Citizenship, Justice, and the New Golden Age
Josiah Lippincott
Josiah Lippincott is a Ph.D. student at the Van Andel School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College, and a writer for American Greatness and The Federalist. His writing can be found on Substack under the name Regime Critic. This is the keynote speech of the annual dinner of The St. Croix Review held on October 17, 2025.
Derek Suszko and your editor invited me here to speak tonight on the theme of immigration. I am happy to oblige: The question of border security was paramount to Trump’s victory. Indeed, his greatest accomplishment thus far has been to dramatically reduce the number of illegals flowing into our country.
Yet to raise the issue of immigration means doing more than just addressing the problems of stemming illegal entrants or even the subject of deporting illegals already here. The question of legal migration is of even greater importance.
The question of who should become a citizen raises the question of what a citizen even is. What are the duties and rights of citizenship? What must one give up to become a citizen? What does one receive in return?
To raise these questions is to raise the question of what government is even for.
Here at last we come to the heart of the issue: We come to the question of justice itself. What is the best way of life? What authority is required to protect and secure this way of life?
The libertarians are fond of asking where we should “draw the line.” However, it is much more clarifying to ask who should draw the line: who should have the power, by right, to inflict harm on his fellow men?
By raising the question of violence, the real issues of immigration, citizenship, and justice appear in stark relief. Blood, torture, flogging, misery — WAR! — now we are talking! Death makes everything clear.
Politicians, journalists, and activists have every incentive to shroud this fundamental reality. They want to pretend that government is about health care, Social Security, roads, clean water, and education. Government is when we sing kumbaya and all work together to improve society.
The modern state, at its beating heart, is an apparatus of coercion. Simply raise the question of what happens if you do not obey, and then you will understand. What happens if I don’t submit to the lockdown? What happens if I refuse to wear the mask? What happens if I don’t pay my taxes?
Then the smiling façade of collective action for the “greater good” disappears. The open hand of common purpose transforms itself into a mailed fist ready to smash all skeptics and dissidents.
The government of the United States maintains a vast network of military bases, prisons, police departments, spy agencies, and nuclear weapons. Millions of regulators, bureaucrats, and administrators cover the surface of the nation snooping on everything from the words you say online to the amount of water in your toilet bowl.
From old age pensions, to student loans, to mortgages, to the market rate of interest, to banking — the long arm of The State finds its way into virtually every corner of our lives.
These vast instruments of power do not exist because your rulers trust you. Far from it. It is precisely because you are so bad, because you are so irresponsible with your freedom that your rulers have decided the only way you can have liberty is by ensuring you use it correctly, by which they mean using your rights in a way they find acceptable.
A citizen, therefore, in our present circumstance primarily means being a “human resource” that needs to be “managed” by the wise. In our case, the wise are the credentialled experts in Washington, D.C. The COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandate were a perfect example of the real meaning of citizenship in modern America.
In 2020, I was stationed in Pendleton, California, with the Marine Corps. I remember the insanity of those first few months. Police shut down the beaches and arrested anyone caught going out in the water. Skate parks were filled with sand or covered in steel cables to prevent teenagers from congregating. The parks had yellow tape around the play equipment. Local officials used drones to monitor my neighborhood to find anyone going where they were not allowed.
I distinctly remember the air of fear and paranoia that permeated every aspect of life then — dystopian.
I longed to rebel. One evening, I snuck out of my apartment down to the beach. I slipped past the barricades and patrolling officers till I came down to the waterfront. I was utterly alone save for one homeless schizophrenic in the distance screaming his ramblings at God and nature alike.
Storm clouds gathered in the distance, rolling in from the Pacific. I watched them for a long time. The gathering physical darkness reflected the nation’s dystopian spiritual condition. America has never been the same since.
The scars of lockdowns, mandates, and the despair of the Biden years have not gone away. We can paper over them, but we cannot, in the end, ignore what happened.
Things have improved, yes. The lockdowns ended. The mandate was unenforceable. The idiocy of the Biden years grew to such an extent that even “respectable” people had had enough. Trump’s sweeping victory in 2024 was a beacon of hope.
Trump, like a meteor blazing across a dark night, brought hope for a better day. Who could possibly forget the aftermath of the assassination attempt as Trump, covered in blood, pumped his fist in the air: FIGHT! Yes. We must fight. We have no choice. We must push back the darkness. We must.
Trump’s courage and charisma have propelled him to a comeback story for the ages. The man is a near unstoppable force. He is a man of destiny. His opponents, all lesser mortals, can do nothing but stare slack-jawed in his wake.
Trump represents a vision of the possible, of a better and more peaceful future. He speaks often of a new Golden Age. Trump is instinctually drawn to prosperity, greatness, and success. Trump is a winner. He is animated by the spirit of victory, by the fire of eternal youth.
Yet Trump cannot bring this golden future into being by himself. The problems are profound, deeper than even he knows. Trump, like Moses, points to a promised land that he will not enter. Trump is the Great Revealer and the Great Restrainer. Through his very being in the world, he reveals the true character of his enemies. When the masks went on, the mask came off.
Trump holds back greater evils. Yet in doing so, he preserves the current system. The great irony is that Trump is saving the liberals from themselves! Trump is not a radical. Far from it. He is a shrewd moderate, a businessman and ’90s Democrat who is more interested in making a deal than taking an ideological stand.
Trump isn’t here to blow up our institutions but to reform them. He doesn’t want to undo the post-1945 international order and American hegemony, he wants to make it work better. Trump’s primary complaint about the ruling class is not that they are evil but that they are stupid.
If the establishment were smart, they would try and work with Trump. They would accept his criticisms of their order and would respect his populist energy enough to blunt the more extreme aspects of their program.
If the Left was smart, they would have tried to keep the post-1994 political balance going for as long as possible: Republicans pushing for balanced budgets and low taxes on the one hand, but with no real desire to undo the Great Society or New Deal state. Crucially, the establishment should have avoided all further wars and economic dislocation. But the Left could not be satisfied. The uniparty needed new wars, new schemes of social transformation at gunpoint.
Trump is the response to leftist hubris. But even he is not willing to undo this system. Trump is still sending money and weapons to Ukraine and still hip deep in the Middle East. We are still in NATO, the administrative state still dominates our lives, Anthony Fauci is still a free man. Under Trump, current estimates put us on track to naturalize some new 600,000 to 800,000 immigrants. Those migrants continue to support the Democratic party by a ratio of about 3:2 in the best case.
Trump has not solved all of our problems. He has not answered the deepest political questions. This is not to attack him. Trump has done more than anyone else in my lifetime to stand against the Left. I merely wish to show the nature of the problem. Before we can find a solution, we must acknowledge what we are up against.
Taxes are still high, crime is still out of control (as the stabbing of Iryna Zarutska makes clear), and the Left has ramped up terrorism and violence. The failed assassinations of President Trump have been followed by the murder of Charlie Kirk. It is clear that the nation is still in a dark place.
We are running budget deficits of $2 trillion a year, half of which goes to paying interest to our current creditors! The national debt sits at $38 trillion, with no end in sight. Things cannot go on like this. We cannot borrow money forever. We cannot print money forever. Resources have to come from somewhere. There is no magic in this life.
The looming fiscal and monetary crisis is an enormous long-term problem, but in the short run, economic conditions remain bad for the young. Housing prices are sky high — the average new home costs $415,000. With 20 percent down, a 6.5 percent interest rate, and typical property taxes, the average first-time home buyer is looking at a monthly mortgage payment of $3,000 a month. The average salary is just $63,000 a year. You do the math.
There is a reason why young people are angry. The financial crisis of 2008, the lockdowns, and the subsequent inflation make it feel, for many, as if they will never get ahead. Boiling resentment, at the elderly in particular, is a normal feature of discourse among the young. “OK, Boomer” isn’t just a meme, it is a battle cry.
Zohran Mamdani in New York and Omar Fateh in Minneapolis show the future of leftist politics — explicit calls for more third-world migration, wage and price controls, and central planning in the name of racial justice.
What can the mainstream right offer in response? Older conservative Americans may be stunned by the rise in socialism among Zoomers and Millennials, but they have little ground to stand on. How can the eager recipients of Social Security and Medicare balk at an attitude of “entitlement” among the young?
Watching retirees with fat government pensions and monthly checks from the state, paid for with taxpayer dollars collected from young people who are still working, complain about the unwillingness of young people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps?
A dangerous realization is spreading among young people on both the left and the right: Why is it that money and resources should only flow one way? Why should Social Security and Medicare pay for the expenses of the old? Why not simply reverse the flow? Why shouldn’t rich boomers with paid for houses, 401(k)s, and rental properties be forced to pay their fair share by subsidizing the young instead of the other way around?
It does not help things that America’s elderly are predominantly white and the young are majority non-white. Identity politics pours fuel on the fire of intergenerational resentment. The 2020 BLM riots were simply a foretaste of things to come.
The trajectory is clear: Americans increasingly view their fellow citizens not as friends and allies but as potential pockets to be picked, as a source of resources and wealth. The old terms of the post-war social contract, in which young people were expected to pay into a social “safety net” that would be there for them in their old age, are laughable.
Cynicism and nihilism are the standard among the young today. No one believes government, media, or academic establishments. The truth is simple: I am simply a paypig. I am an ATM for government bureaucrats to draw down, a warm body to be sent into wars abroad, and a symbol of heteronormativity, patriarchy, and colonialism. In the eyes of those in power, I am at best a cog to be fit into place, at worst a problem to be solved.
Last year, I estimate that my wife and I paid, all told, some $25,000 in federal income taxes, state income taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, property taxes, import duties, and license and registration fees. God alone knows how much income I have foregone due to the hidden cost of administrative regulations.
We cannot go on this way. The current order is fragile. Trump may hold back the tide of resentment for a while, but eventually there will be a crisis and catastrophe that the ruling class cannot manage. What hope is there for the future? How can we rebuild our country?
And yet, there is hope. What was built by human hands can be unbuilt by human hands. We are not merely in the grip of blind fate. We can make choices. This does not mean we are guaranteed to succeed in attaining our ends but merely that things can be other than they are right now.
It is obvious that we need to start over. We have forgotten who we are. We have forgotten our heritage. We are increasingly a nation of strangers and enemies, but we can change that. We must go back to the heart of things and begin anew.
It is not my purpose tonight to spell out what a comprehensive transformation of American law and a restoration of American citizenship will require. Instead, I want to point the way toward what is possible. I want to provide a vision of hope, a vision of a new Golden Age.
I know my vision is radical. I know it will be difficult to make this vision a reality, but just because a thing is hard does not mean we shouldn’t attempt it. And just because a thing appears difficult to most people does not mean it is difficult for all. We should not, therefore, be afraid to strive for a bold future or to launch great endeavors.
Life is short and precious; why waste it on petty projects and nibbling around the edges of the real problems? As the kids say, go big or go home.
If our aim is peace and prosperity, what means will we require to get there? First, let us establish why wealth comes into being. The answer is simple: Because human beings seek happiness.
Every action we take in every moment of our waking lives aims at removing a source of misery or acquiring a piece of happiness. Human beings are finite, needy beings. We need food, water, air, clothing, and shelter just to live. More than that, we seek knowledge, friendship, entertainment, and love.
Deep down, the most powerful and common human desire is to have good things and to have them forever. We do not want to suffer, grow old, and die. We do not want to lose our friends and family. We want, rather, to have these good things indefinitely. We wish for a world in which every tear shall be wiped away, in which there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor weeping.
In this life, however, good things do not come about without effort. To this end, a human being has only three ways of solving his problems: He can solve the problem himself, he can hire someone else to solve it by offering that man something he wants, or he can seize the property of others.
A man may, in other words, produce, exchange, or steal. There are no other options available to him. Production and exchange are peaceful. Exchange, in particular, is potent. Because human desires vary not only from man to man but from moment to moment, it is possible to acquire the good things of life by offering up something we desire less than the thing we wish to acquire. Our trading partner experiences the same phenomenon in reverse.
Every single piece of human wealth that you see is the result of production and exchange. Every building, every road, every piece of technology came into being because its creator intended to profit (become happier) by producing it. Even those things which were either stolen or were the product of theft were, in the beginning, made for the benefit of the maker.
No one creates wealth so that it may be seized from him by force.
A world built on freedom and exchange, in which theft is outlawed and harshly punished, is a world of phenomenal wealth creation. It is simply in the nature of things that if men have peace and freedom then they will seek to solve their problems through individual creation and mutual trade.
It is also in the nature of things that if a man defers consumption today, he can save up for even greater production tomorrow. This is called investment. By nature, those who work hard and prepare for the future are wealthier than those who are profligate and shortsighted.
A free people is a virtuous and wealthy people.
Leave a free people alone in a wilderness and they will create a paradise. This is the story of America. In the 18th and 19th centuries, our intrepid forefathers gave birth to the freest, most powerful nation on earth. Their industry, frugality, and spirited defense of their property gave rise to phenomenal wealth.
During that time, government spending was just 2 percent of GDP. Today it is 25 percent. All told, federal, state, and local governments tax $7.5 trillion a year from their citizens. They issue another $3 trillion in debt.
This is $10 trillion a year in present and future tax obligations. Imagine, however, a world in which we went back to the principles of our forefathers, in which this tax burden fell by 90 percent.
Imagine if virtually all the money that currently flows, at the point of a gun, to bureaucrats, defense contractors, welfare recipients, Congresscritters, lobbyists, and grifters were instead left in the hands of the rational and industrious people who created that wealth in the first place.
Imagine if the average American watched his taxes fall by 90 percent, if $9 trillion more a year remained in private investment markets. There is your Golden Age. I’ve found it, right there!
Getting rid of the vast state agencies that parasitically suck down the wealth of the people would be a boon to the genuinely productive and decent people of this country. But who would build the roads, man the fire stations, and provide health care if the state no longer does so?
This is no objection to liberty. It is like asking who will provide the houses, food, and cellphones in a free society. Free men and women will provide them! If a service is valuable, then people will pay for it. Instead of nasty public fights over how best to spend extracted taxpayer dollars, free associations, charities, and businesses will provide these services.
In the beginning, the first fire companies were created by insurance providers in order to protect their assets. Moreover, there have always been private roads and bridges. Road owners have far more incentive to facilitate transportation at the most efficient price than government bureaucrats who will get paid no matter how badly or corruptly they manage these “public” services.
Americans, moreover, will be infinitely better off saving for their own retirement and health care. If Social Security and Medicare are so great, then why do Americans have to be coerced into paying into them? Are people so stupid that they do not recognize the great benefits of these public pension schemes? If they are so stupid, then why should these people be allowed to be free at all? They would be better off being completely enslaved to wise masters who are truly fit to manage their money.
I hold, by contrast, that the people in this country are not stupid. Take a simple example. In my 15 years of working, I have contributed $35,000 into Social Security and Medicare at an average rate of $209 a month. Right now, I am slated to receive $1,000 a month from Social Security starting at the age of 67.
If I lived for 20 more years beyond that point, I would receive $240,000 total from the SSA. However, if I invested that money in an S&P 500 index fund at the average market rate of interest over the last 30 years, I would have $1.8 million by age 67.
And remember, that money is mine; it can be left to my children, and I can spend it whenever I wished. In retirement, that money would continue to grow, too. Moreover, this assumes I don’t make additional investments over this time period.
A free man knows his own interest better than any socialist central planner. I know what makes me happy more than any meddling administrator in Washington, D.C. Moreover, why should we assume that everyone should save for retirement? There are no guarantees in this life. Some men may seek to enjoy the fruits of their labor now in the present rather than preparing for an uncertain future.
There is a cost to such a decision, of course, but that is no one’s business but their own. A free society is not a regime of busybodies.
In the world I am describing, virtually all of the services we associate with government have gone away. There is no more inflation because the Federal Reserve can no longer print fiat currency. The post office has been replaced by FedEx, Amazon, UPS, XPO logistics, and a hundred other delivery firms. Fire protection is covered by volunteer associations and insurance companies. Roads are managed by tollway operators.
Private property and personal freedom are the rule of the day. But what of the government? Who will protect this property and liberty? At last we return to the question of citizenship, what it is and who should have it.
In a free society, the role of government is the protection of person and property. It is a free association, created as our Founders so wisely proclaimed, by the “consent of the governed.”
Citizenship in a free society ought to be a choice. The duties imposed by citizenship — everything from the payment for protection to jury service to membership in the militia — are assumed by voluntary choice.
In return for these duties, the citizen of a free society receives protection from external dangers and the preservation of peace. A good governor is a defender of the peace. His most important domestic function is to ensure that disputes between citizens are arbitrated as honestly and peacefully as possible.
Since no man can be unbiased in his own case, a free society requires the creation of neutral courts of arbitration. In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, these judges or deciders have been a jury of own’s peers. The citizen submits his case against his neighbor to his fellow members of society. While not perfect — no human system of judgment is — a system of true self-government in which criminal punishment and civil relief is meted out not by a bureaucratic process but by the earnest efforts of one’s fellow citizens is as close to an ideal as is known to us.
The true social compact is the creation of voluntary choice of its members. The word society comes from the Latin socius, meaning “ally.” The social compact is a military and juridical alliance for the sake of preserving peace from thieves, murderers, and invaders.
As a free association, its members have every right to accept or reject whomever they like as members. No foreigner has any right to become a citizen.
The territory controlled by the members of the social compact may have foreigners and non-citizens living on it. This is no issue. The peace of these aliens should not be disturbed unless they harm the person and property of a citizen. Yet, at the same time, they have no right to protection by jury. The will of the sovereign guardian toward these aliens can be appealed to no common judge. These aliens can be, if the sovereign determines it is necessary defense, be forced to find a new home upon the surface of the earth.
The citizen of a free society ought to take an oath of allegiance. There is no birthright citizenship and no claim by the son to the same protection that was given to the father. The right to a jury trial, to vote, and to police and military protection are the rights of citizenship. They are not for non-members.
Nor should the terms of the social compact change once it has been implemented. A contract where one side may unilaterally alter the terms at its own will is not just. It is merely a contract to sell oneself into slavery and is therefore incompatible with peace.
We have become used to an endless proliferation of laws and regulations. This is incompatible with a free society. City councils, county commissions, state legislators, and the federal Congress are all dens of thieves, fools, and tyrants. A true law is knowable even to children. It should never change save by the consent of every citizen.
Indeed, a free society needs only two laws: Thou shalt not harm thy neighbor and thou shalt not steal. All crimes violate one of these two commandments. Murder, theft, fraud, assault, arson, and rape are all covered under their aegis.
What possible law could be needed beyond these two? In our time, every expansion of the “law” is really an expansion of the commands of tyrants who seek to dominate their neighbors. Indeed, these are not laws at all but edicts! To call them laws is to lie, to bear false witness.
A free society does not know administrative orders, lockdowns, public health officials, or mandates. It knows only the law, which each and every one of its members has sworn to obey. A free society does not need regulatory agencies. It has juries! A free man does not submit to the long house of nanny state regulation.
True, in such a society, men would have to suffer the consequences of their own choices. There would be no bailout for stupidity and bad investments. Charity would be voluntary. Those who choose to prioritize present pleasures over future goods will pay the consequence. But that is life.
No man has any right to rule over his neighbors, nor can he justly steal their property even when he is in need. This is because every man is needy. All of us are mortal beings. We are all dying. We are all “disabled.” No man can rightly prioritize his own suffering over the happiness of his fellows without setting in motion the fatal cycle of tyranny that ends in civil war.
But, you may ask, this vision of the free society is compelling, it captures the spirit of our Founders, it appeals to the manly spirit of “Give Me Liberty or give me death” that freed us from the shackles of our imperial rulers, but how could this possibly work now? Wouldn’t such a society harm the poor, the elderly? Wouldn’t it lead to financial crisis and economic suffering?
I by no means accept this premise. A free society is a just society. It allows the industrious and rational to keep the rightful fruits of their hard work. It rewards industry, kindness, and frugality. These are good! We should not be afraid to end the parasitic nanny state in one fell swoop. True, this would be disruptive, but this current order is disruptive! It steals from good people! That is wrong. Theft and aggression make life worse for those who are subjected to it.
In a free society, yes, some of the poor and elderly might need to make friends or go to work. But this is by no means a bad thing! Our nation would be a better place if more Americans knew the dignity of productive labor, of knowing that in their own small way they were contributing to the betterment of their neighbors. We would be a better country if instead of being forced to subsidize the poor, we had genuine charity.
Indeed, in a free society even economic “crises” are good. It is simply a fact that sometimes investments do not work out. Men misread the nature of the times, unforeseen natural disasters strike. But this pain is good. It teaches us to be more cautious and thoughtful.
There is no magic in this life. The money that funds every bailout must come from somewhere; it must come from someone. It is not fair; it is not just that those who have been cautious with their resources should pay for the foolish risks taken by others.
Much more could be said on this matter. Bringing the free society and the attendant Golden Age into being will be hard. There are plenty of grifters, thieves, and wannabe tyrants who do not want it to exist. Cowards and despairing men alike will see every reason why they should not fight for a better future. We may pay them no mind.
The free man, the just man, does not bend the knee to danger. He is not cowed by difficulty. He maintains always a straight and narrow course toward what he knows to be right. Nothing good in this life may be obtained without hard work, daring, and foresight. We can live in a better country. We can have secure borders, thriving communities, and genuine civic friendship. We can have the Golden Age.
So what if it is hard to achieve? Did our forefathers give up on their cause because they suffered at Valley Forge? Were they so easily cowed? Of course not! They were real men. They fought and fought hard for what they knew was right. It is our duty now to do the same.
Like our Fathers, we must now take up the cause of liberty, mutually pledging to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Thank you. *
