Washington hid the true meaning of globalization from the American people through repeated military diversions.

It's an old story: the few take advantage of the many. In the name of making the world better or safer, elites capture the government and end up killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

The United States is no exception. Washington traded the gold of American manufacturing jobs for the silver of geopolitical power.

Washington elites weren't merely content to practice diplomacy. They grew accustomed to dictating political and military policy in Europe and Asia. They liked waging war and running the world.

To that end, Washington elites excelled at creating a vocabulary to obscure reality and justify their actions. What America's Founders called empire, Washington elites call leadership, saving the world for democracy and fighting a war on terrorism.

For 60 years, the national security state has bled the American economy. Free markets are sacrificed on the altar of armaments and inattention to unfair trade.

Since Eisenhower's prescient warning in his farewell speech, the military-industrial complex has been the pallbearer for a command-and-control American economy. The unseen effects permeate our culture and shape our politics.

During the Cold War, Washington looked the other way while American commercial manufacturing jobs were lost to free world allies. Washington should have conditioned its defense commitments in Europe and Japan on free markets and fair trade. Successful trade negotiations were more important to the vitality of the U.S. economy, but not in the minds of Washington elites.

U.S. military bases in Europe and Japan put Washington elites in the driver's seat. Because defense commitments were used to dictate foreign policy, allied governments were never called on the carpet for mercantilist trade practices.

What America's Founders called empire, Washington elites call leadership and saving the world for democracy.

When the new world order of globalization arrived, Washington's priorities didn't change. Intoxicated by geopolitics, Washington continued to downplay the threat of economic competition. Getting China to go along with Washington's policies on Iran, North Korea and global warming was more important than growing our economy and protecting our middle class.

Instead of a robust commercial manufacturing sector driving the U.S. economy to a size of $20 trillion in GDP, a hollowed out manufacturing sector has stalled the largest economy in the world at $14 trillion.

Instead of a healthy middle class with rising incomes, a weakened U.S. economy has flattened our middle class with falling incomes.

The industrial policy of empire

By redirecting American manufacturing capacity to the military-industrial complex, Washington practices its own form of mercantilism. Although well camouflaged, empire is an industrial policy. Behind the "free market" rhetoric lays the biggest industrial policy the world has ever known.

Since 9/11, "security" spending has almost doubled. Very little of this $1.2 trillion annual expenditure has anything to do with true national defense.

Washington runs a global welfare system for Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon and other giant military contractors. Their sales eat the largest slice of the U.S. budget and account for more than three-quarters of the global arms market.

As American foreign policy militarized, sound bites have replaced reasoned political debate and American culture has coarsened. The gargantuan villas that sprang up around Washington are the outward and visible sign of the national security state.

As foreign governments grew more economically aggressive with globalization, Washington became more militarily aggressive as a warfare state. Washington has been at war almost every year since the Soviets disappeared as a superpower.

Each of the 66 empires in the last 3,000 years bankrupted themselves. Will we go the same way?

Rather than commit to the jobs war, George W. Bush used 9/11 to divert public attention to military combat operations in one foreign country after another.

Empire is like a barroom fight: You don't hit the person who hit you. When the 9/11 blowback occurred, Bush instinctively understood the public appetite for major military action.

Launching a full-scale war against Saddam Hussein made Bush a much bigger war president than doing the sensible, surgical thing — tracking down bin Laden. Inventing a war on terrorism was politically more attractive than bringing justice to a few dozen doctrinaire criminals.

It is sad to contemplate the missed opportunity at the end of the Cold War. If Washington had shut down NATO and most of its thousand military bases abroad, the country would have been able to begin the process of healing the economic wounds of the Cold War.

The absence of political debate about the real war — the jobs war — made the loss of manufacturing jobs even worse when globalization hit. Rather than rehabilitate the American economy, Washington hid the true meaning of globalization from the American people through repeated military diversions.

Changing Washington

Perversely, Washington elites act as if their job depends upon them not understanding the primacy of the American economy. Since the United States abandoned the gold standard in 1971, U.S. trade deficits have totaled a staggering $8.5 trillion.

At every turn, Washington elites exhibit a self-serving combination of arrogance and timidity in their dealings with foreign governments. They delight in American military power and dictating to allies and adversaries. Yet they lose their footing and seem unsure of themselves when it comes to standing up for American commercial manufacturing and middle class jobs.

We must restore the far-sighted government that respects the economic interests of our citizens. Bad governance has given us a weak economy.

In the recent pivot to Asia, trade agreements continue to balloon our trade deficit and increase unemployment in the name of geopolitics. If we don't renounce militarism and shut down the empire, we have no chance of winning the jobs wars of the 21st century.

Empire impoverishes us. We pay for a security umbrella which relieves our economic competitors of the burden of providing for their own defense. This hurts us not just in the money we spend and the money they don't spend, but it takes Washington's eye off the ball.

We must be clear in our purpose. The purpose of the United States is to secure individual liberty. Before we went down the road to empire, we enjoyed the greatest economic growth and innovation the world had ever seen.

We must restore the far-sighted government that respects the constitutional rights and serves the economic interests of our citizens. Bad governance has given us a weak economy.

Each of the 66 empires in the last 3,000 years bankrupted themselves. Will we go the same way?

America can once again break with history and embrace the citizen state. If we don't restore the Republic, America will go the way of other empires. History is cruel with exceptions.

Washington elites consistently put their own interests ahead of our national interest. By selling American manufacturers out to foreign governments, they mined the gold out of our economy and dumped our middle class.

Without a strong middle class, the American system of government doesn't work. When our political institutions fail, our economy fails. When our economy fails, our politics become impossible.