by Norman Singleton July 9, 2004 09:36 PM
Here is some more details on how the GOP used procedural tricks to defeat an attempt to role back part of the PATRIOT Act, which Lew and Daniel previously commented on:
Under section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, judges must automatically approve a request to search library records, thus the PATRIOT Act turns judges into rubber stamps instead of independent checks on federal law enforcement. Representatives Bernie Sanders, Ron Paul and others offered an amendment to the Commerce, Justice, and State Department Appropriations bill restoring the fourth amendment requirement that the government show probable cause and obtain a warrant from an independent judge before using taxpayer funds to search library and Internet records.
The amendment was debated yesterday afternoon and at 3:41 Congress began was was supposed to be a 15-minute vote on the amendment.
However, at the end of 15 minutes, the Sanders-Paul amendment was winning. So, instead of bringing down the gavel and ending the vote, leadership 'kept the vote open' while it twisted arms to get Republicans to change their votes.
Like they did during the Medicare votes, the GOP leadership ordered the C-SPAN cameras to remain fixed on a wide shot of the House, so the American people could not see the House leadership browbeat members to abandon the Fourth Amendment and their constituents' freedom 'for the good of the party.'
While they could not see what was going on, the American people could hear Representative Sanders and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi inquire as to whether 15 minutes had passed and if so why the vote was still being held open. The official explanation from the GOP le"
Thoughts, ponderings and ramblings on politics, culture, society, religion, science and such.
Rantings from the defenders of resonable free thought.
Disclaimer- Everything here is an opinion, theory or philosophy. This is a celebration of the 1st Amendment and our God given right to think and speak. Some opinions may be harsh.
7.10.2004
REVOLT ON THE RIGHT!
"It's one of the most under-reported but pivotal stories of this election season: Untold numbers of American Christians, conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, constitutionalists and others 'on the right' are torn over how to vote in this November's election."
7.06.2004
Kidnapped marine 'safe after defecting' to Islamists
"Kidnapped US marine Wassef Ali Hassoun has been taken to 'a place of safety' after he pledged not to return to the US military, his captors told al-Jazeera television in a statement yesterday. "
It has been some time since I went on a real rant about all the evils of “sissyfying” the military. All of the years of indoctrinated political correctness, easing training standards for fear of hurting someone, easing recruitment standards because there are really just not enough good kids waiting to get in, eliminating the ability of commanders at the company level to issue stern punishment; all of these and more are examples of the things I am talking about.
Imagine this, a US Marine deserts and then defects. Unconscionable and unfathomable. The Corps just ain’t what it used to be…and to think I wrote a piece bemoaning the eventual beheading of this criminal.
I suppose this young man, though he be a translator, was never fully introduced to the meaning of Semper Fidelis.
It has been some time since I went on a real rant about all the evils of “sissyfying” the military. All of the years of indoctrinated political correctness, easing training standards for fear of hurting someone, easing recruitment standards because there are really just not enough good kids waiting to get in, eliminating the ability of commanders at the company level to issue stern punishment; all of these and more are examples of the things I am talking about.
Imagine this, a US Marine deserts and then defects. Unconscionable and unfathomable. The Corps just ain’t what it used to be…and to think I wrote a piece bemoaning the eventual beheading of this criminal.
I suppose this young man, though he be a translator, was never fully introduced to the meaning of Semper Fidelis.
6.29.2004
Israel major supplier of arms to Beijing
"A congressional commission on China stated in a report recently made public that Israel has become China's largest arms and weapons technology supplier after Russia. "
China is indeed a Dragon rising in the east. All the effort and money spent elsewhere by the US will eventually be proven as a mistake.
China has undertaken a massive modernization program. Within the decade the fruits of that effort will be apparent.
China is indeed a Dragon rising in the east. All the effort and money spent elsewhere by the US will eventually be proven as a mistake.
China has undertaken a massive modernization program. Within the decade the fruits of that effort will be apparent.
6.28.2004
A New Terror Threat- This holiday, watch out for those floating beer coolers
Right...what genius at Homeland Security thought this up?
Iranian woman 'gives birth to frog'
"Tests are being carried out on the frog
An Iranian newspaper has reported the controversial story of a woman who claims to have given birth to a frog. "
Just plain weird
An Iranian newspaper has reported the controversial story of a woman who claims to have given birth to a frog. "
Just plain weird
6.12.2004
AP Wire | 06/11/2004 | Limbaugh announces end of 10-year marriage
I am not going to attempt to pass judgment on the entire concept of divorce. I will simply state that marriage is a sacred institution and a solemn commitment. I believe that one ought not enter into it lightly nor leave the commitment just because things are hard.
There is no doubt that marriage can be hard. It takes men and women of real principle to see it through at times. A whole heck of a lot of people get divorced in this country. I am not saying that people ought not get divorced under any circumstance, just that maybe the high divorce rate is indicative of a failing of some core values of family and of keeping ones commitment. It is just so easy to treat marriage as a conditional arrangement that one can quit whenever they want.
Hopefully, I have not alienated every single person that has went through a divorce at this juncture. We all do what we think is right. My points are really focused on what society says is right. Our society has transformed to the point that the general attitude is that it si just better to get divorced than to try and work through problems and keep the commitments we have made. In one sense we have become a society of quitters.
Rush Limbaugh has as much as anyone else in the "New Conservative" movement served as a focal point and mouth piece for the cause. Thousands of very conservative Christians, small government believers, Constitutionalist and even libertarians have at times joined the ranks of the ditto heads. It seems that in the person of Limbaugh and the causes he championed we saw our very best hope to achieve our goals.
Limbaugh began as what we saw as an amplification of the principles espoused by Ronald Reagan. During the Clinton years we saw Limbaugh as a voice announcing the evil of the Clinton administration. It has only been since the installation of Bush II that many have began to see Limbaugh for what he really is.
What is he really? Is he really a man that stands on the principles of conservativism? Does he represent the goals of the Christian right? Is he at all a friend to those of libertarian beliefs? Does he really represent and advocate the principles of the Constitution as originally intended? Is he even a man of person principles and values that we ought to listen to?
The answer of course is NO to each of these. Limbaugh is firmly a member of the Party of Lincoln. He has stated several times recently his fondness for that man. He is not an advocate of smaller government. He really just wants to move pieces and parts of the government around. He does not support or defend Christian principles. he is certainly no friend to libertarians, even his economic beliefs are not as free market oriented as he attemtops to appear at times.
His political views are based much more on expedience than principle. This is his biggest flaw. It is the flaw of all men of Lincoln's and FDR's ilk. The idea that whatever is best to fix a short-term problem is acceptable without regard to long standing principles is a dangerous one.
Rush was forgiven by many for becoming addicted to drugs. After all it was just prescription drugs, right? Thousands still forgive him for his lack of real political principle-after all who else will stand up to the liberals?
The problem with listening to a man that bases his opinions on current expediency instead of solid principles is that invariably he will go far from the true path.
Rush is no friend to true conservatives or our movement. He has in fact confused and led astray thousands for far to long. It is time that we woke up and turned this guy off.
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
There is no doubt that marriage can be hard. It takes men and women of real principle to see it through at times. A whole heck of a lot of people get divorced in this country. I am not saying that people ought not get divorced under any circumstance, just that maybe the high divorce rate is indicative of a failing of some core values of family and of keeping ones commitment. It is just so easy to treat marriage as a conditional arrangement that one can quit whenever they want.
Hopefully, I have not alienated every single person that has went through a divorce at this juncture. We all do what we think is right. My points are really focused on what society says is right. Our society has transformed to the point that the general attitude is that it si just better to get divorced than to try and work through problems and keep the commitments we have made. In one sense we have become a society of quitters.
Rush Limbaugh has as much as anyone else in the "New Conservative" movement served as a focal point and mouth piece for the cause. Thousands of very conservative Christians, small government believers, Constitutionalist and even libertarians have at times joined the ranks of the ditto heads. It seems that in the person of Limbaugh and the causes he championed we saw our very best hope to achieve our goals.
Limbaugh began as what we saw as an amplification of the principles espoused by Ronald Reagan. During the Clinton years we saw Limbaugh as a voice announcing the evil of the Clinton administration. It has only been since the installation of Bush II that many have began to see Limbaugh for what he really is.
What is he really? Is he really a man that stands on the principles of conservativism? Does he represent the goals of the Christian right? Is he at all a friend to those of libertarian beliefs? Does he really represent and advocate the principles of the Constitution as originally intended? Is he even a man of person principles and values that we ought to listen to?
The answer of course is NO to each of these. Limbaugh is firmly a member of the Party of Lincoln. He has stated several times recently his fondness for that man. He is not an advocate of smaller government. He really just wants to move pieces and parts of the government around. He does not support or defend Christian principles. he is certainly no friend to libertarians, even his economic beliefs are not as free market oriented as he attemtops to appear at times.
His political views are based much more on expedience than principle. This is his biggest flaw. It is the flaw of all men of Lincoln's and FDR's ilk. The idea that whatever is best to fix a short-term problem is acceptable without regard to long standing principles is a dangerous one.
Rush was forgiven by many for becoming addicted to drugs. After all it was just prescription drugs, right? Thousands still forgive him for his lack of real political principle-after all who else will stand up to the liberals?
The problem with listening to a man that bases his opinions on current expediency instead of solid principles is that invariably he will go far from the true path.
Rush is no friend to true conservatives or our movement. He has in fact confused and led astray thousands for far to long. It is time that we woke up and turned this guy off.
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
6.06.2004
Reagan's Legacy
Ronald Reagan died today and the number of words that will be written about this occurrence on the Internet and in print will undoubtedly number in the millions. I feel compelled to say a few words because the presidency of Reagan had a significant impact on me and my political outlook.
I was a teenager during the 1980’s, I graduated high school in 1986 and college in 1990. All of my fond reckless memories are from this era. This is also the time that I became politically aware. During the hostage crises of 1979 I first became interested in things political. I had known more or less from early boyhood that being a soldier was something I wanted to do. The events surrounding the Iranian hostage crisis served to thrust me into the Reaganite camp rather firmly.
In 1979 I asked my mother if I could miss school to attend a speech Reagan was giving locally during the campaign. After the speech I deftly positioned myself right beside the exit door and was able to shake the man’s hand. After his election I wrote him a letter to thank him and I received a letter back with and automated but authentic looking Reagan signature at the bottom.
Reagan’s early talk of national defense and being strong before the world appealed to my awakening sense of what the world ought to be. I found myself enthralled by Reagan’s speeches and his words.
When he spoke of the Evil Empire and the need to stand on a wall and defend against it I was ready. I was only seventeen for a month, the minimum age that the Army would accept a person, and a junior in high school but still I joined up. I completed basic training the summer between junior and senior years and served in the National Guard all through high school and college. I was predisposed and maybe even destined to serve anyway but my early entry is due in large part to Reagan.
Yhose that write Reagan’s legacy will say many things. One of the truest of the things that will be said is that he was a coalition builder. Reagan brought in to the Republican Party a myriad of disenchanted groups. The Christian Right saw Reagan as the best hope to restore to America a moral base. States’ Rights and small government types heard within the words of Reagan a return to the right kind of government. Ordinary American without deep ideological beliefs say Reagan as the man to move us away from something.
To be sure there was something to worthy of the desire to move on. The 1970’s were in essence a very low point for America. Americans of all sorts looked to Reagan to move America forward.
As we examine the legacy of Regan we must ask what did we move away from or more aptly stated what did we move toward? Were the hopes and dreams of the Reagan Republicans realized?
Another foundation in the legacy of Reagan will undoubtedly be the he looked the bear in the eye and forced the Soviet Empire to crumble. This is something so stuck in the realm of legend that it is hardly worth disputing. D-N-I.net has an interesting set of statistics that demonstrate that although the first two years of Reagan’s presidency contained massive defense spending increases the following six years did not. They also show that the Soviet system was in trouble long before the 1980 increase here and that inevitably the system was destined to collapse.
Reagan’s legacy includes the concept that he was and always was a conservative. Reagan has missed most of the neo-con backlash because this idea has taken root and is not easily removed. It must be remembered that Reagan voted for FDR each time he ran. He supported liberal and quasi-socialist candidates as late as 1950. In many respect Reagan might be considered the first Neo-con.
Instead of the various groups getting the things they wanted from the Party of Reagan they have been slowly “waking” up over the last fifteen or so years to realize that the Party of Reagan is not the party of Jefferson. It is in fact the Party of Lincoln. It is a party that does not wish to do away with the socialism of FDR, they just want to change it a little. It is not a party of small and limited government. It is not a party of Christian values. Ronald Reagan rebuilt and redefined the Republican Party on the hopes and dreams of millions of people that wanted something different. Instead of Reagan moving us in the direction that these new Reaganites really anted to go we left the 1980’s set on a straight path toward Empire.
I shall not speak ill of the dead, especially a man that was once such a large hero of mine. Reagan will no doubt go down in the pantheon of “heroes” beside Lincoln, FDR and other sorts that have made America what it is. I will mourn his loss but I will not celebrate his legacy.
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
I was a teenager during the 1980’s, I graduated high school in 1986 and college in 1990. All of my fond reckless memories are from this era. This is also the time that I became politically aware. During the hostage crises of 1979 I first became interested in things political. I had known more or less from early boyhood that being a soldier was something I wanted to do. The events surrounding the Iranian hostage crisis served to thrust me into the Reaganite camp rather firmly.
In 1979 I asked my mother if I could miss school to attend a speech Reagan was giving locally during the campaign. After the speech I deftly positioned myself right beside the exit door and was able to shake the man’s hand. After his election I wrote him a letter to thank him and I received a letter back with and automated but authentic looking Reagan signature at the bottom.
Reagan’s early talk of national defense and being strong before the world appealed to my awakening sense of what the world ought to be. I found myself enthralled by Reagan’s speeches and his words.
When he spoke of the Evil Empire and the need to stand on a wall and defend against it I was ready. I was only seventeen for a month, the minimum age that the Army would accept a person, and a junior in high school but still I joined up. I completed basic training the summer between junior and senior years and served in the National Guard all through high school and college. I was predisposed and maybe even destined to serve anyway but my early entry is due in large part to Reagan.
Yhose that write Reagan’s legacy will say many things. One of the truest of the things that will be said is that he was a coalition builder. Reagan brought in to the Republican Party a myriad of disenchanted groups. The Christian Right saw Reagan as the best hope to restore to America a moral base. States’ Rights and small government types heard within the words of Reagan a return to the right kind of government. Ordinary American without deep ideological beliefs say Reagan as the man to move us away from something.
To be sure there was something to worthy of the desire to move on. The 1970’s were in essence a very low point for America. Americans of all sorts looked to Reagan to move America forward.
As we examine the legacy of Regan we must ask what did we move away from or more aptly stated what did we move toward? Were the hopes and dreams of the Reagan Republicans realized?
Another foundation in the legacy of Reagan will undoubtedly be the he looked the bear in the eye and forced the Soviet Empire to crumble. This is something so stuck in the realm of legend that it is hardly worth disputing. D-N-I.net has an interesting set of statistics that demonstrate that although the first two years of Reagan’s presidency contained massive defense spending increases the following six years did not. They also show that the Soviet system was in trouble long before the 1980 increase here and that inevitably the system was destined to collapse.
Reagan’s legacy includes the concept that he was and always was a conservative. Reagan has missed most of the neo-con backlash because this idea has taken root and is not easily removed. It must be remembered that Reagan voted for FDR each time he ran. He supported liberal and quasi-socialist candidates as late as 1950. In many respect Reagan might be considered the first Neo-con.
Instead of the various groups getting the things they wanted from the Party of Reagan they have been slowly “waking” up over the last fifteen or so years to realize that the Party of Reagan is not the party of Jefferson. It is in fact the Party of Lincoln. It is a party that does not wish to do away with the socialism of FDR, they just want to change it a little. It is not a party of small and limited government. It is not a party of Christian values. Ronald Reagan rebuilt and redefined the Republican Party on the hopes and dreams of millions of people that wanted something different. Instead of Reagan moving us in the direction that these new Reaganites really anted to go we left the 1980’s set on a straight path toward Empire.
I shall not speak ill of the dead, especially a man that was once such a large hero of mine. Reagan will no doubt go down in the pantheon of “heroes” beside Lincoln, FDR and other sorts that have made America what it is. I will mourn his loss but I will not celebrate his legacy.
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
6.04.2004
Gay Exodus?
It seems that the issues of what is acceptable to the people of a state as moral and good might finally be settled. In this article gays and lesbians upset with Virginia's stance an homosexual unions are considering leaving the state for more friendly regions.
Of course you might also be familiar with a proposal among Christians to pack up and move by the thousands to South Carolina.
Imagine a nation in which local people set the rules for government at the state level. No federal judiciary interpreting rights for millions of people. Instead people could decide to live in areas friendly to their outlook. That would be freedom. It is impossible to assume that a Nation as large as the United States can possibly meet the needs of each citizen. Our values and principles are too diverse. It is possible to allow states to determine what is allowed and not allowed within their borders. This was the original intent during the creation of the Constitution.
If the Federal government was willing to accept the valid Constitutional principle of States' Rights and act inside the very limited delegated powers of the Constitution secession or division of the union would not even be a topic that required discussion.
If Californians want to ban "smoking" and "tobacco" from their language let them. If some other state wants to publicly fund abortions let them. If on the other hand a state wished to allow people to smoke or prohibit abortions within its borders because that is the belief of the people then let that state be. If you do not like the laws of the state in which you live get them changed or move. It is simply not the place of the Federal government to tell and mandate to each state how these issues are to be addressed.
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
Of course you might also be familiar with a proposal among Christians to pack up and move by the thousands to South Carolina.
Imagine a nation in which local people set the rules for government at the state level. No federal judiciary interpreting rights for millions of people. Instead people could decide to live in areas friendly to their outlook. That would be freedom. It is impossible to assume that a Nation as large as the United States can possibly meet the needs of each citizen. Our values and principles are too diverse. It is possible to allow states to determine what is allowed and not allowed within their borders. This was the original intent during the creation of the Constitution.
If the Federal government was willing to accept the valid Constitutional principle of States' Rights and act inside the very limited delegated powers of the Constitution secession or division of the union would not even be a topic that required discussion.
If Californians want to ban "smoking" and "tobacco" from their language let them. If some other state wants to publicly fund abortions let them. If on the other hand a state wished to allow people to smoke or prohibit abortions within its borders because that is the belief of the people then let that state be. If you do not like the laws of the state in which you live get them changed or move. It is simply not the place of the Federal government to tell and mandate to each state how these issues are to be addressed.
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
6.03.2004
New Blog
I am posting most of my thoughts on secession on this site.
Yankee Wars
Interesting must read by Clyde Wilson. Mr. Wilson hits the target with his assesment of the amoral, bureaucratized, politicized, technocratic military force. What we ought to be is not at all what we are.
"I quoted the warnings of Richard Weaver and Alesandr Solzhenitsyn on the descent into brutality that beckoned. The points made then seem to me a little prophetic and still valid. I would add that the American military has always swung back and forth between two modes or spirits. The Washington/Lee mode and the Grant/Sherman mode. The first emphasizes skill, enterprise, and courage in achieving objectives with an economy of force and strives to keep warfare as honorable as possible. The second relies on marshalling overwhelming materiel to crush a weak opponent, heedless of the cost in life and taxes, and rewards its commanders appropriately. The Grant/Sherman mode is self-righteous and recognizes no ends except boastful triumph. Our bureaucratized, politicized, technocratic armed forces have been in the amoral Grant/Sherman mode for a long time now. What kind of a regime sends women into harm's way and makes them into prison guards? Surely one not worth the allegiance of a civilized person." Read More
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
"I quoted the warnings of Richard Weaver and Alesandr Solzhenitsyn on the descent into brutality that beckoned. The points made then seem to me a little prophetic and still valid. I would add that the American military has always swung back and forth between two modes or spirits. The Washington/Lee mode and the Grant/Sherman mode. The first emphasizes skill, enterprise, and courage in achieving objectives with an economy of force and strives to keep warfare as honorable as possible. The second relies on marshalling overwhelming materiel to crush a weak opponent, heedless of the cost in life and taxes, and rewards its commanders appropriately. The Grant/Sherman mode is self-righteous and recognizes no ends except boastful triumph. Our bureaucratized, politicized, technocratic armed forces have been in the amoral Grant/Sherman mode for a long time now. What kind of a regime sends women into harm's way and makes them into prison guards? Surely one not worth the allegiance of a civilized person." Read More
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
6.02.2004
Draft the Volunteers
Draft...errr Stoploss. The inevitability of more and more of this was something that was known by those that "Know" i.e. get it. The former Chief of Staff of the Army warned truthfully of the number of troops that would be required to prosecute this little foray into Iraq. Of course he was sent packing for that bit of honesty. Nobody wanted to talk about increasing the end strength of the Army in the early days of the war; back when it would have made an impact. The recent addition of 30,000 troops to the total will not make a difference for some time.
The draft has been discussed but anyone that really knows understands that this is unworkable. It is a bad plan not because draftee armies are inferior or because a draft violates all that a free society ought to stand for. A draft would not work because the military is not equipped to accept thousands of people that do not want to e there. Basic training today is soft and the tools that commanders have available to deal with troublesome troopers are few. In the old days misfits could be shipped off to corrections companies or stern punishment could be imposed at the unit level. In today's military misfits are simply chaptered (booted) out. Not exactly the thing to do with draftees that do not want to be there in the first place. And forget the notion that the military might be allowed to return to the "tougher days" of discipline. In our politically correct world THAT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!
Venomous Kate does a good job of compiling many of the relevant facts around this dilemma of too few troops. I was stunned at the proposal in the DoD to close down the NTC and send the 11th ACR into action. In the short term that will obviously produce more troops. Without a continual process of training the quality of the force will deteriorate. Short term fixes create long term problems.
Anyway, just imagine yourself as that guy that has given 20 plus years of your life to service. You may or may not have already served a tour in the theater of operations. You have planned for, prepared for and looked forward to your retirement. A retirement that you earned. Now you are told "sorry, you have been drafted errr stop lossed". A draft is wrong but the idea of forcing people that have already volunteered to serve past their term is just as wrong.
If the politicians were incapable of standing up at the beginning of the war and facing the hard truths and asking for more troops then maybe a free republic ought not have the right to force people against their will to do their bidding.
The draft has been discussed but anyone that really knows understands that this is unworkable. It is a bad plan not because draftee armies are inferior or because a draft violates all that a free society ought to stand for. A draft would not work because the military is not equipped to accept thousands of people that do not want to e there. Basic training today is soft and the tools that commanders have available to deal with troublesome troopers are few. In the old days misfits could be shipped off to corrections companies or stern punishment could be imposed at the unit level. In today's military misfits are simply chaptered (booted) out. Not exactly the thing to do with draftees that do not want to be there in the first place. And forget the notion that the military might be allowed to return to the "tougher days" of discipline. In our politically correct world THAT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!
Venomous Kate does a good job of compiling many of the relevant facts around this dilemma of too few troops. I was stunned at the proposal in the DoD to close down the NTC and send the 11th ACR into action. In the short term that will obviously produce more troops. Without a continual process of training the quality of the force will deteriorate. Short term fixes create long term problems.
Anyway, just imagine yourself as that guy that has given 20 plus years of your life to service. You may or may not have already served a tour in the theater of operations. You have planned for, prepared for and looked forward to your retirement. A retirement that you earned. Now you are told "sorry, you have been drafted errr stop lossed". A draft is wrong but the idea of forcing people that have already volunteered to serve past their term is just as wrong.
If the politicians were incapable of standing up at the beginning of the war and facing the hard truths and asking for more troops then maybe a free republic ought not have the right to force people against their will to do their bidding.
Did they die in vain?
This piece by Stoney sums up many of the things that I thought over this past long weekend in a way that I had neither the time, energy nor creativity to express. His points regarding what blogging might really accomplish are on the mark. Are we a people that might truly be awakened by mere words? Can the pen have the influence over a slothful people the way a little book called Common Sense had on our forefathers? I doubt it. I doubt there is much short of the Almighty that can possibly bring us back from the precipice we now toy about. Still I shall remain confident that maybe a precious few will head the call and wake up form this Orwellian nightmare. Right on Stoney!
5.27.2004
New Topic Blog
All of my posts relating to Southern issues will be located here for the time being
4.23.2004
Remebering Pat Tillman
One may bemoan the evilness of the growing Imperialism that stretches its large, dark embrace from Washington to far and remote parts of the world. We may rightly admit that the US Military is a vital tool in the execution of Washington’s nefarious agenda. We also cannot deny the power of “patriotism” when used by the imperialist to further their goals. All true Americans are patriots and loyal to the ideals that founded this nation, no matter the nuances and realities of how far things have changed and how much of the original ideal has been lost.
We can talk, rightly so, about the causes of the current “War on Terrorism”. A rational and logical approach reveals that certainly Washington’s policies of economic and military domination of other nations plays a significant role in the reasons we are at war. It is a simple fact that the US cannot claim exclusive right to the moral high ground and state, “these terrorist have attacked us unprovoked”. There is a time and a place for such discussions. That is not the issue I will discuss here.
True Americans, being fundamentally loyal to the ideals of our founding and therefore basically patriotic, are prone to accept Washington’s policies and aid Washington’s wars without much question. It is a tribute to the indelible spirit of Americans that young men march off to war when called without much question or reluctance. While it may be sad that this very quality of patriotism and loyalty to an ideal is the very thing that has allowed the usurpers to destroy the ideal this fact alone does not diminish the sacrifice and service of young American patriots.
I write today about one ordinary soldier, a soldier that is not so ordinary at all. Pat Tillman had what almost all young American males dream of; he had the opportunity to play professional football in the NFL.
The story of Pat Tillman is interesting enough if we only consider his achievements prior to the age of 25. The current media culture of our out-of-balance society praises and worships professional athletes and celebrities. Pat Tillman was at a significant disadvantage to ever achieve such a status. He stood only 5 foot 11 inches tall and weighed 200 lbs, small by NFL standards. The fact that he was able to earn a starting slot on a Division I NCAA team is fascinating enough. While in college he was not just goofing off and playing ball. He graduated in 3 ½ years with a 3.84 GPA from Arizona State. He did more; he made it through training camp and earned a spot on the Arizona Cardinals.
Pat did well with the Cardinals, led them in tackles in 2000. He did well enough to garner and offer for a three-year multi million-dollar contract in 2001. By the standards of our media culture this man was a success. We so often equate fame and fortune with success.
In our principle deficient world Pat could have stopped there. He could have lived out his playing years, made enough money to be set for life, and enjoyed the perks of being a professional athlete.
This was not the path that Pat chose. This young man turned down the multi-million dollar contract that was on the table and instead enlisted in the US Army to become a Ranger. Yep that is right he enlisted in not only the Army but in the Rangers. He traded in a life of luxury and big paychecks for a mere $18,000 per year and an existence full of danger.
Why did this young man do this? Pat’s own words on the subject were few. He did not conduct press conferences. He did everything to distract from him personally. Pat joined up along with his younger brother to serve in the Rangers because he thought it was the right thing to do at a time of war.
The story could end right there and it would be fascinating enough. Who else among the over-paid, thugs, punks and gangsters of the professional athletic set or celebrity set have or would make such a sacrifice? None have and it is doubtful that none will. The unprincipled “low-lifes” that Americans idolize so religiously on Sundays are just not made of this sort of stuff. The can talk grandly about “going to war” on the playing field but they cannot begin to understand what that means.
How does this story end? Pat Tillman; US Army Ranger and a man that all of us can look up to, died this week in a firefight in Afghanistan. Pat knew the risks, he accepted the challenge, understanding a little about his intentions when he enlisted it is doubtful that Pat would want to be singled out for remembrance. After all coffins draped in US flags arrive daily at Dover Air Force Base. Each contains the remains of someone’s son or daughter, another soldier, sailor, airman or Marine that have given their life.
Pat’s story is a story that we must remember. As most Americans go about their fat and happy lives giving only passing recognition to those that answer a call that they see as duty it is important to remember men like Pat.
Many good and decent American young people are answering the call each and everyday. It is a travesty that their service and sacrifice is so little appreciated in either monetary compensation or honors due. As a whole they do not much care that the nation that they serve thinks so lowly of them; they willingly serve anyway.
It is time that Americans rediscover what Patriotism really means. As Americans we must honor those that serve and sacrifice. We must also ask why their sacrifice is necessary. What policies and actions brought the US to the point that the World hates us? The Founding Fathers warned sternly against “foreign entanglements”. It is these very foreign entanglements that have placed us in the position we are in now.
It is time for a renewed sense of Patriotism. The kind of Patriotism that demands that our government live by the principles that gave it birth. It is time to stop the march toward imperialism. We must accept that our own actions are partly to blame for the current mess. Young Americans will continue to volunteer to answer the call. True patriots must stand up and ask the right questions before the call is cried out across the land.
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
We can talk, rightly so, about the causes of the current “War on Terrorism”. A rational and logical approach reveals that certainly Washington’s policies of economic and military domination of other nations plays a significant role in the reasons we are at war. It is a simple fact that the US cannot claim exclusive right to the moral high ground and state, “these terrorist have attacked us unprovoked”. There is a time and a place for such discussions. That is not the issue I will discuss here.
True Americans, being fundamentally loyal to the ideals of our founding and therefore basically patriotic, are prone to accept Washington’s policies and aid Washington’s wars without much question. It is a tribute to the indelible spirit of Americans that young men march off to war when called without much question or reluctance. While it may be sad that this very quality of patriotism and loyalty to an ideal is the very thing that has allowed the usurpers to destroy the ideal this fact alone does not diminish the sacrifice and service of young American patriots.
I write today about one ordinary soldier, a soldier that is not so ordinary at all. Pat Tillman had what almost all young American males dream of; he had the opportunity to play professional football in the NFL.
The story of Pat Tillman is interesting enough if we only consider his achievements prior to the age of 25. The current media culture of our out-of-balance society praises and worships professional athletes and celebrities. Pat Tillman was at a significant disadvantage to ever achieve such a status. He stood only 5 foot 11 inches tall and weighed 200 lbs, small by NFL standards. The fact that he was able to earn a starting slot on a Division I NCAA team is fascinating enough. While in college he was not just goofing off and playing ball. He graduated in 3 ½ years with a 3.84 GPA from Arizona State. He did more; he made it through training camp and earned a spot on the Arizona Cardinals.
Pat did well with the Cardinals, led them in tackles in 2000. He did well enough to garner and offer for a three-year multi million-dollar contract in 2001. By the standards of our media culture this man was a success. We so often equate fame and fortune with success.
In our principle deficient world Pat could have stopped there. He could have lived out his playing years, made enough money to be set for life, and enjoyed the perks of being a professional athlete.
This was not the path that Pat chose. This young man turned down the multi-million dollar contract that was on the table and instead enlisted in the US Army to become a Ranger. Yep that is right he enlisted in not only the Army but in the Rangers. He traded in a life of luxury and big paychecks for a mere $18,000 per year and an existence full of danger.
Why did this young man do this? Pat’s own words on the subject were few. He did not conduct press conferences. He did everything to distract from him personally. Pat joined up along with his younger brother to serve in the Rangers because he thought it was the right thing to do at a time of war.
The story could end right there and it would be fascinating enough. Who else among the over-paid, thugs, punks and gangsters of the professional athletic set or celebrity set have or would make such a sacrifice? None have and it is doubtful that none will. The unprincipled “low-lifes” that Americans idolize so religiously on Sundays are just not made of this sort of stuff. The can talk grandly about “going to war” on the playing field but they cannot begin to understand what that means.
How does this story end? Pat Tillman; US Army Ranger and a man that all of us can look up to, died this week in a firefight in Afghanistan. Pat knew the risks, he accepted the challenge, understanding a little about his intentions when he enlisted it is doubtful that Pat would want to be singled out for remembrance. After all coffins draped in US flags arrive daily at Dover Air Force Base. Each contains the remains of someone’s son or daughter, another soldier, sailor, airman or Marine that have given their life.
Pat’s story is a story that we must remember. As most Americans go about their fat and happy lives giving only passing recognition to those that answer a call that they see as duty it is important to remember men like Pat.
Many good and decent American young people are answering the call each and everyday. It is a travesty that their service and sacrifice is so little appreciated in either monetary compensation or honors due. As a whole they do not much care that the nation that they serve thinks so lowly of them; they willingly serve anyway.
It is time that Americans rediscover what Patriotism really means. As Americans we must honor those that serve and sacrifice. We must also ask why their sacrifice is necessary. What policies and actions brought the US to the point that the World hates us? The Founding Fathers warned sternly against “foreign entanglements”. It is these very foreign entanglements that have placed us in the position we are in now.
It is time for a renewed sense of Patriotism. The kind of Patriotism that demands that our government live by the principles that gave it birth. It is time to stop the march toward imperialism. We must accept that our own actions are partly to blame for the current mess. Young Americans will continue to volunteer to answer the call. True patriots must stand up and ask the right questions before the call is cried out across the land.
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
3.28.2004
Tyranny Alert
The ancient rights of man have slowly slipped away from us and continue to be eroded at a rapid clip. The article below demonstrates a potential very real threat to our 4th Amendment rights.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
First, some years ago we gave up the right to be free from unconstitutional searches of our cars and persons in the public arena if police officers felt threatened. And of course more recently we have given up the right to almost everything at airports and other public venues, all for the sake of security. Now it seems some court has determined that if police officers feel threatened they may search a citizen’s home without due process or a warrant. Amazing how fast tyranny just rides in under the radar.
I guess I have been wrong all of my life. I always thought that the police were there to protect and serve. Just like soldiers going off to war face the possibility of death being a police officer is dangerous. We would not accept a policy of allowing our soldiers to shoot first and ask questions later in contingency and operations other than war situations. We are willing to take some American casualties in those circumstances in order to do what is right. After all soldiers know that their jobs are dangerous and accept the risks. Why would we accept allowing police officers the ability to violate the Constitution just so that THEY feel safe. Don’t they realize that their job is supposed to be dangerous?
It seems a far better thing to have brave men an women working as police officers that are willing to accept the risks of the job and realize that occasionally some of them will die rather than to compromise the Constitution. Just who are these folks there to protect and serve? Laws and concepts like the court decision below lead me to believe that it is not the citizen.
So if a police officer feels threatened this court believes that the police have the right to search my home. I am a peace loving man but I tell you that one of the few things that will ever cause me to be a threat to anyone is for someone I have not invited to enter my home.
Thank God that we law-abiding citizens still have remnants of the Second Amendment in place to thwart any goose-steeping Nazis that come knocking uninvited. As for my friends Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson and I, we understand full well the adage that a man’s home ought to be his castle.
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
______________________________________________________
Court Opens Door To Searches Without Warrants
POSTED: 3:55 pm CST March 26, 2004
NEW ORLEANS -- It's a groundbreaking court decision that legal experts say will affect everyone: Police officers in Louisiana no longer need a search or arrest warrant to conduct a brief search of your home or business.
Leaders in law enforcement say it will provide safety to officers, but others argue it's a privilege that could be abused.
The decision was made by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Two dissenting judges called it the "road to Hell."
The ruiling stems from a lawsuit filed in Denham Springs in 2000.
New Orleans Police Department spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said the new power will go into effect immediately and won't be abused.
"We have to have a legitimate problem to be there in the first place, and if we don't, we can't conduct the search," Defillo said.
But former U.S. Attorney Julian Murray has big problems with the ruling.
"I think it goes way too far," Murray said, noting that the searches can be performed if an officer fears for his safety -- a subjective condition.
Defillo said he doesn't envision any problems in New Orleans, but if there are, they will be handled.
"There are checks and balances to make sure the criminal justce system works in an effective manor," Defillo said.
Copyright 2004 by TheNewOrleansChannel.com. All rights reserved
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
First, some years ago we gave up the right to be free from unconstitutional searches of our cars and persons in the public arena if police officers felt threatened. And of course more recently we have given up the right to almost everything at airports and other public venues, all for the sake of security. Now it seems some court has determined that if police officers feel threatened they may search a citizen’s home without due process or a warrant. Amazing how fast tyranny just rides in under the radar.
I guess I have been wrong all of my life. I always thought that the police were there to protect and serve. Just like soldiers going off to war face the possibility of death being a police officer is dangerous. We would not accept a policy of allowing our soldiers to shoot first and ask questions later in contingency and operations other than war situations. We are willing to take some American casualties in those circumstances in order to do what is right. After all soldiers know that their jobs are dangerous and accept the risks. Why would we accept allowing police officers the ability to violate the Constitution just so that THEY feel safe. Don’t they realize that their job is supposed to be dangerous?
It seems a far better thing to have brave men an women working as police officers that are willing to accept the risks of the job and realize that occasionally some of them will die rather than to compromise the Constitution. Just who are these folks there to protect and serve? Laws and concepts like the court decision below lead me to believe that it is not the citizen.
So if a police officer feels threatened this court believes that the police have the right to search my home. I am a peace loving man but I tell you that one of the few things that will ever cause me to be a threat to anyone is for someone I have not invited to enter my home.
Thank God that we law-abiding citizens still have remnants of the Second Amendment in place to thwart any goose-steeping Nazis that come knocking uninvited. As for my friends Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson and I, we understand full well the adage that a man’s home ought to be his castle.
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem
El Cid
______________________________________________________
Court Opens Door To Searches Without Warrants
POSTED: 3:55 pm CST March 26, 2004
NEW ORLEANS -- It's a groundbreaking court decision that legal experts say will affect everyone: Police officers in Louisiana no longer need a search or arrest warrant to conduct a brief search of your home or business.
Leaders in law enforcement say it will provide safety to officers, but others argue it's a privilege that could be abused.
The decision was made by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Two dissenting judges called it the "road to Hell."
The ruiling stems from a lawsuit filed in Denham Springs in 2000.
New Orleans Police Department spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said the new power will go into effect immediately and won't be abused.
"We have to have a legitimate problem to be there in the first place, and if we don't, we can't conduct the search," Defillo said.
But former U.S. Attorney Julian Murray has big problems with the ruling.
"I think it goes way too far," Murray said, noting that the searches can be performed if an officer fears for his safety -- a subjective condition.
Defillo said he doesn't envision any problems in New Orleans, but if there are, they will be handled.
"There are checks and balances to make sure the criminal justce system works in an effective manor," Defillo said.
Copyright 2004 by TheNewOrleansChannel.com. All rights reserved
3.24.2004
Why They Hate Us-Part II
Many Muslims term the United States as the Great Satan. Americans puff up at this claim. Our Friends in South Korea view us disdainfully, Americans look at them as ungrateful. Mexicans consider the US to be a belligerent bully that has invaded and robbed Mexico of her lands. A dozen other countries can make similar claims to US militaristic aggression.
My topic here is US cultural aggression in foreign lands. Most of us, if we were raised by parents that taught us right and wrong, find occasional if not persistent repulsion in the items that emerge from our televisions. Over the last twenty to thirty years we have been bombarded by ever increasing encroachments on common decency and values. To a large degree we have become immune to the content and may not fully realize just how decadent our society has become.
Consider this
Our Society
· Protects the murder of unborn children
· Flaunts homosexual behavior and lifestyles
· Has abandoned the sanctity of marriage
· Produces some of the worst child molesters in the world
· Produces and consumes pornography of various levels far in excess of the rest of the world
· Worships thugs, gagsters, punks and drug addicts that we call celebrities and sports stars
· Produces corporate executives, government leaders and even presidents that live by no apparent moral code
· Encourages greed
· Discourages selflessness
· Shuns the divine principles of our founding
The world receives MTV, HBO and all manner of other media produced right here. Their perception of us is based largely on what they see. Many have never met true Americans. They judge us by those that we idolize.
Would you fear a neighbor that had no apparent moral base and just happened to be much bigger and stronger than you? If that neighbor also had a demonstrated propensity to kick in the door of the houses of his other neighbors to “set things right” you would certainly fear him. If he also continually flaunted his immorality in front of you, attempted to take economic advantage of you at every turn and continually told you how to live your life you would grow to hate him.
Why does the so much of the World hate us? We are that neighbor. The “civilized” world, specifically Europe, tolerates us more because in many ways they are as decadent as we. In nations where people are closer to their God and less able to offer reasons for the US to leave them alone there is little toleration and much hate.
The United States has embarked on a path that will lead to its’ destruction. The War on Terror should have begun years ago by changing the reasons that people hate us. It is too late to become a good neighbor now. The War’s in Afghanistan and Iraq will not solve anything. Capturing a few leaders will not make the problem go away. Men that believe in their principles will follow them. That is really the problem with principles and conviction, you just cannot kill it.
The US lacks the advantage of actually having any principles in this current incarnation of imperial globetrotting. With all of the industrial, economic and military might that the US has this one fact will ultimately cause defeat. Just as the Roman and British armies seldom tasted defeat on the battlefield during the heyday of their empires the US too will remain supreme tactically. Strategically and over time however, this is a war that cannot be won.
People argue that the “terrorist” that struck the World Trade Centers demonstrated a distinct lack of principles and acted as murderers. War is a sad endeavor. I wished intently that the event of Sep. 11th had not of occurred. However, when faced with numerical and technically superior enemies one is forced to use asymmetric tactics. The methods used on the World Trade Center were brutal but effective and one of the few options available to those that wished to strike the US. It could be argued that their methods were no less terroristic that a US bomber flying at 20,000 feet dropping bombs on individuals that have no idea they are being targeted, or cruise missiles being fired from hundreds of miles away. The definition of terror is really in the mind of the receiver.
The rest of the world hates Yankee imperialism, secularism, commercialism and immorality. I for one cannot fault them for standing on their principles. The US must now fight this War and we as citizens are forced to support it because there is really no way out. We cannot simply stop and come home because nothing has fundamentally changed. The reasons for hatred still exist.
In the final analysis future historians will dissect the causes of the demise of the US Empire just as all historians do with all empires. The economic strain caused by making enemies of the world because we were bad neighbors will undoubtedly be the prime cause they settle on.
My topic here is US cultural aggression in foreign lands. Most of us, if we were raised by parents that taught us right and wrong, find occasional if not persistent repulsion in the items that emerge from our televisions. Over the last twenty to thirty years we have been bombarded by ever increasing encroachments on common decency and values. To a large degree we have become immune to the content and may not fully realize just how decadent our society has become.
Consider this
Our Society
· Protects the murder of unborn children
· Flaunts homosexual behavior and lifestyles
· Has abandoned the sanctity of marriage
· Produces some of the worst child molesters in the world
· Produces and consumes pornography of various levels far in excess of the rest of the world
· Worships thugs, gagsters, punks and drug addicts that we call celebrities and sports stars
· Produces corporate executives, government leaders and even presidents that live by no apparent moral code
· Encourages greed
· Discourages selflessness
· Shuns the divine principles of our founding
The world receives MTV, HBO and all manner of other media produced right here. Their perception of us is based largely on what they see. Many have never met true Americans. They judge us by those that we idolize.
Would you fear a neighbor that had no apparent moral base and just happened to be much bigger and stronger than you? If that neighbor also had a demonstrated propensity to kick in the door of the houses of his other neighbors to “set things right” you would certainly fear him. If he also continually flaunted his immorality in front of you, attempted to take economic advantage of you at every turn and continually told you how to live your life you would grow to hate him.
Why does the so much of the World hate us? We are that neighbor. The “civilized” world, specifically Europe, tolerates us more because in many ways they are as decadent as we. In nations where people are closer to their God and less able to offer reasons for the US to leave them alone there is little toleration and much hate.
The United States has embarked on a path that will lead to its’ destruction. The War on Terror should have begun years ago by changing the reasons that people hate us. It is too late to become a good neighbor now. The War’s in Afghanistan and Iraq will not solve anything. Capturing a few leaders will not make the problem go away. Men that believe in their principles will follow them. That is really the problem with principles and conviction, you just cannot kill it.
The US lacks the advantage of actually having any principles in this current incarnation of imperial globetrotting. With all of the industrial, economic and military might that the US has this one fact will ultimately cause defeat. Just as the Roman and British armies seldom tasted defeat on the battlefield during the heyday of their empires the US too will remain supreme tactically. Strategically and over time however, this is a war that cannot be won.
People argue that the “terrorist” that struck the World Trade Centers demonstrated a distinct lack of principles and acted as murderers. War is a sad endeavor. I wished intently that the event of Sep. 11th had not of occurred. However, when faced with numerical and technically superior enemies one is forced to use asymmetric tactics. The methods used on the World Trade Center were brutal but effective and one of the few options available to those that wished to strike the US. It could be argued that their methods were no less terroristic that a US bomber flying at 20,000 feet dropping bombs on individuals that have no idea they are being targeted, or cruise missiles being fired from hundreds of miles away. The definition of terror is really in the mind of the receiver.
The rest of the world hates Yankee imperialism, secularism, commercialism and immorality. I for one cannot fault them for standing on their principles. The US must now fight this War and we as citizens are forced to support it because there is really no way out. We cannot simply stop and come home because nothing has fundamentally changed. The reasons for hatred still exist.
In the final analysis future historians will dissect the causes of the demise of the US Empire just as all historians do with all empires. The economic strain caused by making enemies of the world because we were bad neighbors will undoubtedly be the prime cause they settle on.
Slavery NOT The Cause of The War Between the States
Below is an interesting articulation of the fallacy of the Yankee Imperialist’ argument that the War Between The States was fought over slavery.
Like all the Economic Wars the Imperialist Yankees have waged this war was cloaked in terms of a moral crusade. The War, the way it was waged and the revision of history to justify it are the most immoral acts imaginable.
The rightful culture of millions of Southern blacks has been robbed by the lies told by the historians of the victorious. Thousands of black men stood shoulder to shoulder with their White Southern countrymen and fought and died defending their homes. This is a fact that will not today be discussed, for to do so would undermine the federal governments legitimacy with those it wishes to incorporate in its’ insidious welfare state.
So you don’t believe that thousands of blacks freely served and fought to defend their country? You do not believe that the Southern Army was the first fully integrated Army, with blacks and whites serving in the same units, bearing the same load and fighting a common enemy? Then you are a product of the Yankee education system. Read Fremantle’s Diary or go to the library and search old Southern pension files. Take a look at several of the southern state soldiers monuments that depict black and white soldiers side by side. You do not believe because you are not informed.
Slavery was an evil and despicable institution, particularly from our 21st century viewpoint. Slavery was not started on the North American continent by Southerners, most Southerners never owned slaves and Southerners did not profit the most from the slave trade or slave labor. Yankee merchants profited from the trade and from the follow-on trade produced by its' labor.
Free Blacks in the North were treated generally far worse than free blacks in the South. Free blacks in the South owned property, some even owned slaves. The social register of the antebellum Charleston Mercury contains marriage and other tidbits of social information about free black families. This was unheard of in the North. Economically slavery was proving unviable all around the world, including the South. Most estimates predict that left alone the system of slavery would have ended by 1900.
And what of the South where slavery ended in a natural death? It is reasonable to assume that without the foreign occupation that accompanied Reconstruction Free Blacks in a post slavery South would have enjoyed the same status as Free Blacks in the antebellum South. Without the foreign meddlers and economic depression caused by the War the adjustment from slave to sharecropper to skilled laborer would have been a much smoother transition. If the economic base that was destroyed by the War remained intake there would have existed an ample job market. This would have avoided the circumstance of a century of poverty for Southern Blacks and the necessity for the Federal Welfare State. Jim Crow laws, a reaction to Yankee meddling, would never have existed.
It is a tough thing to admit or accept for most folks. The fact is that The War was never about freeing slaves; it was about the North’s desire to retain economic control of a tremendous resource.
Who really lost in this immoral and illegal war? Southern People, black and white.
__________________________________________
Slavery as the Cause of the War Between the States
by Dr. Donald Livingston
Of all the myths taught to our children about the War Between the States none is more corrupt (and corrupting) than the claim that the war was “about slavery”-- that the South seceded to protect slavery and the North invaded to abolish it. Slavery was a national enormity and not merely a southern problem. It was not the South but New England that, in the seventeenth century, opened the slave trade with Africa and grew rich selling slaves throughout the western hemisphere. The seed money for the industrial revolution came from the slave trade and from financing and shipping southern exports, largely produced by slave labor. By 1860 nearly three fourths of American exports were from the South. Hardly anyone at this time, North or South, was prepared to integrate into society an African population of 3.5 million, many of whom were only two generations from tribal existence. Northern manumission laws were designed to rid themselves of their African population. These laws freed not adults but children, born after a certain date and upon reaching adulthood. Owners were free to sell their slaves in the meantime. By 1860 less than one per cent of Massachusetts was black. Many northerners thought that blacks would eventually die off as most of the Indians had.
Lincoln’s state of Illinois prohibited the entrance of any free blacks unless a bond of $1000 each could be raised. The constitutions of Oregon and Indiana prohibited absolutely the entrance of any free blacks and nullified any contracts made with them. No political party of any significance in the North had proposed emancipation. Lincoln proposed sending free blacks abroad. The abolitionists, a tiny and despised minority, did urge emancipation, but their solution was peaceful secession of the North from the South as the best way of ending slavery. By 1861 the South had accomplished this goa1 for them. But worse, Congress, with Lincoln’s approval, passed an amendment to the Constitution making it impossible for the central government ever to interfere with slavery in the states where it was legal. The amendment would have been ratified by the states had the South stayed in the Union. Slavery could not possibly have been better protected than it was by the northern-dominated Congress of 1861.
With the exception of Haiti, slavery was peacefully abolished everywhere in the west by the 1880s. And it would have disappeared from the South by then had it been allowed to secede as the abolitionists had urged. The Confederate Constitution prohibited the slave trade and allowed for the entrance of non-slave holding states. The Confederate cabinet agreed to abolish slavery five years after the cessation of hostilities in exchange for British and French recognition. Robert E. Lee believed in gradual emancipation and freed the slaves he had inherited through marriage. He and other Confederate leaders argued early on to arm blacks as the first step in emancipation and integration. Slavery, like any other institution, had evolved over time. Theologians were urging reforms, and in the border states the institution was evolving into an apprenticeship system. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas had voted to remain in the Union. They reversed themselves only after Lincoln illegally raised troops from the North to coerce the seceding states back into the Union.
It has been said that Southerners, in their defense of secession, have not confronted the evils of slavery. We have long since confronted them. What has not been confronted (and what our nationalist historians guarantee will perhaps never be confronted) is the evil of launching a war that left 1,500,000 killed, missing, and wounded merely to consolidate a northeastern industrial empire. Lincoln was not able to win the war without finally directing it against the civilian population. This shocked Europeans, as it broke the code of civilized warfare that had been in place since the early eighteenth century. In violating the Geneva Convention the Lincoln administration became the first of the modem war criminals. To dignify this unexpected ourbreak of barbarism as being “about slavery” is the deep lie in the soul of the American liberal. Indeed it has almost become a part of American self-identity. Until it is honestly faced Americans will remain in a condition of spiritual and political adolescence.
Like all the Economic Wars the Imperialist Yankees have waged this war was cloaked in terms of a moral crusade. The War, the way it was waged and the revision of history to justify it are the most immoral acts imaginable.
The rightful culture of millions of Southern blacks has been robbed by the lies told by the historians of the victorious. Thousands of black men stood shoulder to shoulder with their White Southern countrymen and fought and died defending their homes. This is a fact that will not today be discussed, for to do so would undermine the federal governments legitimacy with those it wishes to incorporate in its’ insidious welfare state.
So you don’t believe that thousands of blacks freely served and fought to defend their country? You do not believe that the Southern Army was the first fully integrated Army, with blacks and whites serving in the same units, bearing the same load and fighting a common enemy? Then you are a product of the Yankee education system. Read Fremantle’s Diary or go to the library and search old Southern pension files. Take a look at several of the southern state soldiers monuments that depict black and white soldiers side by side. You do not believe because you are not informed.
Slavery was an evil and despicable institution, particularly from our 21st century viewpoint. Slavery was not started on the North American continent by Southerners, most Southerners never owned slaves and Southerners did not profit the most from the slave trade or slave labor. Yankee merchants profited from the trade and from the follow-on trade produced by its' labor.
Free Blacks in the North were treated generally far worse than free blacks in the South. Free blacks in the South owned property, some even owned slaves. The social register of the antebellum Charleston Mercury contains marriage and other tidbits of social information about free black families. This was unheard of in the North. Economically slavery was proving unviable all around the world, including the South. Most estimates predict that left alone the system of slavery would have ended by 1900.
And what of the South where slavery ended in a natural death? It is reasonable to assume that without the foreign occupation that accompanied Reconstruction Free Blacks in a post slavery South would have enjoyed the same status as Free Blacks in the antebellum South. Without the foreign meddlers and economic depression caused by the War the adjustment from slave to sharecropper to skilled laborer would have been a much smoother transition. If the economic base that was destroyed by the War remained intake there would have existed an ample job market. This would have avoided the circumstance of a century of poverty for Southern Blacks and the necessity for the Federal Welfare State. Jim Crow laws, a reaction to Yankee meddling, would never have existed.
It is a tough thing to admit or accept for most folks. The fact is that The War was never about freeing slaves; it was about the North’s desire to retain economic control of a tremendous resource.
Who really lost in this immoral and illegal war? Southern People, black and white.
__________________________________________
Slavery as the Cause of the War Between the States
by Dr. Donald Livingston
Of all the myths taught to our children about the War Between the States none is more corrupt (and corrupting) than the claim that the war was “about slavery”-- that the South seceded to protect slavery and the North invaded to abolish it. Slavery was a national enormity and not merely a southern problem. It was not the South but New England that, in the seventeenth century, opened the slave trade with Africa and grew rich selling slaves throughout the western hemisphere. The seed money for the industrial revolution came from the slave trade and from financing and shipping southern exports, largely produced by slave labor. By 1860 nearly three fourths of American exports were from the South. Hardly anyone at this time, North or South, was prepared to integrate into society an African population of 3.5 million, many of whom were only two generations from tribal existence. Northern manumission laws were designed to rid themselves of their African population. These laws freed not adults but children, born after a certain date and upon reaching adulthood. Owners were free to sell their slaves in the meantime. By 1860 less than one per cent of Massachusetts was black. Many northerners thought that blacks would eventually die off as most of the Indians had.
Lincoln’s state of Illinois prohibited the entrance of any free blacks unless a bond of $1000 each could be raised. The constitutions of Oregon and Indiana prohibited absolutely the entrance of any free blacks and nullified any contracts made with them. No political party of any significance in the North had proposed emancipation. Lincoln proposed sending free blacks abroad. The abolitionists, a tiny and despised minority, did urge emancipation, but their solution was peaceful secession of the North from the South as the best way of ending slavery. By 1861 the South had accomplished this goa1 for them. But worse, Congress, with Lincoln’s approval, passed an amendment to the Constitution making it impossible for the central government ever to interfere with slavery in the states where it was legal. The amendment would have been ratified by the states had the South stayed in the Union. Slavery could not possibly have been better protected than it was by the northern-dominated Congress of 1861.
With the exception of Haiti, slavery was peacefully abolished everywhere in the west by the 1880s. And it would have disappeared from the South by then had it been allowed to secede as the abolitionists had urged. The Confederate Constitution prohibited the slave trade and allowed for the entrance of non-slave holding states. The Confederate cabinet agreed to abolish slavery five years after the cessation of hostilities in exchange for British and French recognition. Robert E. Lee believed in gradual emancipation and freed the slaves he had inherited through marriage. He and other Confederate leaders argued early on to arm blacks as the first step in emancipation and integration. Slavery, like any other institution, had evolved over time. Theologians were urging reforms, and in the border states the institution was evolving into an apprenticeship system. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas had voted to remain in the Union. They reversed themselves only after Lincoln illegally raised troops from the North to coerce the seceding states back into the Union.
It has been said that Southerners, in their defense of secession, have not confronted the evils of slavery. We have long since confronted them. What has not been confronted (and what our nationalist historians guarantee will perhaps never be confronted) is the evil of launching a war that left 1,500,000 killed, missing, and wounded merely to consolidate a northeastern industrial empire. Lincoln was not able to win the war without finally directing it against the civilian population. This shocked Europeans, as it broke the code of civilized warfare that had been in place since the early eighteenth century. In violating the Geneva Convention the Lincoln administration became the first of the modem war criminals. To dignify this unexpected ourbreak of barbarism as being “about slavery” is the deep lie in the soul of the American liberal. Indeed it has almost become a part of American self-identity. Until it is honestly faced Americans will remain in a condition of spiritual and political adolescence.
Cultural War Crimes
Once upon a time on the North American Continent there existed two cultural nations and several sovereign states. The various states conceived to form a more perfect union by covenant and convention and thus was formed the United States. Reference to the union in the pre 1861 period included the lower case the and sometimes a lower case united states to reflect that the whole was only comprised of the many and various States. Sovereignty remained with the States, granted by the consent of the people.
There remained however two separate cultural nations.
The North was the cultural product of England and puritan ideologies. Commercialism, mercantilism and commerce dominated the cultural development of the Northern Culture. Puritanism developed and transformed over time from a reliance on the divine to reliance on the human. Secularism combined with commercialism was the recipe for the commercially driven Imperialism to follow.
The South drew a great deal of its’ original cultural influence from the Scots and later a proportionally large Irish influence. Celtic, Christian and agrarian would best describe the cultural influence of the South. A cultural history of “feeling the tyrant’s boot” in Scotland and Ireland combined with a simple belief in Man’s individual relationship with God made the culture of the South individualistic and unconcerned with expanding and trampling the rights of others in far away lands.
John C. Calhoun first articulately expressed the problem of concurrent majorities existing under one government. The cultural divide could not be sustained in a system where 51% of the voters got everything they wanted and 49% were left disenfranchised.
Just like a club that members freely join of their own accord, members ought to be allowed to leave. In 1861 when it became apparent that the system could no longer support two separate cultures the Southern States exercise their legitimate right as sovereign States to leave the club. There was no Constitutional Crisis, in fact the system worked fine, no bloodshed was required.
The Imperial Northern Yankees would not and did not accept this amicable and logical solution. Instead they visited war upon the Southern People and Nation. It was an economic war later clothed in the aura of a religious crusade to abolish slavery. The Yankee Imperialist has a despicable habit of cloaking their economic wars in terms of “noble crusades”. I will discuss the fallacy of the Northern Slavery claim in latter writings.
Since the occupation of the South in 1865 the list of crimes against all of mankind have piled up. The United States post 1865 began an imperial empire. Those subjected to be trapped within its’ borders have been subjected to an ever-growing federal tyranny that taxes, legislates and dictates almost every aspect of a mans’ life. As I have discussed previously those outside the US borders are no safer and are increasingly faced with the Sophie’s Choice of cooperate or die.
The list below does not speak at all about other internal victims of Yankee Imperialism: Native Americans forced from their lan and lied to in treaties, Blacks bought and sold by Yankee merchants, Hawaiians duped out of their independence, Mexicans forced from their lands etc. I will deal with those crimes in later rants.
A brief list of Internal Crimes against the Southern People
· Promoted the murder of 45 million – (Abortion is a travesty worse than the Holocaust in the sheer numbers killed).
· Scoured and raked the country to roust God out of every heart and hiding place, out of every schoolroom and football game and school board meeting
· Set children against mother and father, wife against husband, woman against man, race against race
· Legitimized every form of fornication and foulness
· Driven the farmer off the land and the smallholder out of his property and made our people renters & strangers in their own land
· Traversed the globe with armies and fleets, bombing cities and nations and imposing upon them the imperial will or death
· Eroded the rights of Man defined so clearly in Bill of Rights
· Suspended Habeas Corpus (1861, 1862 and apparently and subtly in 2002)
· Created a welfare state
· Taxed the people beyond reasonability
· Legislated every aspect of human existence
· Denied cultural identity to a significant portion of the population
There remained however two separate cultural nations.
The North was the cultural product of England and puritan ideologies. Commercialism, mercantilism and commerce dominated the cultural development of the Northern Culture. Puritanism developed and transformed over time from a reliance on the divine to reliance on the human. Secularism combined with commercialism was the recipe for the commercially driven Imperialism to follow.
The South drew a great deal of its’ original cultural influence from the Scots and later a proportionally large Irish influence. Celtic, Christian and agrarian would best describe the cultural influence of the South. A cultural history of “feeling the tyrant’s boot” in Scotland and Ireland combined with a simple belief in Man’s individual relationship with God made the culture of the South individualistic and unconcerned with expanding and trampling the rights of others in far away lands.
John C. Calhoun first articulately expressed the problem of concurrent majorities existing under one government. The cultural divide could not be sustained in a system where 51% of the voters got everything they wanted and 49% were left disenfranchised.
Just like a club that members freely join of their own accord, members ought to be allowed to leave. In 1861 when it became apparent that the system could no longer support two separate cultures the Southern States exercise their legitimate right as sovereign States to leave the club. There was no Constitutional Crisis, in fact the system worked fine, no bloodshed was required.
The Imperial Northern Yankees would not and did not accept this amicable and logical solution. Instead they visited war upon the Southern People and Nation. It was an economic war later clothed in the aura of a religious crusade to abolish slavery. The Yankee Imperialist has a despicable habit of cloaking their economic wars in terms of “noble crusades”. I will discuss the fallacy of the Northern Slavery claim in latter writings.
Since the occupation of the South in 1865 the list of crimes against all of mankind have piled up. The United States post 1865 began an imperial empire. Those subjected to be trapped within its’ borders have been subjected to an ever-growing federal tyranny that taxes, legislates and dictates almost every aspect of a mans’ life. As I have discussed previously those outside the US borders are no safer and are increasingly faced with the Sophie’s Choice of cooperate or die.
The list below does not speak at all about other internal victims of Yankee Imperialism: Native Americans forced from their lan and lied to in treaties, Blacks bought and sold by Yankee merchants, Hawaiians duped out of their independence, Mexicans forced from their lands etc. I will deal with those crimes in later rants.
A brief list of Internal Crimes against the Southern People
· Promoted the murder of 45 million – (Abortion is a travesty worse than the Holocaust in the sheer numbers killed).
· Scoured and raked the country to roust God out of every heart and hiding place, out of every schoolroom and football game and school board meeting
· Set children against mother and father, wife against husband, woman against man, race against race
· Legitimized every form of fornication and foulness
· Driven the farmer off the land and the smallholder out of his property and made our people renters & strangers in their own land
· Traversed the globe with armies and fleets, bombing cities and nations and imposing upon them the imperial will or death
· Eroded the rights of Man defined so clearly in Bill of Rights
· Suspended Habeas Corpus (1861, 1862 and apparently and subtly in 2002)
· Created a welfare state
· Taxed the people beyond reasonability
· Legislated every aspect of human existence
· Denied cultural identity to a significant portion of the population
Latin American Interventions by Yankee Imperialist
Here is a sample of Yankee Imperialism visited on just one continent. The same has occurred all over the world in one form or another…and continues apace now.
Why does the World hate the US and wish to blow up the symbols of Yankee Mercantilism? A history of meddling, invading and interference is just one reason why.
___________________________________
History of U.S. intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean
1823: The Monroe Doctrine declares Latin America to be in the United States "sphere of influence."
1846: The U.S. provokes war with Mexico and acquires half of its territory, including Texas and California.
1855: U.S. adventurer William Walker invades Nicaragua with a private army, declares himself president, and rules for 2 years.
1898: The U.S. declares war on Spain and as a result annexes Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Hawaii.
1901 : With the Platt Amendment, the U.S. declares its unilateral right to intervene in Cuban affairs.
1903: The U.S. encourages Panama's independence from Colombia in order to acquire the Panama Canal rights.
1905: The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine declares the U.S. to be the policeman of the Caribbean; the Dominican Republic is placed under a customs receivership.
1912 : U.S. Marines invade Nicaragua and occupy the country almost continuously until 1933.
1914: Mexican refusal to salute the U.S. flag provokes the shelling of Veracruz by a U.S. battleship and the seizure of parts of the city by U.S. Marines.
1933: U.S. Marines finally leave Nicaragua, but are replaced by a well-trained and well-armed National Guard under the control of Anastasio Somoza.
1954: The CIA engineers the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Guatemala; 30 years of military dictatorship, repression, and violence follow.
1961 : The U.S. attempts to overthrow the revolutionary Cuban government at the Bay of Pigs.
1965: Johnson sends 22,000 troops to the Dominican Republic to combat the constitutional forces trying to regain power.
1973: The CIA helps overthrow the democratic government of Allende in Chile in favor of a bloody dictatorship.
1981: The Reagan Administration begins the contra war against Nicaraguan civilians.
1983: The U.S. invades Grenada to overthrow a popular government.
1989: The U.S. invades Panama to arrest accused drug dealer Manual Noriega.
1990 : The U.S. intervenes in the Nicaraguan election process through covert and overt means.
Why does the World hate the US and wish to blow up the symbols of Yankee Mercantilism? A history of meddling, invading and interference is just one reason why.
___________________________________
History of U.S. intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean
1823: The Monroe Doctrine declares Latin America to be in the United States "sphere of influence."
1846: The U.S. provokes war with Mexico and acquires half of its territory, including Texas and California.
1855: U.S. adventurer William Walker invades Nicaragua with a private army, declares himself president, and rules for 2 years.
1898: The U.S. declares war on Spain and as a result annexes Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Hawaii.
1901 : With the Platt Amendment, the U.S. declares its unilateral right to intervene in Cuban affairs.
1903: The U.S. encourages Panama's independence from Colombia in order to acquire the Panama Canal rights.
1905: The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine declares the U.S. to be the policeman of the Caribbean; the Dominican Republic is placed under a customs receivership.
1912 : U.S. Marines invade Nicaragua and occupy the country almost continuously until 1933.
1914: Mexican refusal to salute the U.S. flag provokes the shelling of Veracruz by a U.S. battleship and the seizure of parts of the city by U.S. Marines.
1933: U.S. Marines finally leave Nicaragua, but are replaced by a well-trained and well-armed National Guard under the control of Anastasio Somoza.
1954: The CIA engineers the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Guatemala; 30 years of military dictatorship, repression, and violence follow.
1961 : The U.S. attempts to overthrow the revolutionary Cuban government at the Bay of Pigs.
1965: Johnson sends 22,000 troops to the Dominican Republic to combat the constitutional forces trying to regain power.
1973: The CIA helps overthrow the democratic government of Allende in Chile in favor of a bloody dictatorship.
1981: The Reagan Administration begins the contra war against Nicaraguan civilians.
1983: The U.S. invades Grenada to overthrow a popular government.
1989: The U.S. invades Panama to arrest accused drug dealer Manual Noriega.
1990 : The U.S. intervenes in the Nicaraguan election process through covert and overt means.
"Imperialism of Decadence", 1913-or better yet Yankee Imperialism in the early 20th Century
History indeed repeats itself. The Imperialism of the Yankee Merchant/Industrialist machine has grown steadily since 1861. First it conquered the sovereign states of Southern America. Next a war with Spain was “invented”. And as we see in this period piece the Imperialist pursued a series of interventions in Latin America.
Almost 100 years later we may have forgotten the tyrannical boot stomping of early Yankee Imperialism. The various conquest have always been justified in one way or another (to remove a tyrant, free a people etc. etc.) This benign cover has worked well for internal distribution. Most Citizens of the United States long ago sold their soul to the corporate mindset and culture that supports and feed upon Yankee Imperialism.
We have long forgotten the true Rights of Man or the Noble charter that originally formed this land. Our Constitution; that divinely inspired great human endeavor; ceased to exist in 1861. The nation that won the War Between the States was not the representative of the republican principles set forth by the Forefathers of the True America. The Imperialistic power that usurped and supplanted the former government has proven itself time and time again to be a thorn in the side of human freedom and self-determination.
The gentleman that wrote the piece below makes the mistake of grouping all US citizens together as US Imperialist. It is an easy enough mistake. He missed the fact that many that live within the borders of the US are themselves victims of Yankee aggression.
One may wonder why so many people around the world hate the United States. It should be no mystery to anyone that knows history. The piece below, written in 1913 by a man that experienced the heel of the US Imperialistic boot first hand might well represent many of the voices that hat the US still.
_________________________________________________
Francisco Garcia Calderón:
"Imperialism of Decadence", 1913
Calderón was a Peruvian diplomat and writer. Here he criticizes U.S. policy, as well as US businesses, for exploiting Latin Americans. He also warns of the dangers of cultural imperialism.
Interventions have become more frequent with the expansion of frontiers. The United States have recently intervened in the territory of Acre, there to found a republic of rubber gatherers; at Panama, there to develop a province and construct a canal; in Cuba, under cover of the Platt Amendment, to maintain order in the interior; in Santo Domingo, to support the civilising revolution and overthrow the tyrants; in Venezuela, and in Central America, to enforce upon these nations, torn by intestine disorders, the political and financial tutelage of the imperial democracy. In Guatemala and Honduras the loans concluded with the monarchs of North American finance have reduced the people to a new slavery. Supervision of the customs and the dispatch of pacificatory squadrons to defend the interests of the Anglo-Saxon have enforced peace and tranquility: such are the means employed. The New York American announces that Mr. Pierpont Morgan proposes to encompass the finances of Latin America by a vast network of Yankee banks. Chicago merchants and Wall Street financiers created the Meat Trust in the Argentine. The United States offer millions for the purpose of converting into Yankee loans the moneys raised in London during the last century by the Latin American States; they wish to obtain a monopoly of credit. It has even been announced, although the news hardly appears probable, that a North American syndicate wished to buy enormous belts of land in Guatemala, where the English tongue is the obligatory language. The fortification of the Panama Canal, and the possible acquisition of the Galapagos Island in the Pacific, are fresh manifestations of imperialistic progress....
Warnings, advice, distrust, invasion of capital, plans of financial hegemony all these justify the anxiety of the southern peoples.... Neither irony nor grace nor scepticism, gifts of the old civilizations, can make way against the plebeian brutality, the excessive optimism, the violent individualism of the [North American] people.
All these things contribute to the triumph of mediocrity; the multitude of primary schools, the vices of utilitarianism, the cult of the average citizen, the transatlantic M. Homais, and the tyranny of opinion noted by Tocqueville; and in this vulgarity, which is devoid of traditions and has no leading aristocracy, a return to the primitive type of the redskin, which has already been noted by close observers, is threatening the proud democracy. From the excessive tension of wills, from the elementary state of culture, from the perpetual unrest of life, from the harshness of the industrial struggle, anarchy and violence will be born in the future. In a hundred years men will seek in vain for the "American soul," the "genius of America," elsewhere than in the undisciplined force or the violence which ignores moral laws....
Essential points of difference separate the two Americas. Differences of language and therefore of spirit; the difference between Spanish Catholicism and multiform Protestantism of the Anglo-Saxons; between the Yankee individualism and the omnipotence of the State natural to the nations of the South. In their origin, as in their race, we find fundamental antagonism; the evolution of the North is slow and obedient to the lessons of time , to the influences of custom; the history of the southern peoples is full of revolutions, rich with dreams of an unattainable perfection.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source:
From Francisco Garcia Calderón: Latin America: Its Rise and Progress (London: T. F. Unwin, 1913), pp.392-393.
Almost 100 years later we may have forgotten the tyrannical boot stomping of early Yankee Imperialism. The various conquest have always been justified in one way or another (to remove a tyrant, free a people etc. etc.) This benign cover has worked well for internal distribution. Most Citizens of the United States long ago sold their soul to the corporate mindset and culture that supports and feed upon Yankee Imperialism.
We have long forgotten the true Rights of Man or the Noble charter that originally formed this land. Our Constitution; that divinely inspired great human endeavor; ceased to exist in 1861. The nation that won the War Between the States was not the representative of the republican principles set forth by the Forefathers of the True America. The Imperialistic power that usurped and supplanted the former government has proven itself time and time again to be a thorn in the side of human freedom and self-determination.
The gentleman that wrote the piece below makes the mistake of grouping all US citizens together as US Imperialist. It is an easy enough mistake. He missed the fact that many that live within the borders of the US are themselves victims of Yankee aggression.
One may wonder why so many people around the world hate the United States. It should be no mystery to anyone that knows history. The piece below, written in 1913 by a man that experienced the heel of the US Imperialistic boot first hand might well represent many of the voices that hat the US still.
_________________________________________________
Francisco Garcia Calderón:
"Imperialism of Decadence", 1913
Calderón was a Peruvian diplomat and writer. Here he criticizes U.S. policy, as well as US businesses, for exploiting Latin Americans. He also warns of the dangers of cultural imperialism.
Interventions have become more frequent with the expansion of frontiers. The United States have recently intervened in the territory of Acre, there to found a republic of rubber gatherers; at Panama, there to develop a province and construct a canal; in Cuba, under cover of the Platt Amendment, to maintain order in the interior; in Santo Domingo, to support the civilising revolution and overthrow the tyrants; in Venezuela, and in Central America, to enforce upon these nations, torn by intestine disorders, the political and financial tutelage of the imperial democracy. In Guatemala and Honduras the loans concluded with the monarchs of North American finance have reduced the people to a new slavery. Supervision of the customs and the dispatch of pacificatory squadrons to defend the interests of the Anglo-Saxon have enforced peace and tranquility: such are the means employed. The New York American announces that Mr. Pierpont Morgan proposes to encompass the finances of Latin America by a vast network of Yankee banks. Chicago merchants and Wall Street financiers created the Meat Trust in the Argentine. The United States offer millions for the purpose of converting into Yankee loans the moneys raised in London during the last century by the Latin American States; they wish to obtain a monopoly of credit. It has even been announced, although the news hardly appears probable, that a North American syndicate wished to buy enormous belts of land in Guatemala, where the English tongue is the obligatory language. The fortification of the Panama Canal, and the possible acquisition of the Galapagos Island in the Pacific, are fresh manifestations of imperialistic progress....
Warnings, advice, distrust, invasion of capital, plans of financial hegemony all these justify the anxiety of the southern peoples.... Neither irony nor grace nor scepticism, gifts of the old civilizations, can make way against the plebeian brutality, the excessive optimism, the violent individualism of the [North American] people.
All these things contribute to the triumph of mediocrity; the multitude of primary schools, the vices of utilitarianism, the cult of the average citizen, the transatlantic M. Homais, and the tyranny of opinion noted by Tocqueville; and in this vulgarity, which is devoid of traditions and has no leading aristocracy, a return to the primitive type of the redskin, which has already been noted by close observers, is threatening the proud democracy. From the excessive tension of wills, from the elementary state of culture, from the perpetual unrest of life, from the harshness of the industrial struggle, anarchy and violence will be born in the future. In a hundred years men will seek in vain for the "American soul," the "genius of America," elsewhere than in the undisciplined force or the violence which ignores moral laws....
Essential points of difference separate the two Americas. Differences of language and therefore of spirit; the difference between Spanish Catholicism and multiform Protestantism of the Anglo-Saxons; between the Yankee individualism and the omnipotence of the State natural to the nations of the South. In their origin, as in their race, we find fundamental antagonism; the evolution of the North is slow and obedient to the lessons of time , to the influences of custom; the history of the southern peoples is full of revolutions, rich with dreams of an unattainable perfection.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source:
From Francisco Garcia Calderón: Latin America: Its Rise and Progress (London: T. F. Unwin, 1913), pp.392-393.
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