Tag: media lies

Roots: What Are We as Individuals and Community At Our Core? Honorable?

As I read the headlines that 99% of Americans do not see, those from independent and grassroots media, across the Internet, I find a search for several things from all angles across the globe. I find words like honor, freedom, faith and reason all being bantered about as we humans attempt to make sense of this broken world.

On the one hand, we have people looking back in our broken (and sometimes covered up) history. For example, Karen Stokes writes of the type of person typical of areas of the southern USA in 1863 under the stress of war that threatened their families and their livelihood:

.. their letters also offer an inspiring story of “devotion to home, family solidarity, faith, virtue, fidelity, sacrifice, bravery, and a strength of character that makes it possible to survive terrible loss and trauma.

The character to stand up to tyranny when ones own family and way of life could be swept away like that of Job in the Old Testament of the Bible is something that was not seen in these united States since the War for Independence 80 years earlier when the same kind of people stood up to the British Empire.

A man or woman of honor were people, who in times of crisis, rose to the occasion and became unwilling leaders in their efforts to repel the forces of change that represented a foe who’s agenda was to implement their own life view on others, with force. Honor was a sought after attribute especially in the South in the decades after the War for Independence, and by the 1930s had all been but overshadowed by something new:

Earlier in the 1930s, the celebrated English writer and critic G. K. Chesterton gave his thoughts on what the “Old South” had to offer the world in his essay “On America,” in which he asserted that, although the twentieth century was the “Age of America,” there was “a virtue lacking in the age, for want of which it will certainly suffer and possibly fail.”

That missing virtue, according to Chesterton, was honor.

The Age of America emerged from the post-“Civil War” north’s view that its own victory over the South was a moral one. All one has to do is to count the atrocities and scandals in the decades that followed until the Northern GOP was forced to finally let the South go in the late 1870s, removing them from military districts and allowing them to go it alone to recover economically. It would not be until the 1970s that most of these states did recover, without much if any federal assistance. That is not honorable.

Lately, there has been yet another underground effort to capture the essence of what the history of the South could help us in the 21st century understand about the core of human nature in a world that seems out of control and bent on destroying us:

in his book Why America Failed (2012), cultural historian Morris Berman expressed similar sentiments, characterizing the antebellum South as a culture focused on “honor and community,” and further stating, “In its flawed and tragic way, the Old South stood for values that we finally cannot live without if we are to remain human.”

It does seem that hope and encouragement are sorely needed at this time in this world. Personally I take solace in reading what the 1st century Jesus-followers did as they faced persecution and yet stood with honor, grace and defended their families against all odds, with the strange by-product of having Jesus’ words ripple throughout the Roman Empire in such a way as to turn the then known world upside-down!

So in 1939, as the threat of another world war was evident, a book was offered in an attempt to give some hope from a more secular view:

What does the South have to offer that is valuable to humanity, to civilization? In 1939, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Douglas Southall Freeman proposed an answer to this question in his book ‘The South to Posterity’ ..

.. He maintained that these works of historical literature would always stand as solid evidence that the South had “fought its fight gallantly, and, so far as war ever permits, with fairness and decency; that it endured its hardships with fortitude; that it wrought its hard recovery through uncomplaining toil, and that it gave to the nation the inspiration of personalities, humble and exalted, who met a supreme test and did not falter.”

The core of his book centers around the real war-time correspondence letters of Alexander Cheves Haskell, one of seven brothers who fought in the War Against Southern Independence:

In ‘The South to Posterity’, one man whose story Douglas Southall Freeman offered as testimony to the “court of time” was a young Confederate cavalry officer from South Carolina, Alexander Cheves Haskell. Freeman had recently read a biography of Haskell which drew heavily on his memoir and correspondence, and he singled out a letter Haskell penned in 1863 as among the finest examples of “the war-time correspondence of high souls” and “one of the most beautiful born of war.” Freeman included only a portion of this letter in his book, but all of Haskell’s wartime letters have finally been collected and published as part of his family’s correspondence in my new book An Everlasting Circle: Letters of the Haskell Family of Abbeville, South Carolina, 1861-1865.

An Everlasting Circle includes many outstanding letters written by a remarkable and prominent family that sent seven sons to war. Dr. James E. Kibler has contributed an excellent afterword to the book that comments on the literary value of the letters and the kind of civilization that could produce a family like the Haskells. It was a civilization shaped by classical learning and orthodox Christianity.

Beyond this article, others like Bionic Mosquito, has taken sights off the distractions of today’s world and centered on the core of what each generation needs to grapple with, the tension between reason and faith:

As God is the author of reason and faith, philosophy and theology, why would any Christian agree to live with such distinctions? It seems reasonable to suggest that one reason Christianity has lost its way (and has lost many in the West) is precisely because Christian leaders have accepted and even emphasized this difference. “Oh, you just have to believe by faith; don’t ask questions.” This is too often heard.

It is interesting that non-Christian intellectuals are making this connection once again. I am thinking of Jordan Peterson and John Vervaeke. It is also interesting that this has led to an increase in interest in Christianity – although I think neither of these two have ever intended to increase church attendance.

It is the case: God moves in mysterious ways….

Yes, that last quote is a teaser. You will have to go look around Bionic’s site to see the path he has traveled in his quest for truth. I may have to post about some of his works this year. He has done a great service for those around the globe who are starting to see all the government and media lies and are desperately searching for truth.

Stay tuned!

-SF1

Abe Lincoln: Can You Handle the Truth About this Man?

I love the truth. The truth sets one free!

Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you. (John 8:32 The Message – paraphrase of the Bible)

You see, for some time now I have been “incensed” at the lies I have been told all my life. This started when as a young man attending a church that had a culture where everyone showed up on Sunday mornings with no smiles, with no joy, almost like a gathering of people doing their duty. The “dominie” (Dutch word for pastor, Scottish for schoolmaster) was pressed to ensure that everyone was very aware of their sins and their performance for the past week which seemed to be within the Calvinist tradition. In this environment, I opened the Bible in front of me and read from the books of the New Testament about people following Jesus who were full of joy, and hope and laughter, even in the middle of the storms of life while living in an oppressive empire!

In hindsight, it seems that there were times when I took it upon myself to dig for the truth. When given Child-craft encyclopedias as an 8 year old I read the World Book encyclopedias instead. Later in life, when studying towards a Bachelor of Science degree in Ministry and Leadership I expanded my research far beyond the text books supplied. A bit later in life, after hearing contrary thoughts to the political view of President Bush’s “War on Terror”, I looked beyond the US government/media spin and to source material on what really happened both BEFORE and after 9/11! Of course once you have doubts about the government/media story about 9/11, you go on to other events like The Gulf of Tonkin incident and Vietnam War, JFK’s assassination, Pearl Harbor’s “surprise”, sinking of the Lusitania, the sinking of the  USS Maine in Havana harbor, the events leading up to the first shot at Ft. Sumter, the War of 1812, the transition from the Articles of Confederation to the US Constitution coup d’tat and even events during and right after the American Revolution.

Looking back, I find myself “Gratefully Disillusioned”, a term that reflects satisfaction in turning over so many “sacred cows” in life, that I do feel very free to say and do what my heart encourages me towards in my everyday life. I no longer have to measure what I hear and see with a “holy narrative” that someone (government/media/religion) has propped up as “truth” to be preserved, I can in fact entertain a thought without accepting it!

So what does this all have to do with Abraham Lincoln? Everything. Of all the presidents we have had in the United States, there is none other that has received such a “holy place” in our political understanding of America than this man. His assassination in fact was the major turning point in this because before the day he died, he in fact was not well like at all both in the South and in the North or Western regions of the United States. The timing of his assassination, just before Easter, setup the political mouthpieces (including many New England clergy) to seize this moment to deify a man for political means that has lasted over 150 years. How appropriate for this man to be chosen for this USE by all political parties, for as a man he was at his core a political animal!

While there have been over 10,000 books written about Lincoln, only a minority have really unpacked his real effect, his real life and his real character. These include Edgar Lee Masters’ 1931 classic, ‘Lincoln the Man‘, a 1943 book, ‘The Deification of Lincoln‘, by historian Ira D. Cardiff and lately the books ‘Lincoln Unmasked‘ and ‘The Real Lincoln‘ by Thomas DiLorenzo.

This week, another epic truth-telling book was released, ‘Lincoln As He Really Was‘ by Charles T. Pace in which Thomas DiLorenzo writes the Forward. Some context setting quotes follow as this book may consume the balance of my Labor Day weekend!

So here are a few quotes that reflect on the character of Abraham Lincoln before his death in 1865:

Murray N. Rothbard once said about Lincoln in an (online) essay entitled “Just War”: Lincoln was a “master politician,” said Rothbard, defined as one who is a masterful “liar, conniver, and manipulator.” He makes any “master politician” or our time look amateurish by comparison.

.. about his personal life, while there is nothing inherently wrong with not going to church EXCEPT if a majority of authors on Lincoln have led many to believe that all Lincoln’s Bible references infer that he was in fact a Christian, they have led you down the wrong path. One needs to hear what those closest to Lincoln said about him:

Lincoln never joined a church, and both his law partner William Herndon and his wife Mary Todd said he was not a Christian. His White House assistant, Colonel Ward Lamon, called him “an infidel.” His close associate Judge David Davis, whom he appointed to the Supreme Court, wrote that Lincoln “had no faith, in the Christian sense of the term.” But his mother read him Bible stories as a child, and later in life he studied the Bible for political purposes – to use religious rhetoric to sway the masses to favor his political positions.

Political animals, like the ones we have in the 21st century, tend to be crude in their day-to-day life:

[Lincoln was] a “zealous party man” who honed his skills, such as they were, of personally attacking his political opponents with often over-the-top ad hominem assaults ..

None of Lincoln’s family members voted for him, nor did 20 of the 23 ministers in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois. He did not even carry his own county in the 1860 election. These are the people who knew him best.

Lincoln invited no family members to his wedding; chose not to attend his own father’s funeral; and is said to have never had a real friend.

Lincoln was a master story teller, many of which were notoriously vulgar and crude. He never passed up an opportunity to make a speech, writes Pace, as he spent years honing the skills of the master politician. He could sound like an abolitionist in front of a Massachusetts audience, and the exact opposite in Southern Illinois. His speeches were always vague and his positions hard to pin down, the hallmark of a successful politician. He viewed politics as “life itself” and was intensely partisan, routinely denouncing his political opponent as “villains.” He was a “born politician,”

By 1864, what did people think?

During his lifetime Lincoln was actually the most hated and detested of all American presidents, as documented by historian Larry Tagg in ‘The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: The Story of America’s Most Reviled President‘. For example, on page 435 of his book Larry Tagg cites an 1864 Harpers Weekly article that compiled a list of terms that the Northern press used to describe Lincoln including “Filthy Story-Teller, Ignoramus Abe, Despot, Old Scoundrel . . . Perjurer, Liar, Robber, Thief, Swindler, Braggart, Tyrant, Buffoon, Fiend, Usurper, Butcher, Monster . . .”

After Lincoln’s April 14th, 1865 assassination:

New England pastors who had excoriated Lincoln for four years all of a sudden “rewrote their Easter sermons to include a new, exalted view of Lincoln as an American Moses, a leader out of slavery, a national savior who was not allowed to cross over into the Promised Land” himself. Senator James Grimes of Iowa boasted that the Republican Party’s deification of Lincoln “has made it impossible to speak the truth about Abraham Lincoln hereafter.”

Even 80 years later in 1943 historian Ira D. Cardiff wrote:

… that by then Americans were not even “interested . . . in the real Lincoln. They desire a supernatural Lincoln, a Lincoln with none of the faults or frailties of the common man . . . a savior, leading us to democracy and liberty – though most said readers are not interested in democracy or liberty.” Moreover, said Cardiff, “a biography of Lincoln which told the truth about him would probably have great difficulty in finding a publisher.”

Hopefully I have your attention, and if you are ready and like me have been:

.. incensed that you have been lied to all your life by the politically-controlled/politically-correct education establishment. If so, ‘Lincoln as He Really Was‘ is a must-read as a first step in your rehabilitation as an educated American citizen – or as the citizen of any other country. It will be especially helpful in allowing your children and grandchildren to have an opportunity to learn the truth about this important aspect of American history.

So now I am off to my reading nook .. take care this holiday weekend (in the United States) .. talk to y’all again next week!

-SF1

PS About the author of this book:

Apologia MY EDUCATION IN COLLEGE was scientific — mathematics, physics, chemistry, zoology; in medical school it was the study of man’s structure, his form, his gross and microscopic qualities, his function, his diseases.  There not a mention was made of Lincoln — the course of study being only a steady search for scientific truth.  The doctor, like the farmer, is, in his limited sphere, looking for reality.  In clinical experience, both in training years and in my own practice, I saw men and women who served to the best of their ability the needs of the sick.  In my mature years I finally had time to read outside my profession.  I read of America’s supreme figure: “Honest Abe.”  I learned that whatever he was, he was certainly no doctor.  He lived a different life.

There were two Lincolns — the myth and the man.

Charles T. Pace Greenville, North Carolina

Pace, Charles T.. Lincoln As He Really Was (Kindle Locations 165-172). Shotwell Publishing LLC. Kindle Edition.