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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
What Keeps The Continent of Africa Poor? Geography or Management? | Thomas Sowell
Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2024
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Africa, Geography, Management, Poor | Leave a Comment »
Did the Supreme Court Really Rule Against Free Speech?
Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2024
by Tom Woods
“I can tell you that on social media today you can see people saying things like, “The government has an interest in preventing the spread of misinformation during a deadly pandemic.”“
“If you’re like me, that kind of language makes your skin crawl.“
I think privately owned news entities can do what they want with what they own as long as they don’t violate the non aggression principle. It is up to the user to understand what they are dealing with. Can we say the same about publicly traded companies?
That said you have to be an idiot not to understand social media and main stream news media make “adjustments” to the truth.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/did-the-supreme-court-really-rule-against-free-speech/

The Supreme Court just ruled in the case of Murthy v. Missouri, in which plaintiffs (including Jay Bhattacharya, who wrote the foreword to my Diary of a Psychosis) argued that the federal government unconstitutionally outsourced restrictions on speech to third parties, namely Twitter and Facebook, and prevented dissenting views on Covid from receiving a fair hearing.
The Court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked “standing” to sue, so the merits of the case took a back seat.
Jenin Younes, an attorney who has argued her share of COVID cases and has appeared on the Tom Woods Show, offered her initial thoughts:
As many have likely seen, the Supreme Court found that plaintiffs in Murthy v Missouri lack standing, reversing the Fifth Circuit, with Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch dissenting. While disappointing, the decision is not devastating. It is premised on the fact that a preliminary injunction isn’t warranted because plaintiffs can’t show likelihood of future harm. The majority specifically said they weren’t expressing a view as to whether the Fifth Circuit correctly articulated the standard for when private conduct [e.g., suppression of speech at government behest] is turned into state action.
Thus, the underlying case WILL continue. Alito’s dissent is excellent, showing far more familiarity with the record and explaining that the majority opinion will permit an unlawful censorship campaign to operate so long as it’s carried out with enough sophistication.
This fight is not over!!
Jay himself seems less hopeful:
The Supreme Court just ruled in the Murthy v. Missouri case that the Biden Administration can coerce social media companies to censor and shadowban people and posts it doesn’t like. Congress will now need to act to enforce the Constitution since the Supreme Court won’t.
This now also becomes a key issue in the upcoming election. Where do the presidential candidates stand on social media censorship? We know where Biden stands since his lawyers argue that he has near monarchical power over social media speech.
The court ruled that the plaintiffs (Missouri and Louisiana, as well as me and other blacklisted individuals) lacked standing to sue. This means that the Administration can censor ideas & no person will have standing to enforce the 1st Amendment. Free speech in America, for the moment, is dead.
And since it was petty bureaucrats doing the censoring at the behest of elected officals, voters should ask every candidate for office down to dog catcher where they stand on the power of government to censor. Let’s make it a political liability to favor censorship.
Friends familiar with the court proceedings told me the plaintiffs’ case was poorly argued—an inexcusable failing, given the strength and importance of the case.
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If Joe Biden Isn’t Running the Government, Who Is?
Posted by M. C. on July 11, 2024
“These four groups form the coalition that makes up the political class. The “establishment” simply refers to the established, or current, political class. And, together, this coalition works to empower and enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.”
“That is the cycle churning in Washington, DC. The fact that the president is cognitively impaired is essentially irrelevant.”
“That is unless it begins to wake the American public up to the fact that the government does not work for us like we were all taught it does in elementary school. But until then, the churn continues.”
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/if-joe-biden-isnt-running-the-government-who-is/

After a disastrous debate performance two weeks ago and a weak damage-control interview last Friday, it’s finally become clear to almost everyone that President Joe Biden is not running the federal government.
Every four years, we’re supposed to pretend that a single individual, who we collectively choose at the ballot box, takes charge of the federal government and acts as we would to address the problems we face at home and abroad.
Biden’s inability to get through a debate and a sit-down interview without issues shatters the illusion that he is the one running things in Washington and across America’s globe-spanning sphere of influence.
So, if Biden is not actually running the government, who is?
There are, of course, the people around Biden. Some of his family members—like his wife, Jill Biden, and son, Hunter Biden—have been especially close by these last weeks as the president weathers the debate fallout. There’s also Biden’s closest advisors and political confidants like Mike Donilon, Ron Klain, Anita Dunn, and Ted Kaufman, who have been at the president’s side since he decided to run in 2020. Finally, there’s the White House staff who does much, if not all, of the day-to-day work.
But this group makes up only a small part of the broader power structure in Washington. To understand where federal power truly lies, we have to zoom out.
The political class in America is made up of countless organizations, departments, and factions. However, four unique groups can be defined.
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Labour’s Net Zero Mandate Presages Economic Failure
Posted by M. C. on July 9, 2024
“We did it,” Sir Keir Starmer told cheering Labour supporters at a 4 a.m. victory rally. “Change begins now. And it feels good.”
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by Tyler Durden
Tuesday, Jul 09, 2024 – 03:30 AM
Authored by Rupert Darwall via RealClearPolitics,
Globally, the International Energy Agency’s net zero pathway in 2030 requires the energy sector to have $16.5 trillion more capital, 25 million more workers, and extra land area amounting to the combined size of California, Texas, Mexico, and France – all to produce 7% less energy.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/labours-net-zero-mandate-presages-economic-failure

Did what, exactly? is a question Britain’s new prime minister should reflect on as he enters Downing Street with a huge 176-seat majority in the House of Commons – because Labour’s mandate from the country is not what it appears. At 34%, Labour’s share of the national vote is the lowest for any governing party in the last century.
Overall, Labour’s vote share this year is five points lower than in the 2017 election under Jeremy Corbyn, Starmer’s much-derided, hard-left predecessor. Its share of the vote improved on its disastrous 2019 showing thanks only to a large increase in Scotland. In England, Labour’s vote was largely unchanged, and in Wales, it actually fell. Despite Labour’s landslide in terms of the number of its Members of Parliament, at the constituency level, seat majorities are tighter than at any point since 1945. On closer inspection, Starmer’s victory resembles Joe Biden’s in 2020 – a rejection of an incumbent rather than a positive mandate for change, the kind that Tony Blair could boast of in 1997.
Starmer’s challenge is compounded by Britain’s enfeebled economy. “Wealth creation is our number one priority. Growth is our core business,” he declared when he launched Labour’s election manifesto last month. “The only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people. And that’s why we made it our first national mission in government.”
This prioritization makes political as well as economic sense. In an important eve-of-poll article, Chris Giles, Financial Times’s economics editor, shows that only the bottom 20% of the income distribution saw any real gains after inflation since the 2019 election. “Everyone else was hit harder by high inflation.” In prior years marked by fiscal austerity, income gains were higher for poorer than richer households. “The outcomes for working-age household incomes since 2010,” Giles writes, are “exactly what you might expect a left-leaning government to produce. People hate it.” Generating economic growth should be Labour’s first, second, and third instinct, Giles argues.
But this approach would run counter both to Labour’s instinct to redistribute income and to its history. The British Labour party has never successfully turned around an ailing economy. Blair entered Downing Street with a strong economy, his economic adviser admitting that the economy Labour inherited was better than that of any incoming government in living memory. Blair was no Bill Clinton, whom the maestro of supply-side economics Art Laffer praises to the skies. “Big fan of Clinton,” Laffer told Chris Giles two months ago. “I voted for him and campaigned for Clinton because Clinton did cut taxes.” Nonetheless, Blair had a great facility in articulating economic ideas. Hearing Starmer, a human rights lawyer, talk economics is like listening to someone struggle to speak a foreign language.
Despite his manifesto pledge, Starmer knows that wealth creation is not his government’s top priority. As a matter of law, the Climate Change Act 2008 imposes on his government, as on its predecessor, a duty to reach net zero by 2050. If the courts are persuaded that individual policies interfere with that duty, they can overturn those policies. There is no corresponding duty to grow the economy. Neither should there be: Judicializing policy by creating cast-iron legal duties that require ministers to pursue certain policy outcomes replaces democratic accountability with the threat of judicial review. There is no “get-out” clause in the Climate Change Act, which was piloted through Parliament when Labour was last in power by climate and energy secretary Ed Miliband, whom Starmer has just reappointed to his old job. Starmer’s economic policy is a prisoner of net zero.
Apart from Nigel Farage’s Reform party, now Britain’s third-largest party in terms of votes won, politicians of all other parties subscribe to the fiction that net zero is the growth opportunity of the 21st century. In this, they are aided by the economics commentariat that either downplays, covers up, or outright denies the existence of any trade-off between net zero and economic growth. It is another example of what FT columnist Janan Ganesh, writing of Democrats and the media cover-up of President Biden’s mental impairment, calls “liberal denialism.”
In Britain, net zero denialism extends to official advice provided by the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility. In its net zero review, the Treasury asserts that “additional investment will translate into additional GDP growth.” The data falsifies the Treasury’s assertion. Between 2009 and 2020, decarbonization of power generation with large additions of wind and solar has seen a 15.5% increase in nameplate capacity produce 17.1% less electricity – a decline of 28.3% in output per unit of generating capacity. It is why Britain has some of the world’s most expensive electricity, destroying the competitiveness of its manufacturing industry and contributing greatly to Britain’s cost of living crisis, which, as Giles shows, has left 80% of British households either worse off or no better off after inflation since 2019.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, Labour's Net Zero Mandate Presages Economic Failure | Leave a Comment »
We were “deceived and gaslit for years”, all in the name of “democracy”; then “poof”, it collapsed overnight
Posted by M. C. on July 9, 2024
We see clearly the collapse of the manipulation that has confined discourse to within the various Washington villages.
The third agent to decline lay, Todd argues, with America declaring itself to be the greatest military nation on earth – versus the reality of an America that has long rid itself of much of its manufacturing capacity (particularly the military capacity), yet elects to clash with a stabilized Russia, a great power returned, and with China which has instantiated itself as the world’s manufacturing Behemoth (including militarily).
The Editor at Large for the Wall Street Journal, Gerry Baker, says: ‘We’ve been “gaslit’ and deceived” – for years – “all in the name of ‘democracy’”. Who is this Baker trying to kid, the War Street Journal has been an effective enabler.
The Editor at Large for the Wall Street Journal, Gerry Baker, says: ‘We’ve been “gaslit’ and deceived” – for years – “all in the name of ‘democracy’”. That deceit “collapsed” with the Presidential debate, Thursday’.
“Until the world saw the truth … [against] the ‘misinformation’ … the fiction of Mr. Biden’s competence … suggests they [the Democrats] evidently thought they could get away with promoting it. [Yet] by perpetuating that fiction they were also revealing their contempt for the voters and for democracy itself”.
Baker continues:
“Biden succeeded because he made toeing the party line his life’s work. Like all politicians whose egos dwarf their talents, he ascended the greasy pole by slavishly following his party wherever it led … Finally—in the ultimate act of partisan servility, he became Barack Obama’s vice president, the summit of achievement for those incapable, yet loyal: the apex position for the consummate ‘yes man’”.
“But then, just as he was ready to drift into a comfortable and well-deserved obscurity, his party needed a front man … They sought a loyal and reliable figurehead, a flag of convenience, under which they could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life — on a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery. There was no more loyal and convenient vehicle than Joe”.
If so, then who actually has been ‘pulling America’s strings’ these past years?
“You [the Democratic machine] don’t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years about how this man was both brilliantly competent at the job and a healing force for national unity – and now tell us, when your deception is uncovered, that it’s ‘bedtime for Bonzo’ – thanks for your service, and let’s move on”, Baker warns.
“[Now] it is going horribly wrong. Much of his party has no use for him anymore … in a remarkably cynical act of bait-and-switch, [they are trying to] swap him out for someone more useful to their cause. Part of me thinks they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. I find myself in the odd position of wanting to root for poor mumbling Joe … It’s tempting to say to the Democratic machine frantically mobilizing against him: You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to deceive, dissemble and gaslight us for years”.
Something significant has snapped within ‘the system’. It is always tempting to situate such events in ‘immediate time’, but even Baker seems to allude to a longer cycle of gaslighting and deception – one that only now has suddenly burst into open view.
Such events – though seemingly ephemeral and of the moment – can be portents to deeper structural contradictions moving.
When Baker writes of Biden being the latest ‘flag of convenience’ under which the ruling strata could sail the progressive vessel into the deepest reaches of American life – “on a mission to advance statism, climate extremism and self-lacerating wokery” – it seems probable that he is referring to the 1970s era of the Trilateral Commission and the Club of Rome.
The 1970s and 1980s were the point at which the long arc of traditional liberalism gave place to an avowedly illiberal, mechanical ‘control system’ (managerial technocracy) that today fraudulently poses as liberal democracy.
Emmanuel Todd, the French anthropological historian, examines the longer dynamics to events unfolding in the present: The prime agent of change leading to the Decline of the West (La Défaite de l’Occident), he argues, was the implosion of ‘Anglo’ Protestantism in the U.S. (and England), with its entailed habits of work, individualism and industry – a creed whose qualities were held then to reflect God’s grace through material success, and, above all, to confirm membership of the divine ‘Elect’.
Whereas traditional liberalism had its mores, the decline of traditional values triggered the slide towards managerial technocracy, and to nihilism. Religion lingers on in the West, though in a ‘zombie’ state, Todd avers. Such societies, he argues, flounder – absent some guiding metaphysical sphere that provides people with non-material sustenance.
However, the incoming doctrine that only a wealthy financial élite, tech experts, leaders of multinational corporations and banks possess the required foresight and technological understanding to manipulate a complex and increasingly controlled system changed politics completely.
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John Doyle – My New Addiction
Posted by M. C. on July 9, 2024
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Why Not Eliminate Taxes on All Income?
Posted by M. C. on July 8, 2024
Although no Americans are old enough to remember it, there was a time in the United States when there was no income tax. The income tax actually began as a modest 1 percent tax on taxable income above $3,000, followed by a series of surcharges of up to 6 percent applied to higher incomes. The maximum rate of 7 percent was applied to taxable income over $500,000. Thanks to generous exemptions and deductions, only a small percentage of the population paid taxes on their income.
The reason why people say that we just can’t eliminate the income tax is that it would deprive the government of revenue it needs to spend. But isn’t that the point? The case could be made that at least 90 percent of what the federal government spends money on is unconstitutional: foreign aid, business subsidies, welfare, education, health care, job training, the war on drugs, public broadcasting, student loans, food stamps, foreign wars, space exploration, and so much more.
During a campaign stop in Nevada early last month, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump promised that if elected, there would be no more federal tax on tips.The constitutional functions of the U.S. government could be adequately funded without an income tax.
[Click to Tweet]
Said Trump: “For those hotel workers and people that get tips, you’re going to be very happy, because when I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips. You do a great job of service. You take care of people, and I think it’s going to be something that really is deserved.”
According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), tips are taxable income and must be reported to employers. Four factors determine whether a payment qualifies as a tip:
- The customer makes the payment free from compulsion;
- The customer must have the unrestricted right to determine the amount;
- The payment should not be the subject of negotiations or dictated by employer policy; and
- Generally, the customer has the right to determine who receives the payment.
Tips reported to employers are included on employees’ W-2 forms for income-reporting purposes. Tips are simply added to one’s taxable income and are subject to not only income tax but also Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes.
Trump was not clear whether his proposal would exempt tips from payroll taxes, income taxes, or both.
A week after Trump met with congressional Republicans, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), with cosponsors Senator Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), introduced the No Tax on Tips Act. The relevant text of the bill simply reads: “There shall be allowed as a deduction an amount equal to the cash tips received during the taxable year that are included on statements furnished to the employer.” This would be an above-the-line deduction of tips received (via cash, credit cards, and checks) that reduces taxable income similar to the deductions for student loan interest paid, unreimbursed expenses of teachers, the deductible part of self-employment tax, and contributions to a traditional IRA.
Naturally, industry groups were ecstatic about the bill, including the National Restaurant Association and the Professional Beauty Association. Said Sean Kennedy, Executive Vice President of Public Affairs at the National Restaurant Association: “Tipped employees are a critical part of the restaurant industry, and anything that strengthens their economic condition is a positive for them. The ‘No Tax on Tips Act’ would provide immediate tax relief for more than 2.2 million restaurant employees and their families, putting more money in their pockets at a time when we’re all feeling the squeeze of higher prices.”
However, Elyanna Calle, an organizer with the Restaurant Workers United union, slammed the proposal, calling it a “misguided way of trying to fix a problem of uplifting the lower class.”
Other opponents of Trump’s proposal focused on how much revenue the federal government would be losing if tips were no longer taxed.
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Hannibal Directive – Named After Hannibal Lector?
Posted by M. C. on July 8, 2024
‘There was crazy hysteria, and decisions started being made without verified information’: Documents and testimonies obtained by Haaretz reveal the Hannibal operational order, which directs the use of force to prevent soldiers being taken into captivity, was employed at three army facilities infiltrated by Hamas, potentially endangering civilians as well
Gaza Division operations and airstrikes in the first hours of October 7 were based on limited information. The first long moments after the Hamas attack was launched were chaotic. Reports were coming in, with their significance not always clear. When their meaning was understood, it was realized that something horrific had taken
Haaretz Pay Wall – See more of the story here
A new report from the Israeli outlet Haaretz titled “IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive” confirms what independent outlets like The Grayzone and Electronic Intifada have been getting smeared as antisemitic conspiracy theorists for saying this entire time: that many of the Israeli deaths on October 7 were the result of an IDF policy of deliberately firing on their own people to prevent them from being taken hostage by Hamas…
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TGIF: On the Pursuit of Happiness
Posted by M. C. on July 5, 2024
The equation, however, is invidious. It suggests that other people necessarily are impediments to one’s happiness and thus one should sacrifice one’s happiness at least to some extent. But why would anyone believe that “selfishness”—making the most of one’s life by holding it as one’s ultimate value—entails the disvaluing of other people? It’s crazy on its face. Rand, like the ancient Greeks, understood that he who cares about only himself demonstrates that he doesn’t care enough.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tgif-pursuit-happiness/

The most remarkable phrase in the Declaration of Independence, whose anniversary we just celebrated, is the pursuit of happiness. Looking back 248 years, that phrase may strike the modern ear as strange for a political document. But it apparently did not seem that way to Americans in 1776. The second paragraph told the world:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The term among these indicates that Thomas Jefferson and the Second Continental Congress did not think that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were our only unalienable rights. But the pursuit of happiness made the brief enumeration, which speaks volumes.
The first thing to note is that Jefferson did not write that we had a right to happiness, but only the right to pursue it. Legal scholar and historian Carli N. Conklin of the University of Missouri School of Law states in “The Origin of the Pursuit of Happiness”:
[T]he pursuit of happiness is not a legal guarantee that one will obtain happiness, even when happiness is defined within its eighteenth-century context. It is instead, an articulation of the idea that as humans we were created to live, at liberty, with the unalienable right to engage in the pursuit.
Through historical investigation, Conklin shows that contrary to common belief, the phrase was no “glittering generality” (in Carl Becker’s phrase) back them but rather was a term of substance.
I trust no one will take seriously that the omission of property from the list of examples means that Jefferson et al. thought property unimportant. Of course, it did not mean that. We know that the people behind the Declaration understood the deep importance of private property to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A possible reason for not listing it is that property was often used differently from the way we use it today. While we say, “That’s my property,” an 18th-century person might say, “I have a property in that,” although today’s usage was hardly unknown back then. James Madison, who was not a member of the Continental Congress but who had a lot of say about property, used the word both ways. However, here are examples of what he called “the larger and juster meaning” of the word:
[A] man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. [Emphasis added.]
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.
He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. [Emphasis added.]
In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
It’s widely known that Jefferson and other founders were deeply influenced by John Locke,
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Give me Liberty or Give me America 2.0
Posted by M. C. on July 5, 2024
Some truths are self-evident
“Endowed by their creator?” That won’t play well in Hollywood, or any big city in America 2.0. This was the basis of the Bill of Rights, which made the Constitution tolerable. How many Americans understand that we are born free; that our rights come from God, not from any government
https://donaldjeffries.substack.com/p/give-me-liberty-or-give-me-america

As I’ve noted before, I was fascinated by history as a very young boy. And no part of history caught my attention like the founding of this nation. The American Revolution, the War for Independence- call it what you will. The Boston Tea Party. The Minutemen. Paul Revere’s midnight ride. The shot heard around the world.
I know that our Founders weren’t perfect. Thomas Paine, the brilliant writer who produced Common Sense, the pamphlet that helped ignite patriotic fervor in the colonies, wound up hating George Washington, who did indeed seem to have forgotten his invaluable contributions to the movement for independence. Shockingly and inexplicably, the location of most of Paine’s remains are unknown, as I detailed in Crimes and Cover-Ups in American Politics: 1776-1963. Washington’s actions regarding the Whiskey Rebellion besmirch his reputation. He also was unfortunately swayed by the dastardly future Black Broadway star Alexander Hamilton, instead of Hamilton’s ideological foe Thomas Jefferson. This would have a huge negative impact on the future of the young republic.
And then there was Benjamin Franklin, who was a member of the blasphemous Hellfire Club. In the 1990s, some human bones were found in his one-time London home. The court historians were quick to declare that there was nothing sinister about this, and blamed it on a young medical student renting a room from Franklin, who went on to die very young, interestingly enough. But Franklin was an undeniably brilliant man, who discovered electricity among other things. And you have to love someone who said “There is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace.” Not to mention his very clever pickup line, which he used on the fair damsels of eighteenth century Paris, “Would you care to join me in the pursuit of happiness?” That’s way better than “you got any fries to go with that shake?”
Our Founding Fathers were the wealthiest men of their time. The One Percent if you will. Can we picture any One Percenter today like John Hancock, who is said to have written his name so large on the Declaration of Independence in order for King George to read it without his glasses? Think of Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet, and other billionaires meeting surreptitiously in small taverns, passing out radical pamphlets, all for the cause of human liberty. There wasn’t a eugenicist in the bunch. Well, maybe Alexander Hamilton. If he were actually around today, and not just a fake Black Broadway star, he’d be invited to Bilderberg and Bohemian Grove. But the rest of them would be relegated to appearing on humble little podcasts like mine.
Those who signed the Declaration of Independence did truly pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Quoting from my Crimes and Cover-Ups in American Politics: 1776-1963: “Seventeen of those who signed the Declaration lost everything they owned. Nine of these men lost their lives in the conflict. Rhode Island’s William Ellery’s estate was burned to the ground during the war. William Floyd of New York suffered the same fate. Fellow New Yorker Frances Lewis saw his estates destroyed by fire as well, and he was imprisoned and died during his incarceration. One of the richest of all those who signed, William Livingston, died impoverished a few years after the war. John Hart of New Jersey risked not only his fortune, but his family ties. His wife was dying as he signed the Declaration, and he was forced to flee from the British when he headed home to say goodbye. He never saw his thirteen children again, and died in 1779. New Jersey Judge Richard Stockton was another British prisoner, and he too died a pauper. Wealthy banker Robert Morris gave away his fortune in an effort to finance the revolution. He also died penniless….Virginia’s Thomas Nelson, in a perhaps implausible anecdote, allegedly turned a cannon on his own home, which had become General Cornwallis’s headquarters, and destroyed it. He, like so many of the others, died in poverty. South Carolina’s Thomas Lynch, along with his wife, simply disappeared at sea.”
The very wealthy George Washington led his troops in battle. Picture one of our countless chicken hawk political warriors, like Lindsey Graham, subjecting themselves to anything more dangerous than a game of Risk. The American Revolution was a revolt of the One Percent. They weren’t rebelling against any homegrown aristocracy, but the yolk of British rule. They didn’t want to be under the thumb of royalty. Their guiding principles of consent of the governed and no taxation without representation were watershed concepts in human history. The whole consent of the governed thing was shattered by Abraham Lincoln, whose despotism contradicted the intentions of the Founders. As for taxation without representation; does your congressional representative represent you? And are you taxed?
Could there be any bolder words than these? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Thomas Jefferson’s unique intellect shines through here, and his thoughts remain relevant, almost 250 years later.
“Endowed by their creator?” That won’t play well in Hollywood, or any big city in America 2.0. This was the basis of the Bill of Rights, which made the Constitution tolerable. How many Americans understand that we are born free; that our rights come from God, not from any government? Pay particular attention to the very clear statement that the People have a right to alter or abolish “any Form of Government” when it no longer suits their needs. Jefferson would be arrested and prosecuted as an “insurrectionist” for such Thought Crimes in America 2.0. He’d be given a small cell, alongside all those January 6 defendants, who’ve been denied all due process. To understand his present reputation, look at his demeaning character in the Broadway play Hamilton. To millions of Americans, he’s the “racist” who “raped” Sally Hemings.
As inhabitants of the most corrupt society in the history of the world, this passage should resonate with all of us: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Do those “long train of abuses and usurpations” sound familiar? Just imagine the list we could compile.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: America 2.0, American Revolution, Boston Tea Party, Liberty, The Minutemen | Leave a Comment »

