Violent revolution soon?

Maybe.

A columnist at Breitbart's site Big Peace, while showing Neocon colors, has seen beyond the veil cast by the mainstream media to the mood of the American people (at least the Constitutional conservative element of the people).

The American people cherish the Freedom to live their own lives without interference by the government.  That treasured and Constitutionally protected Natural Right has driven immigrants to risk life and limb to cross the oceans from every nation on the planet just to live here.  The fight for personal liberty fired the American soul in the Revolution, the Texans in their secession from Mexico, and the Confederate States in their secession from the United States.  It drove those people who braved the frontiers of America throughout our history.

This libertarian impulse in Americans led to the popularity of Goldwater, the election of Reagan, the victory of the Republicans in the 1994 election (Contract with America election).  It drives the Tea Party now.

Almost every American has a libertarian living inside them, whether they are a social justice driven liberal or a neoconservative Bush doctrine supporter.  They may or not be conscious of it.  I think they are more conscious of it when the "other side" is in power, and their status quo is threatened. Right or Left, they do not want to be told what to think, what to buy, where to live, and they dont appreciate being ignored by their representatives in Congress.

Anyone reading these words is probably aware that Congress' latest approval rating is 13%.  Most of us grew up believing that the police and the government had our best interests at heart.  We know now that either by willful deceit or gross incompetence of our leaders, our birthright and that of our children is betrayed.  Our economy is destroyed and wont get better.  More and more wealth is confiscated through monetary policy and outright taxation.

Talk about taxation without representation:  Try false representatives enslaving the populace with debt that can never be repaid.

The American people are really really pissed off.

I talk to people at work every day, "testing the waters" of antigovernment feelings amongst my colleagues.  I was surprised at how angry they are.  It gives me hope that they are thinking about this crisis, and are thinking as I do.

At my job, we are all of a middling sort.  We are middle class, decently educated, and know that our federal government crossed a red line within the past several years.

I have thought about it a lot, but I still am not sure what will get Americans into the streets for either a sustained protest in front of Congress, like the planned Guardians of Liberty starting January 21, 2011, or like what we have seen in Europe, with destructive violence.

Our 18th Century Revolution was a conservative revolution, when the people felt that the King and Parliament had strayed from the Bill of Rights of 1689.  The people sought to maintain law and order and control potential mob violence through the local communities through the Committees of Safety and Committees of Correspondence.

We want to get rid of the looters and their corporate cronies, but none of us want to lose the sense of law and order that we see day to day, and none of us want the potential chaos seen in a violent mob-based revolution.

What I suggest to Constitutional conservatives is the following:  a planned escalation of resistance to tyranny.  Protests and voting will only go so far when Congress is no longer bound by the language and original intent of the Constitution.   That has been tried, and those that still have faith in the system will continue to vote and protest.

Our physical presence in Washington (a constant in their face vocal presence) is one early tactic to try.  A second tactic would be a large scale(10's or 100's of thousands of people) tax protest.  The first year withhold a certain percent of what is owed, the next year a larger percentage, and so on.

As Larry Gomez (Budd's boss in the strip joint) said in Kill Bill Vol. 2:  "Fuckin' with your cash is the only thing you kids seem to understand!"

Violent resistance should be reserved for reacting to a government attempt to disarm the population, or if there is a crackdown on freedom of speech, freedom of the internet, or if constitutional conservative leaders are arrested or assassinated.

Violence in the defense of personal liberty is a moral obligation to one's self.

Nothing says "I'm serious," though, like a match 175 grain .308...

The more centrally organized a resistance is, the easier it would be for the government to take it down.  The Tea Party is large and spontaneous, and has some "leaders" but no leaders who are revolutionary leaders, at least as far as I perceive.  The passion of the betrayed American public has to be, and will be, harnessed in any near future Revolution.

Sons of Confederate Veterans responds to aspersions cast on SCV regarding Secession Ball in Charleston

From SHNV.blogspot.com (emphasis added):

In a letter addressed to Rev. Sharpton at the National Action Network in Harlem, New York, Commander [in Chief of Sons of Confederate Veterans] Givens stressed several points. These include:

"You sadly accused the attendees of this event of celebrating treason." You continued by adding they will be celebrating men that fought and killed and died to overthrow the United States government."

CiC Givens continued. "These accusations are patently and historically wrong. In 1860, secession was not considered an act of treason. Secession had been suggested by northern states previously and their lives were not in peril for the suggestion. Texas had recently seceded from Mexico to join the United States. This was sanctioned and embraced by the United States government, including Abraham Lincoln. In fact, the United States was created due to a secession of the colonies from the government of Great Britain. Would you suggest an evil intent is behind the celebration of the Fourth of July on these same grounds?"

Commander Givens also wrote "I assure you the Secession Ball is neither a celebration of treason nor of the repressive institution of slavery. Let us all agree that slavery is the darkest chapter in American history. Let's rejoice of its demise, learn from the past and make our country better."

Givens further wrote "The people attending the ball will be celebrating the courageous spirit and tenacity of their Confederate ancestors, black, brown and white that fought to protect their homes from invasion."

The letter closed stating "Instead of casting aspersions and slandering folks, let's come together as Americans and prove to the world that our country is truly great. Why don't we start this, you and I. Let's sit together, discuss our differences and discover our commonalities while doing some good for our country. Contact me anytime."

http://www.scsecessiongala.org/

Quote of the Day 12/18

This is a joke email passed on to me, but it will suffice as a quote of the day:

-------------------------

This old story out of Texas.  Seems a guy makes a rolling stop at a
stop sign, and gets pulled over by a local policeman.  Guy hands the
cop his driver's license, insurance verification, plus his concealed
carry permit.

"Okay, Mr. Smith," the cop says, "I see your CCW permit.  Are you
carrying today?"

"Yes, I am."

"Well then, better tell me what you got."

Smith says, "Well, I got a .357 revolver in my inside coat pocket.
There's a 9mm semi-auto in the glove box.  And, I've got a .22 magnum
derringer in my right boot."

"Okay," the cop says.  "Anything else?"

"Yeah, back in the trunk, there's an AR15 and a shotgun.  That's about it."

"Mr. Smith, are you on your way to or from a gun range...?"

"Nope."

"Well then, what are you afraid of....?"

"Not a goddamned thing..."

Anon Ops latest: Operation Paper Storm

Slideshow here: 

http://picasaweb.google.com/anonopss/OperationPaperStorm?feat=flashalbum#5552037432253041938

WikiLeaks cables: Bank of England Governor Mervyn King plotted banks bailout by four cash-rich nations

Wikileaks strikes again!

The governments, economists, and pundits said of the big crash of '08: "We never saw it coming."

• “ The notion of a bubble bursting and the whole price level coming down seems to me as far as a national nationwide phenomenon, is really quite unlikely.” Alan Greenspan Fed Reserve Chairman, 2003

• “ Housing activity will remain healthy for some time to come” David Lereah, NAR’s Chief Economist, 2005

• “ The idea that we’re going to see a collapse in he housing market seems to me improbable” John Snow, Treasury secretary, 2005

• “ It’s impossible for prices to go down this year” Garry Watts, Orange County Assoc of Realtors, 2006

• "At this juncture, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the sub prime market seems likely to be contained” Ben Bernanke, Fed Reserve Chairman, 2007

Bank of England leader Mervyn King had a sophisticated picture months before the crisis in the Autumn of 2008.  Such intimate knowledge is probably (at least) months in evolution.  Intelligence is gathered, reports come in, bureaucrats analyze and advise, and conclusions are drawn.

You decide:  Is it incompetence of our leaders and their so-called "experts", or deliberate concealment?

What happened in the end?  How did they try to solve their insolvency?  Through Keynesian style looting of the people:  Money printing (quantitative easing = devaluation), government guarantees (on our backs -- the backs of the taxpayers), government takeover of private institutions (socialistic maneuver, again money to do so comes from us).  Government cannot do anything better than private industry for two reasons:  gross incompetence (no expertise), and no incentive (private industries are risking their own money, and their investors money, that they have to pay back with interest.  Government has no such pressure, although they will pay lip service to gaining a profit for taxpayers).

TARP was wholesale looting of taxpayers by government and federal reserve to help out cronies in private institutions like Goldman Sachs.  This is the essence of corporatism.  This is the antithesis of true free market capitalism.

What does this all mean for the American, British, and European taxpayer (those not in on the corporatist gravy train)?:

"Why make trillions when we can make...BILLIONS?"

“How I turned one million dollars of real estate into $25 in cash”, - Steve Martin.

“I lost a million dollars in the stock market.  I would have lost more, but that’s all I had” - Groucho Marx.

The same process took place in Europe on a smaller scale.  If the Bank of England Governor knew this much at this time, his Federal Reserve counterpart knew at least as much.

How long til ya declare independence and assert your right to Life, Liberty, and Personal Property?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/146196

via Karl Denninger's market-ticker.org

Radical!

This post is a bit long, but stick with it:

First, two definitions:

 

radical

late 14c. (adj.), in a medieval philosophical sense, from L.L. radicalis "of or having roots," from L. radix (gen. radicis) "root" (see radish). Meaning "going to the origin, essential" is from 1650s. Political sense of "reformist" (via notion of "change from the roots") is first recorded 1802 (n.), 1820 (adj.), of the extreme section of the British Liberal party [see below] (radical reform had been a current phrase since 1786); meaning "unconventional" is from 1921. U.S. youth slang use is from 1983, from 1970s surfer slang meaning "at the limits of control." Radical chic is attested from 1970; popularized, if not coined, by Tom Wolfe.

--------------------------

British Liberal Party:  During the 19th century the Liberal Party was broadly in favour of what would today be called classical liberalism: supporting laissez-faire economic policies such as free trade and minimal government interference in the economy (this doctrine was usually termed 'Gladstonian Liberalism' after the Victorian Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone). The Liberal Party favoured social reform, personal liberty, reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England (many of them were Nonconformists) and an extension of the franchise (right to vote).  

-----------------------------

Butler Shaffer of Lewrockwell.com had a blogpost on 12/14 that inspired this post: 

Lew:  The answer raised by your blog is quite simple: When you live a philosophically principled and centered life, it is easy to speak and act with consistency. Your “roots” — the meaning of “radical,” as you point out — provide you with the integrity (as in “integrated” life) that unfocused men and women don’t have. It would be most difficult — probably impossible — for Ron (or the rest of us genuine libertarians) to behave contrary to who he is. This is why it is so easy for the philosophic and moral slugs to jump around from issue to issue, taking whatever position —  no matter the inherent conflict and contradiction to one another — that results in the existential mess of our world. What is interesting to watch is the utter confusion of the politicians and media members who end up projecting their disordered thinking onto Ron, and then imagining there is something incoherent about him.

 

(Empasis added)

Therefore: 

The focus of this blog is radical as defined above (1650's definition):  to get to the root of what is wrong in this country.  This country had a written Constitution because the ("living" and not written and enumerated) Constitution of Great Britain was too dependent on the whims of Parliament and the King.  The American people organized and rebelled when these whims affected their livelihoods.  They invented the idea of secession in response to this threat.   The Constitution was written with clear language with specific words used.  The meaning of certain phrases, Articles, and Amendments of the US Constitution,  were well understood by the State Ratifying Conventions, and there is abundant documentary evidence of this.  Read Tom Woods' Nullification.  These meanings have been since corrupted by the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches of this Federal Government to mean whatever suits the current leadership, and that has led to the monstrosity that is the current American Empire.  That is why the Statists love the term "living Constitution", and call the 1787 Constitution an anachronism.   The federal governmental leaders betrayed the founding generation in quantum leaps like the War Between the States, and in dribs and drabs of 230 years of legislation.  

I still believe at least a plurality of people in this country believe in the principles of individual freedom, States Rights, limited federal power, republican ideals of the founding generation, and real free market capitalism.  The main ideas that might still unite most individual Americans into a common cause is to be left alone by the central government (original idea of Liberty), and that they get to keep what they earn (private property).  This is my hope for the future.  

In T.H. Breen's recent book, American Insurgents, one of his theses is that the people of the colonies in their villages, towns, and cities are the ones who had become radicalized and their example and the pressure that they, the congress, would become irrelevant if they didn't respond to the obvious will and strength of the people prompted the Continental Congress into radical declarations.    

The people led the Founders.    In 1774, after the Port Act was enacted to punish the people of Boston, there was a spontaneous American response of common people to send charity to the impoverished in Boston.  This led to a notion of common purpose against Great Britain.  Then, after a rumor of the British bombarding Boston (the Powder Alarm) swept the countryside,  at least 15,000 men spontaneously mustered and marched on Boston, led by Israel Putnam of Connecticut.  They turned back when they heard the rumor was false.  The story of the episode reached the Congress in Philadelphia and the delegates responded by approving the "Association", a written document that instructed the local Committees of revolutionaries to boycott British products, and to ostracize citizens who would not observe the boycott or who openly supported Great Britain.

The people of America were radical then, and are becoming more radical now.  The Tea Party is an amorphous tip of the iceberg.  The country is now culturally diverse and greatly populated now.  It will be exceedingly difficult to organize the country as a whole.  (If the country were to break up, the Southern and Western States could potentially be reestablished as a new federation based on Classical Liberal and State Rights lines).   The message is readily accessible through the internet.   The inertia of sloth among the people will not reach a critical tipping point until they are threatened with economic ruin.  This may be close at hand, by many indications.       

I want to do what I can do to propogate this message:  we can increase the sense that we live in a free country with unlimited opportunity when we return to our true roots. 

Quote of the day 12/17

I think of this movie line every time I hear a government official say something like "we have to do something about this problem"...

Mel Brooks on Government, from Blazing Saddles:

Governor William J. Le Petomane: Holy underwear! Sheriff murdered! Innocent women and children blown to bits! We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!

 

Lincoln sought to preserve Slavery through a Constitutional Amendment

"Lincoln instructed Seward to make sure that the amendment said that "the Constitution should never be altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the states" where it existed. In addition, writes Goodwin, Lincoln instructed Seward, who would become his Secretary of State, to get a federal law introduced that would have made various personal liberty laws that existed in some Northern states illegal. These state laws were meant to nullify the federal Fugitive Slave Act, an act that Lincoln very strongly supported. Far from putting slavery "on the path to extinction," these actions of Lincoln’s would have granted it more powerful government support than ever." 

Read Tom DiLorenzo taking apart a Lincoln cultist professor's article published in the New York Times, at LewRockwell.com

Which economists "get it"? Austrian vs. Keynesian?

Those schooled in Austrian Economics:
Ludwig von Mises was right.


One such blogger/pundit/commentator of the Austrian school is Gonzalo Lira;  see him compare and contrast the different governmental approaches to solve the debt crises in Ireland vs Iceland.  Without mentioning Mises, Keynes, or any other economic theory, he describes why the Austrian approach is successful, and gives another example of a Keynesian failure:

Iceland recovers faster, with expected pain, in a short time, when malinvested monies and debts are liquidated.  The taxpayer in Iceland is not expected to pay for the debt assumed by a private bank.  Unemployment dips fast, then recovers fast, in a V shaped curve.

Ireland's leadership in Dublin, and their masters in Brussels, take the Keynesian approach to the problem, increasing but spreading out the suffering by propping up failed or failing private financial institutions.  This is done by spreading the debt to the tax-paying public by guaranteeing debt by the government (local taxpayer money), or IMF or EU funds (foreign taxpayer money).  This only prolongs an inevitable correction, when even greater debts must be dealt with.  Quantitative easing/increasing the money supply or any other term you wish to apply devalues the currency and allows the debt to be paid off in cheaper currency.  Capital is drained from the productive portion of the economy, and businesses stagnate and contract.  Unemployment assumes an L shaped curve at best.

Keynesian approaches to solving economic problems can only continue for so long.

Think of it as auto-cannibalism:  In order to support your brain and your heart and other vital organs, you eat your hands, arms, feet, legs, and so on.  IMF or EU funds is like finding another body nearby on which to feed, but in doing so you sap that body as well.  It cannot go on indefinitely.  Either a country must deal with its debt by paying it off, or must declare insolvency and liquidate the debt.

(Relevant article: MEP of the UK Conservative Party and friend of the Austrian school of economics and libertarians in general Daniel Hannan write about Ireland here.)

Up til now the Keynesians' debt has been put off until future generations.  The bill has come due.

The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. 
--John Maynard Keynes


I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
--John Maynard Keynes

Quote of the Day, 12/16

"We sons of Confederate soldiers are especially fortunate in our forefathers. They not only won a place in the hearts of us, their descendants. They also won the lasting admiration of everyone in the civilized world who values courage, skill, sacrifice, and

an indomitable spirit in defense of freedom. That is why our battle

flag, which is being suppressed in these United States, appeared

spontaneously at the fall of the Berlin Wall and among peoples

celebrating their liberation from the Soviet Empire."

Clyde Wilson, 2007

Defending Southern Heritage, practical suggestions

From the great historian Clyde Wilson, no less important or timely now as in 2001:

"You can either honor your Southern heritage and preserve your Southern identity, or you can give unthinking obedience to the America of today. You cannot do both without engaging in self-defeating contradiction.

Here are a few suggestions.

• Don’t compromise. Compromise is only a defeat and a springboard for another attack. Don’t think that being a good sport will make the other side good sports. Who follows an uncertain trumpet? You will probably lose. But a loss on principle preserves a rallying point. John C. Calhoun says: a defeat on principle is not an overthrow, while a victory by compromise is a defeat.
• Be worthy of your ancestors. Don’t be a goody goody "American" humbly begging to be allowed to keep a shred of your heritage. You are a member of a great people who are under attack and have been betrayed by their leaders. It is needed to defend the Southern people here and now and not just the noble Confederate soldier.
• Think like a Southerner. We cannot defend just our Confederate forebears, as important as that is. They are but a part of Southern history. Lay claim to all of Southern history and culture, from Captain John Smith and Pocahontas to Dale Earnhardt. To concentrate on Confederate history alone is to concede to the enemy that the Confederacy can be segregated off as an evil episode of slavery and treason. It also plays into the North’s everlasting tendency to claim anything Southern that is good, as "American," that is, non-Southern. George Washington is just as Southern as Robert E. Lee. Thomas Jefferson is just as Southern as Jefferson Davis. Andrew Jackson is just as Southern as Bedford Forrest. Alvin York, and Audie Murphy, and the Alamo are just as Southern as Stonewall Jackson. Lay claim to all your heritage!

Avoid argument with the enemy and concentrate on educating yourself and members of our people, especially the young, not forgetting the many Yankees of good will. In Heritage Haters you are dealing with people who send their children to private schools while busing yours and still think they are morally superior to you because they are in favor of busing and you are not. They are not interested in debate or evidence. Remember, they are not attacking your great-grandfather’s war: they are attacking you! And, as we learned in the flag fight in South Carolina, this goes double for the academic "experts" in the war era, who are even less interested in evidence and perspective than the ordinary flag hater.

• Don’t be discouraged. So beautiful and powerful is our heritage that it has taken them decades to cut away as much as they have. It will take some time and hard work to recover lost ground.
• If you have to argue, turn the tables. The significant factor is the North’s motives! They are the ones who invaded us, violating the fundamental American principle of the consent of the governed.

If you must debate, don’t make indefensible statements that will be laughed out of court, like the war was not about slavery, most Southerners did not own slaves, and an exaggerated count of black soldiers in the Confederacy. Yes, the war was partly about slavery, though not on their side and not as centrally and in the way that they claim. Counting families, approximately one-fourth of Southerners were owners of domestic servants, almost all of them of a few people who lived and worked closely with the family. Yes, there were a great many black Confederates who helped sustain the armies and the home front, but not as enrolled soldiers.

• Stop supporting federal government wars out of unthinking loyalty. For a long time the US armed forces had a chivalric Southern flavor. They now combine all the worst aspects of bureaucracy, imperialism, graft, affirmative action, and Political Correctness, in an atmosphere of moral depravity.
• Cure yourself of Republican party thinking. What further proof is needed that the South and Southerners have nothing to expect from the Republican "conservatives" except payoffs to individuals to betray their people? As the Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney pointed out long ago, the Northern "conservatives," in the entire course of American history have never conserved anything. George W., though raised in Texas, suppressed innocuous Confederate plaques. McCain, though a descendant of Confederates, branded our flag as a hate symbol to be suppressed. The Republican governor of New York banished the Georgia flag. Shortly after their candidate was elected President, the Wall Street Journaland National Review published pieces ridiculing Southern conservatives. The message was clear: Give us your votes and shut up.

The worst thing that can happen to the South is to be turned into an appendage of the bland, principleless elements represented by the Republican party. Think like a Southerner, not like a knee-jerk "conservative." If Jesse Jackson causes a ruckus in Decatur, Illinois, applaud him. You can be sure that if he was making trouble in your town, Decatur, Illinois, would be cheering him on. They just don't want him to bother them.

My standpatter compatriots, if you want to be a good American as defined by the ruling institutions today, forget about your Southern heritage. But most Southerners care for family, place, Christian social order, courage, loyalty, honor – all things besieged in America today. That is, after all, why we love our heritage.

February 28, 2001

Pesky Constitution

Congress' job approval rating at 13%, lowest in history

...And the 13% is comprised of a combination of Goldman Sachs and defense contractor executives, GM executives, and people who didn't understand the big words in the poll question:  "Do you approve the job that Congress is doing?"

...And guess what happens when Congress' job approval hits 0%?  Nothing!

Baaah, Baaaah...

Lincoln and the Growth of Statism in America

"The Lincoln regime destroyed the system of federalism, or states' rights, that was established by the founding fathers. After the war, the union was no longer voluntary, and all states, North and South, became mere appendages of Washington, DC. Lincoln illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus and imprisoned tens of thousands of political dissenters without due process; waged total war with the bombing, plundering, and mass murder of some 50,000 of his own citizens; signed ten tariff-raising bills; imposed heavy "sin taxes" on alcohol and tobacco; introduced the first federal income-tax and military-conscription laws; introduced an internal-revenue bureaucracy for the first time; executed thousands of accused deserters from the army; shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers in the Northern states; went off the gold standard and nationalized the money supply; introduced massive corporate-welfare schemes; deported an opposition member of Congress; and exploded the public debt, among other sins. By "targeting and butchering [Southern] civilians," Murray Rothbard wrote in his essay, "America's Two Just Wars: 1775 and 1861" (in John Denson, ed., The Costs of War), "Lincoln and Grant and Sherman paved the way for all the genocidal horrors of the monstrous 20th century." They "opened the Pandora's Box of genocide and the extermination of civilians …""

...But other than that, he was a great president...;-)

Thomas DiLorenzo is offering an online course at the Mises institute in January.

Eurozone Debt crisis spreads, fears of contaigion spread

In Belgium:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/8202422/Eurozone-debt-crisis-spreads-to-Belgium-on-rising-political-risk.html
and in Spain:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/8203455/Spain-debt-downgrade-threat-sends-euro-and-stock-markets-lower.html

in Greece:   http://www.zerohedge.com/article/new-general-strike-paralyzes-greece-100000-protesters-take-athens-streets

To the leftists protesting in Athens:  

"There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

"The only thing wrong with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"

     --both attributed to Margaret Thatcher

Quote of the day 12/15

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.


--John Adams




Let's hope he was as wrong about that as he was about signing the Sedition Act.

Why the Southern Man took up musket and bayonet in 1861

From Chapter 1, Co. Aytch, memoirs of Private Sam R. Watkins, 1st Tennessee Regiment, Company H: 

The Federal army was advancing all along the line. They expected to
march right into the heart of the South, set the negroes free, take our
property, and whip the rebels back into the Union. But they soon found
that secession was a bigger mouthful than they could swallow at one
gobble. They found the people of the South in earnest.

 

Secession may have been wrong in the abstract, and has been tried and
settled by the arbitrament of the sword and bayonet, but I am as firm in
my convictions today [20 years after the war] of the right of secession as I was in 1861. The
South is our country, the North is the country of those who live there.
We are an agricultural people; they are a manufacturing people. They are
the descendants of the good old Puritan Plymouth Rock stock, and we of
the South from the proud and aristocratic stock of Cavaliers. We believe
in the doctrine of State rights, they in the doctrine of centralization.

John C. Calhoun, Patrick Henry, and Randolph, of Roanoke, saw the venom
under their wings, and warned the North of the consequences, but they
laughed at them. We only fought for our State rights, they for Union and
power. The South fell battling under the banner of State rights, but
yet grand and glorious even in death. Now, reader, please pardon the
digression. It is every word that we will say in behalf of the rights of
secession in the following pages. The question has been long ago settled
and is buried forever, never in this age or generation to be resurrected.

 

The question has been resurrected in our generation, friend Sam.

Feel safer yet? or, Turn your head to the left and cough...

"My wife in tears told the screener and the witness she would not let them abuse her," Willie Johnson of Raleigh said in a complaint filed Nov. 15 on the Raleigh-Durham International Airport website. "No citizen should be subjected to humiliation, stress and fear just to fly."

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/12/14/861264/pat-downs-anger-rdu-fliers.html#ixzz187oFUN5Q

Curious about Anon Ops?

http://anonops.blogspot.com/

Quote of the day 12/14

"I consider the foundation of the [Federal] Constitution as laid on this ground: That "all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people." [10th Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition." 
--Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on National Bank, 1791. ME 3:146


Dear President Jefferson:


Somewhere along the road we forgot:

Condescension of a Supreme Court Justice, another Face of Tyranny

"The point I am making is that here is a man who sees himself as the ultimate law, not interpreting the law, which I have always contended was NOT their purpose, but merely reading the law and strictly applying the actual words to the laws in dispute, with prejudice against laws that infringe on the natural liberty of the citizen. Instead, they see the words, each one they might conflate out of proportion to arrive at an end that pleases the majority of them the most. These are the actions of kings, not men and certainly not citizens."

TL in exile asks you to join him in Washington DC on 21 January 2011, the Guardians of Liberty.  The people must confront a tyrannical government.  Watch the Fox News video of Justice Stephen Breyer.  It made me sick.  This is what we're up against.  Now think of 5 like him on the court, add the 14th amendment, and presto!  You've got tyranny!

Obamacare Unconstitutional!!

Breaking news from Federal Court in Virginia:

RICHMOND, Va. – A federal judge in Virginia has declared the Obama administration's health care reform law unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson is the first judge to rule against the law, which has been upheld by two others in Virginia and Michigan.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli filed the lawsuit challenging the law's requirement that citizens buy health insurance or pay a penalty starting in 2014.
He argues the federal government doesn't have the constitutional authority to impose the requirement.
Other lawsuits are pending, including one filed by 20 states in a Florida court. Virginia is not part of that lawsuit.
The U.S. Justice Department and opponents of the health care law agree that the U.S. Supreme Court will have the final word.

Chalk one up for States' Rights, baby!

Obamacare: Doctors will "Just Say No"

For all the times that President Obama promised "you'll get to keep your doctor" under his health-care reforms, he apparently failed to ask any practicing doctors.

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Francisco d'Anconia money speech--Atlas Shrugged

This passage from the 1957 Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, ought to be read and re-read by every American once or twice a year.  Too many have forgotten these principles and swallowed Marxist philosophy hook, line, and sinker, (Oh! not you, President Obama!) and now Socialism and Corporatism have the upper hand.  


Socialism and Corporatism are our modern words for "looters".  The people who benefit from Socialist programs are "moochers," living off of the productive efforts of others (our tax money).  Boldface is added by me;  don't let it stop you from reading it.


If you can't read it out of context, or cannot read this without getting bored or losing your focus, get the unabridged audiobook from audible.com and put it on your ipod/mp3 player, especially if you have a commute of a half hour or more.  I cannot recommend it enough.
(BTW, I doubt that the upcoming movie of Atlas Shrugged will do justice to Ayn Rand's intent or match the book's impact)


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Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, "Don't let him [Francisco d'Aconia] disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil and he's the typical product of money."

      Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.

      "So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

      "When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

      "Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

      "But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made before it can be looted or mooched made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

      "To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery that you must offer them values, not wounds that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade with reason, not force, as their final arbiter it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

      "But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

      "Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

      "Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

      "Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

      "Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

      "Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

      "Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

      "Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

      "But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt and of his life, as he deserves.

      "Then you will see the rise of the double standard the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims  then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.  


--(This is where we are today in the United States...)

      "Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

      "Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

                                   Greenspan, Bernanke, anyone?

      "When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.  

      "You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers as industrialists.

      "To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being the self-made man the American industrialist.

      "If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose because it contains all the others the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

      "Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide as, I think, he will.

      "Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns or dollars. 

Take your choice;  there is no other and your time is running out."