Tag: France

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

01SEP1939 Was Not the Real Start of WWII: Neville Chamberlain and the “Lost Cause” (Myth) of Appeasement

Hands clasped in friendship, Adolf Hitler and England’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, are shown in this historic pose at Munich on Sept. 30, 1938. This was the day when the premier of France and England signed the Munich agreement, sealing the fate of Czechoslovakia. Next to Chamberlain is Sir Neville Henderson, British Ambassador to Germany. Paul Schmidt, an Interpreter, stands next to Hitler. (AP Photo)

Back a few months I wrote how my oldest son gave me a birthday present:

What prompted me to better understand what I call the “inter-war” period from the end of WWI in 1918 to the beginning of WWII in 1939 was a book my oldest son gave me for my birthday/Father’s Day called “Appeasement” by Tim Bouverie. Written from a British perspective, Tim paints the 1938 efforts as a lost cause for keeping the world safe from Nazi expansionism.

Well, after intermittent reads, I finally wrapped that book up today. My initial view was that the author was a Churchill worshiper, however, by page 400 I did see the author admit that many of Churchill’s mistakes were lumped on Neville Chamberlain as England needed a scapegoat after being outmaneuvered by Hitler off the coast of Norway in Germany’s attempt to keep the supplies from Sweden undeterred in Germany’s effort to maintain and ramp up industrial war production activities in their homeland.

I was pleasantly surprised that the author shared some truth as to Neville’s own transformation from what appeared to be a pacifist (was really just a non-interventionists) to a realist by 1939 in he dealings with Hitler. All in all the tilt was toward appeasement being a “lost cause”, but he did admit that IF the British would have ramped up war efforts in the mid-30s, their planes would have been outdated by the time they would have needed them in the 1940s to defend their own homeland.

If nothing else, the learning from this book taught be the risks that empires have once more. (I think all one has to do is read about King Solomon in the Bible to see how even the wisest man in the world could not keep all the alliances with various nations intact for a peaceful coexistence of Israel back when both Egypt and Babylon’s empires contracted) Multiple “entangling” alliances, which triggered WWI were resorted to again in the run up to WWII as well as the fact that empires can’t just think of protecting their homeland, but also colonies scattered across the globe that are only thought of from time to time as political bargaining chips.

However, no honest discussion of WWII can be had without knowing how the Treaty of Versailles at the conclusion of WWI set the stage for a humiliated Germany to roar back to life in only 20 years. It also involves decisions made back to 1906 that involved NOT Neville Chamberlain, but Winston Churchill, as the primary villain that created the climate for Hitler to gain success in Germany with his Nazi party.

Patrick Buchanan has several articles here and here that address this as does his book called: Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War’: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

.. it was colossal blunders of British statesmen, Winston Churchill foremost among them, that turned two European wars into world wars that may yet prove the mortal wounds of the West.

Wow, quite the accusation. But Pat does give us plenty of data to support these findings decades later:

  • The first blunder was a secret decision of the inner Cabinet in 1906 to send a British army across the Channel to fight in any Franco-German War. Had the Kaiser known the British Empire would fight for France, he would have moved more decisively than he did to halt the plunge to war in July 1914. Had Britain not declared war on Aug. 4 (1914) and brought in Japan, Italy and the United States, the war would have ended far sooner. Leninism and Stalinism would never have triumphed in Russia, and Hitler would never have come to power in Germany.
  • The second blunder was the vengeful Treaty of Versailles that added a million square miles to the British Empire while putting millions of Germans under Czech and Polish rule in violation of the terms of the armistice and Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points.
  • A third was the British decision to capitulate to U.S. demands in 1921 and throw over a faithful Japanese ally of 20 years. Tokyo took its revenge, 20 years later, by inflicting the greatest defeat in British history, the surrender of Singapore and an army of 80,000 to a Japanese army half that size.
  • A fourth British blunder, which Neville Chamberlain called the “very midsummer of madness,” was the 1935 decision to sanction Italy for a colonial war in Ethiopia. London destroyed the Stresa Front of Britain, France and Italy that Mussolini had forged to contain Germany, and drove Mussolini straight into the arms of a Nazi dictator he loathed.

This is the world stage that Neville Chamberlain entered as Winston Churchill was sidelined for a few years in. Neville’s 1938 Munich Treaty effort was a direct, if not inevitable, consequence of a Versailles treaty that had consigned 3.5 million Sudeten Germans to Czech rule against their will and in violation of the principle of self-determination.

The seeds of the crisis were planted at the Paris peace conference of 1919. There, the victorious Allies carved the new nation of Czechoslovakia out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

But instead of following their principle of self-determination, the Allies placed under the rule of 7 million Czechs 3 million Germans, 3 million Slovaks, 800,000 Hungarians, 150,000 Poles and 500,000 Ruthenians. These foolish decisions spat upon Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points, under the terms of which the Germans, Austrians and Hungarians had laid down their arms.

By 1938, Germany had arisen, re-armed and brought Austria into the Reich, and was demanding the right of self-determination now be granted to the 3 million Germans in Czechoslovakia, who were clamoring to be free of Prague to rejoin their kinsmen.

But the fatal blunder was not Munich. Appeasement #1 is usually blamed as a failed policy because of what happened in the next 18 months. The truth is more on what is unseen than seen (just like in economics).

Chamberlain went to Munich because he did not believe that keeping 3 million Germans inside a nation to which they had been consigned against their will was worth a world war.

Moreover, Britain was unprepared for war. She had no draft, no Spitfires, no divisions ready to be sent to France. Why should the British Empire commit suicide by declaring war on Germany, to support a Paris peace agreement that he, Chamberlain, believed had been unjustly and dishonorably imposed on a defeated Germany?

It was common knowledge in the higher positions of England and France’s political elite that Germany was done wrong with the mandated “demilitarization” of its armed forces, but to leave native people across borders does tug on the hearts of a culture. Even by 1939 the average German was not pro-war but was for the return of German people groups under Germany’s protection.

England was ecstatic as to what Neville accomplished in Munich, war was averted, German people groups would be allowed “self-determination”. However, Hitler had more people groups outside the borders of Germany:

Hitler had already turned to the next item on his menu, Danzig, a city of 350,000 Germans, detached from the Reich at Versailles and made a Free City to give the new Poland an outlet to the sea. Hitler did not want war with Poland. Indeed, he wanted the kind of alliance with Poland he had with Italy. But, first, Danzig must be resolved.

Here, too, the British Government agreed: Danzig should be returned. For of all the amputations of German lands and peoples at Versailles, European statesmen, even Winston Churchill, regarded Danzig and the Polish Corridor that sliced Germany in two as the most outrageous. The problem was the Poles, who refused to discuss Danzig.

The Polish, who disliked communist Russia, desired to stay intact. At the same time in March 1939, Czechoslovakia suddenly began to fall apart. The Sudetenland had been annexed by Germany the previous fall and Hungary had taken back its lost lands. It looked as though the wheels were coming off this peace effort, but in fact, the pre-WWI version of Europe was re-emerging as all of the political re-drawing of lines started to be erased by reality.

Chamberlain, now humiliated, mocked by Tory back-benchers, panicking over wild false rumors of German attacks on Romania and Poland, made the greatest blunder in British history. Unasked, he issued a war guarantee to Poland, empowering a Polish dictatorship of colonels that had joined Hitler in dismembering Czechoslovakia to drag the British Empire into war with Germany over a city, Danzig, the British thought should be returned to Germany.

The war guarantee with Poland actually led to a half-hearted war against Germany after Poland fell in under one month. This was a war that was declared by both France and England, and was, in fact,  a “pre-emptive” war that in the end was unnecessary, which in turn led to a world war that was also unnecessary.

Result: a Hitler-Stalin Pact and a six-year war that left scores of millions dead, Europe in ruins, the British empire bankrupt and breaking, 10 European nations under the barbaric rule of Joseph Stalin and half a century of Cold War. Had there been no war guarantee to Poland, there might have been no war, no Nazi invasion of Western Europe and no Holocaust.

Sick, right?

So Neville is not as bad as he is portrayed today but made some huge mistakes. So too Churchill is not as good as he is portrayed today but he too made some huge mistakes.

He [Churchill] was behind the greatest British military blunders in two wars: the Dardanelles disaster of 1915 and the Norwegian fiasco of 1940 that brought down Chamberlain and vaulted Churchill to power.

While excoriating Chamberlain for appeasing Hitler, Churchill’s own appeasement of Stalin lasted longer and was even more egregious and costly, ensuring that the causes for which Britain sacrificed the empire — the freedom of Poland and preventing a hostile power from dominating Europe — were lost.

Politicians, no matter how wise, are in fact horrible at directing human action and human events.  All collectives, whether they be monarchies, democracies, fascist or communist peril the innocent subjects in their midst with the fallout and blow-back from their leader’s decisions. From the first act of war, usually economic sanctions, to the desperate actions in war, the wanton killing of innocents, there is always a worse “unseen” aspect to war and the unintentional consequences of those decisions than there is in the honorable striving for peace.

No wonder Thomas Jefferson declared:

Churchill was, however, surely right when he told FDR in their first meeting after Pearl Harbor that they should call the war they were now in “The Unnecessary War.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

-SF1

“By Their Fruit You Will Recognize Them”: The 1919 Treaty of Versailles

I have a (bad?) habit. When I hear of some historical event, I look for the context and the history that preceded that event. Do I have a CSI in my DNA? I guess I just want to know the event in a holistic way so that I do not judge it by it’s appearance only. (My family knows this reference, but it works really well here)

As I pointed out in a previous post a couple of weeks ago:

My point today is that any book on any subject that has you reflecting on what you thought you knew, can launch you into doing research in and around the book reading to attempt to get at the nugget of truth that is typically obscured by an overriding narrative that the masses like to believe.

Reading a “wrong” book or a book from a different perspective from your own should never be seen as a waste of time. In fact, it is usually this kind of ‘entertaining a thought without accepting it’ is essential towards being a true CSI’er of our history.

One of the books I am reading is “Appeasement”, by Tim Bouverie. Primarily about the steps Britain took, or failed to take, with Hitler that led to a disastrous start to WWII. It is assumed in this book, written from a primarily Oxford viewpoint, that the treaty signed at the end of WWI should have kept Germany from rearming causing the British to once again cross that channel and save the day for the continent of Europe.

Well today I want to shed a little light on that treaty, which as of this past week turned 100 years old. Just today, at Lew Rockwell, a post appeared that helped me to mine this time period even more for the wisdom that can come out of understanding history, which is basically just “relationships” at a macro level.

The work by the author, Edward W. Fuller, is fascinating in that it really tells the story of the “tree” that was planted in 1919 which makes the fruit that we see in the 1930s, with Hitler’s rise to power, give us no real surprise.

I contend, that if we all really knew history well, even events that happen today might have us all asking the right questions in the search for truth. We want to be like The Who in their song “We won’t get fooled again”:

Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t want to get fooled again
No, no!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

So let me assist in getting some major points down on the situation 100 years ago when many nations attempted to draw up a treaty to ensure that “The Great War” would not be repeated:

June 28, 2019 is the centenary of the Treaty of Versailles. The notorious treaty, signed by Germany on June 28, 1919, was the most important of the peace treaties that ended the First World War. Although each defeated nation signed its own treaty, the entire settlement is often called the Treaty of Versailles.

Yes Germany signed this treaty, however, doesn’t it really take two (or more) to actively work on hammering out a real treaty? I do think that the author of the book “Appeasement” and 95% of US citizens think and have been taught that this treaty was indeed honorable, not only in its terms but also in its inception. Mr. Fuller points out something interesting:

In early January, 1919, delegates from Britain, France, Italy, and the United States congregated in Paris. Initially, the Allies’ plan was to have a preliminary conference amongst themselves to decide on the peace terms to offer Germany. After the brief preliminary conference, the plan was to invite Germany to a full-scale peace conference to negotiate the terms.

As the Allies squabbled amongst themselves, the preliminary conference gradually developed into the full-scale conference. The Germans were not summoned to Paris until early May. And when they finally arrived, they were never allowed to negotiate the terms of the treaty. Thus, the Treaty of Versailles was a dictated treaty, not a negotiated treaty.

Whoa! While I knew that Germany got really ripped off in this treaty, I mean, it had not even entered this conflict on its own, as Eric Margolis shares:

.. Germany’s role in the conflict was no greater than the other belligerents, and perhaps less than commonly believed.  Starved into submission by Britain’s naval blockade, Germany was unfairly and foolishly saddled with total war guilt, and saw 10% of its territory and 7 million of its people torn away at Versailles by the war’s rapacious victors.

One thing that stood out to me in my read of “Appeasement” is how inadequate was my own high school and post high school history “official” education. I am so glad that at this date I can re/un-learn enough to really know what was going on and why.

Just yesterday I read that Serbia, Bosnia, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine all were relinquished by the German’s with this treaty and France and Britain would be the new overseers. Don’t tell me that this has nothing to do with the Middle East as it stands today. Something tells be there is a lot more to this story.

Eric Margolis hints at why the French and the British did not include Germany at the negotiation table when he says:

Both of these imperial powers feared Germany’s growing commercial and military power (just as the US today fears China’s rise). Germany’s vibrant social democracy with its worker’s rights and concern for the poor posed a threat to the capitalists of Britain and France. Britain’s imperialists were deeply worried by the creation of a feeble little German Empire based in Africa. At the time they controlled a quarter of the globe and all of its oceans.

One has to wonder how the world might have been if England would have acted honorably for once and put the brakes on the rush to war fever that initially was primarily a French emotion:

A total conflagration could still have been averted if Great Britain, which had been playing neutral, had boldly demanded the rush to war cease. France would have been unlikely to go to war without Britain’s supporting its left flank in Flanders.

… a coterie of anti-German officials in Britain, led by the duplicitous foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey and the ambitious, war-yearning imperialist, Winston Churchill, pushed the British Empire to war against Germany. They were joined by a cabal of German-haters in the French government. British and French industrialists, fearful of German competition, and seeing huge profits to be made, backed the war party.

Does this sound familiar or what. How much DNA was transferred to the USA when the British Empire help the American colonies get established in the 1600s?

Beyond not being an equal partner in the “negotiation” of this treaty, the obedience to the treaty’s terms were also an issue:

The military clauses of the treaty disarmed Germany. But the German disarmament was supposed to be part of general European disarmament sponsored by the League of Nations. While the Germans were disarmed by the treaty, the Allies did not fulfill their promise to disarm. This was unfair, and the Allies’ broken promise infuriated German public opinion.

Psychologically, there was more damage from this treaty to those German citizens who knew better. Consider this “feature”:

The reparations section of the treaty included Article 231 – the infamous war-guilt clause. Article 231 required Germany to accept responsibility for starting the war. This clause was unfair, because Germany was not solely responsible for the war. All the major European powers share the blame.

Anger, resentment, punishment all lead to a sense of GROSS INJUSTICE!

I, myself, am wired in a way that is incensed by injustice. Beyond injustice, is my own drive to give individuals on a micro level, and people groups on a macro level the ability to give their consent to those who would govern them, otherwise this becomes slavery even if it comes under the guise of “government” for the greater good.

.. the Allied leaders assured the world that the peace would be based on the principle of national self-determination. Their actions proved otherwise. At the conference, the Allies imperialistically carved up the world and created new but unsustainable nation states with government coercion.

Is this believable? In 2019, after a century of war with 200 million killed by governments, you just have to agree that they do lie, they all do!

So for Germany, what did this mean?

… how could a lunatic like Hitler rise to power in Germany? The answer is the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles. The German population thought the treaty was unfair, and they wanted someone to oppose it. The treaty created the platform for Hitler’s rise to power. For this reason, the Treaty of Versailles must be considered a major cause of the Second World War.

The fruit of this non-negotiated treaty was more war. Such is the wisdom of men (including woMEN) in committees … stupid is multiplied!

For the rest of the world the author concludes:

The First World War and the Paris Peace Conference led to Nazism in Germany, fascism in Italy, militarism in Japan, extremism in the Middle East, and communism in Russia, China, Korea, and Vietnam. What must be learned from the war and peace settlement? Here is the most important lesson: the free market economy is the only way to lasting world peace.

The war was caused by Europe’s imperialistic intervention in foreign trade. In the decades before the war, there was a massive drive by the European powers to expand their empires. This put the European powers on a collision course. Why the imperial expansion? The European powers did not allow other powers to trade freely in their empires. For this reason, the European powers viewed imperial expansion as the only way to gain new markets for their goods. Europe’s rejection of the principle of free trade was the fundamental cause of the First World War.

Free trade brings peace, but states love war.

Are we getting the message now?

-SF1

American Revolutionary War: 3D Layers to Causes, Principles Used and Results

The advantage of taking on a portion of this ‘American Revolutionary War’ conflict, as I was able to do in reviewing John Oller’s book ‘Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Won the American Revolution‘, was that I could get my head around how South Carolina became ripe for revolution, how principled was the conflict and how South Carolina dealt with their freedom from empire.

The disadvantage is that nothing happens in a vacuum or in isolation, and so in reality one needs to back up to the macro (Thirteen Colony Federation view) and even to a global view to understand more holistically how all this came down. This last disadvantage I was able to partially overcome with the assistance of a book Captain1776, Malibu and myself first ran across at the Camden, SC RevWar historical site bookstore called ‘South Carolina and the American Revolution – A Battlefield History‘ by John W. Gordon.

This book helped me to understand the rather complex web of issues, real or imaginary, physical or psychological that helped evolve the love of family, love of community and even into a love of a colony/region towards violence-based actions that risked these very things (family, community and colony/region and even culture).

The writer is a former US Marine officer and professor at the Citadel in South Carolina who is now involved with national security affairs in Quantico, VA. What was refreshing in John W. Gordon’s approach was the eye towards tactics and strategies that either helped or detracted from the efforts of either the rebel-patriots-Whigs or the loyalists-Brit-Tories in the very real civil war that raged in South Carolina from approximately 1775 until 1783.

One aspect realized, was the early attempt on the part of the British to utilize the Cherokee and Creek to their advantage in the southern theater of this war the British brought to regain control of the colonies actually led to ‘blowback’, where unintended consequences would rule as a result of decisions made. This in conjunction with the assumption that Loyalists would rise to greatly assist the British efforts showed how much out of touch London, England was with the thoughts on the minds of those in the low country, midland and rolling hills leading up to the Blue Ridge felt in 1775, 1778 and 1780.

Another aspect that came to light when reading this book was the pivotal moment the French aligned with the colonies which caused this conflict to spread to English colonies around the globe as this became a very real world war that involved Spain and the Dutch as well as the French.

Primary to all of this was the effect this effort to extract the South Carolina people from British Empire control in how this region unified to a degree during the conflict, that pitted father against son and cousin against cousin. The effect was specifically where, during and and especially after the war, the upstate areas obtained more say in the government. The fact that civil government by the people themselves for three years in absence of the British royals, that was then forced into exile in North Carolina for a time after Cornwallis occupied Charlestown and much of the region and then back in late 1781 showed that South Carolinians could rule themselves!

Decades later, praise for this effort across micro-cultures inside this state would emerge from the pen of George Bancroft in 1857 in “History of the United States”:

Left mainly to her own resources, it was through the depths of wretchedness that her sons were to bring her back to her place in the republic ..  having suffered more, and dared more, and achieved more than the men of any other state.

This struggle matured a generation of men and women towards principles that will be again used eighty years later when another “empire” would be threatening South Carolina in coercive and violent ways once more.

Hats off to South Carolina’s Revolutionary War generation in their fight for their love of future generations and their way of life.

-SF1

NOTE: Future posts are forthcoming towards a more in-depth review of this new book, South Carolina and the American Revolution – A Battlefield History , in our library

The State: Friend or Foe?

Demonstrators wearing Yellow Vests (Gilets jaunes) walk past the Arc de Triomphe (Arc of Triumph) in Paris on November 17, 2018
(Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP) / ALTERNATIVE CROP

What brings protestors to state monuments and state capitals? The feeling that they have been done wrong by the state. Was this inevitable? Of course, every state can’t possibly follow through on all the promises its politicians make, ever. There will come a time when the people have had enough of this parasite activity.

The state itself is not being questioned here, just the state’s actions (over time sparked by recent actions as in this case, a gas tax). I question the state because it actually always comes up short on their end of the deal. I think Jesus would agree, when He could have received justice, He got the cross. He knew that would happen, however, it is something we should ALL know, that the state can mean DEATH!

From The Burning Platform, in an ongoing dialog with Doug Casey reflecting on the 1st amendment to the US Constitution that has in it a fourth provision stating the right of assembly:

I’m opposed the very existence of the State. I’m opposed to it on moral grounds, because its essence is coercion. I’m opposed to it on economic grounds, because it’s more a threat to everyone’s property than a guardian of it. On practical grounds, since it’s necessarily inefficient in doing what it’s supposed to do, and does everything it’s not supposed to do. On aesthetic grounds, since it inevitably draws the worst kind of people to its employment. On evidential grounds, since its main products are wars, taxes, regulations, inflation, pogroms, and the like…

… I’ll just say that it speaks poorly of the average person, that he not only thinks the State is necessary, but enthusiastically supports it. And a constitution—whatever its positive aspects—enshrines and legitimizes the idea of the State.

I favor individuals cooperating as individuals, not as cogs in the State’s machine.

Doug Casey – Transcript from Interview with “JB” on The Burning Platform

I contend that while the US police forces, under direction of the federal government in times of crises (“insurrection”) may put up with peaceful assembly that does not destroy property (especially the destruction of state property in their eyes), in time they will remove this right (we still have the natural right, just that the government will not protect us to have this right) as they have done with all the others.

In the future, if the economy gets as bad as I expect, there will be serious riots—which are always a danger when the hoi polloi assemble. There are now means of crowd control much more effective than tear gas. There are beam weapons that, when directed at you, make your skin feel it’s on fire, and will absolutely make you run away and hide. Directional sonic weapons that will make you cover your ears, and run away. Ultra-slippery chemicals that make it impossible to walk. And of course they have means of identifying people in crowds, both with facial recognition and gait recognition. It may not be against the law to assemble, but the “authorities”—if they choose to– can certainly make it unpleasant.

Doug Casey Transcipt in Interview with “JB” on The Burning Platform

Beyond this, there is the whole marginalization scheme that technology has afforded centralized government in measuring individual’s adherence to state policy and narratives and thereby giving them a score that reflects on what a good citizen they are. This then plays a role in what interest rate you might be eligible for or IF government benefits are due you, or not.

There’s no question that the Chinese Social credit system will be adopted in the U.S. You can tell by the way people cherish their Experian and credit scores, even now. Although you’ll theoretically have a right to protest and gather, you could put yourself at risk by doing so. Freedom of Assembly is on its way to becoming a dead letter, if only because of technology.

Doug Casey Transcipt in Interview with “JB” on The Burning Platform

So what is there to know about the recent efforts in France toward making a case that their government has gone to far or failed to uphold their part of the “social contract”? For a more global view of these events in context I will refer to two sources (that I do not always agree with), Eric Margolis via Lew Rockwell and Moon of Alabama:

The storm that is hitting France came out of what looked like a clear blue sky.  The angry demonstrators, known as ‘gilets jaunes’ (yellow jackets), for the warning vests all motorists must keep in their cars, inundated Paris last weekend in peaceful  protests over the government’s planned increases in fuel prices, which were already among Europe’s highest.
As too often in France, violent vandals known as ‘the breakers,’ infiltrated the demonstrators and sought to put the most beautiful parts of Paris to the sack.  I watched with horror as the magnificent Arc de Triomphe, France’s premier war memorial, was befouled by spray-can graffiti.  The majestic Champs Élysée was ravaged by hoodlums, who smashed showroom windows, burned cars, looted luxury stores and set scores of fires.

Paris Under Siege By Eric S. Margolis

As is often the case, a movement, peaceful at first, gets hijacked by those with no principles. This is the hardest way to get government to retract and to do the right things as usually the revolution gets you something worse than what you already had. France’s history has proved this before! (Us in the US should know this as well, for how many of us would willingly go back to the British Empire’s tax rate of 3% that was effective in the American Colonies before the Revolutionary War?)

In a France24 report from a small town in the country side shows extraordinary solidarity between the people. Police passing through an occupied toll road entry sign the protesters petition, other pass by and gift food to the middle-aged protestors.
One woman makes an good point. Yes, the violence as seen in Paris last weekend was not nice. But only after last weeks protest went violent were the yellow vests really noted by the media and by the otherwise tone deaf politicians.

Moon of Alabama

It is too bad that the politicians are not close enough to kick in the butt when they misbehave and squander tax revenue for their pet projects and also enter into alignments with other countries that the people do not always appreciated (i.e. EU) This is the very fact that makes me think secession into smaller republics, states, city-states is the peaceful way forward. Having to use violence against private and public property carries its own negative long term unintended consequences.

From Mint Press, who I use to get a more unbiased view (at least not a US Empire centric MSM view) of world events:

The Yellow Vests held their first demonstrations on Saturday, November 17, on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. It was totally unlike the usual trade union demonstrations, well organized to march down the boulevard between the Place de la République and the Place de la Bastille, or the other way around, carrying banners and listening to speeches from leaders at the end. The Gilets Jaunes just came, with no organization, no leaders to tell them where to go or to harangue the crowd. They were just there, in the yellow vests, angry and ready to explain their anger to any sympathetic listener.
Briefly, the message was this: we can’t make ends meet. The cost of living keeps going up, and our incomes keep going down. We just can’t take it any more. The government must stop, think and change course.

Mint Press By Diana Johnstone

This is the “sound” of tax slaves that are at the end of their rope. 50% plus income taxes in addition to all the other taxes in place or proposed makes for a life for those on the margins a very tough go with no hope for the future!

There were young women who were working seven days a week and despaired of having enough money to feed and clothe their children. People were angry but ready to explain very clearly the economic issues. Colette, age 83, doesn’t own a car, but explained to whoever would listen that the steep raise of gasoline prices would also hurt people who don’t drive, by affecting prices of food and other necessities. She had done the calculations and figured it would cost a retired person 80 euros per month.

Mint Press By Diana Johnstone

The very real failure of socialism is on display here as it has been in Venezuela for several years, the state in the long run will never live up to its propanganda of utopia!

A significant and recurring complaint concerned the matter of health care. France has long had the best public health program in the world, but this is being steadily undermined to meet the primary need of capital: profit. In the past few years, there has been a growing government campaign to encourage, and finally to oblige people to subscribe to a “mutuelle”, that is, a private health insurance, ostensibly to fill “the gaps” not covered by France’s universal health coverage. The “gaps” can be the 15% that is not covered for ordinary illnesses (grave illnesses are covered 100%), or for medicines taken off the “covered” list, or for dental work, among other things. The “gaps” to fill keep expanding, along with the cost of subscribing to the mutuelle. In reality, this program, sold to the public as modernizing improvement, is a gradual move toward privatization of health care. It is a sneaky method of opening the whole field of public health to international financial capital investment. This gambit has not fooled ordinary people and is high on the list of complaints by the Gilets Jaunes.

Mint Press By Diana Johnstone

In the end, the state is a parasite, and efforts however novel (i.e. US Constitution), will fail time and again in this broken world.

Putting your trust in the state is madness IF you research it long enough. Do not forget history, even if the state indoctrinates you to.

‘Democracy, the God that Failed’ is an epic book by Hans-Herman Hoppe that suggests that a monarchy is better than democracy [which is better than socialism, marxism and communism, but are all collectives in nature].. at least with a king, they want to give their heirs a better kingdom .. but as 1 Samuel 8 shows, even God says there are some significant drawbacks to having a king:

“.. Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king.He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots.Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants.He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants.Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use.He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves.When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day. ” – 1 Samuel 8:10-18 

SF1 in an e-mail sent out this past week

So if God’s view is that even monarchy is never ideal, what is?

More on that next time! Stay tuned.

-SF1