Category: People of Character

The Gift of Truth – The Truth Will Set You Free

I hate lies. I love truth. Friends don’t let friends believe in lies .. but they also allow someone that process .. towards truth .. it is a different timeline for everyone .. everyone is unique and ultimately have to own their own beliefs, values, mission, etc.

Along these lines, once I found out what “Honest Abe” did to the much more honorable Robert E. Lee, I had my suspicions that Lincoln was not everything the state says he was, Father Abraham to the freed Blacks, a saint that ended slavery, and the list goes on and on to this deified man. The very fact that the “state” does this should make everyone suspicious!

I detest the way the Lincoln administration chose to bury their dead on an honorable man’s private property .. a man who had 100x the character of Lincoln himself when it came to principles. Lincoln’s words in 1848 about a very Jefferson idea about the consent of the governed would have been something that Robert E. Lee would have agreed with .. and when Lee acted on this belief, Lincoln made sure Lee could never return to his home.

16,000 Union solders buried in Lee’s garden

Obviously, Lincoln was all words (typical politician) and Lee was principles and character, not moved by conditions or time.

The quote Lee and Lincoln would agree to:

“Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movements.” ~ Lincoln January 12 1848, expressing the near-universally held Jeffersonian principle

Anyway, Jacob Hornberger at FFF (The Future of Freedom Foundation) shared this article a few years ago about Memorial Day, but I thought that as 2019 wrapped up it was good to reflect on the nation we find ourselves a part of, and its real history, including a good dose of truth!

Today, Memorial Day, Americans across the land will hear the same message: that U.S. soldiers who have died in America’s foreign wars and foreign interventions have done so in the defense of our rights and freedoms. It is a message that will be heard in sporting events, memorial services, airports, churches, and everywhere else that Memorial Day is being commemorated.

There is one big thing wrong, however. It’s a lie. None of those soldiers died protecting our rights and freedoms. That’s because our rights and freedoms were never being threatened by the enemy forces that killed those soldiers.

Yes, lets look at how the US military defended our rights and freedoms … it should not take long and you will see that it has been a LONG time since they actually did that:

Syria. The Syrian government has never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Syria was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Niger. The Niger government has never invaded the United States and tried to take away our freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Niger was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Iraq. The Iraq government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Iraq was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Afghanistan. The Afghan government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who has died in Afghanistan was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. Even al-Qaeda never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Its terrorist attacks, including the one on 9/11, were retaliation for U.S. interventionism in the Middle East.

Panama. The Panama government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Panama was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Grenada. The Grenada government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Grenada was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Vietnam. The North Vietnam government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Vietnam was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

Korea. The North Korean government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in Korea was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

World War II.

The Japanese government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in the Pacific theater in World War II was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. The Japanese attack on U.S. Naval forces on Hawaii was intended solely to prevent the U.S. Navy from interfering with Japanese attempts to acquire oil in the Dutch East Indies in response to President Roosevelt’s oil embargo, whose aim was to provoke the Japanese into attacking the United States so that the U.S. could get into the European part of war.

The German government never invaded the United States and try to take away our rights and freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in the European theater in World War II was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms. Germany wasn’t even able to cross the English Channel to invade England, much less the Atlantic Ocean to invade the United States. In fact, the last thing that Germany wanted was war with the United States, as reflected by Germany’s refusal to react to President Roosevelt’s repeated provocations to get Germany to attack the United States. Germany only declared war on the United States after FDR successfully provoked the Japanese into attacking the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor, in the hope that this would provide a back door to entry into the war in Europe.

World War I. The German government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any U.S. soldier who died in World War I was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms, especially given the ridiculous aims of U.S. intervention into the war: to “end all wars” and to “make the world safe for democracy,” a word that isn’t even in the U.S. Constitution. In fact, it is perversely ironic that it was U.S. interventionism into the conflict that contributed to the rise of Nazi Germany and World War II.

The Spanish-American War. The Spanish government never invaded the United States and tried to take away our rights freedoms. Therefore, any soldier who died in the Spanish-American War was not killed protecting our rights and freedoms.

I will add the following:

The War Against Southern Independence (of seven states originally, wrongly called a civil war, wrong because the southern states did not want any other territory, PERIOD).

The South Carolina militia in Dec 1860 to April 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states. As a sovereign entity (reclaiming what it had before the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation) it said LEAVE US ALONE.

The Confederate States of America from Feb to April 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states. While after the US Army detachment in Fort Moultrie violated the agreement in place since Dec 1860 when it agreed NOT to take any action in Charleston Harbor and remained at peace in what was now South Carolina territory (seceded from USA), Gen. Anderson, in the cover of night moved his troops to Fort Sumter. When Lincoln attempted to resupply the fort with provisions AND troops was when the forces around Charleston Harbor chose to fire on Fort Sumter .. KILLING NO ONE.

The Confederate States of America (now 11 states) from April – July 1861 never invaded the United States and try to take away the rights of those in other states.

So why celebrate Memorial Day when the reason for its existence is based on lies .. it is yet another government piece of propaganda that when repeated enough get into the heads of the sheep!

Bottom line is that while the defense of the United States in the War of 1812 was ‘honorable’, even that war was entered into under questionable circumstances and outright lies. Know that by 1814 the NORTH was ready to secede from the United States (peacefully) .. you might want to research the “Hartford Convention of 1814”

“… the Hartford Convention began a three-week debate about the relationship between the then 18 states and the federal government. The meeting was held in secret by New England members of the Federalist Party and there were nationwide fears that the Hartford Convention would call for New England’s secession from the Union …”

New Englanders were unhappy over political concerns that they were being badly treated by the Union. Since Thomas Jefferson’s election in 1800, the president had been a Southerner chosen by an electoral system that allowed the slave-holding Southern states to count each slave as 60 percent of a free person for their allocation of congressional seats and the number of presidential electors…”

Did the southern states invade the north to keep this from happening? No! As early as 1804, sensing that New England was not happy with things (this time it was the Louisiana Purchase, another time when secession was discussed in the North.):

“Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part.  Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country, in future time, as with this; and did I now foresee a separation at some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for both portions of our future family which should fall within my power.”

–Letter from President Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Joseph Priestly, Jan. 29, 1804

So maybe the American Revolutionary War was really the last time the government’s troops fought for our freedom and for our rights. Think about that!

PS Also, if you think George Washington was really the tactical hero of Yorktown, just know that when the French general Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau told Washington to move his troops to Yorktown as the French fleet was coming to contain the British troops under Cornwallis there, Washington had a melt-down and at first refused the thought thinking as he had the last few years that the decisive battle HAD to take place against the British in New York harbor.

[Do your own research!]

-SF1

Bigger is Better? Not So Fast .. Liberty and Freedom Benefits from SMALL

26 Cantons in the Swiss Federation

Two articles (each dated by a year or five) caught my eye this week about small governments serving their people where happiness thrives. The first is Donald Livingston’s Abbeville blog post from JAN2019 that states:

Switzerland is regularly ranked by the UN’s World Happiness Report in the top ten happiest countries in the world. The top ten are usually always small states. The U.S. has yet to make the top ten.

The second one is a five year old Abbeville blog post (recently re-shared) that states:

In his time [Nathaniel] Macon was widely admired by Americans as the perfect model of a republican statesman. By republican I mean republican with a small “r.” I definitely do NOT mean the Republican Party, which, from its very beginning, when it stole the name from better people, right up to this minute, has stood for the exact opposite of what Nathaniel Macon meant by republican government.

It should be noted that the thirteen British colonies that seceded from the British Empire chose to fashion their guiding document, the Articles of Confederation from the Switzerland’s confederation documents. So when on Nov. 15, 1777, the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, he articles vested the conduct of war and foreign policy in a Federal government, but left everything else to the States.

The Swiss Confederation was chosen in part due to it having been established more than four centuries earlier and was still intact and the federation in 1777 was still thriving. Historically, in 1315, the Swiss defeated the powerful Austrian empire in the Battle of Morgarten, when the men of Schwyz (one of the Swiss cantons / sovereign states) lured the Austrians into the mountains and ambushed them in a pass. The men of Schwyz killed 1,500 Austrian troops, drove hundreds more into Lake Lucerne and put the rest to flight. The country’s inhabitants were so grateful they changed the name of their nation from Helvetia to Switzerland. The country has remained free, independent and faithful to its own Articles of Confederation for nearly 700 years.

What this means is that the small republics, cantons, allow the people in a federation to tolerate differences across these unique cultures and lands. Smaller is better, but bigger can allow for protection from external forces, the problem is when there are internal forces that attempt to use the larger body for their own agenda.

The republics themselves have the following guiding principles modeled by the Greeks:

There are four principles to this republican tradition: First, republican government is one in which the people make the laws they live under. But, second, they cannot make just any law. The laws they make must be in accord with a more fundamental law which they do not make but is known by tradition. Third, the task of the republic is to preserve and perfect the character of that inherited tradition. And finally, the republic must be small. It must be small because self-government and rule of law is not possible unless citizens know the character of their rulers directly or through those they trust.

The Greeks created a brilliant civilization that was entirely decentralized. It was composed of 1,500 tiny independent republics strung out from Naples to the Black Sea. Most were under 10,000. One of the largest was Athens with around 200 thousand people. For over two thousand years, up to the French Revolution, republics seldom went beyond 200-300 thousand people, and the great majority were considerably smaller.

Having only 300,000 people to a republic, is small enough to personally kick the *ss of a politician who has done the people wrong. Large states have whole groups of people that live above the law and not under the laws they themselves get to create. Large states are also known for killing large amounts of their own people as in the case of Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China. It was not that long ago that the USSR disintegrated into 15 republics proving that they too found the downside of the large centralized state.

So we have the options of small republics and large nations, but it was a German Calvinist Johannes Althusius (1563-1638) that proposed a federation of small polities in a state larger than the classical republic, but smaller than a European monarchy. He called it a federation! In this structure, to prevent the central government from consolidating the smaller polities into a unitary modern state, Althusius introduces a constitutional right of secession from the federation. If a federation grew too large, it could always be brought back to a republican scale by secession.

This was why the founders, BEFORE the full force of the British Empire was on their shores, thought that this arrangement like the Swiss had (see below) would work across the cultures from New England to the Southern colonies:

Switzerland is so decentralized that its central government has no original taxing power. Its power to tax requires a constitutional amendment approved by a majority of the cantons, each of which has one vote, and a majority of individuals.

Switzerland (including all 26 cantons) would fit in South Carolina

After the revolutionary war, many founders abandoned the Swiss model as being too week and opted again towards the large-state model which is why we are in the mess we are in today!

It was at this point as the Revolutionary War ended that a reluctant Nathaniel Macon appeared on the scene:

Macon was born in 1758 on a plantation in Warren County, where he lived his entire life. He was a student at what is now Princeton when the War of Independence broke out in 1775. He left school and joined the New Jersey militia on active service, and then went home and joined the North Carolina troops. He was offered but refused a commission and he refused also the bounty that was paid for enlisting. He served in the Southern campaigns until he was elected to the General Assembly near the end of the war while he was still in his 20s. In the next few years he was offered a place in the North Carolina delegation to the Continental Congress which he declined.

You can see Macon’s character here, refused a commission (G. Washington would never do that), declined a place on the North Carolina delegation to the Continental Congress, but when the wheels started coming off the liberty and freedom wagon, he showed up!

As soon as the U.S. government went into operation, Hamilton and his Yankee friends, claiming that they were acting in behalf of “good government,” began to turn the government into a centralised power and a money-making machine for themselves by banks, tariffs, government bonds, and other paper swindles that would be paid for out of the pockets of the farmers, who produced the tangible wealth of the country. To oppose this Macon accepted election to the U.S. House of Representatives for the Second Congress. He served in the House 24 years and the Senate 13 years—representing North Carolina in congress from 1791 to 1828, from the age of 33 to the age of 70 when he retired voluntarily.

He was in this fight to the end as his own philosophy did not change at all from his farm in Warren County, North Carolina to the swamp (which it literally was in those days) called District of Columbia.

During all this time Macon was admired because he never changed from the principles with which he began. What were these principles? The federal government should be tightly bound by the Constitution. It should not tax the people and spend money any more than was absolutely necessary for the things it was entitled to do, nor go into debt, which was just a way to make the taxpayers pay interest to the rich. Eternal vigilance was the price of liberty. Power was always stealing from the many to the few. Office-holders were to be watched closely and kept as directly responsible to the citizens as possible.

Nathaniel Macon

His priority at all times was the people, not himself, not his agenda. He was a learned man who know the history of other peoples in different times and learned from their mistakes:

It might be nice to pay for everybody to go to college, or to build a fancy temple for the Supreme Court, or to issue bonds for rich people to invest in, or overturn a dictator 5,000 miles away. But the politicians had no right to take away the citizens’ earnings for whatever they thought was good. ..

History showed that the stronger and more centralised a government became the less free were the people. And the richer the government and its politicians and beneficiaries became, the poorer were the people. That was what had always happened, but America, with governments created by the people, had a chance to avoid the bad tendencies of government of the past.

It had a chance but even Nathaniel know the momentum was against those who saw the eternal vigilance against state powers was needed but was found wanting toward the end of his life:

By the end of his life Macon had realised that the cause of republicanism was lost at the federal level, and also that the North was determined to exploit and rule the South. South Carolina tried in 1832 to use “nullification,” state interposition, to force the federal government back within the limits of the Constitution. After he read Andrew Jackson’s proclamation against South Carolina, Macon told friends that it was too late for nullification. The Constitution was dead. The only recourse was secession—there was nothing left but for the South to get out from under the “Union” and govern itself.

Patrick Henry saw the American Republic die with the 1787 US Constitution when he said “I smell a rat”. Nathaniel Macon tried fighting the good fight until 1832 before he admitted that the Constitution was dead.  Lysander Spooner saw this all real clear by 1867 when he said:

It was over before any of us were even born. The American Empire is what is rolling on now to its eventual grave, which those in command trying to take as many tax slaves with us to potential early graves.

-SF1

Searching For Truth – Be Aware, Sociopaths Are Everywhere!

PSA (Public Service Announcement): ** NOTICE **

From Caitlin Johnstone’s June 2018 article comes some wisdom in dealing with many people in this broken world.

Please follow the link above to see details about the other eleven tips (my favorites are listed below):

1) It’s always ultimately about acquiring power. 2) Money rewards sociopathy. 3) Wealth kills empathy. 4) Money is power. 5) This same ruling class controls the media. 7) Society is made of narrative. 9) Powerful forces are naturally incentivized to collaborate with each other toward mutual interests. (Note: think Roman Empire occupation forces and religious Pharisees .. more on this later) 10) There is an immense amount of wealth that can be grabbed in the chaos of war and conflict.

It is the last one, #12 below, that caught my eye:

12. The push towards truth always starts with yourself.

You can’t out-manipulate seasoned manipulators. The main error most people make when trying to deal with a sociopath is to try and manipulate them back. Don’t even try. They have years of experience on you because they literally have done nothing else. While you were laughing and crying and worrying and connecting and relating to people, they were working out how to play humans like Garry Kasparov worked out how to play chess. And when you have literal teams of sociopaths collaborating together to amass power, you my dear child, do not have a chance. Don’t play their game. You will lose.

The only way to win this is to set your compass resolutely to “true.” Always be honest with yourself. Find all the different ways that you are manipulating others and see them and acknowledge them. Find your tribal allegiances and your desire to be right, and tip your hat to their existence. The more self-aware we are, the less levers we have to be manipulated by. If you are blindly partisan or loyal to a particular faction, that makes you gullible to propaganda because your wishful thinking and your desire to be right come into play. Get honest with yourself about who you are and what you want, and you will start to become an un-playable piece on the board.

It is a tough day when you find your ladder is on the wrong wall .. thinking how I felt when I realized in late 2003/early 2004 that President George Bush lied about WMDs .. I had to be honest with myself, I had been deceived all along. While there were other things about history that made me suspect of the government of my own country, it was nothing compared to this. I was a changed man.

This also has me thinking of how the most zealous Pharisee in the Roman Empire occupied territory of Judea felt in 31 A.D.!

The author of the Bible’s book of Acts, doctor Luke, describes Saul (who later because known as Paul) in the following clips:

On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. (Acts 8:1-3)

“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished. (Acts 22:3-5)

What changed Saul’s mind in his search for truth? A very dramatic event:

Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” (Acts 9:1-6)

Coming face to face with Truth, Saul found no condemnation .. just love and a mission! He went away a changed man, so much so, that he changed his name!

What is the lesson here in 2019?

The first is “situational awareness” in spotting manipulators or sociopaths in our midst as Caitlin Johnstone pointed out in her article.

The second being “setting our compass to true”. This is not unlike the fictional character Benjamin Martin in the movie “The Patriot” when he gives Anne (Gabriel’s new wife) a talisman of Polaris, the north star, that belonged to his late wife. He explains that the star is a symbol of unwavering strength and serves as a constant guide.

Being aware of one’s surroundings and culture while seeking truth is a very honorable path. As the American Empire starts to stumble and crumble, this will become more and more a strategy to consider embracing.

Keep searching and seeking truth and liberty!

-SF1

When Innovative Projects Get Hijacked (Part 2 of 2)

As a follow-up to my previous post about innovation hijacking, the above photo shows President George Washington leading 13,000 troops to put down a tax rebellion that was totally just according to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent

Alexander Hamilton’s plan to pay for the combined war debts of all the colonies with a heavy Whiskey Tax (in today’s terms, $2.50/gallon), in the Distilled Spirits Tax of 1791 act.

How very British of Alexander right? Apparently, the Amerexit (secession of the thirteen colonies from the British empire) was all in vain as the names and flags have changed but power instead of liberty reigns yet again. Hijacked!

So in my last post I had shown how George Washington, as a young British officer, sparked a war between two superpowers in the Ohio country, called the French Indian War (1754-1763), this conflict had a distinct fallout in the American colonies after its conclusion.  My effort today is where:

… I hope to bring both the ramp-up to revolution over the next 25 years (1750-1775) as well as the end result of the quest for independence into focus, and how the dreams of the 20% of the people that were for independence, liberty and freedom were hijacked resulting in a culture in 1790 that involved the very things they were fighting against:

… tyranny, new or higher taxes, monopolies, and restrictions …

By the end of the war the British Empire was the undisputed superpower in both North America and Europe and was all too eager to foist upon their hapless colonial subjects the previously unenforced Navigation Acts along with new taxes. Thanks George!

The liberty experienced for the past 140+ years started losing ground to increased power that the state brings with coercion and violence. To be sure, this shift was gradual, but within a generation it was clear that the British empire failed to understand each of the American colonies to the extent that they should never had intervened from thousands of miles away. As any parent knows, once you have a child on the way to their own independent life, attempting to control that child for the parent’s own well-being is an effort in futility UNLESS you make slaves of everyone.

In England itself, with the liberal Whigs out of power and the warmongering Tories in control, there was fresh support for the new King George III who would station its troops in the colonies during peacetime, enforce the Navigation Acts, restrict western settlement to stunt growth, and institute new Parliamentary taxation. Statist power came like a pendulum to each of the colonies. So with the Proclamation Line of 1763 that restricted western settlement, the 1764 American Revenue Act that enacted taxes on sugar and increased customs enforcement, and the 1765 Stamp Act that raised new taxes on paper products, it was finally The Stamp Act that was especially hated and produced a storm of protest.

Why was there no general revolt in 1763, or 1764? Murray Rothbard has a thought from his fifth volume of Conceived in Liberty:

Ultimately, revolutions are mass phenomena, and cannot succeed without the support—indeed the active and enthusiastic support—of the great majority of the population. . . . Otherwise it will not even make a respectable showing, much less take and keep the reins of government. But the masses will not move, will not erupt, if they lack aggressive leaders to articulate their grievances and to point the path for them to follow. The leaders supply the necessary theoretical justification and analysis of the revolution’s short- and long-term goals. Unaided by leaders, the masses tend to accept each act of tyranny, not out of willing agreement, but from failure to realize that successful opposition can be mounted against the status quo. The articulation by the leaders is the final necessary spark that ignites the tinderbox of revolution.

Leaders are not appointed, they rise to the occasion when this kind of statist tyranny happens. These leaders risk all, as during the American Revolution demonstrated in just the lives of those that signed the Declaration of Independence.

In 1765, Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, who respectively wrote the Virginia Resolves and Massachusetts Resolves stepped up their game. Sam Adams also established a resistance group known as the Loyal Nine, which soon expanded into the colony-wide Sons of Liberty. The result was that by 1766 The Stamp Act was repealed.

However, in Massachusetts after the passage of the tax-increasing Townshend Acts in 1767, British troops occupied Boston and colonial assemblies were forced to be dissolved. The colonies responded to this increasing coercion with mass non-importation protests that severely hurt British commerce. This BOYCOTT sent a message to the British that eventually, three YEARS later resulted in that the Townshend Acts were partially repealed in 1770.

Yet again, the British Empire pushed buttons yet again as they are now dealing with a teenager, and enacted the Tea Act of 1773 that extended the British East India Company’s tea monopoly to American shores.

This was epic BS as ANY nation that picks and chooses where their people can purchase products THEY want (i.e. free trade) is not a friend of the consumer and is a fried of both economic warfare and eventual physical warfare. Here is looking at you President Trump with all your sanctions and trade deals. But I digress …

Those in Boston promptly responded accordingly with the famous Boston Tea Party of December 1773. Great Britain responded with the Coercive, or “Intolerable” Acts of 1774, which provoked the assembly of the First Continental Congress in late 1774.

It was at this point that the radicals (I am pretty sure in 2019 USA that these people would have been targeted, marginalized and most likely suicided), led by Massachusetts’ Sam and John Adams and Virginia’s Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, battled the conservatives and decided upon a colony-wide boycott of all British products.

In the spring of 1775, the British redcoats responded by trying to arrest Massachusetts radicals John Hancock and Sam Adams, who were currently near military supplies in Concord. Paul Revere traveled to nearby Lexington to warn of the impending British, and colonial minutemen confronted the approaching British troops. The showdown led to the famous “Shot Heard Round the World,” and the American Revolution began.

At this point, with open warfare on the people, which is what the confiscation of firearms is, how does liberty respond to power? Philosophically, it was with managing the war that the forces of liberty faced their most difficult challenge, since war is naturally a coercive event that leads to death and destruction.

The war itself split the liberty lovers that probably included less than 20% of the general population. Many would align with power within this renegade government and use British tactics and statism against the British. How absurd. Bringing war to a larger power in the same way that larger power does war is a study in insanity. This was accomplished both during the American Revolution as well in the Second American Revolution, the War Against Southern Independence that most people refer to as the American Civil War.

Murray Rothbard, in Conceived in Liberty Volume I-IV, yet again points to what method actually saved the American Revolution, which was the use of guerilla warfare where he is paraphrased as saying:

… the Patriots’ greatest military strength lay in their guerrilla warfare tactics (ambushing armies, sneaking behind enemy lines, disrupting supply chains, etc.) and he argued that the only libertarian method of fighting a war is through such guerrilla warfare. This is because it is relatively inexpensive since there is no standing army, soldiers are better motivated because they are close to home, and there is far less need for a stifling and oppressive military bureaucracy.

.. and beyond this, the strategy that was chosen:

.. the decision to fight the war conventionally led to enormous government intervention in the economy through paper-money inflation, debt financing, price controls, and confiscation of goods

War debt leads once again to a desire for a strong central government that will eventually bring tyranny to the forefront yet again, like in 1794 with Washington leading 13,000 troops into Western Pennsylvania and the very real situation we have today with a militarized Redcoat fully entrenched here in the USA in 2019:

So we have come full circle in showing how this struggle between liberty and innovation has with power and political status-quo bureaucracy.

So quickly, in general, I will offer two of my own experiences with this as I referred to in my previous post:

Also in “Part 2”, I hope to offer my own general experiences of where an innovative project’s dreams were hijacked by political and organizational forces bent on expediency and short term gains.

I have a two in mind, one in business and one in ministry, that I have personally participated in. The parallels are very interesting!

It does seem that innovative projects and initiatives do threaten the political status-quo in any organization. I have no doubt that this is the main reason that Jesus himself resisted the human-natural act of forming an organization to accomplish some vision or mission.

In corporate America, as opposed to smaller businesses, there seems to be a bent toward managing verses leading, that risks are to be totally managed so as to really make no progress at all for years or decades. In the end, the business can no longer sustain itself as management surrounds itself with “yes men” (I know that sounds wrong in this PC-world, just assume someone else e-mailed me about this aggression) and stifles innovation that would actually IMPROVE the ability of the business to provide value to its customers going forward.

In my specific case, a very innovative project was hijacked in the development stage by management that failed to understand the project’s attributes and decided to bring in a partner that was ill-equipped to compete development and bring the project into production. Along the way, typical traits were demonstrated like the marginalization of those who really knew the core philosophy of the project as well as how the design was intended to positively impact this business. In the end, money was squandered and the project, like so many in government circles (F-35, Ford Carrier Class, etc), ends up imploding and being a general dumpster fire where good money is thrown after bad.

In organized ministry circles, similar innovative approaches can also bring the status-quo political fake news people out of the woodwork to halt anything that they can understand as being beneficial for people who could use a relationship with Jesus to bring peace and love to their lives and give them an insight into the way that Papa (God, Father) is especially fond of them. Close-minded church-goers and rule-followers have little patience for alternative ways that people can be reached whether is be from one’s home, from a coffee-house or even in the marketplace.

In my specific case, a ministry that had already transitioned from an inward facing clique/country club to a spiritual family that actually had a heart for those without Jesus, just could not give up their view that the church building was the center of what Jesus-following is all about. Threatened that their years of tithing (investing) might find them not able to realize their ROI, they effectively marginalized any staff (professional/volunteer) personnel that would not maintain the new status-quo.

In both instances, the lost dreams of the innovators has to be grieved, which is a process that every visionary has to deal with in their own terms. While they will many times see the positives and learnings that came out of the process as being very beneficial for the next “project/dream”, there is usually always a scar on ones heart to those that gave their all to attempt something that others barely or rarely understand, something much bigger than themselves.

I can only reflect on how Francis Marion, guerilla leader of the militia in South Carolina (1780-1783) that successfully dogged Cornwallis so that he could eventually be trapped by the French fleet at Yorktown. After much of the conflict was over, he was already being marginalized for the next chapter of life in the American Colonies as I indicated in a previous post:

So by the fall of 1781 as the British catastrophe at Yorktown reverberated throughout the British Empire, there were nationalist forces that were already parting ways with the radicals, and even the militias that brought them to this day. By 1783, Francis Marion saw the writing on the wall. The NOV1782 election meant that Marion had to leave Pond Bluff yet again for the 06JAN1783 legislative session. Writing from there on January 18th he shared the inequalities that tainted his excitement about the future of the colony as well of the federation of states. It seems that the Rhode Islander Continental Nathaniel Greene was awarded 10,000 guineas from SC toward the purchase of a SC plantation and quoted an old saying “that kissed goes by favor”. Georgia had also given Greene 24,000 acres as well. Marion eventually was awarded 300 acres in 1785.

It should be noted that the correspondence Marion had with Greene stopped abruptly as the hostilities stopped in DEC1782. Marion had hoped that Congress would follow through on the promise of a lifetime of half-pay for officers but it would be 50 years before that practice would finally start. Marion lamented that “idle spectators of war” were in charge now.

It is little wonder then why there is much more effort needed to be put towards the maintenance of liberty in this broken world than it does to maintain power. It seems that power, and kings, is the default mode of man:

Just some things to reflect on.

I do hope this allows y’all to reflect on history as well as current events.

-SF1

A Journey of Discovery: What Drove Those That Have Gone Before Us

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=435&v=20qgbjwoegY

To quote our contemporary, Ricardo  Duchesne, who asked in his book, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization:

“What caused the buildup of ideas…From the Italian Galileo to the Polish and Prussian Copernicus?… these ideas then being picked up and debated across Europe, to the Dane Tyco Brahe in his study of comets, the German Kepler building on Brahe, and also the Englishman William Gilbert… these ideas then fused with the Dutchman Christian Huygen’s centrifugal force, the French Descartes’ algebraic geometry and so on…”

A sense of independence and freedom runs throughout our history. What we find in our people is that rather than state-sanctioned, top-down mandates directing scientific and artistic life, the Westerners more often had independent spaces of inquiry– guilds, universities, laboratories, artistic circles, who sought to dare and create and explore.

Inspiring, in that even in the midst of the wars that Jesus said Himself were to be persistent (The Bible Book Of Matthew Chapter 24 Verses 6-8 spoke by Jesus):

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.

.. and yet, the results of wars can be redeemed, and while they may have had evil intentions, there can be healing on the other side and a deeper view of life, as a gift, itself:

… With such engines of passion and curiosity driving us, conflicts naturally arise, but past wars do not negate the wider bonds of our people. 

Often times, wars were fought to assert sovereignty, harkening again to that theme of freedom. 

And of course, sometimes we were at the hands of leaders who, unrestrained by small scale bonds and duties, sought megalomaniacal gains, or sold out to the lure of unchecked power, sometimes subverted by alien influences. 

This doesn’t mean that when the German and English soldiers put down their arms to play games with each other during the Christmas truce of World War I, they didn’t know deep down that they were related. They did.

Just like in the early 1900s, when elderly Union and Confederate soldiers embraced each other at American Civil War battle anniversaries…

Yes, we share a common Source, we are all made in the image of the One who made us. We are designed to tinker, to learn, to improve, to discover:

No matter what we may learn, no matter how surprised we may be by future findings, our story reaches back much further than is commonly thought today.

Know what has been shared in this presentation.

Let it spur you on to discover more.

Know that we have a common source and that now more than ever, share a common fate. 

Be well. 

Yes, be well.

-SF1