History is always our friend in times of tyranny

If we listen and learn from the thinking and lived experience of those from the past, we can all to often find our way out of the darkness.

I’ve been writing and creating content about US politics for a while now across various platforms, and I think I can safely say there's never been a time when I have felt such fear for the future. I have spent my entire life as a ‘glass half full’ person, and it has generally served me well through some very challenging times. I can hand on heart say I have never feared for the future of my grandchildren as I do right now.

The great thing about retirement from the rat race is the freedom to read, observe, and learn, be it from history or modern-day events. It presents an opportunity to reflect on the lived experience of economic and emotional challenges. Add to that, I’m blessed to share my thoughts and observations through my work here on Substack. With over 500 articles now under my belt and a group of fellow truth seekers by my side, contentment has become an important friend in my life.

I can’t tell you how liberating it is to wake up each day and stare at a blank page to share what’s on my mind. Often, this comes from events of the day, but sometimes inspiration comes from deeper philosophical thoughts about how we got here and how we can learn from past mistakes to create a better world for our children and our children’s children. I have learned on this journey that I write best when I write from the heart, without thinking about what people might want to read. I have to admit, I’ve recently had a crisis of confidence because I fell into the trap of measuring my success by the number of paid subscribers I gained along the way.

I have to be honest and say, that a sharp decline at a time when subscriptions were funding the lion’s share of my research, and access to expensive resources did came as a psycological blow, and it led to me to stepping away to re-evaluate how to best continue to make a meaningful contribution to this existential threat to democracy and social justice on the limited budget of a pension and a small savings pot. It’s a sobering realisation that the only thing I have to offer as I approach the autumn of my ability to contribute is an abundance of time. I have spent a lot of that time in the last 8 weeks thinking while taking on the remodelling of the wilderness at the bottom of my garden. A project, might I add, that I’m delighted with the outcome of.

I’ve rationalised my resources and taken on some part-time consulting work to ensure that no matter what happens, my ramblings will remain free to all. I just want you to know that the last few weeks have been difficult as I planned the best way forward for documenting my thoughts. I am under no illusion that my challenge is just a drop in the ocean compared to the many who are facing real hardship in this moment, so please don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. My whole reason for doing this is that I believe that NOBODY should have to pay to read the truth.

There’s a certain sense of liberation that comes from deciding that, no matter the cost, the truth is worth it, and I am thankful to have gathered a coalition of truth seekers who deserve better than me worrying about which resources I can afford in order to do what I do. It’s time to move forward with a sense of freedom and simply do what I love. There’s always a way to make it work.

As I tried to unwind after a pretty intense day yesterday, I took time to reflect on my 66 years on this planet, with a view to understanding how we got here. I think it’s safe to say that our memories dim quickly when it comes to the various challenges the world has faced in our lifetime, simply because looking back serves little purpose as the world relentlessly moves on. This nostalgia for the ‘good old days’ is often invoked by politicians who create the illusion that those days were somehow better than the times we live in now.

Those of us who eat, drink, and sleep politics believe that the rest of the world cares about politics and policy. We arrogantly think people care about what we think, when in reality, they have far better things to do than live in a perpetual doom loop. People have lives to live, kids to feed, and ever-increasing bills to pay. They have little time for political analysis and the divisive society politicians are responsible for creating in an attempt to secure power. Frankly, most folk are too busy trying to survive. This ‘we were once great’ mentality is merely a symptom of declining imperial power.

Image: The Battle of Waterloo, by William Sadler II

As a British citizen, I live in the remnants of a once-great empire that was the largest empire in human history, where this tiny island controlled 25% of the world’s landmass. At its peak in the 1920s, the British Empire accounted for 13.7 million square miles of territory, and it ruled around 23% of the global population. It was around six times larger than the Roman Empire, and became the source of the phrase "the empire on which the sun never sets". That was just over a century ago. How times can change.

The Industrial Revolution is widely regarded as possibly the most significant event in human history, and Britain was the first industrialised nation. This didn’t happen by accident. We had, and continue to have, the benefit of some of the greatest minds ever to grace us with their presence.

It amuses me when a US president who commits crimes against the English language and grammar every day speaks as if every invention of man originated in a country that celebrated its 250th birthday less than a month ago. In Britain and across Europe, we have public toilets older than the nation he claims is the fountain of all knowledge and wealth. There is deep irony in the fact that on the day of the Declaration of Independence, a book was published by a Scottish social philosopher, psychologist and pioneer of economics named Adam Smith. That book was titled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. It is widely regarded as an inspirational treatise that laid the foundation for modern economic theory, which still carries weight 250 years on.

It is unfortunate that Americans are taught, among many things, that the US is the greatest nation on earth with nothing more than ‘take it from us’ as credentials for that claim. There is much talk about patriotism amidst chants of ‘USA, USA, USA’. It’s just one part of a fantasy narrative that Trump and his sycophants have created to falsely attribute the nation’s achievements to white Christian men. To us on the outside, the ludicrousness of that joke is beyond absurd, coming from a man largely viewed on the world stage as the global village idiot. However, to the indoctrinated, it seems totally reasonable that the creation of the world as we know it began 250 years ago. Indeed, the world could be flat! Certainly, in 2026, dumb has become the new smart as 21% of Americans are illiterate and 54% have a 6th-grade literacy standard.

The US was not colonised by babies born in cowboy boots and Stetson hats; it was colonised by the Spanish, the French and the English. all of whose football teams, by the way, reached the quarterfinals of the World Cup in the land they conquered. (Thought I’d just make that smug irrelevant point.) America is the very definition of a nation built by immigrants for immigrants who went on to commit genocide against the indigenous people who inhabited America for at least 15,000 years prior to European arrival in 1492. Some estimate it could have been double that number.

Let’s be clear: Europe didn’t send its best and its brightest; it sent those from the lower or working classes, including indentured servants, CONVICTS, and those seeking to escape religious persecution or severe poverty at home. So there was some merit in the claim that countries emptied their prisons into America. As an example of how the Trump false narrative operation works, the only information extracted from the above truth is “those seeking to escape religious persecution “ Everything else is regarded as an inconvenient truth and so struck from the record.

This is a consistent pattern that has seen a nation in which non-white people were denied the vote or the ability to gather in ‘white-only spaces’ until just 62 years ago. Now they create a fairytale narrative around alleged democracy, freedom of speech, and nonexistent voter fraud. To be clear, Trump would be happy to return to the Jim Crow days in a heartbeat.

There is a certain irony that a Scotsman, in the very year of America’s birth, wrote the script that the wealthy elite have bastardised to become unbridled free-market capitalism, which now dominates American society and its politics. The foundations of capitalism are not an American thing; they were born in 16th-century England during the transition from feudalism to early merchant trade. Adam Smith's transformative thinking shaped the global trading system we have inherited today. The difference is that the beating heart of his wider vision was ‘baked-in social responsibility'.

When you get a moment, you might want to watch this video, in which Johan Norberg, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, analyses Smith's thoughts. Norberg is a writer and analyst who focuses on globalisation, human progress and intellectual history.

The video mirrors my often scorned belief that capitalism is NOT inherently evil, as many on the left would have us believe. The father of modern economics closely mirrors my views on the role of capitalism in modern society. You can see from this documentary that global trade is an economic imperative. We can debate the economics that drive it, which we will indeed do. But without it, there would not be the prosperity that so many benefit from today. It is defined by the societal progress achievable within a free trade system. Progress that brings together what I like to call "horses for courses." The world is a rich tapestry of knowledge and expertise, skills that can be traded and nurtured to create prosperity for the greater common good, regardless of wealth.

Tragically, once you inject human nature, the dynamic changes from collective good to exploitation at the altar of greed. I’m really excited to be sharing these thoughts with you because I believe they lie at the very heart of where we find ourselves today. I believe the blueprint for a better, more equitable society can be found in the work of Adam Smith, and that Democrats would do well to study the foundations on which he built a framework that leaves no one behind. Work that indeed influenced the Founding Fathers as they drew up the US Constitution.

Those who choose to cherry-pick Adam Smith’s work would say that The Wealth of Nations advocates that government intervention is not required in a free market system, but you have to look at this in the context of his prior book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, from 1759, which deals with the foundations of morality and human empathy. If nuance is a casualty of originalism, we find ourselves in the same space we inhabit when interpreting the Constitution. My proposition, while at odds with Smith’s philosophy on deregulation, is absolutely aligned with his disdain for isolationism and tariffs. Smith had a singular failing, in my opinion: he didn’t sufficiently account for human nature, which we’ll discuss in the coming days.

I am more than aware that my thoughts and feelings are the antithesis of the social Darwinist model of economic apex predators in this reimagined America. However, it’s my belief that there is a common-sense solution to this cancer that is eating America from the inside out, and I’m really looking forward to expressing what I believe the solutions to be. While I appreciate that it will just be an academic exercise, given that it will not represent the populist writing many prefer. However, people often ask me about what I think are the solutions that will put both the US and UK economies back on the right track to social redemption and banish ‘otherism’.

I hope you’ll come back tomorrow and pull up a chair to share that journey with me over virtual free tea and biscuits.

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