Tag: American Empire

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

Thanksgiving Propaganda 1.0 by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863

High angle shot of an unrecognizable family saying grace at the dining table on Thanksgiving

Donald Jeffries helped me this morning to reflect on the “official” federal (called general back in 1863) government declaration of the thanksgiving holiday and placed it in proper perspective, an act of deception.

Note that up until this point, the different English colonies and later American states each had their own day of Thanksgiving, if they had one. I think Lincoln here is trying to force this whole “union” thing. Since many still refer to him as “father” Abraham, there seems something magical to them when government decrees these kind of things, a vast majority people assume a god has spoken and the words are true.

Let’s take a look at the context:

It’s fitting that America’s biggest tyrant, Abraham Lincoln, first proposed a national day of Thanksgiving in 1863, after a pivotal victory by the Union army during the war he waged so relentlessly. His official proclamation, like all of Lincoln’s writings, distorted a horrendous reality into often beautiful poetry.

So Lincoln, over two years into a war “against insurrection”, but was actually against independence via secession like when the thirteen American colonies exited the British Empire, reflects on what he has accomplished to date:

While waxing over the wonderful bounties we all take for granted, Lincoln provided the following bit of political delusion: “In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict….”

Can any casual read call B.S. to this? I guess if you rely on government textbooks then maybe you believe this to be true. Maybe to the northern farmers of the time, you might have believed all this. But if you were an owner of a printing press, you would have known by now that there were many things you could not print. If you were a farmer in the south, you would have known by now the utter destruction the Union army accomplished against innocent civilians as they got more desperate for total victory, via total war. Lincoln, an avowed atheist, knows that many people DO believe in Providence and therefore speaks their language in his deceptive speech as Thomas DiLorenzo pointed out:

But as more and more fellow American citizens were murdered by the thousands by his army, and as the war crimes mounted, Abe stepped up his Biblical lingo.

Lincoln knew he had to connect with people to cover the lies he was spewing, like proclaiming government of/by/for the people? Really?:

“that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” when he was trying to prevent the seceded Southern states from doing that.

Sheesh. I wonder how many people “got that”?

The author moves on in his analysis of this Thanksgiving proclamation:

Analyzing this proclamation further, Lincoln’s note that “order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed” was especially laughable, in light of the untold thousands of political prisoners he locked up in the north [18,000 to 38,000], the hundreds of newspapers he shut down, and his unconstitutional suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. “Harmony” certainly didn’t prevail in those makeshift prisons; one of those imprisoned was Frank Key Howard, grandson of Francis Scott Key. In an incalculable irony, Howard was incarcerated in Fort McHenry, the very spot where his grandfather was inspired by the glorious flying flag to write The Star-Spangled Banner. 

While this is indeed a 19th century case of fake news, please know that fake news has been around a lot longer than we realize. Some people wake up to this fact along the way, but it usually involves using some critical thinking techniques that few seem to be equipped with.

Lincoln’s concern for all those widows and orphans didn’t compel him to order bloodthirsty Union generals like Sherman and Sheridan to cease their unprecedented “scorched earth” campaign. It’s impossible to determine how many of those widows were raped by soldiers, who also plundered their remaining valuables, burned their crops and salted the earth behind them. As far as Lincoln imploring the “Almighty Hand” for anything, this flies in the face of his own, well-documented atheistic beliefs. His cold exploitation of a faithful, religious populace with these persistent, flowery references to an Almighty being he didn’t believe in himself goes beyond even what we see in the modern world of practical politics.

Was Lincoln’s proclamation successful? Well, you can be sure no southern state decided to celebrate Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day any time soon. The truth is, Thanksgiving became a national holiday with the completion of the Reconstruction of the South after the War of Northern Aggression and the extermination of the Plains Indians by the Union generals in the 1870s. This actually taints the US Federal Government holiday “Thanksgiving” as a celebration of the preservation and expansion of the American Empire and accurately reflects the goal of the political forces behind Lincoln.

Politics of course was always at the forefront of Lincoln’s mind, the proclamation in the fall of 1863 was to set the tone for 1864 elections that he feared greatly that he would not win. Over the next year he would force the creation of a new state (West Virginia) out of part of a seceded one (Virginia), allow Nevada to join early even though it did not have enough people to qualify and also utilize the threat of force at the last minute as Lincoln won New York by 7,000 votes in 1864 “with the help of federal bayonets”.

Lincoln was not the first that tried to force Thanksgiving on ‘the people’, as George Washington issued the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation on November 26, 1789. However, the early presidents who were more Virginian and of a states’ rights disposition regarded such proclamations as excessively Yankee and Federalist.  I have to agree. Let each region or state choose themselves what they want to celebrate, or not. Getting pretty tired of the national government forcing their heroes and their morality (immorality) on the balance of us to celebrate, as I hesitate to hear what new holiday might be in the works.

So here we are in 2019, in a land with our society ripped about by politics, where the politicians are happy that their own political big names are talked about more than family and real life. The bread and circus era is upon this empire to distract from some pretty serious red flags one sees in various aspects of this nation, its war on terror creating more terrorists, its war on drugs imprisoning millions, its war on poverty keeping millions dependent on the state and the continued deficit spending causing more ‘taxation without representation’ as our kids and their kids will have to pay this money back and be tax slaves the rest of their lives. This will undoubtedly cause generational warfare which politics will claim as something they can solve.

Being a contrarian, a rebel of sorts, I like to counter this government sprawl that has taken place with its decreed holy days with some good old common sense.

Consider making everyday Thanksgiving Day, as we could just unofficially wake up each day, thankful for what we have and balance that with a hope for the future, for us, our families and our friends. I am not saying to not take advantage of this day, but attempt to keep perspective of what we have gained, and what we have lost, each and every day.

Consider too making every family-centered celebration the main thing, as those in opposition to faith and family that try to utilize the state as their avenue for more stuff, that causes more and more divisions, will be curious in time of the deep love y’all have for family.

Enjoy the day y’all .. get hugs from family and friends and stay true to liberty and freedom and the One who gave us our natural rights in this very broken world.

Draft #1 of the declaration of independence from the British Empire:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained, & to assume among the powers of the earth the equal & independant station to which the laws of nature & of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change.

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness ..

-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

Epic Lies: Bringing Democracy to the World & Mission Accomplished

Usually, when the bombs start to drop, it is really the middle of the story. The start of the story is usually hidden to the public at large, both intentionally and by sheer ignorance.

The “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq by US forces in 2003 was not the reaction to something Saddam did wrong, like having WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction), but was part of an agenda that was set in motion years if not decades before:

It’s surely clear to almost everyone now that we were lied into an illegal war which not only destroyed an entire country, but which also led directly to the rise of ISIS and helped bring terrorism to Europe too. – Ron Paul (2016)

While statism kills, empires kill on a whole different level. While nations like Germany (Jews) and China (farmers) and USSR (Ukrainians, etc) and USA (Southerners and American Indians) do their share of genocide, there is nothing like an empire that can take that to a whole different level.

But it was not always so. Take for instance a majority of the time the British Empire was a world power, as Eric S. Margolis in this article explains:

The British were always masters of efficient imperialism. In the 19th century, they managed to rule a quarter of the Earth’s surface with only a relatively small army supported by a great fleet. Many of their imperial subjects were so overawed by the pomp and circumstance of British rule that they often willingly cooperated, or at least bent the knee.

Call it colonialism 101. Ardent students of Roman history, the British early on adopted the Roman strategy of ‘divide et impera’, divide and conquer. The application of this strategy allowed the British Empire to rule over vast numbers of people with minimal force.

For over one hundred years, life in the American colonies were not bad at all actually. This is why there was 1/3rd of Americans that did NOT want to go to war with the British Empire, as up until the 1760s, the British ruled in a minimalist way!

When we reflect on the poor country of Iraq, and how it was somewhat abused by English power in the early 20th century especially after the discovery of oil, never really knew what was in store for them by 1990. From a post WWII transition that saw American influences in the Middle East region on the increase, and with Saddam Hussein in the employ and control of the CIA, even supplying Iraq with chemical weapons in its war against Iran in the 1980s, it is clear that the American Empire was in the driver’s seat.

In 1990, when the world was shocked that Hussein invaded Kuwait, there were those in the US Government that were not surprised as they gave him the green light. This even allowed the US Empire a “reason” to respond to this attack on an adjacent sovereign nation and allowed a “coalition” of UN nations to mount an attack on Iraq (Gulf War I) to place it under tighter control until the US again invaded 12 years later.

Eric S. Margolis goes on to explain:

I was in Iraq in 2001 and 2003 and saw how much it had developed in spite of the draconian rule of Saddam Hussein. I was one of only a few journalists trying to dispute the western lies about Iraq. The dim-witted Iraqi secret police threatened to hang me as a spy – after I revealed their germ warfare plant at Salman Pak had been set up and was secretly run by British technicians.

There was enough fake news in the early 2000s to convince the American public and the world that Saddam was bad and that the US and its allies were good.

Iraq, let’s recall, was the target of a major western aggression concocted by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Britain’s Tony Blair, financed and encouraged by the Gulf oil sheikdoms and Saudi Arabia.

Truth be told, these “leaders” are in fact war criminals still walking free.

Most people don’t understand that Iraq remains a US-occupied nation. We hear nothing about the billions of dollars of Iraqi oil extracted by big US oil firms since 2003. For the US, Iraq was a treasure house of oil with 12% of world reserves. It was OPEC’s 2nd largest producer.

Recall one of the leading neocons who engineered the invasion of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz, claimed the US could finance its entire invasion of Iraq (he estimated the cost at about $70 billion) by plundering Iraq’s oil. Today, the cost of the occupation has reached over $1 trillion. Wolfie is nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, President Trump says the US will grab Syria’s oil fields.

It is all very sick, but the problems in Iraq do not make it into MSM these days:

Ever since the 2003 invasion, Iraq has been ruled by a succession of US-appointed figureheads who have proven as corrupt as they are inept. During the war, the US destroyed most of Iraq’s water and sewage systems, causing some 500,000 children to die from water-borne diseases, wrecking much of its industry and commerce, leaving millions of men unemployed. Public services have broken down.

Before the US invasion, Iraq led the Arab world in industry, farming, medicine, education and women’s rights. All that was destroyed by the ‘liberation.’

The fallout from this conflict and that in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria have produced economic refugees that have invaded Europe and dispersed Christians out of the Middle East. Will we ever know the true statistics for all the chaos that was put into action in 2001 (Afghanistan) and 2003 (Iraq)?

How is that for the legacy of American Exceptionalism?

Blow-back (CIA term) is a thing, and we thought the 2000/2010s had seen enough terrorism as a result, just wait ..

-SF1

APR2017 Throwback: “Swamp Fox (Reflections)”

A few years ago during my first read of ‘The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution‘ I had a moment of reflection that I still believe holds true today.

Note the names have been changed to “protect the innocent”:

Halftime in this book, time for a little reflection as to how things were in 1780, how things were for us in the 1990s .. and reflecting on the future.

In dialog over the past week with my son Captain1776 regarding the recaps I have been sharing went like this:

Captain1776: “.. Can’t imagine evading, hiding, having limited food n clothes, fighting a long war away from family as your brothers and neighbors die… its crazy ..”
SF1/Dad: “.. Back then society consisted of mainly pioneer types … this allowed Marion to be supplied buy a slim majority in some areas .. today society is full of snowflakes IMHO . look at your neighbors and think how many would risk to supply you if you led rebellion against the Government. Yup .. a LOT of work to do to change hearts and minds .. will probably need to be preceded by government defaulting on it’s promises in a big way ..”
Captain1776: “..That’s some truth right there. I don’t think there’d be anyone willing to help lol. Smh!..”

I was sitting on the deck this morning in the mid-40s sunshine that SW Michigan offered up with my eyes closed. My mind reflected back to the 1990s when we had a time as family where springtime, especially by April 10th meant it was time for chickens and pigs: (Malibu holding spring chicks)

As a young father, what were my priorities? Family first .. and then community/extended ‘family’. What gave the capacity to do this? Love. Plain and simple, there were just some things that one sacrifices for that don’t always benefit ones self.

As a dad, I love all my kids, and time with them was a premium. But there was also a time that I expanded that to what I call ‘extended family’ .. usually good friends would emerge (whether it was neighbor M.S. or L.G. who I met at church, or B.P. or J.F. or even Pastor R.V.) that would expand my world. My daily thoughts were/are still for them and their families.

It does seem that since 9/11 the distractions from the American Empire and the world have taken center stage, and our love for country wants safety for all involved .. the soldiers as well as the civilians caught up being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not long after this “noble” war we learned that it was all based on a lie. Soldiers that did return from the Middle East felt as betrayed as the ones that returned from Vietnam in the 1970s. The American “exceptionalism” meant that we were to go around the world and create new democracies .. however, this too has turned into a lie.

The American media which for generations have brought Americans the journalism that shaped our worldview has started to reveal their true allegiance .. and it is not towards telling the truth.

The American educational system which for generations have taught us a local/regional/national view that has begun to unravel. More Americans everyday are starting to wakeup to the fact that we have been lied to, our parents have been lied to .. our grandparents as well as the version of history, economics and even psychology taught is a subset of what is real.

The American government’s war on poverty, war on drugs, etc. are utter failures, by design, as their monopoly works so that they just need a little more money to get it right while tricking the pawns caught in the web to experience perpetual government dependence or life in prison.

The American corporatism (corporate welfare recipients) have also corrupted our country, with a suspect food supply, suspect health”care” system that only benefits those elites that can gain profit and power from these intrusions into families and communities across America.

The American police state has made it their business to know everything about everybody, and the CIA/FBI/NSA and 14 other intelligence agencies in this country can control both individual lives as well as politics. They now have the dirt on everyone over the past decade plus that can be used as blackmail since all that data can easily be taken out of context to prove ones guilt to the myriad of laws on the books .. and even remove anyone from society with a trip to Gitmo or soon, a drone strike.

Twenty short years from the 1990s it seems that we have lost almost the rest of what America had to offer to those pioneers in the 1600/1700s that provided Francis Marion that opportunity to serve his FAMILY and COMMUNITY by doing sacrificially what he did over the course of two plus years to help the “cause” for each of the thirteen sovereign states to be independent from the English Empire.

While the erosion of locality, family & community, has been ongoing since almost right after the American Revolution .. the last 20/50/150 years has seen times that accelerated this slide.

Personally, I am in the middle of unlearning all that government schools taught me in the 1960s/1970s .. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are not the people the text books make them out to be. This is NOT an exercise in bashing others to make me look good or right. This is an effort to knock down those idols, those deified gods our state has propped up to support their narrative on being that “shining city on a hill” BS.

The real heroes are the family men and women who sacrifice their time, money and sometimes life to provide their kids and community with liberty and freedom.

Francis Marion is one of those rare people that became a legend and yet when a light is shined on their lives they were real people with a heart for others.

So while the evening news, Yahoo News or Google searches try to distract you into thinking that only the American Empire can keep you and your family safe, and that the Nanny State loves all her children and that the Daddy State (Military Industrial Complex) is a righteous power for good in this world and that the Police State can keep you safe from all the bad guys by knowing everything (if you see something, say something) .. think again.

Do your own homework and research. Teach your kids and challenge your co-workers to “change minds and hearts”. Above all, know that Papa is especially fond of you, that He has been greatly misunderstood by many religious teachers and know that Jesus is with you and can relate to where you might be at when you feel you are at the end of your rope. Trust the Holy Spirit in your heart to be your guide and your True North.

“The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops – no, but the kind of man the country turns out.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love y’all

Spring must be a season for reflections .. soak up time with family and friends!

-SF1

Remake of  in 2014 – RIP Dean Ford – Life is Short: