This understanding of the concept ran all through the debates on the Constitution of 1787. The consummation of either must necessarily end in the overthrow of Liberty and the establishment of Despotism. To speak of any Rights as belonging to the States, without the innate and inalienable Sovereign power to maintain them, is but to deal in the shadow of language without the substance. Unfortunately, much of the economic analysis employed by such writers was completely hopeless. A few Southerners drew the parallel between the suppression of Philippine independence and their own struggle three decades earlier.
Militarism leads to military domination, military despotism.
We can only hope that Wilson's views and policies owed more to his life in New Jersey than to his Virginian background. Even if the Spanish war launched the American empire, the domestic consequences of Wilson's crusade far outweighed those of the former. Tom Watson of Georgia hated Wilson's crusade even more than he had hated the war of 1898. In August 1917, Watson, who was, among other things, a lawyer, defended two black men accused of failing to register for the draft, in a test case he hoped would overturn Wilson's Conscription Act. This of course failed.