Sunday, December 31, 2006

Foundations Shaking

Many pundits and websites put forth the idea that Iran’s real crime against the world is that they are not playing ball with the global financial puppetmasters who control the money supplies. I include myself in this list of pundits. I think the idea has merit, although I do not trust this Ahmadinejad fellow. In order for dollar world hegemony to be maintained, all the major middle east oil countries must sell their oil only for US greenbacks. This arrangement stems from the post-Bretten Woods system that resulted from Nixon closing the gold window completely in 1971.

A major oil producer like Iran shifting its financial transactions from dollars to euros would greatly undermine the need for other countries to hold dollars in reserve. If countries like China and Japan who hold literally hundreds of billions - if not trillions - in reserve decide they no longer need to do so, and sold off these dollar assets, those dollars would come back into circulation in America. The result: insane hyperinflation overnight.

Read the rest - worthy of consideration

Friday, December 29, 2006

R.I.P. Gerald Ford

This is a man that will likely have but a footnote if looked at from a long view of history. I think we can say one thing about him without equivocation. He could be rightly considered a model for other men that wish to become president. He was unimposing, did not meddle, forced no massive social or economic schemes on the American people, did not invade other nations without just cause and basically did his job meekly and quietly.


Pat Buchanan has a wonderful first-hand account.

Mark also makes a reasonable observation.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Proxies

A chaplain friend of mine that spent time in Ethiopia as a missionary before entering the Army relates to me that the Christian Church in Ethiopia is exceptionally devout and uncompressed by bad theology. Perhaps all this Islamic Courts versus Ethiopia stuff may serve to make reality the notion held by some that a real crusade exists.

But then again maybe not. Evangelical Christians are not terribly concerned with the Christian plight and exodus from Iraq as a result of our war there. They for the most part are not terribly concerned with the plight of Lebanese Christians nor the exodus of Christians from Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

None of that matters in the distorted world view of neoconservatism nor the wrong-headed theological view of the manmade nation of Israel as being the Biblical people of Israel.

To the neocons the Ethiopians are merely proxies doing what they wish they could do.

It is all none of our business, just like Johnny said.

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Merry Christmas

God bless you and your family. La Shawn has the rest of the story.

Or follow the hour by hour Christmas postings on The Joshiah Project.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Middle-Aged Reflections

On this, the occasion of my 39th birthday, I have a few things on my mind. Mind you, 39 does not have the significance of 18, 21, 30 or 40. As best as I can figure it (optimistically) I am at the exact half-way point of my life. I work out regularly, I generally eat right and I do not smoke and I seldom drink. I believe if my profession does not kill me I can make it to 78.

Without sounding like some cliche movie, my life has been well-lived up to this point. I made mistakes, many of them. There have been disappointments and missed opportunities but ultimately I would not change anything of significance.

I have traveled the world, I have met people and experienced cultures that most of the world only read about. I have seen all the great wonders and stood where it all began. I have known great men, lived with them and moved in their shadows. Not the great men of industry but men of character and integrity.

I have faced death and found that in those times my faith sustained me. I have experienced hardships that, looking back, I can hardly now imagine, and through it all I remained the man my parents raised me to be.

I was young and wild once and knew women on several continents, but Providence called me back to my upbringing and provided me with a lady to love and cherish.

I am not special, in reality I am just blessed and truly I am nothing more than a miserable sinner forgiven by grace.

I was fortunate to have been born in and spend significant portions of my youth in South Carolina - during a time that the state and her people still retained a sense of culture and identity. To me, it makes perfect sense for beer joints to close at midnight on Saturday and for stores to be closed on Sunday. I fail to see why any self-respecting decent Southerner would see that any different.

I recall the utter joy of hearing the regimental band play "Dixie" Friday afternoons as we cadets marched off the parade field. That meant the weekend was about to officially begin and we acknowledged that fact with a hearty rebel yell. I fail to see why anyone should have a problem with such a practice.

I remember a time when real men spoke their mind and said the truth as they saw it. There was no thought of labeling a person for ideas and words - only deeds mark the tenor of a man. I fail to see how our current gender-neutral, politically-correct speech is an improvement on what was.

I remember my childhood home in which my mother spent 18 years of my life being my mother full-time. The material things we had my father went out into the world and earned. The intangibles my mother provided every day and every night. I fail to see how mothers dropping their children off for someone else to raise is an improvement on what I enjoyed.

I fail to see the sense in many things that go on in our world today. Frankly I am mad as blazes. Our federal government is run by a bunch of greedy, paternalistic, lying, socialist bastards. Our state governments are run by simpletons and lackeys - not a single statesman resides within their midst. Our population is no better - mindless drones, concerned only with acquiring the latest gadget or trinket. Most of the fools living around us would (and do) mortgage their entire future to debt just to have "things". We are a society of slaves - and we became so because of our own greed.

Politically we have bought into the charade of a two party system that ultimately offers no real choice. There is no real difference in either of the two major parties. Many fools dedicate their lives and efforts to dogmatically defending their side of that common coin but it all springs from a shared ideology - a flawed ideology.

We live in a society that condones and protects the murder of unborn children while at the same time promoting illicit sex and sexuality. Something within the natural order is out of balance.

We will send fellows like me to the Iraq/Syrian border to protect the sovereignty of Iraq but we fail to do anything to really protect our own borders.

We have absolutely no respect for our elders, we treat them as a bother and shuffle them off to a "long term care facility" for someone else to change their diapers. I remember as a very young child folks sitting up with the dead - they were loyal even up to the point the person was buried, they would never consider sending them away when they were still alive. I suppose such loyalties get in the way of "careers".

We preach equality and follow that up with silly quotas and affirmative action plans. Federal judges still to this day rule over local issues and dictate which child goes to what school. We are 40 years past the civil rights movement - it is time for every man to stand on his own merit.

We have taken the "woman's equality" issue entirely too far. Women are not equal to men in all categories - women are better at some things and men are better at others. We let our daughters dress and act like whores and then send them off to college to do who knows what. How is that just? Have fathers completely lost touch with their role in raising and protecting their young ladies?

Men are no longer men - we are much more effeminate. We have homosexuals, metrosexuals and your run of the mill pencil-necked geeks. We have few men that talk straight, act decent and know how to work all day if they had to (real work). We neither protect or respect our women nor do we lead our families through hard-work and good example.

We shuttle our children off to public schools that are little more than statist factories churning out good drones. Little real education occurs within those places - a lot of indoctrination takes place however.

We are a grotesquely fat society, the converse is the plastic narcissistic part of our culture. Each shows the worst sides of human nature, selfishness and greed.

I know most people do not have a clue what I am talking about, I am however informed by my principles and convictions. The world is turned upside down. It all makes me mad - but more so sad. My children deserve much better.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Pandora's Box

Al-Qaida's power and influence is growing in Mogadishu and elsewhere in Somalia, a U.S. assistant secretary of State says.

Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary for Africa, said Somalia's Council of Islamic Courts is controlled by al-Qaida, The Washington Post reported Monday.

That creates a Taliban-like situation in a country apparently prepared to go to war with neighboring, predominantly Christian Ethiopia over a border dispute, the report said. (read the rest)

How interesting this is. Not only was our blood and effort wasted in Somalia the first time - apparently the invasion of Afghanistan will ultimately come to naught as well.

In this age of non-state actors asserting power once reserved for the nation-state it is impossible to settle an issue with an invasion alone. Ideologies cannot be merely defeated; they either die of natural deaths or every single adherent must be killed. The ideology of al-Qaida will live on - and the US lacks the will power or resources to chase it down in every valley and village that it may take refuge.

We foolishly opened Pandora's Box in 1990, or perhaps the British opened it in 1920 and then again maybe it was opened in 1947 - we can not close it now regardless of when or how it was opened. The pestilence will either die out or consume us.

Monday, December 18, 2006

I Support Clinton/Obama in 2008!

I officially and unequivocally endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barrack Hussein Obama for president/vice president in 2008. I think that ticket would do as much for the United States as the Lincoln presidency did in 1861. As the Rebellion blog states:

Yes, the Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barrack Hussein Obama ticket would be unbeatable—as a shot in the arm for the Southern Movement. I remember the Clinton years as a fertile time for the Cause. Conservatives of all stripes despised the Clintons, and the League’s message that Slick Willie’s administration was not a fluke, but the epitome of what the Federal government had become struck a chord. Membership grew with every fresh scandal, and new League chapters popped up all over the South.

Bill Clinton was indeed no fluke - he was a shining example of socialism come home to roost. Much like George Bush representing all that is real about the fascist aspects of republican ideology, Clinton/Obama would hold out for all to see the real agenda of socialism (national healthcare, cradle to grave government intrusion and paternalism).

The side of right lost the battle in 1861 - probably deservingly so, for we were incapable of solving a social ill. A significant portion of what was good about our system of government died in that conflict. As Jefferson Davis said after that war (and I paraphrase) - the issues for which the conflict were fought have not died, they will rise again, in another time. The time is now if ever.

Perhaps for my people a Clinton/Obama presidency would refocus our identity and highlight that the Federal Government and the false two party system has left us. The Bush presidency certainly opened the eyes of folks in Vermont and elsewhere to the fascist tendencies of the GOP - I think we Southrons need a dose of Hillary. I am all for it. Send me my bumper sticker please.

China and the Dollar (again)

Joshua points out that there is still smoke in the China/Dollar issue (even if I bit on false rumors yesterday)

Mr. Roy F. Moore of The Distributist Review in China and the Dollar Crisis


Time will tell

Important Questions

We rant and praise our Constitution, but do we really know what we're saying? We crave a return to gold as Constitutional money, but is it only because we happen to own some coins squirreled away? For the most part I don't believe Americans are prepared for a return to constitutional government. We would have to reclaim our once cherished individual responsibilities. That means less government, my dear reader. Be intellectually honest with yourself now....Are we as parents able to take responsibility for the education of our own children? Now, I said education, and that doesn't mean just putting them on a yellow bus! I mean learning. Can we live without the government certifying every trade and work skill? How are you at replacing a toilet? What do we know about crop rotation, fertilizers, local marketing, etc? How many of us can run a wood splitter? Even more important where to get the wood. If you think a temporary power outage now to be an annoyance, wait until your local utility is unable to buy its natural gas or oil for any amount of dollars. Who do you blame? You blame the government, of course. But, then what do you do - - you turn around and ask the government for help! (a recent email from The Charleston Voice)

The questions he asks above are not merely rhetorical - they are practical in nature. I suppose the sad reality behind most modern conservatives supporting unprincipled and pragmatic positions is precisely because they know the answers to these questions. They are personally unprepared for the increased responsibility that must accompany increased liberty.

We have bought lock, stock and barrel into the notion that government must be involved in every aspect of life - from cradle to grave. Most of this has come about when good intentioned people said "there ought to be a law" - a statement generally following some irresponsible behavior by some individual or individuals.

I am conflicted as to the answer. That is the primary argument that most folks hold out against paleoconservatives. I know in our time, in the circumstances that are reality, every man cannot have his "40 acres and a mule". A true distributivist economic system is impossible, agrarianism on a mass scale is now impossible. It is even impossible to thwart the nature of modern man and his desire for bigger and cheaper. The mass of the population is not, and never will be ready to accept a world in which they, as individuals, are help accountable for their own well-being, where they are forced to conform to community standards in order to survive, where individual freedom comes with enormous responsibility and is tempered by the small community in which a person lives.

Even the very notion of community is confused in our modern mind. Many assume that their "homeowners associations" are akin to the sort of community that we paleoconservatives speak of - nothing could be further from the truth. Most of those associations take on the likeness of a communist party - demanding that all surrender something for the common good. Real community is of course different - it does not demand, it compels; there is a tremendous difference.

In some real sense paleoconservatives do not offer a real solution to the problems of the world around us - at least not a solution that the citizen-drones around us would accept. Perhaps we remain as simple a voice for some distant future generation, rising out of a cataclysmic future. Maybe that is too cynical of a view. I remain hopeful that all is not lost and that some small remnant remains that is capable seeing reality.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Breaking News That Was Not

Just to set the record straight, an analysis of a "breaking news" story that seems to be nothing more than rumor. (From The Charleston Voice)

Let's put this to rest. I've Googled for "CHINA TO DUMP ONE TRILLION IN U.S. RESERVES" which turned up dozens upon dozens of hits. I didn't go to all of them, but enough so to conclude that they all led back to Hal Turner. His "Breaking News" is on blogs, forums, gold sites, investment sites, and others. Seems many have bought it. I don't. The insertion also about OPEC and the Arabs' "extreme militarism" only adds to the confusion. Hal Turner either fabricated it himself, or was duped into believing it, and posting it. The two Washington Post articles were independent of his rant. It may have been a ploy to precipitate just such a panic as explained would be imminent Monday. Another reason could be to lend an assist to longs which are underwater with their positions. Whatever the case may be we'll be able to see Asian trading open at 7:15PM EST (I think) at: http://www.netdania.com/QuoteList.asp
I am reminded of words once told me a long time ago outside of the gold klan: "Any bank that cannot withstand a run deserves to fail. It just proves the depositors were right in the first place to demand their money from an unsafe custodian." Applying that wisdom to ourselves can be understood that anyone who knowingly leaves his funds on deposit with a custodian he believes to be unsafe deserves to go down with the bank.

China and the Dollar

UPDATE: This seems to be only a rumor


BEIJING, CHINA -- Sources with a U.S. Delegation in Beijing have told The Hal Turner Show the Chinese government has informed visiting Bush Administration officials they intend to dump One TRILLION U.S. Dollars from China's Currency Reserves and convert those funds into Euros, gold and silver!

Since I am not in the know of such things and have never heard of Hal Turner I must trust The Charleston Voice's caveat on this matter -

I had thought China had but 70% of their reserves in US dollars....oh well....I can't vouch for this report, but there are other links on the Hal Turner link shown below. I haven't taken the time to digest this, so I'm w/o additional comment. I don't have much familiarity with the Hal Turner Show, but I haven't heard him to be a rumor monger. The three reasons given presumably by the Chinese really seem to have an American creation flavor to me, however. There are two links to Washington Post articles purporting to "confirm" which I found to be quite a stretch after reading them. Again, it would be out of character for the Chinese to be so brash and certainly so blunt about their intentions. They are extraordinarily demure. To my knowledge, Turner's not played a prominent role in the inner sanctum of the "goldbug klan" until now.

This could indeed be the thing that pushed the phoney system of the fiat dollar over the edge and create despair and opportunity - despair for you and I, opportunity for folks that have a solution (Amero) handy.

More related stories here, and here

Saturday, December 16, 2006

No Need to Worry - The Smart Folks Have This

From WhatDoesitmean via The Charleston Voice)

To the second part of the USANORTH plan for the unsuspecting American people, Conduct the Army-to-Army portion of the theater cooperation mission with Canada and Mexico”, we can read from the Council on Foreign Relations report that first outlined the merger of the independent Nations of the United States, Canada and Mexico into a North American Union, and which says:

"Sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in association with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales.

North America is vulnerable on several fronts: the region faces terrorist and criminal security threats, increased economic competition from abroad, and uneven economic development at home. In response to these challenges, a trinational, Independent Task Force on the Future of North America has developed a roadmap to promote North American security and advance the well-being of citizens of all three countries.

When the leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States met in Texas recently they underscored the deep ties and shared principles of the three countries. The Council-sponsored Task Force applauds the announced "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America," but proposes a more ambitious vision of a new community by 2010 and specific recommendations on how to achieve it." (read entire CFR document)

You can look at this a couple of ways.

First it seems that there is already a dozen multi-letter organizations dedicated to "homeland security". Adding yet another layer of functionality is classic bureaucratic waste.

More nefariously - who in their right mind really wants Mexican troops in the United States doing anything other than a handful or so attending professional courses? I can't find the article but I am certain I read that Mexico sent troops to "help out" with Katrina. No matter how badly the Federal government botched that entire thing, the inclusion of Mexican troops served a much broader purpose - it set a precedence, a dangerous precedence.

I am convinced that all of this is related to the very serious efforts of many folks to make a North American Union a reality. Robert Pastor - the primary intellectual force behind union - has essentially said as much. He admits that union is a good thing and the only factor standing in the way is misplaced nationalism. He concedes that union cannot become a reality until Americans, specifically, accept greater cooperation.

It is not conspiracy theory nonsense to state that items like the mission statement of USANORTH is part of the incremental plan to bring Americans on-line. The Federal government has been pretty successful in incrementally luring the American sheeple into accepting things that they ought not accept - why would folks like Pastor think the same strategies will not work with union also?

One of the lessons tyrannical empires learned long ago is that it is best to suppress dissent with troops that are not local. A rational mind would say that the National Guard is the best military choice for "homeland security". Long before 9/11 the National Guard sold the idea that they were the rightful place for this mission. I suppose that local troops just do not fit the bill for all the potential missions people like Robert Pastor have in mind.

Y'all go back to sleep now - go read the hundreds of "cutting edge" bloggers that talk of nothing of importance, busy your mind with whatever Oprah has to say, worry about nonsense such as majorities in the Senate etc. Just ignore ideas such as the North American Union - smart people like Robert Pastor will think about that for you.

Here is an article by D.L. Cuddy, Ph.D. that lays out the chronology of this thought process.

What is Really Going On?

From Freedom In Our Time -

One difference between a genuinely totalitarian ruling elite and criminal cliques of the sort that run more ordinary governments is this: Totalitarians display a thoroughgoing ignorance of basic human nature coupled with a demented belief in the State's ability to re-arrange reality by decree.

On this basis it's clear that the people who rule us fall squarely into the totalitarian camp...

William Grigg goes on in a lengthy post to explain exactly what he means by the above statement.

I have received several emails as of late discussing many "goings on" related to the dollar, the elusive Amero, the recent interim ban on exportation of pennies and nickels and the crack-down on the liberty dollar crowd.

There just may be something to all of this, particularly as it relates to the impending Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (as a precursor of the North American Union).

These issues seem to be more than mere conspiracy theories - they seem to hold real merit and deserve analysis.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Being Principled is Not Insane

In my post on the death of Megan McClung I asked how a just society could send women and girls to foreign lands to fight and die.

One anonymous commenter stated my argument denying her the right to serve her nation as she wished was insane.

Well, I suppose I could attempt, as others have done, to rationalize the issue. For example -

Gary North argues: "The camaraderie and esprit de corps in a military unit or a police unit is heavily dependent on shared risk. When women are exposed to the same degree of risk of life and death, this disrupts the military-protective function, which is unquestionably masculine."

I could cite incidents of sexual assault - but the rationalist would simply say that the culture of the military ought to change to be kinder and gentler (less rough men standing on a wall and more politically correct bureaucrats).

I could discuss the 1992 Presidential Commission on The Assignment of Women in The Military's findings (the last major governmental study on the subject), but that would really miss the point.

The point is not whether some women can perform in the military and even in combat roles nor whether the military can be changed as an organization to accommodate women. The argument against women in combat specifically and in most military roles generally is one of principle and relates directly to philosophy.

Women do not belong in positions that place them in harms way simply because it is the function of a just society to prevent that. Women are charged in a good society with bringing beauty and elegance to an otherwise nasty world. They teach our children to appreciate elements of life that men - if men actually performed manly functions - are really incapable of passing along.

If you do not understand the paragraph above and instead paint me as -"insane", "chauvinistic", "archaic", or any other term you like - you simply do not understand the philosophical place my views derive from.

If you want to really know, and I suppose you have assumed it already - I do indeed believe the most important work a woman can do is in the home, raising good children. That is the nature of a well ordered society, a society that conforms to the natural order and natural law. My libertarian friends may scramble to remove our blog from their blogrolls - I know these views conflict with their philosophy that derives from the enlightenment and reason - whereas mine originate from lessons via a long history of good and bad societies.

Women are not inferior to men - in many pursuits they are superior. We are partners in a joint endeavor - we should celebrate our differences and stick with what we all are born of nature to do best.

I could and have argued against placing women in most military roles based upon reason and I believe a pretty good argument can be made using reason, facts and data. I no longer make such arguments.

The fact is, if a society wishes to abandon its greatest asset - ladies of strength and character - and replace them with generic persons and then send them into the world - abandoning our greatest treasure, children - that is a society in decline. It is unjust and unpardonable.

Darrell Dow puts it in perspective:

Christians who aren’t embarrassed by their Bibles should forcefully put forth the truth that there is a comprehensive pattern of differentiation between men and women outlined in Scripture. It is men who protect and lay down their lives for women, even as Christ died for the Church, and it is women who bear a responsibility as nurturers. In Joshua 1:14, we read that the “wives, young children, and livestock” of Israel remained on the other side of the Jordan River while the “fighting men” crossed the river to wage war against the Canaanites.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Perhaps the Rest of the MCM Will Come Around

Paleoconservatism is informed by certain philosophical presumptions that differ markedly from the presumptions of neocons and most modern conservatives. It is a hard concept to initially get your arms around for the uninitiated, but once you understand the presumptions the positions on issues naturally follow. It is not just a hodge-podge of policy differences.


From an excellent synopsis of paleoconservative philosophy.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Megan McClung

Take a look at her face and her smile. Megan McClung (Major, USMC), was killed last week in Al-Anbar province, Iraq.

Tell me - do just societies send women and girls to foreign lands to fight and die?

Don't give me the argument that it was her right - I suppose in our culture it is her right - that in and of itself does not make this just.
Shame on us.

The world is a darker place - and we share a bit more guilt.

UPDATE - read this before you send me a nasty email

Monday, December 11, 2006

Support the Good Blogs!

Y'all be sure to vote early and often for Joshua over at Western Confucian - he is a finalist for the 2006 Weblogs Award (Best Asian Blog).

Before I leave the Land of the Morning Calm, he and I will meet and have coffee - I declare it.

I like folks that I learn from. Joshua has encouraged me to learn many things and to explore a few things (not overtly but rather indirectly).

His blog is well worth the read (even a Baptist fellow like me can learn to appreciate the saints a wee bit) - but more than that he thinks based upon principles - and isn't that a rarity!

Blogging for me has been just that sort of experience - one of discovery. A couple years ago when I blogged heavily about Southern issues I was frustrated by the fact that I could attract so few readers/commenters. Perhaps it was just bad writing - but then there are plenty of bad writers getting heavy traffic. You probably cannot tell but I have been at this since 2002.

The blogshere is a lot like high school - folks gravitate to those that are like them. One very profound reason that I have never and will never attract a large readership is because there are not a lot of people like me in the world (well that and bad writing). The upside is that very rarely you do discover folks that share something with you - something of paramount importance: principles.

Folks that write what they believe at their core cannot long hide what is really inside of them. Blogging is a good thing in that way - a medium that opens possibilities and bridges connections previously impossible. In a small way it creates a connection with like minds that we might otherwise never experience.

Of course there is the downside - mindless minions following lock-step in ideological purity after "trend-setters". But that is a tale for another time.

Good luck Joshua - I will get up to Pohang someday and buy you a cup-o-joe.

It is Good to be King

Joshua shares his experience in Chile and impressions of Augusto Pinochet (what a cool name).

Few dictators get to live past the term of their tyranny - much less resume their previous role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and the assume a new role as Senator-for-life. On top of all that he lived out his life in the nation he once ruled. That is simply odd for a dictator.

Despite the things he did that were wrong he had two things right - his opposition to communism and his view of "demonacracy".

Pinochet contended that “Merely formal democracy dissolves itself, victim of a demagogy that substitutes simple, unattainable promises for social justice and economic prosperity.”

Throw Away The Key!?!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates have contributed to the United States having the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to criminal justice experts.

A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 showed that a record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year.

What does this mean? China - a much more populous nation - has only 1.5 million total prisoners. The old saying is that if you make a law you create a criminal is certainly true but that does not explain all of this. Many of these folks are real criminals - the kind that violate natural law as opposed to artificial manmade law.

Many of our prisoners are there because of drug offenses, as the article states - we jail more drug offenders than all of Europe incarcerates for all crimes.

Once a person goes to prison it is safe to assume that they become essentially hardened criminals. Most affiliate with a gang, they live with other criminals and invariably become like them. Few and far between are the exceptions that do their time and return to society as good citizens ( I am certain there are cases but they must be the minority).

It seems we are left with three options -

  1. Change the culture so that drugs do not present a draw
  2. Legalize drugs and let losers waste their own lives
  3. Leave the laws in place and lock all criminals up for life - with perhaps a sliding scale work-farm system for folks that behave

Obviously the first option is the best. The second option of simply legalizing drugs - at the federal level has merit (just let communities keep out the drugs if they want). If all else fails then I suppose that sending people off that go to prison for life is all that is left - a harsh option for certain.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Take That Tree Down!

SEA-TAC Airport - All of the Christmas trees inside the terminal at Sea-Tac have been removed in response to a complaint by a rabbi.

A local rabbi wanted to install an 8-foot menorah and have a public lighting ceremony. He threatened to sue if the menorah wasn’t put up, and gave a two-day deadline to remove the trees.

Sea-Tac public affairs manager Terri-Ann Betancourt said the trees that adorn the Sea-Tac upper and lower levels may not properly represent all cultures.

She said that since this is their busiest time of year and they don't have time to add a fair representation of all cultures, her department decided to take down all of the decorations, review their policies, and decide if they need to make a change for next year.

I am no fan of SEA TAC Airport - it is the only place in the world where I have been personally protested - and you all know I am and always have been opposed to the war in Iraq, I just don't like a bunch of limp-wrists actually protesting me!

Also, I hold no misconceptions that Christmas trees represent anything more and the secularized version of Christmas for most people. But really that is beside the point. If most Americans have as part of their culture a secular version of Christmas then they should be allowed that - if many of us understand the real meaning of Christmas, good for us. The notion that multicultural correctness should take away even something as simple as a tree - an item that is clearly part of "American" Culture is ridiculous. The menorah may be part of Jewish culture, and there may be many Jews that are Americans. But here is the point - the menorah is not part of American Culture and the desire of a subculture to trump the general culture with their demands for multiculturalism should fall on deaf ears.

Upgrade to Blogger Beta

We just updated to Blogger Beta and in the process a few things will change (temporarily). We are still a team blog (more or less a tag-team as it has turned out.) When I executed the upgrade command (that sounds official) Blogger put all the other contributors in que until they also upgrade their accounts. Apparently, in the interim, blogger decided for me to place my profile on the right hand column (as if we were just a single person blog).

No worries, Johnny is still with us (and any of our other team members that want to contribute). Once Johnny signs on to blogger the right hand column will be sans my profile.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Wisdom of Lynyrd Skynyrd

Mama told me when I was young
Come sit beside me, my only son
And listen closely to what I say.
And if you do this, It will help you some sunny day.


Take your time... don't live too fast,
Troubles will come and they will pass.
Go find a woman and you'll find love,
And don't forget son, There is someone up above.

And be a simple kind of man.
Be something you love and understand.
Be a simple kind of man.
Won't you do this for me son, if you can?


Forget your lust for the rich mans gold
All that you need is in your soul,
And you can do this if you try.
All that I want for you my son, Is to be satisfied.

Boy, don't you worry... you'll find yourself.
Follow your heart and nothing else.
And you can do this if you try.
All I want for you my son, is to be satisfied.

Seems pretty much to fit with what any decent person ought to teach their children....

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

4GW Coming Home

This reminds me of something startling and scary one of my fine young Soldiers said to me one day about his frustrations -

The Bush administration, as usual, has it exactly backwards. The danger is not that the "terrorists" we are fighting in Iraq will come here if we pull out there. Rather, American involvement in 4GW in Iraq will create "terrorism" here from among the people we have sent to fight the war there. Well educated in the ways of successful insurgency, they will come home embittered by a lost war, by friends dead and crippled for life to no purpose. Thanks to America’s de-industrialization, they will return to no jobs, or lousy "service" jobs at minimum wage. Angry, frustrated and futureless, some of them will find new identities and loyalties in gangs and criminal enterprises, where they can put their new talents to work.

(link via Western Confucian)

It Will Never Happen Here!

I have noticed that since I have been saying more and more of what I really believe that our readership has dropped 75%....so be it.

Here is a bit from Chuck Baldwin (a man I do not always agree with) quoting Ron Paul (a man a usually agree with).

In an interview with nationally syndicated radio talk show host Alex Jones, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas recently discussed President Bush's support for the Military Commissions Act. During the interview, Paul said that "the law officially allows for citizen concentration camp facilities."

Paul also warned that "the Military Commissions Act and the Defense Authorization Act . . . essentially wipes out Habeas Corpus."

Paul continued by noting, "Right now we don't have concentration camps, but . . . the authority has been given so that concentration camps can come without Habeas Corpus." He then said, "If they can lock you up, what good is freedom of speech or what good is a gun?"

Ok I will admit, I pay some attention to Alex Jones, he has the general problem right even if sometimes he might go down rabbit holes in search of facts that probably aren't there. All the same, Alex is looking in the right direction - even when he gets distracted.

Folks generally dismiss anything a person says when they mention the idea of concentration/detention camps. I know a lot of sites on the net dedicate a lot of space to supposed FEMA camps built in places like Alabama and Montana by Haliburton. Who knows, if such things exist or not is not the point at all. It is easy enough to build such places when and if a government decided they needed them.

What is more significant is the tremendous power the various acts passed since 2001 give the Federal Government. When you combine these acts with the gradual increase in Federal power since say - well you really have to go way back to mark the beginning of the death of the Republic and of state/individual rights.

Ron Paul has it pretty much right on though - habeas corpus is the bedrock of all other rights. Without it no other right articulated in the first ten amendments or retained via common law has any weight at all.

Chuck Baldwin warns -

Ladies and gentlemen, please wake up! Under the leadership of President George W. Bush, rights and freedoms that have been lost to you include your right to an attorney, your right to know the charges being levied against you, the right to a speedy trial, the right to trial by a jury of your peers, the right to not be subjected to torture, the right to not have your home and personal items searched and seized without warrant, the right to not have your personal conversations (including letters and email) intercepted without court order, and the right to not incriminate yourself, just to name a few. And now we learn that our government has authorized and is planning to build "concentration camp facilities."

Furthermore, just because you or I have not yet been personally subjected to this tyranny, does not mean that we won't be! The seeds are already planted; the die is already cast. The time to act is not when you are being carted off to an "undisclosed location." By then, it is too late.

It is fascinating how quickly people dismiss this sort of talk as unreasonable and claim that such a thing "could never happen here." History has proven that such things do occur in places where people would not believe it and would not accept it until it was already occurring. For those people it is always too late once they wake up.

Just do the math, the other day I read an article that claimed that 1 out of every 11 Americans is in a jail of some sort. Beyond notable cases such as that of Jose Padilla, few of these are there for political reasons. My point is already a large (relatively) portion of our citizenry is in government custody (many deservingly obviously). We say it is incomprehensible that the government would ever make enemies of the people and lock up dissenters. I say that we could easily raise the number of "prisoners" from 1 in 11 to 2 in 11 without really noticing.

We already have so many laws and so much law enforcement, it would not be difficult to raise the incarceration count in fairly short order. The government could make criminals of dissenters without resorting to overt tyranny. For the hard cases, they could follow Newt Gingrich's advice -

According to the (Manchester, NH) Union Leader, "Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday [Monday, Nov. 27] in Manchester said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

"Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a 'different set of rules' may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message."

Free speech means nothing without habeas corpus but imagine for a moment - such a thought process as expressed by the fat little man from GA is wide open to interpretation. The folks they say they want to snarl in their net are not terrorist in a foreign land but folks within the US. Who is to say that at some point in the future their net is not widened to include say - folks like Johnnie and I and all the folks we link to and email and maybe you for just reading what we have to say?

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Catch a Little Lithuanian Flu

You are invited to contribute to the discussion -

The charter of the American Secession Project is simple. We desire to place the concept of secession in the mainstream of political thought. Our intent is to proclaim that secession is a viable and legal right and a practical solution to contemporary problems.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Someone Should Tell Congress

A quote from George Nichols, a Virginian that worked on the committee that drafted that states ratification of the 1788 Constitution (snagged from a Thomas Woods post)

"If thirteen individuals are about to make a contract, and one agrees to it, but at the same time declares that he understands its meaning, signification and intent, to be, what the words of the contract plainly and obviously denote; that it is not to be construed so as to impose any supplementary condition upon him, and that he is to be exonerated from it, whensoever any such imposition shall be attempted –- I ask whether in this case, these conditions on which he assented to it, would not be binding on the other twelve? In like manner these conditions will be binding on Congress. They can exercise no power that is not expressly granted them."

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Just Plain Silly

The United States and other countries are demanding North Korea abandon its nuclear programs by the end of 2008, it was reported Saturday. (story here)

Or what?  This is a pretty silly predicament for a "superpower" to find itself in - in the vernacular of some folks back home, seems the Feds are betwixt a rock and a hard place.

The Bush administration also threatened to impose additional sanctions on North Korea if Pyongyang refuses to accept the demand, the Kyodo News Agency quoted sources as saying Saturday.

Oh yeah, that will do the trick.  What foolishness.  I was thinking today as I watched the news how silly it is to keep enemies of folks that really cannot threaten us.

Take Cuba for instance.  Prior to 1989 you could make the argument that since Cuba was communist and had crawled into bed with the Soviets previously, they were a potential threat - sanctions probably made sense.

Why do they make sense now?  Castro does not murder or starve his people - the country makes do with what it has.  To be certain he had a high time for a while attempting to be an international revolutionary leader, but no more.

The best policy with Cuba would have been to say to them as soon as the wall fell and the Soviet empire went into cardiac arrest, "our conflict is over".  The US could have done that unilaterally - we do not need the permission of a small country like Cuba to say we no longer consider them an adversary. We should have told the Cubans to fill up our humidors with their cigars and that they were free to buy as many non-military goods from us as they please.  What would have been the harm in lifting the travel restrictions - letting old expats go home, seeing their kin and tell of how great capitalism was to them?

Castro would have looked pretty silly if he attempted to hold out and still call us a foe. 

The beauty of being a superpower ought to include the ability to ignore mosquitoes - eventually they will just go away. I cannot imagine the world heavyweight boxing champion getting all upset because some young wanna-be nobody in a gym wants to fight him.

World politics really ought to be the same way. Just stop making a big deal out of the little guys, ignore them until they actually demonstrate some sort of real threat.  Preemption and forward posturing seems to me to invite more hostility than it prevents.

Storm South of the Border

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's new president was sworn into office Friday in a brief ceremony that interrupted a morning of intermittent brawling between his supporters and opponents in the national congress.

I am not certain this episode is over yet. I am not unconvinced that this entire thing might yet turn into a shooting conflict. Just imagine the surge of refugees flowing across the southern border. Real trouble in Mexico would invariably mean real trouble in the United States - the details are too numerous to even consider at any great length.

We really never seriously consider how quickly our artificial world could be turned asunder - a financial shake-up, combined with social and civil unrest to the south and all of that spilling over into the US.

Plunge Protection Team Increases Frequency of Meetings

I wonder what this is really all about:

Barnes then goes on to say that “Paulson’s fear of a significant Chinese recession dovetails with another of the major tasks assigned to him by Bush: crisis management. Paulson believes a financial crisis is overdue—a serious crisis that would be a body blow to the U.S. economy. This fear is shared to some extent by Bush and Bolten, who wanted a major Wall Street player at Treasury in case an economic emergency occurs.” Barnes then details Paulson’s activation of the financial working group “to prepare for the crisis”.

All in all, it does not seem that Secretary Paulson shares the sanguine Wall Street view of the market and the economy. Indeed, now that he is no longer in the securities business, Paulson is acting very much like a man who is looking ahead and does not like what he sees.

The Chinese recession bit goes hand in hand with the issues Lawrence discussed in a previous comment on this blog. Their potential financial difficulties become ours - they would simply call in debt and tip the balance of our false prosperity. I guess we knew second and third mortgages could not drive and economy forever - particularly when massive amounts of debt have been shipped overseas. It is all just a make believe world - existing on paper and on computers, but with little real value.

The Defenders of States' Rights - the Good Ole GOP

I seems that even folks in California actually "get it" when it comes to the topic of states' rights. Here is an except from a fellow in Folsom, CA -

I'm no genius when it comes to studying our constitution, but "States Rights" looms large on my list of "must have." If my state votes to allow people to wear bikini suits to work, then so be it. The constitution protects the right for us to elect our own officials and they have the obligation to do what we want.

"Must have" indeed, here is one reason why as he puts it -

I now hear seniors are voicing the concern that voting no longer matters. "There is no one to vote for, and besides, they don't even listen anymore."


Now this is alarming. The young voters have always been reluctant to believe their "vote counts" and the middle-agers are frantically trying to keep their heads above water, but now the oldsters are upset with our system? Now that's trouble.

As Johnny pointed out a month or so ago, for many voting is stupid - if they don't listen, you are merely giving tacit validity to a system that has lost its mandate. Voting or not voting does not matter - in either event ours is a system of taxation without representation. The scale is too big, influences other than the individual hold too much sway - our politicians only speak to our issues at election time, and then proceed with the hubris of Roman Senators to go back to the Federal District and do what they think is best for us (or for their future/wallet/etc).

We are foolish enough to believe asinine comments like this found in stateline -

[T]he Republican Party traditionally was known as a supporter of states’ rights.

Wait a darn minute, how can anyone wishing to be taken seriously make such a statement? What could they possibly base this assumption on? The GOP's promises or their actions?

The GOP is the party of Lincoln - you know those guys that killed 600,000 Americans in order to crush states' rights under foot as the grapes of wrath. What in the world has this party done in the last 40 years to redeem that record? Have they supported or passed one piece of legislation that supports and defends states' rights?

Perhaps the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (Public Law 107-110) was a GOP attempt to bolster states' rights and all of us yokels are too stupid to realize it.

Perhaps their attack, in 2005, on New York state's attempt to regulate trade within her borders was a defense of states' rights. And certainly we foolish plebes misunderstood the intent behind the Federal Government's attack on the right of states to prefer local businesses to say, Panamanian ones. (We can't have states ignoring something as important as the Central American Free Trade Agreement.) The list could go on and on.

The point is the GOP is absolutely no supporter of states' rights - they have proven themselves to be the greatest enemy of these rights. It is a travesty that this party sells a bill of goods to otherwise good people with no intention of meaning what they say.

Don't get me wrong here, the socialist Democrats would do no better - at least they lack the hypocrisy of proclaiming to stand for the rights of states. With a democrat you know what you are getting (with a few curious exceptions - such as James Webb).

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Declaration of Cultural Independence

As you probably have realized Johnny and I are big fans of the way William S. Lind thinks.  He is the director of the Free Congress Foundation. Below is their proposed rally cry for the reclamation of decent American Culture. I completely agree that in order to save whatever is left of good culture we must look inward and to our immediate left and right- we must start at home. I too have given up on politics at the national level as anything more than a sideshow, in in a few very rare instances where a right-minded person takes a righteous stand a platform for good ideas. 

(I am not so certain about Paul Weyrich - the founder of FCF - he seems to me to adhere to many neoconservative ideological notions - specifically related to domestic policy)

______________________________________

Once, not so very long ago, America was a good place to live. Families were strong and stable. One breadwinner, almost always the father, brought home enough income to give a whole family a middle class standard of living. Wives and mothers could devote themselves to making good homes and rearing their children. Those children played in safe neighborhoods, surrounded by good neighbors. They went to schools that inculcated discipline, built character and taught reading, writing and arithmetic well. Entertainment was moral, instructive and healthy. Civilization was passed successfully from one generation to another, and even improved a bit along the way.

Today, that America has become a memory. Divorce and illegitimacy have shattered families and crippled children. Taxation and consumerism together have made the single-breadwinner middle class family a rare exception. Children are left to grow up on their own, learning from their peers rather than their parents. Childhood itself is disappearing, as young children are left to face adult situations alone and without guidance.

Public schools have become "attendance centers," as some are now openly called. Some are little more than holding pens for illiterate young ruffians. Few effectively teach even the most basic skills. Rather, their concern is inculcating the "attitudes" demanded by the reigning ideology of Political Correctness.

The entertainment industry is a bottomless sewer, inverting good and evil and flooding the land with sex, violence and degradation of every sort. Video games desensitize children to killing by turning people into objects. Television "normalizes" every deviance, including homosexuality and the inversion of the traditional roles of men and women. Popular music glorifies killers and reduces women to whores.

The high arts are almost dead. Art and architecture are intended to be ugly and alienating. Serious music has become a self-parody. Publishers seek not good writing but "celebrity" authors. The news media values sensationalism over facts.

All these are classic, age-old signs of a culture that is self-destructing. A growing number of Americans know how to read these signs. They realize that, despite economic prosperity, America is becoming a foreign country, foreign to everything that once defined Americans as a people. Indeed, as Political Correctness demands, we are no longer one people. "Multiculturalism" has changed our national motto into ex uno, plura: from one, many.

What is to be done? When a man finds himself in a sewer, his first objective is to get out of it. In a culture that has become a sewer, our first objective must be the same: to get out of that culture, and to create an alternative to it.

Until recently, the objective of cultural conservatives, those Americans who still adhere to our ancient, Western, Judeo-Christian culture, was to retake existing cultural institutions - the public schools, the universities, the media, the entertainment industry and the arts - from those hostile to our culture and make them once again forces for goodness, truth and beauty. We sought to do so primarily through politics, by electing fellow cultural conservatives to high office and expecting them, once elected, to use politics to help restore our traditional culture.

Unfortunately, we must acknowledge that this strategy has not been successful. Despite some political successes, the culture has continued to deteriorate. In part, this is because some of the people we elected abandoned their principles once they were in office. But the larger reason is that culture is more powerful than politics. The tide of cultural degradation and decay is simply too strong for any political barrier to stem.

When one strategy fails, the proper response is not to surrender but to adopt a different strategy. We, the undersigned, therefore pledge ourselves to a strategy of cultural Independence. We hereby declare our Independence from the decayed, modern or post-modern culture and pledge our efforts toward creating new institutions built upon the values of our traditional, inherited Western culture.

We seek nothing less than the creation of a complete, alternate structure of parallel cultural institutions. Home schooling is an example: faced with the failure of the public schools, home schoolers have created a separate, parallel system of education, a system that revives our traditional values and culture and transmits them to a new generation. What home schoolers have done in primary and secondary education, we seek to do also in higher education, media, entertainment, the arts, every aspect of popular and, eventually, high culture as well.

The task is a vast one. But the talents and energies of Americans who still adhere to our traditional culture are also vast. When mobilized effectively, in the late 1970s and 1980s, they had profound if temporary effects on our nation's politics. Now, the challenge is to mobilize them again, not in hopes of evanescent gains in politics, but in service of a more solid goal, the goal of creating our own institutions and through them recovering our identity as a people.

To that task we pledge our talents, our treasure, and our abilities, to work on scales small or great as our circumstances allow. Out of the wreckage of the country once called America we will build a new, moral and pleasant land.

A Little Hemp Seed Oil Anyone

Here is an article that claims hemp seed oil can cure many ills.  I don't know, back when I was a young man I had more than one friend with a "plant" or two growing in some part of the woods.  Those fellows are all still alive and kicking, I suppose I ought to check. Perhaps they are healthier than me for their efforts as young men. I never really found much use for it - not because I was unwilling to try, it just did not particularly interest me.  In my crowd it was ok to drink, not so ok to smoke dope. (I guess even bad kids have lines they don't cross.)

As an adult I am as much for closing down the red dot store (at least all of them close to my home) as I am chasing after ganja smokers.  If it is ok for one it ought to be ok for the other, and visa versa. I figure it ought to be up to the community to decide what they want and don't want.  If you have a dry county, that ought to mean all forms of drugs (alcohol, pot, etc).  If you can buy hard liquor why not pot also?  No real difference. (With the exception of most pot smokers I have been around don't actually want to go out and party and drive - they eventually get mellow; thus they are probably less dangerous to the community.)

Same goes for the purported medicinal benefits of pot - It cannot be any worse than the chemical junk our overpaid docs pump into us. 

Are We Citizens or Subjects?

It has been some time since I articulated the argument(s) that the (1)14th Amendment was never properly ratified; (2) it so fundamentally disagrees with the basic intent of the Constitution that it must be unconstitutional; and (3) if we accept the amendment as Constitutional and valid as interpreted, that fact alone presents such a usurpation of States' Rights as to justify secession, without any other cause provided or required.

In Secessionist Paper No. 5, I argue that the manner in which this amendment was enacted, rather than ratified, combined with the sweeping power it steals from states and gives to the Federal Government (contrary to the intent of the original compact), creates a situation in which the Federal Government exists de facto rather than de jure. I stand by that.

Once the Federal Government was able to declare me and everyone else their citizen, rather than citizens of our home states, all of the ingredients for future tyranny were in place. We are subjects to a far away and distant regime; not participants in a republican democracy small enough to hear our voices on issues that really matter to us. 

Don't argue with me that during the time that the 14th Amendment was "expanded" so broadly it was most necessary- to correct social ills.  It is never right to do a little wrong for a greater good. 

If anything at all of lasting good has come from the 14th Amendment, it is the legal precedent that states can indeed leave the union - as it was necessary for Congress to expel the southern states in order to ratify enact this amendment.  

(from the June 13, 1967 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD HOUSE, Page 15641)

Mr. RARICK. Mr. Speaker, arrogantly ignoring clearcut expressions in the Constitution of the United States, the declared intent of its drafters notwithstanding, our unelected Federal judges read out prohibitions of the Constitution of the United States by adopting the fuzzy haze of the 14th amendment to legislate their personal ideas, prejudices, theories, guilt complexes, aims, and whims.

Through the cooperation of intellectual educators, we have subjected ourselves to accept destructive use and meaning of words and phrases. We blindly accept new meanings and changed values to alter our traditional thoughts.

We have tolerantly permitted the habitual misuse of words to serve as a vehicle to abandon our foundations and goals. Thus, the present use and expansion of the 14th amendment is a sham—serving as a crutch and hoodwink to precipitate a quasi-legal approach for overthrow of the tender balances and protections of limitation found in the Constitution.

But interestingly enough, the 14th amendment—whether ratified or not—was but the expression of emotional outpouring of public sentiment following the War Between the States.

Its obvious purpose and intent was but to free human beings from ownership as a chattel by other humans. Its aim was no more than to free the slaves.

As our politically appointed Federal judiciary proceeds down their chosen path of chaotic departure from the peoples’ government by substituting their personal law rationalized under the 14th amendment, their actions and verbiage brand them and their team as secessionists—rebels with pens instead, of guns—seeking to divide our Union.

They must be stopped. Public opinion must be aroused. The Union must and shall be preserved Mr. Speaker, I ask to include in the RECORD, following my remarks, House Concurrent Resolution 208 of the Louisiana Legislature urging this Congress to declare the 14th amendment illegal. Also, I include in the RECORD an informative and well-annotated treatise on the illegality of the 14th amendment—the play toy of our secessionist judges—which has been prepared by Judge Leander H. Perez, of Louisiana.

A summary the argument

THE 14th AMENDMENT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL

By Judge Leander H. Perez

The purported Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is and should be held to be ineffective, invalid, null, void, and unconstitutional for the following reasons:

1. The Joint Resolution proposing said Amendment was not submitted to or adopted by a Constitutional Congress as required by Article I, Section 3, and Article V of the U.S. Constitution.

2. The Joint Resolution was not submitted to the President for his approval as required by Article 1, Section 5 of the U.S. Constitution.

3. The proposed Fourteenth Amendment was rejected by more than one fourth of all the states in the Union, and it was never ratified by three fourths of all the states in the Union as required by Article V, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution.

read the rest...

Free Scotland

The Guardian asks a relevant question:

"Many nations have prospered after gaining independence from their neighbours. Why should the Scots be different?"

Indeed why should the Scots be any different. As a Southerner of Ulster Scots decent I have a particular affinity for the history and plight of Scotland and the Scots. The British Empire was built upon the bones of the Scots - the empire is long gone.  It is time for Scotland to regain again what is hers.

A recent opinion poll in Scotland demonstrates that -  "52% of the electorate [support partition]. Those regarding themselves as Scottish had risen from half to three-quarters in 25 years, while those saying "British" had halved to just 20%."

Alone, in all of Europe Scotland (the Picts) resisted assimilation into the Roman Empire and resisted assimilation with the South until 1707.  Just like my native Southland - Scotland has always provided a disproportionate number of warriors to fight in the wars of empire.  WWI was particularly devastating to Scotland, as entire villages lost an generation of fine young men.  Scotland has paid her dues - she has earned the right to reclaim her freedom and independence. In 1997 she regained her parliament - but this is not enough.

From the Guardian-

The Scottish debate shows British politics at its most conservative. Any sign of a desire for local autonomy, in any part of the United Kingdom, is seen at Westminster as uppity insubordination by people ignorant of their best interests. Unionism may have disappeared from Britain's industry, but it is the ruling ethos of its politics. Big is beautiful if British. The prevailing wisdom holds that anyone, be they Scots, Welsh, Northern Irish or, for that matter, Iraqi or Afghan, must be better off under the benign custodianship of London. Imperialism is still Westminster's default mode. Surely nobody could be richer, safer or freer than with a British soldier on every corner and a British subsidy under every belt.

If resistance to Scottish independence is conservative it is the neoconservative sort - true conservatism defends the traditional.  In this case 10000 years of Scottish history outweighs 200 years of Union.

It appears that support for independence might be running a bit higher than 52%, one Kevin Williamson reports that the Daily Record closed a poll on the subject - on St. Andrew's day no less without explanation. "Could it have been because the poll was running at 65% in favour of Scottish Independence."

Murray Ritchie presents an excellent argument against the lies that unionist typically tell. These are the same lies centralizers all around the world use to persuade people that their culture is not worthy of independence.

As Stuart Dickson points out the Scottish National Party is not doing so bad in their goal to achieve independence via the ballot box.

These are interesting times in which we live. Free Scotland!

Unprincipled Traitor!

From Rebellion -

Nothing irritates me more than the emails I get from readers who say, “I thought you were a conservative/libertarian/free-market defender/blah-blah and now you’re saying (fill in the blank).” I rail against immigration, and the left-libertarians get upset.  I lambast George W. Bush, and the Republicans forward pouty little protests that I’m undermining “our” commander-in-chief.  I condemn the Patriot Act, and “conservatives” shoot little barbs at me for not supporting the “War on Terror.” They all tell me how inconsistent the Rebellion blog is, or (here’s my favorite) how unprincipled I am.

Now that hurts.

It is always amazing how quickly "right-minded" folks can and will turn off what you have to say if you view the world through panorama instead of a microscope.  Those that try to apply philosophy of how to think are seldom tolerated long by those that believe in ideologies that tell them what to think.

Blogging exasperates this phenomenon - an ideologue may stumble upon your blog based upon one post that supports their particular ideology; they read for a few days, until you post an item that does not fit neatly into their "rules" of thinking. Invariably they either leave without ever returning of they fire off an email informing you that you are either unprincipled or confused. It indeed does hurt.

Of course most of us know the real deal about ideologies -

Here’s the bottom line, folks: It’s Ideology that’s actually inconsistent.  The notion that there can be a best-of-all-worlds political philosophy is an illusion.  Sooner or later, the ideologists end up supporting contradictory positions.  Mule-headed adherence to part of your ideology will ultimately lead you down a dead end, and maybe to a self-defeating position you’re forced to stick to just to remain consistent.  Call it Gödel’s Theorem applied to political thought.

I would only correct the statement above by stating that there probably is a "best-of-all-worlds political philosophy" - so long as the philosophy remains broad enough and provides the tools that equip "thinkers" to solve most any issue.  The only danger is when a philosophy begins to become too defined and restricted and in effect more ideological.

Perhaps it would be better if folks that pretend to navigate the world of ideas actually spent a little more time figuring things out before attempting to pin a label and move on. 

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Sage Advice

From Bill Losapio

Strengthen our family bonds.
Strengthen our bonds of friendship.

Begin trading with real gold and silver with each other…. vegetables at the farmers market, babysitting, mowing a neighbor’s lawn. Begin an “underground” economy completely independent of fiat money. Trade! Trade! Trade! Come Hell or high water, economic crash, or New World Order, for Goodness sake, trade! This, more than anything, must be done to reignite the division of labor, civil society, and peace should TEOTWAWKI dawn.

We Need a Hero - Not Really

Dr. Clyde Wilson dispenses wisdom for all you neophytes.

I recently saw the film V for Vendetta and looked over some fairly obscure books with a similar theme—overthrow of an evil Establishment by heroic resistance. I am all in favour of getting rid of Establishments of the currently prevailing type. I was cheered when early in the film it was declared that governments ought to be afraid of their people rather than people being afraid of their governments. That sums up the spirit of the American War of Independence as well as any concise statement can. But nonetheless the overthrow of tyranny in the film left me disquieted.

[...]

The overthrow of oppression is seen as the work of a single superhuman individual. I do not think it ever has been that way in the real world. The overthrow of tyrannical government requires the collective action of strong elements of a society, not the intervention of a superhero.

[...]

Our culture seems to have lost awareness of or hope in the true pursuit of liberty. The longing for liberation by a superman is not a solution, but is part of the problem. And part of the explanation for the 20th century being exceedingly beyond all others the time of tyrants.

Really nothing different that what we lesser paleoconservatives say over and over - if we want to change we have to start in our communities and we have to be willing to actually take action. There is no masked man coming along to save us.

Secession Fever

Excerpts from a must read article by Thomas Naylor

Secession fever is spreading across America just as it did back in 1776 and 1861. More than forty states now have active political independence movements committed to the peaceful withdrawal of their respective states from the Union. As a result, the United States may never be the same. Indeed, in the not too distant future, it may cease to exist, just like its former nemesis, the U.S.S.R.

How can this be? Our government has lost its moral authority. It has become a cross between an oligarchy and an autocracy disguised as a democracy—just like the former Soviet Union. Our nation is no longer sustainable economically, politically, militarily, socially, culturally, or environmentally. Because of its size, it is ungovernable and, therefore, unfixable.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Be Brave, Be Very Brave

From an article entitled "A State Within A State: The Centralist Better Get Used To It".

If there was one thing that seemed to annoy the Bush II Administration more than anything about Hezbollah during its recent war with Israel, was that Hezbollah was “a state within a state,” i.e. a parallel government was operating within the bounds of sovereign state (Lebanon). Apparently the Bushes and the centralizers within the Beltway don’t like “state within states” very much. Apparently such an idea seems to run afoul of the U.S.’ global hegemony. If the U.S. is the dominant power on the globe, then there is supposedly no room for such little entities to be able to operate. Don’t they know we’re an empire now according to one administration official?

[...]

So if such places can have “states within states,” why not the U.S.? Especially why not the U.S.? After all, modern global connecting technology like the Internet and GPS satellites give such small places the opportunity to survive economically and preserve their unique cultures through independence, de facto or de jure. An independent Vermont could very well survive on its own no worse than tiny Singapore, Liechtenstein or Andorra. And even if Vermont, or New Hampshire, or the South was just independent in the mind only, such distinct regionalism is the very hallmark of the American experiment.

It should be pointed out that when the U.S. won its independence, what it did more or less was secede from the British Empire. And for much of that struggle, it governed not by the Constitution, but by the Articles of Confederation, which allowed the states a great deal of freedom within structure of the American nation. It only because of powerful economic, commercial and political interests that the convention that ultimately adopted the Constitution was called to convene. Such forces tend to be the gravitational pull of centralism. But the very technologies that are supposed to pull the world together in one globalized mass, can also pull it apart. Such technologies make persons across the globe realize there is no "golden straightjacket" that encloses them. They can "be yet separate" in mind and in fact as well, one way or another and not suffer some sort of catastrophe as the elites always warn. They just have to be brave enough to do so.

I wonder if folks truly understand the momentum this thought process is gaining across the world. The age of the nation-state may indeed be over - killed by would be empire-builders that pushed centralization too far. William Lind is perhaps one of the greatest political/military thinkers of our age - as early as 1990 he saw the real meaning of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the coming of stateless warfare and devolution. Now in the US, Canada and Britain good folks are again talking seriously about regaining their identity and independence.

Be brave compatriots, be very brave - ours may yet be a generation that fundamentally alters the shape of things. Deo Vindice!

Dum Spiro Spero and the Rising of the South

Joshua points us to an article by Erik Curren that should warm the hearts of all Southrons -

Perhaps the best-known prophet of peak-oil doom is James Howard Kunstler, who predicts that America will suffer decades of economic hardship and political unrest after peak oil hits. In his 2005 book The Long Emergency, Kunstler writes that "it would be reasonable to wonder whether the United States will continue to exist as a unified entity, and what kind of strife the Long Emergency could ignite region by region."

I spoke about just such a scenario in a recent post.

Kunstler goes on to describe one possible response to this emergency.

The suburban development that has powered the economic engine of the New South for the last 50 years in places like Atlanta will grind to a halt. High-gas prices will make long commutes too expensive; cul-de-sac developments and McMansions will lose their value almost overnight; jobs will evaporate as businesses go bankrupt; and tax attorneys, neurologists and bond traders and their families will find themselves suddenly destitute.

Angry suburbanites - being Southerners, many of them own guns - will join with angry Crackers (Kunstler's word) in riots and rebellions directed at local and federal authorities, who will be increasingly powerless to respond as government starts to break down.

Well Kunstler is from New York for goodness sakes so I will allow him a few errors in his assessment - I shall also correct them here.

First, those people that move to subdivisions have pretty much ceased to be Southrons at all - to be certain many of them were born in the South, they may have a semblance of the dialect, they may even like to hunt and fish but they are not Southern. No real southerner could ever be happy living door-step to door-step with a bunch of other people on a piece of property that just a few years ago was probably prime pasture land.

Don't get me wrong, I know and I am friends with some of those people, but despite some trivial common interests, their very decision to fore-go freedom in exchange for convenience and "things" makes them something other that the heirs to the Southern tradition I live and enjoy.

Kunstler is right however, these people in their consumer driven cul-de-sacs are a potential problem when and if things turn bad. I have expressed my concerns related to the one subdivision within a reasonable distance of my farm in SC. Of course these people may have the numbers but they do not yet own the country side. They have not occupied by greed and consumerism each little town. They are incapable of sustaining themselves for long in bad times - let them eat cake.

Curren sees the flaw in Kunstler's assessment too -

Indeed, might the South, with its small-town and agrarian values, be better off in an energy-starved world where we have to make more of our stuff and grow more of our food close to home than many places in the North that have always relied heavily on trade and manufacturing?

While the twin evils of suburban sprawl and factory farming are indeed huge threats to a sustainable future, they have not yet entirely snuffed out the traditional Southern way of life that, in many aspects, remains a model for a re-localized society elsewhere.

[...]

Perhaps Southern towns will be slower to adopt written peak-oil plans or formal re-localization efforts than places in New England or California. But the flip side of this intellectual conservatism is that the South was also slow to give up the small-town life and vibrant communities that such activist efforts attempt to rebuild.

Like Staunton, hundreds of other towns across the region have embraced (or never abandoned) farmer's markets, revamped their downtowns and nurtured the best of the South's values - family, community and stewardship of the earth.

He continues with a wonderful description of what the South and her people are and are not and concludes with-

If Southerners choose carefully from their diverse heritage - discarding racism, violence and know-nothing jingoism while embracing community, family and stewardship of the land - the rise of Dixie could be a good thing for everybody.

It is really hard to disagree with this conclusion - racism was something I never knew in my part of SC - it was something I encountered first-hand in other parts, but not at home (meaning my community).

Vindice majores aemulamur

The Constitution Party and Paleoconservatives

Matty N. contemplates why so few paleoconservatives support the Constitution Party. He claims that perhaps it has something to do with the last portion of the party's mission statement:

"[T}o restore American jurisprudence to its original Biblical common-law foundations."

Perhaps he is correct in his assessment - maybe, however, he is wrong.

Matty argues that such a mission statement necessarily equates to joining Church and State. He also argues, wrongly, that the States are themselves prohibited from establishing a state religion. This is of course false, as many states had established state religions before 1789-92 and long after - their state religions predated the Bill of Rights and continued to legally exist after ratification. Only the Federal Government is prohibited from engaging in the establishment of a state religion (someone should remind the folks that run Arlington and the National Mall that Statism is also a religion prohibited to the US Government).

But really whether or not the various states have this right is not the point. The principles, values and traditions of American jurisprudence are squarely based upon common-law and natural law - each of which are based in large part on Biblical Law.

If The Constitution Party has to drop the term "Biblical Law" from its mission statement to attract "real paleoconservatives" then the point seems moot - anyone with such a tenuous grasp of history as to completely misunderstand the development and origin of jurisprudence on the American continent is just not ready to be a paleoconservative yet. They lack an appreciation for and understanding of history that is simply required of a person that holds out a philosophy that honors traditions and what was good of the past.

Matty does get it right in the end:

The former national taxpayer's party [Constitution Party] needs to go back to its own roots -- a Constitution Party which supports strict interpretation of our Constitution, its limited powers bestowed upon the federal government, the power of the States to establish their own militias, and its exact freedoms it provides for the American people while supporting better values in our government and in out people. How do you do the latter? No morality based legislation, but set up ethical standards for our government officials. How about promoting values? Well, that's done by the individuals through their own religious and other values-based endeavors without forcing it through the government. We don't need too much government involvement in our values and if it is needed, (theft, murder, drug laws) it can be done on the State level. These state-by-state morality based legislation can be a state-by-state decision...

I have doubts that even if the Constitution Party could attract significant votes that it would ever affect change at the national level - all the same I support them (even amidst their own misconceived self-inflicted wounds). I cheer for them and hope for their success because essentially each time they raise an issue at the national level it reverberates at the local level. Perhaps in its own way the CP might just help in the effort to reawaken states and communities and engage people in the process of taking back what is theirs and righting wrongs.

It is time to dust off the 10th Amendment and give it a spin around the block!

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Devolution Anyone?

Keith Humphreys - a CE delegate to the 1st North American Secession Convention in Vermont - has started a digital project to keep alive the collaborative progress achieved at that event
The very idea or mention of secession is so misunderstood and easily dismissed by those that refuse to ponder it. Take a gander at reasonable men, from all corners of the United States, talking about why secession is a viable solution our current problems.

I have conversed or met most of the men you see in the video, all are reasonable, thoughtful and rational people. Here and here are more videos.

From a paleoconservative point of view devolution is the only solution that can ensure what is important is preserved. Consolidation necessarily means that tradition, culture and heritage is destroyed.  Still unconvinced?

All across the world the winds of devolution are again blowing - in the mid-80's nobody would have thought it possible that the Soviet Union could collapse without great violence - but it happened. Quebec just may finally achieve the nationhood most Quebecers have long desired. Even in Scotland the old embers of individual nationalism and identity have sparked new flames.  Why not in these United States?

My hat is off to the men that have worked for so long toward the day when we could again talk about the issue of secession - particular kudos to Professor Donald Livingston, Kirkpatrick Sale, Dr. Michael Hill, Dr. Clyde N. Wilson and others to numerous to mention as well as to groups like The Middlebury Institute, The League of the South, The Abbeville Institute and others.
We all stand on the shoulders of giants - those that came before, in this case Burke, Jefferson and Calhoun but the men and groups above have certainly done their part in this generation.
This is the absolute only solution to all of our problems.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Chance Favors the Prepared Mind

Pragmatic Survivalist

Andreas' post got me thinking alright, after I penned my last post I went to bed with my head swimming in this subject. I will share a lot in this post I probably ought not share. If I ever hope to influence anyone with political thoughts I should not share what some will misunderstand to be "craziness" but to heck with all of that.

I mentioned in my last post that I was once fascinated with survivalist thought and that I have in fact made a lot of effort over the years to equip myself as a survivalist, more or less. I have to clarify all of that; then I will tell a story of how I intend to survive the bad times I foresee as a possibility. By "bad times" I mean a natural disaster forcing me to take care of my family for a few weeks up to one of the more dire scenarios listed below lasting upwards to a couple of years.

One of the numerous email newsletters I receive is from a gentleman named Bruce Beach. Bruce is the founder and driving force behind a project to build community based survival programs all over the world. His most famous work (or infamous according to Canadian "authorities") is a project called Ark II.

Bruce is a wonderful gentleman, we have conversed numerous times via email. We differ in our philosophical approach to mankind, our religious beliefs and our view of the future but my relationship over the years with him via digits has been rewarding. Sign up for his newsletter.

Bruce believes strongly in a nuclear calamity - I do not fear this as much as he but I do not discount the possibility. He believes that after the calamity mankind will be left without effective government and that communities must band together to survive and rebuild. Bruce does not welcome the calamity but he does see it as an event that will allow mankind to rebuild and correct mistakes of the past. He makes a good argument that you will survive the initial stages of a calamity.

I disagree with several points in his assessment. First, no matter how badly beaten up, government will survive any calamity, manmade or otherwise (more on that later). Second, such a calamity will not be the path to a brighter tomorrow, it would in fact hasten the march toward tyranny - imagine 9/11 response times 5000.

I agree with him that only communities can ensure the survival of most people during bad times - let's face it 99.99% of the population is incapable of being true individual survivalist. There is danger to the prepared family in this community response however. Suppose you are the only person around that prepared anything at all; suppose you have things that others want. The community could get together and "vote" to redistribute your goods. Local communities could be good or bad depending upon the character of your neighbors.

As for government in general consider this. No matter what scenario you want to go with - plague, nuclear Holocaust, peak oil theory, economic collapse or [insert anything] - the likelihood that the central government would cease to exist is minimal. Some piece of that gigantic leviathan would survive. If oil was expensive and hard to come by in the peak oil scenario - the government would still have oil. Government people would have whatever limited supplies of medicines were required to cure any disease. Some functionary would still be alive and kicking even after the most horrific nuclear scenario.

To be certain it is conceivable that government could be hampered for a time, maybe a long time. Just look at the FEMA/DHS response to Katrina - and those buffoons knew that was going to occur. Perhaps in the most extreme scenario imaginable the central government would have no real control of many areas for several months.

This does not mean that the central government would just give up and go away. To the contrary, the state of emergency and the powers the Federal Government would declare to itself would be greater than any ever considered in this land. Eventually they would come to "save you" - despite the fact that you had already survived the initial event and the traumatic after affects. Your rugged individualism would be championed in speeches but looked upon disfavorably in policy matters. You can just hear the talk now, "we have to do something about these rouge towns out there in the countryside, and what about all of those guns - they are a threat to democracy".

When I say I was a survivalist as a teen and I have made many survivalist preparations as an adult I mean that I prepare to face the bad time - the time between a world shaking event and the time that the government comes around to "save me". Now if it takes them two years to "get to us" and by that time we already have a pretty good system working they may have a problem on their hands when they come to say "we are from the government and we are here to help" - translation, we got our stuff in order and we are here to tell you we are in charge again.

Thus in my last post when I considered firearms for the survivalist, I left out one very important consideration. Suppose you and your community survive only to find two years down the road a Federal Government comes knocking, one calling itself the US Government and paying homage to The Constitution and all that but resembling say Lenin's Soviet Union - shouting "land, peace, and bread" or Hitler's German. Think it impossible? Tyranny follows disaster.

I suggest, as I have always suggested that firearms serve two purposes; to defend the individual and to thwart tyranny - with the minor ancillary purposes of hunting and sport. Surviving a major catastrophe only to submit to utter tyranny would be foolish - better to be armed and ready. If the world is to be remade after such an event - for good or bad - it will not happen without violence. You are either prepared to face that or submit to it. Keep you arms clean and your powder dry.

As a paleoconservative my philosophy is that communities are the key to everything - including surviving any potential disaster scenario. The lowest form of government is the seat of power that is best suited to help and the most deserving of loyalty in such cases (loyalty after that to God and family). In the United States the local sheriff is the highest lawman in the county (no matter who else with a badge shows up). If bad things happen we ought to be able to rely on ourselves first, then our neighbors and then our local government. My brand of politics and my political philosophy are not divorced from this concept at all.