Consequential Actions Podcast

Empire of Liberty — Episode 5B

Article 5 examined how World War I transformed America - how financial entanglement, propaganda, and the suppression of dissent created what Randolph Bourne called “the health of the State.” Episode 5b applies that framework to the present: the permanent bombing campaign in Somalia that receives no media coverage; the $771 billion flowing to five defense contractors; the think tanks and media that manufacture consent; the Epstein files as a case study in narrative control; the deportation of students for peaceful protest; and the tripwires in Iran, Ukraine, and beyond that could produce the next catastrophe.

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Empire of Liberty — Episode 5

$2.3 Billion in Loans Bought America a World War

Woodrow Wilson won reelection in 1916 on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Five months later he stood before Congress and asked for a declaration.

The standard explanation is German aggression — the submarines, the Lusitania, the Zimmermann Telegram. The fuller account starts the day after Britain declared war, when the British cut Germany’s transatlantic cables and every scrap of European news reaching American newspapers began passing through British hands. Add $2.3 billion in Wall Street loans to the Allies, a propaganda bureau at Wellington House built specifically to work American opinion, and a Lusitania carrying 4.2 million rounds of rifle ammunition through a war zone Germany had publicly advertised as lethal. Then watch what the war did at home: conscription, the Creel Committee, the Sedition Act, and Eugene Debs in federal prison at sixty-three for giving a speech.

The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?

⏱️ CHAPTERS

0:00:00 — Introduction: “War is the Health of the State”

0:02:02 — April 1917: America Enters World War I

0:04:04 — The Real Causes vs. The Standard Narrative

0:07:47 — True Neutrality and a Divided American Public

0:10:07 — The British Blockade and Neutrality Violations

0:11:16 — Financial Entanglements: Wall Street and Allied Debt

0:14:41 — Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan’s Resignation

0:15:51 — The Information War: British Propaganda and Wellington House

0:18:16 — The Bryce Report and Atrocity Propaganda

0:21:27 — The Sinking of the Lusitania

0:26:29 — Was the Lusitania a Legitimate Military Target?

0:29:31 — Germany Resumes Unrestricted Submarine Warfare

0:30:32 — The Zimmermann Telegram

0:33:32 — Wilson’s Shift: From Peace Candidate to War President

0:35:11 — Wilson’s Messianic Vision and Ideological Crusade

0:38:06 — The Voices of Dissent: Norris, La Follette, and Rankin

0:42:06 — Randolph Bourne’s Prophetic Warning

0:44:47 — The Selective Service Act: Conscription and State Power

0:46:31 — The Creel Committee: Industrializing Consent

0:49:10 — Suppressing Dissent: The Espionage and Sedition Acts

0:50:22 — The Imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs

0:53:13 — Creating the Command Economy

0:55:56 — The Treaty of Versailles and a Punitive Peace

1:01:13 — The Great Counterfactual: What if America Had Not Intervened?

1:04:32 — The True Costs of American Intervention

1:06:52 — Questions for Reflection

1:09:32 — Preview of Episode 6: Sykes-Picot and the Middle East

📚 Companion article: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/war-is-the-health-of-the-state-wilson-and-world-war-i

The written version cites Wilson’s war message to Congress (April 2, 1917), Randolph Bourne’s “War Is the Health of the State” (1918), the Senate speeches of La Follette and Norris, Debs’s Canton speech (1918), the Bryce Report (1915), and the German embassy’s published sailing warnings — plus H.C. Peterson’s Propaganda for War, Thomas Fleming’s The Illusion of Victory, Geoffrey Stone’s Perilous Times, Margaret MacMillan’s Paris 1919, and Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

🎙️ Empire of Liberty — Ep 5: “War Is the Health of the State — Wilson and World War I”

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Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly.

𝕏: https://x.com/@jkellick

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This contemporary application episode connects the alliance dynamics traced in Episode 4 to current events in Ukraine and Iran. As peace talks continue in the UAE and the USS Abraham Lincoln positions off Iran’s coast, we examine how alliance commitments—NATO’s Article 5, the Russia-Iran strategic partnership, the Russia-North Korea mutual defense pact—create the same escalation dynamics that produced World War I. With 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers AWOL and President Trump threatening strikes “far worse” than Operation Midnight Hammer, the tripwires of empire are live. The founders’ warnings against entangling alliances have never been more relevant.

Empire of Liberty: America’s Foreign Entanglements from the Founders to the Forever Wars - Ep. 04Before Americans can evaluate whether intervention in World War I was wise, they must understand the system they were being asked to join. This episode examines the European imperial order that produced the Great War: the British Empire at its zenith, the Crimean War and the birth of anti-Russian propaganda, the romantic brutality of the Great Game in Afghanistan, the horrors of the Scramble for Africa, and the alliance system that transformed a Balkan assassination into continental catastrophe. We trace how commitments made decades earlier removed human judgment from crisis response—and ask whether similar dynamics operate today.#wwi #history #europeanhistory [00:00] Prologue: The Charge of the Light Brigade and the Power of Propaganda[02:24] Introduction: The Lamps Going Out All Over Europe[05:40] The Great Game and the Road to Armageddon[07:29] The British Empire and Liberal Imperialism[09:34] Catherine the Great, Sevastopol, and the Potemkin Myth[15:19] The Crimean War: Manufacturing the Enemy and Modern Propaganda[24:10] The Great Game in Central Asia: Romance and Brutality[32:11] The Scramble for Africa and the Congo Free State[37:14] The Herero Genocide: The Logic of Imperial Extraction[40:39] Entangling Alliances: The Triple Alliance and Triple Entente[47:03] The Balkan Tinderbox and the Naval Arms Race[52:02] The Royal Cousins: A Family Tragedy[55:02] June 28, 1914: The Assassination in Sarajevo[57:14] The July Crisis: How the System Executed Itself[01:02:22] The Founders’ Warning Vindicated[01:05:33] America Looks at Europe’s Catastrophe[01:07:22] The Liberty Lens: Do 1914 Alliance Dynamics Apply to NATO Today?[01:11:16] Summary of the European Imperial System[01:13:55] Questions to Consider[01:16:10] Preview of Episode 5 & Outrohttps://jeffkellick.substack.com/p/the-great-game-and-the-road-to-armageddoneuropea?utm_source=youtube

Empire of Liberty — Episode 3B

This contemporary application episode connects the yellow journalism that drove America to war in 1898 with modern legacy media’s coverage of interventions from Iraq to Libya to Syria. It examines the commercial incentives that shape foreign policy coverage, the repeated pattern of uncritical amplification followed by post-hoc acknowledgment of failure, and the great migration of audiences from cable news to streaming platforms where anti-interventionist voices can reach their audience at scale.

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The 10 Months That Turned America Into an Empire

In January 1898 the United States had no overseas colonies. By December it had an empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific and a colonial war on its hands.

The war with Spain lasted four months and cost fewer than 400 American combat deaths — John Hay called it a splendid little war. The war nobody talks about came next: more than a decade in the Philippines, using the exact methods America had condemned Spain for. Reconcentration camps. The water cure. A general who ordered his men to kill everyone over the age of ten and was punished with forced retirement. This episode covers how the Maine explosion — which modern investigations suggest was an internal coal-bunker fire — became a war that Spain had already conceded, and why the Anti-Imperialist League’s arguments were never answered, only overwhelmed.

Content note: this episode discusses wartime atrocities, including torture and the killing of civilians, and quotes period racial language.

This is Episode 3 of “Empire of Liberty: America’s Foreign Entanglements from the Founders to the Forever Wars,” a series tracing how a republic that warned against entangling alliances became a global military empire.

The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?

⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Introduction to the Consequential Actions Podcast

00:37 - The Turning Point: Why 1898 Matters Most

01:46 - America’s Transformation from Republic to Empire

02:22 - The “Splendid Little War” and the Brutal Aftermath

03:05 - Senator Albert Beveridge and the Mission of Empire

05:45 - The Reality of the Cuban Insurgency

08:01 - American Commercial Interests in Cuba

08:25 - Yellow Journalism and the Push for War

10:02 - The Sinking of the USS Maine

12:46 - Spain’s Concessions Ignored by War Fever

13:40 - The Spanish-American War: Swift and Decisive

15:43 - The Treaty of Paris and the Platt Amendment

17:07 - Acquiring the Philippines: The Constitutional Crisis

19:45 - William Jennings Bryan’s Fateful Political Gamble

22:25 - The Philippine-American War Erupts

23:19 - Counterinsurgency and Guerrilla Warfare

24:40 - The “Water Cure” and Brutal Tactics

25:36 - General Jacob Smith and the “Howling Wilderness”

27:28 - The True Cost: Filipino and American Casualties

28:30 - The Anti-Imperialist League

30:42 - The Arguments Against Empire: Constitutional, Economic, Moral, Strategic

37:09 - Why the Anti-Imperialists Lost

40:41 - Theodore Roosevelt and the New Imperial Ideology

45:06 - The Consequences of 1898: An Imperial Presidency

47:45 - The Survival of the Anti-Imperialist Tradition

48:58 - Preview: The Road to WWI and Upcoming Episodes

📚 Companion article: https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/serving-commerce-1898-and-the-birth-of-american-empire

The written version cites William Graham Sumner’s “The Conquest of the United States by Spain” (1899), Mark Twain’s “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (1901), Albert Beveridge’s “The March of the Flag” (1898), McKinley’s account to the Methodist delegation in The Christian Advocate, and the Senate’s Lodge Committee hearings on affairs in the Philippine Islands (1902) — plus Stephen Kinzer’s The True Flag, Stuart Creighton Miller’s “Benevolent Assimilation,” and Robert Beisner’s Twelve Against Empire.

🎙️ Empire of Liberty — Ep 3: “Serving Commerce — 1898 and the Birth of American Empire”

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Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly.

#spanishamericanwar #americanempire #philippines #antiimperialism #theodoreroosevelt #marktwain #foreignpolicy #libertarian #americanhistory

This contemporary application episode applies the historical template from Article 2—the Mexican-American War’s pattern of manufactured casus belli, executive manipulation, and marginalized critics—to current events in Venezuela, Iran, and the renewed discussion of American territorial expansion. We examine how the DOJ’s “Cartel de los Soles” claim dissolved when it had to be proven in court, how American objectives toward Iran have continuously shifted, and how current annexation rhetoric echoes the patterns Cleveland warned against in 1893.

The Two Words That Ended the Debate Before It Began“Manifest Destiny.” Destiny — something fated, inevitable, beyond human choice. Manifest — obvious, self-evident. Put them together and you have a phrase that forecloses debate before it begins. If expansion across the continent was destined, what is there to discuss? The phrase was propaganda from its first utterance in 1845 — and like all effective propaganda, it made conquest seem natural, inevitable, even benevolent, obscuring the choices that were made and the peoples who were dispossessed.This episode examines what Manifest Destiny actually meant in practice. It begins with what went right: Jefferson’s peaceful Louisiana Purchase, territory bought rather than seized and organized into equal states. Then it turns to the harder history — the diverse Native nations and the varying American policies (civilization, removal, reservation, allotment) that produced one consistent result: dispossession, up to and past Jackson’s defiance of the Supreme Court in Worcester v. Georgia. At the center is 1846, when President Polk marched troops into disputed territory, announced that American blood had been shed on American soil, and got the war he wanted. A young congressman named Abraham Lincoln demanded he name the exact spot. Polk never answered. That sequence — executive provocation, a manufactured pretext, congressional acquiescence, critics marginalized as disloyal — is the template this series calls the Polk Playbook, and you will watch it run again in 1898, 1917, 1964, and 2003. The episode closes on Grover Cleveland’s principled refusal to annex Hawaii, and the gathering forces that would overwhelm that restraint in 1898.This is Episode 2 of “Empire of Liberty: America’s Foreign Entanglements from the Founders to the Forever Wars,” a series tracing how a republic that warned against entangling alliances became a global military empire.The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?⏱️ CHAPTERS[00:00] Introduction[00:50] Manifest Destiny[06:11] The Louisiana Purchase[09:36] Native American Dispossession[15:57] Andrew Jackson & The Trail of Tears[19:19] The Plains Tribes & Buffalo Destruction[24:38] Seeds of Empire[27:02] The Mexican-American War[30:45] Abraham Lincoln’s Resistance[35:01] The Template for Imperial War[37:48] Ulysses S. Grant & Santo Domingo[39:21] Grover Cleveland & Hawaii[44:05] 1897 - The Fork in the Road[46:31] Conclusion📚 Companion article — “Manifest Destiny: Continental Expansion and the Seeds of Empire,” with primary-source citations to O’Sullivan’s 1845 “Annexation,” Lincoln’s Spot Resolutions, Polk’s 1846 war message, Grant’s Personal Memoirs, and Cleveland’s 1893 message on Hawaii:https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/manifest-destiny-continental-expansion-and-the-seeds-of-empire🎙️ Empire of Liberty — Episode 2: “Manifest Destiny — Continental Expansion and the Seeds of Empire”—Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly.#manifestdestiny #americanhistory #polk #mexicanamericanwar #trailoftears #libertarian #noninterventionism #lincoln #foreignpolicy #americanempire

This contemporary application episode examines how the founders’ key insight—that foreign policy and domestic liberty are intimately connected—plays out in a current case study. We trace the chain from America’s ongoing undeclared war in Somalia (over 100 airstrikes in 2025 alone) to the refugee crisis it has fueled to the fraud scandal now dominating headlines in Minnesota. The founders warned that entanglements abroad would have consequences at home. This is what those consequences look like.

Content Note:This episode discusses politically sensitive topics including immigration, fraud allegations, and US military operations. The analysis is intended to be fair-minded and non-partisan, applying the founders’ analytical framework to current events.

Madison Predicted the Surveillance State in 1795

In 1795 James Madison wrote that no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. America has been at war, somewhere, since 1941.

He wasn’t moralizing. He was describing a mechanism: war builds armies, armies require debt and taxes, debt and executive power grow together, and the emergency authorities granted in wartime are never returned. Washington said the same thing in the Farewell Address — and both men were warning a nation that had just won its independence with the help of a foreign alliance. This episode establishes the baseline every later episode in the series is measured against: what the founders actually said, why they said it, and the strongest case that they’ve been overtaken by events.

This is Episode 1 of “Empire of Liberty: America’s Foreign Entanglements from the Founders to the Forever Wars,” a series tracing how a republic that warned against entangling alliances became a global military empire.

The question underneath all of it: did this leave Americans more free, or more governed?

⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Introduction: The Consequential Actions Podcast

03:05 - Episode 1: Entangling Alliances With None

04:24 - The Hard Experience of Foreign Entanglements

07:13 - Washington's Neutrality Proclamation

07:48 - The Hamilton-Madison Debate

09:16 - The Threat of Standing Armies to Liberty

11:30 - Constitutional Constraints on Military Power

16:06 - George Washington's Farewell Address

24:51 - Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address

27:41 - James Madison's Political Observations

31:39 - Principles Tested Against Practice

32:01 - The Quasi-War With France

34:39 - The Barbary Wars

37:05 - The War of 1812

39:17 - The Monroe Doctrine

42:09 - Addressing the Interventionist Objection

44:06 - Coming Soon: Manifest Destiny

45:57 - Primary Sources and Recommended Reading

📚 Companion article: https://jeffkellick.substack.com/ https://www.consequentialactions.com/post/entangling-alliances-with-none-the-founders-vision-of-american-foreign-policy

The written version cites Washington’s Farewell Address (1796), Jefferson’s First Inaugural (1801), Madison’s “Political Observations” (1795), Hamilton’s Federalist No. 8 and “Pacificus No. 1,” Madison’s “Helvidius No. 1,” and Monroe’s 1823 annual message — plus Felix Gilbert’s To the Farewell Address, Walter McDougall’s Promised Land, Crusader State, and Tucker and Hendrickson’s Empire of Liberty.

🎙️ Empire of Liberty — Ep 1: “Entangling Alliances with None — The Founders’ Vision of American Foreign Policy”

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Consequential Actions is a libertarian, non-interventionist analysis of American constitutional and foreign policy. New episodes weekly.

#foundingfathers #foreignpolicy #libertarian #georgewashington #jamesmadison #thomasjefferson #noninterventionism #farewelladdress #americanhistory #constitution