Sweden has been criticized quite a bit for forgoing the typical mandatory government enforced lock-downs / house arrests that a LOT of nations have chosen, even in the “land of the free” (United States), for the “common good”. These efforts we are told will flatten the curve and allow hospitals to deal with the sick in a way to avoid as many deaths as possible.
But have you noticed how “flattening the curve” is now about “ending the curve”? While at first this was all about the capacity of each nation’s healthcare system, is now about eradicating this virus BEFORE we can return to whatever normal awaits? Talk about mission creep.
Today’s Russia Today article revisits Sweden’s battle with Covid-19 that excludes government overreach. Notice even RT ‘seems’ critical of Sweden’s efforts as the author of this article attempts to see this from the view of the 22 researches in Sweden that are pushing for the government to do more:
They are not inclined to change their recommendations, even when Sweden’s curves start to differ radically from those of neighboring countries.
As always, context matters. It seems that in the past weeks it has been necessary to place ALL stats in context. While Johns Hopkins data is displayed in red highlighting raw data that fails to place a nation’s population in proportion to the number of deaths “reported”, one has to do this exercise themselves, at least if one is a critical thinker. Others just assume that the media does it all and they can just take what media gives them as truth. Not me, not even with RT or other non-US mainstream media (MSM).
If we take the raw numbers we see:
Sweden has 11,445 confirmed cases of infection and a death toll of 1,033 so far
Denmark has recorded 6,706 confirmed cases and 299 deaths
Norway reports 6,623 infected and 139 deaths
Finland reports just 3,161 confirmed cases and only 64 deaths
So on the surface you might agree with these researchers. Now let’s look at the total population of these countries do we can compare more apples-apples:
Sweden 10.23M people
Denmark 5.8M people
Norway 5.5M people
Finland 5.5M people
So you see that Sweden STILL has more Covid-19 deaths PROPORTIONALLY than the other Scandinavian countries ASSUMING that they all do verify Covid-19 deaths WITH testing AND that the underlying diseases were NOT a major factor. I know, this is a LOT to assume for any government, that they are presenting the data accurately. But I digress.
There is one more attribute that I believe impacts a nation’s Covid-19 numbers, the numbers of migrants. Here is Bill Sardi on what this does:
Hot spots for infection (Wuhan, Italy, NYC) have a lot of young adult migrants who harbor TB bacteria in their lungs and may experience an eruption of latent TB, which is what is occurring now. Why we have to sort this out for ourselves as the Centers for Disease Control is not providing this kind of analysis and is narrowly presenting a COVID-19 pandemic with total disregard for the seasonal flu, TB, etc. speaks for the biases and politics involved.
Let;s look to see if Sweden might have more RECENT immigrants than other Nordic countries:
This latest influx of immigrants came from the Middle East where latent TB in the adult population can have an effect on both the number of positive Covid-19 cases as well as deaths attributed to Covid-19.
But back to the whole reason for flattening the curve, the salvation of the healthcare available for those susceptible to this corona-virus. In this regard, is Sweden is STILL on the right track?
… the man behind the government’s [Sweden’s] strategy, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, [states]
“I don’t understand what they mean. The healthcare system has always been in control,” Tegnell said. “If you look at the curve, we have consistently had around 60 dead per day. We have had an unfortunate development in elderly care, and we have started to work hard on that.”
Tegnell pointed to New York, which has roughly the same population as Sweden but ten times the death toll, as an example of the apparent failure of lockdown.
In my own opinion, early in this evaluation of a reaction to a novel virus, that WE have experienced before, and like the flu, will experience again without most people’s “savior”, vaccines, Sweden has demonstrated a very healthy method in dealing with this overblown panic. In this I applaud them!
So there is one more attribute of the lock-down that could also be factored in here. In NYC, when one is locked down, one is under house arrest and remains INSIDE away from the sun which is the best and cheapest source of vitamin D around. This vitamin is essential in keeping the immune system healthy to fight viruses like this one!
I also wonder how the lock-down was implemented in Wuhan, China, if people were encouraged to stay inside and away from the sun?
Anyway, Covid-19 and the “proper” response in a world where ‘scarcity’ exists, is complicated! Choices have to be made as we do not have unlimited resources. This is a fact that most people fail to understand these days as they look to the government to keep them safe, even from the inevitable, DEATH! The fear used by government’s drives the herds toward obedience and irrational behavior:
2020 Oregon Trail
At this point it is too early to tell for sure if Sweden’s government did the right thing, but one thing is for certain, their economy and the people’s mental health are by in large intact, and that will mean that Sweden’s healthcare system will not be overrun by ‘Rona-PTSD in the months to come.
With Sweden’s economy healthy, the healthcare services can be allowed to remain healthy as well without resorting to the US approach, that of printing money and debasing it’s own currency. But I digress once more …
In my previous post I opened up the whole concept of the remnant as it was offered by Albert Jay Nock in the 1930s to describe those who could see what the masses could not. His thought was that is was a huge waste of time and effort to educate the masses, and that it was much more effective to address the remnant, even if it meant a much smaller audience and rarely any reward factor.
I talked about my school experience transition where I was able to see it for what it was by age 10 as my parents separated and I moved with my mother and sister to California for my 5th grade school year. My whole personality changed with this new adventure in the midst of a time of crisis, where my parents were heading toward divorce.
My second of three major transitions came in the part of life that many people talk about the least. While most see this as religion, I see this more as faith and hope. Many, like myself were introduced to faith through religion, especially in my generation ( #60ish ), and that experience could have been good or bad, however, if you are one of the remnant, you might be “gratefully disillusioned”.
In hindsight I would change nothing, because my faith journey toward who I am today required that I navigate (with the assistance of the Great Navigator) my own way to the understanding I have today and where I might be going in whatever tomorrows I still have. I had mentioned last week:
I think it is by design that truth makes itself know in a process verses just being taught. While knowledge helps, there is nothing like a crisis to unpack that truth that had been simmering for months and years before.
This holds true for me in my own process of developing a faith worldview.
The process started in my earliest memories of attending a fairly large conservative church where a majority were of Dutch ancestry in the Midwest. The typical cycle of weekly religious life was church attendance TWICE on Sunday, at 9:30am and 6pm with almost NO “fun” allowed on that “day of rest”.
Many families would have cooked their Sunday meal the night before and prepared for a day, the “Sabbath”, to reflect on where they came up short with their creator. The church service was designed by John Calvin’s followers to be a rather dour experience where man’s degenerative nature was emphasized and I was quickly aware of the sour faces around me for that hour of organ music and hymns followed by a sermon from the “dominie” ( minister / professional pastor ) who spoke God’s Word at us in no uncertain terms.
Dominie is a Scots language and Scottish English term for a Scottish schoolmaster usually of the Church of Scotland and also a term used in the US for a minister or pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church
By Monday morning I was on my way to Christian school where the underlying emphasis was still communicated as almost all our lessons came from the Bible’s Old Testament and God was someone you always feared. Staying on the right path performance wise seemed to be the only way to avoid God’s wrath and judgement until one went to Heaven to be with Him forever. Midweek there was a Catechism class taught at the church and so we were bused from the Christian school to the church for another hour of instruction on what is called the Heidelberg Catechism, a question and answer format that was foundational to this Calvinistic theological matrix that emphasized total depravity of man, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. ( known by the acronym TULIP, how Dutch is that? ) The only day without religious expectations was Saturday, which to me meant Little League, college football and playing with neighborhood friends except for weekends when our family went to my grandparent’s dairy farm for the day to visit, which itself was an interesting experience that I plan to talk about someday.
Inside this rhythm of religion, I started to explore the only option I had during the minister’s sermon on Sunday mornings, the Bible. Instead of paging through the Old Testament, I started reading the New Testament books where I discovered a whole new “lens” to see what faith was beyond the typical religious wrappings and trappings. I found it interesting that Jesus came humbly into the world and took His time to start His official ministry, that he was marginalized in His own hometown and that He chose gnarly fishermen to be on His team. This was not an exclusive religious performance culture, but an inclusive relationship-based friendship culture. The nautical culture that Jesus introduced His friends to the real loving Father he had, would impact the early Jesus-follower’s vocabulary for generations. The anchor symbol meant a hope to a future, whether on this earth or not.
“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.” ~ CS Lewis
So in the middle of religion, I found a relational faith that would take years and decades to unpack. I will post an “Episode 2” in a few days that expands on my journey during the balance of my school years from 5th grade and beyond.
In hindsight, towards the end of this journey, I have learned to relax in this relational faith in the middle of the storms of life.
As opposed to religious obligation says that it is all up to you, where, if God isn’t doing the things you want, you have to work harder, stand firmer and pray longer. The religious focus I have found is on your performance, your obedience, your righteousness.
Outside that box, you will learn to rely on Him ( Abba Father or Papa ) alone and recognize that any time you give up responsibility for your spiritual and faith nourishment to another person – whether friend, pastor or author, you’ve already traded away a bit of your freedom, for life in a box.
So in these days I picture this:
.. and I leave you with this:
Peace out ..
The anchor holds
Though the ship is battered
The anchor holds
Though the sails are torn
I have fallen on my knees
As I faced the raging seas
The anchor holds
In spite of the storm
Crisis events does tend to make one a bit reflective, at least for me. As I reflect on a couple of my previous “crisis events”, it was evident that my resulting worldview change took years and then took a crisis for me to make the final step into my own new land and new worldview.
I think it is by design that truth makes itself know in a process verses just being taught. While knowledge helps, there is nothing like a crisis to unpack that truth that had been simmering for months and years before.
I have wrote about this just last month when I said:
May a new generation and a new remnant of Americans see though the infectious nature of government and decide for the future that they will take responsibility for themselves, their livelihood and the education of the next generation and never trust any government again.
However, I do not think that the masses ever achieve this kind of mind shift, for I think there are limits for the typical broken person to make that transition well. What I mean by that is, that in time, to be “well” on the other side means to actually be grateful for the process. That the new land is much more freeing than the old. I call this being gratefully disillusioned.
The fact that the masses typically can’t or won’t make this transition is why in my quote above I used the word “remnant”. That word came to me over five years ago on one of my journeys through the political path that included people like Ron Paul and Jeffrey Tucker. Jeffrey had a libertarian hub that I was a member of for a few years that allowed me to purchase books at either free or $X levels. One of these was Albert Nock’s books written during the Great Depression that acknowledged that the masses were not to be prioritized in expending energy towards opening their eyes to a new worldview. Here is a quote from Gary North in his 2002 article about the remnant:
Nock warned against deliberately appealing to the mass-man. There is no audience there, he said, for any developer or defender of ideas on liberty. Individualism does not appeal to the mass-man. This is why he is a mass-man. Any attempt to whoop up the troops will fail to attract the Remnant. Indeed, it will alienate them. They will go elsewhere.
Nock took as his starting point God’s call to the prophet Elijah after Elijah’s public confrontation with King Ahab, when Elijah’s temporary victory in front of the assembled representatives of the nation backfired. Elijah was now on the run from the king. He despaired. God told him this:
Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him (1 Kings 19:18).
His ministry was to them, not to the masses, God reminded him. He had failed to persuade the masses. He did not need to persuade the Remnant, which already agreed with him. He merely had to speak the truth in the name of God before the Remnant.
So as you may see, a prophet in these days (not foretelling but forth-telling) is one who sees things differently than most, and yet to them, it is crystal clear.
I have done this truth-journey thing two or three times in my six decades of life here on this planet. The beauty of this is that there were overlaps to these journeys chronologically, which in a way helped with the process for me in hindsight.
My first worldview change journeys started for me as a 5 or 6 year old. I was not totally aware yet, but my parents were going through a huge change in their marriage complete with lies and distrust. For me, at this naive age, all I knew was that I had a new baby sister, but beyond that I was pretty clueless as my world was small and included just a few compartments.
Faith (is God real, what is this church service thing, what is this mid-week catechism thing and Sunday school thing)
School (what is this friends thing, why do some of the richer kids talk to me sometimes and not other times, playground unwritten rules all at a Christian school)
Home-life (parents who facilitated “home” but were not on the same page offset by an awesome 1960s freedom to play outside ALL DAY long on weekends and after school on weekdays).
In my youth then there was church and school, and what to believe about these two areas which was mandatory for me verses my free-range suburban neighborhood freedom which came naturally.
In today’s post I only offer one of these journeys and will cover the other two more major ones in subsequent posts.
My formal day school journey was probably the quickest one to unfold. Like I said before, my K-4th grade experience was at a Christian school which had an underlying caste system in place that separated at times the more wealthy middle-upper class kids from the ones whose parents struggled to pay the school tuition. My whole demeanor during those years was one of hiding in the shadows, hoping that the day passed quickly so I could get home to my neighborhood for my daily dose of free-range freedom. Besides my 2nd grade teacher who on the 1st day told the class to look at the ceiling and notice the holes in the tiles followed by “that is where I pinned the ears of the kids last year who misbehaved”. These were 10 foot ceilings!!! Other than that, most teachers were fine except when it came to reciting Bible verses in front of class, graded on the exact word for word repeating of various combinations of these verses every week. I guess I would have appreciated some context for each of these verses but rote memorization apparently is what this religion wanted. Most all complied and thought nothing of it, I myself thought that the exercise was misguided, but who would listen to a 6 year old?
The crisis that would finally diffuse my own distaste for much of the school environment would be the decision of my parents to separate, with my mom, sister and myself moving to another state (California) for the school year. To underscore my distaste of my K-4th grade experience, my first question to my parents when they broke that news on that August Sunday afternoon just a few weeks before school was to start was NOT .. “Can I see my school friends before we go?” BUT “Do I have to go to Christian schools in California?”.
The answer was “no” and with that I had no more questions actually. I felt so free and ready for a cross-country trip to arrive in a totally new neighborhood and a totally new school. This “re-start” allowed me to be who I was in this new environment. This fresh start overnight changed my personality so much that I did not really care for what others thought of me or my ideas. As Popeye would say “I yam what I yam”
This is a remnant characteristic, as Albert J. Nock would admit later in his life:
“And so it was that at the age of thirty-five or so I dismissed all interest in public affairs, and have regarded them ever since as a mere spectacle, mostly a comedy, rather squalid, rather hackneyed, whereof I already knew the plot from beginning to end. I have written a little about them now and then,”
― Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man
The journey out to California in a 1963 Chevrolet Impala towing a U-Haul trailer was eventful in itself, as my mom was not too good with directions, so my role as a co-pilot was great for my self esteem. I was needed.
I always love maps, and so this was an epic drive:
As a 5th grader, being ten years old, I then experienced my best grade in school to date. I met new friends from all over the spectrum (red, yellow black and white as well as Christian and non-Christian) and I was fine with all that. I walked home from school past strawberry fields, cow pastures and a golf course to our apartment and then proceeded to pick up my 5 year old sister from her babysitters, feed her a late lunch and then go to the apartment complex pool for a few hours of swimming. Livin’ the dream!
At the end of that school year my sister and myself would fly back to the Midwest on a TWA 707 to be with my father that summer.
Shortly thereafter my parents would divorce and I would complete my schooling in the Midwest, but I always treasured my school year out in California in the late 1960s! I was now part of the “remnant”, even if I did not know it yet.
Below at the end of this post are the words of Albert Jay Nock (available in MP3 from the Mises Institute) explaining the role of a prophet verses that of a promoter. The financial rewards of being a prophet are few, however, being true to one’s own soul is priceless!
Just be you! You have been made for a unique imprint on this earth for a time.
-SF1
Nock’s wisdom on display:
Here is what Nock wrote about the prophet’s job. He used Isaiah as his example. The prophet’s job is not the job of the promoter.
Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses’ attention and interest. . . .
The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one’s doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message. . . .
Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favour, and answerable only to his august Boss.
If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedious business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one’s resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about. . . .
We all know innumerable politicians, journalists, dramatists, novelists and the like, who have done extremely well by themselves in these ways. Taking care of the Remnant, on the contrary, holds little promise of any such rewards. A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great reknown out of it. Isaiah’s case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others, but not many.
Sorry to disappoint, as I am not talking about the Covid-19 novel virus, but the virus that is a whole lot worse and has a horrible half-life. That virus is government.
Governments come and go, they run the gambit from totalitarian “democratic/socialist” ones that kill millions of their own people, to totalitarian “communist/marxist” ones that kill millions of their own people, to monarchies that can do the same.
While the nomads in history had other things that threatened their lives, and pioneers the same in new lands, there is nothing like a government that has the ability to take out large swaths of people.
Oh sure on the front end of these governments the talk is all about “safety”, only in time do we understand that to mean safety for THEM. It only took until the 21st century to allow police officers in the “land of the free” to be told by the highest court in the land that they did not have to protect the people, but that their first priority was to protect themselves.
So here we are in 2020 which is turning out to be an epic year for governments around the globe, almost in sync, to rise up and control everyone. From small businesses to people who live on property in the middle of nowhere, the way this government addresses 330M people assumes that they all live in the city. Supposedly even Google is providing them data on how people are venturing out > 2 MILES away from their primary residence. For some people, that is just doing chores on the ranch!
Centralized government’s virus downsides have been noted most succinctly just before the American Revolution in much literature which then gave the Founding generation an opportunity to experiment one more time with a government in mind that might be, as they say, “exceptional”. Maybe this would be a government virus that was held in check by a vaccine like the Articles of Confederation (AoC)?
The problem is that after the independence from the British Empire, the idealists became pragmatists and many in the founding generation in their old age once again thought more of safety than of freedom, thought that a different BIG centralized government might be MORE beneficial (to them, the caretakers). Was the vaccine (AoC) too effective?
So from 1783’s Treaty of Paris under the Articles of Confederation came a whole new “operating system” (OS) .. the US Constitution. That coup d’etat forever changed the trajectory of the united colonies to become a united state. This vaccine actually still allowed the virus to grow, but at a slower rate, or as one might say, they flattened the curve!
The downside of having to travel down the centralized rails a bit is that once the momentum is there, there is little you can do to stop it. During the War of 1812, northern states contemplated secession as this war hurt the Northeast/New England region the hardest. It was after this war that arose a person who in time began to see clearly the “side-effects” of this virus. This man’s name was John C. Calhoun. One of the latest Abbeville Institute articles that deals with this 1619 initiative helps to paint why Federalists were mad at him from the War of 1812 until his death in 1850 and are still mad at him in 2020!
Side-note: This world also lost another prophet in 1850, Frederic Bastiat, whose thoughts I covered somewhat in these two posts here and here.
One should realize by now that those who propose the proper track to be on rather than the centralized government / totalitarian / empire track are marginalized from politics well before these ideas are squashed in the public square. So it comes as no surprise that John C. Calhoun, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, was:
… the last eloquent political philosopher to stand against the ideology and intentions of the Federalists. He was the last to stand firmly in the halls of the Senate and articulate exactly what it would mean to allow power to become centralized under an unconstrained federal government.
Talk about flattening the curve, this virus gained ground in 1865 with the Union’s brutal victory not just over the Confederate army that was protecting people’s homeland, but over the Southern region itself as Reconstruction again drove home the point that the virus (central / totalitarian government) was king. Everything beyond this point just added to this virus’ spread .. the Spanish-American War in 1898 based on a false flag, progressive movement in 1900, creation of the Federal Reserve and implementation of the DIRECT taxing of Americans (income tax) in 1913, WWI entry in 1918, FDR’s socialization and debt programs (New Deal) of the 1930s followed by a cover-up war (WWII) in which he economically goaded Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor WHILE keeping his navy commanders there in the dark, for the greater good. Since WWII this virus has gone out of control, but has been oblivious to millions that were educated in government schools reading government textbooks. The most ignorant generation in history is the most “educated” ones!!
In summary:
The Anti-federalist position, as proven by what has become of the Republic, was the only true, realistic and conservative position in 1788. The Federalist position, as evidenced by history, turned out to be totalitarian in nature, it is the power behind progressivism, it was from the start the seeds of the eventual destruction of the Republic; debt, discord, endless wars, less liberty. One simply could not have enacted the federal income tax, the New Deal, social security and all the enormous government and taxation that came from that without the Federalist position winning out.
Again, this did not happen overnight, so I call this a stealth-virus!
Calhoun, despite his flaws, despite the fact that the rights he defended are offensive to our modern sensibilities, despite all that, Calhoun was right on some important foundational issues. Progressivism could never have raised its head to expand government without the efforts of the Federalists from 1788-1870; no federal income tax, no prohibition and the resultant birth of organized crime, no New Deal, no dysfunction of government at the Federal level (because the Federal government would matter a lot less) no massive debt, no tariffs, no endless wars. This is the legacy of the Federalists.
Calhoun was prophetic in all this, and like all others who have raised the issues of the cost of this virus, continue to be marginalized and forgotten especially in these days.
So now that the centralized government is on display today as a totalitarian state that can shut down any business they want and make you mind (like a dog or a sheep), I can’t help but think of Toby Keith’s song:
How do you like me now
Now that I’m on my way
Do you still think I’m crazy standing here today
I couldn’t make you love me
But I always dreamed about living in your radio
How do you like me now?!
Same thing only different .. but do you feel the Gov-Love now?
Peace out.
-SF1
PS How about a “natural” way to deal with this virus .. go underground like the 1st century Christians who found their way around an empire’s persecution to help people “off the record”? The fix for government (virus) is never in politics, it is in building up a natural immunity!!!
The Articles of Confederation, which had the word “perpetual” in it, was cast aside in replacing it with the US Constitution in 1787. Prophetic Patrick Henry said:
I smell a rat.
Yes, and with that move the United States began a constant assault on the personal liberties and freedoms the Declaration of Independence declared.
While George Washington himself allowed crisis to over-rule the Law of the Land (i.e. US Constitution), no one did it in a bigger way (to date) than Abraham Lincoln. All it took was for the state of Virginia to change its mind on secession after Lincoln decided to call up 75,000 volunteer troops to “suppress the rebellion” (actually, the peaceful departure of seven southern states of the Deep South). Washington DC was then faced, literally, with a land now belonging to the Confederate States of America across the Potomac River. In response to this development, the thought of Maryland also seceding had Lincoln and his cabinet in panic from consequences of THEIR OWN actions. Potential peace negotiators had attempted to meet with Lincoln and his leadership all during March 1861 but Lincoln refused that peace could be a viable option, for the “union”. He simply would not settle for a divorce from seven states that had been abused by the union for decades, and decided to get that spouse “back in the trailer”.
Can we do something different than Lincoln’s violent response to a divided country where at the end of Lincoln’s war, 2.5% of the population perished? (750,000 by 1865, 7 million in 2020) I highly doubt President Trump would allow the following to happen .. to allow the regions to heal better from the current ECONOMIC crisis disguised as a health crisis:
.. we will see. I think he is pure Lincoln material unfortunately.
Back to Lincoln and what he faced in late April 1861 .. James Dueholm paints the picture in this article:
27April 1861:
Lincoln issued an order to General Winfield Scott authorizing him to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, at or near any military line between Philadelphia and Washington if the public safety required it. Lincoln issued his order pursuant to the provision in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution stating that “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion and invasion the public safety may require it,”
A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another’s imprisonment.
Laurence M. Vance explains:
The origins of what Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase called “the most important human right in the Constitution … the best and only sufficient defense of personal freedom,” go back to the Magna Carta: “No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised [seized] or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land” (Magna Carta, sec. 39). The English Petition of Right (1628) and Habeas Corpus Act (1679), as well as our own Constitution and The Judiciary Act of 1789 (which established the detailed organization of the federal judiciary), all mention this “fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action” (Justice Abe Fortas).
One problem with the way Lincoln pulled this off, it was Congress that was supposed to do this, and Congress would not be called into session until 04JUL1861 by Lincoln!
Lincoln had decided on 15APR1861 to delay calling Congress to order until the 4th of July so that the war on the insurrection could already have gained enough momentum and that the official narrative could have taken hold in the hearts and minds of the people in the north and west (Midwest) United States.
25May1861:
On May 25, federal troops arrested John Merryman in Cockeysville, Maryland, for recruiting, training, and leading a drill company for Confederate service. Merryman’s lawyer promptly petitioned Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, sitting as a trial judge, for a writ of habeas corpus. This writ, sometimes called the Great Writ, is a judicial writ addressed to a jailer ordering him to come to court with his prisoner and explain why the prisoner is being held.
Following a hearing in the matter, Taney ordered delivery of a writ of habeas corpus to General George Cadwallader directing him to appear before Taney on May 28 with Merryman in tow. After Cadwallader refused service of the writ, Taney ruled on May 28 that the president did not have the power to suspend the writ, and Taney announced that he later would issue an opinion in support of his ruling.
Several days later, Taney issued his opinion. Only Congress, he said, could suspend the writ of habeas corpus. He observed that the limitation on suspension of the writ appeared in Article I of the Constitution, dealing with legislative powers, not in Article II, which established executive power. He explored the history of the writ of habeas corpus under English law, showing that the House of Commons had limited and then abolished the royal power to suspend the writ, leaving suspension in legislative hands. The Constitution, he said, embodied this English tradition. Article II, he asserted, gave the president very limited powers that were weakened further by the Bill of Rights. Finally, he cited eminent authority, noting that Chief Justice John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson, and Joseph Story, a luminary as both judge and scholar, had all acknowledged that the power to suspend was a congressional power.
Lincoln’s reaction, in October of 1861 Lincoln ordered the District of Columbia Provost Marshal to place armed sentries around the home of a Washington, D.C. Circuit Court judge and place him under house arrest. The reason was that the judge had issued a writ of habeas corpus to a young man being detained by the Provost Marshal, allowing the man to have due process. By placing the judge under house arrest Lincoln prevented the judge from attending the hearing of the case.
Chief Justice Taney
After the fact, in 1863, Congress finally caught up with Lincoln’s violation of the Constitution and covered for their dictator:
Congress did not enact legislation authorizing suspension of habeas corpus until March 3, 1863. In the meantime, Lincoln’s 1861 orders authorizing suspension remained in force, and on September 24, 1862, he issued a proclamation imposing martial law and suspending the writ of habeas corpus. The proclamation orders that, for the rest of the war, (i) “all rebels and insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice, affording aid or comfort to rebels against the authority of the United States, shall be subject to martial law and liable to trial and punishment by courts martial or military commission,” and (ii) “the writ of habeas corpus is suspended in respect to all persons arrested or imprisoned in any fort, camp, arsenal, military prison, or other place of confinement by any military authority or by the sentence of any court martial or military commission.”
Lincoln’s response to an obedient Congress:
“You ask … whether I really claim that I may override all the guarantied rights of individuals, on the plea of conserving the public safety—when I may choose to say the public safety requires it. This question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me as struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative, is either simply a question who shall decide, or an affirmation that nobody shall decide, what the public safety does require, in cases of rebellion or invasion. The constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur for decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it. By necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision is to be made, from time to time; and I think the man whom, for the time, the people have, under the constitution, made the commander-in-chief, of their Army and Navy, is the man who holds the power….”
So this arrogant and pompous President, actually, a dictator at this point, said “public safety” in the middle of this crisis mandated that SOMEONE decides to remove the writ of habeas corpus.
Can you see Trump saying this? Yes you can! If you are honest with yourself.
