Tag: revolution

Reigning in Evil is Indeed Appropriate, But Thinking the Federal Government will Help ..

Seems like many things in life appear to be black and while, high road or the low road, religion or hell. So in this election year where plenty of evil has been uncorked, there is a thought that the only recourse is to elect a certain leader, because “never before” has there been such an important election.

If it were only that easy. You see, those American colonists threw off the British Empire to be free, however, even before the American Revolution was over there were agendas afoot toward establishing a political power that would in fact bring less freedom and more taxes. Tax slaves once again.

Our rights, given to us by our Creator, were to be protected by this thing called government. The last two decades have seen our Bill of Rights evaporate “for safety from terrorists” (thanks GOP) ..

2012 version
2018 version

.. and now our ability to elect representatives is about to be removed (thanks Democrats)!

I think it is that bait-n-switch that can get under the skin of those that do more than talk about freedom. Those that have either willingly chosen to serve in the military, or being drafted, gave it their all and then some that return to the USA quite disillusioned.

This happened with the Revolutionary War militia member of South Carolina that were indispensable in getting the British forces out of their region who NEVER were paid for their efforts. This is also what happened when Daniel Shay and his veteran groups found that being paid in worthless Continental dollars yet expected to pay back property taxes in gold in Massachusetts would sow the seeds of a rebellion whose core were those veterans who already gave more than lip service to liberty and freedom efforts.

More recently, we have many vets who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002 who today wonder how they could have been so willing to go and fight to “spread democracy” and yet realize that democracy was never the objective. PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder] is a real thing caused by an internal fight of morals for good or for evil. No one wants to wake up to the fact that they were used .. or to hear their leaders say things like this:

So as you see, this is nothing new. Every generation has to come to terms with this when they see their country and society being raped and pillaged by the evil in their midst. When politicians restrain law enforcement from protecting private property OR the citizens (that the US Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement had no obligation to attempt), it is up to “we the people” to take back what we had delegated to those who represent and serve us.

In 2020 we are seeing this vividly in the power struggle between the “establishment” (that has a swamp of their own) and the “Woke-Left” who desires to put their politicians and employer (Soros) into the US’s driver’s seat. Here is a chart that shows the span of principles (from tyrants to woke-left to real conservative) from Vasko Kohlmayer from his post at Lew Rockwell’s site today:

It should be no surprise what direction this nation is heading, and why there are those that say only Trump can save America.

Well, in truth, America has not had a healthy society or culture for many generations, and the more the federal government thinks it can fix things both in LA and in Podunk, Louisiana with the same tools, the more ineffective and out of touch it becomes. The more money it then needs to FORCE the fix. No wonder the bloated budget, the staggering bureaucracy and the perpetual of kicking the domestic issues down the road while we go and invade some nation, any nation somewhere elect on this globe.

But I digress. Maybe it is time, past time, to go full on local!

An example of think locally / act locally is what the last part of today’s blog post is set to communicate. I would like to now go back in time and unpack an era just after WWII in Tennessee where that corrupt local government combined with a corrupt law enforcement was finally “right-sized” by people of principle, veterans that knew something had to be done.

You see, in my mind, fixing this country where life, liberty and property are valued starts with me ..not relying on the state whose only tool is force:

Once we each have researched how people can live in proximity in this world filled with scarcity, it is THEN we can go about sharing ideas of freedom, liberty and prosperity with our neighbors, our co-workers and if possible, even with family!

With that, please either read the full post at the link below OR follow with me the Reader’s Digest version in the clips below from a post from Abbeville Institute’s Neil Kumar called ‘The Battle of Athens, Tennessee‘ :

Bill White, a vet, has seen the injustice and issues this declaration –

Well! Here you are! After three or four years of fighting for your country. You survived it all. You came back. And what did you come back to? A free country? You came back to Athens, Tennessee, in McMinn County, that’s run by a bunch of outlaws. They’ve got hired gunmen all over this county right now at this minute. What for? One purpose. To scare you so bad you won’t dare stand up for the rights you’ve been bleeding and dying for. Some of your mothers and some of your sisters are afraid to walk down the streets to the polling places. Lots of men, too!

The local government had secured a monopoly that terrorized the local taxpayers. No one even wanted to walk past the jail in case a lazy deputy accused you of doing something wrong and locking you up. This environment had gone on for years, and neither the state OR the federal government helped:

There were no “elections” in McMinn County through the war years. The ballot boxes were in Democratic offices, and Cantrell’s deputies served as the election officers, some of whom were brutal killers with the blood of innocent civilians on their hands. .. Word was put out among elderly voters that their pensions would be held up unless they voted “the right way.”

When the Republican election judge, a disabled veteran of the First World War, attempted to view the ballot count, he was dragged into the corridor and beaten, leaving him paralyzed. Another man who attempted to observe the ballot count was pistol-whipped, and one gunman fired at a poll worker who tried to leave the courthouse … Several Athenians petitioned the Department of Justice for relief, knowing that local and State officials would not take any action against the machine. A hardware store owner wrote Attorney General Francis Biddle, imploring, “The good people of this county are sacrificing for the cause of America’s freedom but have lost their freedom at home. Both parties have lost the freedom of the ballot box, a dictatorship has been set up, the county treasury is being raided at the expense of the taxpayers, and the good people of this county would like to sell their property and move away. Your department is our last line of defense. Please, for God’s sake come to the rescue of a helpless people.”

The (typical) response from the federal government:

The Department of Justice compiled a report, observing that “the alleged violations in McMinn County were the worst ever brought to the attention of the Department of Justice.” Despite overwhelming evidence and continuing petitions, the Feds took no action. A separate ouster lawsuit against McMinn election commissioners was finally tried by the Assistant Attorney General, largely due to the fact that the U.S. Attorney and the two U.S. Senators who had recommended him were believed to be associated with the machine, but this case was held before a judge who was also rumored to be a part of the organization. The judge dismissed most of the charges and fined the men one penny for the charges that stuck.

At the end of the day, when corruption comes local, y’all will have to be ready yourself, because:

In this case, the returning vets had skin in the game, they had been fighting for freedom and was horrified at what they came home to and decided that the first recourse was political:

.. another veteran said, “It wasn’t really a town anymore. It was a jail.” Another GI deplored the deputies, who “were nothing but a lot of swaggering, strutting, storm-troopers, drunk most of the time, beating up our citizens for the slightest reason.” Yet another observed that “if you were on the right team, why, you could get away with almost anything. If you were on the wrong team, you couldn’t get away with anything.” This should all sound all too familiar for us today.

When Cantrell announced that he was returning to Athens to “run” for Sheriff, Mansfield his handpicked successor to the State Senate seat, the GIs knew that now was the time to take action. Despite having been warned to stay away from the polls and to not even consider running for office, the veterans began organizing. As one of the soldiers put it, “We just got plain tired of being pushed around by a bunch of thugs.”

Politics however was in the back pocket of the county’s thugs, but the process brought about public relations that allowed the people to know someone was trying to save them. The Republican party was actually honorable enough to give the GIs a shot at the offices up for election:

The local Republican Party resolved to officially endorse the veterans’ ticket instead of running its own candidates; after seconding the motion in favor of the resolution, one party official delivered an excellent summation: “We are involved in a conflict with desperate enemies who have sought to subject us to tyranny and oppression…We feel a deep sense of obligation and now seek in measure to repay…Young men who have fought against oppression abroad will continue that fight for honesty and decency at home.”

However, those in power do not concede it easily, if at all:

Election Day had finally arrived. A local minister exhorted his congregation thus: “If you do not vote as your conscience dictates, then you have sold your citizenship and do not deserve to be citizens. It is the responsibility of each and every person to preserve our most cherished possession, liberty, or forever lose it.” Armed deputies “guarded” each polling place, and reports of election fraud poured in to GI headquarters almost immediately. One veteran lamented, “They already started knocking our boys in the head and putting them in jail. They’re taking this thing… At one polling place, a deputy beat and shot a sixty-year-old whose only crime had been his surplus of gumption in exercising his right to vote. Meanwhile, another deputy delivered a brutal beating to a GI election judge after he protested the brazen voter fraud happening before his eyes; the deputy tried to draw his gun, and likely would have killed the veteran, but it snagged in his holster. When he had exhausted himself, he had the man dragged to the jail bloody and insensate.

By this time, DeRose notes, “there were twelve ballot boxes: one in the jail, another inside a heavily defended courthouse, a third barricaded in the Dixie Café, a fourth in the vault in the Cantrell Bank Building, and poll watchers had been ejected at two other locations.” Inside the courthouse, deputies held a handful of GI poll watchers hostage, two of them wounded.

The powerful WILL turn to violence to keep power. Keep that in mind people of California, New York State, Michigan and other states in between!  Just know, at the right time when that line is crossed, one may have to fight fire with fire:

Do you know what your rights are supposed to be? How many rights have you got left? None! Not even the right to vote in a free election. When you lose that, you’ve lost everything. And you are damned well going to lose it unless you fight and fight the only way they understand. Fire with fire! We’ve got to make this an honest election because we promised the people that if they voted it would be an honest election. And it’s going to be. But only if we see that it is. We are going to have to run these organized criminals out of town, and we can do it if we stick together. Are you afraid of them? Why, I could take a banana stalk and run every one of these potbellied draft dodgers across Depot Hill. Get the hell out of here and get something to shoot with. And come back as fast as you can. – Bill White

Inspired by White, the veterans fanned out to procure all of the weapons and ammunition that they could. They returned with an arsenal of pistols, rifles, shotguns, squirrel guns, and European souvenirs like a German Mauser. White still wasn’t satisfied: “We need some more firepower.” A group got together to raid the nearby National Guard armory, where they found revolvers, a Thompson sub-machine gun, an array of .30-caliber M1917 rifles, and plenty of ammunition. For good measure, one man drove to his hunting lodge in Asheville to collect his stash of ammunition. DeRose describes the scene well: “They draped themselves with bandoliers of bullets, took everything they could carry, and drove back to town.”

Things were about to get real, but a noble cause does sometimes require violence, sometimes more than turning tables over in a temple!

He had sworn to defend America against all of her enemies, and he meant to satisfy his vow. Later, White would explain that “if it was worth going over there and risking your life, laying it down, it was worth it here, too. So, we decided to fight.” The GIs set out, ready for action. They formed a line on a hillside across from the jail and demanded that the machine men bring out the ballot boxes. From the jail, someone called, “You’re going to have to come get them.” The GIs answered that that’s exactly what they would do. Someone else inside the jail shouted, “Why don’t you call the law?” A GI delivered the rejoinder: “There ain’t no damn law in McMinn County!” According to Byrum, the first fire was a shotgun blast from inside the jail; in any case, gunfire erupted.

Flashes pierced the night, both sides keeping up a sustained assault on one another. Athens, DeRose writes, “rattled to the roar of Tommy-guns, rifles, and pistols” and the “blunt blast of shotguns mingled with the sharper crack of rifles and the whine of ricochets.” The GIs, under the ceaseless torrent of bullets, climbed rooftops to take positions atop a ring of buildings encircling the jail. In the streets, the veterans further hemmed in the crossfire, firing from behind walls and parked cars. The soldiers shot out the transformer that supplied the jail, Byrum notes, “leaving the deputies not only low on ammunition but with the difficult task of groping around trying to load guns in the dark.”

With the National Guard on the way, White and his men stepped it up:

After receiving news that the National Guard had been mobilized, the GIs asked White what they should do. He replied immediately, vowing, “We’re not going to do anything about it. We’re going to keep shooting here until we get those ballot boxes and get those people out of there.” Running out of time, they realized that they needed to pick things up. One of the veterans reminded Bill that there was an enormous stockpile of dynamite in the old county barn that the county used to clear roads and blast stumps and stones. The dynamite procured, the GIs commenced tossing dynamite in increasing amounts at the jail, aiming closer and closer with each throw, finally promising that the next would be through the window. This last threat was followed by the veterans’ ultimate volley. The machine men, outgunned and out of ammunition, surrendered, and the deputies marched out one after another, their hands held high in supplication to their victorious conquerors. A swollen crowd of townspeople cheered.

Unlike most insurrections and revolutions, this one was not followed by another team in power that sought to intimidate to maintain their position:

“They realize [that] they have taken a serious step, but do not interpret their action as [having taken] the law into their own hands. Rather, they say [that] they just put the law back in the hands of the people.”

Now that is honorable and principle-based.

On August 1, 1946, a group of Southern World War Two veterans in Athens, Tennessee, fought and won the only successful armed insurrection in the United States since the War of Independence.

May a grassroots growth of liberty and freedom-minded men and women set about to repair this land from the local and up in the weeks and months to come. Regardless if the USA remains a union is not important. The most important aspect is what these GIs fought for in Athens, TN in 1946.

FREEDOM

Peace out.

-SF1

Point of No Return – Ruling Class’s Power Over the US Empire

Sometimes it takes a very small quote to wake up to the new reality. I contend that this reality could have come much earlier, like in 1814, or 1860, 1867, 1870s, 1913, 1941, 1950, 1964, 1971, 1990, 2002, or 2008. I think it comes from our nature to assume the best in some tough situations.

But, consider this quote from Angelo Codevilla in his article “Facing Up to the Revolution” :

Our country is in a state of revolution, irreversibly, because society’s most influential people have retreated into moral autarchy, have seceded from America’s constitutional order, and because they browbeat their socio-political adversaries instead of trying to persuade them. Theirs is not a choice that can be reversed. It is a change in the character of millions of people.

The sooner conservatives realize that the Republic established between 1776 and 1789—the America we knew and loved—cannot return, the more fruitfully we will be able to manage the revolution’s clear and present challenges to ourselves. How are we to deal with a ruling class that insists on ruling—elections and generally applicable rules notwithstanding—because it regards us as lesser beings?

It does have to be considered how the US Constitution actually helped the oligarchy, the ruling class, to gain access to the US government. If the colonies had remained sovereign states, like under the Articles of Confederation, it would have been more difficult and easier to resist from a grassroots level. The spread of “general” government to that of a federal government forever changed the structure of this nation as well as the fabric of society. Today, 99% of people can not imagine life without their safety net, their protector, their ‘mom’, their ‘dad’, .. their government.

Last month in a Lew Rockwell article, Gary D. Barnett proclaimed:

No nation-state is valid, as all states tend to seek a hierarchal structure of power, specifically in the name of protecting the common man collectively with profoundly restrictive laws. No free individual has need for such false protection. The beginning of this American experiment to create a powerful state was said to be about freedom of the individual, while all along, the hierarchy of power became more and more evident. What started out as a few separate colonies quickly became separate states with a new ruling class, and then one nation-state was formed and centralized, with allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. This progression was intended all along, and so the sought after tyrannical state came to fruition. Today we live as slaves in a society with a ruling structure akin to a fascist oligarchy. This is now a nation that is in constant war, and has become the largest and most murderous empire in the history of the world.

Unfortunately, secession will never be tolerated (if Lincoln didn’t tolerate it, you can bet no 21st century president would), and those who speak of this will be marginalized one way or another.

The US Empire will have to die before anything like the 1783-1789 federated group of states could ever be attempted again. As Mr. Barnett predicts:

Collectivism breeds empire and allows it to flourish, and because of the loss of individual thought, it becomes the internal disease that leads to the extermination of that empire. This is the real America, not the land of the free and home of the brave, but a collective mob of ignorant sheep awaiting the slaughter due to their own weakness and stupidity.

With collectivist thought at an all time-high we seem to be a long way from breaking up this evil empire that continues to wage war all around the globe. War is the only thing it knows, and the only thing that brings in the $USD and props up the petro-dollar.

Sad times indeed, however, by planting the seeds of individual thought in our kids and our friends, we can all be best prepared for the next season of the US Empire.

-SF1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-SF1

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

August 17, 1780 Francis Marion Goes Into Action – As a Guerrilla Leader/Freedom Fighter

The day after the British defeated the Continental Army at Camden, Francis Marion knew that something had to be done to delay the British rolling up through the colonies and crushing George Washington in the North. In addition to this, if the British were allowed total control of South Carolina, the colony and its people would no longer have control of its own society, taxes and laws.

Marion traveled 80 miles by horseback arriving at Witherspoon’s Ferry to meet up with the Kingstree Militia on 17AUG1780. As South Carolina’s 2nd Regiment leader, either of his own initiative OR on orders from the South Carolina governor who was in exile in North Carolina, he gave orders for all the boats to be destroyed along the Santee. The Santee served as a highway of sorts for the British to supply their forces inland. It was key for the militia to slow the British advance! On 18AUG1780, the militia dispersed in various directions to do what they could do to preserve the cause.