Welcome to Plan C: The Blog.

Let me explain a few things.

I am a classical singer who specializes in new and contemporary music. After winning a big competition about a year and a half ago, I’ve spent a large amount of time, money, and effort trying to get someone in the opera world to pay attention to me.

In other words, I’ve been trying to sell out.

No one’s buying.

No interest, no gigs, nothing. No one cares.

So I’ve been rethinking things. When I started doing this, I made a couple of plans. Plan A was “Become a famous opera singer”.

Plan B was, “If you fail to become a famous opera singer, get more academic qualifications and teach privately full-time”.

But I never stopped to think, “Is either of these things really what I want?”

The answer is, “Not really.” So it’s time for Plan C. Plans A and B were both answers to the question, “What CAN I do?” Plan C is the answer to the question, “What do I WANT to do?”

In other words: Instead of continuing to bang my head against the gate and drain my resources trying to bribe the gatekeeper, I’m going to take another path. I’m going to break down the wall.

So of course I don’t quite know what that is/means yet. But this is the place where I intend to find out, to work out my ideas, to post works in progress.

Oh, and just so we’re clear, the “secession” I’m referring to in the tagline is the Viennese art movement of the late 19th century, not the Confederacy.

I plan to post here about twice a week. You can read my closer-to-daily blog at http://scintillator.wordpress.com.

By Adeola Aderounmu

Nigeria has been without a ruler or leader for several days now. In my opinion Nigeria has never had a president since May 2007. The man who was illegally imposed on us is now very sick and lying in some hospital in far away Saudi Arabia. Call it the shame of Nigeria-the nation with the largest concentration of black people not been able to provide good health care for its own (fake) president! Imagine the fate of the man on the street who has to beg to be able to afford a pill for his headache! What a tragedy for our nation?

Before he was bundled away he didn’t hand over the reign of power to his deputy, the so called vice president Goodluck Jonathan. On several occasions in the past Mr. Yar Adua had left his ill-gotten post unceremoniously without handing over to the man next to him. But this time it appears he will be away for a long-long time. There are uncertainties if he would be able to stand on his feet again, let home forcefully and illegally govern a nation of 150m passive people. Yes, we are that many but almost stupidly passive!

If we are not too passive or fashion-ly resilient we should have taken back all the things that were stolen from us or we should have kicked away the things that we didn’t ask for. Nobody voted for Mr. Yar Adua in the first place, so it was a stupid passivity that we allowed him to reign, forcefully.

We have been left alone several times without a ruler or a leader we still sit down and adopt the wait and see approach. By now millions of Nigerians should be on the streets demanding an end to this useless dilemma. Our economy is bad and investment is uncertain, yet we sit at home or go to work pretending that all will be well. The national budget is unknown making the already bad economy even looking predictably worse in the days ahead.

The men and women who pretend to be in the national assembly are too busy with personal interests and political survival that they do not see or realise how USELESS they have become in their own existence. If they are not useless what are they still doing when Nigeria with a population of over 140m has no legal president? Their own personal individual emergence continues to haunt them and they know that trying to do anything “right” will jeopardise their political future. I dare any member of the Nigeria Senate or House of Rep to sanely move for the removal of Yar Adua! They are all birds of the same feather-wicked and evil in colour.

The junta who want to have a northern president at all cost or the removal of Goodluck Jonathan to pave away for a Northern President to replace Yar Adua have now sown new seeds of secession. If the North must be president at all cost or at any cost, it makes more sense that they should keep the north to themselves. The rest of the south can decide what to do with their regions.

If the constitution of the PDP takes pre-eminence over that of Nigeria, then there should not be a country called Nigeria. This definitely is not the best option for Nigeria but it appears sensible that if the north wants to always dominate power then the other regions have the opportunity and reason to say, NO MORE!
The South-South have already issued a warning that if Jonathan cannot be the president in the absence of Yar Adua then the rest of us should brace up to a secession. That is more than justified. I mean if the constitution is not followed then there is no country to belong to. Therefore the individual nationalities have a reason to carve out their own existence. No one knows if there will be civil rife and on what scale.

But seriously what is wrong with Nigeria and Nigerians? I cannot stop looking at the intelligence question and the black race. Are we really stupid? Why is it so hard to follow the norm?

One man is sick and incapable, what is wrong with the deputy taking over as it is written in the constitution? Why should there be any rumour or allegation that a group from the north is putting pressure on the VP to resign? What sort of useless agreement could have been made between the VP and the North before the emergence of this unelected government? Are these the outcomes of Nigeria’s crazy democracy-one in which our votes are never counted? How long shall be continue with this nonsense? For how long shall we remain captives and slaves in our own country? For how long shall we bring shame and dishonour to ourselves and to Africa?

A time must come and maybe this is the best chance to redefine our mode of existence and the conditions for our co-existence or disintegration. What is of paramount significance and importance is the quality of lives that we want to live. We must be able to address the best avenues to attain our objectives for the nearest future.

To continue to live passively, doing nothing and encouraging these dictators-visible and invisible is a disservice to ourselves, our children and our children’s children. Just over the weekend Shakira said on Larry King Live: “we should be political, we must participate in the decisions that affect the future of our nations”

This statement must be directed to every Nigerian. We must participate-and we must start to do so positively-in the decisions that affect us now and our children in the future. Our political madness must stop and the way we do our elections must change. If nothing changes then we are confirming the fears of some group that as the black race we are not intelligent afterall. The prevalence of poverty and the fact that more than 90m live on less than 1 dollar per day despite the oil wealth of our country does not show that we are intelligent on our own soil. Maybe we are elsewhere.

The days ahead will shed more light on our intelligence especially in the political arena. The future of Nigeria is in our hands and whatever we decide to do or not do about it.

When I was a Boy Scout, I learned the motto…”Be Prepared.” How much more simple a motto could there be? Plan ahead and practice doing things you might need to do.

I’ve written about secession and state militias recently. But it occurred to me that even those who might agree with me might not be up to speed on personal preparations.

It would be so nice to believe that our state governments would handle this like they are supposed to do. Aren’t most state constitutions written to authorize a militia, and then to equip and train it? However, I don’t know of a single state that is fulfilling its Constitutional duty to its citizens as relates to the militia. And make no mistake…the State National Guard is NOT the state militia.

In light of the daily headlines about the economic meltdown that is just over America’s horizon, the need for a militia could occur very quickly. In addition, when there is an economic meltdown, our neighborhoods could become very dangerous very quickly…like in a matter of days. That’s not the time for you to start planning, and it may be too late to start buying stuff you need.

If you were going to be in any state’s militia, you’d need reliable gear. So, here is a short list of the most fundamental things you’d need.

Rifle

I’m going against groupthink and recommend that you buy an AK-47 or AK-47 variant like Saiga, chambered for the 7.62 x 39 cartridge. Around the world, the AK is the most reliable battle rifle known to man. Children in Africa operate this rifle and keep it clean. It takes enormous punishment and still operates. Mud, sand, water…still shoots. Great for beginners and sharpshooters. Even though the AR-15 is ubiquitous in America, it’s temperamental. But always remember that you need proficiency with your rifle, so practice with it. Also, the rifle you have in your hand is better than the rifle you want.

Rifle Optics

There are a lot of very cool optics available today. But most of the cool optics require batteries. I vote for low tech optics. Proficiency with iron sights is best and most rifles can be accurate out to 300-400 yards with iron sights. If you must have a scope on your rifle, I recommend one that uses no batteries. Your holographic sight without a battery is just like carrying a small rock.

Pistol

For the same reasons of ultimate reliability, I recommend the Glock pistol chambered in .45 ACP. My second choice would be the 9mm Glock.

Shotgun

I recommend a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun. The shotgun can be used for harvesting game, self defense or as a rifle.

Ammo

You should own at least 1,000 rounds of ammo for every weapon you own. It’s easy to go through a couple hundred rounds in one day at the rifle range. Buy the largest bullet in the cartridge that you can find. For example, in .45 ACP, buy a 230 grain bullet rather than a 185-grain bullet. Factory loads are fine, handloads save you money. For a shotgun, buy #6 shot for bird hunting, 00 Gauge buckshot shells, and slugs. A rifled slug sends a one ounce bullet downrange…devastating stopping power.

Firearms cleaning kit

For the obvious reasons. However, I’ve seen video of kids in Mozambique take a shoelace, make a knot in one end, dip the knot in motor oil, and pull it through the barrel to clean an AK-47. Here’s another tip. Cans of spray carburetor cleaner are great for cleaning guns.

Battle Dress Uniforms (BDUs)

Get at least two pairs of pants, two long-sleeved shirts, and two olive drab T-shirts. I recommend green camo, not black or tan. Buy one size larger than you are. Try stuff on and make sure it’s loose.

Broken-in Combat Boots

Buy a pair of high quality combat boots, but then wear them a lot early-on to break them in. Foot problems can take you out of the action in a hurry.

Flak jacket

Buy a flak jacket with removable hood and liner. I recommend green camo, not black or tan.

Poncho

You need foul weather gear. Get a rain suit or poncho that you can fold up and stow in your pack.

Field gear

A soldier’s pack can weigh 60-80 pounds. If you have field equipment to carry your gear, you’ll suffer less fatigue. MOdular Lightweight Load-carryng Equipment (MOLLE) is the new system that’s now being fielded. Consists of web belts, backpacks and other carrying equipment that fastens to the MOLLE. The Marines love this stuff.

Backpack

Get a backpack that fits you when you’re fully clothed like winter. Get a backpack that’s about as long as your torso from neck to butt in a green camo color.

Bugout bag

A Bugout Bag is basically a big survival kit that contains all of the items you would require to survive after a disaster. A bugout bag allows you to grab what you need quickly and evacuate should a disaster happen.

Most experts suggest that your bugout bag should contain enough supplies to last for at least seventy two hours. For a checklist, go to: http://zombiehunters.org/flyer/ZS-bob-trifold.pdf

Edge weapons

Buy a Swiss army knife with a bunch of attachments or a multi-tool.

Buy a tactical folding knife with locking blade. But make sure that the blade doesn’t unlock when you’re gripping the handle tightly. Huge design flaw in most folding knives.

Buy a hunting knife or combat knife with a full-tang, carbon steel blade. “Full tang” means the handle and blade are formed of one piece of steel. Then the grips are affixed to the handle. Anything else is a toy knife. Carbon steel holds an edge best.

I bought a 14” battle axe that only weighs about 2 pounds. Carbon steel blade, carbon fiber handle. Nice piece of work. Think about it.

First aid kit

A field medical kit would be good.

Headgear

Get a camo Kevlar helmet if you like. But you will need head protection. A camo Boonie (cloth hat, wide brim) can be further camouflaged if necessary.

Ghillie suit

A Ghillie suit is a camouflage suit for heavy cover. Usually made of burlap or canvas strips of camo colors. Snipers use Ghillies. This is optional.

Compass

Get a good camper’s compass.

Lights

Get tactical flashlights. Usually made of black aluminum, and now lit by LED bulbs. LED are extremely bright, low power use. Many will attach to your guns.

Sleeping bag

You gotta sleep. Get a sleeping bag that fits you. Climb inside it before you buy. Don’t go cheap.

Cooking gear

The simplest Boy Scout cooking kit will work. Remember that this will be in your backpack so weight counts. You really only need one cooking pan.

Cover

You could buy a tent, but remember that you have to carry it. You could opt for a heavy plastic tarp about 8’ x 8’ with brass grommets at the corners. It folds up small and can be stowed in your pack. With a tarp, you can create a simple shelter under which you can sleep dry. Buy a spool of parachute cord…light, strong and cheap.

Water supply

You need a canteen or a water backpack like the CamelBak system. You wear this like a backpack under the big backpack. Can hold 70 oz. or100 oz. or more.

Food

Meals Ready To Eat (MREs) store indefinitely. Buy a 30-day supply.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten some things, and many of you may have other preferences. But if you have all of these supplies and equipment, you would be ready for most eventualities. This is just the minimum needed. If you have the time and money, secure these minimums and build on them.

DumpDC. Six Letters That Can Change History.

Brisbane General Strike, 1912

Our old friend the essayist Jeff Snyder, author of the famous polemic on behalf of individual self-defense by handguns “A nation of cowards” from The Public Interest* in 1993,

*The influential former quarterly (1965-2005) founded by Irving Kristol and Daniel Bell (Nathan Glazer replaced Bell in 1973), reanimated this fall as National Affairs

and a contractarian ethicist much indebted to early republican thought, as well as such mid-to-late-19th century thinkers as Kierkegaard and the individualist anarchists, and Bertrand de Jouvenel from the mid-C20, has just posted his latest essay “Trust Busting By The People, For the People: A direct action plan for bringing down the US financial system“, at his new site Secessio Plebis:

A forum for direct action proposals to overthrow, supplant and undermine hegemonization and the political organization of society through nonviolent, cooperative social action, specifically, through withdrawal of support (moral, psychic and physical) and noncooperation.

Snyder’s links to such historic essays as “The Ethics of Dynamite” by Auberon Herbert are well worth the exploring.

Our response to an earlier draft of his essay follows.

I enjoyed the piece. Your analysis of the Federal Reserve System and fiat money, as you probably know, squares pretty well with what I read ages ago by Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard in their respective writings on money, credit and the business cycle. And your reading of  , I think, comes through in your holding the state to the sort of strict contractarianism to which we would hold private parties, and which it routinely violates at every turn. The use of facts and figures was helpful, too.

In a way, I felt echoes of what those of us who cut our teeth on the hard-money movement of the 1970s and 1980s went through during and then after the historic run-up of gold and silver prices in 1980 – the distinction between investing in gold and silver from reasons of sound-money doctrine and/or allied fears of hyperinflation down the road, versus the pitfalls of investing in it and then taking potentially big hits when the prices no longer rose, and fell. My own education on that score, happily, only lost me $67.50, as c. late 1980 I invested in several rolls of silver dimes at $202.50, only to sell a while later when the value had dropped to $135. For such reasons of prudence,  Harry Browne, in formulating his Permanent Portfolio strategies to meet the changing times, recommended gold and silver as one of only four legs of a media-diversified portfolio that also included stocks, bonds and cash/money-market instruments.

The strong “Modest Proposal” aspect of the article comes through in the admission that those enacting in their financial lives the “radical” measures proposed will at each point take the sort of hits those undertaking “faith-based” purchases of gold and silver did in fact suffer during, per my example, the Reagan years. Right now, the kind of people making such “sacrifices for the cause”, as we know, are only a tiny minority of the hard-core committed, and are heavy in the Ron Paul demo. But witnessing among the great middle of the US population the sort of developed revolutionary consciousness required is, of course, highly unlikely from purely educational efforts and the sort of “unmasking” of the state characteristic of Spooner, Rothbard, &c., whose native demo, like most such subcultures, stays at a saturation point at well under a million members. What would probably be required to capture the numbers of people not otherwise susceptible to doctrinal appeals of the sort you and I have imbibed, is the ongoing development of crises and the resulting naked exploitations preceding and succeeding them of a sort too brazen not to be grasped by John Q. For the great majority of those with a steady income, a place to live, lights and cable TV and A/C that still work, and a car to drive, revolution prompting thoroughgoing withdrawal of assets from traditional media seems far off, to say the least. The essay admits up front that the measures suggested will require people to take an asset-hitting leap of faith, and people would do that only if they felt their immediate interests were directly threatened otherwise – and to avoid that sort of material threat developing, and the consciousness by a critical mass of the need to literally pledge their lives’-savings and fortunes (sacred honor having long since departed), the powers that be seem to have a “narsenal” of PR tricks and mystifications to keep most of us in our place most of the time. Alas. Which is not to say things could not get that bad at some future point. Whether even those of us most bleakly convinced of the state’s naked perfidies in all spheres would wish things to reach such a stage is an open question. We want to free the slaves, yes – but do we want to undergo another Civil War to do it? Are there ways less gut-wrenching? I haven’t a clue. Most even of our freedom-fighters are fairly comfortable, and disinclined to take to the streets with bullhorns when the conference tables of the think-tank already have their name cards laid out next to the water-pitchers and the C-SPAN cameras. The dogmas of voting, looking to the two Satanic parties, and rallying round the flag when “security” seems besieged are so proverbial among us as to render the mass-withdrawal scenario, at the moment, a wonderful seed for a screenplay, which is nothing to sneeze at – fiction is as fruitful an avenue to dramatize ideas, even, as here, sound ones, as nonfiction.

For more of my thoughts on historical tradeoffs, the anti-”heroic” mediocrity of our day and why that might not be the worst thing in the world, see my cracker-barrel philosophy of history sketched at Dan McCarthy’s blog, tossed off before Rod Dreher surprised me in quoting from it on his own popular “Crunchy Con” blog a few days later.

It is useful, though, as a clarifying thought exercise to sketch such counterfactuals as those outlined in “Trust Busting”, as we ask ourselves if freedom of the sort we seek is likely, possible or probable given the prices we’d all have to pay to get there, and whether we’d stick with the devils we know rather than give up big $ on behalf of those we don’t:

The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus conscience (or, comfort, inertia, Anheuser-Busch) does make cowards of us all
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

DSL.

Length: 6:59

Related: nation; state; sovereignty; constitution

Dickerson, Mark et. al. An Introduction to Government and Politics (8th ed.). Canada: Nelson Education, 2010.

An Article by Thomas J. DiLorenzo on LewRockwell.com

Dear Glenn,

First of all, congratulations on deciding to become a community organizer for the cause of liberty and prosperity, as reported all over the media recently. You will be a stark contrast to the Marxist in the White House who boasts of his “community organizing” efforts for the exact opposite cause, ACORN-style socialism as defined by its “People’s Platform.” (His nationalization of banks, General Motors, and possibly health care, and his administration’s bombastic, anti-capitalist rhetoric, reminds me a lot of Lenin’s first months in power.)

Glenn, I’m writing to offer a few suggestions with regard to your upcoming community organizing efforts, which I’m sure will attract huge media attention and could potentially be very influential. First, you really need to “man up” those “Five Pledges” of yours, especially Pledges 1 and 2. There you say you are in favor of a balanced budget, and that government should not increase the financial burden on taxpayers “during difficult economic times.”

I certainly agree with the last part of this statement. Raising taxes during a depression is exactly the opposite of what even a central-planning Keynesian would advocate. This only highlights the fact that Obama is not a Keynesian central planner, as Democratic presidents usually are (and most Republicans as well), but a central planner of the Marxian variety. Marxists want to destroy the existing economic system, creating a social catastrophe that they hope will allow them to foment a revolution and consolidate their political power. Keynesians are merely neo-mercantilists who use Keynesian ideology to pull the wool over the public’s eyes with regard to their policy of perpetual political plunder under the guise of a perpetual quest for prosperity.

But come on, Glenn, don’t fall for that Big Government propaganda line about the alleged virtues of a balanced budget. What the government establishment means by budgetary balance is a devotion to endless tax increases to fund all of their pie-in-the-sky special-interest spending programs. According to this propaganda line a doubling, tripling, or quadrupling of government spending, and the consequent shrinking of private-sector prosperity, is perfectly fine as long as taxes are also doubled, tripled, or quadrupled at the same time. Americans already pay more in taxes than medieval serfs did, so what’s so good about waiting for “good economic times” to be plundered and robbed even more?

I notice that you frequently display a picture of Thomas Jefferson on the television screen during your Fox News Channel program. You would do well to dump those first two pledges and, in their place, adopt what Mr. Jefferson said in his first inaugural address:

[A] wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government . . .

Saying that government “shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned” means there should be no taxes on earnings. If you’re serious about calling yourself a Jeffersonian, Glenn, you would advocate the total elimination of income taxation (for starters), and not potentially endless increases of it “during good times.” You should also abandon that Pledge #3 about “energy independence.” Such rhetoric is just another protectionist smokescreen, no different from those who insist that we must free ourselves of foreign beef, tomatoes, cars, etc. Isolating ourselves from the international division of labor is a good recipe for economic disaster.

Your pledge #5 is also highly problematic. You say, “I believe the United States of America is the greatest country on earth and therefore will not apologize for policies or actions which have served to free more and feed more people around the world than any other nation on the planet.” The problem with this is that you equate “the United States of America” with the federal government. I think your confusion stems for a misunderstanding of the difference between nationalism and patriotism. A nationalist, as my old friend Clyde Wilson has said, is someone who promotes the aggrandizement of the state in all its “glory.” A patriot, in sharp contrast, is someone who simply loves his country and its people.

Your statement is way too nationalistic. It seems to be a version of the neocon propaganda line that “We saved Europe from the Nazis in World War II, therefore, every successive military intervention, no matter how misguided, and no matter how many innocent foreigners are murdered, is justified. The rest of the world should just shut up.” This is what the neocons at the Claremont Institute and the American Enterprise Institute would call “statesmanship,” but “arrogant, imperialistic propaganda” would be more accurate.

Good luck with the Washington, D.C. rally that you’re planning for next August at the Lincoln Memorial. One more suggestion: Hold the rally at the Jefferson Memorial instead. Lincoln was a tyrant who waged total war on his own citizens, orchestrating the murder of some 350,000 of them, including 50,000 Southern civilians. Jefferson was the founding generation’s champion of liberty. In his first inaugural address Lincoln first made an ironclad defense of slavery, including a promise to support its enshrinement in the U.S. Constitution, while threatening “bloodshed” and “invasion” over tax collection. He said it was his “duty to collect the duties and imposts,” and “beyond that there will not be an invasion of any state.” The tariff on imports had just been doubled two days earlier. “Pay Up or Die” was his message.

Contrast this, Glenn, with what Thomas Jefferson said in his first inaugural address: “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” This could not possibly be more different from Lincoln’s “Do As I Say Or Die” commandment. After all, secession or “separation” from the British Empire is how America was created. Secession was “the” principle of the American Revolution according to George Washington’s Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering. Since the theme of your television program on the Fox News Channel is “Refounding America,” I think you should highlight and discuss the right of secession and its virtues on your program every single day. It is probably the only real hope that we have to escape Obammunism.

If you’re not convinced, consider this: In a January 29, 1804 letter to Dr. Joseph Priestly, Jefferson wrote that “Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those of the eastern . . . and did I now foresee a separation [i.e., secession] at some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests as zealously as the eastern . . .” In an August 12, 1803 letter to his friend John Breckenridge on the subject of the New England Federalists, who were at that time threatening to secede from the union, Jefferson said that if there were a “separation” then “God bless them both [North and South] & keep them in the union if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better.”

As you can see, Glenn, Lincoln was in many ways the anti-Jefferson, which is to say, an enemy of liberty. Consider Mr. Jefferson’s most famous publication, The Declaration of Independence. In that document the states are said to be “free and independent.” Lincoln disagreed and waged total war on the Southern states to “prove” himself right. They were not free and independent, he insisted, despite the clear language of the Declaration and of all the other founding documents on this matter.

In his “Train of Abuses” condemnation of the King of Great Britain Jefferson said “He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly…” Lincoln imprisoned members of the Maryland legislature, deported a Democratic congressman, and imposed military rule on parts of the South that became conquered territory during the war. This is no different from what King George III did.

“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone,” Jefferson wrote. By suspending habeas corpus and imprisoning tens of thousands of Northern citizens without any due process, Lincoln made his will the law of the land, just as King George III had done.

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” said Jefferson in the Declaration. Myriad new bureaucracies, including an internal revenue bureaucracy, were created to run the occupied states during the war, and all states after the war.

“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.” This is exactly what Lincoln did by suspending the writ of habeas corpus and ordering the mass arrest of thousands of political dissenters in the North during the war.

“He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.” The legislatures of the Southern states did not invite a federal invasion, as required by the “insurrection clause” of the U.S. Constitution in cases of insurrections, which did not exist anyway in 1861. The Party of Lincoln kept standing armies in the South for a decade after the war while the states were ruled as military dictatorships under the direction of the Republican Party.

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws . . .” Lincoln ignored the Constitution completely. Nowhere is a president given the constitutional authority to invade his own country, suspend habeas corpus, wage war without consent of Congress, deport congressmen, shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, etc., etc.

“For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.” Lincoln blockaded Southern ports during the war, and was a lifelong protectionist of the worst kind. His party imposed average tariffs in the 50 percent range for almost half a century after the war.

“For imposing taxes on us without consent.” The South did not consent to paying a doubled import tariff. Lincoln kept the promise that he made in his first inaugural address and launched a military invasion of the entire South to force them to pay “his” duties and imposts.

“For depriving us in many cases, of the right of Trial by jury.” How else could one describe Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus?

“He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coast, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies, of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny.” Well, Southerners certainly weren’t “protected” by Lincoln’s invasion of their country; Southern ports were blockaded and Southern ships were sunk; entire Southern towns were burned to the ground by the Union Army under Sherman and others; the lives of some 350,000 Southerners were snuffed out; hundreds of thousands of European mercenaries were paid to wage war on American citizens by the Lincoln regime. “Death, desolation and tyranny” is a perfect description of the Lincoln administration.

Glenn, I know that you have praised Lincoln for “persevering” in his mass murder of fellow citizens from the Southern states until he finally “prevailed.” This of course is an essential part of the neocon/Lincoln Cult party line. It has been repeated endlessly on your own Fox News Channel by all those neocons who keep telling us that we should never, ever, withdraw our military from the Middle East until “the job is finished” (which would probably be long after we are both dead, if ever). But did you know that all other countries of the world that ended slavery in the 19th century, the British, Dutch, Spaniards, French, Danes, Swedes – all did so peacefully without a war? And did you know that slavery was also ended peacefully in all of the Northern states, including New York where slavery still existed in the early 1850s? (See the book, Slavery in New York.) I highly recommend that you read Jim Powell’s excellent book, Greatest Emancipations: How the West Ended Slavery, which describes in great detail how the rest of the world ended slavery peacefully instead of using slaves as political pawns in a war that was not about them but was a struggle for political power, as all wars are.

This calls into question the fairy tale about Lincoln and emancipation that all Lincoln Cultists repeat endlessly. The war was all a part of some grand strategy to free the slaves, they tell us. But what kind of “statesman” would ignore all of world history including the history of his own country (in the Northern states) with regard to how slavery was ended and plunge his country into the bloodiest war in human history up to that point? Is this “grand strategy” that caused the death of almost 700,000 Americans and maimed several times that number for life a praiseworthy one?

Glenn, if you are upset about the Fed and its showering of corporate welfare on Wall Street banksters and myriad other fat-cat corporations, you should also know that Lincoln spent his entire adult life championing the “American System” of Alexander Hamilton, which was the only policy plank of the Whig Party that Lincoln belonged to for more than twenty years before becoming a Republican. The “American System,” which was really the corrupt British mercantilist system designed for America, involved a central bank that would print money to finance corporate welfare for railroad corporations and others, along with high, protectionist tariffs which are also, of course, a form of corporate welfare. It was Lincoln’s National Currency Acts that resurrected central banking in America and led to the creation of the Fed. No member of the old Whig Party was a more forceful proponent of central banking – a bank run by politicians out of the nation’s capital – than Abraham Lincoln was.

What Lincoln’s Whig Party (which morphed into the Republican Party after the Whig Party imploded in the early 1850s) stood for was perfectly described by the famous playwright and law partner of Clarence Darrow, Edgar Lee Masters of Illinois, in his book, Lincoln the Man. It was a “political system which doles favors to the strong in order to win and to keep their adherence to the government. [It] offered shelter to devious schemes and corrupt enterprises . . . [and] a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that cannot stand alone . . . . Its principles were plunder and nothing else.”

In light of this, I think it would be an absurd farce to hold a rally protesting the Fed, corporate welfare, bailouts, Big Government, etc. at the Lincoln Memorial. Thomas Jefferson opposed every one of these policies, as did his political heirs, the big majority of whom were Democrats and neither Whigs nor Republicans. Hold the rally at the Jefferson Memorial. Best of luck to you.

November 26, 2009

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today.

If you want the government to come between two people who want to make a civil contract, you are not a Libertarian. If you claim religious foundations for your argument against that contract, you have no respect for religious liberty. If you think that marriage contracts are exclusively religiously-validated.

To rebuke those views from a Libertarian standpoint, gays are human and should be able to marry, same as any other two humans who aren’t already related or married. Any argument against this is going to include religious elements, which our Constitution prohibits in legislation. And the contract of marriage is a civil institution which gets a couple benefits and some tax reshuffling. The contract can be signed by a pastor, yes, but it can also be a judge. It’s whoever the married couple bestows with the power, not the other way around.

If you want the government to intervene in what the Supreme Court views as a legal medical procedure between “a woman, her doctor, and her God” because you have an objection to the science, or the morality, of the practice, you are not a libertarian. You are arguing against the privacy of a woman based on either unfounded, non-objective science, claiming “life begins at conception” ignores the scientific definitions of “birth” and “death” and “life,” all at once, or you are again arguing on religious grounds.

If you deny that human beings are capable of causing climate change, and as evidence for those claims, you will cite that human beings are innately incapable of such a feat, that it would be “beyond us” to affect the planet, as climate scientists suggest when not the property of utility companies, you are not a libertarian. Libertarians should argue that the industries polluting are capable of causing damage, as is demonstrably true, but that the industries have that right just as everyone. Libertarians should argue for innovation in renewable energy, and in personal habits which can make a difference. That way each citizen has a choice which theory to decide is true.

If you believe that the Union is not a vital part of this nation and its history, particularly in the realms of workers’ rights and the standard of living we all enjoy, you are not a Libertarian. Not only did Unions help protect the fundamental rights of workers, but also to guarantee a standard of living for millions of workers that the rest of the world referred to for many years as “The American Dream.” Liberty was at the core of the reason that Unions were so integral in the political process for so many years. Conservative business interests continually push the theory that unions are harmful to the overall society because they create “lazy, highly-paid and immobile workers.” What this means, simply, is that a worker has a guaranteed right to a job, and good pay, even if you don’t like his haircut, or that he’s gay, or that he’s a communist. You the boss can’t fire him for any reason, which is a violation of your rights as a Libertarian owner. The Union movement helped make the American institution of hard work actually worth it to the workers, who should be free to choose to join a Union if they see it as beneficial. The boss must deal with the workforce he has, not the one he wants.

Libertarians should be arguing for the loss of tax-exempt status for churches. Churches are clearly political now, having been corrupted by the anti-abortion, anti-environmental science, anti-gay rhetoric that the GOP used to replace Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Rather than playing off of race-based fears, the GOP has welcomed Blacks and Asians to their party, but only to bash Unions, Gays, Climate Scientists and Abortion Doctors. Truly those are the four categories most persecuted in our nation, and at the hands of a national political party no less. They also pull out the bogeymen of immigrants, welfare recipients, and the poor at large, attacked as victims of their own choices, their own identity, not of an unequal world. Truly, the GOP is practically a supremacist movement unto itself. Most of the people who voted for McCain in ‘08 who now call themselves Libertarians do so as a form of protective indifference to the changing nation, as a way of saying “I’m free to ignore the progress being made around me.” There’s nothing Libertarian about bigotry. The only way these people can be identified as Libertarians is under the banner “White Fundamentalist Christian American Business Libertarianism.”

No, in many modern cases, American “Libertarians” are just Republicans in hiding. Conservatives realize that the GOP moniker is toxic, as toxic as a sub-prime mortgage at JP Morgan Chase Manhattan, and so now the identity du jour is the same held up by Glenn Beck and the creators of South Park. In America, currently, the majority of “Libertarians” seem to be arguing against American religious liberty, and against the privacy of women, and against the right to choose your political leanings, or join a Union, or love and marry anyone who isn’t already your blood.

Libertarians would be open to a strong government charged with protection of civil rights and minority rights, in particular minorities like atheists, abortion doctors, etc. Hate Crimes legislation would have passed a long time ago if there were really so many Libertarians in our country. In that case, Glenn Beck’s populist agitation (holding “conferences” and “conventions”) would work. He will rally the people like John Galt’s speech was designed to do, to inflame the people with a rambling, logical, but facetious argument. While Galt claims to be fighting for everyone’s freedom, he walks away from everyone’s will. Leaving the Democracy because it isn’t going your way? That’s American Libertarianism nowadays. I suppose they’re free to spin out of control, if only that their downward spirals would never affect me.

by Zach Jones

Is it a Field of Dreams or a Plea for Return to a Constitutional Republic?

Last night I stumbled upon an article, A Case For Secession-Introduction, (first of a series) on Gather.com (Editor’s Note: We ran this article here at DumpDC on November 19th) and it struck me that the time may soon be approaching when one or two states will be called to step up for the rest of us in hopes of saving the Republic. I’m not advocating for secession now; I’m just looking at the possibility with a little more interest. How such a move might shift our ‘government’ back to position where Representatives actually have to listen to and respect their constituents is a question that interests me. What is clear is that with Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in control, Democratic Members of Congress are currently being effectively bribed with earmarks, promises or threats to pass legislation America does not want. They are not listening.

Polling demonstrates over and over the majority of Americans are against government run healthcare, are against unreasonable infringement of our Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms, are against illegal immigration, are against socialism, are against tax dollar funding of organizations like ACORN and SEIU, are against politicians creating unsustainable debt that will cripple their children’s futures, are against government manipulate of the news, are against government creating more unsustainable entitlements, are against Congress not adhering to the Constitution, are against Congress exceeding their power, are against Congress trampling on the rights reserved to the states under the Constitution, and are against unreasonable infringement of rights of privacy and free speech. In many states, the majorities are huge. They generally reflect states with populations that realize that government handouts do nothing other than create dependence to government/politicians and harm the recipients.

Today Congress is acting like a mule; and like a mule, sometimes the only way to get its attention is to hit it between the eyes. As we (a majority) all know, the Obama Congress is running America’s balance sheet, value of her dollar, and entire economy over the cliff. Most of us also know that it’s only drastic action can get the attention of this Congress that appears hell bent on ushering in a new socialist nation. Ordinary Americans are trying with massive Tea Parties, but one certain way to get Washington’s attention and possibly prevent the coming economic and social disaster (annihilation) is for one state or two to say ENOUGH! The preverbal two by four between the eyes may be what is called for to save the futures of all Americans.

Logistically there are only a few states that have strong enough economies and sufficient resources to tell the Federal Government to go screw itself, we are going our own way.

Alaska has sufficient resources (energy, etc.), access to trade with other countries (Canada and Russia), self-sufficient people, leaders who have a minimal concept of a balanced budget, and natural independence from the contiguous United States.

Texas has many of the same attributes as Alaska (a notion of being somehow independent of the rest of the country, trade with Mexico, Latin America and an independent/self-sufficient people).

N. Dakota, Nebraska a few other boarder/coastal states may be able to manage independence for themselves, but not without a lot of determination. Other central states like Oklahoma would probably need prearranged trade compacts with neighboring states to be successful. They would go along as they have been; except they would not pay federal taxes, nor receive federal tax dollars nor serve in the U. S. military. That would certainly get people’s attention.

Most of the states that might reasonably consider secession as an option are the ones that ARE NOT like California, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or New Jersey, etc. where politicians have intentionally created large dependent populations of people and groups with their hands out for “other peoples’ money” (dependent voting blocks tied to money- not principle).

To have a shot at successfully seceding, it is likely that a state must first have a large majority of its population that is interested in independence, who are self-reliant, who as a group have not been used to taking more than their fair share of federal tax dollars, who are not looking for ways to avoid fair taxes but who don’t want to be carrying the load for the above named states, who have reasonable expectations of government; and most importantly, who care about freedom, equality and the principles of the United States Constitution more than the “Federal Government”. America is its people; it is not the buildings, institutions, and politicians in Washington, D. C.

If a state did have the courage to choose secession, many of their residents would likely flee. However, millions of independent/self-sufficient Americans, small businesses, and numerous large businesses would be just as quick to try to come to live and thrive in freedom. Like the movie ‘Field of Dreams’ – build it and they will come. I believe that is true. Especially, if the state is built/rebuilt upon the principles that founded the once great U.S.A., it would ensure a diverse, hardy, can do citizenry that encourages one another. You know, a citizenry like America once had. Not the one that sues every time their coffee is too hot or they have their feeling hurt slightly.

Such a state’s own tax dollars, collected in a fair and reasonable manner from its citizens, would go twice as far as those they had been paying the federal government. Tax systems could be simplified so everyone has a stake in the services provided by government because they too are paying taxes. Those in times of need would be given a helping hand up to reach their potential instead of under the government’s foot!

If fact, upon secession, such a state could made one big but simple change in the system that would go far to encourage individuals to strive for success. What if the state recognized that it would be more likely that voters would choose the best candidate to represent all the people if voters did not have a big conflict of interest present? What if the state said that if you are currently receiving monetary benefits from the state/tax-payers (worker’s compensation, welfare, etc., excluding total disability) you cannot vote in any state election until you stop receiving government assistance? If one wants to participate in elections, one would need to try to get better if injured, try earnestly to find work, or find a way to stop receiving benefits from the state.

Education, environmental protection, etc. could all happen because it would not be in people’s self-interest to scam the state. Spending for the public good would likely be a lot more reasonable and not tied to corrupt special interest groups like ACORN.

If one or two states did choose to succeed from the Union, it would not necessarily have to be on a permanent basis. It might be done with the understanding that when the federal government starts respecting the rights of the individual and the states, balances its budget or at least seriously starts down that path, respects and again follows the Constitution; and stops supporting enterprises with a history of intimidation/voter fraud like SEIU and ACORN; then they would consider rejoining the union.

Somehow I imagine every Senator and Representative saying to himself or herself –

What have we done? We have brought about the destruction of America. It was on my watch!

(One additional thing for Members of Congress to remember is that states like California, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and some other bloated, selfish, leftist states have much lower percentages of residents enlisting in the military than states that would be more likely to entertain seceding! Who would protect America and her diminishing freedoms from al Qaeda and the Taliban? Maybe they could make a deal with the state/nation to allow its free citizens to serve in the U. S. military.)

Maybe Members of Congress wouldn’t say anything and just continue bleeding America’s taxpayers without listening to them.

I hope for the former; but if the latter occurred, I would pack my bags and move to Texas or wherever. I would be going to that ‘Field of Dreams’!

Never in my 55 years on this earth have I thought that I would seriously consider the idea of secession from the United States of America. I guess I was wrong. Personally, I will be waiting to see if America can be set again on its path under the Constitution through the electoral process in 2010.

If America can’t be righted to its course, it may be prudent for all freedom loving Americans to be reading up on secession.

Speaking of the 2010 elections, have you heard that Larry Sinclair, the man who alleges that he and Obama used cocaine and engaged in consensual sex in 1999, is running for Congress?

Copyright © 2009 About Australia

Today, I’m going to tread ground upon which many fear to tread by discussing the first two phrases of the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states thus: “A Well-Regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the Right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Seems to me that we have either ignored or simply missed a very vital component of liberty in our discussions and writings about secession…or about the Second Amendment. That very vital component is the existence and use of force.

No reasonable proponent of state sovereignty wants to propose secession and state nationhood through armed overthrow and insurrection. All of the thought leaders of secession that I have read concentrate on the orderly and lawful methods of secession, and eschew any ideas of military resistance. That’s fine.

But James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson had a different perspective.

The Framers knew that when tyranny advanced against any state, the state’s last option to resist that tyranny was to take up arms and fight. They had just proven its effectiveness by seceding from Great Britain through the use of state militias.

Most of the words I’ve ever seen written about the Second Amendment had to do with the last phrase of the Amendment. Even when I wrote about this subject HERE, my emphasis was about firearms.

My only paragraph about the militia said this:

“Any State with a well-regulated Militia would be capable of defending itself from Federal tyranny. Over the past two hundred years, the individual States have forgotten that their security as a free State relies upon a well-regulated Militia. The first two phrases in the Amendment shed light on today’s power structure in the United States. The Federal government now has standing armies, navies and an air force that far outnumbers any state militia. So, state sovereignty has been destroyed. Now states are more like counties…no sovereignty, only slave territories of a cancer-ridden Federal system.”

The very nature of government is force. It is not governed itself by anything but raw force. Bullies and tyrants never are. If you doubt this, go find a woman who has gotten a restraining order against an abusive ex-husband. See how safe she feels. A week hardly goes by in which there is not a news story about an ex-husband or boyfriend who murders a woman, even though she got a court-issued restraining order. But courts don’t enforce restraining orders because cops are not personal bodyguards. They only deal with violations after the fact.

In like fashion, courts and Congresses, resembling murderous ex-boyfriends and looters, are only stopped from wreaking their mayhem by force or the threat of force.

Do you notice that American armed forces are in Afghanistan and Iraq, not walking the streets of Pyongyang, North Korea? That’s because North Korea is very willing to defend itself. Washington bows up like a banty rooster about the lawful Iranian civilian nuclear program, but sends bribes to “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il.

Even if secessionist and nationalist leaders champion the cause of non-violence and secession through lawful means, they do themselves and their followers a disservice by refusing to broach the subject of armed resistance to Federal tyranny. That position is akin to posting a sign in your front lawn that reads “Gun Free Zone.” You’ve just announced that you have no means of defending yourself against attack and violence. Ask those at Fort Hood, Columbine High School and Virginia Tech.

There is a fine line between acknowledging that you’ll fight tyranny and picking a fight with a tyrant. The first trick is to know enough not to cross that line. The other trick is to be aware that the bad guys keep moving the line.

I think of a state like Texas and its very exciting nationalist movement. I encourage a free and open discussion of militia re-building as they move forward. With a Texas population of over 24 million, the militia could easily become a force of 1-2 million able-bodied adult men.

Secessionists in every state need to talk about this subject.

Any state that seriously contemplates secession must reconstitute and rebuild its own Militia. This will be one of the most solemn indications of that State’s seriousness about its own liberty and the liberty of its citizens.

Copyright © 2009, Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Russell Longcore throws down the gauntlet to state politicians and readers.

I’ve been writing about secession now for a while. Recently my articles have been featured on the LewRockwell.com website. Every time that a new article is posted, I get tons of emails from readers that I dutifully answer. I figure if they took the time to write to me, it would be discourteous of me not to answer. Plus, hundreds of new readers look over my secessionist website at www.DumpDC.com. It’s all good.

I learn so much from the writers. They ask the most penetrating questions that make me think deeply about what I write. Most of the messages are positive and complimentary. I always get a couple that inform me that I’m a raving idiot who knows nothing. Curiously, those e-bombs are always from north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

But after the last posting, “State Secession: Trying To Beat the World’s Worst Record,” and reader’s comments and questions, I’ve started to re-think some of my secessionist ideals.

I’ve held the hope that the push for state’s rights and secession, with the goal of forming a new nation, would come from the people duly elected to various state House and Senate positions, and from the offices of governors. That’s what happened in 1861. But I’m starting to wonder if there is ANY leadership in the state governments. I’m beginning to seriously doubt if secession and the desire for liberty truly beats in the hearts of any state politicians anywhere.

Where are the articles about secession written by state legislators and governors? When the Framers of the Constitution sought to convince Americans to ratify the new document, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison wrote 85 detailed articles that appeared in newspapers. Those articles are now known as The Federalist Papers.

Are there no politicians willing to make a policy statement about secession? No matter if the articles would be pro-secession or anti-secession, the paucity of position papers written by state politicians is an object lesson we’d better notice.

You might try to correct me by pointing to the thirty nine states have passed legislation or resolutions asserting their Tenth Amendment rights. A few have passed legislation that asserts their Second Amendment rights, specifically that Federal gun laws and BATF regulations do not apply to firearms manufactured within a state’s borders. Why haven’t at least SOME of the sponsors of the legislation, or the guys writing the resolutions, gone on record in writing with articles posted at widely-read forums like this one? Getting a resolution passed has nothing to do with winning hearts and minds out there in the citizenry.

I guess it’s possible that I’ve missed those articles. I know I didn’t read the local papers in Montana and Tennessee, two states that passed the Second Amendment bills. But I live in Georgia, and the Georgia Senate passed and adopted SR 632 on April 1, 2009, which is self-titled “A RESOLUTION affirming states’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles.”

I did not know about this Georgia resolution until about a month ago, and I live not 25 miles from the State House.

The sponsors of the Georgia resolution introduced this onto the Senate resolution calendar on the 39th day of a 40-day legislative session. Most senators, in a rush to complete their work in the final hours, didn’t even read the 6-page bill, and it passed 43-1. So while it was nice for the sponsors to introduce and shepherd the resolution, the back-door tactics don’t appear to champion the cause in a forthright manner. A writer in the Atlanta Journal Constitution called it “lend(ing) aid and comfort to radical causes and fringe groups.”¹

Yeah, baby. Secession is pretty radical.

In my article “Cowardice In State Government”, I ask this:

“But where is the state legislature and Governor that will notify Washington that there is a new “nullification sheriff” in town? When will some state begin nullifying the laws coming out of Washington, and refusing to allow them to be obeyed in that state? When will a state refuse to enforce Federal legislation? When will a state slap the cuffs on a Federal law enforcement officer who is trying to enforce Federal law in a state that has nullified Federal law?

Where is that state that will be true to its origins, and allow nothing but gold and silver coin (specie) as tender in payment of debts (Article I, Section 10)?”

None of the state politicians would even have to breathe the word “secession” to assert their powers of nullification, would they?

I even make the suggestion that states could begin now collecting their tax revenues from their own citizens in silver and gold. The process would begin to teach citizens what true money is before they are plunged into a worldwide currency collapse and are forced to learn the hard way. State politicians could even make speeches against secession and still collect their tax revenues with real money instead of Federal Reserve Notes.

Then I think back to the days before the formation of the Confederate States of America. In those days, eleven individual state governments actually passed legislation that a Governor signed, and eleven individual states formally seceded from the united States of America.

In Charleston, South Carolina, on December 20, 1860, the first vote for secession at the Secession Convention was 169 to zero.

On January 9th, 1861, Mississippi joined South Carolina. Florida joined the secession ranks the next day on January 10th. Alabama followed on January 11th. Georgia seceded on January 19th. Louisiana left the Union on January 26th. Texas was seventh to leave on February 1st.

Those seven new sovereign nations sent delegates to Montgomery, Alabama to draft a confederacy. They ratified the provisional Montgomery Constitution on February 8, 1861, and elected Jefferson Davis as President the next day.

Virginia defeated a vote for secession on April 4th. But on April 17th, two days after the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for troops, Virginians voted to secede. Arkansas and Tennessee seceded on May 6th. On May 20th, North Carolina joined the Confederacy.

I do not know if those 1861 state-elected representatives and governors wrote and published their positions. But they understood state’s rights and nullification, understood the US Constitution, and voted in favor of secession in sufficient numbers that seven states could leave the US peaceably and form a new nation. Shamefully, the North did not want peace.

The differences between the politicians of 1861 and 2009 are so stark that comparison is almost laughable.

There was no “groupthink” back then. There was no mass communication media that drowned people in entertainment and info-tainment. The simplest news item took days or weeks to become known by the populace. The closest thing to fast news was Samuel Morse’s telegraph.

Today’s world is a constant din of instant info-noise. Today’s state legislator or Governor is well trained in the ways of Washington plunder and bound with the heavy chains of Federal money. States suckle and cannot stop. They are willing participants in the economic rape of America. If they weren’t, they’d stop it.

So, the questions become obvious: Is it reasonable to believe that men and women in elective State offices who have a Federalist worldview will forsake that worldview and embrace a completely new worldview of nationhood for their state? Should we look to our state houses and governors’ offices for leadership when the poop hits the fan? Should we have any faith in state politicians to protect their own state’s economic health?

I am beginning to believe that the new Founding Fathers and Mothers will be men and women whose names you’ve never heard before. The present crop of state politicos may have to be shoved aside and considered obstructionists. The visionaries who actually bring new nations into existence will rise from obscurity and their names will eventually be found in history books.

So, as I close, I’d like to issue two challenges.

Challenge Number One: Politicians of the Fifty States, I challenge you to write articles either in favor of secession or in opposition to secession. Your constituents have a right to know your position in this matter. I will post your articles at www.DumpDC.com for the world to see. I cannot speak for others, but I’m guessing that other important websites and blogs will pick up your articles and post them far and wide.

Challenge Number Two: Readers, print this article and send it to your state representative, state senator and governor. Then watch to see if they accept the challenge.

Finally, remember Matthew 7:18-20: Jesus said “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”

¹Atlanta Journal Constitution, April 16, 2009, “Georgia Senate threatens dismantling of USA,” by Jay Bookman.

Copyright © 2009, Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Last night I stumbled upon an article, A Case For Secession-Introduction,  (first of a series) on Gather.com and it struck me that the time may soon be approaching when one or two states will be called to step up for the rest of us in hopes of saving the Republic.  I’m not advocating for secession now; I’m just looking at the possibility with a little more interest. How such a move might shift our ‘government’ back to position where Representatives actually have to listen to and respect their constituents is a question that interests me.  What is clear is that with Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in control, Democratic Members of Congress are currently being effectively bribed with earmarks, promises or threats to pass legislation America does not want. They are not listening.

Polling demonstrates over and over the majority of Americans are against government run healthcare, are against unreasonable infringement of our Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms, are against illegal immigration, are against socialism, are against tax dollar funding of organizations like ACORN and SEIU, are against politicians creating unsustainable debt that will cripple their children’s futures, are against government manipulate of the news, are against government creating more unsustainable entitlements, are against Congress not adhering to the Constitution, are against Congress exceeding their power, are against Congress trampling on the rights reserved to the states under the Constitution, and are against unreasonable infringement of rights of privacy and free speech.  In many states, the majorities are huge.  They generally reflect states with populations that realize that government handouts do nothing other than create dependence to government/politicians and harm the recipients.

Today Congress is acting like a mule; and like a mule, sometimes the only way to get its attention is to hit it between the eyes.  As we (a majority) all know, the Obama Congress is running America’s balance sheet, value of her dollar, and entire economy over the cliff.  Most of us also know that it’s only drastic action can get the attention of this Congress that appears hell bent on ushering in a new socialist nation.  Ordinary Americans are trying with massive Tea Parties, but one certain way to get Washington’s attention and possibly prevent the coming economic and social disaster (annihilation) is for one state or two to say ENOUGH! The preverbal two by four between the eyes may be what is called for to save the futures of all Americans.

Logistically there are only a few states that have strong enough economies and sufficient resources to tell the Federal Government to go screw itself, we are going our own way.

Alaska has sufficient resources (energy, etc.), access to trade with other countries (Canada and Russia), self-sufficient people, leaders who have a minimal concept of a balanced budget, and natural independence from the contiguous United States.

Texas has many of the same attributes as Alaska (a notion of being somehow independent of the rest of the country, trade with Mexico, Latin America and an independent/self-sufficient people).

N. Dakota, Nebraska a few other boarder/coastal states may be able to manage independence for themselves, but not without a lot of determination.  Other central states like Oklahoma would probably need prearranged trade compacts with neighboring states to be successful.  They would go along as they have been; except they would not pay federal taxes, nor receive federal tax dollars nor serve in the U. S. military.  That would certainly get people’s attention.

Most of the states that might reasonably consider secession as an option are the ones that ARE NOT like California, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or New Jersey, etc. where politicians have intentionally created large dependent populations of people and groups with their hands out for “other peoples’ money” (dependent voting blocks tied to money- not principle).

To have a shot at successfully seceding, it is likely that a state must first have a large majority of its population that is interested in independence, who are self-reliant, who as a group have not been used to taking more than their fair share of federal tax dollars, who are not looking for ways to avoid fair taxes but who don’t want to be carrying the load for the above named states, who have reasonable expectations of government; and most importantly, who care about freedom, equality and the principles of the United States Constitution more than the “Federal Government”.  America is its people; it is not the buildings, institutions, and politicians in Washington, D. C.

If a state did have the courage to choose secession, many of their residents would likely flee. However, millions of independent/self-sufficient Americans, small businesses, and numerous large businesses would be just as quick to try to come to live and thrive in freedom.  Like the movie ‘Field of Dreams’ – build it and they will come.  I believe that is true. Especially, if the state is built/rebuilt upon the principles that founded the once great U.S.A., it would ensure a diverse, hardy, can do citizenry that encourages one another.  You know, a citizenry like America once had.  Not the one that sues every time their coffee is too hot or they have their feelings hurt slightly.

Such a state’s own tax dollars, collected in a fair and reasonable manner from its citizens, would go twice as far as those they had been paying the federal government.  Tax systems could be simplified so everyone has a stake in the services provided by government because they too are paying taxes.  Those in times of need would be given a helping hand up to reach their potential instead of under the government’s foot!

If fact, upon secession, such a state could made one big but simple change in the system that would go far to encourage individuals to strive for success.  What if the state recognized that it would be more likely that voters would choose the best candidate to represent all the people if voters did not have a big conflict of interest present?  What if the state said that if you are currently receiving monetary benefits from the state/tax-payers (worker’s compensation, welfare, etc., excluding total disability) you cannot vote in any state election until you stop receiving government assistance?  If one wants to participate in elections, one would need to try to get better if injured, try earnestly to find work, or find a way to stop receiving benefits from the state.

Education, environmental protection, etc. could all happen because it would not be in people’s self-interest to scam the state.  Spending for the public good would likely be a lot more reasonable and not tied to corrupt special interest groups like ACORN.

If one or two states did choose to succeed from the Union, it would not necessarily have to be on a permanent basis.  It might be done with the understanding that when the federal government starts respecting the rights of the individual and the states, balances its budget or at least seriously starts down that path, respects and again follows the Constitution; and stops supporting enterprises with a history of intimidation/voter fraud like SEIU and ACORN; then they would consider rejoining the union.

Somehow I imagine every Senator and Representative saying to himself or herself –

What have we done?  We have brought about the destruction of America. It was on my watch!

(One additional thing for Members of Congress to remember is that states like California, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and some other bloated, selfish, leftist states have much lower percentages of residents enlisting in the military than states that would be more likely to entertain seceding!  Who would protect America and her diminishing freedoms from al Qaeda and the Taliban? Maybe they could make a deal with the state/nation to allow its free citizens to serve in the U. S. military.)

Maybe Members of Congress wouldn’t say anything and just continue bleeding America’s taxpayers without listening to them.

I hope for the former; but if the latter occurred, I would pack my bags and move to Texas or wherever.  I would be going to that ‘Field of Dreams’!

Never in my 55 years on this earth have I thought that I would seriously consider the idea of secession from the United States of America.  I guess I was wrong.  Personally, I will be waiting to see if America can be set again on its path under the Constitution through the electoral process in 2010.

If America can’t be righted to its course, it may be prudent for all freedom loving Americans to be reading up on secession.

Speaking of the 2010 elections, have you heard that Larry Sinclair, the man who alleges that he and Obama used cocaine and engaged in consensual sex in 1999, is running for Congress?

by Patrick Samuels

What I will be sharing with you over the next few weeks may be considered by some, perhaps many, seditious at the least, treasonous at worst. Fortunately we still enjoy freedom of speech in this country and political speech in particular. This will not be the time or place to argue the methods of secession. Should a state currently operating under the contract of the Constitution of the United States find these arguments compelling in the future, or if the national government continues its slide into tyranny and obligates free men to act to preserve their freedom, it is my hope that the attitude of Thomas Jefferson would prevail; “Let them part by all means if it is for their happiness to do so. It is but the elder and the younger son differing. God bless them both, and keep them in the Union if it be for their good, but separate them if better.”

Since the “Civil War”, or the War for Southern Independence, established the preeminent place of the national government over the states, eliminating their ultimate sovereignty and right of self determination guaranteed under the tenth amendment of the Constitution, and the continual implementation of the progressive/statist agenda beginning with the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, the people of the various states in the union have been “disposed to suffer, while the evils are sufferable…” In recent years, more and more Americans are no longer finding the evils “sufferable”. We are tired of having our money confiscated for “redistributive justice” or wasted on pork barrel projects. We are tired of distant politicians thinking they know better than we how to raise our children, take care of our own health and well being, and spend our own money. We are increasingly worried that the national government will treat our God given rights as merely privileges to be exercised at the whim and direction of those in power. We are continually offended by politicians who treat us with contempt and disdain. We are fearful of the results of out of control spending and debt accumulation. Many of us believe that if we continue along the path we are on, our children and grandchildren with inherit a country that is merely a shadow of its former self. We believe that the greatness of the United States of America rests in the morality and industriousness of its people and the wisdom of a system of government whose chief aim is to secure their liberty. In a world where tyranny and oppression have been the rule rather than the exception, the United States has demonstrated the great things that can be accomplished by a people unencumbered by class, strict religious ideology or oppressive rulers. To see all that made this country the beacon of light to the world that it has been under attack by the very government we entrust with its perpetuation has become insufferable.

To even contemplate secession brings tears to eyes of every patriot who admires the courage of the men who formulated this Union, remembers the sacrifice of those who gave their all to preserve it, and takes pride in the accomplishments such a great nation has given to the world. Many of the original patriots said the same about Great Britain. It was the best system then available in the world but had become increasingly tyrannical, marring all that was good about it. To see the Union dissolve after all these years is a distressing thing to contemplate. Yet free men are under no compulsion to yield their freedom to perpetuate a government that no longer secures their liberty and happiness, no matter what their affection for its history.

There are those who say “This is America, love it or leave it!” Some among the dissent, myself included, have formulated “escape plans” to be implemented when the confiscation of our wealth or restrictions on our liberty become too great. For a small minority, of which we may be, this would be the moral and proper thing to do. However, if the majority of the people in a state or region become dissatisfied with their government, no longer willing to endure the “long train of abuses and usurpations”, finding no reasonable redress for their grievances and envisioning only despotism in the end, then the secession of that state or region becomes reasonable, just and proper. Why should a people who have invested their lives in the soil of their ancestors be expected to pick up and leave because an oppressive government seeks to reduce them to servitude? Do not those who have toiled to reveal the wealth of the land for their own prosperity and that of their progeny have a right to stay on that land without the expectation that they or their children will be brought into bondage? Do we not have the right to stay in an area where our history and culture have developed in conjunction with our geography to make us unique, without subjecting ourselves to the policies of a government that embraces the antitheses of our culture and values?

Most will object to secession with the idea that we still elect our representatives, we just need to put the right people in office, we need to change Washington from the “inside”. Do we really believe that’s possible any longer? Let’s say that in 2010 we “threw the bums out” and there was a historic fifty percent turnover in the house and senate. Would anything really change? Thirty years ago we had the Reagan Revolution. Twenty years ago there was the Contract with America. Where are we today? Did anything change? Is government smaller, did it shrink even a little? Tom Daschle was voted out and replaced by Harry Reid. Wishy-washy Republican leaders are replaced by other wishy-washy Republican leaders whose best plan of action is to give ground slowly and whose worst is to cooperate to give away our freedom. There is a systemic problem in Washington and it is that the two parties are entrenched in power and the radical party leadership calls the shots because they hold the money for everyone’s reelection in their hands. If ignoramuses like Nancy Pelosi, criminals like Charlie Rangle and Chris Dodd and just plain weirdoes like Barny Frank can be reelected time and time again in their gerrymandered districts, the system is broken and there is no hope for real change in Washington. The parties and the huge Washington bureaucracy are holding us hostage and that is not going to change before the economic and moral damage becomes irreparable.

Finally, consider the fact that the liabilities and obligations assumed by our national government are unsustainable and will, in the near future, result in the destruction of our currency and economy. If our ship of state is like the Titanic and some of us can see the iceberg ahead, Obama, Pelosi and Reid have just given the order for full speed ahead. Some may say deliberately, and not just out of ignorance or stupidity. If the national government is going to commit national suicide, are the people of the many states obligated to go down with the ship, particularly if the people in those states have been continually dissatisfied with the policies that brought us to the point of impact? Would it not be a wise course of action to get into a lifeboat now so you are assured a seat when the ship goes down? A state that secedes before the ship strikes the iceberg, develops a sound currency and economy based on free market principles and an efficient private sector utilization of resources will not only survive the catastrophe, but thrive, because it will have recaptured the ideals and values that made this country great.

I have written this introduction and what will follow based on the idea that a single state or a few that make up a region of the country with similar values and culture would choose to leave the union. If a larger number of states would seriously consider this course of action, then we need to ponder the consequences of a constitutional convention. If the many states choose to, in essence, form a new government under a revised contract, restoring freedom and common sense in government, then perhaps this nation can remake itself in the image of its former glory.

Why consider this now? Although this is not the place to consider the history of the secession movement in this country or its legal ramifications, suffice it to say that a country founded on the right of secession has had secession movements throughout its history. Massachusetts was the first and the southern confederation was the last to be taken seriously. The events of the last two years have awakened many people to the deficiencies of their government, while their government has flaunted those deficiencies as if they were a badge of honor. There are those of us who believe that our national government, with its entrenched leadership and bureaucracy, is incapable of relinquishing power. Perhaps the grab for power and control has become too blatant to ignore but it is only the acceleration of a pattern that began with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Even if we put a stop to the current attempts at tyranny like health care or cap and trade, it will only be a temporary reprieve. The vast majority of the people in our national government, and many state and local governments as well, believe that they can do a better job of managing everything than the people can. Democrat or Republican, they believe their job is to fix things the government was never meant to fix, many of which are not broken or are broken because they broke it!. Such an attitude will only lead to more tyranny, more absurdity and the absolute ruin of our economic and moral foundations. The ship is steaming full speed ahead for the iceberg. It may be ten yards or ten miles from hitting but it will hit. The laws of economics and the lessons of history make it certain. Will we jump over individually, swimming for safety as best we can? Or will the people of several states rise up and declare their right to liberty and self determination? If the latter is a consideration, the following essays will provide some powerful ammunition to make a case for secession and provide some of the philosophical foundation for building a free state based on the principles that worked so well for so long in the United States.

Copyright 2009, Gather.com

www.patricksamuels.com

By Patrick Samuels, author of: “Memories of a Former American”

What I will be sharing with you over the next few weeks may be considered by some, perhaps many, seditious at the least, treasonous at worst. Fortunately we still enjoy freedom of speech in this country and political speech in particular. This will not be the time or place to argue the methods of secession. Should a state currently operating under the contract of the Constitution of the United States find these arguments compelling in the future, or if the national government continues its slide into tyranny and obligates free men to act to preserve their freedom, it is my hope that the attitude of Thomas Jefferson would prevail; “Let them part by all means if it is for their happiness to do so. It is but the elder and the younger son differing. God bless them both, and keep them in the Union if it be for their good, but separate them if better.”

Since the “Civil War”, or the War for Southern Independence, established the preeminent place of the national government over the states, eliminating their ultimate sovereignty and right of self determination guaranteed under the tenth amendment of the Constitution, and the continual implementation of the progressive/statist agenda beginning with the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, the people of the various states in the union have been “disposed to suffer, while the evils are sufferable…” In recent years, more and more Americans are no longer finding the evils “sufferable”. We are tired of having our money confiscated for “redistributive justice” or wasted on pork barrel projects. We are tired of distant politicians thinking they know better than we how to raise our children, take care of our own health and well being, and spend our own money. We are increasingly worried that the national government will treat our God given rights as merely privileges to be exercised at the whim and direction of those in power. We are continually offended by politicians who treat us with contempt and disdain. We are fearful of the results of out of control spending and debt accumulation. Many of us believe that if we continue along the path we are on, our children and grandchildren with inherit a country that is merely a shadow of its former self. We believe that the greatness of the United States of America rests in the morality and industriousness of its people and the wisdom of a system of government whose chief aim is to secure their liberty. In a world where tyranny and oppression have been the rule rather than the exception, the United States has demonstrated the great things that can be accomplished by a people unencumbered by class, strict religious ideology or oppressive rulers. To see all that made this country the beacon of light to the world that it has been under attack by the very government we entrust with its perpetuation has become insufferable.

To even contemplate secession brings tears to eyes of every patriot who admires the courage of the men who formulated this Union, remembers the sacrifice of those who gave their all to preserve it, and takes pride in the accomplishments such a great nation has given to the world. Many of the original patriots said the same about Great Britain. It was the best system then available in the world but had become increasingly tyrannical, marring all that was good about it. To see the Union dissolve after all these years is a distressing thing to contemplate. Yet free men are under no compulsion to yield their freedom to perpetuate a government that no longer secures their liberty and happiness, no matter what their affection for its history.

There are those who say “This is America, love it or leave it!” Some among the dissent, myself included, have formulated “escape plans” to be implemented when the confiscation of our wealth or restrictions on our liberty become too great. For a small minority, of which we may be, this would be the moral and proper thing to do. However, if the majority of the people in a state or region become dissatisfied with their government, no longer willing to endure the “long train of abuses and usurpations”, finding no reasonable redress for their grievances and envisioning only despotism in the end, then the secession of that state or region becomes reasonable, just and proper. Why should a people who have invested their lives in the soil of their ancestors be expected to pick up and leave because an oppressive government seeks to reduce them to servitude? Do not those who have toiled to reveal the wealth of the land for their own prosperity and that of their progeny have a right to stay on that land without the expectation that they or their children will be brought into bondage? Do we not have the right to stay in an area where our history and culture have developed in conjunction with our geography to make us unique, without subjecting ourselves to the policies of a government that embraces the antitheses of our culture and values?

Most will object to secession with the idea that we still elect our representatives, we just need to put the right people in office, we need to change Washington from the “inside”. Do we really believe that’s possible any longer? Let’s say that in 2010 we “threw the bums out” and there was a historic fifty percent turnover in the house and senate. Would anything really change? Thirty years ago we had the Reagan Revolution. Twenty years ago there was the Contract with America. Where are we today? Did anything change? Is government smaller, did it shrink even a little? Tom Daschle was voted out and replaced by Harry Reid. Wishy-washy Republican leaders are replaced by other wishy-washy Republican leaders whose best plan of action is to give ground slowly and whose worst is to cooperate to give away our freedom. There is a systemic problem in Washington and it is that the two parties are entrenched in power and the radical party leadership calls the shots because they hold the money for everyone’s reelection in their hands. If ignoramuses like Nancy Pelosi, criminals like Charlie Rangle and Chris Dodd and just plain weirdoes like Barny Frank can be reelected time and time again in their gerrymandered districts, the system is broken and there is no hope for real change in Washington. The parties and the huge Washington bureaucracy are holding us hostage and that is not going to change before the economic and moral damage becomes irreparable.

Finally, consider the fact that the liabilities and obligations assumed by our national government are unsustainable and will, in the near future, result in the destruction of our currency and economy. If our ship of state is like the Titanic and some of us can see the iceberg ahead, Obama, Pelosi and Reid have just given the order for full speed ahead. Some may say deliberately, and not just out of ignorance or stupidity. If the national government is going to commit national suicide, are the people of the many states obligated to go down with the ship, particularly if the people in those states have been continually dissatisfied with the policies that brought us to the point of impact? Would it not be a wise course of action to get into a lifeboat now so you are assured a seat when the ship goes down? A state that secedes before the ship strikes the iceberg, develops a sound currency and economy based on free market principles and an efficient private sector utilization of resources will not only survive the catastrophe, but thrive, because it will have recaptured the ideals and values that made this country great.

I have written this introduction and what will follow based on the idea that a single state or a few that make up a region of the country with similar values and culture would choose to leave the union. If a larger number of states would seriously consider this course of action, then we need to ponder the consequences of a constitutional convention. If the many states choose to, in essence, form a new government under a revised contract, restoring freedom and common sense in government, then perhaps this nation can remake itself in the image of its former glory.

Why consider this now? Although this is not the place to consider the history of the secession movement in this country or its legal ramifications, suffice it to say that a country founded on the right of secession has had secession movements throughout its history. Massachusetts was the first and the southern confederation was the last to be taken seriously. The events of the last two years have awakened many people to the deficiencies of their government, while their government has flaunted those deficiencies as if they were a badge of honor. There are those of us who believe that our national government, with its entrenched leadership and bureaucracy, is incapable of relinquishing power. Perhaps the grab for power and control has become too blatant to ignore but it is only the acceleration of a pattern that began with Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Even if we put a stop to the current attempts at tyranny like health care or cap and trade, it will only be a temporary reprieve. The vast majority of the people in our national government, and many state and local governments as well, believe that they can do a better job of managing everything than the people can. Democrat or Republican, they believe their job is to fix things the government was never meant to fix, many of which are not broken or are broken because they broke it!. Such an attitude will only lead to more tyranny, more absurdity and the absolute ruin of our economic and moral foundations. The ship is steaming full speed ahead for the iceberg. It may be ten yards or ten miles from hitting but it will hit. The laws of economics and the lessons of history make it certain. Will we jump over individually, swimming for safety as best we can? Or will the people of several states rise up and declare their right to liberty and self determination? If the latter is a consideration, the following essays will provide some powerful ammunition to make a case for secession and provide some of the philosophical foundation for building a free state based on the principles that worked so well for so long in the United States.

www.patricksamuels.com

Mexico. Country to the south that has constructed a long, tall wall to separate our two frigidly friendly countries and people.  Why would Mexico do this to us? Why?

Medieval Times. Roughly 600 AD to 2009 AD; Republican Party philosophy born, adopted, adapted and subsequently spread from Florida to Louisiana. Major participants and events include Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh, Secession, Palintology, Paleontology, War and Peace, Peace and War, Divorce, B. Kerik, Galileo, Male, Trial by Error, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Fox News, Football. (“Are you ready for some…?”)

Miscegenation. Unlawful coupling of Elephant and Donkey.

Misguided. Attempted coupling of Elephant and Donkey.

New York. Once called The Empire State now officially listed by Sotheby’s as For Sale by owner. Call M. Bloomberg. 212-$$$-$$$$.

Opinion. Thoughts of the loudest, often most incoherent. 

Palin. A rogue. See also Octomom, Cleopatra, any of The Gabors

Quest.  Search for the Holy Grail of 60 Senatorial votes. Also allergic reaction to discussion.

Republic. A substantial gathering of individuals.

Republicans. A small gathering of individuals. Sound of one hand clapping.

Scandal. Generally believed to be widespread; a form of Swine Flu and contagious. See Alleghany Trail, C Street Brotherhood, B. Madoff, N. Gingrich, Republican, Wall Street, D. Cheney, Blackwater, Halliburton, Barry and Stock Exchange Bonds, Republican Party.

Secession. See Session at Sea, Slavery, Carpetbaggers, Tea baggers, Ulysses S. Grant, “Free at last,” South Carolina, Argentina (“Don’t Weep for Me”), Rhett Butler, Levi Johnston, General Joe Johnson, Johnson & Johnson, Fort Sumter, Atlantic Ocean, Root Canal. Also “Lafayette we are here!” Merrimac and School Monitor.

Texas. A second state of denial. (Considerably larger than Florida.) See Bush 41, Bush 43, Ship of Fools, Imperfection, Palintology, Governor Perry, Hair, Fort Hood, Santa Ana Winds, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, Santa Claus, Remember the Alamo, Remember the Titans, Tulia and Texas Monthly. Also Dallas Cowboys, Jerry and Shirley Jones, Cowboys, Indians, sharpshooters Annie Oakley and Dick (“I never heard of Valerie Plame. Isn’t that a French name?”) Cheney. Also Halliburton, Enron, Bulls—t, Global Warming – not here, Death Penalty – here, Tom Delay, Fraud, Freud, Oil, Ail, Ale, Osama bin Cheney.

Texas. Universe. Native Americans believe the word derives from Friends or Allies. (Example: With friends like these you don’t need enemies.)

University of Texas. Where no children left behind are sometimes left behind.

Utopia. Texas?

Virginia. Believer in Santa Claus. (“Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus…”) East of West Virginia. See also “Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolfe?” “Wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Also Ship of Fools.

War. A game likened to Monopoly, often with similar results. Preferred 17 to 1 by Republican Party members, George W. Bush and Dick (“I like shotguns”) Cheney. See also Tug Of, Decline and Fall, Hundred Years, Civil and … of the Roses.

Washington. A single United States State owned and operated by W. and M. Gates. Home of Evil Empire where lay hidden the Forbidden Apple.

Xenophobia. Fear of strangers. See Republican.

Yale. Where George W. Bush was under-educated; majored in obfuscation, Muddle East.

Zip. Number of thoughtful Republican United States Senators.

Note: See also Abridged, Unabridged, “Bridge Over the River Kwai”, Pictionary, Punxatawney.

Although this is a notably reliable compilation of “dictionary” terms and meanings that refer to politics, political parties and Ships of Fools it is possible that some definitions have been omitted. I apologize in advance for errors of omission, commission, long division, Missions Accomplished or Unaccomplished.

Warren Langer

langerw@comcast.net

illini1000@gmail.com

http://warrenlanger.wordpress.com

Even mega-states are typically founded by a small nucleus of pioneers, visionaries, and activists. The United States is a relatively recent example. The character of the collective of Founding Fathers has a profound effect on the nature of the polity that they create: nations spawned by warriors tend to be belligerent and to nurture and cherish military might throughout their history (e.g., Rome); When traders and businessman establish a country, it is likely to cultivate capitalistic values and thrive on commerce and shipping (e.g., Netherlands); The denizens of countries formed by lawyers are likely to be litigious.

The influence of the Founding Fathers does not wane with time. On the very contrary: the mold that they have forged for their successors tends to rigidify and be sanctified. It is buttressed by an appropriate ethos, code of conduct, and set of values. Subsequent and massive waves of immigrants conform with these norms and adapt themselves to local traditions, lores, and mores.

Back to the United States:

Thinkers and scholars as diverse as Christopher Lasch in “The Cultural Narcissist” and Theodore Millon in “Personality Disorders of Everyday Life” have singled out the United States as the quintessential narcissistic society.

The “American Dream” in itself is benign. It involves materialistic self-realization, the belief in the ideal of equal opportunities and equal access to the system, and in just rewards for hard work, merit, and natural gifts. But the Dream has been rendered nightmarish by the confluence with America’s narcissistic traits.

America’s internal ethos is universally-accepted by all Americans. It incorporates the American Dream and the conviction that America stands for everything that is good and right. Consequently, as the reification of goodness, the United States is in constant battle with evil and its ever-changing demonic emissaries – from Hitler to Saddam Hussein.

There is no national consensus about America’s external ethos. Some Americans are isolationists, others interventionists. Both groups are hypervigilant, paranoid, and self-righteous – but isolationists are introverted and schizoid. Theirs is  siege mentality. Interventionists are missionary. They feel omnipotent and invincible. They are extroverted and psychopathic.

This pathology can be traced back and attributed to a confluence of historical events and processes, the equivalents of trauma and abuse in an individual’s early childhood.

The United States of America started out as a series of loosely connected, remote, savage, and negligible colonial outposts. The denizens of these settlements were former victims of religious persecution, indentured servants, lapsed nobility, and other refugees. Their Declaration of Independence reads like a maudlin list of grievances coupled with desperate protestations of love and loyalty to their abuser, the King of Britain.

The inhabitants of the colonies defended against their perceived helplessness and very real inferiority with compensatory, imagined, and feigned superiority and fantasies of omnipotence. Victims frequently internalize their abusers and themselves become bullies. Hence the rough, immutable kernel of American narcissism.

The United States was (until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s) and still is, in some important respects, a pre-Enlightenment, white supremacist society. It is rife with superstition, prejudice, conspicuous religiosity, intolerance, philistinism, and lack of social solidarity. Its religiosity is overt, aggressive, virulent and ubiquitous. It is replete with an eschatology, which involves a changing cast of demonized “enemies”, both political and cultural.

The Civil War was fought between 2 America’s: the South, a perverted rendition of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the North, a harbinger of modern, multicultural immigrant societies. The North and the American Dream prevailed, the slaves were freed, and the Southern way of life, that of “gentlemen with leisure”, was replaced by a workaholic society where everyone is a slave to money and leisure is an ever rarer commodity.

Americans’ religion is a manifestation of their “Chosen People Syndrome”. They are missionary, messianic, zealous, fanatical, and nauseatingly self-righteous, bigoted, and hypocritical. This is especially discernible in the double-speak and double-standard that underlies American foreign policy.

American altruism is misanthropic and compulsive. They often give merely in order to control, manipulate, and sadistically humiliate the recipients.

Narcissism is frequently comorbid with paranoia. Americans cultivate and nurture a siege mentality which leads to violent acting out and unbridled jingoism. Their persecutory delusions sit well with their adherence to social Darwinism (natural selection of the fittest, let the weaker fall by the wayside, might is right, etc.).

Consequently, the United States always finds itself in company with the least palatable regimes in the world: together with Nazi Germany it had a working eugenics program (the 1935 anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws and the Nazi sterilization law were modeled after American anti-miscegenation and sterilization statutes), together with the likes of Saudi Arabia it executes its prisoners, it was the last developed nation to abolish slavery, alone with South Africa it had instituted official apartheid in a vast swathe of its territory.

Add to this volatile mix an ethos of malignant individualism, racism both latent and overt, a trampling, “no holds barred” ambitiousness, competitiveness, frontier violence-based morality, and proud simple-mindedness – and an ominous portrait of the United States as a deeply disturbed polity emerges.

Islam and Liberalism

Narcissistic Collectives

The Cultural Narcissist

The Roots of anti-Americanism

And Then There Were Too Many

What most Americans know about American history is flawed. Those that had been taught about the so called civil war or War against the States in school and even college have been denied nearly every angle of truth about the conflict and it’s causes as if they had never been educated at all. Honestly it takes not only an open mind to discover the truths of who lived and died in the War against the States. It takes a great passion. And a great many years of it to be able to understand a little more about the war and a lot more than what others know!

Miss Belle Boyd known fondly to her South as La Belle Rebel. One of the more well known and bravest women of the South that risked life and everything to aid in the defense of Southern independence.
You do not need to be a genius to begin learning about why boys, men, old men, and even women marched from their homes to defend those homes. You need only to read the lyrics of one of the South’s most popular war anthems, one that hundreds of thousands of our ancestors in gray marched in step to towards horrific hand to hand or cannon to face battles.
“ Rebels before, our fathers of yore. Rebel’s the righteous name Washington bore. Why, then, be ours, the same, the name that he snatched from shame, Chanting our battle cry, Freedom or Death. Chanting our battle cry, freedom or death!”

Freedom or death doesn’t exactly chime with the fabrications and revisions of hate, racism, and slavery that puritan lawmakers and government education sink into our heritage of honor.

Many of us are proud of the parts of our American history where men and families sacrificed everything, facing mad unknowns, for freedom, independence, and home. The majority of those that want to honor the true history of the Confederate States are descendants of Confederate veterans. You may never know or care of how many black southerners are as proud of their heritage of defending their thirteen state wilderness, their home as white descendants are. But they are many. Not a minority of race but one of honor.

Those of us that are indeed proud of our Confederate ancestors agree that there is little else more noble than taking a stand for the rights and freedom of your family and home and defending your neighbor from the deadly will of a great host .

Open your mind and research beyond the stories that only your peers or people that agree with you provide. You could find an unending supply of memoirs, letters, speeches, photographs, diaries, confessions, reports, orders, paper accounts, and individual quotes as well as whole chapters of history that have otherwise been largely censured in this land of the free. Finding the truth in history is a lot like archeology. Not altering the shape or symbols of what you might dig up.

The truth does not always unearth specifically what we wish to discover. But in it’s most pure and raw form, like what is found in memoirs and period letters of those that actually lived during the period, will surprise anyone that cares. One power we do not have, however, is to change truth, and the truth of what happened in history. Regardless of how it has been manipulated or altered since,actions and events that have already passed remain unchanged.

Again, the best chance of finding truth about a certain period is through many testimonies of many of it’s characters. Also, if what you discover is unpopular or censured by the ruling majority, chances are it might be correct!

Go to google images and look up “Confederate monument at Arlington Cemetery.” Get a good deep eye full of the different “races” (or more respectfully called, brothers and sisters of a different distant ancestry.)

Notice the multi-cultures represented in the monument’s bronze. The images upon this monument were selected and approved by Confederate veteran groups at the turn of the century. The monument so contradicts the Northern and government’s own revision history of the Confederacy that despite it being less than two miles from otherwise very well known monuments of Washington DC and in spite of being in the most famous cemetery in the United States, this monument reflecting the true existence of white and black soldiers serving together in the Confederate Army is never portrayed or recognized by the national media or national park service.
Nowhere on the monument is “race” or any other special context recognizing one group of people of others that is so common in war memorials today. Saying simply and manly,
“Not for fame or reward, not for place or for rank, not lured by ambition…” Further that,
“These men suffered all, sacrificed all, dared all, and died.” May you learn more about the story of this monument and dozens of other Confederate memorials that also include depictions of black Confederate veterans alongside white Confederate soldiers.

Ireland born Major General Patrick Cleburne who was killed from nineteen wounds received while leading a Confederate charge during the battle of Franklin, Tennessee on November 30, 1864. Before his death he was quoted saying, “The history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by all influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, our maimed veterans as fit objects for their derision…to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”

To a brave little minority in America, (a very diverse one) from Virginia to Missouri to Oklahoma to Texas and Tucson, Arizona and Mexico too and the great tribes with the great sufferings, the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw to name a few, share a heritage of the second war for independence in North America, the boldness to secede from a giant, and the blood of the rebel yell.

The roots of the major trans-continental slave routes from Africa to the British (later the United States) colonies honestly began and flourished from the puritans at Plymouth to the puritans that in a later breath sang the battle cry of freedom while conscripting and manipulating more than sixty-two thousand chained army of black men into the glorious cause of Union and Lincoln. For most of the blacks that were allowed a strictly segregated role into the Federal Army (more than two years after both Northern and Southern witnesses reported seeing blacks integrated into the Southern ranks) their service was reduced to being cannon fodder and forced to turning thousands of miles of rail tracks to everybody’s favorite “Uncle Billy’s Neck Ties.” (Overheating rails and twisting them together. Major General Sherman depended on these troops to keeping the non-combat aspects of his march to the sea going smoothly. But when Confederate patrols got too close to Sherman’s large rear guard, there are many authentic accounts saved for history’ sake, though they might not be preserved for much longer, testify and swear to accounts of untrained black regiments of the USCC being forced to the rear of the white columns to delay Confederate assaults long enough to take time to find a tactical advantages or safe routes of their own escape. These battles were horrific. Sherman broke the most severe lesson of lessons thoughtlessly forgotten. DO NOT RUN UNTRAINED TROOPS AGAINST 1864 CONFEDERATE VETERANS. Though an act of cruelty on the part of the Northern Army, it was of little loss to them, for the surplus of conscripts was never short for the Unionists.

Several examples of the national flags of the Confederacy and the battleflags Southern regiments carried, many to their deaths. Joan of Ark’s words truly depect what these symbols and their true meanings stand for in the history of the South.

by Ron Holland

The American Time magazine article headline asks, “Will Switzerland Vote to Ban Minarets on Mosques?”

Swiss citizens are becoming concerned about the threat that Islam presents to their traditional culture, economy and religious institutions. As an American, I know how I would vote were I Swiss but the decision will be made by the Swiss electorate as they have this referendum right on all issues.

In Switzerland, the people still rule and have the ultimate right to decide decisions above the government or parliament. Through the right of referendum they can cancel legislation and with the initiative they can pass or create legislative action on issues parliament refuses to act upon.

The bias and closed statist views shown in the article is business as usual for the US media elites out to protect the American political establishment and are so evident in this headline and article. It isn’t the question they asked but rather the question they didn’t dare ask is the “700-lb gorilla in the room.”

Quoting from the article, “Critics say the SVP, the largest party in Switzerland’s coalition government, has taken advantage of the country’s unique brand of direct democracy to push its populist, anti-immigrant agenda on the Swiss electorate. Citizens have the right to propose new laws in Switzerland – the only thing they need to force a nationwide vote on an initiative is a petition of 100,000 signatures.”

The question not asked is why doesn’t the American electorate have oversight over legislation and unpopular government regulations in the United States like in Switzerland? Imagine if 4% of the American voters signed a petition requiring a nationwide vote “yea or nay” on the banking bailouts, going to war in Iraq, auditing the Federal Reserve, nationalized health care or on the trillions in new Washington debt added because of the financial meltdown. The United States would still be a decentralized republic with limited government had we had the political option to hold back Washington and the special interests.

How America would be different if we had Swiss-style political rights to restrain government where the people rule instead of the special interests. Imagine an America where the billions in graft and political influence that control Congress could still buy legislation but not ultimate control if we as a people could overrule their actions.

What if the will of the people still ultimately controlled the political system and direction with true limited government at the federal, state and local level? Imagine the American electorate overriding Congress and demanding a strong dollar backed by real gold reserves, an audit of the Federal Reserve, a rollback of the bailouts, a declaration of war for foreign military intervention, the abolishment of the Patriot Act and a return to banking privacy.

Yes, a Swiss political party (The Swiss Peoples Party) promotes a nationalist agenda to the Swiss voters and they will ultimately decide in referendum yes or no on the issue. This is currently impossible in the United States but Swiss direct democracy and limited confederation government have worked in Switzerland for hundreds of years.

This is far superior to the two-party monopoly in America where the elites controlling both parties can push their self-serving agendas without restraint. Currently, short of the Tenth Amendment movement, state nullification or outright state secession, there is no real effective way to push back against Washington.

Until the American people can find a way to restrain the Federal government, the bureaucracy and the judiciary, the best place for Americans to secure and safeguard their wealth is outside their own country. Switzerland is one of the best jurisdictions to consider because their political system has preserved the rights and freedoms we once had as Americans. Still the ultimate problem for Americans is the necessity to restore our liberties at home because history has shown that wealth without liberty is only a temporary condition at best.

I say, it is time to take a real look at direct democracy in the United States or else Americans who value their property and liberties will have little choice but to first transfer their wealth to safety outside the US as it will be lost in the coming crash of treasury debt and the dollar. Next we must stand and fight the Washington leviathan through the political tools of the 10th amendment and John C. Calhoun’s political ideal of nullification both of which the Feds will probably just ignore. Our final democratic political tool is to exercise the political right of state-by-state secession with all the political and historical baggage this entails.

Trust me, Swiss style direct democracy in the United States would be an easier way to control Washington and the special interests but we only have a few years before the Washington debt and dollar collapse is upon us. Therefore I’ll close with a question. Is anybody here for secession?

Ron Holland works in Zurich and is a co-editor of the Swiss Mountain Vision Newsletter.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com.