Tag: Thomas Jefferson

From Yankee to Marxist Color Revolution: An Interesting Timeline to Consider

In the quest to understand what might be upon us here in 2020, to utilize CSI techniques to identify where this effort against individuals and private property while dutifully labeling everyone into different groups where collectively somehow all the wrongs can be righted, one can use history to double-check that one is not indeed going bat-sh*t crazy.

The Marxist push in this land did not spring up overnight, nor only during Obama’s administration, nor after Reagan’s or even FDRs. One needs to go way back to when Europeans came to America’s shores to spot the germ of this parasitic plant.

I eluded to this in my last post calling out the GOP’s DNA being so similar to that of BLMs. This however was not the original birth or insertion of this parasite onto our shores. We have to go back to the first incursions onto this continent as highlighted in a recent post from Abbeville Institute when Jason Morgan rightly said:

Being unwelcome in England due to his penchant for religious terrorism, the Yankee was exiled across the sea where he immediately set about destroying the civilizations he found here. He ran wild against the Wampanoag and the Iroquois. He put the Lakota and the Navajo into camps, where they remain. He later crossed another sea, imprisoned the Hawaiian queen, committed genocide against the Moros, napalmed the Vietnamese in their farming villages, and put the torch to the cultural treasures of Japan. Having practiced looting and pillaging in Atlanta, he put his well-honed skills to use in Baghdad, the ruination of museums and relics following wherever he directed his gaze.

I just love this 30,000 foot view of the trends in history to sort all this out or at least consider in light of these trying times that impact our body and soul.

Norman Rockwell’s Icabod Crane

While most assume that Yankee just indicates being from the US north as opposed to Rebel being that from the US southern states, its roots actually had to do with the Dutch in the late 1600s:

[Yankee] a name applied disparagingly by Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (New York) to English colonists in neighboring Connecticut. It may be from Dutch Janke, literally “Little John,” diminutive of common personal name Jan.

By 1820 Washington Irving’s story of “The Headless Horseman” Ichabod Crane was a Yankee who had come from Connecticut to New York and “made himself a nuisance” so a young New Yorker played a trick on him to send him packing back to “Yankeeland”.

At this time, even in the current region of the Midwest (called “The West”) most settlers and pioneers came from Virginia, Carolinas and even Texas after the War of 1812 to break in the land of prairies and forests past the Ohio River.

The Yankees from New England and New York State came later via railroads, especially just before and after the so-called Civil War to ply their trade in spite of their general repugnant character.

Clyde Wilson has spent his lifetime in part trying to understand the Yankee mindset as he has read so many personal accounts from those with more humble characters encounter this rather unique character originally from the northeast. He noticed in Thomas Jefferson’s writings:

Thomas Jefferson himself once complained that “It is true that we are completely under the saddle of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, insulting our feelings, as well as exhausting our strength and substance.” This was long before anyone began debating the issue of slavery. The Yankees said Jefferson, “were marked with such a perversity of character” that America was bound to be forever divided between Yankees and non-Yankees.

Clyde goes on to compare what he has seen in recent years as being a continuation of this:

[Clyde] Wilson describes how New England writers have falsified the history of America by emphasizing the Mayflower Pilgrims while ignoring or downplaying the earlier, Jamestown Pilgrims; by pretending that New Englanders alone won the American Revolution and ignoring the efforts of Francis Marion and other Southern revolutionary heroes; by ludicrously portraying the Virginia planter George Washington as a New England “prig” in their books and movies; and of course reserving their biggest lies in their discussions of the causes and consequences of the “Civil War.” As if to prove Jefferson’s point, Daniel Webster wrote in his diary: “O New England! How superior are thy inhabitants in morals, literature, civility and industry”

Puke. Seriously? I guess Daniel Webster was as much a Yankee then as Hillary Clinton is today:

There is no better example of this today than that “museum-quality” specimen of a Yankee – self-righteous, ruthless, and self-aggrandizing as Hillary Rodham Clinton, and her pay-to-play Clinton Foundation.”

Priceless. At the end of the day their character can be summed up as:

[Clyde] Wilson describes “Yankees” as “that peculiar ethnic group descended from New Englanders, who can be easily recognized by their arrogance, hypocrisy, greed, lack of congeniality, and penchant for ordering other people around”

Y’all all know these people, from North, South, East and West, they are everywhere!

So it is a great delight to share a few more highlights from Jason’s blog post:

And yet, for all that, the Yankee is nevertheless a human being. With patient tutelage he, too, may be brought into the world of gentility and manners. His is not a hopeless case, no matter how large loom the depredations of his tribe. ..

The United States is a long experiment in this very thing. Our Yankee cousins, inflicted on us as God gave the Philistines to the Hebrews, are a test and a burden, but also a chance to do real charity and teach the wayward how to live like human beings. From age to age the South has tempered the Hun-like nature of the Yankee, patiently bearing with him and quietening him in his atavistic fits…

The Yankee has ever been anxious to take up his weapons and bathe in the blood of innocents as his ancestors did. We know firsthand, unfortunately, how the Yankee behaves when war gets into his head. But even a raging Yankee may be soothed and tamed, with time. American history is the history of the South trying to teach the Yankee to behave like a gentleman. We have not always succeeded, but we have tried.

Honor and principles are usually not in the Yankee’s repertoire.  Individuality and respect for others made in God’s image is in the heart of Southerners whereas ..

.. the Yankee hates order and gentility, and so they range the cities of the plain looking for some scrap of civilization to demolish. Lee, Jackson, Jefferson, all are defaced. Revealing his utter ignorance, the Yankee even lashes out against statues of the 54th Massachusetts, against Lincoln and Grant. (Did you think the Yankee was learning any history in his trade schools?)

At the end of the day, anyone can attempt to know what is good and true from the Southern tradition. One must know that the “slavery” label is the Yankee’s only defense in attempting their own complacency of those days when chattel slavery was actually encouraged by the banks and shipbuilders of the north. Only when the south attempted to leave the union so that their economy would have to adjust did they wage war on a peaceful, orderly, legal secession of seven states.

Everyone who loves his home and wants to protect and preserve his heritage is a partner. There are Southern natives of Michigan and Minnesota, California and Maine, who labor patiently at the arts and at husbandry. It is not a paradox but the deepest truth of America that anyone in the North who holds America dear and loves his family and homeland is a fellow Southerner. Likewise, the South, thronged with Yankees, has largely forgotten what it means to cherish, to forgive, to clear weeds from the heart and give thanks for even the hard things. We have been under Yankee capture for far too long. We all need to learn to be civilized.

Black and white, yellow and brown, red and sable, come, let us live like God intended, bearing with one another, being Christians, helping one another, not nursing hatred in our souls.

Again, there is something here that resonates with today’s world seemly split between those who see others made in God’s image and the balance that see them as worthless users of the earth’s resources (Green agenda) or oppressors (Marxist agenda) of the common man or even the evil elite (New World Order/Central Bank) that demand a financial reset to get all this under control.

Humble reflection is essential to stay the course, to True North, in these days ahead ..

Peace out

-SF1

Honorable Rebellion, Honorable Leaders and the Naming of Army Forts

I am sure this title caught your eye. The point is that rebellion is actually GOOD once in a while. Personally, teenage rebellion is good as well, otherwise the teenager stays in one’s basement for decades and no honorable person, parent or child, wants that long term. Allowing and encouraging these young adults to “be all that they can be” is a most honorable path I would think.

Countries and cultures are similar in that there comes a time when going separate ways brings out the best for all parties.

Thomas Jefferson was one that spoke to the benefits of rebellion:

God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independant 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.- Thomas Jefferson (1787)

Rebellion is a warning shot that liberties have been violated. This is an honorable recourse when peaceful approaches have been ignored time and again. Liberty can grow in the way that the American Revolution’s conclusion was conducted, not so much how the French Revolution was conducted.

If the 1776 rebellion was honorable, why not the 1860/1861 rebellion? What might help to set the context is to compare the presidential inaugural addresses of both President Lincoln and President Davis.

Lincoln’s 1st Inaugural Address 04MAR1861

Lincoln made the strongest case ever in the defense of Southern slavery even supporting its enshrinement in the text of the constitution to be a perpetual right but on the issue of tax collections he would definitely go to war to enforce the newly doubled federal tariff.

Davis defined the South as an international trading community that sought free trade with the world and promised to resort to the sword if the North were to invade to put an end to the Confederacy’s free trade policy.

Davis also set the context for the formation of an agent to work on the principle’s (13 sovereign states) behalf when he said:

The declared purpose of the compact of the Union from which we have withdrawn was “to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity

He continued on why the seven states had voted to leave such a Union:

When in the judgement of the sovereign states now composing this Confederacy, it had been perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained, and it ceased to answer the ends for which it was established, a peaceful appeal to the ballot box declared that so far as they were concerned, the government created by that compact should cease to exist. In this they merely asserted a right that the Declaration of Independence of 1776 had defined to be inalienable .. they, as sovereigns, were the final judges, each for itself ..

What few people know is that this man was so honorable and such a Unionist up until his home state of Mississippi seceded, that his logic, actions and words were honorable to their core.

So what do we do with men like this after a War for Southern Independence is fought and lost? We honor honorable men of that day by naming military forts after them, even when they in the end were not victorious in securing an independent country against a country who secured a victory in less than honorable means.

Walter E. Williams addresses this in his article at Lew Rockwell today. He lays the groundwork as to why we have forts in the US today that bear the name of honorable Confederate generals who were fighting for their homes and families against a tyrant who violated the US Constitution left and right.

Walter addresses a statement made by an ignorant military man, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who said in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee arguing in favor of renaming Confederate named military bases:

The Confederacy, the American Civil War, was fought, and it was an act of rebellion. It was an act of treason, at the time, against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the U.S. Constitution.

Ignorance knows no bounds, as I pointed out yesterday that Lincoln himself was the one that acted treasonous and also acted violently against the US Constitution. The Southern state’s secession was NOT an act of treason, even if your feelings and emotions convince you and Gen. Mark Milley that way. He needs to find a safe space, and by renaming these forts I do hope he feels better soon.

But I digress ..

Walter E. Williams starts with context of the union in the first place:

Let’s start at the beginning, namely the American War of Independence (1775-1783), a war between Great Britain and its 13 colonies, which declared independence in July 1776. The peace agreement that ended the war is known as the Treaty of Paris signed by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay and Henry Laurens and by British Commissioner Richard Oswald, on Sept. 3, 1783. Article I of the Treaty held that “New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States.”

This fact is something that Lincoln himself ignored to retain his narrative that the “Union” preceded the states, which then dovetails into his own personal thought that the states should have asked permission of all the other states before leaving.

Walter continues:

Delegates from these states met in Philadelphia in 1787 to form a union. During the Philadelphia convention, a proposal was made to permit the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, rejected it. Minutes from the debate paraphrased his opinion: “A union of the states containing such an ingredient (would) provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”

The fact that Lincoln never acknowledged the states as having seceded, left him with the complicated aspect that he actually violated the principle above, that his making war on states still in the union meant the compact was in fact dissolved. He wanted to ask for the “divorce”, he did NOT want the spouse(s) to have that status!

With this thought, that each of the sovereign states would voluntarily join this union one at a time, each state also understood that they each could voluntarily leave this union.

During the ratification debates, Virginia’s delegates said, “The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.” The ratification documents of New York and Rhode Island expressed similar sentiments; namely, they held the right to dissolve their relationship with the United States.

Note that northern states also expressed interest in the ability to exit. Only 16 years later, there was talk of that from that section of the federation:

Many New Englanders were infuriated by President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in 1803, which they saw as an unconstitutional act. Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts, who was George Washington’s secretary of war and secretary of state, led the movement. He said, “The Eastern states must and will dissolve the union and form a separate government.” Other prominent Americans such as John Quincy Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Fisher Ames, Josiah Quincy III and Joseph Story shared his call for secession.

Sparking secession talk again was the War of 1812 that hurt the New England commerce the most, rekindling this viable option:

While the New England secessionist movement was strong, it failed to garner support at the 1814-15 Hartford Convention.

By early 1861, many Northern government officials and presses were well aware of the dangers of not allowing an honorable rebellion to take place and voiced such before Lincoln took action to send armed reinforcements to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor:

  • Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, “Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical and destructive of republican liberty.”
  • New-York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.”
  • The Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in extent.”
  • The New-York Times (March 21, 1861): “There is a growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.”

Walter summarizes this so well in saying:

Confederate generals fought for independence from the Union just as George Washington fought for independence from Great Britain. Those who label Robert E. Lee and other Confederate generals as traitors might also label George Washington a traitor. Great Britain’s King George III and the British parliament would have agreed.

Spot on Walter, you rock as an 80-something!

Named for Confederate General Braxton Bragg, who had previously served in the United States Army in the Mexican-American War.

Should the ten forts named after Confederate officers be renamed? No. But it seems that stupid people with a lot of feelings now rule. While the name of a fort does not do anything physically, it is a part of the culture cleansing going of to remove whatever is left of this country’s honorable past.

In my mind, the past was already being erased a little at a time over the last 100+ years. I think it is the shear momentum of this now that has many feeling that it is over the top and openly wondering when if ever will it stop.

Honestly, can we start talking secession now, or is it too early yet? Asking for a friend.

Peace out.

-SF1

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

While Canadian children learn all about this fairly well in their government schools, the version that is taught in the US government licensed public and private schools is that the British were to blame for this war and we (US) beat them good. Nothing can be further from the truth.

From what I can recall from my own schooling in the 1960s/1970s, there was mention of the British navy “impressing” US sailors into service on British warships. Well, the truth is that this had been happening since the end of the US War for Independence in 1783 by BOTH the British and the US navies as well as navies all around the globe. In fact, the main mission of the US Marines was to go into port and get able bodied sailors for US ships, kidnapping was encouraged for the greater good. There is no way this issue alone triggered this war.

Since war is the health of the state, power and money are usually the top two reasons states go down this path. The lies told to the public citizens so that they will go along and give up their teen and 20-something men to fight in this just cause is justified because the ends justify the means.

To set the stage and context for this war initiated by the US, one has to find the trigger to resort to this decision. Most of what is covered here is readily available in Wikipedia or its equivalent or conversely, one could listen to this podcast by Bad Quaker (Ben Stone) starting at 17:00 until 49:00.

Regarding the money angle for the US to decide to annex/invade Canada by crossing at Fort Detroit in July 1812, one has to know that since the mid-1780s the US enlisted and licensed privateers to confiscate British merchants goods from the high seas. These were not the Johnny Depp or Errol Flynn versions seen in movies of independent pirates going about their plundering but incorporated business more like present day Iraqi War – US Invasion companies like Halliburton, General Dynamics and Blackwater that thrive in times of conflict.

So up until 1805 with the Battle of Trafalgar, where the British navy whipped both the Spanish and French fleets, the US privateers (considered pirated in other countries) had free reign in the Caribbean and Atlantic due to the 600 ship British fleet focusing on other areas of the world. The Americas was a “backwater” area that did not really rate high on the priority of British global interests.

Complicit in this plundering was the fact that when the privateers brought the booty into US ports (mainly NYC and Boston) the US government got their cut from US constitution decreed taxes before the privateers sold these goods to Americans or even sometimes to the British themselves.

After 1805 the US government’s revenue stream from this activity started to dry up and there was much angst around the economic health of the US and its government by 1812.

 

Power was another angle that has to be considered as there had always been talk of expanding the US both north and south as well as west. During the US Revolutionary War an attempt to get Canada onboard was thwarted, but it seemed to some people who desired empire-building that Canada must be annexed.

It wasn’t enough that the US was able to obtain the Indian Confederacy land in the old Northwest Territory (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan) as this had been the intent since George Washington commanded ownership of large land swaths in the Ohio Territory.

So on 12JUL1812 US troops invaded Canada and was met with still resistance by the Canadians mainly (50% of the forces as militia) as the small number of British military leaders had no real skin in the game. Most of the elite thought that the US could just walk in .. even Thomas Jefferson!

The acquisition of Canada, this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching. – Thomas Jefferson AUG1812

At the same time the US was an ally to France’s Napoleon who decided to invade Russia in 1812 and empire building elites in the US eyed Russian holdings from San Francisco bay up to Sitka, Alaska. When Napoleon failed in this endeavor, the US had to back off from their expansion dreams to the west.

The moneyed elites also looked with greed at all the land Spain still had from Mexico all the way to Panama! It is apparent that the immature US government bit off more than they could chew.

Looking just at a comparison of naval vessels, the British Empire had 600 ships at their disposal including some “Ship of the Line” types that had three decks of large cannon numbering from 100-120.

However, they decided to place only the following near this “backwater” region at Halifax, Nova Scotia:

  • 1 old Ship of the Line
  • 7 frigates
  • 9 sloops

The US had the following:

  • 8 frigates (including the USS Constitution which is still commissioned and still afloat)
  • 14 sloops

Know that the USS Constitution had ONE gun deck and 44 guns, no match for the larger British ships and its fame was won by capturing a 16 gun schooner and a 20 gun sloop!

In fact the British Empire fought a defensive war that only sought to protect trade to the West Indies while the Canadians fought bravely and actually beat soundly the US’s invasion attempt.

The Treaty of Ghent on 23DEC1814 awarded the British and Canadians with all their territories returned that they possessed in JUL1812 while the British offered a condolence prize to the New England fishermen who threatened to secede during the war with prize fishing grounds in British waters off the Canadian coast.

The Treaty of Ghent was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain. Both sides signed it on December 24, 1814, in the city of Ghent, United Netherlands.

The victory won in early 1815 at New Orleans by Andrew Jackson was mainly fought by US privateers and British commanded Canadians and made no difference in the war’s outcome having come after the treaty was signed in late 1814.

The US gained more war debt and no more territories as a result of this conflict. The US had twice as many killed and wounded than the British/Canadian forces. Would this be a lesson learned or would this repeat itself in another generation?

Stay tuned.

Peace out.

-SF!

Yesterday’s Decisions Impact Tomorrow’s Options – How Lincoln’s Reaction Crippled the USA

USA Communist Party Convention – 1930s

I am not sure I am the only one thinking this, but why does it seem that NO ONE is really about assisting the PEOPLE here in July 2020? It is almost as if there is this standoff that prevents common sense from prevailing. I guess that is the definition of politics, the absence of common sense and logic.

In my last post I said:

In an effort to mask the underlying financial hole that consumes a large part of the world, Covid-19 followed by accusations of racism and white supremacy have been followed by … Covid-19 again. Take 3.

Yes, it should be very obvious by now that in spite of declining Covid-19 deaths, the emphasis has changed to “cases” (more accurately called ‘positive tests’ that mean one may have had Covid-19 or another corona-virus, including one that can cause the common cold).

The psychological effect of this is the ability to easily make face coverings the norm even though the science clearly states that these masks are not effective with this 120nm virus. The social impact of everyone in public being masked up like the OK Corral in the Wild West is to clearly accelerate the distrust factor in this country towards continued division. Governments are great at distracting the masses, so this election year there is plenty of “stuff” to cover up their own critical failures, especially with the US economy and the US debt.

But I digress.

My purpose here is to give a bit of insight into the bind we (USA) find ourselves in. It is rather obvious from the accusation of systematic racism to the cancel culture that everything can be a potential target for those that have no use for other’s property (their bodies and their legal possessions). We have unveiled the great cultural divide in the USA that has been here for decades.

Thomas Jefferson faced a similar issue during and after his presidency, but his approach is never considered.

In a 1803 letter to John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky:

if there is to be a separation .. then God bless them both and keep them in the union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better

In 1804 Jefferson wrote:

Those of the Western Confederacy will be as much our children and defendants as those of the Eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country, in future time, as with this, and did I now foresee a separation at some future day ..

I can understand why the GOP can’t say this, but why can’t the Democrats? (Hint – Marxism requires the WHOLE country to feed on)

SECESSION is the only path forward .. but the US is stuck!

Sometimes, in any relationship, parting can actually be therapeutic for both parties. We can see this with divorce as well as with business partnerships. None of these are really “perpetual” relationships UNLESS both parties work on making it all work without abusing each other.

The GOP is stuck because the DNA in their party rests with Abraham Lincoln and his reaction to having seven states PEACEFULLY secede from the united States of America (written as it was inked in the 1783 Paris Peace treaty with the British Empire). As a result, Trump’s options are like this:

Lincoln forever made the barrier to peaceful secession almost impossible when 80 years after the 13 colonies seceded from the British Empire he decided that “union” was to be achieved at all costs, even that of 750,000 American lives.

It seems that American Exceptionalism is a myth. How come, could Maine seceded from Massachusetts in 1820, Hungary secede from Austria in 1867, Norway secede from Sweden in 1905, Singapore from Malaysia in 1965, the Czech Republic from Slovakia in 1993 and especially the 15 republics that seceded from the USSR? Instead, a four year war is waged on Americans to make permanent something that never was, by invading his OWN nation.

You see, by Lincoln’s logic, the southern states NEVER left the union and its citizens were still American citizens when he direct his armies into the 11 states that eventually voted to secede. This legal gymnastic was needed to allow Lincoln to utilize George Washington’s actions during the Whiskey Rebellion that was described as an “insurrection” so he could unilaterally, WITHOUT Congress, move forward with violence and a plan of war. Legally, secession was not forbidden by the US Constitution and three states, New York, New Jersey and Virginia all had clauses in their ratification document to voluntary join the union.

Another S-word was also not forbidden by the US Constitution, slavery. While most lazy historians accept that slavery caused the southern states to secede, what they don’t know is that the US Constitution would have PROTECTED the slave owners and that Lincoln offered to protect them as well .. FOREVER! There was zero to be gained by any southern state to secede regarding slavery as the Fugitive Slave Act mandated run-away slaves had to be returned to their owners, something Lincoln was also 100% in favor of.

I have seen so many posts that claim the Democrats are the party of slavery and the KKK, however, one only has to look at Lincolns words and actions to know that the birth of the GOP centered on a platform that kept slavery intact!

Here is part of the 1860 Republican Platform:

Resolved: That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions (chattel slavery) according to its own judgement exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend ..”

Lincoln himself quoted the above statement word for word during his 1st inaugural address on 04MAR1861. He also reiterated his support of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Earlier in his address he said:

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

Interestingly, near the end of his address, he says:

I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution–which amendment, however, I have not seen–has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

Total support of an amendment he has not seen? Come on Honest Abe!

Seriously, this is the 1st 13th Amendment (it was never fully ratified so it never because part of the law of the land) called the Corwin Amendment and it is a very interesting part of our history, as well as that of the GOP which were the primary sponsors since seven southern states has already left by FEB1861 when this was first put on the floor of Congress.

The hope was that this amendment would entice the seceded seven southern states to return to the union.

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

This passed the US House of Representatives 133 to 63 on 28FEB1861 and passed the US Senate 24 to 12 on 02MAR1861. Lincoln proceeded to send a letter to each governor explaining this amendment.

With Lincoln’s encouragement, the following states ratified:

  • Kentucky 04APR1861
  • Ohio 03MAY1861
  • Rhode Island 31MAY1861
  • Maryland 10JAN1862
  • Illinois 02JUN1863

Pretty amazing that the “Land of Lincoln” voted for cementing slavery into the US Constitution as late as 1863. What is this all about?

It is pretty apparent that one more piece of the puzzle needs to be looked at here. Why invade the south if slavery was not the issue? Why ramp up the war machine and NOT call Congress into session until 04JUL1861? The War Aims Resolution that Congress passed on 25JUL1861 has a clue.

this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union ..

‘Save the Union‘ was Lincoln’s motto until that inspiration to the masses lost steam in 1863, and then he shrewdly wove in to end slavery as something to keep the masses engaged. (this is not unlike the Covid-19 –> Racism –> Face Coverings –> ??? we are seeing today)

So in summary, in 2020, the Trump administration would never concede to have GOP majority states secede from the US and allow the Democrats to have the empire. The GOP’s DNA is war and empire.

However, could the Trump administration stray from their DNA (I mean with politicians, “principles” are easily discarded)? Could the GOP part with large sections of California, New York and New England? Could the city-states of Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati (along with other Democratic majority cities in various states) be allowed to go on their own and pay their own way?

Somehow I doubt that. The Marxism agenda is really about taking the whole enchilada and to redistribute whatever survives this process. This is why Marx himself was so encouraged by Lincoln that the two exchanged letters!

Isn’t it a bit ironic that the GOP figurehead and the Democratic party’s role model are one in the same? Totalitarianism of the right boot or the left boot feels the same to “we the people”. The US is crippled in being able to address this rift in culture and society. Splitting up is hard to do!

Something to think about when you might be looking forward to a Republican (stupid party) or Democratic (evil party) win in NOV2020.

Peace out

-SF1

“Land of the Free”? Not So Fast – the Trend-line is Not Linear!

1938 USA Communist Party Convention -Abraham Lincoln as centerpiece

Like most people my age, #60+, I can remember a time when we all were a LOT more free. Rifles in the pickup trucks, shooting guns near suburban neighborhoods, playing outside ALL day with the parents not really knowing where their kids were at. This was all “normal”.

Also during this time, it was the college campuses that allowed and even encouraged thinking and expressing one’s own thoughts no matter how popular they might be. Anti-government speech was not just tolerated, it was at the heart of what it meant to be an American, the Spirit of ’76!

Well those days are long gone, and the transition to where we are today was not a linear one at all. At first there was some minor deviation, but in the past 5-10 years, the college campuses are more group-think than ever, where the narrative of the day is king, where thought police thrive.

This is not the first time this has happened, but it does seem to be the first time it has happened without a war in the past 150 years, but it does have some similarities to a time in American history over 220 years ago where the thought police surfaced, when the “Land of the Free” enacted the Alien and Sedition Act in 1798 which …:

made it a federal crime to publish any false, scandalous or malicious writing – even if true – about the president or the federal government

You see, freedom of speech is a natural, God-given right that governments can and will take away. In the “Land of the Free” in 1798, there were many who took issue with this course change that occurred only 22 years after the thirteen American colonies sought independence from the British Empire. When Thomas Jefferson became president, he and his administration repealed this act. However, one this course change is embedded in a nation’s/empire’s DNA, there is no going back:

Abraham Lincoln arrested Northerners who challenged the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson arrested Americans who challenged World War I. FDR arrested Americans he thought might not support World War II. LBJ and Richard Nixon used the FBI to harass hundreds whose anti-Vietnam protests frustrated them.

In our own post 9/11 era, the chief instrument of repression of personal freedom has been the government’s signature anti-terror legislation: the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act permits FBI agents to write their own search warrants and gives those warrants the patriotic and harmless-sounding name of national security letters (NSLs). This authorization is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says that the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that that security can only be violated by a search warrant issued by a neutral judge and based upon probable cause of crime.

To most libertarians, this is where we are today, where the government has successfully transitioned the US Empire to a static point where the “Land of the Free” is no more. However, there is yet another effort that has been made in the past five years or so to continue the transition towards a totalitarian state, and this one comes from the corporate side of Lincoln’s dream of mercantilism, where government and big corporations become two wings of the same bird.

– Murray Rothbard on Mercantilism

As Rod Dreher of Russian Insider indicates in this article, “A Russian Woman Working as a College Professor in the US Writes About the Sovietization of Amerika”, it seems that it is the former citizens of the old USSR are the most sensitized to this trend the most while typical Americans see this as no big deal, much like the Germans in 1930’s Germany as the Nazi’s came to power.

Clarissa [not her real name] is a college professor who emigrated to the US from Russia as a young woman, a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. She is yet another ex-Soviet bloc person who is extremely anxious about the emergence of soft totalitarianism here. Of course she can’t use her real name, because she fears professional retaliation. It should tell us something that not a single academic from a former communist country that I interviewed for this book was willing to speak using their own name — this, in the Land of the Free. Why not? Because they were afraid of facing professional consequences for speaking out against identity politics and the “social justice” regime.

I am pretty sure if I were to chart out freedom in the USA, we are now at an all-time low as both the government and corporate America are actively seeking out dissenters to the latest narratives. The tools are in place to “take out” people professionally both in social media attacks:

Totalitarianism is something that takes away from people the unbearable burden of freedom. It allows many people to hound and persecute with impunity. That is pleasant in many senses. There was a practice in the Soviet Union where people would be told to get together in groups at work and write letters to the newspaper to denounce famous poets or artists. We see that today in Twitter. People love that because it allows a little person to completely destroy somebody who has done something great.

.. as well inside universities and corporations with diversity and sensitivity training in the workplaces:

All your co-workers are enemies. Either they can get you in trouble, or they are out to destroy you with an accusation. It destroys all sorts of uncontrollable communities – friendship, families, church communities. When you set people against each other, they are much easier to control. This is what it was like under totalitarianism.

So one might think I just need to be more careful about what I share in certain social circles. But that is not how this works, to see how any flavor of totalitarianism actually works, we need to learn from those who lived there:

… wokeness in corporate America is a weapon used by white-collar professionals to weed out competitors for increasingly scarce jobs. She said, “People find ideological purity tests useful to weed out people who compete for jobs you cover. Progressive forces are completely allied with globalist capitalism.”

She also said that people have no idea how vulnerable they are to this mindset, because of social media. “You will not be able to predict what will be held against you tomorrow. You have no idea what completely normal thing you do today, or say today, will be used against you to destroy you. This is what people in the Soviet Union saw. We know how this works. This is why people like me are so upset today.

One would think that at least the church might be a place where one can be real in this regard. Anyone who understands the 1st century church, it was the underground Christians in the Roman Empire that actually turned the then-known-world upside-down NOT with violence or revolution, but with love of their neighbor where .. :

[NOTE: It seems that true “diversity” does not focus on division based on race, sex or anything else. A true team sees each unique God-created individual as part of the crew that can help to keep the ship afloat.]

Well, a note of caution, most of the churches today, especially ones with government registration in place (501c3), are part of the corporate woke-ness effort underway in this country. Most of the church of today bears little resemblance to the church in the generation after Jesus was killed by religion and empire.

Until this trend is reversed, the ‘circle of trust’ is going to get mighty small. Take your time in knowing who your friends are, it is better to be lonely than to be a fresh target for either empire or corporate-elite.

Peace out

-SF1