Christian Covenanter

March 23 - Today in History: Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death

2008-03-23T00:45:00.000-05:00

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death

Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.

No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The questing before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Economic Collapse 2008? It's Possible.

2008-03-16T00:44:00.001-05:00

Founding Fathers On The Threat of Tyranny

2008-03-03T14:03:00.000-05:00

Parody - U.S. State Department Stupidity

2008-02-29T01:47:00.001-05:00

Yes, the political class and U.S. State Department really is almost as stupid as the parody portrays.

Never Give Up, Never Surrender!!!

2008-02-28T13:54:00.002-05:00

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
—Winston Churchill

Londonistan

2008-02-27T22:02:00.004-05:00

Multiculturalism is the ideology of Western suicide. London, England is fast becoming an Islamic Caliphite. This will translate to more terrorism and the dimunition of the English nation. These ungrateful interlopers despise the Western society that naively embraces them.

The Free-Market is Just and Humane

2008-02-27T21:18:00.002-05:00

Allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of a free society, and also the most productive and efficient supplier of human needs.

Thomas Jefferson Supports Ron Paul

2008-02-16T13:21:00.000-05:00

Ughh... I didn't know Jefferson had a lisp, but he endorses Ron Paul!

An Open Letter to Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr.:

2008-02-15T12:30:00.005-05:00

February 15, 2008

Honorable Congressman Virgil H. Goode Jr.,

Sir, it has come to my attention that Senator Obama is proposing a massive foreign aid subsidy program, a veritable Great Society run riot on an international level. Supposedly, he wants to pledge $845 billion over several years, (or 0.7% of gross national product per annum.) I am disturbed by such measure, particularly given the size of budget deficits at home, the deterioration of the U.S. Dollar, and what appears to be the beginning of exorbitant inflation. Years of fiscal mismanagement by the Congress seem to only be met with more reckless mismanagement. I find it disturbing that amidst what appears to be the beginning of American economic decline that our political leadership sees fit to waste our tax dollars. Our infrastructure at home is falling apart, as evident by that bridge collapse in Minnesota. There are better uses of tax dollars than foreign aid.

I realize there are voices of sanity and statesmanship in the Congress like yourself, and other members of the Liberty Committee like Ron Paul. I hope you will speak to this matter, and oppose it.

One of your predecessors Dan Daniel was compelled to challenge U.S. government attempts to aid regimes that practiced socialism, whether the Marxist variety or not, "because it encouraged them to remain victims of their own economic systems." Such logic is lost to today's politicians, and foreign aid has crippled the Third World, by propping up corrupt socialist kleptocracies. "There's no escaping the truth," proclaimed Daniel, "that the $60,000,000,000 in economic aid which we have given away since World War II has seriously jeopardized our economy." I fundamentally believe there is truth to that proverb God helps those that helps themselves. I think that private charities like Pat Robertson's Operation Blessing among many others, are more efficient and honestly administered than American-subsidized programs under the auspices of the United Nations. I am against foreign aid too, because of its perceived unconstitutionality. Where's the authority in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution?

A July 4, 2005 interview with a Kenyan economist in the German newspaper Spiegel offered some hard-hitting truth that the world needs to hear about Africa. Socialism in Africa, reinforced by naive Western powers and the United Nations, is at the root of Africa's problems. It held true in the 1970s. And it holds true in the twenty-first century. Intervention via foreign aid inculcates weakness in their government, saps market vitality, and props up despots and dictators. In 2005, the Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati says that foreign aid to Africa does more harm than good, declaring, "For God's sake, please just stop." He elaborated, "Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor." Spiegel then queried, "Do you have an explanation for this paradox?" Shikwati retorted, "Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid." Spiegel then queried, "Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them." Shikwati declared, "But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help... It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help... before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa ...and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unscrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle."

I have become cognizant of the reality that many corrupt special interests in the banking industry, and international bankers have a vested interest in seeing large sums of loans directed at corrupt Third World regimes, and they play the familiar game of lobbying the Congress to bail them out under the auspices of debt relief. This encourages a vicious cycle of fiscal irresponsibility in the United States, and subsidizes corruption, poverty and failure abroad.

Best Regards,
Ryan Setliff

Click image below to download the response from Rep. Goode on Feb. 15, 2008.

Eisenhower's Prescient Warning About the Military-Industrial Complex

2008-02-13T15:25:00.005-05:00

Forty-seven years later, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 speech about the military-industrial complex still carries weight, and it serves a reminder that its influence has the potential to be nefarious, and conducive to war, not peace. One does not have to countenance conspiracy theories like those advocated by left-winger Oliver Stone, to understand this reality. Public choice economists like Nobel Laureate James Buchanan, on the Right, have pointed out the marked tendency of an exuberant public sector to fabricate demand for public goods—that ultimately benefit the producers of those goods, and yet they do not serve any vital public interest. The aggrandizement of this military-industrial complex and the policies they advocate are seldom within the rubric of a vital public interest at all. Demand for the military-industrial complex's public goods (i.e., armaments, logistics, service, and maintenance contracts) often emanates from the pursuit of war. So is peace really the end which the military-industrial complex serves when they profit so much from war? After the Cold War, the military-industrial complex within the United States needed to find new rationalizations for interventionist foreign policy. Peace paid no significant profits and no dividends. The Iraq War on the other hand has cost over $1 trillion thus far, with no exit strategy in sight. Moreover, we have succumbed to the perils of blowback by our government's covert actions in years past.

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040

My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

II.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

III.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs — balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage — balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

IV.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

VII.

So — in this my last good night to you as your President — I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I — my fellow citizens — need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Ron Paul 2008!

2008-02-12T14:15:00.001-05:00

The Jeffersonian Prescription for Political Economy

2008-02-07T14:56:00.000-05:00

Can any serious student of history doubt after Hamilton wrote his Report on Public Credit, and the United States Congress established a charter for the First Bank of the United States, that we set ourselves on a perilous course, whereby public debt and taxation could subsume the national economy, and continually aggrandize the federal government at the expense of the states and the people? As John Taylor's Inquiry lamented, all the Hamiltonian system did was contrive a system whereby the people pay needless interest on the circulating medium to a private banking cartel, and to perpetuate the fraud the federal government eventually passed legal tender laws.

Jefferson in a moment of reflection declared in 1798:

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing. I now deny their power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender. I know that to pay all proper expenses within the year would, in case of war, be hard on us. But not so hard as ten wars instead of one. For wars could be reduced in that proportion; besides that the State governments would be free to lend their credit in borrowing quotas.
—Thomas Jefferson

"Nietzsche is dead."

2008-02-07T10:54:00.000-05:00

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.
—Colossians 2:8

Year end and year out, beatniks and assorted miscreants boast of the philosophical insight offered by that crass atheistic Friedrich Nietzsche, the author of sordid works as The Anti-Christ. Nietzsche once opined:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
—Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzche proposed that man create his own morality: and that he embrace the tabula rasa (blank slate). Nietzsche believed there could be positive possibilities for humans without God. Relinquishing the belief in God opens the way for human creative abilities to fully develop he posited; it also opens the way for human depravity to become unbridled in the absence of moral constraints such as the consciousness of eternal and just God and a final judgment. The Christian God, he wrote, would no longer stand in the way, so human beings might stop turning their eyes toward a supernatural realm and begin to acknowledge the value of this world. The recognition that "God is dead" would be like a blank canvas.

It should probably not be a surprised that the later-day fascists—particularly one Adolf Hitler praised the philosophy of the insane syphilis-carrier Nietzsche. In his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

There was some ground for this appropriation of Nietzsche as one of the originators of the Nazi Weltanschauung. Had not the philosopher thundered against democracy and parliaments, preached the will to power, praised war and proclaimed the coming of the master race and the superman--and in the most telling aphorisms? (100).

Ideas have consequences as Richard Weaver posited. With Nietzsche's amorality, Hitler and the National Socialist rationalized some of the most barbaric acts of inhumanity in history, rivaled only by the communists.

The simple fact of the matter is that Nietzsche is dead; and God is alive!

1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. 4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision. 5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. (Psalm 2:1-5)

Alexis de Tocqueville's Prophecy of 'Democratic Despotism' which aptly describes Twenty-First Century America

2008-02-06T16:34:00.001-05:00

The French author of the famous book Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville presciently foresaw the undercurrents of a political phenomenon that lamentably came to fruition in twentieth- century America reaching its climax following two world wars, FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. That phenomenon was described as democratic despotism.

Alexis de Tocqueville opined:

Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.

By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience. I do not deny, however, that a constitution of this kind appears to me to be infinitely preferable to one which, after having concentrated all the powers of government, should vest them in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons. Of all the forms that democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be the worst.

Tocqueville elucidates further on the democratic despotism phenomenon:

Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

What is most lamentable about democratic despotism, isn't foremost the budgetary bloat of the colossal public sector, or the taxation burden, but what it does to us as human beings. It drains the vitality out of men, and alienates their affections for "the little platoons" (i.e., family, community, voluntary civil assocations) as Burke dubbed them. Political apathy becomes the norm as the government is perceived as aloof, unresponsive, remote and even malevolent in its nature. Democratic despotism was an unfortunate outgrowth of egalitarian leveling run riot. Tocqueville conceived of liberty like an aristocratic stateman. Liberty and equality have ultimately proven themselves antithetical, precisely because we hapless moderns will not qualify equality and distinguish between the undesirable forms of equality. Tocqueville concluded: "I think that in the dawning centuries of democracy, individual independence and local liberties will always be the products of art. Centralized government will be the natural thing."

In the reductionist conception of ideal liberty heralded by the sages of our times, we are errantly taught to conceptualize freedom in terms of access to the ballot, and the ability to democratically select our leaders. Regrettably, we ignore the moral hazards posed by democratizing so much of civil society. Contemporaneously, civil society cannot ignore the pervasive power of the state with its calculated programmes of public education, wealth redistribution, and an endless array of entitlement programs. The modern managerial regime is increasingly embracing the pagan ancien régime conception of the polis (πόλεις), where the state and society are subsumed into one another. This revival of pagan monism has the roots of twentieth-century totalitarianism, and if unchecked it can spell dismal results for a body politic, culture, nation and society.

Which Side Were the Heirs of George Washington On?

2008-02-02T19:47:00.001-05:00

Much controversy as emanated from the Confederates putting George Washington on the seal of the Confederacy. As historian Reid Mitchell notes, "The Civil War proved curiously filled with echoes of the American Revolution. The patriotic past and the Biblical past wer the two great historic memories by which Americans measured their present.... Southerners did not repudiate the Revolution in 1861; they did not renounce the legacy of 1776. Confederates saw themselves as true Americans. The sectional conflict and the Civil War were in some ways a conflict over the meaning of shared past." Northerners have disparaged the south's use of their noble Virginian George Washington, the First President of the United States, being placed on the seal of the Confederacy. To settle curiosity, which side were the Washington family on in the Civil War. "During a scout near Cheat Mountain, Virginia, in the fall of 1861," notes Mitchell, "a squad of federal calvary approached a group of mounted men. The men turn and fled. The Union soldiers fired and one man fell off his horse, struck by four balls. The Union soldiers rushed toward him—in accordance with his 'brutish instincts'—pulled his revolver but was too weak too fire. With his last words, he begged for water. The Union soldiers tended him but he soon died. Examining his corpse, the soldiers learned he was Lt. Col. John A. Washington, 'the great-nephew of George Washington,' shot in the back by Union soldiers." A little ironic that a Washington was shot in the back? Sort of like how the idea of being governed by consent and taxation by consent were shot in the back?

George Washington's nephew John had received his sword passed down to him as an inheritance.

Book Review : From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition

2008-02-02T05:42:00.000-05:00

From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition is an anthology of essays and writings by historian Clyde Wilson. As Joseph Stromberg writes in the introduction, "Dr. Clyde Wilson is a Christian, a Southerner, an American, an historian and a conservative. For over three decades he has worked on the definitive edition of the Papers of John C. Calhoun, has written on Calhoun and published a collection of Calhoun's most important writings." Wilson is a luminary figure amongst southern conservatives in my humble opinion, and yet modest about his own accomplishments. He has also written a splendid biographical history of General James Johnston Pettigrew and assembled an anthology of essays in tribute to the late Mel Bradford. As Stromberg opines, "His writings-published in Modern Age, Chronicles, Telos, and many other forums-shows Professor Wilson off as the kind of conservative who is a stalwart defender of federalism and republicanism, and the liberties associated with them. Such conservatives are few and far between these days."

For most of American history, the old Jeffersonian Democrats, sometimes referred to as Southern conservatives, were the most plentiful and common American type and now they are largely forgotten. The prescriptive wisdom of the old Jeffersonian Republicans lives on and is brilliantly encapsulated in the writings of Clyde Wilson. From his easy-to-read historical exposition of southern conservative statesmen to his stalwart defense of states' rights, Wilson offers a refreshing bit of conservative sobriety with this enlightening collection of essays accumulated over the years. Wilson defends Jefferson and spells out just why so many people from the Right and the Left hate Jefferson, and are committed to tarnishing and maligning his historical legacy. My favorite essays are those recollecting the legacy and contributions of the Old Republicans - James Monroe, George Mason, John Taylor of Caroline, John Randolph of Roanoke, and Nathaniel Macon. The Old Republicans were in fact more Jeffersonian than Jefferson himself as Wilson expounds upon the Tertium Quids with amazing clarity. Like Mel Bradford, Wilson is appreciative of the rich republican legacy and the Constitution, but keen to admit the prescriptive wisdom of the Anti-Federalists in light of history. The Constitution in our time has been thoroughly subverted and rendered a dead letter by "construction."

Wilson is no mere nostalgic revisionist and his realism compels him to admit that lately us Jeffersonian Republicans have been on the losing side of American history. A free republic requires a self-reliant, resourceful, resiliant and productive populace not apt to look to the state for its sustenance and financial provision. In our time, dependency on the paternalistic state is at an all-time high and it is apparently what many people want. Nonetheless, Wilson gives southern conservatives a reason to hold their head up high as he and other torchbearers continue to kindle the flame to pass on to a new generation of conservatives. The Roman statesmen Cicero avowed, "Long before our time the customs of our ancestors molded admirable men, in turn these men upheld the ways and institutions of their forebears. Our age, however, inherited the Republic as if it were some beautiful painting of bygone ages, its colors already fading through great antiquity; and not only has our time neglected to freshen the colors of the picture, but we have failed to preserve its forms and outlines." It is through the Jeffersonian tradition and the legacy of southern conservatives that we may find the brilliant colors and hues to refresh the colors of our the picture and by prudent understanding of history we can restore those forms and outlines of our fragile republic. Perhaps with perseverance, we can one day effectuate Jefferson's vision of an empire of liberty and restoration of the republic. Wilson is a bold visionary and though realistic about political realities now, he is not possessed of a spirit of resignation and defeatism. This distinguished southern gentleman has left a legacy of scholarship that will be disseminated for years to come. With his Calhoun scholarship, he bequeaths to posterity some potent tools for republican restoration.

In summation, Wilson's accumulated scholarship invigorates the Jeffersonian tradition, and gives us southern conservatives a reason to be emboldened about our political prospects despite the formidable odds. At the very least we have a venerable republican tradition and able torchbearers like Dr. Clyde Wilson to bequeath the flame of liberty to future generations, which should give us hope of future restoration of the republic. As a southern conservative, I have been honored to make Dr. Wilson's acquaintance and hear his lectures.

Ron Paul Campaign 2008

2008-01-29T23:20:00.000-05:00

Gold, Peace, and Prosperity

2008-01-28T05:24:00.000-05:00

The Federal Reserve: America's Corrupt Banking Cartel

2008-01-28T04:52:00.000-05:00

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
—Thomas Jefferson

The trifling economy of paper, as a cheaper medium, or its convenience for transmission, weighs nothing in opposition to the advantages of the precious metals... it is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted.
—Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813. ME 13:430

The evils of this deluge of paper money are not to be removed until our citizens are generally and radically instructed in their cause and consequences, and silence by their authority the interested clamors and sophistry of speculating, shaving, and banking institutions. Till then, we must be content to return quoad hoc to the savage state, to recur to barter in the exchange of our property for want of a stable common measure of value, that now in use being less fixed than the beads and wampum of the Indian, and to deliver up our citizens, their property and their labor, passive victims to the swindling tricks of bankers and mountebankers.
—Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819. ME 15:185

Blame the North for Big Government--- I DO

2008-01-27T22:00:00.000-05:00

After the Civil War, Alexander Hamilton Stephens, the former Vice President of the Confederacy and a political theorist and historian whose insights have not received the attention they deserve, called attention to the late war and its aftermath as an example of the trend toward empire and centralization:

If centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being enacted: then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but in the judgment of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity.

Foreshadowing the American Illiad 1861-65

2008-01-27T19:53:00.000-05:00

In 1783, after the American War for Independence, a British captain confiding these prescient words to an American General:

When all of you are in your graves, there will be wars and rumors of wars in this country. There are too many different interests in it, for them to be united. One of those days, the northern and southern powers will fight as vigorously against each other, as they both united to do against the British.

Ron Paul - Lord of the G.O.P.

2008-01-27T19:36:00.000-05:00

Facing Up to America's Shameful & Sinful Past of Muderous Imperialism

2008-01-26T21:08:00.000-05:00

When I was younger, it was easy to be a reactionary defender of the United States of America in history. That reactionary nature was hardened by the tactics of the political Left to attack and malign America's heroes and heritage: and summing up American history as a festival of slave oppression, indian killing, and imperial capitalism violently suppressing organized labor. But as I grew older, I came to realize that the U.S. government wasn't always altruistic in its aims... that it was frequently seized by selfish and corrupt interests, and could pursue the most naked acts of aggression, oppression, and violence, so as to disturb the human conscience.

The Philippine-American War was one such example of a shameful and avoidable war where countless Filipinos died at American hands.

As Philadelphia Ledger writer J. Franklin Bell reported: “Our men have been relentless; have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives ... from lads of 10 and up, an idea prevailing that the Filipino, as such, was little better than a dog... Our men have pumped salt water into men to ‘make them talk’ ... [then] stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down as an example to those who found their bullet-riddled corpses.” Needless to say, America didn’t give the Filipinos independence. McKinley justified U.S. occupation by saying that it was our duty to civilize and Christianize the Filipinos, who were largely already Roman Catholics. But the U.S. Government did little to 'Christianize,' instead it engaged in a cruel-hearted and brutal systematic ethnic cleansing of dissidents, and even those mildly associated with dissidents including women and children. It was amoral and reprehensible, and a blight on the American memory. Some newspapers were honest; others engaged in yellow journalism and warhawkism accusing the Filipinos of killing their own people and burning down their own villages, as Fighting Joe Wheeler dubiously claimed.

Writer Mark Twain opposed the war by using his influence in the press. He felt it betrayed American ideals and was little more than naked imperialism, masking under altruistic ideological claims of a benevolent civilizing imperialism:

There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it — perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands — but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector — not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now — why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.

General Jacob H. Smith's infamous order "KILL EVERY ONE OVER TEN" was the caption in the New York Journal cartoon on May 5, 1902. (Click the picture to the right to enlarge the picture.) The Old Glory draped an American shield on which a vulture replaced the bald eagle. The bottom caption exclaimed, "Criminals Because They Were Born Ten Years Before We Took the Philippines." Published in the New York Journal-American, May 5, 1902.

Did Booker T. Washington foresee the coming of demagogues Jackson and Sharpton?

2008-01-26T06:27:00.001-05:00

There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do do not want to lose their jobs.
—Booker T. Washington, My Larger Education (1911)

Gold Standard

2008-01-26T05:58:00.000-05:00

"The gold standard has one tremendous virtue: the quantity of the money supply, under the gold standard, is independent of the policies of governments and political parties. This is its advantage. It is a form of protection against spendthrift governments."
—Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy, p. 65