Quote of the day 12/12

"We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."

George Orwell

My second comment on NAACP protesting Secession Ball in Charleston

This is follow up to my comments on the article on the NAACP protesting the Secession Ball coming up in Charleston SC.  I respond to two comments this time, one written by Sark, who prompted my first comment, and one by artrogue, who addressed me and ended with a R. E. Lee quote to which I felt some response was necessary.


I realize both postings in this paper are probably exercises in futility, but if I reach one open minded person... 
That is what this blog is really all about.


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"Not a single thing you said, Honourablemeans, changes the facts in regard to the contents of the Declaration of Secession. Entire books have been written trying to rehabilitate the Confederacy, but they can't get over the facts of that country's founding."--Sark


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"South carolina is too big for a insane asluym and to small to be a nation.
Interestingly enough..especially for the poster that majored in history....the Confederate Constitution did not allow for state rights.... a state could not be a member and forbide slavery!! So much for states' rights.
I'd like to hear any other right...just one... that any state was willing to spill blood over. There seems to be only two..the one is the right to have a right and the other was slavery.
I salute the ancestors of both sides that fought for what they belived and gave thier all but it does little good to continue these salutes and rememberances when we need to be a healed and whole nation.
While its important to remember its also more important to be one united country. We do need a strong central goverment(albiet i would agrees a less intrusive one and smaller leaner). One of the downfalls of the confederacy.. was just that..a weak central goverment...states could choose to send their resources or keep them for themselves..which many did when they had serious issues of their own. While its nice to have the states..its pretty ovbious we need to stand as one united strong nation aginst our common enemie's..
even Robert E Lee said "lets furl the banner never to unfurl it again.""--artrogue


@artrogue


After that quote at Appomattox, he later said:


"All that the South has ever desired was the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth."
 Gen. Robert E. Lee


"Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in this right hand." CSA General Robert E. Lee


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@sark


Does the possibility that someone else can have an opposing view DESPITE knowing and acknowledging what you say is true (i have read the secession ordinances of all Confederate States)threaten your world view? Does it give you pause that your focus may be too narrow? Probably not. Many people become trapped by complacency in their knowledge base, and trapped by their faith in the sources of that knowledge. The knowledge base may be lacking. The sources may be inaccurate or spun a certain way. Anyway, all I suggest to open minded people is to read both sides of an issue and let reason be your guide.
On slavery again: the southern perspective was that the federal government was tyrannically reaching beyond it's own mandate, and the issue of 3/5 representation and it's extension into western territories affected the balance of power between competing ideologies of government, and interfered with Northern protectionist and mercantilist economic goals. These issues were contemporary to that time period -- not revisionist history. Saying the war was fought over slavery, implying it is a struggle of moral Yankee principles against southern evil principles IS post war revisionism. Freeing millions of slaves at a stroke with no plan for integration, certainly no compensation, empowering blacks politically and taking away the rights of white southerners was a recipe for intense racial animosity. This suited the ruling class.
The country's founding: slaves introduced to New England in 1630's. New Englanders profited most from the slave trade. 1776 1/4 of Connecticut families owned slaves. Stars and Stripes was the flag flying over a country whose founding had legitimized and institutionalized slavery in it's Constitution and laws for 74 years before the Confederate States of America was founded....but other than that you are absolutely right...
Does it make sense that a CSA soldier fought tooth and nail and risked all until broken to protect the right of the wealthiest 10% of the CSA to own slaves? 
 These guys were Americans! They fought until their ruin for their wives, children, their read of the Constitution, and to prevent what did come to pass: everything they believed in has disappeared, or nearly so.


But go on and say " the war was fought over slavery" and I won't trouble you any more trying to disrupt your knowledge with my knowledge.

NAACP protests Planned Secession Ball commemorating 150th Anniversary in Charleston

Read about it here;  this comment below the article inspired me to do my small bit of Confederate Heritage Defense and maybe educate a couple of people who might have an open mind...

You're right about one thing patriot: the NAACP is unlikely to ever show much consideration to neo-Confederates. Hmmm, I wonder why? Is it because the NAACP is an intolerant, racist, discriminatory organization? Or could it be that they don't feel compelled to respect people who celebrate a country that was founded in intolerance, racism, and discrimination? 

Let me be blunt: anyone who celebrates confederate heritage is either completely ignorant or a racist. Just read the friggin' declaration of secession! SC explicitly said that slavery and the fear Lincoln would abolish it was the reason they were leaving the Union. They mentioned slavery 18 times in a fairly short document! If anyone knew why the South seceded, you'd think it'd be the guys who voted to secede.

This refusal to even consider basic facts is baffling to me. It's like someone investigating the causes of the American Revolution and refusing to even read the Declaration of Independence.

@Sark: here are some basic confirmable facts about the way Americans thought about themselves and their country from 1783 or so, until the time of the War of 1861-1865--
The people are the sovereign power, endowed with Natural rights.
The States are created by the People, and derive their mandate to guide the State from the voluntary consent of the People.
The Constitution clearly states that the States are Sovereign entities which delegate specific powers to a new entity called the Federal government, as this government was created by a voluntary Confederation of sovereign States. The States explicitly retain every other right not enumerated to the Federal entity to the several States and to the people. This includes setting local laws and customs, such as slavery, which had been established in North America for 230 years by the time of the War of 1861-1865. The States are free to choose these laws independent of Federal executive will.
So the conflict, which had primarily economic and ideological/Constitutional causes, was fought over whether the States should retain their Sovereignty, and whether the Confederation of the United States was to be a voluntary or involuntary Union.
The Slavery issue and it's impact on the balance of power in Wasington was primary. The morality of slavery was not an issue--many leaders on both sides of the conflict abhorred the institution while others had what we consider by modern standard to think of Slavery in racist and paternalistic terms. Racism was endemic throughout the United States.
Northeners fought to keep the Union whole. Southeners fought to maintain freedom from a Federal entity growing out of it's Constitutional boundaries to establish a Nation.
The Federal government succeeded in establishing a new Nation -- at the point of a gun.
Those who celebrate Confederate Heritage remember this and remember the struggle for independence, and brutal subjugation of the Southern people. They remember the remnants of Confederate forces returning home not to return to US citizenship, but to military occupation and political disenfranchisement -- at the point of a gun.
Some of us alive today feel no different in our feelings to Washington today than our ancestors of 1776 or 1861.
By the way, I went to a Northern public school, lived my whole life in the North, and attended a Northern Ivy league University where I majored in History. I didn't even know I had Confederate ancestors until earlier this year.
Do I strike you as "completely ignorant or a racist"?
History books are written by the victors, and the books used in our public schools are written to be, if you'll forgive the pun, black and white (and simplistic) in their depiction of what led up to the War. 
 True history is much, much, more muddy.

Our government makes laws for us, and exempt themselves

Another example of "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others"... 





"Gee, when the so-called "privileged" have to go through the same thing that the TSA says it has the right to impose on everyone else in the country there's suddenly a problem...  "

Tough to be a mundane, huh?


Don't worry about our government officials, though:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_airport_security_vips

Quote of the day 12/11

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.


Edward Abbey

Madoff's poison

...Continues to claim more victims, and will for generations.

Today in NYC, Mark Madoff, 46, committed suicide.

He supposedly found out of about his father's crime the day before the arrest.  His great bitterness and sense of betrayal only increased over time.  I can't imagine what he must have felt, his very name becoming synonymous with infamy and evil.  Actually it reminds me of Dr. Mudd, who treated John Wilkes Booth's leg during his flight from the assasination--his name became the inspiration for the phrase "his name is mud."

He chose to kill himself on the second anniversary of his father's arrest.

Today was also the end of the statute of limitations to make claims to Madoff's funds.  Lawsuits had been filed going after Mark's two young kids' trust funds earlier this week.

May Madoff's agony ever increase.

Quote of the day 12/10

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

George Orwell

Neocons hate Wikileaks, but Wikileaks October 2010 doc release vindicates Iraq WMD claim

Wired magazine's contributing editor Noah Shachtman -- a nonresident fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution -- researched the 400,000 WikiLeaked documents released in October. Here's what he found: "By late 2003, even the Bush White House's staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But WikiLeaks' newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction (emphasis added). ... Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict -- and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."

In 2008, our military shipped out of Iraq -- on 37 flights in 3,500 barrels -- what even The Associated Press called "the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program": 550 metric tons of the supposedly nonexistent [uranium] yellowcake. The New York Sun editorialized: "The uranium issue is not a trivial one, because Iraq, sitting on vast oil reserves, has no peaceful need for nuclear power. ... To leave this nuclear material sitting around the Middle East in the hands of Saddam ... would have been too big a risk." 

Townhall.com article

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke's Lies exposed

"Is the line on the chart - The Fed's own chart - going from the lower left to the upper right?

That's currency, from The Fed's own data.  It is increasing.  Bernanke lied."

from Karl Deninnger's market-ticker.org

Quote of the Day 12/9

"I started and own a business that fits the category spoken about in this article. I couldn't say any of this reality better. I've hired (created) 160 jobs by diverting income into working capital and thinking of novel services that people want to purchase. And instead of celebrating this--all these employees pay taxes, buy homes and cars, send kids to college, etc....all courtesy of the business, all I get is more tax and regulation that is taking the working capital needed to do more of what we have done--provide good jobs for good people. They don't get it. So I'm planning to retire to my farm where I can cut wood for heat, be outdoors and not have to talk to lawyers all day and generally see a sunny sky that isn't encombured by yet another conference call with advisors who make livings by charging us high hourly fees to navigate this mess.

I give up."

Comment left 12/1/2010 by Wall Street Journal reader responding to an article entitled "The Dead Enders, even after their defeat, Democrats keep insisting on a tax increase"

Got Galt?

 

Anon ops manifesto

Their website is currently down.  Here is their manifesto, dated 12/9/2010:

Obama and Bernanke destroy the Sovereign credit of the United States

"Mr. President, you, in re-nominating Bernanke and not putting a stop to both the outrageous deficit spending and allowing Bernanke to back himself into this corner without removing him, have destroyed the sovereign credit of the United States.

You may not recognize it yet, and neither has the market in the main, but I assure you that recognition will come, and precisely where the "tipping point" happens to be where you no longer have any meaningful degree of control over the situation is not determinable in advance."

Karl Denninger calls it like it is.

Walter Williams on Moral vs. Immoral government

"Do farmers and businessmen have a right to congressional handouts? Does a person have a right to congressional handouts for housing, food and medical care?

First, let's ask: Where does Congress get handout money? One thing for sure, it's not from the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus nor is it congressmen reaching into their own pockets. The only way for Congress to give one American one dollar is to first, through the tax code, take that dollar from some other American. It must forcibly use one American to serve another American. Forcibly using one person to serve another is one way to describe slavery. As such, it violates self-ownership."

New column at Townhall.com

Suggested further reading is Frederic Bastiat's classic The Law

It opened my eyes.  Impeccable logic.  

Denial of Service cyber attacks continue apace over Assange

"The website of the Swedish prosecutor's office pursuing WikiLeaksfounder Julian Assange came under cyber attack on Tuesday in the latest salvo in a campaign by online supporters who have also struck PayPal and the Swiss Post Office bank."

Full article in English language Swedish newspaper here.

Quote of the day 12/8

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

Edmund Burke

Double Standard trap: MSM condemns Assange (or is complicit), but runs his stories...

 ...but Assange is also a journalist...with the initial scoop...not the source of the leak, remember?

11.15pm: The New York Times has responded to Senator Joe Lieberman, from Robert Mackey's top-notch WikiLeaks live blog:

A spokeswoman for The New York Times has responded to a suggestion by Sen. Joe Lieberman on Tuesday that the news organization, and others that published American diplomatic cables obtained and distributed by WikiLeaks, might be subject to criminal investigation.

"We believe that our decision to publish was responsible journalism, legal, and important to a democratic society," Danielle Rhoades Ha, the communications director of The Times Company, said.

The Truth in Chains

Great article

"It has been, by any standard, an extraordinary campaign of vilification and persecution, wholly comparable to the kind of treatment doled out to dissidents in China or Burma. Lest we forget, WikiLeaks is a journalistic outlet – just like The New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, all of whom are even now publishing the very same material – leaked classified documents -- available on WikiLeaks. The website is also a journalistic outlet just like CNN, ABC, CBS, Fox and other mainstream media venues, where we have seen an endless parade of officials – and journalists! – calling for Assange to be prosecuted or killed outright. Every argument being made for shutting down WikiLeaks can – and doubtless will – be used against any journalistic enterprise that publishes material that powerful people do not like."

But before Assange was taken into custody, he fired off one last message to the world, in The Australian, a newspaper in his native land. With supreme irony, he tied WikiLeaks’ operation to the roots of the Murdoch media empire, which began by speaking truth to murderous and wasteful power – and now, of course, is one of the most powerful and assiduous instruments of murderous and wasteful power itself.

Update: Cyberwar on behalf of Assange continues

Piratebay.org, the site that is a global hub for hackers and "free film" aficionados everywhere has officially joined the Eric Cantona plea for a bank run, which Zero Hedge first broke over three weeks ago, however compounding the initial premise with that of PayPal lock out. The reason: suddenly Assange has become the martyr saint of the global hacking community, which in the past 24 hours has manage such exploits as crashing the web site of the Swiss bank that supposedly froze Assange's account.

Egypt jumps the shark

...if you'll pardon the pun.

This article, mentioning that Egypt "wont rule out" a Mossad plot as the cause of several shark attacks at the southern tip of the Sinai, a resort community called Sharm el Sheikh...

It reminded me of this story from a book called The Siege, a sympathetic history of modern Israel:

Over time, he (Conor Cruise O'Brien, Irish representative to the UN, 1960's--seated in alphabetical order next to the Israeli representative) struck up a friendship with both his adjoining delegates.  He recounted this vignette of a moment during a particularly bad speech by Adlai Stevenson, denying any American involvement in the Bay of Pigs:

While this performance dragged on, Gideon Rafael [of Israel], in the chair beside me on my right, was doodling on his pad, his face impassive.  The Caribbean is not a region of the highest priority for Israel.  When the time came, Gideon would cast his vote with the United States, keeping his personal opinion about the Bay of Pigs to himself.

Adlai’s peroration was even more embarrassing than the rest of his speech.  “I have told you,” he said, “of Castro’s crimes against man.  But there is even worse:  the record of Castro’s crimes against God.”

Several delegates looked faintly sick.

“Fidel Castro has” – Adlai here turned his page and peered at the new one – “Castro has . . . circumcised the freedoms of the Catholics of Cuba . . .”

Gideon looked up sharply and turned to me.  “I always knew,” he said, “that we should be blamed for this, sooner or later.”

The Mossad must have gotten the idea for this shark attack thing from Germany, who undoubtedly were behind the rash of shark attacks in New Jersey in the summer of 1916 , trying to intimidate the Americans to stay out of World War I.

Nefarious plots!!! ;-)

rothbard on wikileaks and government transparency

Rothbard on WikiLeaks

Posted by Michael S. Rozeff on December 6, 2010 02:58 AM

From “The Ethics of Liberty” (1982):

“In some areas, a radical distinction between private persons and government officials is acknowledged in existing law and opinion. Thus, a private individual’s ‘right to privacy’ or right to keep silent does not and should not apply to government officials, whose records and operations should be open to public knowledge and evaluation. There are two democratic arguments for denying the right to privacy to government officials, which, while not strictly libertarian, are valuable as far as they go: namely (1) that in a democracy, the public can only decide on public issues and vote for public officials if they have complete knowledge of government operations; and (2) that since the taxpayers pay the bill for government, they should have the right to know what government is doing. The libertarian argument would add that, since government is an aggressor organization against the rights and persons of its citizens, then full disclosure of its operations is at least one right that its subjects might wrest from the State, and which they may be able to use to resist or whittle down State power.”

(emphasis added)