The North American Indian Declaration of Independence: A Darwinian Lockean Liberal Perspective

FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES

The Declaration of Independence seems to be hypocritical in its handling of the American Indians.  While it appeals to the "self-evident" principles of government by the consent of the governed to justify the right of the American colonies to become "Free and Independent States," it refuses to consider the possibility that the American Indians have the same right to be free and independent from European or American imperial rule.  

In the Declaration, one of the grievances against the King is that he "has excited insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."  

The Declaration is silent about the claim of the American Indians that their warfare on the British colonists was in defense of their self-governing sovereignty over their ancestral territory that was being invaded by colonial settlers who were stealing land that belonged to the Indians.

In 1763, the Treaty of Paris ended the French and Indian War (a theater of the Seven Years War) with a victory for the British over the French.  American Indians had fought on both sides of the conflict.  In the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the King divided the lands in North America taken from the French.  This created an "Indian Reserve" west of the Appalachian Mountains, prohibiting the British colonists from settling there.  But many colonial settlers and land speculators refused to accept this, which was one of the grievances against the King that led to the American Revolution.

                   Map of North America Established by the Treaty of Paris and the Proclamation of 1763

In 1783, another Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolution with a victory for the Americans.  Although American Indians had fought on both sides of the Revolution, they were not represented in the diplomatic negotiations over the Treaty, and they were shocked when they learned that the Treaty carved up the North American continent with no territory for the Indian Nations.  What had been set aside in 1763 as Indian Territory west of the Appalachians was given to the new American Empire.

But while the United States claimed all of the Trans-Appalachian West east of the Mississippi, most of that territory was actually controlled by Native American Nations.  Moreover, almost all of the continent west of the Mississippi was controlled by Indians.  In 1783, North America was still, as Pekka Hamalainen has argued, predominantly an "indigenous continent," just as it had been for thousands of years.

                            Map of North America Established by the Treaty of Paris of 1783

In 1783, Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), a Mohawk chief, became the founding leader of the Northwestern Indian Confederacy (1783-1795), which brought together Indian nations in the central Mississippi Valley and the Ohio Country to stop the United States from stealing Native land.  The member nations--Shawnees, Illinis, Miamis, Lenapes (Delaware), Potawatomis, Wyandots (Huron), Odawas, Ojibwes (Chippewa), Piankashaws, and Wabash--agreed that no nation could sell its land without the consent of the others.  They called themselves the "United Indian Nations."  This was the largest pan-Indian resistance movement in the history of North America.

They fought the U.S. in the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795)--the first of the American Indian Wars fought with the U.S. Army.  They won some remarkable victories--most notably in 1791, they drove U.S. soldiers under the command of General Arthur St. Clair, the federal governor of the Northwest Territory, into a retreat and killed over 97% of the soldiers, making it one of the worst defeats of the U.S. Army.  But in 1794, the Indians were badly defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.  And in 1795, they were forced to sign the Treaty of Greenville that ended the war and also ended the Indian Confederacy.

In 1794, Brant met with Henry Knox, the U.S. Secretary of War.  Speaking for the American Indians, Brant told him: "We are of the same opinion with the people of the United States; you consider yourselves as independent people; we, as the original inhabitants of this country, and sovereigns of the soil, look upon ourselves as equally independent, and free as any other nation or nation.  This country was given to us by the Great Spirit" (Ablasky 2019: 591).

Here Brant was echoing the language of the Declaration of Independence: "That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States."  And he was claiming that the Native Indian Nations had the same right to be recognized "as equally independent, and free as any other nation or nation."

Actually, Brant was invoking an international legal principle of equal Native nationhood that had been accepted as federal policy in the presidential administration of George Washington.  Secretary of War Henry Knox had told Washington shortly after his inauguration: "Independent nations and tribes of Indians ought to be considered as foreign nations."  Washington's Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson advised him "that the Indians had the full, undivided and independent sovereignty as long as they chose to keep it and that this might be forever" ("Notes on Cabinet Opinions," February 26, 1793).  

The phrase "Free and Independent States" was a reference to the law of nations, particularly as stated in Emer de Vattel's Law of Nations (1758).  Vattel repeatedly identified sovereign nations as "free and independent" (68, 71, 74, 77, 84-85, 214, 265).  This must be so because "nations being composed of men naturally free and independent, and who, before the establishment of civil societies, lived together in the state of nature,--nations or sovereign states are to be considered as so many free persons living together in the state of nature."

As I have argued previously, this follows John Locke's account of how people naturally free and independent in the state of nature can establish civil societies that become sovereign nations that are free and independent in the international arena, which is itself a state of nature because there is no world government over all nations.

According to Vattel, a nation is "free and independent" as long as it is self-governing:

"Every nation that governs itself, under what form soever, without dependence on any foreign power, is a sovereign state.  Its rights are naturally the same as those of any other state.  Such are the moral persons who live together in a natural society, subject to the law of nations.  To give a nation a right to make an immediate figure in this grand society, it is sufficient that it be really sovereign and independent, that is, that it govern itself by its own authority and laws" (83).

By this standard, as Brant and other Indian leaders indicated, the self-governing Native American polities of North America could claim the rights of sovereign statehood equal to the United States.  Locke also saw this because he recognized that the Indians in America were divided into self-governing "nations" or "peoples"--"little Independent Societies" (FT, 144, 153, ST, 41, 102, 105, 107-108).  Consequently, the European imperial powers had no authority over the Indians: "Those who have the Supream Power of making Laws in England, France or Holland, are to an Indian, but like the rest of the World, Men without Authority" (ST, 9).

THE AGRICULTURALIST ARGUMENT

And yet, both Vattel and Locke sometimes seemed to suggest that being a self-governing nation is not enough to make that nation a "free and independent state."  Those people in America who "live only by hunting, fishing, and wild fruits," Vattel observed, cannot rightly object when nations that live by cultivating the land appropriate some of the land of the Indians that they have left uncultivated, because the agricultural development of the land supports a much larger human population than would be possible if the hunter-gatherer Indians were allowed to claim all the land for themselves (128-131, 213-217).

Similarly, in his chapter on "Property" in the Second Treatise, Locke recognized that the hunter-gatherer Indians could claim property in the deer that they had hunted and killed or the acorns and apples that they had gathered, because they had mixed their labor with those natural resources and thus appropriated them to themselves (ST, 26-31).  But he also saw that once human beings engaged in agriculture, then they needed to claim property not just in the wild plants they had gathered or the wild animals they had hunted, but in the land that could be rendered productive through agriculture.  "As much Land as a Man Tills, Plants, Improves, Cultivates, and can use the Product of, so much is his Property" (ST, 32).  

In appropriating such land for farming, they were obeying the command of God in Genesis 1:28 after He had created human beings in His image: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it."  The English colonists in America used this as Biblical sanction for their taking land from the Indians (Seed 1995: 16-40).  Since the Indians lived by hunting and gathering and were not engaged in agriculture, they had no right to exclude the colonists from appropriating land for farming and thus rendering productive what the Indians had left as the "uncultivated wast of America" (ST, 37).

It has been common for "post-colonial" theorists to cite this as evidence that Locke justified colonial settlers in their oppression of indigenous people and that this shows inherent contradiction in early liberalism--claiming to defend liberty against tyranny but denying the liberty of indigenous people facing colonialist oppression (Tully 1993).

But there are at least four lines of Lockean argument that support American Indian claims for national freedom and independence (Goldie 2015).  The first argument is that many of the American Indians engaged in agriculture: they grew corn, beans, and squash (Hamalainen 2022: 12-13).  And Locke knew this because in his writing about the American colonies, he recognized the importance of "Indian corn" for the colonial settlers (Kammen 1966: 154).  So, if ownership of land depends on cultivation, these agrarian Indians had good claims on their land.

On the other hand, if the Lockean claim on land ownership depends on laboring upon the land, then one can make a good argument that Indian hunting, gathering, and grazing over a certain territory is a rightful claim of territory: occupying the land is a form of labor.  In 1725, John Bulkley insisted that by Locke's standard, the Indians had no claim on their lands because they had not engaged in agricultural cultivation (Bulkley 1725).  But in 1781, Samuel Wharton offered a different interpretation of Locke: "the very act of occupancy alone, being a degree of bodily labour, is from a principle of natural justice, without any consent or compact, sufficient of itself to gain a title."  He also appealed to the "self-evident" truths of the Declaration of Independence as justifying the equal rights of the Indian Nations (Wharton 1781: 15-16, 24-25).

A third Lockean argument for the claims of the American Indians is that Locke saw that most of the Indians were no longer in a state of nature, governed by natural property rights, but rather, as indicated above, they were living as Indian Nations with established governments, and "in Governments the Laws regulate the right of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions" (ST, 50).  The Europeans recognized the nationhood of the Indians by dealing with them through treaties, which are international agreements between sovereign nations.  The Royal Proclamation of 1763 recognized American Indian nationhood and its territorial claims: "It is just and reasonable . . . that the several nations or tribes of Indians . . . should not be molested or disturbed in the possession of such parts of our dominions and territories as, not having been ceded to or purchased by us, are reserved to them."

The fourth Lockean argument for the independence of the American Indian nations is the most fundamental:  the same Lockean reasoning for the American colonists revolting against British imperial rule--the reasoning in the Declaration of Independence--can be used by the American Indians to revolt against American imperial rule.

AMERICAN WARS OF INDEPENDENCE

The Declaration of Independence is what John Searle calls a Declaration of Status Function, which has the form "X counts as Y in C."  So, for example, a twenty-dollar bill has monetary value as long as we recognize that a twenty-dollar bill (X) counts as currency (Y) in the monetary system of the United States (C).  Similarly, the American Revolutionaries declared that "these United Colonies [X] are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States [Y]" in the European system of states [C].  The success of that Declaration depended on whether in their "decent respect to the opinions of mankind," they could persuade world opinion to recognize their status as "Free and Independent States."  

Their success depended on both the intellectual persuasiveness of their reasoning in the Declaration and the forceful persuasiveness of their winning the Revolutionary War.  Of those people both inside and outside the American colonies who were not persuaded by the intellectual argument of the Declaration, many were persuaded to accept it once the Americans had won the war.  Going to war to settle the dispute was what Locke called the "Appeal to Heaven"--the appeal to the "God of Battles."

In March of 1776, the Continental Congress asked for prayers "that it may please the Lord of Hosts, the God of Armies, to animate our officers and soldiers with invincible fortitude."  In the following October, King George III issued a Proclamation "putting Our Trust in Almighty God, that he will vouchsafe a Special Blessing on Our Arms, both by Sea and Land" (Shain 2014: 407-408).  This is the same as what Abraham Lincoln saw in the Civil War: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other" (Second Inaugural Address).  The "God of Armies" will decide.

The first major victory for the Americans was in the Battle of Saratoga in 1777.  When French King Louis XVI saw this, he agreed to a formal Franco-American alliance.  This proved to be a turning point in the war (Weddle 2021).  If the British had won that battle, that might have been enough to refute the Declaration of Independence.  As I have argued in previous posts, there is a sense in which might does make right.

The Continental Congress was a practical demonstration of the truth of the Lockean principles of the Declaration of Independence.  Acting in a state of nature, the Congress exercised the Lockean executive power of the law of nature in punishing Great Britain for violating that natural law, in establishing the Continental Army to settle the dispute by force of arms, and in instituting a new government to secure their natural rights.

Similarly, just as the American patriots had formed a confederacy of the "United States" to fight a war of independence from the British Empire, the American Indians formed the Northwest Confederacy of the "United Indian Nations" to fight a war of independence from the newly emerging American Empire in 1783.  That phase of the war came to an end with their defeat in the battle at Fallen Timbers in 1794, which forced them to sign the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which opened two-thirds of the Ohio Country to American settlement.

Although Brant had insisted that American Indian Independence was granted to them by the Great Spirit, it seemed that the God of Armies had not favored the Northwest Indian Confederacy.

THE GREAT SPIRIT'S CHOSEN PEOPLES FIGHT HOLY WARS OF INDEPENDENCE

Brant's appeal to the Great Spirit as supporting American Indian resistance to European and American colonialism expressed a religious cosmology of Indian resistance that had arisen in the 18th century among some Indian prophetic mystics.  This continued in the 19th century as new Indian prophets had supernatural visions of the Creator or the Great Spirit promising His providential care for the American Indians in their holy war for independence from the white colonial imperialists.  This series of Indian prophets included Neolin (the Delaware Prophet), Tenskwatawa (the Shawnee Prophet), and Kenekuk (the Kickapoo Prophet) (Cave 1999; Mohammedi 2002).

One of the persistent themes in this prophetic teaching was that while God had created all human beings, He had created them to live in separate groups in different parts of the world.  Roger Williams heard this from the Narragansett Indians early in the 17th century: "although they do not deny that Englishman's God made English men and the Heavens and Earth where the English come from.  Yet, they also believe their Gods made them and the Heaven and the Earth where they live" (Williams 2019: 108).  Later prophets reported mystical visions of the Great Spirit who taught them that He had created Indians, Negroes, and whites separately, and favored the Indians and the Negroes.

Sometime around 1762, Neolin had a vision of ascending into Heaven and seeing the Master of Light, the Creator of the heavens and the earth.  (This resembles the mystical vision of Saint Paul who ascended into Heaven.)  The Master of Light condemned the Indians for being corrupted by the vices of the white people.  He declared that to regain His favor, the Indians would have to expel the Europeans from the Indian lands.  He told Neolin: "As to those who come to trouble your lands, --drive them out, make war upon them.  I do not love them at all; they know me not, and are my enemies. Send them back to the lands which I have created and let them stay there."  Later, Neolin reported this vision to his people and promised them that "the Great Spirit will give success to our arms.  He will give us strength to conquer our enemies" (Cave 1999: 273).

In 1763, the Odawa (Ottawa) war leader Pontiac brought together many of the Indian tribes in the lower Great Lakes region to form a confederacy to fight against the British and to expel them from their lands.  Pontiac was a shrewd military leader.  As many as eight small British forts were captured, and three major forts--Fort Pitt, Fort Detroit, and Fort Niagara--were put to siege but not captured.

Although the Indians did not defeat the British, they did fight to a military stalemate that was ended by a treaty in 1766.  Pontiac's War was the first pan-tribal confederacy of Indians fighting the first of a series of wars of independence.  The Northwest Indian War was the second of those wars.

The third of those Indian wars of independence was also sparked by an Indian prophet.  Beginning in 1805, the Shawnee Prophet Tenskwatawa fell into an ecstatic trance in which he saw the Master of Life in Heaven.  He began preaching sermons about a new religion that combined elements of Christianity with the traditional Shawnee religion.  He taught his people that they needed to return to traditional Shawnee ways, to reject the corrupt practices of the white people, and to fight against the American settlers who were stealing their land.  He attracted a large group of followers who gathered in western Ohio near Greenville.  He was criticized by some Indian leaders who thought it was foolish to challenge the white settlers with violent resistance, and that it was more prudent to compromise with them and seek some peaceful accommodation with them.  Tenskwatawa charged these rivals to his leadership with being witches who should be punished (Mohammedi 2002).

                                                   George Catlin's Portrait of Tenskwatawa

In 1806, General William Henry Harrison was governor of the Indiana Territory, and he was disturbed by the reports of Tenskwatawa's accusing some Indians in Indiana of practicing witchcraft and ordering that they be tortured and executed.  Harrison denounced this as barbarous.  He also told the Indians that they should test the power of this "notorious imposter."  On April 18, he wrote a letter to them that was published in newspapers advising them: "If he is really a prophet, ask him to cause the sun to stand still--the moon to alter its course--the rivers to cease to flow--or the dead to rise from their graves.  If he does these things, you may then believe that he has been sent from God."  

This was a big mistake because he had forgotten that astronomers had predicted a total eclipse of the sun that would pass over the lower Great Lakes area on June 16, 1806.  Tenskwatawa had heard about this from the scientists who were setting up observation stations across Indiana and Illinois.  So, after Harrison's letter had been published, Tenskwatawa said that the Great Spirit was angry at Harrison; and that as a sign of His anger, on June 16, He would hide the Sun at noon in His hand, and the day would turn dark.  This miracle confirmed that he was a true prophet.

In 1809, Harrison began to push the Indians into signing a treaty for selling some of their lands that could be opened to white settlers.  Some Indian leaders signed the Treaty of Fort Wayne that ceded some extensive lands north of Vincennes along the Wabash River.  

Tecumseh, a Shawnee political leader and brother of Tenskwatawa, denounced the treaty.  Like Brant, 25 years earlier, Tecumseh argued that the Indians should form an intertribal confederacy that would refuse to sell any lands unless all the tribes agreed and that would go to war to defend their lands.  He also invoked his brother's religious visions in claiming that the Great Spirit would give His divine sanction to their war.  Tecumseh traveled widely as he spoke to different tribes trying to persuade them to join the confederacy.  Many Indians moved to Prophetstown, north of what is now Lafayette, Indiana, where Tenskwatawa has established a city for his followers.

On November 7, 1811, Harrison led an army to Prophetstown that fought Tenskwatawa's warriors, defeated them, and burned the city.  This became known as the Battle of Tippecanoe, named after the Tippecanoe River.

Tecumseh continued to build his confederacy with the support of British allies.  In the War of 1812, he led his Indians in fighting in Canada on the side of the British.  Tecumseh was killed in the Battle of Thames in Canada in 1813.

All of these wars of Indian independence, as led by people like Pontiac, Brant, and Tecumseh, were inspired by the religious belief that the Great Spirit would give the Indians victory in war, and thus they were what Locke had called an Appeal to Heaven.  But the failure of the Indians to win these wars suggested to some Indians that either the Great Spirit was not on their side, or that the Indian prophets in their mystical visions had misunderstood the true message of the Great Spirit.  The Kickapoo Prophet Kenekuk then had his own vision of the Great Spirit, who advised that the Indians should take a stance of peaceful coexistence with American culture and nonviolent resistance to American imperialism, which would allow them to preserve their tribal cultural traditions.  

The life of American Indian tribes today shows the success of this strategy for the cultural evolution of American Indian life through adaptation to American liberal pluralism so that the Indian tribes have survived and even thrived.

KENEKUK AND THE VERMILLION KICKAPOOS

                                                        George Catlin's Portrait of Kenekuk

The Kickapoos are an Algonquin-language indigenous tribe originating in the lower Great Lakes region, particularly along the southern Wabash River near what is today Terre Haute, Indiana.  The Vermillion Kickapoos are a distinct band of Kickapoos who by the early 19th century were living along the Vermillion River in eastern Illinois.

Kenekuk was a Vermillion Kickapoo who as a young man was a hard-drinking ne'er-do-well who was thrown out of his band after he killed his uncle in a drunken rage.  After a time of wandering among frontier settlements, begging for food and shelter, he was finally taken in by a charitable Catholic priest who instructed him in Christianity and the ways of the white people.  Kenekuk then decided that he must atone for his past sins, swear off drinking, and preach the word of God to the Kickapoos.  He was welcomed back into his Kickapoo band.  And by 1816, he had emerged as a leading chief (Herring 1985; 1988).

Kenekuk became a charismatic preacher who claimed to have received from the Great Spirit a religion that combined elements of Catholic Christianity and traditional Kickapoo religious beliefs.  His followers believed in Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory.  They worshipped Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the Saints.  But they also practiced traditional Indian singing and dancing in their ceremonies.

To maintain the stable order of the community, Kenekuk taught them that they must abstain from all alcohol because drunkards would be punished in Hell.  Their sobriety saved them from the ravages of alcoholism that had ruined so many Indian tribes.

He also taught them that they should be hard-working farmers.  Unlike other Indian tribes, the Kickapoo men gave up hunting, gathering, and the warrior's ethos, so that they could devote themselves to farming, along with the women.

Having seen that the violent anti-Americanism of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa had been disastrous for the Indians, Kenekuk taught his followers to practice peaceful coexistence with the white frontier settlers.  They should love their neighbors as themselves and turn the other cheek in response to attacks.  But he also taught them to stand up for their rights to religious liberty, to their tribal lands held in common, and to the survival of their Kickapoo Indian culture.

Although Kenekuk's Kickapoos were resolute in defending their eastern Illinois homeland, in obedience to the Great Spirit's command that they should never sell tribal lands, in 1832 they were forced by pressure from President Jackson's Indian Removal Bill and the public reaction to the Black Hawk War of 1832 to sign the Treaty of Castor Hill that ceded all Indian claims to Illinois lands, which compelled them to move west of the Mississippi.

In 1833 they settled on the west bank of the Missouri River a few miles north of Fort Leavenworth.  They reestablished their customary way of life in the new land, with promises in the treaty that the federal government would provide money, food, and farming tools.  They soon became some of the most prosperous Indian farmers in America.

Many Protestant and Catholic missionaries came to their land in the attempt to convert them into orthodox Christians.  But their devotion to the Prophet and his distinctive syncretic religion could not be broken.

Kenekuk died in 1852 from smallpox.  But even after his death, the Kickapoo abstinence from drinking and other vices, their agricultural work ethic, and their religious unity created a social solidarity in preserving their tribal culture against white encroachments on their lands.

While most of the Indian tribes in Kansas were forced to move out to make way for white settlers, the small Kickapoo reservation remains today as one of only three Indian reservations in the state.

INDIGENOUS IMPERIALISM

So far, I have written about the American Indian fight for independence and resistance to conquest as if it were a binary struggle between Indians and settlers.  But that is not true.  Indigenous tribes fighting for their independence were fighting as much against other tribes as they were against colonial powers.  And tribes allied with other tribes to fight against yet other tribes.  Some tribes committed genocide against their neighboring tribes.  Tribes conquering other tribes often enslaved those they had subjugated.  Moreover, there is plenty of archaeological and ethnographic evidence that intertribal warfare, conquest, and enslavement pervaded the history of the North American Indians long before the arrival of Europeans (Chacon and Mendoza 2007).

And while we commonly think of the Indians as fighting against European or American imperialism, much of the Indian fight against imperialism was against the indigenous imperialism of other Indian tribes.  Consider, for example, the indigenous empires established by the Powhatans, the Iroquois, the Lakotas, and the Comanches.

In 1607, when the English colonists landed in Virginia and established Jamestown, they were surrounded by the Powhatan people, who were under the rule of the Powhatan Empire (Hamalainen 2022: 59-69).  The Powhatans were ruled by Wahunsenacawh, the paramount chief of the Powhatan Confederacy with the title of mamanatowick, which suggested manito--his "spiritual power."  He was quioccosuk, a "god on Earth," ruling by divine right over his empire.  He had subjugated several rival nations, who were forced to pay tribute to him--providing soldiers and over eighty percent of their possessions.  He ruled over more than thirty towns and twenty thousand people.  He had as many as a hundred wives.  His ten-year-old daughter was known to the English as Pocahontas.  Captain John Smith observed that "the form of their Commonwealth is a Monarchical government, one as Emperor rules over many Kings or Governors."  The will of the chief ruler "is a law and must be obeyed: not only as a King, but as half a God they esteem him.  His inferior Kings whom they call Werowances, are tied to rule by customs, and have power of life and death at their command."

At about this same time, the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy were beginning to expand by conquest in the eastern Great Lakes region to become the dominant imperial power in the Eastern Woodlands by the middle of the seventeenth century (Hamalainen 2022: 97-141).  Previously, I have written about how the Huron were devastated by Iroquois attacks, which forced the Hurons who survived abandon their native territory, which was taken over by the Iroquois.  At least a dozen Indian nations were forced by Iroquois expansion to abandon their ancient homelands and retreat into the western Great Lakes region along the southern shore of Lake Superior and the western shore of Lake Michigan.  This was the first large-scale westward expansion of a conquering people in early American history.

                                                         Expansion of the Iroquois Empire

The largest westward expansion of Indians west of the Mississippi was by the Lakota people, who eventually transformed themselves into one of the most powerful empires in North American history (Hamalainen 2019; 2022: 400-408).  The Lakotas are one of three subcultures of the Sioux, along with the Eastern Dakota and Western Dakota.  They might have originated in the Great Lakes region.  They migrated west along the Missouri River Valley until the first Lakota explorers arrived in Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, in 1776.  They identified Paha Sapa as their spiritual birthplace.  It also provided the natural resources they needed, such as pastureland for their horses and bison herds for their hunting.  But several Indian nations believed that the Great Spirit had given the Black Hills to them.  And so the Lakotas had to form an alliance with the Cheyennes and Arapahos to push the Crows, Kiowas, and Shoshones out of the Black Hills.  Later, they expelled the Pawnees, Omahas, and Otoes from the river valleys of the central plains.  According to the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851), the Platte River was the southern border of Lakota territory.

                                                         Lakota Sioux Treaty Lands

But the Lakotas claimed a two-hundred-mile southward extension of their territory to the Arkansas River by the right of conquest.  The Oglala leader Black Hawk explained: "These lands once belonged to the Kiowas and the Crows, but we whipped these nations out of them, and in this we did what the white men do when they want the lands of the Indians."  This proved that the Great Spirit was on the side of the Lakota Empire.

To the south of the Lakotas, there was another indigenous empire--the Comanches.

                                                                  The Comanche Empire

The Comanches expanded their empire by attacking the Spanish, Mexican, and white settlers and also other Indian tribes such as the Lipan Apaches.  Eventually, what the Spanish called Comancheria encompassed forty thousand Comanches living on a quarter million miles of land, making it the largest indigenous territory in North America.  In 1846 and 1847, the Comanches even sent thousands of soldiers deep into Mexico--attacking the city of Queretaro, only 135 miles north of Mexico City (Hamalainen 2008; 2022: 409-29).

THE EVOLUTIONARY ECOLOGY OF POWER

As Pekka Hamalainen has observed, Darwinian science allows us to explain the evolutionary ecology of Lakota and Comanche power that came from harnessing the stored energy from the Sun in horses, bison, domesticated plants, and human slave labor (Hamalainen 2022: 12-15, 249-58, 421-23).  (I have pursued a similar line of thought in writing about the Big History of photosynthesis and the cosmic evolution of complexity as measured by energy rate density.)

The modern domesticated horse (Equus ferus caballus) is a subspecies of the wild horse (Equus ferus).  The wild horse evolved over 45 million years ago.  Humans began domesticating horses around 4,000 BCE.  There were horses in North America until around 10,000 years ago, when they went extinct there.  They were reintroduced into North America by the European colonists.  When they arrived in the North American West early in the eighteenth century through a trade chain from Spanish New Mexico, the Native Americans in the west entered a new technological age.

Previously, the Indians had domesticated the dog.  But the domesticated horse was a bigger and stronger dog and a better energy converter.  Horses transformed the Sun's energy stored through photosynthesis in the biomass of the continental grasslands into immediately available muscle power, which the Indians could harness for hunting bison and waging war on their enemies.

The grasses on the North American Great Plains coevolved with large grazers like the bison.  And the bison were good at converting the energy stored in the grasses into an animal body that was a source of meat, bones, and hides for Indian hunters.  As they became more dependent on the bison meat as a source of protein, the hunters reduced their gathering of plants.  They developed trade relations with Indian farmers so that they could trade bison meat and hides for corn (maize), squash, and beans, which the farmers had genetically modified through domestication.

Many Indian tribes--including the Lakota and Comanche--also used Indian slaves as like domesticated animals, which was another way of harnessing the energy of the Sun stored in the muscle power of the slaves that could be put to useful work.

THE SURVIVAL OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS IN A LOCKEAN LIBERAL SOCIETY

By the 1880s, the U.S. Army had defeated the American Indian warriors.  This was beneficial for the Indians insofar as it ended the intertribal warfare and indigenous imperial conquest that had run through thousands of years of Indian history in North America.  But this benefit brought with it the cost of surrendering the Indians to American imperial conquest, and this subjugation made them vulnerable to violence and oppression.  Over the past 50 years, some historians have even spoken of the Americans as committing "genocide" against the Indians, so that Native American life was essentially extinguished --perhaps finally, as Dee Brown argued (in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee)--with the U.S. Cavalry's 1890 massacre of more than 150 Sioux at Wounded Knee.

But recently, some scholars of American Indian history--including American Indian scholars like David Treuer (in his Heartbeat of Wounded Knee)--have complained that this story of the "dead Indian" denies or demeans the vibrant life of American Indians in America today.  The story of American Indian genocide is refuted by the simple fact of the stunning demographic growth and diversity of American Indian lives today.  As many as 5 million Americans identify themselves as American Indians today, which probably exceeds the population of Indians in North America in 1800.  Over the past 50 years, the average income of American Indians has been rising, and the poverty rate has dropped.  Indian-owned businesses have been growing.  The number of college-educated Indians has increased.  The youthful reservation population has been growing.  But most Indians live in urban areas.  Many move back and forth between a reservation and the city.  Indians are actively engaged in preserving Indian cultural traditions, including American Indian religious practices and beliefs.  In the 135 years since Wounded Knee, the Indians have not only survived, but they have even lived flourishing lives

As Treuer indicates, there are two reasons for this.  The first is that while the Indians' violent resistance to conquest was defeated in battle by the U.S. Army, their nonviolent resistance to oppressive subjugation has succeeded in securing their rights as American citizens to life and liberty.  This illustrates what I have argued about the importance of Lockean nonviolent resistance to oppression, which explains what John Adams meant when he said that America's Revolution of Independence was achieved "in the minds of the people" in the resistance movement from 1660 to 1775, long before any blood was shed at Lexington.

The second reason why American Indians have been able to live good lives as Indians in America is that a Lockean pluralist society allows for a culturally diverse social order in which one can live as both an American and an Indian.

Treuer conveys both of these points in this passage:

While Wounded Knee was the last major armed conflict between Indian tribes and the U.S. government, there have been many battles since 1890: battles fought by Indian parents to keep their children, and by the children far away at boarding schools to remember and keep their families and, by extension, their tribes, close to their hearts; battles of Indian leaders to defeat allotment and other destructive legislation; battles of activists to make good on the promises their leaders couldn't or wouldn't honor; battles of millions of present-day Indians to be Indian and modern at the same time.  We are, in a sense, the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those hundreds who survived Wounded Knee and who did what was necessary to survive, at first, and then--bit by bit--to thrive (453).

When he speaks of the battle of Indians "to be Indian and modern at the same time," what he calls "modern" is what I call--in my convoluted professorial language--Lockean liberal symbolic niche construction, which is based on Adam Smith's principle of "allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice."  

In other words, American Indians have discovered that they can be citizens in America's bourgeois pluralist society while preserving their Indian tribal identity.  This shows the evolution of Indigenous peoples through cultural adaptation so that they can live and live well as American Indians.

In 1877, the Nez Perce under Chief Joseph surrendered to General Nelson Miles in northern Montana.  Two years later, Chief Joseph gave a speech in Washington, D.C., which was directed to the government and to the general American public.  Treuer quotes the entire speech, which includes this passage:

I know that my race must change.  We can not hold our own with the white men as we are.  We only ask an even chance to live as other men live.  We ask to be recognized as men.  We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men.  If the Indian breaks the law, punish him by the law.  If the white man breaks the law, punish him also.

Let me be a free man--free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself--and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty.

That's the American Indian's Declaration of Independence. 

 

REFERENCES

Ablasky, Gregory. 2019. "Species of Sovereignty: Native Nationhood, the United States, and International Law, 1783-1795." The Journal of American History 106: 591-613.

Bulkley, John. 1725. An Enquiry into the Right of the Aboriginal Natives to the Land in America.  In Mark Goldie, ed., The Reception of Locke's Politics, vol. 6: Wealth, Property, and Commerce, 1696-1832, 191-223.  London: Pickering & Chatto, 1999.

Cave, Alfred A. 1999. "The Delaware Prophet Neolin: A Reappraisal." Ethnohistory 46 (Spring): 265-290.

Chacon, Richard J., and Ruben G. Mendoza, eds. 2007. North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence.  Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Hamalainen, Pekka. 2008. The Comanche Empire. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Hamalainen, Pekka. 2019. Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Hamalainen, Pekka. 2022. Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America. New York: Liveright Publishing.

Herring, Joseph B. 1985. "Kenekuk, the Kickapoo Prophet: Acculturation Without Assimilation."  American Indian Quarterly 9 (Summer): 295-307.

Kammen, Michael G., ed. 1966. "Virginia at the Close of the Seventeenth Century: An Appraisal by James Blair and John Locke." The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 74: 141-169.

Locke, John. 1988. Two Treatises of Government. Ed. Peter Laslett. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Mohammedi, Sara. 2002. "The Interpretation of Christianity by American Indian Prophets." Indigenous Nations Studies Journal 3 (Fall): 71-88.

Seed, Patricia. 1995. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe's Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Shain, Barry, ed. 2014. The Declaration of Independence in Historical Context. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

Treuer, David. 2019. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present. New York: Riverhead Books.

Tully, John. 1993. "Rediscovering America: The Two Treatises and Aboriginal Rights." In An Approach to Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

de Vattel, Emer. 2008. The Law of Nations. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Weddle, Kevin J. 2021. The Compleat Victory: Saratoga and the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wharton, Samuel. 1781. Plain Facts: Being an Examination Into the Rights of the Indian Nations of America, to Their Respective Countries. Philadelphia; R. Aitken.

Williams, Roger. 2019. A Key into the Language of America. Eds. Dawn Dove, Sandra Robinson, Loren Spears, Dorothy Herman Papp, and Kathleen J. Bragdon. The Tomaquag Museum Edition. Yardley, PA: Westholme.

The Reason/Revelation Debate Among the American Indians?

I will be writing some posts on how many of the American Indian wars of independence were inspired by Indian prophets who claimed to have had mystical visions of the Great Spirit promising that He would lead the Indians as His chosen people to defeat the white people and expel them from Indian lands.  This leads me to wonder whether there is any resemblance between these holy wars of Indian independence and the theology of the American Declaration of Independence. 

The Declaration of Independence appeals to God as Lawmaker, Creator, Supreme Judge, and Divine Providence.  But in Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration, the only reference to divinity was "Nature's God."  Later, other members of the Congress added three more references to deity: "they are endowed by their Creator" in the second sentence; "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intensions" in the penultimate sentence; and "with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence" in the last sentence.  God as Creator, as Supreme Judge, and as Providential Caregiver does suggest a divine agency above or beyond the natural world that might intervene miraculously in the natural world against natural law to serve His purposes and thus enforcing a transcendent morality. 

In his Defense of the Constitutions of the United States of America (1786-1787), John Adams explained: "The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history."  Those who formed these new American governments did not claim "interviews with the gods" or "the inspiration of Heaven."  These thirteen governments were contrived "merely by the use of reason and the senses," and founded "on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery" (Adams 2000: 117-118).

Here Adams was following Jefferson in appealing to "Nature's God," in appealing to "the simple principles of nature" that can be known "merely by the use of reason and the senses," without "interviews with the gods" or "the inspiration of Heaven."  Here Adams and Jefferson were on the side of reason rather than revelation.

But it's possible for those religious Americans who are on the side of revelation rather than reason to see support for their religious faith in the Declaration's references to God as Lawmaker, Creator, Supreme Judge, and Divine Providence.  These Americans can pray to this God and ask for His miraculous intervention in history to preserve America as a free and independent state.

Thus, the Declaration is open to freedom of thought and speech about the reason/revelation debate, so that people are free to choose between the philosophic life and religious experience without the need for persecution to enforce some religious orthodoxy.

Although it's not completely clear to me that the American Indian nations allowed such freedom of thought about reason and revelation, I do see some evidence for this.  For example, in Roger Williams' Key into the Language of America (1643), he describes the remarkable openness of the Narragansett Indians in discussing their religion and pondering whether Williams might be right about Christianity being the only true religion.

Williams taught the Indians the Bible's creation story in Genesis 1, and then he taught them the Bible's story about how those who know, love, and fear the one true God will go to Heaven after death for eternal happiness, while those who don't worship this God will go to Hell after death for eternal punishment.  Williams then described how the Indians reacted to these stories:

Once after I had talked, as well as my language permitted, before the chief Sachim, or Prince, of the country with his Archpriests and many others in full assembly and, being night, and tired from travel and talking, I laid down to rest.  Before I fell asleep, I heard this discussion:

A Qunnihticut Indian (who had heard our discussion) told the Sachim Miantunnomu, that he heard from the discussion that souls went up to Heaven, or down to Hell, but, he said, "Our fathers have told us that our souls go to the Southwest" [to the Southwest God Kautantowwit].

The Sachim answered, "But how do you know yourself, that your souls go the Southwest.  Did you ever see a soul go there?"

The Native replied: "When did Roger Williams see a soul go to Heaven or Hell?"

The Sachim again replied: "He has books and writings, and one which God himself made, concerning men's souls, and therefore may well know more than we, that have none, but take all upon trust from our forefathers" (Williams 2019: 117).

Notice the implication here that these Indians recognized two ways of knowing: what we see with our own eyes versus what we take upon trust from what we have heard from our forefathers or from a book that our forefathers have told us is the holy word of God.

The first way of knowing is what Adams identified as "the use of reason and the senses," while the second is believing in those who claim "interviews with the gods" and "the inspiration of Heaven."  This is what I mean by Reason versus Revelation. 

In previous posts, I have argued that there is no final resolution to this reason/revelation debate because neither side can refute the other.  But still, it is possible for the zetetic philosopher or scientist to make a rational choice for the philosophic life even without refuting revelation.  

Do we see some intimation of the zetetic philosopher in the Qunnihticut Indian?

REFERENCES

Adams, John. 2000. The Political Writings of John Adams. Ed. George W. Carey. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing.

Williams, Roger. 2019. A Key into the Language of America. Eds. Dawn Dove, Sandra Robinson, Loren Spears, Dorothy Herman Papp, and Kathleen Bragdon.  The Tomaquag Museum Edition. Yardley, PA: Westholme.

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin: The Evolutionary Science of Liberty, Slavery, and the Bible

On February 12, 1809, Charles Darwin was born in England, and Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky.  They had more in common than just the coincidence of their birth on the same day.  Almost every February 12th, I have posted an essay on some of the common themes in their lives.  I have identified ten points of similarity between Darwin and Lincoln.

1. Both saw the Universe as governed by natural laws, which included the natural laws for the evolution of life and human beings.

2. Both denied that the Bible was a divine revelation, and they denied the Biblical doctrines of divine special creation in the first chapters of Genesis and the divinity of Jesus in the New Testament.

3. Both were accused of being atheists or infidels.

4. Both spoke of God as First Cause in a deistic sense.

5. Both appealed to the Bible as a source of moral teaching, even as they also appealed to a natural moral sense independent of Biblical religion that could correct the Bible's moral mistakes (such as the Bible's endorsement of slavery).

6. Both rooted that natural moral sense in the evolved moral sentiments.

7. Both abhorred slavery as an immoral violation of evolved human nature, and they saw the American Civil War as a crucial turning point for the abolition of slavery.

8. Both were moral realists.

9. Both saw human history as moving through a Big History of three evolutionary eras--the foraging era, the agrarian era, and the modern commercial and liberal era.

10. Both were classical liberals.

Although there is no evidence that Lincoln ever read Darwin, we do know from William Herndon that Lincoln was persuaded by his reading of Robert Chambers' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) to embrace an evolutionary science of the history of the Universe very similar to Darwin's theory.

Now, we have a new book by David Kent--Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln's Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America--about how Lincoln's life-long study of modern science and technology shaped his moral and political life.  Although Kent recognizes some of my ten points of similarity between Lincoln and Darwin, he is remarkably silent about the second, third, fifth, and ninth points.

Kent says nothing about the popular charge against Lincoln that he denied the truth of the Bible and therefore was an atheist or infidel.  When Lincoln ran for a seat in the U.S. Congress in 1846, his opponent--Peter Cartwright, a Methodist minister--circulated a rumor that Lincoln was an infidel.  The basis for this charge was that as a young man, Lincoln had read some notorious books of skeptical deism--particularly, Volney's Ruins of Empires and Tom Paine's The Age of Reason--and he wrote his own pamphlet arguing that the Bible was not divinely inspired and that Jesus was not truly the Son of God.  His friends warned him that the reputation for being an infidel or atheist would ruin his life, especially if he wanted to have a political career.  So, he burned his pamphlet,  and he became very secretive about his religious beliefs.  Darwin was similar.  As I have indicated in some previous posts (here and here), Darwin denied that the Bible was a divine revelation and that Jesus was divine; but he wrote about this only in private correspondence.  Kent is silent about this.

Kent has a long section in his book on Lincoln's "Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions."  But he does not notice how Lincoln mocks the Bible in that lecture.  As I have indicated, Lincoln suggests that "in the beginning," there is no divine creation of man, and man depends totally on himself "to dig out his destiny" without any guidance from God.

Kent also does not notice Lincoln's suggestion that the Bible's endorsement of slavery needs to be corrected.  While Kent surveys some of the attempts to justify slavery as supported by the Bible, he does not confront the fact that the Bible really does affirm slavery.  Frederick Ross's Slavery Ordained by God (1857) shows that all of the references to slavery in the Bible are proslavery.  Lincoln read this book, and Kent points to Lincoln's note on the book's proslavery theology.  But Kent does not notice Lincoln's failure to refute Ross's reading of the Bible.  Nor does Kent reflect on Lincoln's remarkable observation in his Second Inaugural that in the Civil War between North and South, "Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other."

Kent also fails to see how Lincoln's Darwinian evolutionary science of human history moves through three eras--from foraging to farming to commerce.  By embracing the moral progress to the modern commercial society, Lincoln shows the classical liberalism that he shares with Darwin. 

Is Elon Musk America's Dictator? We Will Soon Know.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a "dictator" is "an absolute ruler of a state, esp. one whose rule displaces that of a democratic government."  In the United States, the American democratic government is delineated in the Constitution and in the laws of Congress as the supreme lawmaking body elected by the people, with the President charged to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed," and with the Courts ensuring that the Constitution, the laws of the United States, and all treaties shall be "the supreme Law of the Land."  The fundamental principle is the rule of law, such that no one is above or outside the law.  Therefore, an American dictator would be an absolute ruler who would displace this democratic rule of law.

In my previous post, I suggested that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have emerged in the first few weeks of Trump's term as wanting to become dictators.  It now appears that we will know for sure whether that is the case within the next week.

I say that because of what happened early this morning (February 8).  Acting on orders from Trump, Musk has gained access to the Treasury Department's payment and data systems.  This system channels about 90 percent of the payments for the U.S. government (about $6.75 trillion last fiscal year)--the funds paid directly to people in the states as well as state governments.  This includes, for example, Social Security benefits, veteran's benefits, and federal employee wages.  This money has already been allocated by Congress.  But Trump wants Musk to be able to cut those federal payments if he so chooses.  Moreover, Musk's access to the Treasury Department's systems gives him access to all of Americans' private information stored in those systems.

On the evening of February 7th, the Attorneys General of 19 States filed an application with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York asking for a temporary restraining order that would deny Musk's access to the Treasury Department's systems.  This morning, District Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled in their favor.

In his order, Judge Engelmayer agreed with the States that they had four persuasive reasons for why Musk's actions were illegal and unconstitutional.  First, Musk is violating the Administrative Procedure Act, which is the fundamental legislation governing federal administrative procedures.  Second, Musk's actions exceed the statutory authority of the Department of the Treasury.  Third, this violates the separation of powers doctrine.  And, finally, this violates the Take Care Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Judge Engelmayer issued four orders.  First, the defendants must appear in federal court on February 14 to show cause why an order should not be issued to stop Musk's actions at the Treasury Department.  Second, pending that hearing, Musk and the people acting for him are denied any access to the Treasury Department's systems, and they must "immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department's records and systems, if any."  Third, defendants must file any opposition submission, and the States must file any reply before the February 14 hearing.  Finally, this order must be filed upon the defendants by 12 noon today (February 8).

I lay out these details to show how this sets up a clear confrontation between the court and Musk.  If he accepts this temporary restraining order, then he has accepted the constraints of the rule of law--at least for now--and he is not a dictator.  But if he and Trump refuse to obey this order, then they have declared themselves America's dictators.

This has broad implications as to whether we are witnessing a full display of a chimpanzee politics of dictatorship by Trump and Musk, which I will consider in future posts.  I also need to respond to the "unitary executive" theory of the presidency, which is the interpretation of Article II of the Constitution that supports what Trump is doing.  Trump pointed to this theory in 2019 when he said: "I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president."

Elon Musk's Takeover of the U.S. Government Fulfills Curtis Yarvin's MAGA Fascism

Over the past two months, I have argued that the victory of Trump's MAGA movement is Janus-faced.  The liberal face of the movement is manifest in the multiracial and multiethnic coalition of Trump voters and in the liberal pluralism of Trump's Inaugural Address.  But the illiberal face of the movement was displayed at the inauguration by the prominence of the billionaires seated behind Trump, which suggested that Trump might be headed towards Curtis Yarvin's fascism of dictatorial rule by a multibillionaire CEO.

Now, in the first two weeks of Trump's presidency, we have seen that the illiberal face of Yarvin's fascism has prevailed, and it's the face of Elon Musk taking over the U.S. Government, which is exactly the multibillionaire oligarchy proposed by Yarvin.  (Doesn't Musk look like the perfect James Bond villain--the world's richest man who wants to take over the Earth and then Mars?  Where's James Bond when we need him most?)

Whether this exercise of fascist power can be stopped will depend upon the actions of the Congress, the courts, and the military.  The Constitution gives the Congress all the power necessary to check the exercise of arbitrary absolute power by the President and those working for him.  But there's no evidence that the congressional Republicans loyal to Trump and Musk are willing to check their assertion of dictatorial power.  

If the Republicans were to lose control of the Congress in the mid-term elections of 2026, the new Congress might try to impeach Trump again.  But in that case, Trump and Musk would overturn the elections by asserting that they were rigged, and they could call out the MAGA militias for another insurrection.

It is also possible that Trump and Musk would declare in 2026 that since the nation is in a permanent state of emergency, elections cannot be held.

The courts can declare the actions of Trump and Musk illegal and unconstitutional.  In fact, they have already violated dozens of laws.  Every time they take over or shut down a federal agency, they are violating the congressional laws that set up and regulate those agencies.  

The Supreme Court could say that Trump and Musk are in violation of the Constitution.  But as I have indicated, the Supreme Court justices loyal to Trump have already ruled--against the original meaning of the Constitution--that the President is a "King Above the Law."  

And even if the Supreme Court were to rule against Trump and Musk, they could simply ignore their ruling.  Indeed, it's likely that Trump and Musk will soon tell their Department of Justice to refuse to obey any court orders that restrict presidential rule by executive decrees.  (The intellectual impetus for what Trump and Musk are doing comes from scholars who argue for a "unitary presidency," which allows for the president to exercise arbitrary and absolute powers during times of emergency.  Much of this reasoning comes from Carl Schmitt, the legal apologist for the Nazis who insisted that the "Leader Principle" transcended the law.)

As I have suggested in the past, when Trump lost the election in 2020, some of the people around him urged him to call out the military to overturn the election, but he was warned by General Mark Milley and others that the military would not obey.  But now, we see that in planting his loyalists in the Defense Department, he could be preparing the military to support his fascist rule.  (Notice that Trump's Defense Department has revoked General Milley's security detail, which exposes him to assassination by one of Trump's militia men.)

So, it all comes down to one question.  Will the military obey the commands of Trump and Musk in support of a fascist oligarchy?  

Whether a dictator has a minimal winning coalition often depends on whether he has sufficient support in the military.

And so we see the end of America's experiment in liberal democracy coming on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.

Trump's "Manifest Destiny" for Americans on Mars. Great Idea--If Only Those American Martians Weren't Likely to Die in Space!

One of the most interesting passages in Donald Trump's Second Inaugural Address was his expansion of America's "manifest destiny" to include not only conquering the Panama Canal, the Gulf of America, Canada, and Greenland, but also colonizing Mars.  This passage comes near the end of the speech:

The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation--one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.

And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.

Ambition is the lifeblood of a great nation, and, right now, our nation is more ambitious than any other.  There's no nation like our nation.

Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers.  The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts.  The call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls.

Our American ancestors turned a small group of colonies on the edge of a vast continent into a mighty republic of the most extraordinary citizens on Earth.  No one comes close.

Americans pushed thousands of miles through rugged land of untamed wilderness. . . .

Anyone who knows anything about Elon Musk and his SpaceX will immediately recognize that Trump here was reading language suggested by Musk.  Indeed, those watching Trump read this part of the speech saw Musk cheering this part of the speech.

In recent years, I have written as many as ten posts on the possibility of colonizing Mars, and I have pointed out the many problems with such a project.  I see no evidence that either Trump or anyone else in the White House has thought about these problems, with the exception of Musk.  If you go to the White House website, and search for "Mars," you will be directed to the Inaugural Address, but nothing else.  Since most of Trump's policies are coming from the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025," you might think his proposal for colonizing Mars is there.  But if you search the "Project 2025" text (almost 1,000 pages) for "Mars," nothing comes up.  

In the 1960s, NASA had planned to extend the Apollo Program, so that after landing on the Moon in 1969, we could go on to land on Mars in the 1980s.  Those plans were thrown out during the Nixon Administration.  

But then, in 1996, Robert Zubrin published his book The Case for Mars.  The book was so successful that it created a popular fascination with Zubrin's plans for travelling to and settling Mars.  Zubrin founded The Mars Society in 1998 to promote his ideas.  

Elon Musk read The Case for Mars, and he was persuaded by Zubrin's argument.  As one of the cofounders of PayPal, Musk was on his way to becoming a multibillionaire; and he was looking for ambitious new projects.  In 2001, he met Zubrin, and he began contributing to the Mars Society.  Following Zubrin's advice, Musk set up SpaceX in 2002, which became the most amazing aerospace company, doing things that NASA thought impossible. 

Today, SpaceX has over 6,000 Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit, providing satellite internet service to over 70 countries.  SpaceX launches hundreds of new satellites into orbit every year. 

In recent years, SpaceX has been testing Starship, the biggest and most powerful space rocket ever built.  Musk predicts that an uncrewed Starship will test land on Mars in 3 to 4 years.  Then, Starship will begin taking people to Mars and establishing permanent settlements on the planet within the next two decades.

Is this a good idea?  In my posts, I have tried to answer that question by considering both the case for Mars (best stated by Zubrin and the astrobiologist Charles Cockell) and the case against Mars (best stated by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith).  There are some easy problems and some hard problems.

THE EASY PROBLEMS

The easy problems are the technological problems with developing space rockets that could transport lots of cargo, including lots of human beings, to and from Mars in such a way as to establish and sustain a large Mars colony of thousands or perhaps a million human beings.  NASA has already sent landers and rovers to Mars that are exploring the planet and sending back information.  But this is very expensive--as measured by dollars per pound of cargo--and the main reason for the great expense is that the rockets delivering payloads into space are not reusable.  It would be like a Boeing 747 airliner that could be used for only one flight.  No one could afford the airline tickets.

Musk's SpaceX has been solving this problem by building rockets that are reusable, so that the expense per pound of cargo drops dramatically.  When Starship is fully operational, both the Starship and its SuperHeavy Booster will return to their base after launch so that they can be launched again.  Trump has talked about how exciting it was to see the SuperHeavy Booster return to base for the first time.

THE HARD PROBLEMS

And then there are the really hard problems.  The first one is that the universe wants to kill us.  The universe does not seem to be hospitable to life--particularly, human intelligent life.  We have not found life anywhere beyond the Earth.  And even on the Earth, we know that the Earth has been lifeless for most of its history.  The conditions in the Earth's biosphere for sustaining human life have arisen only for a few million years.  

And once we leave the Earth's biosphere, the lack of a breathable atmosphere, food, water, and protection from deadly cosmic radiation make the extraterrestrial universe a constant threat to human life.  As I have indicated in my previous posts, no one knows how to create an artificial biosphere in deep space that would sustain human life for prolonged periods.

The second hard problem is that the analogy of Mars as the "new frontier" is dubious.  Zubrin and Musk have promoted this analogy, which is assumed in Trump's speech.  Just as "Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness" in the American West, Trump proclaims, now Americans will push to explore and settle the wilderness of Mars.

The problem with this analogy, as the Weinersmiths have argued, is that it's a false analogy in that while the American settlers in the West were moving through the biosphere of the Earth, the American Martians will have to enter the "necrosphere" of Mars where "the ground is poison, there is no air, and cascades of radiation are fired at the inhabitants on a perpetual basis."

Zubrin's analogy between America and Mars could become a true analogy once we learn how to artificially recreate the Earth's biosphere on Mars--perhaps by terraforming Mars.  The Weinersmiths think that's a possibility that we should strive for, but it will require a century or more of research and development: it would be wise to wait and then go big.  

People like Musk and Zubrin will have to persuade us that waiting is foolish and that it would be wise for us to go now.

The third hard problem is the problem of liberty on Mars.  This is a problem because of what Cockell calls "the problem of oxygen":  the concentration of power in a centralized Martian government ("Muskow"?) that controls the artificial life support systems that provide oxygen and other resources necessary for life will exercise absolute power over the people, whose obedience will be enforced by the threat of withdrawing their life support.

Cockell has argued that Mars could be "engineered for liberty" by devising a Martian system of limited government with checks and balances that would secure individual rights--something like the Lockean liberal democracy of America.  But it's not clear whether that would work on Mars.

Zubrin has argued, however, that the only successful human settlements in space will have to be inclined towards liberty.  He sees two reasons for this.  The first reason is that any successful extraterrestrial society will have to respect individual liberty because only free people with freedom of thought and action can provide the inventive innovation that creates and sustains the technology of artificial life support required for extraterrestrial environments.

The second reason is that only free societies will attract immigrants, and Martian societies will need immigrants to overcome their severe labor shortage.  "From a Darwinian point of view," Zubrin insists, "an extraterrestrial tyranny is an impossibility because that colony would not be able to grow, it would not be able to blossom.  It would be outcompeted for immigrants by ones that offer greater liberty."

I see this as an extension to Mars of Lockean liberal symbolic niche construction and the evolution of cultural group selection with a Lockean open borders policy.

But this assumes that we could figure out how to create a Lockean liberal society within an artificial biosphere on Mars.

The fourth hard problem is the most profound one--the problem of figuring out the meaning of our place in the universe.  Will travel in deep space constantly remind us that the whole universe wants to kill us?  And if that is so, does that teach us that the universe does not care for or about us?  Or can human beings find their purpose inherent in human life itself--in pursuing their natural human desires as shaped in the environment of evolutionary adaptation on the Earth--even though human life is only a momentary emergence in the history of a cosmos that has no eternal purpose?

Or will exploring and colonizing deep space induce a sense of awe before the mysteries of the cosmos that suggests some divine or transcendent cause of the cosmos?

LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES?

If we agree with the Declaration of Independence that human beings have a natural right to consent to a government to secure their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then we can foresee that people settling on Mars will want to establish such a government.  But will they succeed in doing that?

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, Robert Zubrin, and Charles Cockell give us a wide range of answers to that question.  The Weinersmiths say no:  this cannot be done, at least not within the next 100 years, because we don't know how to keep people alive on Mars, and we're not going to be securing their liberty or their pursuit of happiness if they're dead.  That's why Mars sucks.

Although Cockell agrees with the Weinersmiths that Mars sucks, he believes we can develop the technology for securing at least the minimal conditions for some people to live on Mars.  Since Mars is so awful, however, he foresees that few people will want to live there.  He thinks a few adventurous scientists (like himself) will go there to study Mars in searching for answers about the origins, development, and diversity of life in the universe.  And yet, even these few scientists will not want to stay on Mars for long.

If the Weinersmiths are right, this won't happen anytime soon because the death rate for these Mars-bound scientists will be so great that most scientists will decide it's not worth the risk.

But even if the Weinersmiths are wrong, so that eventually a large number of people go to Mars to establish permanent settlements, Cockell worries that their governments on Mars will tend to be tyrannical because of the "problem of oxygen":  the concentration of power in a centralized government that controls the artificial life support systems that provide oxygen and other resources necessary for life will exercise absolute power over the people, whose obedience will be enforced by the threat of withdrawing their life support.

To overcome this tendency to Martian tyranny, Cockell insists that we will need to design economic, social, and political institutions that limit, divide, and decentralize power to protect liberty; and in doing that, we can draw lessons from the liberal institutions for promoting liberty on Earth, particularly in the history of the United States.

Zubrin insists that the Weinersmiths refuse to take seriously the ways in which the technology of supporting life in space can reduce the risks to human life that come from space travel and living on a planet like Mars.

And just as the Weinersmiths exaggerate the threats to life in space, Zubrin argues, Cockell exaggerates the threats to liberty.  Actually, Zubrin claims, "the case for Mars is liberty."  "Whether they wish to or not, Martian cities will compete for immigrants.  The ones with the best ideas will draw the most people.  This is why dystopian totalitarian space colonies controlled by villains who tyrannize their subjects by threatening to cut off their air will remain mere fictions.  A successful extraterrestrial tyranny is impossible because no one would move there" (Zubrin 2024: 11-12, 187).

On Mars, Zubrin argues, there will be a Darwinian cultural evolution by natural selection that favors liberty.  "The evolution of Martian cities, like that of biological species on Earth, will be governed by natural selection.  The cities that attract the most immigrants will grow" (Zubrin 2024: 12-13, 152).  And those cities that attract the most immigrants will be those that secure liberty--the liberty that fosters the innovative inventiveness in technology necessary for human surviving and thriving on Mars.

Although Zubrin does not cite Locke, he is restating Locke's argument for immigration as cultural group selection that favors free societies.

I don't know how to resolve this debate.  But then perhaps we don't need to.  Ultimately, people will decide this for themselves.

Now that Elon Musk and other space entrepreneurs have shown that it's possible and even likely that privately organized space travel with little or no dependence on governmental space agencies can send a crewed spaceship to land on Mars in ten or twenty years, we can expect that this is going to happen.  Then people will decide whether to go to Mars or not.

If Mars really is as awful as the Weinersmiths and Cockell say it is, then Cockell is probably right in predicting that only a few scientists and professional astronauts will be willing to go.  They will voluntarily agree to face the dangers of space.  And as they spend years in space travel and on the surface of Mars, they will provide the best test of whether life and liberty on Mars is possible.  Over the years, people will learn from their experience and decide whether it's worth going.

As long as this is all voluntary and based on informed consent, I don't see anything wrong with it.

Now, I know that the Weinersmiths have warned that we know very little about the possibility of "space babies": we don't know whether people in space will be able to safely reproduce and rear their young without damaging effects from space on the children.  And surely even if the adults have voluntarily assumed the risks of space travel, the fetuses and the children will not have consented to this.

But don't we rightly allow people a lot of freedom in trying out experimental reproductive technology--in vitro fertilization for example?  This imposes a risk on the offspring to which the offspring cannot consent.  Would this also apply to reproduction in space or on Mars as risky experimentation chosen by the parents?

The Weinersmiths say that before we do this, we should experiment with sending mice, or preferably primate animals, into space to see if they can safely reproduce offspring that can grow to healthy adulthood.

I can see the argument for doing that.  But I can also see that if we allow men and women to voluntarily go to Mars, they will eventually engage in their own sexual and reproductive experiments in space.

I can also imagine that if people are free to decide whether to go to Mars, they will decide what this means for their place in the universe.  Some people might decide that human beings were created by God live on the Earth until they die, and only in the afterlife will they achieve an extraterrestrial eternal life of happiness in Heaven or torment in Hell.  Others might decide that going to Mars is a way of exploring the mystery of the Universe that God has created for us: these colonists on Mars will want to satisfy their natural desires for spiritual transcendence and religious understanding.

Others will feel no need to find a sacred meaning to the universe because they will be satisfied to explore that universe for the pleasure of understanding it, and even if they decide human travel in deep space is too dangerous right now, they will be happy to explore the deepest reaches of the universe through telescopes, unmanned spacecraft, and robotic explorers.  

These philosophic explorers can still hope to solve the problem of how human beings can travel in extraterrestrial space for prolonged periods without suffering disabling and deadly damage to their bodies and brains.  They might consider at least three ways to solve this problem.  We could bioengineer human beings to be better adapted for living in space.  Or we could overcome the physiological limitations of the human body by replacing some biological organs and limbs with mechanical or electronic parts to create cyborgs that could live well in space.  Or we could create superhuman entities with artificial intelligence designed for life in space.  But then we might wonder whether this is technologically possible.  And if it is possible, could this engineering include engineering these beings for liberty?  Or would these bioengineered, cybernetic, or transhuman entities be inclined to tyranny?

I see no indications that Trump and his people have thought about these questions.  But the rest of us should.