Life is a process. We are never the same person we were born as, as this process ebbs and flows culminating into the legacy we leave as we depart this world. Such is the case of Francis Marion, an officer in the Continental Army who escaped capture by the British due to his being at his home nursing a injured ankle due to his “character”!
So, I am sure you are wondering about that last line. What could his character have to do with his injured ankle? Apparently, it was common practice of senior officers in the military to hold a drinking party in their home and lock the doors so fellow officers could not leave until they were all plastered, king of a 1700s version of a “team-building” event! Francis Marion, as of 20 January 1780 a Lt. Col., commands the 2nd South Carolina Regiment. On the night of 19 March 1780 at a party on Tradd St. in Charleston being more of a ‘man of moderation’ he decided to exit the party and therefore slipped (no pun intended) out of a window and fell to the street injuring or breaking his leg or ankle. As a result, he returned to his home in Pond Bluff which is 50 miles north of Charleston.
The British decided in early 1780 to redouble their shift in their focus to the southern colonies where they believed they had much more support and then roll up through Virginia and cornering the balance of the Continentals under George Washington near New York City in quick fashion. The British had already captured Savannah, Georgia early in the war in December 1778 after it had failed to capture Charleston on 28 June 1776 when British attacked Sullivan’s Island from the sea while Francis commanded the guns at Fort Sullivan (later called Fort Moultrie). The British naval attack failed when the palmetto logs held against bombardment.
Francis Marion also participated in the attempt to retake Savanna, Georgia in the fall of 1779 but the Continentals and militia failed in their siege. So early in 1780 the British captured and occupied Beaufort, South Carolina on 03 February 1780 and then turned its focus on Charleston.
Starting 28 March 1780 the British laid siege to Charleston and by 12 May 1780, Charleston surrendered. Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln surrendered all of the existing Continental Army in SC, plus much of the SC militia and NC Militia. Most of the Continental Army officers and men were captured, over 5000 men in all, and signed documents stating that they would not take up arms against the British ever again.
In the days after this the British moved into the South Carolina back country as they had the momentum as news spread causing many people to switch allegiances and now back the British. On 29 May 1780 Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton and his Legion bayoneted 113 Continental soldiers of Col. Abraham Buford’s Virginia unit. Subsequent captures included South Carolina strategic locations such as Moncks Corners, Cheraw, Orangeburgh, Ninety-Six, and Dorchester. A month later on 11 July 1780 they also occupied Georgetown on the South Carolina coast as well, getting very close to Francis Marion’s plantation near St. Stephens.
Francis Marion is 48 years old at this point in time and is 5′ 2″ tall. His ability to lead men mainly on horseback over the next 24 months will be critical to the success of South Carolina and the rest of the colonies to finally break with the largest empire in the world.
To start with, the US Constitution is in fact non-binding .. like wedding vows, it has been broken so many times and in so many ways by our government that it really is “just a piece of paper” in addition to that, my being born here does not mean I gave my consent .. duh.
“.. Under more appropriate and restrictive definitions, police kill more Americans in just one year than mass shooters have in several decades. Moreover, school shootings present an even smaller risk than mass shooting more generally. As a matter of fact, the American student is today safer in the classroom “than at any time in recent memory.”
Choking on your food, for example, is much more likely to end your life than is a mass shooting, to say nothing of the risks associated with activities like driving in cars or swimming. In the wake of a tragedy, no one likes to hear such facts, as they seem to minimize the pain and loss of the survivors and the families of victims.
The hypocrisy of gun control advocates is striking, or it should be; obsessed with the extraordinarily small risk presented by mass shootings, they strain at a gnat yet swallow a camel. They plead for gun control—really disarmament—for the dominated as they exempt the dominators ..”
Bingo!
Thinking about one position on gun “control”:
The proponents of gun control, broadly defined, seem to believe that private citizens with firearms are likely to pose a danger to society, while agents of the state (e.g., soldiers and law enforcement officers) will act justly and nonviolently, using their weapons only to protect the innocent. If we take seriously the idea that the incentive structures surrounding individuals bear on their behaviors, then this assumption appears untenable, for agents of the state, when they commit violent attacks and injustices, are rarely held accountable for their actions.
The data speaks for itself. Those with badges have a conviction rate in the extreme single digits.
The non-conservative, radical advocate for gun rights contends that the normative questions surrounding gun ownership are far more important than the legal questions
Far, far more as the legality of hiding a Jew in The Netherlands during WWII in German occupied Holland was indeed a crime BUT it was the right thing to do. [I hope you know the story about Anne Frank]
Unarmed people are usually slaves:
The egoist writer and publisher Dora Marsden deftly captured this point:
What profit can a labouring man feel in voicing any desire to be his own master when he sees himself at the apex of a triangle which broadens out to its base in serried rows of armed men, each with his rifle, bludgeon and lash raised threateningly at him? As the mildest-mannered policeman would tell him, to do so would be “asking for it.” That an unarmed populace under a government possessing an armed force is in a condition of slavery, is a fact which shouts. To be free is to have the power to treat on equal terms (emphasis added).
Free or slave, that is the question .. and the weakest among us are the widows, single women and single parents that find them in some rough spots in life where defending life itself, even sacrificially, is the “right thing to do” .. regardless of the “law”.
Gun control advocates who point to Parkland and say “never again” are the humanitarian with the guillotine, their misplaced righteous indignation sweeping away all other concerns. They can’t consider the dangers that inhere in their position because the position is a matter of faith, of religious certitude. Crafting policy as a response to a school shootings is a lot like crafting policy as a response to the September 11th attacks: informed more by fear than fact, scare tactics than good sense. Politicians, overeager to do something to respond to tragedy, are prone to enact “solutions” that are worse than the problems themselves. The desire for “safety” at any cost—for perfect safety of an unattainable kind—leads to policies that make us more unsafe, vulnerable to a more powerful and dangerous enemy: the security state. Because it neither appeals to emotion nor offers an easy fix, this standpoint is unlikely to grab many headlines—unlikely to compete with the righteous indignation of well-meaning high school students. When tragedy strikes, libertarians are often in the uncomfortable, unenviable position of saying that politicians and government ought to do nothing. Looking at the state without the rose-colored glasses of ideal theory, government is just an institution of violence, its actions entailing more costs than benefits. During times of tragedy, when emotions run high, it’s worth reminding oneself of this.
“The greatest want of the world is the want of men — men who will not be bought or sold; men who in their inmost souls are true and honest; men who do not fear to call sin by its right name; men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole; men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.” – Ellen G. White
“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an un-uprooted small corner of evil.
Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the world: They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
Each human is just one step, one heartbeat from going down the evil path.
Each state, country, nation does the same. For the US, we have been on the path of evil for quite sometime but it gets prettied up like a pig with lipstick to convince the sheep that we are an honorable people/nation/empire and that we are exceptional. Epic BS.
In this article the author paints the accurate reality when he says:
Until individuals in this country choose to tell the truth and insist on being told the truth by the leaders they choose, chaos and ultimate collapse will be our destiny. Our economy, our currency system, our banking system, our political system, our mass media, and our public education system are built upon nothing but deception, lies, misinformation and falsity. The entire fetid cesspool of lies cannot withstand the glare of truth, as explained by Ron Paul
Lies, damned lies. No wonder suicide is epidemic among vets (who are coming to terms with the empire’s lies and their participation in them) and among the commoners.
I’ve made it my mission in life to only follow rational thinking, honest, straightforward, fact based people who have not been bought off by a party seeking to cheat, mislead, or steal from average Americans.
Single digit percentage of Americans are honest, rational, critical thinkers IMHO. Looking at our political and corporate (these lines are indeed blurred) leaders and managers are rightly painted by the author here:
Very few corporate executives at S&P 500 sized companies meet this standard of honesty. The criteria for reaching the corner office is insatiable greed, backstabbing, lying, and a sociopathic personality. Despite the Wall Street/Fed rigged financial systems and fake news propaganda spewing mainstream corporate media, there are still independent, non-corrupt, truth tellers as the lone voices of reason in this empire of lies.
Truth does emerge in the end, but I sense this path will be very painful for so many who are used to the easy life of believing a fantasy world. You might say things are not so bad .. but consider the data:
The Wall Street cabal puppeteers have had their Federal Reserve puppets dancing to their tune for the last nine years as bailouts, QE, and free money for feckless financiers has propelled their latest bubble to epic proportions. The bubbles in the stock market, bond market and real estate market are all built upon a vaporous foundation of easy money debt. It took 219 years for the country to accumulate a $9.6 trillion national debt, but our fearless leaders have managed to add $11.6 trillion since September 2008, all geared to enrich Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the sick-care complex and mega-corporations, while leaving Main Street to fend for ourselves with stagnant wages and rising costs for necessities. With government, corporate and consumer debt levels at all-time highs, a financial collapse is inevitable. Hundreds of billions of student loan, auto loan, mortgage loans, and credit card debt are unpayable, especially in a rising rate environment.
Ya think? Tax-slaves for generations could not pay down this debt .. what was every one chasing, quick money and quick power?
Go to any 4th of July picnic and your average neighbor or relative will tell you how much their 401k and house value have soared as they have been convinced the economy is booming and on a sound footing.
They won’t tell you their credit card balance, mortgage balance, auto loan debt, or student loan debt obligations. The value of their stocks and real estate can plummet by 50% in a matter of months (as they did in 2001 and 2008), but the debt will remain, wrapped around their throats, choking them to death.
Yes, a lot of tears are on their way. But this is not all bad. Pain is inevitable … gain is optional. Think about who will be true heroes to all those in misery, could the real Jesus followers emerge in the grassroots of the empire to once again console those who lose much in this life, weeping with those who week and giving them Hope through introducing them to a Papa that is especially fond of them? This has happened before and it turned the empire upside-down.
Choice. That is what each of us is faced with.
Who is to blame for the current state of affairs? The Deep State? Shadowy oligarchs? Politicians? The Jews? The Russians? There is one commonality – human beings are the members of each group. Humans have created the problems plaguing the world. Humans choose to act in a good or evil manner. Humans decide whether to lie or tell the truth. Humans decide whether to be driven by greed, power seeking, selfishness and hubris or generosity, citizenship, sacrifice and humility. The truth is humans commit unspeakable atrocities, steal, cheat, kill and destroy. They are also capable of generosity, self- sacrifice, acting with integrity, and behaving courageously.
The author goes on to admit:
Cooperation, peace, and mutually beneficial deeds have not been the default setting for human interaction throughout history. They are the exception, not the rule. But, the mass of humanity is willfully ignorant of history and naively believe their benevolent leaders and media thought police when fear is used to keep them under control. As Jordan Peterson points out, once people wake up to the realization of their potential for evil, they can resist being led to slaughter by their Deep State controllers.
So here is the root of the article, a sensation out of Toronto, a professor who tends to be a truth-teller:
“When once-naïve people recognize in themselves the seeds of evil and monstrosity and see themselves as dangerous (at least potentially) their fear decreases. They develop more self-respect. Then, perhaps, they begin to resist oppression. They see that they have the ability to withstand, because they are terrible too. They see they can and must stand up, because they begin to understand how genuinely monstrous they will become, otherwise, feeding on their resentment, transforming it into the most destructive of wishes. To say it again: There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character. This is one of the most difficult lessons of life.” ― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Is this truth? Is the difference very small? Can you entertain this thought before believing it?
We’ve been here before, the reign of terror in the 1970s with thousands of bombings, targeted criminal assaults, serial urban arson on a large scale and many unpunished murders.
How serious is the threat? About twenty per cent of the population identifies as Progressive. Not more than twenty per cent of those are committed radicals. Quick arithmetic says about a million strong. Of these, only some will actually participate in violent acts. If history rhymes, they’ll go down to the plantation, spin up the idle hands and set them on the townsfolk.
Trust fund activists are the darlings of the media so, as in the ’70s, they’ll be portrayed as leading a huge populist movement. As always, behind the smoke and mirrors will be more smoke and mirrors. It’s a mistake to underestimate them however.
Arm yourself, they will. This advice comes from a reliable source:
Luke 22:36 – But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it and likewise his pack; and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.
If you’re in a city it’s useful to know street mobs are deeply impressed by actual opposition. Said differently, they’re cowards. During the 1992 Rodney King riot in Los Angeles, determined Korean-Americans successfully defended their businesses with not much gunfire.
The goal isn’t “knock ’em down dead at eight hundred yards” like in the movies, the goal is to convince the mob they’re making a mistake. Putting one on the ground, writhing in pain with a blown kneecap, say, is the kind of publicity you just can’t buy.
A centerfire battle rifle is best, but a typical city block only runs a hundred and some yards, give or take a Starbucks. If all you have is a bunny gun nearly everything is in range. Even a shotgun with serious meat-getter loads covers a lot of it. In most cities the Left is in a position to shut down vendors of ammunition, get as much as you can when you can. And forget “grocery shopping”, lay in supplies, there’s no good reason to get flash-mobbed on a milk run.
Decide what you will absolutely-for-sure defend. Ally with capable, trustworthy and like-minded neighbors for mutual defense and let it go at that. But don’t go looking for trouble. Again, if you’re in a city, stay away from crowds, they’re trouble by intent. What happens to the crowd happens to you. It’s not as if you’ll be consulted before it all goes bad. There’s never a good reason to forfeit your own good judgment.
The Left is always preparing for their long-standing fantasy of murderous insurrection. What would we see if they decided the time is right to go for it? We’d see what we are seeing. Be alert. If the game is on, cities will get untenable. You may have to leave. This is something other than “unrest” with its roving mobs of opportunists, it’s a catastrophic collapse of civil order by design.
Not to scare anyone, but the time for planning is now. There are forces behind the scenes that keep escalating this division for their benefit, they will not enter the fray but will benefit from it. Remember how Lincoln acted to the “insurrection” in 1861? That was based on a law created after George Washington used the military to crush the Whiskey Rebellion in PA (those rebelling just retreated back into the woods). That law is still on the books and those that salivate with the ramp up in the police state would love a full on inclusion of US military forces and hardware that our government has at their disposal to tighten the grip on this land.
It’s your call, no one will ring a bell and make an announcement. If you’re told anything you’ll be told to “remain calm and carry on, order is being restored”. People want to believe it so they will believe it, and there’s your opportunity. First out is best out.
Cities are supported entirely from the outside: food, fuel, electricity, water—everything. All will stutter maddeningly, then wink out to nothing. Officialdom wants to keep you from the only reasonable reaction: panic, so events will always be a step or two ahead of your awareness.
Have a “stop loss” decision point and don’t second guess it, the window will close fast. The surest way to survive a catastrophe is to be elsewhere. This is why you, and the one percenters, have a Beta Plan, meaning a remote, defendable, four-season bugout destination with supplies stacked high and deep.
Four-season bugout location .. that will indeed be interesting .. especially as things unravel, competing groups and families will be vying for similar locations. Many people not used to the outdoors will find themselves out of their element pretty fast.
I prefer the ‘1776 Option’ which is outright secession. Various areas of this country have various “personalities” and it would be great to segregate towards peace than diversify towards an uncivil war. I have kids and grand-kids, I prefer peace ..
When you are fed, there are many problems. When you are hungry, there is one problem. -NoPension at Zero Hedge
Uncertain times require a back to basics adjustment. Slow adopters will suffer the most.
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better.
When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity.
To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.
I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to. – Theodore Dalrymple
Used to being controlled, critical thinking skills if any will be rusty.
