Tag: safety

A Federated Republic Would Never Have to Depend on One Person for Its Survival

I will lay the blame primarily on Abraham Lincoln, whose reaction to the secession of seven states in 1861 led to this republic’s change from version 1.0 in 1781 to version 2.0 (thanks to the US Constitution(1787), a coup d’etat by any simple analysis) to version 3.0 in 1865 that rendered the states as impotent servants to the master (general/federal government), a virtual democracy (i.e. mob rule).

Lincoln’s effort to save actually destroyed!

The genius of the Articles of Confederation is that it recognized as each state was in fact a sovereign country (just like the 1783 Treaty of Paris recognized). The presidential election pre-US Constitution was a non-issue, and 99% of Americans only saw the federal government when the post-rider stopped a few times a week. Furthermore, if one state had a tyrant, it would minimally impact other states.

In 2020, I would give almost anything to have the federal politics happen hundreds of miles away and have little impact on my day to day, year to year life in my own community. Can it be that whatever “federal” power is necessary that it be with this aim:

The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their Liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever. – Article III ‘The Articles of Confederation” 1777

The US Constitution brought the executive branch to a much more powerful level encouraged by those like Alexander Hamilton who saw royalty and a central government as the path toward empire. The empire has been realized, but at what cost? The cost was the soul of this republic.

Today’s situation did not happen overnight, and most people could trace it back to the 1970s, but few realize that the real roots of this go back much further. The wedding of big government and big business was a Whig wet dream from the early 1800s that Lincoln himself believed in like a religion. Even by 1861 the US Constitution was easily raped by Lincoln himself all in the name of “safety” for the “union”. Preserving all thirty-some states with territories to the west complicit with big business barons working their behind the scenes magic with the US government to eliminate the competition.

Enter a recent book review “The Election to End All Elections” by Angelo M. Codevilla on Michael Anton’s new book called ‘The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return‘

[Michael Anton] urges Americans to vote for Trump, disappointed though they may be with his performance, because they know even better than before how much this country’s ruling class would use control of the presidency to hurt us in our private and public lives for having dared to reject their mastery. Trump, imperfect as he is, is like a finger in a dike that, if removed, would loose a deluge. Anton describes how the Democratic Party-led complex of public-private power has been transforming our free, decent, and prosperous country into its opposite—and how it’s going to do to the rest of America what it has already largely accomplished in California.

Personally, I find more and more people disillusioned with how the Marxist inroads into not just the colleges but also much of corporate America has been achieved in the past few decades. Many went to college for “communications” finding out that the MSM is nauseating to consider working for, and others now feel the same way about the medical fields (MIC – Medical Industrial Complex) with the Covid-19 “over-reaction”!

It is intriguing that a rather young person would see with such clarity just into what California is experiencing right now, and all the dots that line up as to the sequence of bad decisions to get to where millions are in a state of exodus there. Angelo writes in the review of Michael’s book:

[Here] in 2020 productive middle-class families are fleeing California—so much so that the state will probably lose a seat in the House of Representatives after this year’s census. And all because its government—controlled by oligarchs in the entertainment and high-tech industries, as well as the state bureaucracy and public sector labor unions—raised taxes, imposed regulations, let public services decay, stopped defending against criminals, and empowered left-wing social activists. Today’s California is for government-favored oligarchs and those who service them. You want a career? If you don’t conform every word and action to the ruling orthodoxies, your work and talents will be wasted. You want your children to grow up intelligent and decent? The schools will teach them little reasoning and much depravity. Like you, they will also learn to compete by favor-seeking rather than by performance. You see crime rising, sense that you have to protect yourself, but know that, in most of the state, the police will arrest you for it. And you are sick of paying for it all.

The bottom line it seems is that in much of middle-upper class America, most kids do not become taxpayers until they are almost 30. This allows the Marxist/totalitarian mindset to take root the longer kids are in college, making PhDs the ones with the most student debt and the most likely to be compliant in whatever corporation will have them! This is by design.

Michael Anton goes on to say:

The real power…resides not with elected (or appointed) officials and “world leaders”; they—or most of them—are a servant class. The real power resides with their donors, the bankers, CEOs, financiers, and tech oligarchs—some of whom occasionally run for and win office, but most of whom, most of the time, are content to buy off those who do. The end result is the same either way: economic globalism and financialization, consolidation of power in an ostensibly “meritocratic” but actually semi-hereditary class, livened up by social libertinism.

The intellectuals from the monarchy days is what I am reminded of. These types do NOT like competition, and government is big and bad enough to wield a club apparently. Angelo continues:

Despising any divine or natural authority and contemptuous of America’s history, those in the ruling class make war on the American people’s culture and national identity. Ironically, this ruling class, led almost exclusively by white men, has cast white men in general as the proper targets of universal vengeance—an inversion of reality sustained by a near-monopoly of power over corrupt institutions and mass communications. Anton’s section on “Propaganda and Censorship: Narrative, Megaphone, and Muzzle” is particularly worth reading.

Insightful stuff here. It is at this point where the talk turns to conservative vs. liberals .. and right away I think of the civil approach the South had with the “rule(US Constitution)-breaking” North where the ends justifies the means:

Truth-bomb time from Angelo:

They [ruling class] do not believe they have to worry about controlling their own violent troops because they are sure that they have nothing to fear from conservatives. That is because conservatives have continued to believe that the United States’s institutions and those who run them retain legitimacy. Conservative complaisance made possible a half-century of Progressive rule’s abuse. The War on Poverty ended up enriching its managers while expanding the underclass that voted for them. The civil rights movement ended up entitling a class of diversity managers to promote their friends and ruin their opponents. The environmental movement ended up empowering the very same wealthy, powerful folks while squeezing the rest of America into cookie-cutter living and paying inflated energy prices. The feminist movement delivered divorce and abortion—far from benefiting women, it has made millions dependent on ruling class favor. The COVID-19 pandemic has had almost nothing to do with public health and almost everything to do with separating, impoverishing, and disconnecting people inclined to vote against the ruling class. As leftist judges rule, conservatives respond by appointing judges who pledge not to rule. As leftist governors establish their brand of effective sovereignty by decree, conservative ones obey court orders. So long as, and to the degree that, the illusion of legitimacy stands—so long as the Right obeys while the Left disobeys and commands—there is no end to what the Left can do because there is so little that conservatives do to fight back.

.. until there is physical fighting, and like with the War Against Southern Independence, all the gloves will come off.

The boomerang and blow-back are real things that the Left is not ready for, and some in rural America are hoping for, so for now Trump, just one person, is holding it all back. Federation to Democracy to Socialism/Fascism/Marxism which is a very toxic brew.

Peace out.

-SF1

Source: Claremont Review of Books

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!!!

 

Amexit: Post War of Independence from British Empire – Politically Hijacked

[A] large group of soldiers who saw the goal of the Revolution as getting rid of the power of a centralised government to rule over Americans. They had a fellow American feeling with comrades in other states for shared sacrifices and they were willing to entertain a federal (not national) government to handle some of the joint affairs of the States, but insisted that such a government must be kept within a strictly circumscribed role.

Yes, even Francis Marion, as you shall see, was himself marginalized at the end of the War for Independence from the British Empire. There were efforts already in the works politically to turn this “win” into something of their own choosing that was much different than what the soldiers and militias were fighting for.

The above quote is from a 2014 article about James Jackson who immigrated to the Georgia colony as a 15 year old. My guess is that you never heard of him. Maybe some of these names you will recognize from your academic experiences:

Nicholas Gilman of New Hampshire, John Lansing of New York, Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania, John Francis Mercer of Maryland, Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina, Thomas Sumter of South Carolina, and James Monroe, St. George Tucker, and John Taylor of Virginia.

Well maybe you have heard of Thomas Sumter and possibly John Taylor, but the others have been obscured by the academic history books for some time. The likes of these people had the following qualities:

A patriot did not seek public fame and fortune. His task was alertness to preserve the principles of free government against all comers. He did not seek power, but if called to public office he took it as a duty to his society, not as an opportunity for self-advancement. His ambition was for his country, not himself. The example here was the Roman hero Cincinnatus, who was called from his farm to lead an army and having won the victory went home and resumed his plowing.

This type of person was one that could see quickly into an existing situation and rightly identify the bad actors behind the scenes. These men, with their prophetic ability, typically would see the red flags much sooner than someone like Thomas Jefferson or James Madison as explained here:

[James] Jackson was nearly alone in 1790 in discerning and exposing the implications of what was afoot; joined only by William Maclay of Pennsylvania in the Senate. As one historian has put it:

The astonishing thing is that the comparatively crude Maclay from the wilds of Pennsylvania and the leather-lunged James Jackson from sparsely settled Georgia should have caught the full significance of it all before it dawned on Jefferson and Madison.

So even three years after the coup d’etat at Philadelphia where the “perpetual” Articles of Confederation was shredded in favor of a NEW document formed in secret called a constitution, there were two yet in the government who saw this new direction for the union for what it was. Patrick Henry had rightly said “I smell a rat” in 1787 as he was the most prophetic of all.

So what helps to form such an honest sort of individual. A mixture of nature and nurture no doubt, as can be seen in a quick biographical sketch here below:

James Jackson was born in 1757 in Devonshire, England. At the age of fifteen he sailed the Atlantic unaccompanied and landed in 1772 at Savannah, Georgia, where some family friends were living. Despite his youth and his recent arrival from the mother country, Jackson enthusiastically joined the cause of American independence. Throughout the war he was active in military service. After the British capture of Savannah, Jackson escaped, reportedly swam the Savannah River, and arrived barefoot and in tatters to join the South Carolina patriot forces as a private, serving 17 months with Thomas Sumter’s partisans. He took part in most of the fighting in the Southern colonies and in expeditions into Florida and to the Indian frontier. He was wounded at least once and repeatedly cited for gallantry and enterprise. Jackson ended the war as a twenty-four-year-old lieutenant colonel in command of his own battalion and was selected to receive the official surrender of Savannah from the departing British, July 11, 1782.

A pioneer, a survivor, a fighter .. “.. a tough, independent citizen ready to defend his society against foreign threats. Equally important, it was characterized by the wisdom to discern and the courage to oppose threats to liberty from inside. History furnished many examples of the undermining of free governments by plausible, designing men ambitious for power and profit. This is why Thomas Jefferson said that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty and that the tree of liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots. A virtuous republican had the makings of such a patriot.” – Clyde Wilson & Brion McClanahan

In 1782, with the War for Independence almost over, James goes back to the plow:

After the war Jackson established himself as a successful lawyer and planter. Georgia was the smallest of the States in population and settled territory (though already filling fast with new settlers) and had an exposed frontier. It quickly ratified the proposed Constitution for the United States without the reservations that concerned many and kept North Carolina out of the Union for several more years. In 1788 the George legislature elected Jackson Governor. He declined on grounds that he was too inexperienced for the august position. The next year he was elected as one of Georgia’s two Representatives to the First Congress. Shipwrecked on his way to New York, he arrived too late for the inaugural day but was soon an outspoken member of the House.

Notice the humble nature of this man, declined his election as governor of Georgia because he felt himself too inexperience! More of this please!

What he found a year later in New York, NY, the first capital of the united States drove him toward using “straight” language:

Jackson found the House discussing the proper way to address the President, with proposals like “His Excellency,” “His Grace,” and “His Serene Highness” being offered by those who wanted to endow the new government with dignity and awe.

He lamented that the probably source of this trend toward having a god in government on earth to displace the God in Heaven was most likely Boston, where as he rightly explains:

.. a town which, fifteen years ago, would have acknowledged no Lord but the Lord of hosts ..

Cutting, but so very true. In fact, after a miraculous win by 13 united colonies against a world power like the British Empire, one can only see that as the Israelites of old, they still could not trust a God that delivered them and proceeded to form a central government that would guarantee this independence for years to come. The downside was that liberty itself would be sacrificed for this perceived safety.

Typical of the pioneer reluctant hero and patriot of the day, his opponents ridiculed his character and speech:

.. some opponents hinted that the Representative from Georgia was too loud and crude. “I have accustomed myself to a blunt integrity of speech,” Jackson told the House, “which I hope the goodness of my intentions will excuse.” The more serious criticisms of the Representative from Georgia were uttered in private. It was known that Jackson had more than once taken his stand on the Savannah dueling ground and had always walked away.

But the disgust for the words to be used in this new republic was pale compared to Alexander Hamilton’s intentions that made the rich richer and the poor/soldier poorer:

The first move came in Hamilton’s proposal to pay off the Continental debt of the Revolution. Everyone agreed that the debt had to be retired, but the devil was in the details. Hamilton’s plan was to pay the holders of the debt in interest-bearing government bonds, thus to create a permanent public debt, which would in turn require tax revenue.

There was an even more serious kicker. The debt was to be funded at face value. The debt, aside from loans from European allies, consisted of paper that had been issued by the Continental Congress for soldiers’ pay and bounties and army supplies. Almost all of it was now in the hands of Northern and European capitalists who had acquired it at cents on the dollar when it was “not worth a Continental.” Jackson pointed out that there were not twenty of the original receivers of Continental paper left in Georgia and that soldiers had invariably been forced by necessity to sell their paper at a large discount.

.. and, there’s more!

Hamilton’s proposal was soon followed by another—the government should assume the remaining debts of the States, now also in the hands of speculators, and fund them in the same way. A proposal in the House to pay some of the proceeds to the original holders was roughly quashed by what was beginning to look like an organized party. Not only that, but, Jackson pointed out, certain money men who obviously had advanced knowledge of Hamilton’s plans had been in Georgia very recently buying up debt certificates.

Yes, by this time the ’cause’ had been fully hijacked by a new political machine that would give Lincoln everything he needed to permanently change this nation into something so much different. The balance of this article show the emergence of government scandals that have unfortunately continued to this day, sucking the life out of taxpayers at every revolution of the sun.

Here in 2019 we can see the fruits of the labors of Hamilton and Lincoln that were seasoned by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Johnson, Nixon, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama and even Trump today. The American Empire is the “same thing only different” from the British one that the American colonies sought to remove themselves from. Now we (US government/empire) are the global and domestic oppressors that operate above the law.

Not cool.

-SF1

The Core of Government: Necessary Evil?

From the Burning Platform post, Doug Casey challenges popular theory that different cultures can’t live in a more peaceful harmony, community by community:

Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together peaceably in Palestine, Lebanon, and North Africa for centuries until the situation became politicized after World War I. Until then, an individual’s background and beliefs were just personal attributes, not a casus belli. Government was at its most benign, an ineffectual nuisance that concerned itself mostly with extorting taxes. People were busy with that most harmless of activities: making money.

But politics do not deal with people as individuals. It scoops them up into parties and nations. And some group inevitably winds up using the power of the state (however “innocently” or “justly” at first) to impose its values and wishes on others with predictably destructive results. What would otherwise be an interesting kaleidoscope of humanity then sorts itself out according to the lowest common denominator peculiar to the time and place.

Politics again is the poison, but the promises of safety seem to trump all other concerns …

… collectivism grows because the “thing” can’t deal well with individuals .. it is too messy and takes too much time. Even the Hebrews mandated the need for a king to replace judges (1 Sam 18 – The Bible). They were warned what would be the consequences of “good” intensions:

“This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle[c] and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

Basically:

Doug goes on to say:

Sometimes that [a certain group gaining power] means along religious lines, as with the Muslims and Hindus in India or the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland; or ethnic lines, like the Kurds and Iraqis in the Middle East or Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka; sometimes it’s mostly racial, as whites and East Indians found throughout Africa in the 1970s or Asians in California in the 1870s. Sometimes it’s purely a matter of politics, as Argentines, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and other Latins discovered more recently. Sometimes it amounts to no more than personal beliefs, as the McCarthy era in the 1950s and the Salem trials in the 1690s proved.

Throughout history government has served as a vehicle for the organization of hatred and oppression, benefiting no one except those who are ambitious and ruthless enough to gain control of it.

Those of us who know real history are awake to this truth, but these days, our own history is being removed .. Milan Kundera sais:

“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.“

The alternative that Doug Casey has is the effectiveness of markets, however, when an empire blows through your neighborhood, how good will the market be to achieve a better way for family, friends, community and society?

That’s not to say government hasn’t, then and now, performed useful functions. But the useful things it does could and would be done far better by the market.

I don’t have the answers here .. just questions.

-SF1

Definition of anarchy:

24SEP1780: Intel Received is Evaluated – Time to Move Out of the Swamp

In my last post about Francis Marion, he and a subset of his men were hold up in a mosquito infested swamp just inside North Carolina.

[NOTE: Today, this same swamp would be a huge lake as Hurricane Florence dumped 20+ inches of rain on this exact area this past week in 2018.]

So with Intel detailing the destruction in the Williamsburg SC area being communicated by Major James including details on house burnings, church burnings and turning churches into British army depots, a plan was formed following the same strategy that had given them successes so far in their fight against the tyrannical British effort in the region.

On Sep 24th 1780 after two weeks in the swamp, Marion heads back into South Carolina and at nightfall on 25SEP they reach Kingston (now called Conway) and camp along the Waccamaw River.

[NOTE: In the next few days here in 2018, this river is expected to crest FIVE feet above the highest level seen in recorded history in this region]

Marion and his men end up traveling 60 miles in two days and finds much support as he arrives. He utilizes locals from the Pee Dee River area to guide the 60 man militia through three miles of swamp to avoid detection and with horses swim across the river so by 27SEP they were positioned for another strike in the area.

The strategy again involved, keeping your plans close-in, allowing his men to go to sleep good and then wake them for a night attack .. (to be covered in a subsequent post)

The cool leadership demonstrated by Marion early on in his militia-led actions showed that while there was common ground in the patriot leadership, there were big differences as well. Thomas Sumter (Gamecock) was combative, bold and rash in his approach whereas Francis Marion (later called the Swamp Fox) was described as timid, cautious and would risk nothing. Cornwallis himself would describe Marion as cautious and vigilant and would not jeopardize his men’s lives by relying on Intel, careful planning and shrewd tactics.

Again, it is essential when engaging a force with more resources that one is strategic in engaging the enemy, especially a global empire.

-SF1