Tag: George Washington

Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Unemployment Checks – The “Union/Empire” Wanes

Confederate Constitution acknowledging God!

After a month away from this blog, I looked back at my last thoughts on this attempt by politics to hijack this virus scare:

Will our existing political class figure this out? Not a chance.

Will voting help? Not a chance.

The US still has the USPS and Amtrak, if they can be trusted with little things, you can safely say they can’t be trusted with MAJOR things.

This nation will have to split into many smaller republics before any of this can be addressed.

Whoever can be trusted with small things can also be trusted with big things. Whoever is dishonest in little things will be dishonest in big things too. – Luke 16:10 (Bible)

Is there any doubt by those that can critically think that our political apparatus from DC to the state’s governors and to the large (and small) city mayors are not full of want-to-be tyrants and sociopaths? When one follows the money, it gets even more immoral as the political class (BOTH sides of the so-called aisle) want to be re-elected so bad that they were all willing to place a big old pacifier in the mouths of millions of let go workers so that 65% or more would receive more weekly income than they had prior to this crisis. This is indeed immoral since to entice people to sit on their couches in their homes in time will lead to lives without any purpose. Life on the government plantation has ruined other cultures like the American Indian and the African American groups in the USA. This is how you emasculate the male population towards a purposeless life as government becomes both nanny and daddy.

But I digress. We should be in better position today to see the federal and state governments for what they really are. This “union” has been poisoned for some time. In fits and starts one can see how the federal government opted to be the “safety net”, like somehow a “neutral” entity could care for our communities and societies better than the locals could. That this safety net could extend to big business so that there was no risk in forgoing savings and instead buy back stock shares to prop up the stock prices. So whether this is individual or corporate welfare, both are immoral as one robs some people of their money and uses it to its own agenda’s purpose picking winners and losers in the marketplace as well as in towns and cities and farms across this land.

The southern states endured the reallocation of their taxed and tariff-ed economies from at least the War of 1812 up until the so-called Civil War (War Against Southern Independence). The South attempted to be “above-board” with their last ditch effort to save themselves from economic ruin by legally seceding (at first only 7 states) from this “union” (marriage). But Lincoln would not have his cash cow as a next-door free-trade zone, so he labeled it an “insurrection” and used George Washington’s illegal put down of the Whiskey Rebellion (25% tax thanks to Alexander Hamilton, so how bad was King George for wanting 3%?) as a template for saving the union.

This HAS to sound familiar right? The whole US government (in parallel to so many other governments) is trying to “save” us from Covid-19 while actually killing society and communities in the process. From 1861-1865 the “union” lost about 800,000 lives. What will the final death count be for the Covid-19 response by 2024 when the unintended consequences of good intentions has run its course with suicides, PTSD, mental health issues from the economic fallout AFTER the unemployment checks run out (now slated for 31JUL2020 but many want this extended to 31DEC2020)?

Smaller republics are the only answer that makes sense. Not existing state lines, although that would be a start, but republics that have like-minded people geographically grouped so that government reach can be minimized for liberty folks and maximized for totalitarian minded folks.

Reflecting on the course of what the southern states sailed can be very helpful. Sure they were not perfect and should have jettisoned chattel slavery at the very start (although this would have upset both white and black slaveholders) and compensating these owners with hard currency.

Consider what the Confederate government learned in the 80 years under the US Constitution.

  1. That unlike the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation which BOTH had God, our Creator, as whom we derived our natural rights from, the US Constitution written in 1787 failed to give such indication as its North Star
  2. That the US Constitution failed to protect the people from the 1798 Alien and Sedition Act that made it a crime to criticize the US Government.
  3. That the US Constitution failed to protect various regions of the land from the plundering ambitions of other region’s agenda and greed.
  4. That the US Constitution’s Supreme Court hijacked the ability of the states to determine which laws were unconstitutional.

It is the last point that is highlighted in this article from Abbeville Institite here. I do think it is the proper time to consider what real justice is these days and know how much a failure this a-political Supreme Court has been.

Although the Court would increasingly try to narrow the realm of States Rights, Madison [author of the US Constitution] denied that “the Federal judiciary” was the ultimate judge of such limits because it was the people of the states themselves who were the final authority.

It was in fact the US Government’s (called General government in those days, now labeled the Federal Government) over-reach that set-off a push back politically:

The conflict became obvious when President John Adams pushed through the 1798 Sedition Act, making it a crime to speak ill of the President or Congress. Since it was harshly enforced for some of the mildest criticisms, strict constructionists respond. Among them was future President James Madison who is known as the Father of the Constitution. He denied that the Supreme Court was the ultimate authority on States Rights. This can be seen from the 1798 Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions he helped write with Thomas Jefferson condemning the Sedition Act as unconstitutional.

Jefferson’s presidential victory in 1800 guaranteed that the 1798 Alien and Sedition Act would be eliminated, but by 1833 things were simmering again. By this stage of the republic’s life the South was losing its position as being a strong entity within this federation and saw New England culture and character make huge inroads into the federal government’s choosing of winners (railroads, canals and the steel industry) over losers in the marketplace:

Calhoun would build upon the Resolutions to formulate his nullification theory that South Carolina invoked in 1833 to nullify the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. Calhoun argued that the tariff was not uniform in terms of geographic economic impact and therefore unconstitutional. When the Federal Government crossed over constitutional lines, a state could take action as the final authority of constitutionality in its borders, not the Supreme Court. All states could only be forced to conform to such a law by passing a new amendment specifically making it constitutional.

This “one-size-fits-all” approach (sound familiar?) is a recipe for disaster, for just as all individuals are different, so too are the states.

The Supreme Court early on made a huge mistake that made it necessary to add an 11th amendment in 1795 when the US Constitution was less than ten years old:

When a 1793 Supreme Court ruling held the state of Georgia at fault in a suit brought by a South Carolina resident, Georgia denied the Court’s jurisdiction. After the adverse ruling ten other states joined Georgia to ratify a new (11th) Amendment specifying that individuals outside an applicable state could not sue that state without the state’s permission. The Amendment’s prompt ratification indicates a widespread belief that the Court was unexpectedly and quickly overstepping its authority.

Now you know why the Confederate government opted NOT to have a supreme court at least initially. Lesson learned.

Now it is our turn to learn from history and push for a government that is more commensurate to the people’s desire of liberty, freedom and self responsibility .. at least in certain geographical regions of this land we call America.

Peace out.

-SF1

Is Trump To Follow in Lincoln’s Footsteps? – Stay Tuned!

The Articles of Confederation, which had the word “perpetual” in it, was cast aside in replacing it with the US Constitution in 1787. Prophetic Patrick Henry said:

I smell a rat.

Yes, and with that move the United States began a constant assault on the personal liberties and freedoms the Declaration of Independence declared.

While George Washington himself allowed crisis to over-rule the Law of the Land (i.e. US Constitution), no one did it in a bigger way (to date) than Abraham Lincoln. All it took was for the state of Virginia to change its mind on secession after Lincoln decided to call up 75,000 volunteer troops to “suppress the rebellion” (actually, the peaceful departure of seven southern states of the Deep South). Washington DC was then faced, literally, with a land now belonging to the Confederate States of America across the Potomac River. In response to this development, the thought of Maryland also seceding had Lincoln and his cabinet in panic from consequences of THEIR OWN actions. Potential peace negotiators had attempted to meet with Lincoln and his leadership all during March 1861 but Lincoln refused that peace could be a viable option, for the “union”. He simply would not settle for a divorce from seven states that had been abused by the union for decades, and decided to get that spouse “back in the trailer”.

Can we do something different than Lincoln’s violent response to a divided country where at the end of Lincoln’s war, 2.5% of the population perished? (750,000 by 1865, 7 million in 2020) I highly doubt President Trump would allow the following to happen .. to allow the regions to heal better from the current ECONOMIC crisis disguised as a health crisis:

.. we will see. I think he is pure Lincoln material unfortunately.

Back to Lincoln and what he faced in late April 1861 .. James Dueholm paints the picture in this article:

27April 1861:

Lincoln issued an order to General Winfield Scott authorizing him to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, at or near any military line between Philadelphia and Washington if the public safety required it.  Lincoln issued his order pursuant to the provision in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution stating that “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion and invasion the public safety may require it,”

A writ of habeas corpus is a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody. A habeas corpus petition is a petition filed with a court by a person who objects to his own or another’s imprisonment.

Laurence M. Vance explains:

The origins of what Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase called “the most important human right in the Constitution … the best and only sufficient defense of personal freedom,” go back to the Magna Carta: “No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised [seized] or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land” (Magna Carta, sec. 39). The English Petition of Right (1628) and Habeas Corpus Act (1679), as well as our own Constitution and The Judiciary Act of 1789 (which established the detailed organization of the federal judiciary), all mention this “fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action” (Justice Abe Fortas).

One problem with the way Lincoln pulled this off, it was Congress that was supposed to do this, and Congress would not be called into session until 04JUL1861 by Lincoln!

Lincoln had decided on 15APR1861 to delay calling Congress to order until the 4th of July so that the war on the insurrection could already have gained enough momentum and that the official narrative could have taken hold in the hearts and minds of the people in the north and west (Midwest) United States.

25May1861:

On May 25, federal troops arrested John Merryman in Cockeysville, Maryland, for recruiting, training, and leading a drill company for Confederate service. Merryman’s lawyer promptly petitioned Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, sitting as a trial judge, for a writ of habeas corpus. This writ, sometimes called the Great Writ, is a judicial writ addressed to a jailer ordering him to come to court with his prisoner and explain why the prisoner is being held.

Following a hearing in the matter, Taney ordered delivery of a writ of habeas corpus to General George Cadwallader directing him to appear before Taney on May 28 with Merryman in tow. After Cadwallader refused service of the writ, Taney ruled on May 28 that the president did not have the power to suspend the writ, and Taney announced that he later would issue an opinion in support of his ruling.

Several days later, Taney issued his opinion. Only Congress, he said, could suspend the writ of habeas corpus. He observed that the limitation on suspension of the writ appeared in Article I of the Constitution, dealing with legislative powers, not in Article II, which established executive power. He explored the history of the writ of habeas corpus under English law, showing that the House of Commons had limited and then abolished the royal power to suspend the writ, leaving suspension in legislative hands. The Constitution, he said, embodied this English tradition. Article II, he asserted, gave the president very limited powers that were weakened further by the Bill of Rights. Finally, he cited eminent authority, noting that Chief Justice John Marshall, Thomas Jefferson, and Joseph Story, a luminary as both judge and scholar, had all acknowledged that the power to suspend was a congressional power.

Lincoln’s reaction, in October of 1861 Lincoln ordered the District of Columbia Provost Marshal to place armed sentries around the home of a Washington, D.C. Circuit Court judge and place him under house arrest. The reason was that the judge had issued a writ of habeas corpus to a young man being detained by the Provost Marshal, allowing the man to have due process. By placing the judge under house arrest Lincoln prevented the judge from attending the hearing of the case.

Chief Justice Taney

After the fact, in 1863, Congress finally caught up with Lincoln’s violation of the Constitution and covered for their dictator:

Congress did not enact legislation authorizing suspension of habeas corpus until March 3, 1863. In the meantime, Lincoln’s 1861 orders authorizing suspension remained in force, and on September 24, 1862, he issued a proclamation imposing martial law and suspending the writ of habeas corpus. The proclamation orders that, for the rest of the war, (i) “all rebels and insurgents, their aiders and abettors within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice, affording aid or comfort to rebels against the authority of the United States, shall be subject to martial law and liable to trial and punishment by courts martial or military commission,” and (ii) “the writ of habeas corpus is suspended in respect to all persons arrested or imprisoned in any fort, camp, arsenal, military prison, or other place of confinement by any military authority or by the sentence of any court martial or military commission.”

Lincoln’s response to an obedient Congress:

“You ask … whether I really claim that I may override all the guarantied rights of individuals, on the plea of conserving the public safety—when I may choose to say the public safety requires it. This question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me as struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative, is either simply a question who shall decide, or an affirmation that nobody shall decide, what the public safety does require, in cases of rebellion or invasion. The constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur for decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it. By necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision is to be made, from time to time; and I think the man whom, for the time, the people have, under the constitution, made the commander-in-chief, of their Army and Navy, is the man who holds the power….”

So this arrogant and pompous President, actually, a dictator at this point, said “public safety” in the middle of this crisis mandated that SOMEONE decides to remove the writ of habeas corpus.

Can you see Trump saying this? Yes you can! If you are honest with yourself.

Think about it.

Stay tuned!

-SF1

Can Economic Crashes Lead Toward Independence? – Follow the Money, Politicians Do

Catalonia Independence Movement

Without a doubt, the current overarching panic has been framed to be that of COVID-19. From all angles, those opportunists are hoping that this crisis can assist them in burying some past or paving the way to some glorious future. Whether it is the unsustainable debt, the banking sector, the pharma sector or even those that deal in welfare (to both corporations (GOP) or individuals (Dems)), everyone it seems are bent on not wasting this crisis.

The very last thing on these people’s mind is that of personal liberties or the free market. To them it is the desire of command and control that consume their soul. Real men (when I use this word I use it the same way our Creator would, meaning men and women), men of character, principled humans who are both compassionate for others and yet principled in not attempting to fix other’s lives or circumstances. Help is afforded when both the opportunity presents itself and the help aligns with what is on the giver’s heart, because surely, Jesus did not heal everyone in the crowds, only those that were on His Father’s heart.

So here we are again where a divided nation is fighting both the effects of a virus as well as the proper method to achieve that. Authoritarians (even the ones that were libertarian just weeks ago) want the government to mandate nothing less than house arrest and martial law all across this land. Libertarian leaning people think the people themselves can figure this out on their own, since only they know their specific and unique circumstance. They might be a city dweller with a network of like minded people that CAN achieve social distancing while also bartering for what may be needed in the weeks to come, OR they might live on a farm or ranch that is miles from their neighbor who can also be in their network for critical supplies.

Montana “social distancing”

What comes to mind then, out of an article penned as Brexit was achieved, is that this is not too different than what face the American people in 1860. Yes there were those who felt righteous enough to demand that others free their slaves immediately, and yet if anyone knew how prepared these slaves were for freedom, it was probably their owners and others on the plantation or farm. While slavery was in fact winding down, there were people willing to demand their agenda no matter the cost, even if it was 700,000 dead soldiers and economically ruined regions of the country that would not recover for a century.

The American leader that most people black and white still rally around today as a man of principled freedom and equality for all is Abraham Lincoln. At times, if you read his very words you have to wonder when in fact he had his heart on the fate of the black slaves and IF his version of “the union” which he was so fond of keeping intact was the best for the marriage that existed between the north and south.

John Marquardt from the Abbeville Institute only a week ago penned an article that is rich in unpacking what really happened 150 years ago as well as the economic factor that was at the root of almost all the BAD decisions by politicians along the way. Lets work our way through some critical quotes and see where this leads:

1775:

… thirteen of its major colonies, with a cry of “no taxation without representation,” declared their independence, seceded from the British Empire and joined together to form the United States of America. Faced with the loss of a vast source of the revenue needed to fill coffers drained by its seemingly endless wars with France, Great Britain opted to wage war on its own colonies.

1860:

… seven of the States in the new American nation felt that the weight of long economic oppression by the Federal government was more than they should be forced to bear and opted to secede from the Unites States to form their own more perfect union . . . and once again the action brought forth a war in which the central government attacked its own citizens to prevent their departure.

At this point I think it is helpful to see Lincoln’s own thought processes and see how they changed through the years (an inevitable characteristic of being a politician as there is nothing off the table morally when a crisis is at hand):

1848:

.. when Lincoln was a U. S. congressman from Illinois, he gave a speech in the House of Representatives in which he stated “any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”

1858:

“neither the General Government, nor any other power outside of the slave States, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists.”

Lincoln said that he did not understand the Declaration of Independence “to mean that all men were created equal in all respects,” and added that he was not in favor of “making voters or jurors of Negros nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people.” He then went on to say that “there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”

Lincoln was not a huge fan of the blacks it is very apparent, but his core philosophy that he never gave up was that the blacks were never to be allowed to migrate north and take away jobs from whites, which would cause economic upheaval. One has to come to terms that back in 1860, it was conceivable that the northern regions were more racist than southern regions who interacted with blacks on a daily basis:

The North feared that slave labor would compete unfairly with its own low-wage, largely immigrant labor force which, unlike slaves, could be willfully hired and fired as needed and did not require food, housing, clothing or even rudimentary medical attention.

It is at this point that John paints the real economic condition of the United States in 1860. Have you ever been taught this in schools as part of a CSI to understand what businessmen around the country thought about seven states leaving the Union? I doubt it, so here it goes, consider it COVID-19 home schooling:

In regard to the true economic cause behind the War, just as it was with Great Britain’s case in 1776, the gaping hole that would be formed in the Federal revenue served as the actual rationale for the Union to wage war on the departed Southern States. In 1860, there were more than thirty-one million people in the thirty-three States and ten Territories, with only a third of these, including almost four million slaves, living in the South. According to the U. S. Federal Abstract for 1860, the total Federal expenditures for that year amounted to some sixty-three million dollars, with over eighteen million of this being used mainly to finance railways, canals and other civil projects in the North. On the other hand, Federal revenues at that time amounted to a little over fifty-six million dollars. As there was then no corporate or personal income tax and revenue from domestic sources, such as the sale of public land, amounted to less than three million dollars, the remaining fifty-three million dollars were provided by what was termed “ad valorem taxes,” in other words, the tariff on foreign goods imported by the United States. The basic problem with this, however, was that as much as three-quarters of that revenue was collected in Southern ports, which meant that there would be a loss of up to forty million dollars in Federal revenue if the Southern States left the Union. Added to this was the fact that well over half of America’s four hundred million dollars in exports in 1860 were agricultural products from the South, mainly cotton, rice and tobacco.

You can see the predicament that Lincoln had when he was inaugurated in early March 1861. You can also see what the British view was back in 1775 and why they did what they did.

Now project yourself forward in time and try to understand what the so-called united States of America faces in 2020.

  • Will the economic crisis cause everyone to stick together and pay the $25T in debts over the next hundred years OR will regions of the US be allowed to go their separate ways?
  • Would anyone in the federal government be willing to let ANY state go in peace?

These are the questions one must answer themselves, along with, what is the moral path forward? Personally I think that bankruptcy is the only moral path forward, but as I was told in the US Navy, ‘opinions are like *ssholes, everyone has one’.

Ok then, let us look to see how Lincoln (Trump-like?) evolved as President:

04MAR1861:

Lincoln stated that he would “hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the (Federal) government, and collect the duties and imposts . . . but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using force against, or among the people anywhere.”

.. [then] stating he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Pretty clear that economics forced his hand to propose the absurd notion that tariffs would still be collected in the seven states that LEFT the union while he had no real heart change on the fate of the black slaves.

Early April 1861 before Ft. Sumter:

Virginia, which still remained in the Union, commissioned a three-man delegation headed by John Baldwin, a pro-Unionist and former judge of the State Supreme Court of Appeals, to meet with Lincoln at the White House in an effort to negotiate a peaceful settlement. During their meeting, the president was reported as saying privately to Baldwin “but what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery (i.e., the Confederates)? Am I to let them go on and open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry with their ten-percent tariff? What, then, would become of my tariff if I do that, what would become of my revenue? I might as well shut up housekeeping at once.”

By early April, Lincoln and his cabinet, the majority of the New Englanders as well as the farmers in the West (now called the Midwest) all saw clearly the economic ramifications of having just 7 states leave the union. Like today, the panic and gross exaggeration seemed to consume people and they were all looking to the US government to do something, ANYTHING!

Lincoln’s Cabinet

It is well documented that Lincoln’s plan to send troop transports to Charleston harbor where his Union garrison had broke a gentleman’s agreement on Christmas 1860 and moved from Ft. Moultrie to Ft. Sumter was to have the South Carolina cannon to fire the first shot (not unlike FDR’s efforts to have Japan do the same at Pearl Harbor, or Bush II’s efforts to have 9/11 be allowed) so he could be “justified” in his next action:

Lincoln’s call to the Union for seventy-five thousand volunteers to suppress what he termed the “rebellion” of the Southern States. Lincoln’s call not only led to the secession of Virginia, but Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee as well, and brought about a war that made casualties of five percent of America’s population, devastated a third of the nation’s States and left deep wounds in the American psyche that to this day have not yet completely healed.

Lincoln, a lawyer, never addresses the seceded states from this point forward, but relied on George Washington’s legislation created during the Whiskey Rebellion to “legally” put down the southern “insurrection” as if it was an unorganized scene of violence that had to be safely extinguished for the safety of the masses.

Keep this in mind for 2020, just sayin’.

By 1862, it was obvious what had happened:

A comparison between the conflicts of 1776 and 1861 was also made in a “London Times” article of November 7, 1861, in which it was said of the War Between the States that the “contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces.”

In a letter written in March of 1862, Dickens stated “I take the facts of the American quarrel to stand thus; slavery has in reality nothing on earth to do with it . . . but the North having gradually got to itself the making of the laws and the settlement of the tariffs, and having taxed the South most abominably for its own advantage, began to see, as the country grew, that unless it advocated the laying down of a geographical line beyond which slavery should not extend, the South would necessarily recover it’s old political power, and be able to help itself a little in the adjustment of the commercial affairs.”

So whatever became of Lincoln’s transition toward loving the black slave? Well, we do know that Lincoln was surrounded by a culture that he was totally in alignment up to the so-called Civil War:

… pertaining to racial discrimination, Dickens said “Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale.”

When the war went poorly and Lincoln was doubtful to his re-election and the possibility of an externally arranged peace conference, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation which sounded good but did not actually free one slave (and later admitted that this was a “war measure”). One can see that even this act was not from his heart as can be revealed by the following quotes:

“Send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” ~ Lincoln, speaking in favor of ethnic cleansing all blacks from the United States.

“I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I favor colonization.” ~ Lincoln, in a message to Congress, December 1, 1862, supporting deportation of all blacks from America.

“They had better be set to digging their subsistence out of the ground.” ~ Lincoln in a War Department memo, April 16, 1863

 

After securing a 2nd term as president he continued to meet with northern Black leaders about his plan to export blacks to the Caribbean or back to Africa after the war. For those black slaves that remained:

“Root, hog, or die” ~ Lincoln’s suggestion to illiterate and propertyless ex-slaves unprepared for freedom, Feb. 3, 1865.

So here you see that war and economics changes everything and allows politicians to make decisions that in peacetime or prosperity would have been prevented, one way or another.

It seems that today, most Americans have given in to their lot as tax slaves happy for just enough freedom for them to claim they live in the land of the free and are able to worship the flag and eat the occasional apple pie. To a majority of Americans, they know little of their history that would help them to see the red flags all around them as freedom and liberty evaporate in this once free land (mainly in 1783-1878).

May a new generation and a new remnant of Americans see though the infectious nature of government and decide for the future that they will take responsibility for themselves, their livelihood and the education of the next generation and never trust any government again.

I can dream can’t I?  One day at a time everyone, one day at a time, however, it is good and well to dream and hope for a better tomorrow where the lessons of this crisis are well learned!

Peace out.

-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

Most People Are Nice People – Why it is So Hard to Understand that the State is Organized Crime

If you had asked me 20 years ago if I thought that the US government was a criminal organization, I would have laughed and called you a conspiracy theorist (a CIA term to discredit those who have doubts about the official government narrative).

Since then I have read a lot about our history (American and pre-American) from a variety of sources that have links to established source materials. At the end of the day, I can say with certainty, that there are elements of our government, and some of the elite who pull the strings they have at hand, that pure evil does exist in this world. This evil prefers to operate behind the mask of the state to accomplish its evil deeds. All too willingly there are political minded people that start out to make the nation or world a better place then over time will either be blackmailed or bought out to follow along with this evil agenda, taking on a mask of themselves as being one who “helps” “the people”.

This propensity for evil to find power structures to use for their own personal agendas is nothing new. Reading the accounts of God’s own nation of Israel or even the atrocities of the Roman Empire can give you a flavor of the depravity of the human soul.

Assisting me in coming to terms with this reality, in light of my indoctrination fo American Exceptionalism in government school systems, have been articles and searches from Lew Rockwell’s site over the past almost two decades. I have always been amazed by the sheer volume of material available for free from his site or others like the Mises Institute that can help anyone research for themselves how the world really operates, as well as the United States government, the Deep State and even Deep Politics.

There has been an article that I bookmarked earlier this week that referenced another lengthy article that intrigued me earlier this year that I never had time to really look at in detail. Let’s just say, I am still overwhelmed by the HTTP links, books and articles that cover not only US history but also world history that unveils what has happened behind the curtain for so many decades and centuries. Let me just say, the trust factor of government in general just keeps ratcheting down the more I read. I think I now know how many of the founders felt when they attempted a “good version” of government after it’s War for Independence from the British Empire.

“Who Rules America: Power Elite Analysis, the Deep State, and American History” by Charles Burris helps to unpack the trajectory of powerful men who have heavily influence many things behind the scenes that shows the heart of government is in fact, organized crime.

Here is a clip of the historical events that led to the effort in the American colonies in the 1770s to try and accomplish something new:

Why Power Elite Analysis (Libertarian Class Analysis) is Distinct From And Superior to Marxist Analysis

  1. Libertarian Class Theory Antedates Marxist Theory
  2. The English Civil War (The Levelers)
  3. Jean-Baptiste Say,  Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer
    1. The Industrial Society Versus the Statist Society
    2. The Competitive Free Market Versus the Monopolistic Society
    3. The Free Market Pitted Against Mercantilism and Feudalism
  4. Henri de Saint-Simon and the Distortion of Class Theory
  5. From Saint-Simon to Karl Marx
  6. Elitism and the Myth of Pluralism
  7. Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class
  8. Later 19th Century Libertarian Class Analysis
    1. Herbert Spencer: Military Society Versus the Industrial Society
    2. Sir Henry Maine: From Status to Contract
    3. Richard Cobden: War and the Interests

I have to admit, I have scrimped when it comes to researching history before the 1770s, and have found myself ill prepared to understand why the wheels came off the American Revolution’s “cause” so fast after the war had ended. In less than a decade, some of the same people that were pro-liberty, took up the reigns of government to be used as the British Empire did, to control the people, to enrich themselves at their expense, and establish a central strong government and central bank to keep people like them in power for generations to come in America. At the end of the day, America looked more like Europe with each passing decade. I guess the imperialism DNA is a strong thing to resist for even noble causes and honorable principles.

Even the honorable Thomas Jefferson tried to do the right thing as President of the United States and came away discouraged for how he had led this young country in those early years. As a older man he was actually thinking that yet another revolution could bring about two or three confederations out of the exiting united States.

In part two of Charles outline, he focuses mainly on the United States trajectory of becoming a hidden organized crime unit led by the power elite:

Part Two

  1. Early American Historical Overview

Theme of Liberty Versus Power –  (Ivan Jankovic, The American Counter-Revolution in Favor of Liberty: How Americans Resisted Modern State, 1765–1850); The Country Party Versus Court Party: The Declaration of Independence and the Revolution (Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics; The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution; Angelo M. Codevilla, The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About it)

  1. Counter-Revolution
    1. U.S. Constitution (Sheldon Richman, America’s Counter Revolution: The Constitution Revisited; John Taylor, New Views of the Constitution of the United States; Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States; Saul Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism & the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828; What The Antifederalists Were For)
    2. Alexander Hamilton and the Plutocratic Federalists: “The Funding Fathers” (John McConaughy, Who Rules America: A Century of Invisible Government; Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – and What It Means for America Today; Brion McClanahan, How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America)
    3. The Early Nationalist Period (Stanley Elkins & Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800; Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815; Phillip H. Burch, Elites in American History: The Federalist Years to the Civil War)
    4. Republicanism: From Jefferson to Van Buren
  2. Jeffersonian Drive to Roll Back the Federalist Program and Rid America of its Powerful Ruling Elite (Lance Banning, The Jeffersonian Persuasion: Evolution of a Party Ideology)
  3. Failure of Jefferson/Madison Regimes and the Rise of the Old Republicans or “Tertium Quids” (Norman K. Risjord, The Old Republicans: Southern Conservatism in the Age of Jefferson)
    1. John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia (John Taylor, Tyranny Unmasked)
    2. John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia
    3. The Panic of 1819, James Monroe, and the “Era of Good Feelings“

This exhaustive set of links ends with the current era highlighting the Obama and Trump administrations:

It is beyond a doubt, that even if one were to investigate only a fraction of these things, it would remain as the tip of the iceburg as to what was really accomplished via politics in secret.

What I appreciate about Charles Burris is that he then goes on to outline some of the historical events that were made possible by the power elite. Going back from the present to WWI, one can only imaging the lives lost or scared by these sociopaths in our midst:

The question for someone in the present is not whether the US should have intervened in these conflicts but what have we learned from this previous century of war, destruction, and the needless death of millions?

What we now know concerning the horrific wars of the previous century, as well as 21st century conflicts such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, provides us with a historical template to guide us in making future principled decisions concerning intervention or non-intervention.

Briefly, working backwards, what have revelations concerning non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, deliberately falsified intelligence from the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, and an elaborately coordinated media disinformation campaign done for the case for US intervention in Iraq in 2003? For falsified (and/or still classified) information concerning the September 11th attacks leading to intervention against Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Afghanistan?

What has declassified revelations from the archives of the former Soviet Union and the Venona files in the United States done to totally reshape the narrative story of espionage and the Cold War?

What has archival revelations concerning the Pentagon Papers and the deliberately contrived Gulf of Tonkin Incident done to spurious justification for the massive intervention in the Vietnam conflict?

What has fifty years of revelations concerning the November 22, 1963 coup d’état and brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy by Lyndon Johnson and the highest echelons of the National Security State done to totally reassess the dynamic behind the change in US policy toward Vietnam within days of JFK’s assassination? How have the powerful behind-the-scenes revelations concerning the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 aided in seeing a more complete picture regarding Kennedy’s murder and the subsequent change of policy toward Vietnam?

How have incisive revelations concerning the birth of the National Security State in 1947 impacted the story of the Cold War? How have revelations concerning the use of former Nazi intelligence officers in the Reinhard Gehlen organization grafted upon US military intelligence and the CIA, been shown to have provided unreliable and provocative disinformation which fueled early Cold War tensions?

How have decisive revelations concerning the Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor reshaped the narrative of US intervention into WWII?

How have revelations concerning the Hitler/Stalin Non-Aggression Pact and the joint German and Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939 affected our historical portrait of the larger story of how the Second World War began?

How have revelations concerning American and British financial, corporate, and political elites substantially aiding and rebuilding the Nazi war machine in the years prior to WWII as a bulwark against the Soviets change our view of the deep historical background?

How have revelations of the decades of joint military training and cooperation by intelligence services between Germany (during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich) and the Soviet Union impact upon the lead up to WWII?

How did the Treaty of Versailles and agreements such as Sykes-Picot affect the interwar course of events leading to the Second World War?

How did the internecine network of secret treaties, entente cordiales, and clandestine military alliances drawn up prior to the First World War lead to this conflagration?

To this legacy one can only conclude that maybe America is not really exceptional at all, but just another self-serving nation who stuck their nose in other nation’s business totally contrary to the wishes of even the very statist George Washington!

The great American Experiment has indeed run its course. It would be nice if the next revolution was one of minds and hearts and not violent, however, man is prone toward the shortcuts of utilizing sanctions and war to accomplish the ‘greater good’.

-SF1