Trumpism embraces the best and the worst of two sides of the political aisle, in a frenetic fashion that sometimes supports and defends freedom and liberty while trampling both at other times. It is a pitchfork populism that isn’t really making the reforms to government necessary to take the American people along a path to truly living free, and instead, it is bringing closer to fruition the very thing that so many liberty minded Americans reject – a massive surveillance police state that is on track to remain and grow as an ever more mammoth and intrusive Big Brother/Nanny State, as President Trump cannot seem to divest himself of his statist and globalist inclinations.

In the twilight of the American century, a profound question looms: How can the United States unwind its vast imperial commitments without descending into economic ruin, social dependency, or authoritarian control? The nation’s Founding Fathers envisioned a republic of free individuals, bound by limited government and inalienable rights derived from a higher moral order. Yet, over two centuries, America has morphed into a global hegemon, with a sprawling federal apparatus that often tramples those very principles. From endless foreign entanglements to domestic overreach – exemplified by agencies like the TSA detaining citizens without cause and demanding access to personal devices – the drift toward centralized power has eroded liberty.

America: To Form a More Perfect Union

American citizens are placed under real troubles by a far too massive, cumbersome and unnavigable U.S. legal code, whereupon among many other violations, their inalienable God-given rights are trampled by way of illegal laws that demand they pay property taxes on their homes, in stark contravention of the Fifth Amendment’s Taking Clause, and they are coerced into allowing Government Agents to search their electronic devices without a warrant, in contravention to the Fourth Amendment. Rather than continuously searching out new reasons to pass some new “law”, constitutional or not, legislatures should do their job and truly represent the American people by cutting the U.S. legal in half, at the least.

This erosion of our liberties has accelerated under recent administrations, including the second Trump term, where promises of deregulation and “America First” have paradoxically fueled expansions in federal power through technology. President Trump’s aggressive push for AI dominance, coupled with enhanced surveillance tools like facial recognition and subtle steps toward a digital financial ecosystem, reveals a troubling alignment with statist impulses. Despite campaigning against globalist overreach and Marxist-style control, these policies risk entrenching a technocratic Leviathan that monitors, tracks, and manipulates citizens under the guise of national security and economic innovation.

Americans must find and create a pathway to gracefully dismantle the empire, restoring a society that prizes independence, moral integrity, and self-reliance over paternalistic state control. It is not a call for isolationism or radical upheaval but a measured retrenchment, grounded in the Constitution, natural law, and the wisdom of history. By focusing on decentralization, fiscal responsibility, cultural renewal, and principled foreign policy – while rejecting the Trump-era expansions that betray conservative ideas – Americans can avoid the pitfalls of serfdom or socialist tyranny. This path demands courage, patience, and a collective recommitment to the ideas, virtues and principles of 1776.

Over the past five years, America’s Right has debated “free market fundamentalism”, “trickle-down economics”/”zombie Reaganism” and “neoliberalism”. However one looks at what transpired since the Reagan presidency, the reduction in government spending and size that Republicans so often promised – and the Democrat Party Communists and illiberal “liberals” feared – turned out to be a false promise, a mirage if you will. What actually happened was a confluence of events and cooperation between both parties that set America on a trajectory toward America’s era of selective luxury communism, whereby corporations and individuals alike clamored to receive and did receive trillions of dollars from the U.S. coffers that were used to unreasonably subsidize a certain standard of living everyone was demanding, whether they earned and deserved it or not.

Just look at how many Republicans have recently crossed the political aisle to join Democrat Communists in their efforts to save Obamacare, the deeply flawed program that Republicans vowed they would repeal in the lead up to Trump’s first presidency, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and fail in 2017 to do that which they so faithfully had promised to carry out.

This cooperative effort, often coerced under the guise of compromise where none should exist, has birthed the term “Uniparty”, although real differences do exist between the two parties – sometimes. It is their cooperation in promoting luxury communism [e.g. crony-capitalism] that is driving every aspect of American decline, whether we speak of a national debt now skyrocketing past $38 trillion or the erosion of our defense industrial base, much to the despair of the young people, who may or may not understand the reasons underlying so much of the economic chaos the nation currently experiences. This is not the only reason for the decline, but it does present as a major part of the problem, and yet the powers that be regularly make certain this problem remains obscured from the public eye.

The current essence of America’s system is that it redistributes wealth from younger families and workers to senior citizens who are on average much wealthier than those paying into the Social Security ponzi scheme. Essentially, Democrat Party Communists and most Republicans agree on at least 85% of federal spending [see inflationary ‘The Big Beautiful Bill’ boondoggle]. mostly because both parties support a massive transfer of finances from young workers to seniors. And until recently, there has been no real political debate in Congress in regard to our economic fascist system created in 1913 and the luxury communism it has spawned.

Unfortunately, for far too many decades, far too many Americans, especially those Democrat Communists and RINOs and other ne’er-do-well Takers have demanded a mythical utopian government that never has and never will exist, a beneficent and inexhaustible entity which has bread and circuses for everyone, work for all hands until in 2025 it became universal basic income for no work from anyone, capital for all business endeavors, credit for all projects – we’re there now aren’t we – oil for all wounds, balm for all sufferings, advice for all perplexities and troubles, solutions for all doubts, truths for all intellects – now presented by way of a mammoth propaganda machine – diversions for all who want them, milk and SNAP for babies and toddlers, and wine for our old age [although too many Americans are now regular users of meth, heroine and fentanyl]. Too many today demand a government which can provide for all our wants, satisfy all our curiosity, correct all our errors, repair all our faults, and exempt us from any necessity for foresight or using sound judgement, prudence, sagacity, experience, order, economy, temperance and activity.

Yes indeed, everybody wants and wants and wants more from the government these days. Incredibly, many Americans have deceived themselves into believing that other people’s money – the source of funding for our government – will never run out, and that the mere act of legislating one taking after the next makes it righteous if the majority says it’s so. They seek to sit on their worthless fat asses while receiving what they see as an inexhaustible source of wealth and enlightenment – whether we speak of universal healthcare, raising their children on the lap of the Nanny State and welfare programs, treasures for their earthly pursuits and entertainment and those false prophets who act as soothsayers and infallible counselors supporting the societal abominations they demand, like transsexual operations for all.

As noted by renown philosopher, Frederic Bastiat:

“When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

In our earliest years. Americans had a much different understanding of the relationship between themselves and the federal government, when they placed these simple words at the head of our Constitution:

“We, the people of the United States, for the purposes of forming a more perfect union, of establishing justice, of securing interior tranquility, of providing for our common defense, of increasing the general well-being, and of securing the benefits of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, decree …“

What modern Americans find within those words is no chimerical creation, no abstraction, from which the citizens may demand everything. They expect nothing except from themselves and their own efforts and endeavors.

America is broke as broke as can be, no matter the promised trillions of dollars from foreign nations wanting to take advantage of President Trump’s push to develop Artificial Intelligence. Yet, our federal government keeps right on borrowing and printing and spending money as though there is no tomorrow or a day of financial reckoning coming on down the pike. And although many of President Trump’s energy and economic policies may soon eventually pull America from the economic quicksand She now finds Herself, any real and steady move towards a full economic recovery still remains several months out.

To chart a course back, we must first acknowledge how we arrived here – and how recent developments have hastened the slide. The American experiment began as a rebellion against empire. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” while the Constitution limited federal authority to enumerated powers, reserving the rest to states and individuals. James Madison warned in Federalist No. 45 that the federal government’s role would be “few and defined,” focused on external affairs, while states handled “numerous and indefinite” internal matters.

Yet, the 20th century saw a seismic shift. World Wars I and II propelled the U.S. into global leadership, justified by noble aims like defeating fascism and communism. Post-1945, institutions like NATO, the International Monetary Fund, and a network of over 800 military bases entrenched America as the world’s policeman. Domestically, the New Deal, Great Society, and post-9/11 security state expanded federal bureaucracies, often at the expense of civil liberties. Today, the national debt exceeds $38 trillion, fueled by entitlement programs and military spending that consume over half the federal budget. Agencies wield quasi-legislative powers, interpreting laws in ways that bypass Congress — witness the TSA’s warrantless searches or the EPA’s regulatory expansions.

One must also acknowledge that under the Trump administration, states rights, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean next to nothing, as the country witnessed President Trump sign an executive order on December 11th 2025 to create a national artificial intelligence policy, limiting state regulation of Artificial Intelligence. The order instructs Attorney General Pam Bondi to create an A.I. Litigation Task Force within thirty days to challenge states whose A.I. laws don’t align with Trump’s A.I. policy, with penalties to include withholding federal tax dollars – a ploy that, in my estimation, is patently illegal and unconstitutional, since all states pay those taxes into the federal coffer and are full well entitled to receive them back for operations and programs necessary to the running of their state.

Totalitarian empowerment is probably the main component of A.I. that Trump understands the best. It is here that he and his communist Chinese communist counterparts find common ground, although Xi probably knows far more about A.I. than Trump. President Trump has fully embraced A.I. as he threw the full weight of the U.S. government behind the Stargate project on his first day in office. He’s also using America’s laboratories in partnership with private sector entities to advance and build the Genesis Mission, an effort on the scale of the Manhattan Project, focused on incorporating Artificial Intelligence into every single aspect of American society. And if the states voice their pesky complaints regarding A.I.’s massive requirements for land, water and energy and try to intervene on the behalf of their citizens, well … they will come up against Trump’s recent executive order that was created specifically to stymie any and all such efforts.

Compounding this, the administration has deepened surveillance through facial recognition, quietly erasing DHS oversight policies while inking multimillion-dollar contracts with Clearview AI for ICE operations. By October 2025, facial scans expanded to all border travelers, including children and the elderly, with mobile apps like “Mobile Fortify” enabling real-time tracking of non-citizens – and, critics warn, U.S. citizens via error-prone algorithms that disproportionately misidentify minorities. These tools merge government and commercial databases, creating a “surveillance state” that echoes the very overreach Trump once decried. Even on finance, Trump’s February 2025 directive to halt penny production – saving costs but accelerating a shift to digital payments — has sparked fears of a cashless society, despite his past criticisms of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as “financial surveillance.” Appointments like David Sacks as AI and Crypto Czar signal crypto-friendly policies, but they risk paving the way for programmable money that tracks every transaction.

This empire has bred dependency: abroad, client states reliant on U.S. aid; at home, citizens hooked on subsidies and entitlements. It has also fostered moral decay, as endless wars desensitize the public to violence, and bread-and-circuses politics – tax cuts without spending restraint, welfare without work requirements – prioritize short-term gratification over long-term virtue. The result? A populace increasingly viewing government as savior rather than servant, echoing Thomas Jefferson’s fear of “elective despotism.” Trump’s policies, while rhetorically conservative, mirror the statist tactics of globalists and Marxists: centralized control masked as progress, eroding the individual liberty conservatives claim to champion.

Gracefully ending the empire requires a multifaceted strategy, executed gradually to minimize disruption. This is not about abrupt withdrawal, which could spark chaos, but a phased transition emphasizing self-determination, economic vitality, and moral revival – while explicitly rejecting the Trump administration’s tech-driven expansions that consolidate federal power.

The first step is reorienting America’s role abroad. The U.S. should pivot from offensive interventions to defensive alliances, reducing the military footprint while bolstering homeland security. Trump’s AI Action Plan, however, ties foreign policy to tech hegemony, promoting “full-stack American AI” exports to allies while scrutinizing supply chains for “adversarial technology.” This globalist framing – echoing the very entanglements Washington warned against – risks perpetual alliances under the banner of AI dominance, benefiting multinational corporations over sovereign states.

Begin with auditing and closing unnecessary overseas bases. With nearly 800 installations in 80 countries, the annual cost tops $100 billion. A congressional commission, modeled on the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, could identify redundancies, prioritizing strategic hubs like those in Japan and Germany while phasing out others in non-essential regions. Savings could redirect toward domestic infrastructure or debt reduction, preventing economic pauperization. Trump’s plan to expedite data center permits for AI infrastructure further militarizes global tech, funneling federal resources to private firms like those in the “American AI Technology Stack.”

Simultaneously, reform alliances. NATO, for instance, should evolve into a true partnership where European nations shoulder more defense burdens aiming for all members to meet the 2% GDP target by 2030. However, given the steady recent trend towards tyranny within the United Kingdom and the entirety of the NATO body, the U.S. might actually wish to depart from this organization to realign with nations that truly support and defend people’s inalienable God-given rights, such as we know them to be. The U.S. could lead by example, withdrawing ground troops from Europe while maintaining naval and air support. In the Middle East, end open-ended commitments like those in Syria and Iraq, focusing instead on counterterrorism through intelligence-sharing and targeted operations, not nation-building. Yet, Trump’s surveillance expansions, like ICE’s Clearview contracts, export these tools abroad, aligning with Maoist-style mass monitoring rather than conservative restraint.

To avoid socialist tyranny, this retrenchment must reject isolationism. Trade agreements should promote free exchange where possible – without imperial strings, unlike and departing from the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement – the worst agreement ever that damaged U.S. sovereignty. Diplomatically, emphasize soft power: cultural exports, humanitarian aid tied to reforms, and leadership in global forums on issues like climate and pandemics – without ceding sovereignty to illiberal, tyrannical organizations like the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization or the United Nations, an organization we would do well to abandon. Trump’s December 2025 executive order preempting state AI laws for a “national policy framework” exemplifies federal overreach, stifling local innovation in favor of uniform control. True conservatism demands devolution, not dictation.

This approach honors Founding principles. George Washington advised in his Farewell Address to avoid “permanent alliances” and “inveterate antipathies,” urging commerce with all but entangling alliances with none. By doing so, America can reclaim moral authority, reducing the hypocrisy of preaching democracy while propping up autocrats — or, under Trump, exporting surveillance states.

At home, restore limited government by devolving power to states and individuals, curbing agency overreach, and fostering self-reliance. Trump’s AI initiatives, however, supercharge the Leviathan: the Action Plan mandates “unbiased AI principles” for federal procurement but expands data access, enabling agencies to merge surveillance feeds without warrants. This betrays conservative skepticism of big government, aligning instead with statist visions of total oversight.

Start with regulatory reform. Federal agencies issue thousands of rules annually, often without congressional input. Target abuses like TSA’s invasive searches by mandating judicial warrants for device access, aligning with the Fourth Amendment. Extend this to AI: prohibit federal facial recognition without probable cause, reversing Trump’s border expansions that scan innocent Americans along with illegal aliens and logs all into the federal files of the Surveillance State.

Fiscal discipline is crucial to avoid serfdom. Entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, projected to be insolvent by the 2030s, must reform: take the new generation of Social Security and prepare them to invest in their own IRA retirement accounts instead – as a first move to eventually end Social Security altogether, raise retirement ages gradually, means-test benefits, and encourage private savings through tax incentives. Cut corporate welfare – subsidies to industries like agriculture, especially corporate farms, and energy – and phase out programs that incentivize dependency, replacing them with work requirements and time-limited aid. And in the meantime, one should note Trump’s penny halt, while fiscally prudent, accelerates cashless trends, potentially enabling transaction tracking akin to China’s social credit system – a far cry from his anti-CBDC stance.

Empower states via block grants for education, healthcare, and welfare, allowing local innovation. This decentralizes power, echoing the Tenth Amendment, and prevents a one-size-fits-all tyranny. For instance, states could experiment with school choice to promote moral education, teaching civic virtue and Founding principles alongside academics. Trump’s federal AI preemption overrides this, imposing a top-down framework that quashes state privacy laws.

To prevent pauperization, bolster economic freedom. Reduce the corporate tax rate to 15% while closing loopholes, and kill the Federal Reserve in a first step to ensure sound money — perhaps tying it loosely to commodities to curb inflation. Encourage entrepreneurship through deregulation in sectors like tech and energy, fostering jobs without government handouts. Yet, Trump’s crypto push via Sacks risks federal backdoors in digital wallets, mirroring globalist financial controls.

No structural reform succeeds without cultural shift. America’s moral fabric has frayed, with rising entitlement mentalities and declining civic participation. Rebuilding requires nurturing independence and virtue – resisting the surveillance chill that Trump’s policies impose, where citizens self-censor under AI-monitored gazes.

Education is key. Reform public schools to emphasize true American history, constitutional literacy, and ethical philosophy rather than Marxist-Maoist ideological “principles” – drawing from thinkers like Locke, Montesquieu, and the Founders. Private initiatives, like homeschooling cooperatives or online platforms, can supplement, teaching self-reliance through practical skills like financial literacy and entrepreneurship. Trump’s April 2025 AI education executive order promotes federal standards, but without privacy safeguards, it risks indoctrinating youth into a monitored world.

Promote civil society institutions: churches, charities, and community groups. Tax policies could incentivize philanthropy, reducing reliance on government welfare, and the Income Tax must be ended so that individuals will retain the fruit of their labor, their property as promised under the U.S. Constitution. Faith-based organizations, rooted in the Judeo-Christian ethos that influenced the Founders, can foster moral accountability – emphasizing charity as voluntary, not coerced.

Media and culture must counter bread-and-circuses distractions. Encourage responsible journalism through antitrust actions against media monopolies, and support independent creators who highlight liberty’s value. Public campaigns, akin to anti-smoking efforts, could promote personal responsibility: “Liberty Starts with You.” Trump’s “Preventing Woke AI” order, while anti-bias, centralizes truth-seeking in federal AI, a statist overreach.

Address the spiritual void. The Founders saw rights as God-given, not state-granted. Reviving this – through voluntary revivals, not mandates – can inspire a society where individuals pursue excellence, not entitlement. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in ‘Democracy in America’, America’s strength lay in its voluntary associations and moral mores, not coercive government. Trump’s tech empire-building, from AI to surveillance, risks turning citizens into data points, not sovereign souls.

This path risks backlash: economic shocks from base closures, geopolitical vacuums, or populist demagogues promising easy fixes like Trump’s “Build Baby Build” AI mantra. Mitigate with transparency — bipartisan commissions for reforms – and safety nets like retraining programs for displaced workers. Guard against socialist tyranny by enshrining protections: a balanced budget amendment, term limits for Congress, and sunset clauses for agencies. Judicial reforms, like limiting Chevron deference, would curb arbitrary power – extending to AI, where Trump’s deregulations invite abuse.

Trump’s affinities with statists emerge here: his AI plan’s data silos breakdown enables fraud detection but invites mass profiling, akin to Maoist purges. Facial recognition errors have already deported citizens, a conservative nightmare of unchecked state power. The cashless drift, despite anti-bail-cashless orders (targeting criminal justice, not finance), signals hypocrisy – pushing digital while decrying control. True conservatives must call this out: Trump’s “dominance” rhetoric veils globalist centralization, not liberty.

Economically, diversification is vital. Invest in domestic manufacturing through incentives, while utilizing tariffs strategically and in temporary spurts as necessary, to build resilience. Culturally, resist victimhood narratives by celebrating stories of self-made success, from legal immigrants to American free born citizen innovators – unmarred by surveillance.

Imagine an America in 2050: a prosperous republic, not an empire. Military spending halved, debt stabilized, liberties intact. Citizens, empowered by education and opportunity, volunteer in communities rather than beg for handouts – or submit to AI scans. States innovate, competing like laboratories of democracy, free from federal AI edicts. Globally, the U.S. leads by example – free, moral, and unentangled, without exporting surveillance.

This graceful exit demands leadership: presidents who prioritize restraint over tech utopias, citizens who vote with principle. It echoes Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” – not as conqueror, but beacon. Trump’s tenure reveals conservatism’s peril: populism devolving into statism, where “winning” means more government, not less. As Jefferson urged, “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” By recommitting to Founding ideals – dismantling Trump’s surveillance scaffolding – Americans can end the empire without ruin, forging a society of free, moral individuals – not serfs, sheep, or supplicants to the state.

Every empire faces a moment of reckoning. For America, that moment is now. The United States has reached a crossroads where its global dominance, bureaucratic sprawl, and surveillance state collide with the founding ideas of liberty and limited government. The challenge is not simply how to preserve power, but how to end empire gracefully, without collapsing into socialist dependency or authoritarian tyranny.

The choice is stark: remain sheep awaiting slaughter, or rise as free individuals who refuse to worship the Leviathan. The path forward is not easy, but it is clear – liberty must be chosen, defended, and lived.

In this renewal lies true greatness: not in dominion or digital chains, but in self-mastery. The path is arduous, but the reward – liberty’s enduring flame – is priceless.

December 17, 2025

~ the Author ~
Justin O. Smith Has Lived in Tennessee Off and on Most of His Adult Life, and Graduated From Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, With a B.S. And a Double Major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – Minors in Military Science and English, for What Its Worth. His Real Education Started From That Point on. Smith Is a Frequent Contributor to the Family of Kettle Moraine Publications.