The American Republic is Over: How the Foreign Policy Establishment Failed to See the Endgame

Now with footnotes

Nota Bene: This piece is long, and its style (and style-guide) diverges from what you may have grown accustomed to from us. Even so, we think you will find this article valuable. It fills a gap in the ongoing discourse beyond our still-small movement.

A piece a little more in our usual style will come out today at noon EST.

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We began publishing The Radical Federalist on February 10, 2025.¹

One day later, on February 11, 2025, Foreign Affairs published an influential essay by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, titled "The Path to American Authoritarianism," arguing that the United States was sliding toward "competitive authoritarianism," a weakened but still recognizable democracy. Now, a little more less one month later, we offer this belated response—not merely to disagree, but to highlight the depth of their miscalculation.

We recognize the inherent unfairness in responding to Foreign Affairs' analysis more than a month after its publication—hindsight offers a clarity rarely available in the moment. Yet this critique is different: it required no hindsight at all. Every fact, every blueprint, every ideological manifesto underpinning our republic's ongoing collapse was available openly, explicitly, and unmistakably long before Foreign Affairs chose to minimize the threat as merely "competitive authoritarianism." (Jump to the Appendix for details).

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The America you knew is already dead. The republic promised by the Founders—where no king ruled, and no corporate baron could purchase democracy wholesale—is gone, replaced overnight by something darker, stranger, and more enduring than even our bleakest forecasts could fully anticipate.

Foreign Affairs calls this phenomenon "competitive authoritarianism." They say we'll still have elections, courts, checks and balances—just tilted, manipulated, gamed. They're not entirely wrong, but their crime is one of understatement. They are soothing us with half-truths, comforting themselves—and their establishment readership—with the lie that, somehow, the familiar will persist.

But it won't. We no longer stand at the edge of a decline—we've plunged over. The "competitive authoritarianism" diagnosis is dangerous precisely because it’s too mild, too gentle, too polite. It misleads us, implying the crisis is manageable through ordinary channels—judicial reviews, congressional oversight, incremental reform. They are playing lullabies as the republic burns. It feels like this same lullaby has put much of the Democratic leadership to sleep.

Here's the truth, raw and merciless: America is no longer backsliding. We are in freefall. The regime isn't merely skewing elections, harassing critics, or corrupting the DOJ—though it does all these things. It is openly dismantling every structural check that ever restrained presidential power, just as the blueprint demanded by Curtis Yarvin’s "Butterfly Revolution" and the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" clearly, explicitly, and publicly foretold.

We repeat: This blueprint was never hidden. It was published openly, available freely online, broadcast in speeches, articles, podcasts. Yet Foreign Affairs and countless others dismissed it as fringe chatter—too radical, too conspiratorial, too grotesque to be real. They underestimated the ambition, the determination, and the resources of those behind it—Musk, Thiel, Yarvin, Vance, Yass, and the oligarchic cabal working openly and shamelessly to abolish democracy.

Curtis Yarvin and the Blueprint for Monarchy

Curtis Yarvin began (public) life as Mencius Moldbug, under which pseudonym he argued for “neoreactionarism” and the return of absolute monarchy. In 2022, now using his real name and perhaps not uncoincidentally now fully-purchased, funded, and owned by Peter Thiel (always remember, real names carry power), he published what would become known as “The Butterfly Revolution”. In it, he made explicit a new vision of a "CEO-state" ruled absolutely, free of the "obsolete" constraints of democracy. Yarvin openly called for blitzkrieg dismantlings of constitutional norms, judicial independence, congressional authority, and civil-service protections—describing it explicitly as a "Butterfly Revolution," the sudden and irreversible transformation of governance from messy democratic plurality to corporate-backed monarchy.

This is not rhetoric. This is policy. Yarvin’s vision has moved steadily from fringe blogs into mainstream conservative think tanks and ultimately into the White House itself. The first wave of purges—DOJ, Defense, IRS, FBI—were not random power grabs, but methodical, strategic, and executed exactly as Yarvin's model demanded: immediate, ruthless removal of anyone who might resist.

His logic was clear: "Purge first, ask questions later." He openly argued for a president who ignores court orders, defies Congress, and repurposes security agencies and military assets into personal instruments of rule. And the regime followed the script exactly.

Project 2025: The Manual for Authoritarian Takeover

At the heart of this coup lies Project 2025, meticulously authored by the Heritage Foundation, funded by billionaire interests, and circulated openly as a precise roadmap for authoritarian control. The key points of the plan were unambiguous:

• Mass firings of civil servants ("Schedule F" on steroids), turning tens of thousands of jobs into pure patronage positions filled by regime loyalists.

• Weaponization of law enforcement (DOJ, IRS, FBI), transforming them into blunt instruments to silence dissent, persecute rivals, and neutralize states refusing to comply with federal dictates.

• Dismantling regulatory agencies, allowing corporate oligarchs unrestricted freedom to exploit resources, destroy environmental protections, privatize education, and rewrite economic rules entirely in their favor.

• Rapid militarization of immigration and detention, using offshore facilities such as Guantanamo for indefinite incarceration—first migrants, next political opponents, critics, dissidents.

Everything described here—every grotesque step—has already started. The regime didn't wait. It moved immediately, precisely because it understood that hesitation or gradualism would provoke organized resistance. Project 2025 was always intended as a lightning-fast assault, bypassing normal processes and overwhelming opposition before it could mobilize.

What Foreign Affairs Misses: The Oligarchy is Already in Control

With that out of the way, letst return to “The Path to American Authoritarianism”.

This is the Foreign Affairs failure writ large: they frame this crisis primarily around Trump, failing to recognize that he is merely the mask worn by a far larger and more dangerous force. Elon Musk's "shadow presidency," J.D. Vance's calls for extraconstitutional measures, and Peter Thiel's explicit financial engineering to profit from the collapse of democratic institutions are not ancillary—they are central. They aren't spectators; they are active participants, financiers, architects of the new authoritarian state.

These billionaire oligarchs have already purchased the system they seek. Foreign Affairs describes a scenario where democracy is "tilted," but still functioning. They fail to understand that, once purchased by oligarchs, democracy ceases to function at all. Every regulatory rollback, every firing, every defiance of judicial oversight, every refusal to certify electoral outcomes is not a bug but a feature of oligarchic capture.

Musk now openly advocates U.S. withdrawal from NATO and the U.N. not as a negotiating position but as a step toward geopolitical realignment where oligarchic power—unrestrained by alliances or international norms—becomes absolute. Europe is abandoned, Ukraine betrayed, America realigned to authoritarian interests abroad, a client-state of the regime’s billionaire patrons.

What we witnessed Friday was pre-scripted—the result of meetings, dry-runs, and conversations imvolving far more than just the two principle actors—what this tells us, what we glean by imagining Trump, Vance, Musk, Thiel, et al at the dress-rehearsal discussing the how and the why—reveals why mainstream discourse is so reticent to acknowledge this was more than Trump’s poorly controlled temper.

Not Competitive Authoritarianism, But Absolute Oligarchic Capture

Foreign Affairs imagines we face a scenario comparable to Hungary or Turkey, nations where democracy still flickers weakly, albeit corrupted. But America’s reality is already darker. The U.S. possesses unparalleled surveillance capabilities, limitless resources for detention and coercion, and a global financial apparatus capable of crushing dissent both domestically and abroad.

Foreign Affairs calls this threat "competitive authoritarianism." We must call it what it is: absolute oligarchic capture. This is not democracy tilted; it is democracy extinguished. There are no longer guardrails. The courts are ignored, states financially blackmailed, dissent criminalized, and opposition systematically purged or silenced.

And here's the most harrowing reality: the process is already so far advanced, the momentum so firmly in the regime’s favor, that reversing course through ordinary electoral or legal means alone may no longer be feasible. This truth is terrifying, but we must confront it clearly.

The Republic is Lost, But the Fight for Democracy is Not Over

If this were a diagnosis alone, despair would be understandable. But Radical Federalism has always insisted on resistance and renewal—not within the corrupted federal system, but beyond and around it.

States must now move urgently to shield their bureaucracies, refusing compliance with unlawful federal directives. They must build independent financial systems, defying attempts at economic coercion. Cities must become fortresses of local democracy, organized networks of mutual support and defiance. Civil servants must resist orders explicitly designed to destroy public trust. Judges at every level must prepare for a confrontation in which their rulings might be ignored outright—and must decide, bravely, to rule against tyranny regardless.

Citizens must understand that their own government—at least at the federal level—is already operating as their enemy. Only by creating new institutions and networks, building parallel democratic ecosystems, can we hope to reclaim what was lost. We call for survival and loyalty to the deepest principles upon which America was founded.

This Is Our 1861, Our 1941—Our Moment to Choose

Foreign Affairs believes (believed?) the old Constitution and institutions can still save us. They cannot. Only we can save ourselves.

Lincoln knew, in 1861, that no compromise could preserve both slavery and freedom. Roosevelt knew, in 1941, that fascism could never coexist with democracy. We know now, in 2025, that oligarchic authoritarianism—funded, planned, and executed openly—is irreconcilable with liberty.

We choose now whether future generations inherit democracy or servitude. Whether corporate billionaires rule absolutely, or citizens reclaim power. Whether courts become instruments of injustice or bastions of resistance. Whether states accept subjugation or fight for sovereignty.

The regime has shown its intentions plainly: it will weaponize crisis, manufacture emergencies, and exploit fear to consolidate total power. We must, with equal clarity, refuse to yield. We must expose their blueprints, disrupt their plans, and fiercely defend the last remnants of democracy, building from the grassroots upward.

If we fail now, we will not get another chance. This is not mere rhetoric—it is reality. The endgame is upon us. Radical Federalism stands ready, and its voice will remain relentless, uncompromising, and urgent until the regime falls, democracy breathes again, and power is restored to the people who were promised it.

This is not the beginning of the end. The end is already here. But this can be—and must be—the beginning of the rebirth.

█ Do not be comforted by half-measures. Do not be calmed by polite reassurances. The old republic is dead, but democracy lives as long as you fight for it. Now is the time. Resist, defy, and build anew—your life and liberty depend on it.

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This analysis is not theoretical; events are moving at lightning speed. Today at noon, we will release our critical assessment of the regime's potential next steps: the manufactured fiscal crisis, election chaos, betrayal of global alliances, and domestic repression plans accelerating in real time. Stay tuned.

Read next :

• The Regime’s Next Phase: The Fiscal Cliff, Election Chaos, Global War as a Reset Button—And Guantanamo as a Holding Pen for Dissent

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Appendix: Evidence of the Blueprint Already in Motion

Below is a consolidated breakdown showing how Project 2025 and Curtis Yarvin’s “Butterfly Revolution” are no longer theoretical proposals but living directives already being implemented.

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I. Project 2025: Heritage’s Playbook for an Unchecked Executive

Core Aims

1. Mass Purges & Schedule F “On Steroids”

   • Transform tens of thousands of federal civil servants into “at-will” employees, subject to immediate firing.²

   • Replace them with loyalists who share the regime’s ideological goals.³

2. Centralization of Power in the White House

   • Diminish or effectively abolish agency independence.⁴

   • Concentrate final decision-making authority under the President, neutralizing arms-length oversight.⁵

3. Regulatory Gutting

   • Roll back or ignore environmental, consumer, and financial regulations.⁶

   • Achieve a near-corporate free-for-all in resource extraction, privatized health care, and even infrastructural ownership.⁷

4. Weaponization of Law Enforcement

   • Appoint fully loyal heads at DOJ, FBI, and IRS; use them for selective prosecutions targeting political rivals or uncooperative states.⁸

5. Overhauling Immigration & Detention

   • Ramp up detention capacity, with plans to extend or repurpose facilities like Guantanamo for migrants—and ultimately, one expects, for any “enemies.” ⁹

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What We’ve Already Seen

• Systematic Firing & Resignations
  High-level terminations at DOJ, Defense, IRS. Multiple mid-level purges have begun, eroding old civil service protections.¹⁰

• Executive Impunity
  The White House is openly ignoring or slow-walking inconvenient court orders—an initial sign that Project 2025’s plan to undermine lower courts is well underway.¹¹

• Loyalty-Only Appointments
  Key positions (e.g., Attorney General, top department heads) are filled solely with unwavering Trump/Heritage loyalists.¹²

• Accelerated Regulatory Rollbacks
  The administration is gutting environmental rules, limiting labor oversight, and defunding consumer-protection offices.¹³

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What’s Next (According to the Blueprint)

• Full “Schedule F” Implementation
  Tens of thousands of “policy-influencing” roles reclassified as at-will, enabling immediate ideological re-staffing.¹⁴

• Merging or Eliminating Agencies
  Certain departments (Education, EPA, etc.) face extreme cuts or outright dissolution; others become hollowed shells.¹⁵

• Targeted Harassment of Cities & States
  More threats to withhold federal funding or forcibly intervene if localities resist White House directives (on policing, immigration, election policy).¹⁶

• Constitutional Challenges & Court Bypasses
  A push for Supreme Court rulings that neuter lower-court power—thereby cementing near-total executive authority.¹⁷

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II. The Butterfly Revolution: Curtis Yarvin’s Template for a “CEO-State”

Core Ideology

1. A Swift, Top-Down Reset

   • Discard existing checks (courts, Congress, civil service) via blitz-like maneuvers.¹⁸

   • Install a “monarchical” or “CEO-like” figure with near-absolute power.¹⁹

2. Concentration of Executive Control

   • Dismantle the messy “checks and balances” tradition, imposing direct top-down subservience.²⁰

3. Use of Crisis to Validate the Takeover

   • Exploit or create emergencies to justify suspending normal processes.²¹

   • Rapidly crush dissent using real or threatened force.²²

4. Privatized Governance

   • Entrust entire public sectors—education, infrastructure, energy—to allied corporate or “tech visionary” figureheads.²³

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What We’ve Already Seen

• Doctrinal Infiltration
  Yarvin’s radical “single executive authority” model now surfaces in White House memos and among billionaire circles. J. D. Vance echoes calls for an “extra-constitutional approach.”²⁴

• “Shock and Awe” Against Bureaucracy (DOGE)
  Waves of top-level firings reflect Yarvin’s script—ensuring no internal obstacles remain.²⁵

• Weakening State/Global Commitments
  Musk’s push to exit NATO and the U.N. aligns with Yarvin’s hostility to outside constraints on the “monarchy-state.”²⁶

• Emergent Paramilitary Forces
  Private security outfits (Prince/Blackwater spin-offs) rumored to support domestic clampdowns, mirroring Yarvin’s insistence on unwavering enforcement arms.²⁷

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What’s Next (If Yarvin’s Vision Continues)

• Total Overhaul of Legal Systems
  Sidestepping or overriding even the Supreme Court if it rules “incorrectly,” with loyalist “emergency courts” decreed by the executive.²⁸

• States Reduced to Subdivisions
  Federal preemption to the extreme: local National Guards federalized, local law enforcement taken over, states forcibly subordinate.²⁹

• Centralized Control Over Information
  Lockdown of media platforms (including Musk’s networks) to block any anti-regime narratives.³⁰

• Internment & Forced Loyalty
  One expects, though this exceeds the text proper, Guantanamo expansion for indefinite detention—migrants first, then “dissenters” labeled as threats. Meanwhile, “Schedule F” ensures only regime loyalists remain in positions of authority.³¹

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III. Combined Trajectory: An Ongoing Revolution

Project 2025 and the Butterfly Revolution interlock:

• Project 2025 supplies the step-by-step mechanism to dismantle the administrative state and grant one-man rule in functional terms.³²

• Butterfly Revolution provides the ideological catalyst, proclaiming that constitutional democracy is “obsolete” and must yield to swift, centralized power.³³

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Already in Motion

• Rapid civil-servant purges, open defiance of courts, lavish corporate backing, intensifying White House–billionaire synergy, and normalization of Guantanamo for indefinite detention.

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Still to Come

• Broad Use of Emergency Powers
  Economic or geopolitical crises will be used to seize near-absolute authority.³⁴

• A Private-Led “Shadow Cabinet”
  Musk, Thiel, and others in open executive roles, controlling major portfolios (energy, communications, national security) as private appointees.³⁵

• Criminalizing Dissent
  Heightened selective prosecutions, “anti-terror” expansions to label activism as subversive.³⁶

• Reshaping Alliances & Sovereignty
  Fully detaching from international institutions, forging a new axis of CEO-states or corporations that replicate this model.³⁷

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References are approximate and reflect the best-corresponding sections/line numbers from:

• Project 2025 PDF/chapters as labeled (especially Chs. 1–3, 5, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17).

• “Curtis Yarvin’s Butterfly Revolution,” from ~lines 20–450.

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1. The Republic in Crisis, Feb 10, 2025

2. See Project 2025, Ch. 3 (“Central Personnel Agencies”), pp. 69–71, discussing large-scale reclassification proposals.

3. See Project 2025, Ch. 2 (“Executive Office of the President”), pp. 43–44, emphasizing the President’s prerogative to appoint and remove staff aligned with the Administration agenda.

4. See Project 2025, Ch. 2, p. 45, recommending subjecting “independent agencies” to direct White House oversight.

5. See Project 2025, Ch. 1 (“White House Office”), pp. 23–24, underscoring an empowered Chief of Staff consolidating authority for the President.

6. See Project 2025, Ch. 2, p. 49, re: “aggressive deregulation,” including environmental and labor policies.

7. While Project 2025, advocates extensive deregulation in energy and health care (Ch. 12, pp. 363–364; Ch. 14, pp. 449–450), it does not explicitly call for a “free-for-all.” This bullet is an interpretation of the plan’s strong deregulatory thrust.

8. See Project 2025, Ch. 17 (“Department of Justice”), p. 545, urging DOJ leadership aligned with the President’s policy priorities and echoing concerns about prior “weaponization.” Though note that the text does not explicitly call for selective prosecutions.

9. See Project 2025, Ch. 5 (“Department of Homeland Security”), p. 133, recommending major increases in detention capacity. Guantanamo repurposing is not stated in Project 2025; Guantanamo is one of few places to scale up to detain 100k.

10. See Project 2025, Ch. 2–3, for the push to remove or replace civil servants in “policy-making” roles.

11. Project 2025 does recommend reining in “nationwide injunctions.” (Ch. 2, p. 50). Outright ignoring court orders arguably goes beyond the text’s explicit suggestions.

12. See Project 2025, Ch. 1, p. 31, “Office of Presidential Personnel,” emphasizing alignment and “loyalty” in appointments.

13. See Project 2025, Ch. 2, pp. 48–50, discussing scaling back regulations via OMB/OIRA oversight.

14. See Project 2025, Ch. 3, pp. 69–71, describing a broadening of Schedule F authority.

15. See Project 2025, e.g. Ch. 11, p. 319 (Education), and Ch. 13, p. 417 (EPA), for suggestions of significant restructuring or downsizing.

16. While Project 2025 proposes tying funds to local enforcement compliance (Ch. 5, p. 133), forcibly intervening is an extrapolation.

17. See Project 2025, Ch. 2, p. 50, on limiting nationwide injunctions and seeking supportive SCOTUS precedents.

18. See Yarvin text, “Curtis Yarvin’s Butterfly Revolution,” ~lines 185–190, suggesting abrupt, total consolidation of executive power.

19. See Yarvin text, ~lines 50–55, describing the presidency as “monarchical” or “CEO” with “the powers of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR—or even more.”

20. See Yarvin text, ~lines 210–215, advocating ignoring the Administrative Procedure Act, overriding precedents, and treating the President as “chief executive” in the absolute sense.

21. See Yarvin text, ~lines 335–340, urging the new President to declare a state of emergency on Day One if the existing system resists.

22. Yarvin text discusses calling “his people into the street.” (~lines 340–345) Actual forced suppression is an inference, but he does propose a large demonstration-based intimidation approach.

23. See Yarvin text, ~lines 245–260, recommending top leaders with corporate or “startup founder” backgrounds. He does not explicitly call for awarding entire public sectors to them, but does want “replacements” run by “trusted founders.”

24. See Yarvin’s text, (~lines 20–25).

25. See Yarvin text, ~lines 401–410, referencing “landing ninjas” in agencies.

26. Yarvin favors rejecting “global commitments,” (~lines 270–280). Musk or NATO references do not appear in the text, so this bullet is technically extra-textual interpretation.

27. Yarvin text (~lines 360–380) discusses “level three” supporters wearing masks, not explicitly calling them private security contractors

28. See Yarvin text, ~lines 195–200, 330–335. He advocates ignoring courts that resist; “emergency courts” is not explicitly stated but is inferred from his “CEO-state” premise.

29. See Yarvin text, ~lines 210–215, “including state and local governments,” effectively consolidated under the “monarch.”

30. Yarvin text, ~lines 440–450, describing “seizing all points of power” (media, academia, social media).

31. Yarvin text does not mention Guantanamo (~lines 280–290). The idea of indefinite detention is an extrapolation that technically goes beyond the excerpt itself.

32. See Project 2025, Ch. 2–3, describing reclassification, expanding presidential oversight, etc.

33. See Yarvin text, ~lines 45–50, presenting the idea that the next President should assume “full sovereignty” and bypass old “checks.”

34. Yarvin text ~lines 330–345, “state of emergency” on Inauguration Day. Project 2025 also advocates strong executive prerogatives in crises (Ch. 2, p. 51).

35. Yarvin text proposes installing “trusted founders” (lines 245–260). Project 2025 never mentions Musk or Thiel directly. This bullet merges the two visions.

36. Neither text openly calls for jailing protestors, though Project 2025 does propose stricter law enforcement (Ch. 17, pp. 545–546). Yarvin advocates an all-powerful executive but doesn’t explicitly detail “anti-terror expansions.”

37. Yarvin’s remarks (~lines 270–290) suggest ignoring or quitting global bodies. Project 2025 primarily addresses domestic restructuring, not complete withdrawal from alliances.