Category: People of Character

Know Your Enemy – Roman Empire & British Empire –> American Empire

Roman Empire – Religion (Pharisee) 1st Century power/control partnership (the state)

I was not always aware of the entity that sees me as the enemy. I did not one day just decide that it was my enemy. Over my six decades I have seen more clearly what was hidden by those with evil intentions. Evil prides itself as being seen as a friend, providing benefits even if they have to rob someone else to achieve that. This entity has no ethics, no principles and is selfish to its core. This enemy is the state.

In my youth I knew of this entity, and saw how it dealt with those that would not bow down to it (i.e. JFK assassination in 1963). I saw how corrupt this entity was that sent tens of thousands of young men to Vietnam based on lies that it told (i.e. the domino theory of Communism and the Gulf of Tonkin incident) and following this the details laid bare by the Church Commission in the mid-1970s that showed to the people just a tip of the iceberg called government corruption.

In spite of this I joined the US Navy when the 1960s policy of Affirmative Action made college aid non-attainable. For over six years I learned the inside of one arm of the state, the military-industrial complex and the federal government itself. I then understood how the US Postal Service, Amtrak and other government entities could never become “customer-centric” and would always soak the taxpayer as it ran services in the most inefficient and ineffective ways. Yet, I thought that this disease had not spread to other areas of government “safety-nets” like Social Security and Medicare, but I was wrong.

By the 2000s, with the War on Terror effort to scare Americans into a new world order and the 9/11 Commission’s inability to come to grips with the real truth behind the scenes, I finally saw things coming together. I saw and understood how other nations like Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria are treated by the American Empire, like 2nd class citizens of the world that could be made into refugees as their communities, societies and nations were destroyed based on lies.

Domestically, the Federal Reserve helps to make self-sufficiency and saving money impossible with the constant printing of money to offset the government’s spending of trillions of dollars with no thoughts towards honoring their debts to the Military-Industrial Complex’s effort to ensure their pockets get filled in the years of potential peace after the Cold War, the people of the United States are viewed as tax cattle OR more appropriately in 2020/2021 called tax sheep (slaves) that can be scared into total submission and total slavery in this new era of bio-terrorism.

The 2019 Event 201 / Covid-19 Plan-n-Case-demic PLUS the Great Reset has been Coup d’tat 9.0 in this nation’s history. (The US Constitution in 1787 was Coup d’tat 1.0) The peak of freedom and liberty actually being enjoyed by the pioneers that escaped Europe mainly in the mid-1700s for the British American colonies. The relative minor clampdown on these liberties with the Stamp Act, Sugar Act and the like triggered the common man (men and women and children) to see the British Empire as their enemy. The entity of the state had made itself known from the Egyptians to the Greek and Romans and then matured (sarcasm) into the modern state where monarchy (royalty and religion) ruled. Sure there were alternative efforts that reduced the state’s direct control of their populations by the Dutch Republics from 1550s-1750s approximately as well as the Swiss Confederation of cantons. But the majority structure to control the masses was the king.

It was in this context that American colonists attempted to create a novel solution to what they had seen go bad in every monarchy. In each American colony there were micro-efforts that preceded the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. A federated republic were words that mattered, and carried with it an idea that government needed to SERVE the people wisely in the limited areas that they were chained down to.

In order to understand the enemy, even one that is chained down, requires understanding the birth of the state (no, the state is not eternal, it neither was historically always there, nor will it live forever) as well as the health of the state.

In search of understanding my enemy (which my own government has declared blatantly over the past year or so) I have started reading a book ( Chaining Down Leviathan) authored by a European that targets a thorough review of the attempt to chain down the state here in America from 1776-1865.

This is a study of American political thought between the secession from Britain and the War Between the States. This period was a struggle between the Jeffersonian and the Hamiltonian visions of America. The Jeffersonians favored a highly decentralized federation of sovereign states, whereas the Hamiltonians favored a highly centralized state with a veto on state legislation. This sort of polity has been called “the modern state,” which was a creation of European monarchs. When the monarchies were overthrown, it took on the form of mass democracy and national elections, both of which greatly expanded central power beyond anything the monarchs could have imagined.

When Britain tried to incorporate the colonies into a British version of  the modern state, they resisted and won their independence. Most of the founders did not want an American version of the same planted in America. But some did. Hamilton and others seceded from Britain not because they opposed the modern state, but because they wanted to create an American version and govern it themselves. They failed. The Jeffersonians, though contested, dominated from 1776 to 1861. Lincoln inherited this Hamiltonian tradition and launched an invasion of the South, not to free slaves, but to prevent secession and securely plant a modern style European state in America where none had existed before.

In the balance of my years I desire to know my enemy so I can prepare myself, my family and my friends for the road ahead. We need many more wise students of history to take of the research necessary to help us all understand not only what the colonists faced with the British Empire in the 1770s but also what Jesus-followers faced with the Roman Empire in the 1st century.

Hope for liberty and freedom is an idea that has never been needed more than now in today’s American Empire. Keep the flame alive for the next generations!

-SF1

PS A possible companion book to this more historical one is a recent publication that deals with Coup d’tat 9.0 called The Truth About Covid-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports and the New Normal.

Since early 2020, the world has experienced a series of catastrophic events―a global pandemic caused by what appears to be an engineered coronavirus; international lockdowns and border closings causing widespread business closures, economic collapse, and massive unemployment; and an unprecedented curtailment of civil liberties and freedoms in the name of keeping people safe by locking them up in their homes.

We are now living in a world that is increasingly ruled, not by our democratic systems and institutions, but by public health fiat, carried out by politicians who rule by instilling fear and panic.

In The Truth About COVID-19, Dr. Mercola and Cummins reveal new and emerging evidence that:

  • The SARS-CoV-2 virus was, indeed, lab-engineered and emerged from a negligently managed bioweapons lab in Wuhan, China
  • The global pandemic was long anticipated by global elites who have used it to facilitate and hide the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history
  • PCR testing, case counts, morbidity, and vaccine safety and efficacy data have been widely manipulated and misrepresented
  • Obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are known to worsen COVID-19 outcomes, but the junk food industry continues to push its agenda at the expense of public health
  • Safe, simple, and inexpensive treatment and prevention for COVID-19 have been censored and suppressed to create a clear path for vaccine acceptance
  • Effectiveness of the vaccines has been wildly exaggerated and major safety questions have gone unanswered

The good news in all of this is that we can take control of our health and that, together, we have the power to unite and fight back for our health, democracy, and freedom.

No matter how accurate you think Dr. Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are in their research, there is bound to be a lot of information that is spot on. Their distrust of the state is not just a way they gain popularity, believe me, being a proclaimed enemy of the state is not the easy way forward, but a required one for those whose hearts are burdened for the generations that follow. In this regard, these two men have indeed “stayed the course”.

Be like these men and rise to the challenge to do the same!

 

Engage in Dialog OR Let the Chips Fall Where They May: Agenda or Serendipity?

Everyone is a unique individual. Everyone has been gifted with a unique set of gifts and talents. Many times, the difference in strategy is that of personality, or as the old saying goes:

There are more than one way to skin a cat

I know, PETA types have been triggered, however, this saying from the mid-1800s is from a Yankee author, which explains some things but I digress. The meaning though is clear, there are many paths to a destination, and one can force it in one extreme, or just let things happen in another.

While I am not a fan of “evangelism” to the extreme, many do make it their primary agenda to force a conversion of other people to a religion, a worldview or a narrative. I am not that type. I would rather “let the chips fall where they may” but others might have the patience to engage in dialog to bring about a change of mind and heart (or the other way around) which brings me to this quote in the Target Liberty post on 17JAN:

If you want to change how people think the first step is to understand the world as it exists in their mind, convince them that you understand it and do so without using the opportunity to give them shit for it. Most libertarians lack the social skills to do all three.

In my mind, I am not into wasting time proceeding to dialog with someone who might either be slow to track OR resistant because they are part of a cult (just know, Statism is a cult!).

Here is a great leading question that is also offered in this post:

.. I asked him if he was a “logical person or an emotional person,” ..

That question right there can save BOTH of you some time.

Most emotional people at the extreme are easily triggered and are following some Rx/narrative that helps them believe they are helping with “good thoughts” alone.

Most logical people at the extreme can also be on the rails towards some solution that they believe with all their mind is the way forward.

However, those that can do both, engage their mind and heart in critically thinking out of a love for self and others, is a unique gift and talent. These people were considered to be part of the remnant that a 1930s author, Albert Nock, would focus on in his life’s work. (see the last few paragraphs of my previous post that talks about this concept and where it came from)

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.

“.. 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…”

Let the chips fall where they may (if that suits you, not trying to convert you) .. life is short!

Peace out.

-SF1

Reflection on What 06JAN2021 Was PLUS Anticipation of 2021+ is Good News

[the short clip above shows how unarmed protestors “stormed” through US Capitol police in an act of “insurrection” and “revolt” as part of an organized “coup” – (note, this is sarcasm)]

Those of us who can critically think, already have, and have come to the conclusion that the events of 06JAN2021 at the US Capitol were intended to make a voice for FAIR ELECTIONS heard. The thousands of people that left the White House for the one mile walk to the US Capitol building knew that the discussion around the way especially the battleground states conducted their elections was about to take place. The objective was to protest AT the US Capitol, only agitators whose identities will never be known except by government and deep state itself used this opportunity to entice “protestors” (both Trump supporters and Antifa) into the building itself to briefly disrupt the proceedings and ultimately make the GOVERNMENT the victim.

MSM, Silicon Valley, CEOs across the US and Democrats PLUS Republicans (I just stuttered, as Dems = GOP essentially, parasites of the people) proceeded to call this an insurrection and a revolt or a coup.

In what world does unarmed, unorganized, everyday people who take a few beers, take a few smokes and break a few windows make up some elite driven (coup) or military-style (insurrection)?

A coup attempt includes illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive.

Only in the brains of those what want to promote that the government was victimized by what Schumer calls a “Pearl Harbor”.

Please. The definitions that leftists use these days makes it impossible to even discuss things logically. Their minds are made up by the sources of information they adsorb each day without using even one brain cell. This is the perfect specimen for the types of people Marxists and Communists LOVE to rule!

But I digress.

Y’all know what really happened, and future generations you will be able to  enlighten with the truth when they read you what their history books say. But for now, it is imperative that we anticipate what the road is like ahead and prepare for this, not just physically, but most importantly mentally!

Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], is a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, farmer and aspiring anarcho-capitalist who ran for Congress in Virginia’s 6th district in 2012. She shared an article today on Lew Rockwell that I will use as the basis for a look ahead.

I am sure you noticed in the title that I consider this good news. Maybe that is the rebel (one who goes to the root) in me that understands the events of the last 4 years, the last 20 years, (and in my mind the last 223 years since the Coup d’etat of the US Constitution ruined this federated republic) and especially the last 9 months have opened the eyes of millions of people to the true nature of their government. This organization, this criminal organization is not your friend but it cloaks itself as the safety net cradle to grave for everyone who finds themselves victims of life. Yep, unfair life is resolved by an ever powerful government nanny/daddy that can make it all better. What a fairy tale, but it is one that is believed by a huge swath of people who see “democracy” as their God. (suggested reading is Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s “Democracy; the God that Failed“)

Now that the GOP has been revealed as the other wing of the same bird to the Democrat party, and that this former federated republic has completed the transition to being a democracy, well on its way through socialism towards totalitarianism (Marxism/Communism), the 70M Donald Trump voters can really understand their plight in this Democrat-run diversity and inclusion environment that operated under their rules.

In reflection of 06JAN2021 Karen offers:

It wasn’t insurrection, despite endless repetitions to that effect by mainstream and left wing media.  Insurrection means, “an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.”  What we saw was not a revolt – marchers intended to influence an upcoming actions and decisions by the Congress and the Vice President.  It was not a rebellion – marchers went to the accepted headquarters of the legislature to influence them, not to replace or destroy them, or steal their stuff.  With the possible exception of the unarmed physical breaching of the facility by a tiny portion of the far larger crowd of demonstrators, there was no resistance to any civil authority or any established government.

If this action had taken place with force of arms, after the Senate and House had accepted the disputed electoral votes submitted by the state legislatures, in an attempt to reverse the decision or take over government, we could call it an insurrection.  For those of us watching from the safety of our living rooms, the show of strength of so many Trump supporters, people who more importantly do not trust government, whether it be made up of Republicans or Democrats, was impressive.  One imagines that such energy and civil disobedience could be effective in coming years, and one day we could see actual popular insurrections occurring all over the country.  But that didn’t happen on January 6th.

Yes. If the snowflakes that listened to MSM say this event was an “insurrection”, these same people will soak their Depends if they see real insurrections in the coming months and years. If this seems like Pearl Harbor to them, I am not sure how they will describe coming events.

The very fact that we can count on the Democrat-Ruling Elite leadership to pull out all the stops to make up for lost time during the Trump years will mean that their actions will most certainly be over-the-top and come with HUGE unintended consequences. THIS is the good news. A federal government can’t even run a whore-house for profit, so you can count on it to be the biggest thing that kills it from the inside. The promise of trillions of dollars alone to the people who have demanded “free stuff” will have consequences of the global market for sure.

Karen continues:

We are learning that the deep state, with its real right and left wings, the status quo, the tax- and power-enriched bureaucratic government class, is beyond frightened of the cynical populist population it seeks to control, to rule, to surveil, and to eventually consume. We are learning that they know that their quiver is empty, their knives are dull, and they are bereft of leadership, and without heroes.

The rhetoric used tells us that the elites are close to sharting their pants. With this they will get even more desperate one they have total control the US government on 20JAN2021.

Half the country probably has some economic sense and yet they also cashed their Covid checks, and will continue to do so!  In fact, they may demand more of them – and my goodness, how could things have gotten this out of whack, and out of control?  The End the Fed movement, started by Ron Paul so long ago, and even once espoused by Trump himself, is being accelerated as the next administration seeks to pay back and solidify their “half” of the country, all of their elite supporters, and the Trump crowd too.  “Buying the vote” no longer works –  everyone is getting “free money” now, thanks to the those mating porcupines known as Trump and Anti-Trump.  We like it, we expect it, and Biden-Harris not only promised more, much more, they had absolutely no choice in the matter.  Imagine, Biden wakes up on January 20th (I know, right?) and decides all this money printing is going to be the death of the United States, and we need to bite the bullet. Instead, government central banks will collapse this country, and others, and in due course, themselves.  The instability of this situation will dog the next administration every day, and create impossible situations.  With half the voters so distrustful of Washington that they pulled a “January 6th” and another 30% of the population refusing to participate in the electoral scam at all, it won’t be pretty.  We are becoming hard to “govern,” and impossible to pay off.

While Karen talks about bribery personal welfare, consider the corporate welfare entities as well that will be at the government tit. This road the US has been on since 1787, since 1865, since 1913 that is unsustainable, is about to run out. Therefore the good news:

Elite panic is all we are hearing and seeing on mainstream media. The logarithmic explosion of memes, articles, audio and video all questioning, challenging, ridiculing, and laughing at the government as a class is our new politics. It’s shallow, it’s reactive, and it produces cynical angry men and women, not statesmen. Thanks to the wonderful world we live in, that anger leads some of those cynical and angry people into the territory of new ideas, and builds a new awareness of both history and future possibilities. For every misunderstood marxist, we also get one agorist, a constitutionalist, a future member of the “Leave Me Be” Party, and a couple of people whose profiles say “loves chickens, gardening and making my own bread.” There is very little room in the future for parasitic elites telling us to sit down, shut up and do what we are told.

Grassroots I tell you. Americans in crisis can be extremely innovative and can find ways in and around a strangling government. Think 1765, ten years before Concord and Lexington.

What do people have to do? Prepare physically, yes. Connect to like-minded in the local community, yes. But prepare and encourage one-another mentally may be the core of what is needed in the near-term now that the Democrats have fast-tracked the collapse of the US Empire.

Peace out

-SF1

Non-Conformity: We Are Individuals Made in God’s Image AND Family is the Rock for Individual Development

For far too long Christians have traded principles for safety. Even in the time of Israel’s ruling Judges as a theocracy, the masses clamored for a king. Trust in a God that “seems” distant when fickle people don’t get the life they had hoped for goes low and trust in monarchy, democracy and even totalitarianism goes high on the dreams these systems offer to the masses.

History shows vividly how all these earthly efforts fail, not only not panning out on the dreams of utopia, but in the end resulting in the murdering (outside of war) of 200M innocent citizens of some of these wicked totalitarian governments in the 20th century alone.

What follows is a rather long and hard to read clip from an article that announces the emerging new wave of grassroots Christianity that can impact this world in the months and years to come as it becomes obvious that governments are a cancer on the people dressed up to be their safety net.

Due to the new hostile sociopolitical realities, the third millennium is a time as well of new beginnings; it is a time of the clan and the small-faith community of families; and it a time when a new Christendom will be built (to the extent that it is built) solely on Christ an those clans and families. If any new Christian sociopolitical entities, even new countries, are to arise, they must arise anew and outside and beyond the demarcations of the past; outside and transcendent of the current sociopolitical powers-that-be; they must arise outside and in contradistinction to the world, the flesh, and the devil. This dawn of the third millennium requires the advent of a new Christian culture comprised of individual pastoral, that is grassroots, shoots that have made their way up among the ruins of an anti-Christic, dystopic world.

It is now, in this the third Christian age, that the lay faithful are called to grow up and out of the childhood of ages past. These faithful, these so-called “commoners” and “citizens,” are called to rise up fully mature, no longer holding onto props of the world, no longer dependent or subservient to powers and principalities, but only holding onto, dependent upon, and subservient to the Holy Cross. The third millennium is truly the age of the laity.  It is the age of the laity because it is the age of the family and the imago Dei individual (the image of God as free rational-volitional beings) that comprises that family.  And it is the age of the family and imago Dei individual because that family is being destroyed and the individual enslaved as never before; for in God’s economy “where sin abounds grace abounds more” (RM 5:20), the truth and good arising in direct contradiction to the prevalent falsehood and evil.

This is where the real value of Jesus-followers in the world demonstrate their value to those around them, by loving others selflessly but wisely. Wise as serpents, harmless as a dove. Being made in the image of God involves flipping tables in public places as well as protecting others from harm with swords bought with the proceeds of selling one’s cloak.

A new Christendom entails not the divine rights of elite kings and royal families, but rather the divine rights of the common man and the nuclear family. And these divine rights of the common lay faithful are absolute, for they derive from the faithful’s absolute right to do their duty to God, that is, their duty to abide by both natural and divine law, and indeed divine inspiration. But make no mistake, those that so abide by natural and divine law are outlaws to the Satanic State; a State that as such must be militantly engaged for “the whole salvation of the Church of Christ,” and most specifically and urgently for the salvation of the domestic church that is the family.

The toxicity of the anti-Christic third millennium requires that Christian piety and devotion no longer be squandered on a supposed but baseless duty to king, flag, or country. No longer should a romanticizing of a country’s past Christian heritage evoke allegiance to that country’s anti-Christic present. And no longer can a Christian justify a particular nationalism against a larger internationalism, for internationalism is but nationalism writ large. Rather, in the third-millennium, Christian piety, patriotism, loyalty, and devotion must be given to that which a person can truly know and so can truly love; and it is the Faith made tangible in the family, and the community of families, that one can truly know and love. It is neither countries, nor royal lineages, nor constitutions that God has immutably ordained, but rather it is the Holy Faith in grace and the sacrosanct family in both nature and grace that is God-ordained.

Christian’s must not give their hearts to a State. Again, they are called to be patriots only in so far as they are called to be pious. A Christian’s allegiance should be both familial and universal, not national and political. For familial allegiance is grass-rooted, as charity begins in the home; and universal allegiance justly transcends nations, as all men are created in God’s holy image (and indeed all men have families as well). But when a people’s allegiance is national and political the flower of their own nation’s familial foundation is inexorably conscripted and exterminated, while the families of opposing politics or nations are likewise afflicted.

Politics and nationalism are a scourge on society no matter how addicting the message is from these forces. In the end, it is never about the individual, it is about the collective.

Lastly, this is what a new disorganized, non-centered but grassroots effort to live life in and around the emerging police-military state that grows stronger by the day:

From home-grown produce, home-schooling, and cottage industries to Christian corporations, neighborhood militias, and patriarchal governing, the family and the extended community of families can in this technologically enhanced third millennium achieve a degree of self-sufficiency, independence, and perfection that was never before possible. But again, this will only be actualized if responsibility is assumed by fathers as the God-ordained leaders of natural and Christian society; it will only come to fruition if mothers are enthroned as the God-ordained center and heart of natural and Christian existence; and it will only thrive if individual Christians uncompromisingly exert their absolute right to dutifully heed their God-ordained conscience informed by natural and revealed truths.

People of character, given just in time courage directly from God, can and will give hope to those marginalized by the centralized and global evil forces that are in motion around this planet. God’s direct comms, His still small voice, will be heard by His children in these days.

Peace out

-SF1

When a Nation Runs Out of Internal Conquests, It Turns to Regime Change Offshore

It did not take long after the New England mercantilism elite, who milked southern cotton profits using tariff revenue and then waged war on their attempted exit from the 1781/1787 compact of states, to then turn their sights to the American Indians, in effect exterminating their independent spirit as well. By the late 1880s there were no “enemies” domestically for the US government to validate their essential nature of providing safety for its citizens. This is when the US turned imperial in nature and looked offshore for its next conquest.

By 1893, New England mercantilists turned their attention to the independent nation of Hawaii. The following clips are from an article called ‘Walter Q. Gresham – Americas Anti-Imperialist Secretary of State’ by Hunter DeRensis

In January 1893, a group of American businessmen organized a coup d’état in Hawaii, overthrowing the indigenous monarchy. The plotters’ efforts were buttressed by a company of U.S. Marines under orders from John W. Foster’s State Department. It was in effect the first regime change operation performed under the auspices of the U.S. government—and it would be Foster’s grandsons, John and Allen Dulles, who would organize more coups in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s.

This happened in the last month of President Benjamin Harrison’s presidency.

Hawaii’s new provisional government—headed by a “Committee of Safety” composed mostly of U.S. citizens—immediately sent a proposal of annexation to Washington. With less than a month left in his term, President Benjamin Harrison signed the proposal and delivered it to the Senate ..

The incoming Democratic administration of Grover Cleveland had as its Secretary of State a former Republican who was a free-trader at his core who also followed the founder’s principle of not interfering or joining in alliances with foreign powers.

Spending most of his career as a judge in his native Indiana, Gresham also served briefly in the cabinet of President Chester Arthur, first as postmaster general and then secretary of the treasury. Despite being a lifelong Republican, by the 1890s he felt increasingly out of step with the party’s devotion to prohibitively high protective tariffs. A lifelong free-trader, Gresham broke ranks and endorsed Democrat Grover Cleveland in his successful return to the White House.

The Cleveland administration promptly rescinded the treaty and Gresham issued this bit of principle that I think would make Ron Paul proud.

“Can the United States consistently insist that other nations shall respect the independence of Hawaii while not respecting it themselves?” asked Gresham. “Our government was the first to recognize the independence of the islands, it should be the last to acquire sovereignty over them, by force and fraud.”

Bingo! Principles over politics. Principles over imperialism of any kind!

Basically, the Cleveland administration could only hold off the inevitable for a few years:

To “satisfy the demands of justice,” Gresham attempted to negotiate the restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy, but arbitration broke down when Queen Liliuokalani—then under house arrest—refused to grant amnesty to the American plotters. The provisional government remained in place until Hawaii’s annexation in 1898 under President William McKinley.

Queen Liliuokalani in a black dress Hawaiian Monarchy Hawaii

However, Gresham was prophetical in his wise statements surrounding this new attribute of the United States:

“Every nation, and especially every strong nation, must sometimes be conscious of an impulse to rush into difficulties that do not concern it, except in a highly imaginary way. To restrain the indulgence of such a propensity is not only the part of wisdom, but a duty we owe to the world as an example of the strength, the moderation, and the beneficence of popular government.”

Gresham believed that “the only safeguard against all the evils of interference in affairs that do not specially concern us is to abstain from such interference altogether.” If Americans did not “stay home and attend to their own business,” then “they would go to hell as fast as possible.”

Our legacy since WWII is below:

Here we are 125 years after these events, in a political hell of our own choosing. Statesmen such as Gresham have been kept out of political positions on an increasing basis over the past century, and “the people” have lost.

Peace out.

-SF1