Tag: John C. Calhoun

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

How to Deal with a Virus? Vax or Naturally?

Sorry to disappoint, as I am not talking about the Covid-19 novel virus, but the virus that is a whole lot worse and has a horrible half-life. That virus is government.

Governments come and go, they run the gambit from totalitarian “democratic/socialist” ones that kill millions of their own people, to totalitarian “communist/marxist” ones that kill millions of their own people, to monarchies that can do the same.

While the nomads in history had other things that threatened their lives, and pioneers the same in new lands, there is nothing like a government that has the ability to take out large swaths of people.

Oh sure on the front end of these governments the talk is all about “safety”, only in time do we understand that to mean safety for THEM. It only took until the 21st century to allow police officers in the “land of the free” to be told by the highest court in the land that they did not have to protect the people, but that their first priority was to protect themselves.

So here we are in 2020 which is turning out to be an epic year for governments around the globe, almost in sync, to rise up and control everyone. From small businesses to people who live on property in the middle of nowhere, the way this government addresses 330M people assumes that they all live in the city. Supposedly even Google is providing them data on how people are venturing out > 2 MILES away from their primary residence. For some people, that is just doing chores on the ranch!

Centralized government’s virus downsides have been noted most succinctly just before the American Revolution in much literature which then gave the Founding generation an opportunity to experiment one more time with a government in mind that might be, as they say, “exceptional”. Maybe this would be a government virus that was held in check by a vaccine like the Articles of Confederation (AoC)?

The problem is that after the independence from the British Empire, the idealists became pragmatists and many in the founding generation in their old age once again thought more of safety than of freedom, thought that a different BIG centralized government might be MORE beneficial (to them, the caretakers). Was the vaccine (AoC) too effective?

So from 1783’s Treaty of Paris under the Articles of Confederation came a whole new “operating system” (OS) .. the US Constitution. That coup d’etat forever changed the trajectory of the united colonies to become a united state. This vaccine actually still allowed the virus to grow, but at a slower rate, or as one might say, they flattened the curve!

The downside of having to travel down the centralized rails a bit is that once the momentum is there, there is little you can do to stop it. During the War of 1812, northern states contemplated secession as this war hurt the Northeast/New England region the hardest. It was after this war that arose a person who in time began to see clearly the “side-effects” of this virus. This man’s name was John C. Calhoun. One of the latest Abbeville Institute articles that deals with this 1619 initiative helps to paint why Federalists were mad at him from the War of 1812 until his death in 1850 and are still mad at him in 2020!

Side-note: This world also lost another prophet in 1850, Frederic Bastiat, whose thoughts I covered somewhat in these two posts here and here.

One should realize by now that those who propose the proper track to be on rather than the centralized government / totalitarian / empire track are marginalized from politics well before these ideas are squashed in the public square. So it comes as no surprise that John C. Calhoun, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, was:

… the last eloquent political philosopher to stand against the ideology and intentions of the Federalists. He was the last to stand firmly in the halls of the Senate and articulate exactly what it would mean to allow power to become centralized under an unconstrained federal government.

Talk about flattening the curve, this virus gained ground in 1865 with the Union’s brutal victory not just over the Confederate army that was protecting people’s homeland, but over the Southern region itself as Reconstruction again drove home the point that the virus (central / totalitarian government) was king. Everything beyond this point just added to this virus’ spread .. the Spanish-American War in 1898 based on a false flag, progressive movement in 1900, creation of the Federal Reserve and implementation of the DIRECT taxing of Americans (income tax) in 1913, WWI entry in 1918, FDR’s socialization and debt programs (New Deal) of the 1930s followed by a cover-up war (WWII) in which he economically goaded Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor WHILE keeping his navy commanders there in the dark, for the greater good. Since WWII this virus has gone out of control, but has been oblivious to millions that were educated in government schools reading government textbooks. The most ignorant generation in history is the most “educated” ones!!

In summary:

The Anti-federalist position, as proven by what has become of the Republic, was the only true, realistic and conservative position in 1788. The Federalist position, as evidenced by history, turned out to be totalitarian in nature, it is the power behind progressivism, it was from the start the seeds of the eventual destruction of the Republic; debt, discord, endless wars, less liberty. One simply could not have enacted the federal income tax, the New Deal, social security and all the enormous government and taxation that came from that without the Federalist position winning out.

Again, this did not happen overnight, so I call this a stealth-virus!

Calhoun, despite his flaws, despite the fact that the rights he defended are offensive to our modern sensibilities, despite all that, Calhoun was right on some important foundational issues. Progressivism could never have raised its head to expand government without the efforts of the Federalists from 1788-1870; no federal income tax, no prohibition and the resultant birth of organized crime, no New Deal, no dysfunction of government at the Federal level (because the Federal government would matter a lot less) no massive debt, no tariffs, no endless wars. This is the legacy of the Federalists.

Calhoun was prophetic in all this, and like all others who have raised the issues of the cost of this virus, continue to be marginalized and forgotten especially in these days.

So now that the centralized government is on display today as a totalitarian state that can shut down any business they want and make you mind (like a dog or a sheep), I can’t help but think of Toby Keith’s song:

How do you like me now
Now that I’m on my way
Do you still think I’m crazy standing here today
I couldn’t make you love me
But I always dreamed about living in your radio
How do you like me now?!

Same thing only different .. but do you feel the Gov-Love now?

Peace out.

-SF1

PS How about a “natural” way to deal with this virus .. go underground like the 1st century Christians who found their way around an empire’s persecution to help people “off the record”? The fix for government (virus) is never in politics, it is in building up a natural immunity!!!