A special report from Shamus Gerry III
This week, the United States took a breathtaking step toward a constitutional crisis. The Supreme Court ruled President Trump’s sweeping tariff regime illegal. The President’s response was not to bow to the court, but to publicly mock the justices as “unpatriotic” and “not smart people.”
Then, he did the unthinkable.
Within hours, Trump declared he would simply use a different, obscure law to do the exact same thing. He bypassed the highest court in the land with a flick of his pen, imposing a new 10% global tariff and threatening to raise it to 15%.
The message was clear: the President, and the President alone, would decide.
This is not a new story.
It is a terrifying echo of a drama that played out almost a thousand years ago in Song Dynasty China, when a radical chancellor and a desperate emperor decided they, too, could bypass the established order to force their vision upon a divided nation. Their power grab, like Trump’s, was meant to save the empire.
Instead, it shattered it.
The Chancellor and the Mandate of Heaven
In the year 1069, the Song Dynasty was in trouble. Decades of fiscal mismanagement and tax evasion by wealthy landowners had hollowed out the imperial treasury. Emperor Shenzong, young and ambitious, turned to a brilliant but controversial official named Wang Anshi.
Wang saw an empire being eaten from the inside out by what he called “engrossers”—powerful elites who monopolized land and wealth.
His solution was radical.
A set of “New Policies” that would put the state in total control of commerce, industry, and agriculture.
“The state should take the entire management of commerce, industry, and agriculture into its own hands, with a view to succoring the working classes and preventing them from being ground into the dust by the rich.”
— Wang Anshi, Chancellor of the Song Dynasty
He created new government agencies to control prices, nationalized key industries, and offered state-backed loans to farmers. To his supporters, it was a bold plan to restore the empire’s strength.
To his opponents, it was a tyrannical overreach that destroyed the natural order of society.
The empire’s most powerful men drew their battle lines.
The opposition was led by the respected historian Sima Guang, who argued that Wang’s reforms were an assault on the very foundations of their society. The bureaucracy, the traditional check on imperial power, resisted.
So Wang, with the Emperor’s blessing, went around them.
He created new, parallel government bodies staffed with his own loyalists to implement the reforms. He purged and exiled officials who dared to speak against him, including the celebrated poet Su Shi.
He effectively created a government within a government, accountable only to him and the Emperor, to force his economic agenda upon the nation.
The Unraveling of an Empire
The results were catastrophic.
The “Green Sprouts” loan program, meant to help farmers, became a tool of predatory lending by corrupt officials, driving countless families into ruin. A famine in 1074 was made infinitely worse as officials insisted on collecting government debts from starving peasants.
The bitter factional warfare between Wang’s reformers and Sima Guang’s conservatives paralyzed the court for decades. The constant political purges and instability eroded the foundations of the state.
The very reforms meant to strengthen the Song Dynasty made it fatally weak.
When the Jurchen invaders swept down from the north in 1126, they found an empire rotted from within, exhausted by internal conflict and economic chaos. The capital, Kaifeng, fell. The Northern Song Dynasty collapsed.
Historians would later blame the fall on the “fiscal mismanagement and private venality of Wang Anshi’s self-anointed disciples.” His power grab, his decision to bypass the established checks and balances, had led directly to ruin.
The Lesson: Power Bypassed is Power Abused
Today, we see the same pattern emerging in Washington.
A powerful executive, convinced of his own righteousness, sidesteps the highest court in the land to impose a radical economic vision. He attacks the legitimacy of the judiciary and creates a crisis where none needed to exist.
“The Supreme Court deliberated for months before moving to end the president’s unprecedented use of one tariff power, only for him to put a different tariff power to unprecedented use almost immediately.”
— The Washington Post, February 25, 2026
Just as Wang Anshi created new agencies to bypass the bureaucracy, the Trump administration is searching for new legal loopholes to bypass the Supreme Court. The principle is identical: when the established rules don’t give you the power you want, you simply ignore them and find new ones.
This is the path of institutional decay.
It is how republics become empires, and how empires fall.
It is a warning written in the ashes of history.
When a government turns inward, when its leaders become obsessed with factional battles and circumventing the rule of law, it can no longer protect its people. It becomes a danger to them.
The Action: Declare Your Independence
When the government itself becomes the source of instability, the only sane response is to build your own kingdom. The constitutional showdown in Washington is not an abstract debate. It is a deafening alarm bell, signaling that the system we depend on is becoming dangerously fragile.
True security is not found in a government that is at war with its own laws. It is found in the soil. It is the independence of knowing you can provide for your family, no matter what happens in the halls of power.
That is why we created the 4ft Farm Blueprint. It is more than a guide to growing food. It is a declaration of independence from a broken system. It is the practical, step-by-step knowledge you need to build your own resilient homestead, your own small kingdom in a world of failing empires.
To understand the full scope of the challenges we face and the solutions available, explore our network of resources:
- HomesteaderDepot.com: Tools and knowledge for the self-reliant life.
- SelfRelianceReport.com: In-depth analysis of the threats to our freedom.
- SurvivalStronghold.com: Strategies for protecting your family in a crisis.
- SevenHolistics.com: Health independence from a broken medical system.
The Song Dynasty chose the path of ruin. America is now staring down the same path.
You do not have to follow.
