Neal's Soapbox

Of all the fundamental rights that belong to human beings is the right to survival; or the right of self-defense and self-preservation. Jefferson defined this as the right to Life in the Declaration of Independence, which was immediately followed by the right to Liberty. In 1772 Samuel Adams wrote about these rights, stating, “Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First. a Right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can–Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature.”

No man, nor group of men, may divest or deny another of any of those fundamental rights without the grossest of injustices being committed. Yet here we are in America today with entire generations of Americans voting for candidates who do just that – deny us our fundamental rights. It does not matter if these crimes are being committed at the local, State, or federal level, they are still crimes against humanity and any lover of liberty should be incensed that they are being done under the guise of representing the people.

I have often pondered upon what sets me, and those like me, apart from the vast majority of Americans who cannot, will not see this travesty which is being committed right before their very eyes. I am, also, absolutely flabbergasted that there are those living in this country who don’t care one way or the other that these crimes against their rights are being committed; caring more about sports or some other form of entertainment than they do the fact that they are quickly becoming free range slaves to an uncaring government.

While I still don’t fully comprehend it, I think I have come to some sort of understanding as to why this has happened. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson writes, “Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.” I feel that if you become dependent upon someone, or something for your needs, your very survival, you are highly unlikely to do anything that will antagonize them. If you rely upon your Social Security check for your survival you certainly aren’t going to call for the abolishment of the government that mails them out to you, are you?

The more that government can do for you, the more you come to depend upon it and are less likely to question the ‘other’ things government does that threaten your very liberty. How much of what our government does is done under the guise of protecting or taking care of us? People today, especially Trump supporters, are proud of their president because he is bringing jobs back to America and making America great again. But has he revoked or repealed any of the laws that violate your basic rights? Are you any freer from the prying eyes and ears of your government? Are you able to keep and bear the arms of your choice without the BATF breaking down your door, confiscating them and arresting you for federal firearms violations? Has Trump pardoned Edward Snowden; who revealed the extent to which your government is spying upon you?

But by golly the economy is doing great and the stock market is up; that’s all that matters; right?

If you ask me, it is almost like a massive case of Stockholm Syndrome; where those held captive feel sympathy or an emotional alliance for their captors. People almost go into a state of panic at the thought of living life without the benevolent arm of government keeping watch over their every need and desire. How, in the name of all that is good, can people call that freedom? If a person cannot live without their daily fix of heroin or methamphetamines, then we call them addicts. What would you call people who cannot live without some form of governmental assistance; or who panic at the thought of a government shutdown?

The only explanation I have for why people cannot see and understand things from my perspective is that they have been conditioned not to think for themselves. I think people have been conditioned to think and act as a herd; or as George Orwell wrote in his book 1984, Groupthink. Being truly free demands that you accept complete and absolute responsibility for yourself, your survival, and the needs of those you call family. But, when you are part of a group, the group assumes that responsibility. It’s like the quote Hillary Clinton referenced in one of her speeches and in her book; it takes a village to raise a child.

Individual responsibility is the enemy of those who seek to exert control over a people as a person who is self reliant does not need the services government provides; therefore they are more likely to oppose measures that restrict any of their freedom. But those who are a part of this so-called village are conditioned from an early age to believe that government is an absolute necessity; and all talk of government should be confined to the parameters that they establish.

That is why political campaigns are such a joke to me; they are platforms where contenders for an office get to discuss the issues – but who defines the issues? I have yet, in my years of watching political debates, see a candidate other than Ron Paul, bring up the constitutionality of the things government wants to do. That alone should send up warning flags in any thinking person’s mind; but unfortunately people aren’t actually thinking when they watch the debates, or vote. What they are doing is reacting to pre-established programming that they have undergone throughout their formative years. You believe you are thinking because you are voting based upon your understanding of the issues, and you are making a choice between either a Republican or a Democrat; or even from among the best sounding candidate within a political party. But what you are doing is responding according to preset programming which keeps you from questioning the legality of the ‘issues’ under discussion. Your only thought is along party lines; whether the Republican view or the Democratic view is right; never whether the issue itself is something government should be enacting laws upon.

On top of all this you are forced to pay tribute to this entity you call your government in the form of taxes upon your income. You know, in the history of most of the empires that have spanned the ages, those who conquered others demanded that they pay tribute for the privilege of living under their benevolent guidance; be it the Romans, the Egyptians, or any of the other empires that flourished throughout history.

Those living under the rule of Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs were typically expected to pay around 20% in tribute to the kingdom. How much do you pay now; 20%…30%…50%? But you consider it your patriotic duty to pay your taxes, and condemn those who, you believe, are greedy because they feel they should be entitled to keep the money they earn. That is the mark of a true slave; one who believes that those who seek to be free of government are the bad guys.

There are times I wish there was such a thing as time travel; I would send some of these people back to 1775 or 1776 and let them mingle amongst those who were fighting for America’s independence. I wonder if they’d come away with a different perspective on government if they had a chance to hold political discussions with the likes of Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry or Thomas Jefferson?

Yet today people like me are both ridiculed or ignored because we quote from those men and hold the same beliefs they did about the powers government should hold and the nature of our rights.

People want to make America great again but they are going about it wrong. You don’t make America great by electing someone to office, you make it great by adhering to the principles it was founded upon. If enough people would simply learn what powers their government was supposed to be exercising on their behalf; what their rights were and that government CANNOT infringe upon them, then they would not be electing these so-called politicians and ass clowns to office. If people cared enough to see through the indoctrination they have received in the public indoctrination centers, (public schools), then we could become a force to be reckoned with; a force our government would have to submit to…not vice versa; a divided and ignorant mass of ants fighting one another instead of uniting against a common enemy.

Our Founders could not have obtained their independence had they remained separate and divided; they had to unite or accept the tyranny of King George III. Today we are divided by the issues; be they whatever are the hot topics of discussion during any election cycle. We should be arguing over whether government has the authority to enact laws upon these subjects, and how we can begin to downsize government and its far reaching scope of powers.

Until we can do that, not one single thing will change as it pertains to how free we as a people are. We can either unite, or keep voting for new slave masters…it’s your choice. But don’t ask me to participate in the election of anyone until I see candidates who are worthy of my vote; for as it stands now I do not support them, or the government they seek entry into.

I may have lost my rights, but in spirit my mind is still free; and I’ll take whatever freedom I can get in these days of serfdom.

I’ve been around for quite a few years now – 60 to be exact. I’ve been a lot of places and I’ve seen a lot of things. I’ve also experienced much of what Mother Nature has to throw at mankind in the way of natural disasters. I have lived through 3 major earthquakes; the smallest of which was 5.6. I have been through an F4 tornado while stationed in Texas; I have been through two major hurricanes in Florida; I have been through two floods in the years that I have lived in my home; and I was 17 miles from Mount Pinatubo when it erupted in 1991.

When things like that happen that affect you personally you don’t really have time to sit back and wonder about it; you are more concerned about saving your own ass, and the asses of those you love.

When you watch the news and hear of these type events happening to others, it usually makes you feel somewhat sad for those affected; but that is the extent of it.

BUT, when something like that happens to people you know; people you have met; sat down and drank beers with, it is something else altogether.
Just a few short days ago, during a Super Typhoon, (the same thing as a Category 4 hurricane), part of a hillside came rushing down, in a sea of mud, devastating a community in Naga Cebu, Philippines. The affected area was where my wife grew up and where her family still lives. Among those confirmed dead are family members and friends.

The list below is of those confirmed dead as it currently stands; but it is expected to go higher. The boxed in area is one entire branch of my wife’s family; from the patriarch, (her uncle), all the way down to his grandchildren – all of them killed in an instant when a sea of mud came crashing down upon them.

You don’t need to read the names, just know that 16 people, all from the same family, are now gone forever.

I’m not going to say any more. What I am going to do is provide a few pictures to show you the extent of the devastation and suffering of those affected by this disaster. I’ll let your conscience decide if you choose to find some way to offer some form of help for them.

The red line is the area where my wife’s family lived.

And this photo was taken on the roof of someone’s house
with a wall of mud behind them where other houses are still
buried…with people still trapped inside them.

Author’s Note: I know I write often about the Civil War, but this is being written because this weekend, for the first time I can recall, the community I live in is holding a weekend long Civil War festival at Riverfront Park. There will be displays and re-enactments and I wanted to share this with you in the hopes that before this event some of you might open your eyes to the truth regarding the bloodiest, and most misunderstood period of our countries history.
Neal

How do you imagine the history books would have recorded the actions of the American Colonists had they lost the Revolution? Would they still have been recorded as brave patriots fighting for their cause against the army of a tyrant, or would they have been marked as rebels who revolted against their government? I’ll tell you how they would have been recorded, they would have been recorded the same way the history books record the actions of the South in the period known as the Civil War; as traitors and rebels.

Most of what you have been taught about the Civil War is a flat out lie, and that which isn’t is taught from the perspective of the victors; the Union and the government that sent those Union soldiers southward to invade and occupy a sovereign nation.

Towards the end of that bloody conflict Major General Patrick Cleburne warned his fellow Confederates of what would happen should they lose their war for independence from the Union, “Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision…”

All these statues and monuments being torn down across the country; all the anger and hatred aimed at them and the Confederate Battle Flag; all of these things are founded upon one big lie; that lie being that the Civil War was about the South trying to maintain the institution of slavery. If that lie where to be exposed then the justification for these acts of historical censorship goes away as well, and those behind them will be exposed for what they are; people who are either ignorant, or too lazy to seek out the truth.

To those of you who still maintain the belief that the war was fought either to end slavery or keep it alive in America, I pose the following challenge; prove your position with facts! Now when I say facts I do not mean something you were taught in school, or saw on the television. What I mean is prove it by something that was said or written back in the 1860’s when the war was actually fought. I dare you to come up with any evidence to support your position.

I, on the other hand, can prove that the war was not fought over slavery; it was fought for the continued domination by the government over all its component parts; the States. First off, let’s tackle the issue that causes so much anger and animosity towards anything Confederate; slavery.
As Commander in Chief of the Union Army, Abraham Lincoln was the official spokesperson for the Northern cause. As a newly elected president it was customary that he deliver an inaugural address to the Union, telling the people the plans his administration hoped to accomplish, and addressing any difficulties the country might be facing. As the question of a looming rift in the country between North and South was front and center among those difficulties Lincoln sought to assure the South that he had no desire to take away their slaves, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Not only was the president promising to not interfere with the institution of slavery, both houses of Congress had passed a resolution, which was to be sent to the States for ratification, which would have amended the Constitution to make slavery permanent in America. This Corwin Amendment, had it been ratified, states, “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”

Not only had Congress already agreed to the wording of this resolution, Abraham Lincoln supported it as well, also stating in his Inaugural Address, “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution—which amendment, however, I have not seen—has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

In an 1862 letter to editor Horace Greeley, Lincoln furthermore states, “If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.”

So, all this hubbub about Lincoln being the Great Emancipator who fought for the freedom and equal rights of the slaves is based upon lies. In fact, Lincoln did not believe the slaves to be his equal. Before he was even elected to the Presidency he stated as much in a debate with Stephen Douglas held in Charleston, Illinois in 1858, “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]-that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” Those are Abraham Lincolns feelings, not mine; yet I am the racist because I support the Confederacy, while Lincoln has a monument dedicated in his honor in Washington D.C.― justify the logic of that if you can.

So, if slavery WAS NOT the reason for the war, what was? Simply put, the Civil War was fought so that the government created by the States and the people could maintain supremacy and dominance over those who had created it. The secession of the 11 States of the Confederacy was a challenge that could not be ignored by the government of the Union; for if it went unchallenged then what was to stop the New England States from leaving the Union and forming their own nation? If Lincoln let the South go in peace there may have come a time when there was a government with no one left in the Union to govern; and Lincoln simply couldn’t allow that to happen.

In his letter to Horace Greeley, Lincoln tells of his purpose in sending troops into the South; to restore the national authority, “The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be the Union as it was.”

In March, 1861, Lincoln went on to address the people, saying, “In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me, will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion–no using of force against, or among the people anywhere.”

Aha, now the truth reveals itself; Lincoln invaded the South to maintain national supremacy AND MORE IMPORTANTLY to keep the tariffs flowing into the treasury. Lincoln knew that if he let the South go then the funds flowing into the federal treasury would be drastically reduced; leaving him, and his Republican cohorts, powerless to enact much of their agenda. No, the South simply could not be allowed to leave; not only would it leave the government almost penniless, it would devastate the Northern economy as well.

In 1860 the Cleveland Daily National Democrat wrote, “The entire amount, in dollars and cents, of produce and of manufactured articles exported to foreign countries from the United States for the year ending June, 1858, was $293,758,279, of which amount the raw cotton exported alone amounted to $131,386,661. . . taking the estimate of the cotton used [in the] North . . . and adding it to the worth of the cotton sent abroad, and we have over one hundred and fifty-eight million dollars worth of cotton as the amount furnished by the South.

Deduct from the exports the silver and gold and the foreign goods exported, and the cotton crop of the South alone exported exceeds the other entire export of the United States, and when to this we add the hemp and Naval stores, sugar, rice, and tobacco, produced alone in the Southern States, we have near two-thirds of the value entire of exports from the South.

Let the States of the South separate, and the cotton, the rice, hemp, sugar and tobacco, now consumed in the Northern States must be purchased [from the] South, subject to a Tariff duty, greatly enhancing their cost. The cotton factories of New England now, by getting their raw cotton duty free, are enabled to contend with the English in the markets of their own Provinces, and in other parts of the world. A separation would take from us this advantage, and it would take from the vessels owned by the North the carrying trade of the South, now mostly monopolised by them.”

That same month the New York Post wrote, “That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe.”

In this modern day and age when people consider paying their taxes their patriotic duty, I can understand why some of them feel that the South should have been forced to remain in the Union so that the government could continue to stay in operation, but back then taxation was not done as it is today, by taxing the income of every working person. No, back in the 1800’s a majority of the taxes collected came from tariffs; and most of those tariffs were paid and collected in the South; stripping it of its wealth just to keep the government open for business.

In 1828 Senator Thomas Hart Benton spoke the following on the floor of the U.S. Senate, “I feel for the sad changes, which have taken place in the South, during the last fifty years. Before the Revolution, it was the seat of wealth, as well as hospitality. Money, and all it commanded, abounded there. But how is it now? All this is reversed. Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in regions north of the Potomac; and this in the face of the fact, that the South, in four staples alone, has exported produce, since the Revolution, to the value of eight hundred millions, of dollars; and the North has exported comparatively nothing….Under Federal legislation, the exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue….Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths, of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government; and of this great sum, annually furnished by them, nothing, or next to nothing is returned to them, in the shape of government expenditures. That expenditure flows in an opposite direction—it flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream. This is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North…taking from the South, and returning nothing to it.”

I wonder how many people know that Jefferson Davis also served as a United States Senator before becoming President of the Confederate States of America; not very many I imagine. After all, just the other day I learned that very few people knew that John Wilkes Booth, (the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln), was a stage actor who performed the plays of William Shakespeare.

Getting back to Jefferson Davis, he once said about the war between the North and South, “I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came, and now it must go on unless you acknowledge our right to self government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence.”

And that, my friends and enemies, is the real reason this war was fought; it was a war between those who sought to free themselves from an oppressive government, and those who fought to maintain that government’s control over those who sought to be free of it.

That is how England saw it, with the London Times publishing the following in November, 1861, ” [T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are the general opinions of the English nation.”

Sixty years later, while serving as President of Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson would write, “It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery…and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South.” (Source: A History of The American People, page 231)

In his defense of the British Soldiers accused of murdering civilians in the Boston Massacre, John Adams stated, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

To those of you who say the Civil War was fought to end slavery, prove it; provide me with something, some evidence to back up your claim! I’m betting that you can’t. And I would also ask, (although I know it is futile to do so), that if you don’t know what you are talking about that you keep your mouth shut about the Confederacy and what it is they were fighting for; because they were fighting for the same thing our Founding Fathers were― freedom from a government that had grown tyrannical and oppressive.

And as a closing thought, all you who have taken great offense at the disrespect shown to the American Flag; the kneeling during the singing of the National Anthem and such; what have you to say about all the disrespect shown to the Confederate Battle Flag? After all, it, more than the Stars and Stripes, stands for the same thing our Founders fought for back in 1776…freedom from an oppressive government.

If you ask me, your support for Old Glory, the Stars and Stripes, or whatever else you choose to call it, shows me that you support a government that feels it has the right and authority to use force to suppress freedom and independence.

Those who fought on the side of the Confederacy did so with regret. They loved the Union, and being a part of it. What they did not love was the government taking advantage of them; plundering their wealth to fund Northern interests. Many of them said so, both during and after the war.
General Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose statue was recently removed in Memphis, once said, “I loved the old government in 1861. I loved the old Constitution yet. I think it is the best government in the world, if administered as it was before the war. I do not hate it; I am opposing now only the radical revolutionists who are trying to destroy it. I believe that party to be composed, as I know it is in Tennessee, of the worst men on Gods earth – men who would hesitate at no crime, and who have only one object in view – to enrich themselves.”

Even Robert E. Lee, who has seen many monuments dedicated to him removed, once said, “All that the South has ever desired was that the Union as established by our forefathers should be preserved and that the government as originally organized should be administered in purity and truth.”
But every man, whether he be an individual or a member of a larger political society, has the right to be free of tyranny and oppression. The South was justified in leaving the Union, and by invading them and imposing the will of the government upon them, the North, under the command of Abraham Lincoln, are the ones who were imposing tyranny upon those who only wished to govern themselves as they saw fit.

And that is the truth regarding the Civil War…take it or leave it. But don’t start a discussion with me about something you know absolutely nothing about; that is unless you want to walk away with your tail between your legs, looking like the ignorant fool you are.

In a day and age when the Constitution is of little to no concern to the average American voter, I thought it would be interesting to discuss the method in which it came into existence way back in 1787. Before the constitution was even a gleam in James Madison’s eye the States were equal in their sovereignty and independence; each having all the powers of a nation to govern their own internal affairs. They had joined together in a loose confederation to fight a common foe, (the British), and maintained that confederation after the conclusion of the American Revolution.

Once peace between the former Colonies and Great Britain was established the talk by certain men was that the government established by the Articles of Confederation was weak and inefficient; and that something must be done to remedy that or else the Confederacy would be rent asunder. Therefore a convention was called and delegates chosen to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation which would be considered by the 13 States; and if approved would give the existing government the necessary powers to handle the general affairs of the Confederation.

Yet before the delegates even arrived at the City of Brotherly Love, (Philadelphia), James Madison was already scheming to abolish the Confederation and establish a centralized form of government with far greater powers than those given the existing Congress. In a letter to George Washington, Madison presented his ideas, stating, “Having been lately led to revolve the subject which is to undergo the discussion of the Convention, and formed in my mind some outlines of a new system, I take the liberty of submitting them without apology, to your eye.”

Even before the Constitution began to take shape there were those who felt something was amiss in Philadelphia. Patrick Henry said that he ‘smelled a rat’; meaning that he felt something untoward was going on. Rhode Island opposed the whole idea of amending the Articles of Confederation and therefore didn’t even send any delegates to the convention.

But once the convention got under way, and before Madison could present his grand design for a new system of government he first imposed certain restrictions upon those in attendance. Here is an excerpt from the Dissent of the Pennsylvania Minority regarding those restrictions, “The convention sat upwards of four months. The doors were kept shut, and the members brought under the most solemn engagements of secrecy.”

Could it possibly be that Madison did not want the various State Legislatures to get wind of his plan to reduce their authority and create a more centralized form of government? The only record we have of what went on in those proceedings comes from James Madison himself; who took copious notes of what was said. Yet those notes were not released until after his death; leaving us to wonder whether he delayed their publication so that no one could question him on what actually occurred.

With that being the case, I still find his notes a fascinating read; shedding a great deal of light onto the various plans and sentiments of the delegates on a wide range of issues; from the sovereignty of the individual States to the powers which should be exercised by the central government they were in the process of creating. Yet the key point remains, did they overstep their authority by establishing an entirely new system of government? They were, after all, chosen by their State Legislatures to attend this convention for the sole purpose of coming up with proposed amendments to the Articles of Confederation. Therefore, any document they produced which was beyond that limited scope of authority could be considered as a violation of the trust and authority granted them; making the drafting of the Constitution an act of fraud and abuse of authority.

One of the interesting points, at least for me, was that there were some who felt that the whole idea of continuing on with a confederation would not serve the purposes for which they were sent to Philadelphia to achieve; that an abolishment of the confederation was the only means of effectively governing the country as a whole.

This idea did not sit well with some in attendance. For instance, William Patterson of New Jersey stated, “If the confederacy was radically wrong, let us return to our States, and obtain larger powers, not assume them of ourselves. I came here not to speak my own sentiments, but the sentiments of those who sent me. Our object is not such a Governmt. as may be best in itself, but such a one as our Constituents have authorized us to prepare, and as they will approve. If we argue the matter on the supposition that no Confederacy at present exists, it can not be denied that all the States stand on the footing of equal sovereignty. All therefore must concur before any can be bound.”

Then there was John Lansing from New York, who also stated, “He was decidedly of opinion that the power of the Convention was restrained to amendments of a federal nature, and having for their basis the Confederacy in being. The Act of Congress The tenor of the Acts of the States, the Commissions produced by the several deputations all proved this. And this limitation of the power to an amendment of the Confederacy, marked the opinion of the States, that it was unnecessary & improper to go farther. He was sure that this was the case with his State. N. York would never have concurred in sending deputies to the convention, if she had supposed the deliberations were to turn on a consolidation of the States, and a National Government.”

Of course nothing could stop the momentum once it had begun rolling towards the creation of a stronger centralized government, with forced John Lansing, and his fellow delegate Robert Yates, to leave the convention and return to New York and begin the opposition to whatever plan was unveiled by the Philadelphia Convention.

Not only did those who chose to remain in Philadelphia overstep their authority, they violated the existing law, (The Articles of Confederation) when they presented the final draft of the constitution to the States; along with their demands that it be ratified according to the procedures outlined in the constitution itself; which at this point in time was merely a proposal and held no authority or legal weight. This was a clear violation of the Articles of Confederation, which in Article 13 stated, “…the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.” (My emphasis)

An argument could be made that from May 21, 1787, (the first day of the Constitutional Convention) until June 21, 1788, (the day the Constitution was officially ratified), the entire process was an illegality; the delegates having exceeded their authority, not to mention demanding that the document be accepted or rejected by means other than those proscribed by law.

If I were a gambling man I would wager that none of this matters to people today. I say that because it is my firm belief that the Constitution itself does not matter to the average voter; let alone the means by which it came into existence. Yet without the Constitution we would not have the government we do today; it is because the people chose to accept the plan proposed by the delegates to that convention that we even have a federal government that consists of an Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branch.

Does it not make sense then that if our government is to be considered legitimate that it must conform to the powers given it by that document; that any assumption of powers beyond those given violates the compact and nullifies their consent to this system of government? Am I the only one who can see that?

Our Founders, at least those that participated in the Revolution, believed “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” This was enshrined in the Declaration of Independence; establishing it as a fundamental principle upon which any system of government in America would be built upon.

This consent, or the revoking thereof, was not required to be a unanimous decision by all the States; any of them at any time could revoke their consent to being government by the entity created by the Constitution if they felt it was in their best interests to do so. Madison himself said as much during the convention that produced the Constitution, “If we consider the federal union as analogous to the fundamental compact by which individuals compose one Society, and which must in its theoretic origin at least, have been the unanimous act of the component members, it can not be said that no dissolution of the compact can be effected without unanimous consent. A breach of the fundamental principles of the compact by a part of the Society would certainly absolve the other part from their obligations to it.”

Regardless of what you have been taught in school, America was not established as a democracy, where the majority, or most powerful, get to dictate the laws that the minority must obey. We are, or we were, a Republic where the rule of law decides what our government can and cannot do; where its legitimate use of coercive force can be exerted. If, at any time, that use of force, coercion, taxation, or whatever, is/was deemed to be excessive or beyond the powers specifically given government, then it basically voided the affected States requirement to remain subject to that government’s authority.

Regardless of what you have been taught about the Civil War, it was NOT about slavery. Slavery may have been an issue which led to secession, but it was not the cause of the war itself. You have to remember, in 1861 slavery was still legal in America; a constitutional amendment prohibiting it not having been ratified at that point in time. Therefore any interference in it by the Northern States could be considered as an act of hostility by the North towards the slave owning States of the South; and grounds for a severing of the ties which bound them to the Union.

But it was not merely the North’s increasing demands for the end of slavery in America which led the South with no other alternative but to seek its independence from the Union; it was the issue of unfair and excessive taxation.

Ever since the Hamiltonian scheme of using government to subsidize and expand American business and commerce the South had been bearing the brunt of the taxes required to fund this growth, in the form of tariffs imposed upon goods entering the country. Three decades BEFORE the Civil War, Senator Thomas Hart Benton said the following in a speech to his fellow Senators, “I feel for the sad changes, which have taken place in the South, during the last fifty years. Before the Revolution, it was the seat of wealth, as well as hospitality. Money, and all it commanded, abounded there. But how is it now? All this is reversed. Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in regions north of the Potomac; and this in the face of the fact, that the South, in four staples alone, has exported produce, since the Revolution, to the value of eight hundred millions, of dollars; and the North has exported comparatively nothing….Under Federal legislation, the exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue….Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths, of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government; and of this great sum, annually furnished by them, nothing, or next to nothing is returned to them, in the shape of government expenditures. That expenditure flows in an opposite direction—it flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream. This is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North…taking from the South, and returning nothing to it.”

The truth is, that for decades the South was being raped economically to fund economic growth and infrastructure improvements in the North, and they came to the realization, (just as their forefathers had), that to remain subjected to a system of government that was oppressive was not in their best interests; so they seceded…

Almost immediately the cries began regarding the loss of revenue into the federal treasury. Here is but one of many instances where the press cried about what would happen if the Southern States were allowed to secede, “… either the (federal) revenue from duties (protective tariff) must be collected in the ports of the rebel states or the ports be closed to importations from abroad… If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe…” (Source: New York Evening Post, March 12, 1861)

Lincoln himself, in a letter to Horace Greeley, said that his intent was not to abolish slavery, but to maintain federal authority over all the states. How can anyone claim that this war was about slavery when the person who initiated it by raising an army of 75,000 to invade the seceded States said it WAS NOT about slavery? Do the facts not matter to people these days? (I know; it was a rhetorical question.)

Towards the end of the war for federal supremacy, (another title given the Civil War), Major General Patrick Cleburne wrote the following, “Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late… It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision… It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”

You have been taught the North’s version of what that war was about, meaning you have been taught a one sided lie. Woodrow Wilson, before becoming president, would write the following about the Civil War, “It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery…and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South.”

How this all ties together is, when the delegates attended the convention that produced the constitution one of the key points of discussion was whether the sovereignty of the States should be maintained, and whether or not the system of government being created would consolidate the States into a single nation under a strong centralized form of government.

This was the major sticking point between Jefferson and Hamilton while both served on Washington’s Cabinet; with Jefferson taking the States rights side and Hamilton looking to expand the authority of government and use it to fund economic growth in the North.

It is also the main point addressed by Patrick Henry when he opposed ratification of the Constitution in the Virginia Ratifying Assembly, “The fate of this question and of America may depend on this: Have they said, we, the States? Have they made a proposal of a compact between states? If they had, this would be a confederation: It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government.”

Alexander Hamilton may have simply been too impatient to see his goals achieved; yet achieved they were when Abraham Lincoln demolished the concept of government by consent. I don’t know how anyone can say that we have a government by consent when the government can use military force against those who revoke their consent to being governed by it.

When Franklin left the Constitutional Convention he was supposedly accosted by a woman who asked him what form of government they had created, a republic or a monarchy. Franklin is quoted as saying, “A Republic madam, if you can keep it.”

Well, we didn’t keep it. It became ill under the leadership of Hamilton and his Federalist cronies. It was wheezing and barely hanging onto life in the 1830’s during the Nullification Crisis, and it died on April 9, 1865 with the surrender of the Confederate Army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.

What we have now is NOT the Republic that was established in 1789 when the Constitution was put into effect. You may cast your votes for those to fill the seats of power within a government that resembles the one established in 1789, but the purposes it serves and the power it exercises over us, and the States, is not what the States were promised when they decided to accept the plan proposed by the Philadelphia Convention.

You ask me why I don’t vote. I don’t vote because I do not recognize the authority of the current system of government that operates upon the people of these States united. I may be forced to submit to the laws they enact, but I do not give my consent to them, and I certainly won’t participate in choosing who will be my master; in that I am still a free man…although the rest of my freedoms have all but been stripped away from me by this thing we can government.

But like I said, I doubt any of this is going to make a difference in how people think, or how they act. Ignorance, apathy, and the refusal to accept the truth are potent enemies to liberty, and they are attributes that abound amongst the people living in this country.

Yet as Patrick Henry warned, “You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your Government.”

If you were to give your government a report card based upon how well they performed that simple function, how would you grade them; and this question applies probably even more so to those who support Trump than it does to those who oppose him; how well is your president safeguarding your liberty?
Liberty, and the pursuit of it, have all but died in this country. As Judge Learned Hand said back in 1944, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.” The pursuit of liberty has been replaced by the pursuit of comfort, security, and what can I get from the taxes paid by others.

Yet there are still those living here who understand why our system of government was originally instituted, and we still cherish liberty above all else. It is to those that I raise a glass and toast, “To us and those like us…damned few left.”

The date was March 23, 1776 and the place was St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia. In attendance was a virtual who’s who of our Founding Fathers. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were in attendance, as were Edmund Randolph and Thomas Marshall; whose son John would go on to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

But it was the young attorney from Hanover County who stole the show that day, for that was the day Patrick Henry arose and gave the speech that would immortalize the phrase, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

Henry’s words, and his manner of delivering them, were so spellbinding that after he had finished the crowd sat in stunned silence for a few moments before reacting. It is said that Edward Carrington, who had listened to it from outside the church, had requested to be buried upon that very spot to commemorate the words he heard that day.

Although that speech is best known for the phrase, “Give me liberty or give me death” there is one passage within it that I have taken as my own personal motto, of sorts, “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 often wonder how many people living in America today would suffer the anguish of spirit it would cost for them to seek out and embrace the truth. In a country that has taken to calling the network news media Fake News, I find it laughable that they believe much of the history they have been taught, and I find it even more laughable that they actually believe that the government they support is the same government that was instituted back in 1789.

I am constantly ridiculed by those who support either the Democratic candidates or the Republican ones because I do not participate in electing any of them for office. They tell me that by not voting I lose my right to complain. I say that they lose their right to complain because it is due to the people they elect that we have the government we do; that if it is corrupt it is because they are electing corrupt people for the positions within it. The only people who truly have the right to complain are the ones who stand apart from this entity called government and see it for what it truly is; a monster that seeks to deprive us of the very liberty it was established to safeguard and protect.

In 1775 liberty was the topic of discussion everywhere; it was spoken of at the supper tables, in taverns, and from the pulpits of our churches. The desire to have liberty was what drove our Founders to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to obtain it. What do we see people voting for today; more benefits, more wars against pretended enemies; more jobs?

It’s funny that so many of those who risked so much to obtain liberty for themselves would then turn around and create the very engine which would destroy that liberty in years yet to come…and yes I’m talking about our constitution and the government it outlines.

What we are taught in our public schools about the history of our country and the ratification of our constitution is only a fragment of the whole story; and much of the whole story has been omitted to shine a light upon the greatness of our constitution. We are taught, figuratively speaking that is, that our constitution is the greatest thing since sliced bread; that it framed the greatest government ever produced.

I suppose it depends upon your perspective whether or not the government outlined by our constitution is great or not. I for one have found that it contains a great many flaws which has allowed for the government it established to become far worse than the one our Founders fought a war to free themselves from. Yet the people today go to the polls unerringly and vote for candidates to fill the various positions within it without regard for the primary purpose for which it was instituted…the safeguarding of their liberty.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence did he say that governments are instituted to create jobs, police the world, or provide benefits for those in need? No, he said that governments are instituted to secure our rights, and that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.

You can consent to a system of government that serves the exact opposite purpose for which it was established; that is your prerogative. What you cannot do, without violating my rights, is force me to support it as well.

I refuse to support a government that says it is okay to violate my right to privacy simply because it makes America safe from terrorism. I refuse to support a government that takes a portion of the taxes it collects from me and gives it to others who are in need. I refuse to support a government that tells me when, where, and under what circumstances I can defend myself, my property, and my liberty.

Liberty, according to the Neal Ross Standard Dictionary, is the right to do whatever the hell you want, say whatever the hell you want to say, so long as you don’t prevent others from enjoying the same right. It doesn’t matter if you find what I say offensive; grow up and get over it. It doesn’t matter if I have a dozen guns; as long as I don’t use them to deprive you of your life or property, get over it. See where I’m going here?

Our Founders, unlike the politicians of today, were well versed in the writings of men like Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, Sir Francis Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, and John Locke. Had you read Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Governments you would have noticed a striking similarity between Locke’s words and those penned by Jefferson when he drafted the Declaration of Independence.

So why is it that our schools do not teach the words of those who influenced our Founding Fathers? Why aren’t we taught what liberty is, and that our country was founded by men who were willing to die to obtain and defend it? Why aren’t we taught that our government was established to secure that liberty for us, and that if it does not serve that function that it is our right to get rid of that form of government and replace it with one that will defend our liberty?

In his Second Treatise Locke speaks a great deal about the Law of Nature, how it is the source of all political power and authority in any society. For example, Locke states, “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which […] teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

No compare that to something Samuel Adams said in 1771, “Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First, a Right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can–Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature.”

Our Founders believed that, not only was it their right to defend their lives and their property against all who would threaten them, but it was also their right to defend their liberty against all attacks; even when those attacks came from government itself. That was the very foundation upon which the American Revolution, and the Civil War I might add, were fought.

Yet today what do we see? Today we see people flocking to the polls to vote for this candidate or that one to fix all that is wrong in this country…without truly knowing what is wrong with this country in the first place. We fall for the lies, or promises, of these people based upon our understanding of the purpose which our government is supposed to serve. But what if what you have been taught about that purpose is a lie; wouldn’t you want to know the truth?

Voting for candidates to fix what is wrong in government is like asking children to keep watch over a candy store; like asking the fox to guard the hen house. We are the true guardians of our liberty, and if we choose corrupt candidates we get the government we deserve.

Our Constitution was flawed from the moment it was presented to the States for their consideration, in that it contained no effective means of restraining the government it established to those few powers given it. In fact, when a list of proposed amendments were sent to Congress, James Madison deliberately omitted the word expressly from the 10th amendment so that it would allow for government to expand its authority into hidden, or implied, powers.

On numerous occasions Patrick Henry, that bulwark of liberty, spoke out against the threat to liberty posed by the government outlined by the constitution. For instance, on June 5, 1788 Henry stated, “The Honorable Gentleman who presides, told us, that to prevent abuses in our Government, we will assemble in Convention, recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust reposed in them. Oh, Sir, we should have fine times indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people. Your arms wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical; no longer democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all?”

Two days later Henry again arose to say, “Where is the responsibility — that leading principle in the British government? In that government a punishment, certain and inevitable, is provided: But in this, there is no real actual punishment for the grossest maladministration. They may go without punishment, though they commit the most outrageous violation on our immunities. That paper may tell me they will be punished. I ask, by what law? They must make the law — for there is no existing law to do it. What — will they make a law to punish themselves? This, Sir, is my great objection to the Constitution, that there is no true responsibility — and that the preservation of our liberty depends on the single chance of men being virtuous enough to make laws to punish themselves.”

When was the last time you heard of a politician being arrested for violating the Supreme Law of the Land? Sure, there have been instances where they were charged with other crimes; embezzlement, fraud, or some other crime, but when was the last time you heard of one of them being arrested for drafting a law that oversteps the limits the constitution imposes upon them, or one which violates any of our unalienable rights?

Never, that’s when. Even Nixon, who resigned from office, did so not because he violated the Constitution, rather he did so because he authorized activities which violated other laws; such as the burglarizing of the DNC Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. The Justice Department, as if justice has anything to do with what they enforce upon us, is part of the government and only enforces the laws that government passes; the question of whether those laws are constitutional or not never enters into consideration. The Courts, and more specifically the judges, are chosen by government, and therefore rarely question the legality of the laws that the government enacts; they only ensure that the law is upheld in their courtrooms. Then there are those who enforce the laws; cops, sheriffs, and all the others who work in the multitude of alphabet soup agencies; who only enforce the law; do they ever ask themselves whether the laws they are ENFORCING violate the Constitution or Bill of Rights?

Yet when one stands up for their rights, or tries to defend their liberty, they are denigrated and called criminals and lawbreakers. Yet isn’t our government itself a criminal enterprise in that it does not adhere to the law which was written to limit its power and authority?

And yet you support this government in its current state. I’d love to hear your justification for that…based upon your understanding of the Constitution that is.

Many of you claim to be Christian, and it is to those of you who do that I now address the following. We are taught to seek out the truth, to hate lies and deceit. In the Book of John the Bible speaks of how Satan is the father of all lies, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” (John 8:44)

Yet how is it that you choose to ignore the truth regarding the government you support simply because it is run by candidates of your choosing? Does not the truth matter to anyone anymore? I grow weary of repeating myself over and over again when those who need most to understand what I say continue to believe that if they could just elect a few more Republicans, (or Democrats), then all would be well in the land of the free again.

I hate to burst your bubble, but freedom doesn’t come from government, it comes from our Creator; and if you want it you are going to have to do a better job of defending it against the very entity which has stolen it from you; your government.

As Patrick Henry said, “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 ” Although I may not be in possession of the whole truth, I can say that I have sought it out and that I know more of it than do most in this country. The truth I have found is that government, in its current state, is the enemy to the liberty it was established to secure, and that if we don’t get up off our asses and defend what’s left of that liberty it will vanish and we will live our remaining years as slaves to an ungrateful master.

Is there a chance we may not succeed in this endeavor? Of course there is; after all, the Confederacy lost when they tried. But as the old saying goes, “Tis better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

And that, my friends, is the unbridled truth…

Have there ever been instances in your life when you have tried explaining something to someone and the person is just incapable of understanding what you are trying to explain? If there have been, then you know how frustrating that can be. Now imagine for a moment that you are trying to explain something that is of great importance, and not only is the person you are explaining it to incapable of understanding, they simply don’t care about what you are trying to say.

I know I shouldn’t use movie analogies to explain myself, as they take away from my credibility, but sometimes I find something that is so truthful that I simply cannot help myself. The 1999 film The Matrix is one such movie, in that it is filled with so many analogies, metaphors and symbolism that I could just include the entire script and call it a day.

However, if I were forced to choose one scene to share with you it would be the scene when Morpheus and Neo are walking down the city street and Morpheus says, “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”

That scene reminds me of the quote by Von Loon that says, “Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession – their ignorance.” It seems that no matter how simple one makes it, most people seem unable, or possibly unwilling, to accept the truth.

Now I’m not saying I am in possession of the whole truth, or even a majority of it, but there is something that sets me, and people like me, apart from the vast majority of people in this country; we actively seek out the truth. Although it has cost me friends and caused me to be ridiculed and ostracized, I wouldn’t change a thing about the path I have undertaken; because for me the truth is more important than having an abundance of friends or living a life believing a lie.

One of the biggest problems I have with people is that they continue to support a system, (i.e. government), that no longer serves the purposes for which it was originally established. To most people the only thing they care about is who gets to control the system; be it Republicans or Democrats; the fact that the system itself has become destructive of the ends for which it was established is of no concern to them.

If someone were to break into your home and attempt to steal your possessions, would you simply let them if they belong to the same political party you do, or if they were wearing a Make America Great Again T-shirt? Why then do you support government just because of one individual you have chosen to be at its head when the government itself continues to do things it was never intended it be allowed to do; one of which is destroy the liberty of those it was designed to represent?

I can, at least, understand the thought process which leads people to believe that the world is a different place than it was back when our Constitution and Bill of Rights was written, and that therefore government should change accordingly. But as Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Judge Spencer Roane, “Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the day be kept off as long as possible.”

So yes, I can at least concede the fact that our government today might need more powers than it was originally given; but the underlying principles for which that government was established should remain the same no matter how much time passes from the date of its enactment. One of the most important principles, at least from my perspective, is the preservation of our liberty as people.

Depending upon where you look there are many definitions for the word liberty. The most concise of them is: the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views.

Our Founding Fathers, and by that I mean those who actively participated in obtaining America’s independence from Great Britain were pretty much united on obtaining liberty for all those living in the Colonies. But from the moment they obtained that liberty there were some who sought to impose their own brand of tyranny upon those who had just suffered a war to gain their independence.

Yet there were those who remained champions of liberty; men such as Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. Today men like them would be laughed off the political stage for their views on the purpose for which governments should exist.

Imagine if you will that Patrick Henry were alive today and was running for President. Would you vote for him if he stood upon a stage and told you, “You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your Government.”

How about Thomas Jefferson? If he were alive today and running for President, would you vote for him if he campaigned upon the following promise, “…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”

Your answer to those questions goes a long way towards explaining how much you know about why your government was originally established. When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence he pointed out two important facts that people today seem to have forgotten. The first of these facts is that our rights come from our Creator, not from government. The second of these facts is that government is instituted to secure these rights, not be the destroyer of them.

People today just accept the fact that we have a government, and only in passing do they think about the fact that this government exists only because the people in 1788 and 1789 consented to it as explained to them by those who supported ratification of the Constitution. Had they known that the government they were about to consent to would eventually destroy the liberty they had so recently obtained, they would NEVER have voted to accept this form of government.

As much as people pay lip service to our wonderful Constitution, it is not a perfect document. On the final day of the Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787, a speech was read to the delegates, written by Ben Franklin, in which Doctor Franklin stated, “In these Sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.

I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution: For when you assemble a Number of Men to have the Advantage of their joint Wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those Men all their Prejudices, their Passions, their Errors of Opinion, their local Interests, and their selfish Views. From such an Assembly can a perfect Production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this System approaching so near to Perfection as it does… ”

What Franklin was saying is that he knew the Constitution was flawed, that it was not perfect; but he also said that it would be well administered as long as the people of this country remained uncorrupted in principle; meaning that they only voted for those candidates who would seek to confine themselves to the specific powers given them, and that they would respect and defend to their dying breaths the rights of those they represented.

The moment voters stopped voting for representatives of that character they put government on the pathway towards the despotic government that Franklin warned us about. How far along that pathway is anyone’s guess, but I’m guessing we are pretty close to an absolute despotism.

I listen to people talk politics today, (that is if they even talk politics and not football or some other triviality) and I hear them say the damndest things; especially as it pertains to their governments ability to violate the rights of the people it represents.

Does it matter whether a majority of the voters approve of a measure that violates the rights of one group or another? Does it matter that tyranny only applies to 10%, 15% or 20% of the people? When anyone’s rights are violated, there is tyranny. As Thomas Jefferson so rightfully said, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

When the laws being passed violate the rights of anyone, and when those charged with enforcing the laws violate the rights of anyone, then there is tyranny. You can choose to either submit to it, or you can do as I do, cry out against it.

I hear all this rubbish about how we need to support our law enforcement officers because they do such good things for the community. Sure, they do good things; but they also enforce the laws which violate our rights without questioning the laws they are enforcing. Does that mean we should submit unquestioningly to their authority in all cases? Isn’t that one of the very reasons our Founders revolted against their government; because it had declared that it had the authority to bind them in all cases whatsoever?

Is tyranny any different in 2018 than it was in 1776; are our rights? On another occasion Thomas Jefferson said, “Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.” (Source: Letter to John Cartwright, 1824)

When the truth is suppressed because it happens to make people uncomfortable, or hurts their precious feelings, isn’t the freedom of speech being violated?

When a person’s right to keep and bear arms, and defend their property against those who would deprive them of it is limited by law, aren’t our rights being infringed upon?

When we cannot enter into our homes and be free of the prying eyes and ears of government agencies such as the NSA, isn’t our right to privacy being invaded?

When we can be taxed to fund programs which redistribute our wealth to those in need, (without our consent I might add) isn’t our right to enjoy the fruits of our labor being violated?

People say they know their rights, and it is all I can do to not fall on the ground in fits of laughter. If people knew their rights they damned sure wouldn’t be supporting the government they have today; no matter who was in control of it!

If I started a charitable organization that provided firearms and training to the people of every city, would I have the right to come to your home and demand that you support it? Of course not! So how is it that people can say that I must be taxed to support programs that I disagree with; programs which are not justified by any of the specific powers granted government?

Government, if anything, implies the power of coercion to enforce the laws it passes; that is a given. As long as government confines itself to those powers it was granted by those who established it, government is good. However, when government begins to overstep those specific powers, when the laws it passes violate the rights of anyone, then government becomes tyrannical. It does not matter that the majority voted for this candidate or that candidate; what matters is whether or not the candidates you elect stick to the specific purposes for which government was originally established.
CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT???

Our Founders, were they alive today, would be considered lawbreakers, rebels, and extremists; all because they chose to resist their existing government when the laws being passed violated their most basic rights as freemen. On the other hand, were a majority of the people alive today suddenly teleported back to 1776 they would find themselves being the outcasts, the traitors to the cause of liberty for their unquestioning support of a government that sought to “…reduce them under absolute Despotism…” (Declaration of Independence)

You can go on choosing to support your Hillary’s, your Trump’s, and whichever other candidates are offered up for your consideration; I will support the same cause our Founders fought for when they stood up to their government; the cause of liberty for all. If that makes me a rebel, then so be it. I’d rather be a rebel than a willing slave…any day of the week.

For the first time in a long while I awoke this morning without a single idea floating around inside my head to write about. Not to fear though, as I was perusing the things people had posted to Facebook I found the inspiration for what you are about to read. So with that in mind I would like to thank Danielle Mottale for the inspiration for what follows.

The time quickly approaches when the Yuba County Tax Collector sends their annual demand for tribute; or the privilege of living on the property I call home. Our home is old; roughly 35 yrs old to be exact, and it isn’t a big home; coming in at around 1,100 square feet…but it is home nonetheless; and we take great pride in keeping it, and our yard, in good condition.

I can’t speak for any other State, but in California if a person refuses to pay the tax imposed upon their property the local government can impose a lien against your home and sell it out from under your feet to pay the taxes owed upon it; leaving you homeless. I don’t know the technicalities of how that works, but I’m guessing that when that happens you don’t get back all the money you spent years paying to the mortgage company, nor do you get a portion of the money, above and beyond the taxes owed, that the County makes when they sell your home to someone else.

Yet people have the audacity to say that they own a home. If they owned it, how can anyone take it from them for failure to pay taxes upon it? Not only can government tax you upon the land you call yours, but it can take it from you under eminent domain if they feel that the public need is best served by booting you off your property to build a strip mall or a highway overpass.

If you truly owned that home the government could not levy a tax upon it, or kick you out of it if you refused to pay it. I’m not absolutely certain, but I would venture a guess that very few people in this country actually own their homes outright, and by outright I mean being in possession of an allodial title. An allodial title is basically a title to property stating that there is no superior landlord, or owner, of that property; that the person bearing it has full possession of the land they live upon.

People in America do not own their land; they are allowed to live on it, while having to pay for the privilege of doing so. In a truly free land the owner of a home could sell it to another and the title would transfer from seller to buyer. But in America today the titles are held in trust by the government, and it is only the money, (after making its way through the banks so they can get their cut), that is transferred…but possession of the land is retained by the government. That is how they can levy taxes upon it and kick you off it if you do not pay.

Then, of course, there is the annual tribute you pay for the privilege of operating a motor vehicle. If your vehicle does not have the current stickers affixed to your license plate, revenue generators, (law enforcement), can pull you over and fine you; and if you refuse to pay the fine, they can jail you; and if you do not comply when they come to arrest you, then can kill you.

It makes me want to gag when I hear people talk about how America is the greatest country in the world; how we are the so-called land of the free. Since when have we ever been FREE? I don’t think the average American would recognize freedom if it walked up to them and handed them its business card.

From the moment we enter this world, kicking and screaming, we are government property; or more specifically, our labor, and the revenue it generates, belongs to the government. At birth we are given a taxpayer identification number; better known as a Social Security Number. We are given injections of poisons and other toxic compounds without our consent; after all, when is the last time you saw a nurse or a doctor ask a crying baby if they WANTED those shots they were given?

When we become old enough we are sent to public indoctrination centers were we are taught, not how to think, but what to think. It does not matter if the facts we are being pumped full of are wrong; all that matters is that the vast majority accept them as the absolute truth. We are taught that patriotism is loyalty to and support for our government; not the principles that government was founded upon; and when anyone questions the authority of their government the people are taught to consider them as enemies of the State.

We are a nation filled with sheep who are taught to work, to pay their taxes, and to obey the law. But, as Jefferson said, “Law is often but the tyrants will, especially when it violates the rights of the individual.” But since most people aren’t taught what their rights are, they don’t even know that they’ve already lost most of them.

We live in a country where there are 2 categories, well actually 3 categories of people. There are those in positions of authority who keep the other 2 categories in line; who pass and enforce the laws we must live by. Then there are those who provide the labor, and the inevitable taxes generated off that labor, that funds government. And finally, there are those whose lives are subsidized by the labor of others; the non-productive members of society.

We are taught that it is our public duty to provide for those in need; that it is our patriotic duty to have our wages taxed so that government can turn around and give it to those it deems worthy or its benevolent assistance; be it the poor or some bank, business, or foreign country in need of federal aid. We are taught that the desire to keep ALL of our income is unpatriotic and evil; that we MUST give of our earnings so that others can live a life equally as comfortable as our own.

From the moment we enter the work force to begin earning a living we have reached the ultimate realization of our worth to the government as a creator of income for its existence. Sure we get to pick and choose who will be our masters, but the fact that they are, in fact, masters never changes regardless of which party is in control.

We work to provide for the things we, and our families, need to survive; a home, food to eat, clothes to wear, and all other non-essential items that make our lives more comfortable. Yet from the moment we get that first paycheck our income is taxed to fund government; and depending upon how much you earn that tax can vary from 10 to 37 percent of our income. Every year we prove our loyalty as good subjects by filing a 1040; declaring how much we’ve earned and by paying, like loyal slaves, whatever else might be owed.

Yet there are those who cheat the system and get back far more than they had withheld from their pay over the course of the year. Has it ever crossed your mind how someone who had only $2-$3,000 withheld from their pay over the course of the year can get a $5,000 refund from the IRS? In essence, they are getting a refund consisting of taxes withheld from other people’s pay…for what; for the fact that they have more kids to claim on their 1040, or more deductions to itemize? How people can begin to consider that a fair system is beyond my ability to understand.

Yet, just as with your property tax, if you refuse to pay federal income taxes they can put a lien on your property and sell it to collect the money they say you owe them. Yet they, and those of their ilk seem to be above the law as it pertains to paying taxes. Look at Al Sharpton; who owes approximately $4.5 million in State and federal taxes. Then of course there are Justin Clark, Joe Alexander, and Deborah Cox-Rousch; all Trump appointees, who owe upwards of $50,000 each in unpaid taxes. But these are all important people, so they cannot be expected to live by the same laws they impose upon us peasants.

It’s bad enough that they can tax you for upwards of 1/3 of all your income, once they so graciously allow you to keep 2/3 of it they then turn around and impose a tax upon the things you purchase with it. Go to the store to buy a gallon of milk and you’ll pay a sales tax upon that milk. If you want a TV or a cell phone, you not only pay a tax upon the item itself, but you pay taxes upon the airwaves, or cable, that sends you the signals so that you can enjoy your purchases.

And then if you are wise you might decide to set aside some of your income for retirement or a rainy day. Well guess what, the interest you make off your savings is taxable; and if you invest in a retirement plan, such as a 401k, when you go to collect it you can be taxed upwards of 30% of that as well.

You can’t even get away from taxes after you die either. So you live your life being a good, honest, tax-paying citizen; then when you die the things you leave behind for your kids is taxed once again as it passes from your hands to theirs in the form of an inheritance tax.

From the moment we come kicking and screaming into the world we live our entire lives as slaves to the taxman. Not only that, all through our lives we are taught, no, encouraged might be the better word, to utilize credit to purchase things we don’t have the money to pay for. Credit cards, home loans, auto loans, student loans…we are told, “It’s okay if you don’t have any money, we’ll loan it to you…at 21% interest of course.”

America is the land of the free alright; we are free to work…so that our income can be taxed; we are free to buy things…as long as we pay the applicable sales tax; we are free to buy a home…as long as we pay our annual tribute for the privilege of living in it; and we are free to borrow money to fill our home with crap we don’t really need…as long as we make our payments plus whatever interest they charge us.

But by golly this is still the land of the free…isn’t it? Not so fast there with that freedom nonsense. The 1st Amendment protects our freedom of speech, religion and the press; as well as the right to protest and petition government for a redress of grievances. Well if I say something others don’t like then I am told to shut up because I’m ‘OFFENDING’ them. Is that what passes for freedom of speech these days?

If I send my kid to school they cannot pray because it too offends people. That not only violates my right to freedom of religion, it also violates my right to free speech; as prayer is speech between the faithful and their God.

I have the right to petition my government for a redress of grievances…right? When is the last time you tried doing that? You’ll be lucky if you get a form letter in response from your representative; let alone a detailed explanation of why they voted in favor or against any proposed legislation.

Try carrying a gun on your person without having first obtained a permit from some ‘authority’ figure and see how free you are. Try installing measures where the government cannot spy upon you in your home and see how quickly you become the subject of inquiries into your activities. Try partaking of the bounty that God has provide us for our sustenance without a hunting or a fishing license and see how free you truly are. Try living off the grid; being truly self-sufficient and see how fast some bureaucrat comes to your door telling you that you are in violation of a multitude of civil codes and must cease and desist in your activities.

But that’s okay people; as long as we still have the vote we are a free people. (And if you could have heard me say that aloud you would have noted the heavy sarcasm)

As I said, most people wouldn’t know freedom if it came to their door and introduced itself; and they certainly wouldn’t let it into their homes. That’s because freedom, and I mean TRUE freedom comes with the responsibility of accepting the consequences of the choices you make…and that terrifies most people. They want, no, they need a safety net in case they make poor, or stupid decisions. They want a big government in place to catch them when they fall and cover for their mistakes.

Try being free in this country and they’ll slap your ass in jail or kill you. But that’s the America we live in today; a country where people willingly sacrifice freedom for comfort and security. The problem with that is, although it might be a voluntary choice on your part, it isn’t voluntary on my part…your acquiescence to a government of unlimited power and authority is forcing servitude upon those who only wish to be left alone to live their lives as they see fit.

And that is why I no longer support government. I don’t see one, two, three, even a couple dozen people making a difference in the fact that government today exists to enslave the American people to a multitude of rules and taxes which restrict the very thing government was established to secure…LIBERTY.

So keep playing your game, voting for this candidate or that, but realize this, you will still pay taxes and you will still see your rights slowly being taken away from you; and one day you will wake up and ask yourself where they all went.

Maybe then you will see that I was right. But then again, maybe y’all will just keep on blaming Trump…or Obama; without ever coming to the realization that the goal of making you a slave to government was a bipartisan effort. If I had to bet money on it, I’d say people would go on blaming the ‘other’ side. When they come to that realization they will find a scapegoat; it will be Obama’s fault, Trumps fault, or whichever other scapegoat they choose to blame. But there is one thing I can assure you of; they won’t stand in front of a mirror and blame the person staring back at them.

(Graphic by my friend Louis Turner)

Here’s a little bit of trivia that I bet you weren’t aware of. For the first 8 weeks of our government’s existence it was basically impotent; meaning it could not enact any law whatsoever. That is due to the fact that it went into operation on March 4, 1789 and it wasn’t until April 30th that George Washington was sworn in as president. According to the Constitution, Congress must submit all proposed legislation to the President for his consideration; and if he does nothing for 10 days the bill automatically becomes law. But what if there is no president to submit these bills to; what then? But as soon as our government became, fully staffed, so to speak, it began the process of accumulating power unto itself…and it has been doing so ever since.

After retiring from public service, Thomas Jefferson kept actively informed on the affairs of the county he helped liberate from tyranny, and it was due to his being actively engaged that led him to write the following, “”Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction; to wit: by consolidation first and then corruption, its necessary consequence. The engine of consolidation will be the Federal judiciary; the two other branches the corrupting and corrupted instruments.” (Source: Letter to Nathaniel Macon, 1821)

There is a lot to be learned from that quote if people would just apply themselves and make an effort to discern what Jefferson meant by it. First off though one must understand what he meant by the word consolidation, and how it applies to the government. Our government was, and I emphasize the word WAS, one of specific powers when it was first established. Not only were the powers given government as a whole specifically enumerated, the various powers held by each branch of the government were also enumerated; with Congress having the power to created the law; the Executive being the one to ensure the laws are faithfully executed; and the Judiciary being the body designed to hear disputes under the law.

Yet, although this new form of government had a great deal of power; much more power than did the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, it was still delegated power given to it by those it was established to represent. Not only that, the powers which were NOT given to the federal government were retained by either the States or the people themselves; and it is ludicrous to think that an entity created by the will of the people can take it upon itself to decide the limits to their power.

So, when Jefferson says consolidation, I think he was speaking of the central government assuming powers which were reserved to the States and the people…centralizing all power in Washington D.C. In a letter to Charles Hammond in July 1821 Jefferson provides the basis for my belief on this, “When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated…”

All that being said, it is my belief that consolidation became absolute with the defeat of the Confederacy by the Union forces. After that State authority became something that was only true in theory, but in reality the federal government, from that point forward, held all the power. If one accepts that as being true, then from the end of the Civil War until now all we have seen is the spread of corruption within our government.

It is Jefferson’s final comment, “The engine of consolidation will be the Federal judiciary; the two other branches the corrupting and corrupted instruments”, that I would now like to spend a few moments discussing. I find it absolutely incredible how some people think that whatever the Supreme Court hands down as a decision is final and absolute. They are, after all, part of the government; and if there is one universal truth it is that government NEVER seeks to limit its own authority.

Sure, there may have been times when the Court handed down a decision which declared certain laws to be unconstitutional, but it was the Supreme Court itself that delivered a ruling declaring that there were hidden or implied powers to be found within the Constitution. In McCulloch v Maryland the SCOTUS first says, “This Government is acknowledged by all to be one of enumerated powers. The principle that it can exercise only the powers granted to it would seem too apparent to have required to be enforced by all those arguments which its enlightened friends, while it was depending before the people, found it necessary to urge; that principle is now universally admitted….”

On the surface that may seem to be a declaration that our government is one of specific and limited powers, but the Court then goes on to say, “A Constitution, to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It would probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves.”

What the Court is talking about is construction; the way in which constitutional power is interpreted. Let me give you an example; the Necessary and Proper Clause. Depending upon how that is interpreted our government can assume a multitude of powers not specifically found within the Constitution itself. For instance, if I were to tell you to go to the store and buy the ingredients for supper tonight, you would have the power to buy whatever items were required to make whatever it is you were planning to eat. However, under a loose interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause you might say to yourself, “Well, I need a new car to go to the store and carry all those items in.” That would be beyond the spirit and intention of my having told you to go to the store and buy all that is needed to cook supper; but that’s exactly what the constructionist policy supported by the Courts decision in McCulloch v Maryland has allowed.

Madison warned about this loose interpretation of constitutional powers when he said,”If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” If that is the case, then our government has taken upon itself to be the sole decider of what powers it shall hold. History has shown that once that happens the rights of those government was established to secure soon vanish.

It’s funny that it took less than a decade for our government to begin exercising powers that were beyond those given it; powers which caused a rift in the Executive Branch between the President and the Vice-President. When President John Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts his own Vice-President, Thomas Jefferson wrote the following in opposition to them, “Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government . . . . and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force. . . . that the government created by this compact [the Constitution for the United States] was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.”

If you did not notice, Jefferson did not say the people are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to the government, he said the States were not united on that principle. I think people have forgotten that this system of government we have was not established to represent them and them alone; it was also established to represent the States in their sovereign capacity as well. Why else would they have created a Senate; with its members being chosen by the State Legislatures?

The process of consolidation, therefore, must include the gradual diminishing of State authority and State say in what laws the central government enacts. It is my belief that the final act of consolidation was the defeat of the Confederacy, in that in that single moment in time a States right to nullify federal laws that violate their rights and sovereignty, or withdraw from a Union that had become destructive of the ends for which it was established, was forever eradicated. With the defeat of the Confederacy the government became supreme in all things; accomplishing exactly what Jefferson feared.

It’s ironic as hell that, in Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.” I say it is ironic because it was Hamilton’s vision of a strong consolidated central government that Lincoln finally accomplished with the defeat of the Confederacy. Since 1865 the only thing that has changed is the extent to which our government has been corrupted.

There are a couple of Latin legal terms that I would like to address for a moment now; de jure and de facto. In legal terminology something that is de jure is something that is in accordance with established law, while something that is de facto is something that is in accordance with reality, or how things actually are. Right now our government exists as a de facto government, meaning it exists, but it is NOT in accordance with the law that created it.

Yet with all that I have said our government still maintains whatever power it has over us by our consent. If every American in this country were to withdraw their consent for this government it would wither and die. If we were all to refuse to pay our taxes and abide by the laws it passes, what could it do to all of us. It needs us to continue to believe in its authority to maintain its power over us. As long as it can maintain the charade that it is legitimate then the people will support it; regardless of whether it is controlled by Republicans or Democrats.

This two party paradigm gives people the illusion that their voice matters in what laws our government passes; when the truth is that most candidates from both parties are all puppets dancing to the tune of the same masters; and we are the puppets who dance to the laws they enact which are gradually turning us from freemen and women into slaves.

This two party paradigm is a poison which has infiltrated government at both the federal and State levels. Today the States are either governed by Republicans or Democrats; meaning that the platform of the political party that holds control of a State is what determines which laws are passed and which aren’t. No longer is the State’s best interests, or the interests of the people the driving force behind the laws being passed; it is whatever serves the agenda of the political party machine.

Therefore, if the political parties are the ones deciding policy, then doesn’t it seem logical that if the State governments and the federal government are run by either Republicans or Democrats then they are both acting off the same script and that the Constitution and our rights are secondary; if of any concern at all?

It has been said that a people get the government they deserve. Ben Franklin said something very similar on the final day of the Constitutional Convention, “I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”

If we, as a people, become ignorant of the purposes for and powers given our government, then aren’t we utlimately to blame when our government assumes undelegated powers, or makes a tyrannical use of its power? In an Independence Day Message, a century after the Civil War, President James Garfield made the following comment, “Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature…. If the next centennial does not find us a great nation … it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”

People today choose who they will vote for, not based upon how well those running for office show that they will support and defend the Constitution and safeguard our liberty, but upon the promises to do things for them that the voters find of importance. These things range from defending us from terrorism to providing programs for the needy. When we disregard the purpose for which our government was originally established we allow corruption to enter, and thrive within our government. Putting all of our hope and trust in one man, be it a Trump or an Obama, to make America into our vision of what America should be only empowers government and limits our freedom.

We are the ultimate check on the power government holds, and we can only exercise that check when we are knowledgeable about what powers our government was supposed to hold, and what purposes it was supposed to serve. As long as we keep voting within the confines of the two party system; while ignoring the actual purpose for which our government was established, ain’t a damned thing going to change…not really. The economy might get somewhat better, more people might be taken care of, but government will continue to grow and our rights will continue to be taken from us.

And that is why I no longer vote in federal elections; I refuse to vote for an entity that does not care about the limits that have been imposed upon its power. I refuse to vote for candidates who place party platforms over the Constitution and Bill of Rights. The lesser of two evils is still evil…and I’ve had about all I can stand of an evil government. So I simply have withdrawn my consent to participate in selecting between one of two criminals.

The answer, if there is one, is for people to abandon their hope that the federal government will fix all that is wrong in this country. The answer is to focus on State and local government and hope that those they elect will have the courage and the wisdom to stand up for both the rights of the States and the rights of the people who inhabit those States. But to put your hope and trust into a de facto government that, over a century and a half ago abandoned the Constitution, is to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. And you know what Einstein said about that right; he called it the very definition of ins

George Washington was the first and only president to be elected who was not aligned with any particular political party. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, as the Commander of the Continental Army, he was the obvious choice to be the first president under the new government established by the Constitution. Secondly, and possibly more important, as our system of government was in its infancy political parties had yet to become the potent force they are today.

After serving for 8 years as President Washington decided to not seek a third term, to pass the reins on to someone else. In an address he wrote to the people of America Washington warned of the dangers of political parties, or factions as he called them, “However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Yet it was during his administration that political parties began to emerge in America; and had these parties existed prior to him having been elected I truly believe that he would have aligned himself with one of them rather than stay neutral. I will get back to this in a moment, but for the time being I would like to discuss how I see political parties as having developed way back then.

Two years prior to the election of George Washington a convention was held in the city of Philadelphia to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation. However, instead of restricting themselves to the wishes of their respective State Legislatures, these delegates decided to form an entirely new system of government. Since they were basically starting from scratch, all manner of suggestions were offered by the delegates as it pertains to what form this government should take and what powers it would hold.

On June 18th, Alexander Hamilton, who beforehand had remained silent, stood up and offered his suggestions for a new system of government. From Madison’s Notes on the Constitutional Convention, we read that Hamilton was, “… particularly opposed to that from N. Jersey, being fully convinced, that no amendment of the Confederation, leaving the States in possession of their Sovereignty could possibly answer the purpose.”

You see, Alexander Hamilton was not born in this country, he came here just prior to the Revolution, and it was during the Revolution that made his name during it as George Washington’s aide de camp. His loyalty and allegiance was not to any State, unlike many of the other delegates; his loyalty was to the country that had adopted him. Had you asked any of the people alive back then to whom they owed their allegiance, many of them would have replied by saying the State they resided in. For instance, had you asked John Adams or Thomas Jefferson about their citizenship, they would have answered either Massachusetts or Virginia. They did not consider themselves to be citizens of America; rather they considered themselves to be citizens of the State they lived in. However, Hamilton owed no such allegiance; even though he had taken up residence in New York.

So it is not surprising that Hamilton would not be bound by any allegiance to any State when he proposed his plan for a new system of government; his loyalty was to the country as a whole. It, therefore, is also not surprising that to Hamilton, State sovereignty was an impediment to a strong centralized government, and he would have preferred that it be done away with entirely.

Why is this important? Well, it is important because Alexander Hamilton was a nationalist; he felt that, for America to survive; for it to become a great and mighty nation, State sovereignty and independence must yield, or be surrendered entirely, to the authority of the central government they were in the process of creating.

Hamilton’s suggested plan was soundly rejected; showing that a great many believed that, even though they were establishing a new form of government to replace the one established by the Articles of Confederation, this new system should remain more federal in nature than it should national.

Today the words federal and national are interchangeable in regards to our system of government, but back in 1787 they were understood to mean two entirely different things. I could take pages to explain the differences between a federal and a national form of government, but let it suffice to say that under a federal form of government the component parts, (the States), agree to surrender a portion of their sovereignty and authority to a centralized government, while under a national form of government all power is held by the central authority.

Having just defeated the British to obtain their independence from an all powerful centralized or national form of government, the delegates were reluctant to create a system modeled upon that form. Therefore, they established a federal one; one in which the States retained all powers not granted the central government, yet with the central government being supreme in all those powers specifically given it. This was reaffirmed by the inclusion of the 10th Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Although Hamilton acquiesced, and even wrote a majority of the Federalist Essays urging ratification of the Constitution, he never abandoned his goal of establishing a purely national form of government. It was due to the weakness of the plan provided, and the particular wording of it, that caused Patrick Henry to fear that a fully national form of government would eventually come out of it. That is one of the reasons Mr. Henry stated the following during the Virginia Ratifying Assembly, “The fate of this question and of America may depend on this: Have they said, we, the States? Have they made a proposal of a compact between states? If they had, this would be a confederation: It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government. The question turns, Sir, on that poor little thing-the expression, We, the people, instead of the States, of America.”

The seeds from which sprung the first political parties in America were sown during George Washington’s time as president; coming from Hamilton; who was his Secretary of Treasury, and Thomas Jefferson; who was his Secretary of State. Hamilton sought to urge, or nudge Washington towards a more nationalized form of government, while Jefferson sought to keep it a more federal one. Unfortunately for America, Washington was more inclined to listen to Hamilton than he was Jefferson. Therefore, as Alexander Hamilton is the father of the modern day progressive party, I believe had that party been in existence at the time Washington was elected, he would have chosen it over a more conservative party; such as the one which formed up behind Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

Yet it is because of this division of beliefs between those two men as to the extent of power exercised by the central government that the first political parties emerged; the Federalists, (which is a joke really, because they were anything but FEDERAL in nature), and the Democratic-Republicans, later shortened to Democrats who sought to keep government small and limit its power while retaining State sovereignty. In short, Hamilton was the first liberal, or progressive, and Jefferson, and later Madison were the first conservatives.

In 2018 when one mentions liberals or conservatives people automatically associate those terms with Democrats and Republicans. Yet in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s a conservative would have been one who sought to govern according to a strict interpretation of the powers given government by the Constitution, while a liberal would have been one who sought a more open interpretation of the powers given government; finding implied powers within those specifically enumerated.

As America grew, most of the immigrants who came here did so for the jobs and opportunities they could not have back in their native countries. They, like Hamilton, owed no allegiance or loyalty to the State they chose to reside in; rather their loyalty was to the country that had opened its arms to them. As the North was where the majority of these opportunities were, the Federalists grew in power and began exercising it to fulfill Hamilton’s dream of a great and mighty empire; with government being used to benefit business and industry.

However, for some reason those chosen to be President were primarily Southern Democrats; who acted as some sort of a brake, or restraining force upon the expansion of federal authority over the States. Even so, there were times, such as the Nullification Crisis, where the excesses of governmental authority to tax that the Democrats were forced to exert their sovereignty by attempting to nullify laws passed by the federal government.

However, in 1860 that balance between State and federal authority shifted towards the federal government with the election of a Republican President; Abraham Lincoln. The South feared that with the election of a Republican that whatever limited restraints had been imposed upon federal authority would now vanish; and yes, this included federal interference in the institution of slavery. The South now had a choice to make, either stay in the Union and submit to federal authority no matter how oppressive it became, or leave the Union and form a system of government of their own. They chose option B and Abraham Lincoln initiated civil war by sending troops into the newly formed Confederacy to compel them into remaining in the Union.

It is interesting to note that, prior to Lincoln calling from 75,000 volunteers to suppress, what he called rebellion in the Southern States, Virginia had remained loyal to the Union. Yet when Lincoln called for troops to invade those States that had chosen to secede, Virginia chose to leave the Union as well. In his response to Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Governor Letcher of Virginia wrote, “In reply to this communication, I have only to say that the militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern States, and a requisition made upon me for such an object — an object, in my judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution or the act of 1795 — will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the Administration has exhibited towards the South.”

History books call this period of American History the Civil War. I have heard it called America’s Second War for Independence, or the War of Northern Aggression. What it really was though, was a war waged against State sovereignty and the federalist ideal as espoused by Jefferson and Madison. Those men believed that, as creators of the federal government, the States and the people were not subject to unlimited and unbridled power; that they could, if circumstances called for it, chose to revoke their consent to being governed by the centralized authority and resume their status as an independent State.

The delegates to the Virginia Ratifying Assembly made that point clear when they declared, “We the Delegates of the People of Virginia duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the General Assembly and now met in Convention having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us to decide thereon Do in the name and in behalf of the People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.”

Yet Virginia was not the ONLY State to make such a declaration; a Northern State, New York, also declared, “That the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness…”

That principle was enshrined in the birth certificate of our country, the Declaration of Independence, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Even Jefferson, in his Inaugural Address, acknowledged this as being the right of the people, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

Although the Union Army fought against the Confederate Army, it was upon this very principle, consent of the governed, that Abraham Lincoln declared war upon. Lincoln believed that obedience to government was not by consent, it was mandatory; and that when any State chose to revoke their consent it was his right as President, nay, his DUTY, to use force against them to compel their obedience.

Abraham Lincoln ran the Declaration of Independence, and the idea of a federalist form of government through a paper shredder; replacing it with Hamilton’s vision of a fully national form of government; with the States as mere subsidiary appendages to it.

I find it both interesting and ironic that Democrats today are the ones primarily behind the tearing down of all these Civil War monuments dedicated to men like Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, yet those men were staunch Democrats. I also find it ironic that Republicans today call themselves conservatives, when in truth, Abraham Lincoln, (who was a Republican) was in fact liberal in his understanding of what powers the Executive could wield to compel the States into obeying federal authority.

Not only did Lincoln deny that the States had the right to revoke their consent to being governed by ANY form of government, he also declared war upon the Constitution itself and the Bill of Rights by violating many of the provisions found within those documents.

For instance, Lincoln violated the freedom of the press by shutting down newspapers and jailing newsmen who wrote in opposition to his war. He suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus; denying those imprisoned the right to face a judge and have charges brought against them. He marched troops into a Union State to suspend their State Legislature before it could vote on whether to secede and join the Confederacy. With his full knowledge, his generals waged a cruel and inhumane war against, not only those serving in uniform against him, but against all those loyal to the Confederate cause. Vast tracts of land, including the Shenandoah Valley and Sherman’s March to the Sea; where he conducted a scorched Earth policy of leaving a path of burnt wasteland in his wake as he made his way from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia.

Had there been the Nuremberg Laws regarding war crimes, it is quite possible that Abraham Lincoln would have been charged with war crimes and found guilty of violating the basic human rights of an entire region of the country; the South.

Then of course there was the actions of the Republican controlled Congress after the war. Instead of allowing the State to resume their status as sovereign entities and electing those they saw fit to represent them in Congress, the government decided to treat them like conquered territories; selecting Union Generals to govern over them; denying them of their right to a Republican form of government as found in Article 4 of the Constitution.

Of these Republicans there stands one Thaddeus Stevens who was behind much of the vengeful retribution unleashed upon the South after the end of the Civil War. Stevens not only sought to punish the South, he chose to declare war upon the very Constitution which created the government he held a position in. In one statement Stevens said, “The talk of restoring the Union like it was, and the Constitution as it is, is one of the absurdities which I have heard repeated until I have become sick of it. There are many things which make such an event impossible. This Union never shall, with my consent, be restored under the constitution as it is … The Union as it was and the Constitution as it is–God forbid it. We must conquer the Southern states and hold them as conquered provinces.”

Not only that, Stevens also perverted the entire relationship between those who created the federal government and the government itself when he said the following in a speech delivered on December 18, 1865, “…they are therefore only dead as to all national and political action, and will remain so until the Government shall breathe into them the breath of life anew and permit them to occupy their former position. In other words, that they are not out of the Union, but are only dead carcasses lying within the Union. In either case, it is very plain that it requires the action of Congress to enable them to form a State government and send representatives to Congress.”

The Confederacy may have been defeated, but the individual States that comprised it were still States, and it is an absurd perversion of thought for Stevens to say that Congress can recreate them from the ashes of the war. But it is not surprising, as it is in line with Lincoln’s own way of thinking that the federal authority is supreme and sovereign in all things, and that the States exist to serve the government.

Abraham Lincoln’s war, no matter what you call it, fulfilled Alexander Hamilton’s vision of a fully national government; and America has never been the same since.

After the war ended, and Reconstruction was over, the Democratic Party had to change its way of thinking if it wished to remain a viable political force. Their former stance as defenders of a limited form of government and State’s rights became irrelevant after the defeat of the Confederacy. It was then that America saw the Democrats transform themselves into the party of the people.

This gave rise to Democrats like Franklin Delano Roosevelt; who gave us the New Deal, and Lyndon Baines Johnson; who gave us the Great Society. If it were not for the defeat of the Confederacy America may very well have never seen the likes of either a Bill Clinton or Barack Obama either. The Civil War forever altered the political landscape in America. Gone are the distinctions between true conservatism and liberalism; to be replaced by varying shades of liberalism. Both parties today refuse to adhere to the limits imposed upon government by the Constitution; albeit for different purposes. Yet when it comes to major issues involving our rights or our being taxed to fund programs that are blatantly unconstitutional, both parties are identical in their belief that government should exercise that authority; and that for the people to oppose such authority makes them treasonous or criminals.

In the America we live in today we fight amongst ourselves along political party lines; over issues it was never intended our government have any business legislating upon; and upon our stances on societal needs; such as abortion or gay rights. Yet rarely, if ever, does talk of what the Constitution originally authorized our government to do enter into political discussions; and when it does those who speak of it are marginalized and ridiculed as radicals.

Today America does not have a truly conservative party; what it has are Liberals, and Liberal Lites in the form of the Republican Party. If you vote for candidates from either of the two parties you are NOT voting for the Constitution and Bill of Rights, you are voting for those who seek to exercise unconstitutional authority over you. The only difference is the extent of and purposes for which that unconstitutional authority is to be used.

As much as I despise the things most liberals stand for, I do have to give them some credit for being somewhat honest about what they believe in.
Conservatives, on the other hand, are blind to the fact that their party is no better than the liberals in its support and defense of the Constitution; and this includes their new golden boy Donald Trump.

You Republicans demonize Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, yet it was a Republican, Abraham Lincoln, who tore down the framework upon which this system of government was built, and it is upon the ruins of that destruction that your precious GOP has built its platform. Y’all call yourselves conservatives…you wouldn’t know real conservatism if it came and bit you in the ass!

When do you think the American Revolution began? Was it with the signing of the Declaration of Independence; was it with the opening skirmish at Lexington and Concord? I think it became inevitability the moment the Stamp Act was passed in 1765. This one small tax on printed goods was the first in a long train of events which culminated in the Colonies deciding they didn’t want to be governed by British rule anymore.

Therefore, if the Stamp Act was the opening act of the American Revolution, what would you say was the opening act of the so-called Civil War? I may be alone in thinking this, but I think that the implementation of the plan for a government, as outlined by the Constitution, was the first of many events that eventually led to the South seeking its independence from the system of government they had helped bring to life just 70 some odd years earlier. I’ll get to that in more detail in a moment, but for the time being I’d like to discuss another issue that is of concern to me.

I am constantly hearing all this rubbish from those on the political right about how Barack Obama was America’s worst president ever. Whether it was due to his policies or the divisiveness he brought to this country people tell me Obama will go down in the history books as America’s worst president. When I hear that it is all I can do to not fall on the ground in a fit of laughter. Barack Obama was NOT our worst president, not by a long shot; Abraham Lincoln was. Now I’m not giving Obama a free pass; he was a lousy president; it’s just that he wasn’t the worst we’ve ever had.

Abraham Lincoln brought war and death to American soil on a scale heretofore never seen, and never repeated. Under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln entire tracts of land were left barren due to his total war against the South. Under the leadership of Lincoln the entire Southern economy and infrastructure was left in ruins. Under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence were torn down and replaced with government without consent. Under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln free speech was lost to all those who opposed his war; with newspapers being shut down and journalists who opposed him imprisoned for speaking their minds. Under Abraham Lincoln Habeas Corpus was suspended, State Legislatures were restricted from convening so that they could vote on the issue of secession, and he even, temporarily, issued an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court because he had ruled against Lincoln.

Then, to add insult to injury, after the war ended, his party, the Republican Party treated the South like conquered territories; dividing them into military districts and setting former Union Generals in positions of authority over them. The Southern States were also forced to accept certain measures that they disagreed with before the ruling Republican Party would allow them to send representatives back to Congress to represent them.

And yet Abraham Lincoln is idolized, with millions visiting his monument every year; all while monuments dedicated to the heroes of the Civil War have their monuments torn to the ground based upon the lies and half truths we have been taught in school about this period of American History which saw the death of more than half a million Americans; more than in any other war America has fought since.

If one would but listen they could hear the crying of truth and justice; saying let the truth about the Civil War be heard, let it have its day in the courtroom of public opinion; and only then, when all the facts have been heard, let the public render a verdict of guilt upon those responsible for this tragic period of American History that saw families torn apart and the entire framework upon which our system of government rested upon rent asunder.

But as I said, I believe the Civil War became inevitable the moment the Constitution was ratified and the government it outlined went into effect. Had the government stuck to the few specific powers given it by the Constitution, and promised it would exercise during the ratification assemblies, the Civil War might have been avoided; or at least postponed. The moment the Washington administration got its feet on the ground Alexander Hamilton began to implement his policy of using government to create a mighty American Empire with a strong government that helped grow American business and industry.

Almost from its inception as a free and independent country, America was divided into two distinct regions; the more industrialized North and the agricultural South. As there was no income tax at the time, the money needed to fund the government came from tariffs and duties imposed upon goods. To help grow Northern industry and businesses the government began to impose tariffs upon manufactured goods imported into the United States; similar to what President Trump is now proposing to give American businesses an advantage over foreign markets.

However, there were no tariffs imposed upon the raw materials used to produce these goods. What this did was limit the ability of the South to buy foreign made goods due to the high cost associated with them due to the tariffs imposed upon all imported goods. But, at the same time, the North, which manufactured goods from raw materials, enjoyed a free market where they were able to choose between buying raw materials from either the South of from foreign markets.

The cost of having goods transported to the South from the North was almost as bad as the cost of buying goods from foreign markets with the tariffs added to them, so the South was hit with a double whammy; they had to pay the high cost of purchasing the goods made from the raw materials they produced, and fight against foreign competition because there were no protective tariffs on the raw materials their economy produced. At times these tariffs were upwards of 45%, so you can see that the South was being exploited; not only were they paying higher prices for goods and facing unbridled competition from foreign markets, the money being collected from these tariffs was flowing Northward to build up the infrastructure of the North; such as railroads and other internal improvements; without nary a penny of it being used to aid the South.

This, by the way, was one of the things Patrick Henry feared about the proposed Constitution, and why he argued so fervently against its ratification. On June 5, 1788 Henry declared, “You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your Government.” Yet from the moment George Washington was sworn in as our first President, he chose to ignore Thomas Jefferson’s pleadings; instead choosing to implement the policies of Alexander Hamilton which put America squarely on the path which led to the industrial North plundering the wealth of the South.

You may think I am overstating things, but in 1828 Senator Thomas Hart Benton, (D. Missouri) delivered a speech to Congress in which he said, “I feel for the sad changes, which have taken place in the South, during the last fifty years. Before the Revolution, it was the seat of wealth, as well as hospitality. Money, and all it commanded, abounded there. But how is it now? All this is reversed. Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in regions north of the Potomac; and this in the face of the fact, that the South, in four staples alone, has exported produce, since the Revolution, to the value of eight hundred millions, of dollars; and the North has exported comparatively nothing….Under Federal legislation, the exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue….Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths, of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government; and of this great sum, annually furnished by them, nothing, or next to nothing is returned to them, in the shape of government expenditures. That expenditure flows in an opposite direction—it flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream. This is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North…taking from the South, and returning nothing to it.”

Bet you weren’t taught that in history class. But I bet you were taught that the Civil War was about saving the Union and ending the reprehensible practice of slavery; which is why the Confederacy is painted in such a bad light these days; because after all, if they were fighting against the Union and its noble cause, they must have been fighting to keep their slaves…right?

WRONG!!!

If slavery was all the South was fighting for, (which it wasn’t), then wouldn’t you think that any peaceful means of keeping their slaves would have been preferable to war? Ever hear of something called the Corwin Amendment? The Corwin Amendment, had it gone into effect, would have been the 13th amendment to the Constitution…and it would have made slavery permanent and irrevocable in America. The Corwin Amendment had already been passed by both Houses of Congress and was on its way to the States for ratification when the war broke out.

The text of the amendment states, “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.” Abraham Lincoln supported ratification of this amendment, stating, “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution–which amendment, however, I have not seen–has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” (Lincoln’s Inaugural Address)

Therefore, if slavery was the ONLY issue the South was fighting for, why didn’t they just adopt this Corwin Amendment and stay in the Union? Yes the South utilized slave labor to an extent that was greater than in the North, but slavery was not the reason they seceded, and it certainly wasn’t the cause of the war itself. The war came about when Lincoln refused to let them leave the Union; believing it was his duty to hold the Union together; even if it meant waging war against the South to do so.

You see, Lincoln was not so much concerned with maintaining the Union; there was an ulterior motive. Had the South been impoverished I think he wouldn’t have cared one way or another if they had chosen to secede. But they weren’t impoverished, they were the source of wealth which the government had been plundering; and if he allowed them to secede his government would have crumbled into ruin; so he couldn’t let them go.

A key to this is found in Lincoln’s 1862 letter to Horace Greeley, where he states, “The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be the Union as it was…” meaning business as usual with the continued plunder of Southern wealth to fund his government.

Your history books don’t teach you that some in the North supported the South’s right to secede, while others, associated with business and commerce were in a tissy fit over the secession of the Southern ‘cotton’ States. Newspapers across the North decried the South’s secession from the Union; and gave their reasons why they opposed letting the South go in peace.

On December 10, 1860 the Chicago Daily Times published the following, “In one single blow our foreign commerce may be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwise trade would pass into other hands. One half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruin. Let the South adopt the free trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow.”

On February 19, 1861 the Union Democrat Manchester, out of New Hampshire, published the following, “The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing… it is very clear that the South gains by this process and we lose. No…we must not let the South go.”

In an 1861 editorial entitled, What Shall Be Done For a Revenue, the Chicago Daily times wrote, “That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the port must be closed to importations from abroad is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe. There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop.”

None of those articles make mention of slavery; their only concern is the harm allowing the South to peacefully secede would cause to Northern businesses and the revenue stream of the government. Heck, Lincoln himself said, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” (Also taken from his Inaugural Address)

Lincoln furthermore stated, “If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.” (Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862)

There is so much more I could go into, but I fear I might lose many due to my bombarding them with too much information. I hope that what I have said has been enough to cause you to question all that you have been taught about the so-called Civil War, and also cause you to seek out more information regarding this period of American History which saw our government go from being a servant of the people to their master.

One other thought before I close. Have you ever stopped to wonder, that is if you even knew, why no Confederate Generals or leaders ever stood trial for treason against the United States? Could it be that had they gone to trial they would have been vindicated because at the time secession was believed to be a State’s right? Could it be that the cause of the war could not have been shifted from economic plunder to the freeing of the slaves; placing the blame for the war squarely upon the shoulders of one man; Abraham Lincoln?

These are just a few of the reasons I believe Lincoln was our worst president ever, and why I spit on both him and his legacy. If you have any integrity, any virtue, you will seek out the truth regarding this period of American History and revise your opinions on who were the bad guys in this conflict. Maybe then, instead of removing Confederate Monuments we can call for the removal of the monument dedicated to America’s worst president ever; Abraham Lincoln.