Tag: immigration

Character Flaw: US Government Has Lied .. Us into Mexican-American War

Continuing on the theme from a few days ago where I titled the post:

Character Flaw: US Government Has Lied Us into War of 1812 All the Way to the War on Covid-19

.. we can go one from one official/unofficial (undeclared by US Congress) war to the next to unpack the gross lies politicians use for their own agendas.

Context for the Mexican-American war that started in 1846 is important because most people fail to remember anything about this war and even less as to what led to it and why this war was so bad .. for setting the stage to the next war or two. (so-called Civil War and Indian Wars)

So as the united States (13 sovereign states as addressed in the 1783 Treaty of Paris) came out of the War for Independence (officially called the American Revolution) and found themselves lied into the War of 1812. By 1815 the United States found themselves in more debt with NO MORE territory to show for it, it seems that maybe the government learned this lesson and stayed out of another war for another generation or so.

About the same time in current day Mexico, if you remember the Spanish Empire, specifically their fleet, was badly wrecked by the British in 1805 Battle of Trafalgar. By 1810 the Mexican people, sensing the demise of the Spanish Empire, started a revolution to expel the Spanish. So note that there was a lot of slave trade going on in Mexico with the Spanish kidnapping indigenous people’s kids and visa versa, so much so that the revolutionaries promised no slavery in the newly freed Mexico. Independence was achieved by 1821 at an 11 year war, but slavery remained .. so we have yet again the typical:

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss-The Who

Sound familiar, in recent years from Bush II to Obama to Trump … but I digress. Viva la no difference ..

Starting in 1822, settlers from Missouri (called the ‘Old 300’) started moving into the region that is now the state of Texas and by 1829 Mexico did finally abolish slavery. However, in 1830 Mexico outlawed immigration to Texas, yet it had no means to prevent this until starting in 1835 Texas went to war to become independent.

While the Republic of Texas occupied only 50% of what we today call Texas, this new government claimed an area three times this size into present day OK, CO, ID, UT and AZ. This “disputed land” was under the actual control of the Comanche, Apache and Navajo Indian tribes. These tribes had kept the Spanish Empire, Mexico and the Republic of Texas out of their land.

1st Republic of Texas flag
Republic of Texas naval flag

In 1845, the US government annexed Texas as the 28th state in the Union, complete with disputed land along the Rio Grande to the southern border with Mexico. The unwritten rules was that no troops were to be allowed in this “demilitarized zone”. However, the US was not content with Mexico alone as the Whigs wanted a more aggressive move against Canada while the Democrats wanted moves against a weak Mexico. Empire building is always in powerful elite’s DNA.

The term Manifest Destiny was the thought that God actually gave the US the right to seize land in the Northern Hemisphere from Atlantic to Pacific. The phrase heard from 1818 until 1846 was “54-40 or fight” based on the Whig premise that the joint claim the British Empire and US had over the Oregon Territory was in fact the US’s to possess. In fact, James Polk, a Democrat, even campaigned for president based on this philosophy.

This region west of the Rocky Mountains and between 42 degrees north and 54 degrees 40 minutes north (the southern boundary of Russia’s Alaska territory) included what now is Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, as well as land up the western coast of British Columbia, Canada.

The first action against Mexico was accomplished during the work towards a treaty behind the scenes between the British Empire (not in any major conflict and not a good time to pick a fight with) and the US Government. Pres. Polk sent Capt. Fremont with mercenaries to California to invade (1st invasion) and when Mexico got upset, he built a fort and raised a flag there. Mexican forces arrived and Fremont retreated to Northern California to operate a more guerilla war of attrition from the safety of the northern California woods. By this time, the Oregon Treaty was signed 15JUN1846 with the British Empire and settled the boundary to be the 49th parallel. The Whigs were ticked!

The Whigs now saw that conflict with Mexico might bring more southern “slave” states and upset the balance of power between the Whigs (Northern) and Democrats (Southern) had for decades. The slavery issue was USED by both parties to keep the people divided (the 1846 version of Covid-19). Polk then dispatched reps from his administration secretly to Mexico to offer them $25M for northern Mexico. The problem was that the Mexican government was in such a fluid and weak state that its leader changed 4x and its finance ministers 16X in the time the US sought to purchase this land. His representatives returned and Polk saw this as an opportunity to spark something. He directed 70 men under command of a man named Thorton to “patrol” (2nd Mexican invasion) Mexican territory and was met by 2000 Mexican cavalry. Over 16 US men were killed and Polk then addressed Congress saying “Mexico invaded the United States” which was an outright lie. Even Abraham Lincoln saw the ruse and challenged Polk from the floor of Congress by saying “show me the spot”.

BREAK: I have to say, the Anti-War Lincoln on the floor of Congress is like the Anti-War Obama on the same floor of Congress, only to become war hawks when they each became president. This is not unlike GW Bush campaigning on peace in 2000 and Trump campaigning on peace in 2016 only to see GW Bush invade Iraq based on the WMD lies and also see Trump dropping more bombs than O-bomb-a!

The 1846 Congress however gave in to President Polk’s wishes and the US invaded Mexico in an all out war that actually accomplished a few things:

  • US Army generals learned their craft of war
  • Whig party split at their peak which allowed a political vacuum for the Republican party
  • Deaths, disease all told by sending men into the tropics saw a 40% casualty rate
  • Failed to annex ALL of Mexico which set the stage for Lincoln’s War on the South
  • Sherman’s total war strategy was formed which was used in the South as well against the Comanche and Arapaho in the decades to come

The blind almost religion faith in the state causes untold casualties, deaths and financial destruction 360 degrees EXCEPT to the state itself .. because:

Now you know why school kids are never taught about this war. Because there were really no lies made to cover-up the real reason of this war except the president lying outright as to the location of the second Mexican invasion near the Rio Grande River.

Peace out.

-SF1

Immigration: Why Adding Government to the Equation Makes it Difficult

I have long had a heart for those men who risked leaving family for a season to make good money with hard work to provide their family a better life. I too had to leave one state with my wife and kids and be employed in another necessitating weekend commutes and double housing expense.

I too know that the current distribution system of taking money from those working and giving a percentage of it to others who don’t work is fundamentally flawed, and then add on to that the giving of this money also to those that cross an imaginary line called a “border”.  What most people do not understand that inside this line are other lines that reflect private property. The US footprint is not all government land, and, all government land is essentially, the people’s. But I digress.

The bottom line is that governments do not really care about people, they just want to be the middleman in all the transactions. They actually prefer that families break up so that they can be the “father” who provides for the kids. When you come to terms with the dysfunction of the government you then know why our society is getting increasingly dysfunctional. Government has become people’s god. For a good book on this, try Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s “Democracy – The God That Failed” (there may be free PDF versions available).

The following Mises article from 2006 highlights the conundrum:

  • The philosophy of individual rights and capitalism implies that foreigners have a right to come and to live and work here, i.e., to immigrate into the United States. The land of the United States is owned by individuals and voluntary associations of individuals, such as private business firms. It is not owned by the United States government or by the American people acting as a collective; indeed many of the owners of land in the United States are not Americans, but foreign nationals, including foreign investors. The private owners of land have the right to use or sell or rent their land for any peaceful purpose. This includes employing immigrants and selling them food and clothing and all other goods, and selling or renting housing to them. If individual private landowners are willing to accept the presence of immigrants on their property as employees, customers, or tenants, that should be all that is required for the immigrants to be present. Anyone else who attempts to determine the presence of absence of immigrants is simply an interfering busybody ready to use a gun or club to impose his will.
  • … the philosophy of individual rights and capitalism implies that the immigrants do not have a right to be supported at public expense, which is a violation of the rights of the taxpayers. Of course, it is no less a violation of the rights of the taxpayers when native-born individuals are supported at public expense. The immigrants are singled out for criticism based on the allegation that they in particular are making the burden intolerable.

To satisfy both of these rights, one has to undo what the US has done since the 1930s when the welfare state was brought on the scene “for the common good”

What we see today is a reflection of a principle that Mises himself proposed, as George Reisman from this Mises article points out:

This is a classic illustration of Mises’s principle that prior government intervention into the economic system breeds later intervention. Here the application of his principle is, start with the Welfare State, end with the Police State. A police state is what is required effectively to stop substantial illegal immigration that has become a major burden because of the Welfare State.

Our government loves it that people are divided along this continuum since it is viewed as an innocent bystander to this hot-button issue.

Government is 99% of the problem. Those educated, inoculated and propagandized by the state will never see it.

-SF1

After the Unintended Consequences, It is Hard to Reverse Good Intentions

30 years into this policy there are finally some politicians that are stating the obvious. Immigration is one thing, an invasion is something entirely different.

Kasselstrand believes this is the only way to solve Sweden’s problems:

“It’s not enough for a restrictive immigration policy. It is not enough to want to stop immigration. In order to solve the major societal problems in Sweden, one has to dare to talk about re-immigration. And not on a small one, but on a large-scale,” he said.

The AfS leader wants all residence permits since the year 2000 to be re-examined. According to him the much larger right-wing Social Democrats do not dare to address this subject.

For Kasselstrand integration has been a total failure.

When sustainability depends on the “immigrants” to add value to society, one has to be able to predict that at the “interview” stage.

It was much easier in the 1600s – 1800s when immigrants had to produce value or die … these days it is the attraction of “free stuff” that is predominant. Eventually, users outnumber producers of value and everyone suffers.

On has to be able to project into the long-term, how would your children or grand-children deal with the fallout of your decisions today?

From Voice of Europe

Remember When the American Colonies Were Ticked?

Home of tyranny (above) .. the 2018 equivalent to King George in 1776

“… He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance…

.. For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury..

..For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences ”

[NOTE: Patriot Act for that last line .. geez. .. moving on ..]

“.. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us ..”

The first one will tick off Trump supporters as they are blind to the inefficiencies this government has for those who innocently desire to be naturalized in the USA, hard workers, good families .. just know the following is very true: