“The Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece of specious humbug disguised to conceal its desire for economic control of the United States.” - Charles Dickens
“The war between the North and South is a tariff war. The war is, further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for power.” - Karl Marx
July 12, 2023
Slavery in the Western Hemisphere
Slavery existed in human societies for more than 3,000 years. In the 400-year period from 1500 to 1900, slave traders transported ten-to-twelve million Africans to countries in the Western Hemisphere, most to Brazil. They transported less than 500,000 Africans to the American Colonies and then States, less than 5% of all African slaves shipped to countries in the Western Hemisphere.
It was legal to own slaves in all 13 American Colonies, before and after Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Vermont partially banned slavery in 1777 and Pennsylvania in 1780. Ohio abolished slavery in 1802 and New Jersey in 1804. In 1806, President Thomas Jefferson called for criminalizing the international slave trade. New York abolished adult slavery in 1829, but their children were to remain indentured (work without a salary) for a specific number of years.
Two Things that Helped End Slavery Worldwide in the 19th Century.
Arthur Herman shows in How the Scots Invented the Modern World (2001) that people in Scotland developed the basic ideas and habits of mind which spawned the modern age. Such people as John Knox, David Hume, John Locke, Adam Smith, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, James Watt, and Dr. David Livingstone played key roles in it. Adam Smith became the prophet of modernity and free market capitalism with his The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776.
The Scottish physician Dr. David Livingstone, born in 1815, spent 28 years in Africa medically treating and educating Africans. He was the first person to use quinine for treating malaria in Africa and was the first European to explore the interior of Africa, finding it a world of lush vegetation inhabited by millions of human beings, not a barren savannah or desert as people had thought. Livingstone worked tirelessly to bring Africans freedom from slavery.
Returning home after his first 16 years living in Africa, Livingstone found himself world famous. He taught: “We must smile at the heap of nonsense which has been written about the Black intellect… I do not believe in any incapacity of the African in either mind or heart.”
Scotland had the highest literacy rate of any country. Adam Smith observed how the parish school system in Scotland taught, “almost the whole common people to read, and a very great proportion of them to write and account.” Voltaire said, “We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Life Among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1852, became the best-selling book of that century, after the Bible. It had a profound effect on white people’s attitudes toward African Americans and slavery. Meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe at the start of the Civil War, Lincoln was to have said, “So this is the little lady who started this great war.”
Peaceful Emancipation, 1813-1886
In the 19th century all the countries in the Western Hemisphere, except the United States, freed their slaves peacefully. In the 18th century, in 1791, slaves in Haiti liberated themselves and mounted a successful 13-year insurrection against French colonial rule.
Britain freed the slaves throughout its empire, buying them from their owners and setting them free. Had the U.S. done this, the cost of buying and freeing all its African American slaves would have been less than what it cost to fight the Civil War.
States’ Asserting Their Right of Secession (and Nullification), 1787-1863
In adopting the Constitution of 1787, several states passed legislation stipulating their sovereign right to secede, if necessary. In 1798 Thomas Jefferson and James Madison promoted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions supporting a states’ right of secession. Lincoln, when a Congressperson, said:
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right.”
From 1803 to 1845, the New England states threatened to secede from the Union five times, objecting first to Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase; then to the Embargo Act; then to admitting slave-holding Louisiana into the Union; objecting to the War of 1812 against Britain; and to the admission of Texas into the Union. They faced no threats when they threatened to secede for each of these reasons.
Lincoln invited the Union-disposed northwestern counties of Virginia to secede from the state and become the new “State of West Virginia” and made it part of the Union.
South Carolina took a different approach. When the federal government tripled the sales tax on imports, known as the “Tariff of Abomination,” South Carolina refused to comply and nullified it.
Nullification
Nullification is the action of a state abrogating a federal law based on state sovereignty.
Thomas Jefferson introduced this concept, writing:
“Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force… Nullification is the rightful remedy.”
Tom Woods spells it out in his book Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, published in 2010. (He identifies the three Constitutional clauses most often exploited to justify expansion of federal government power: the general welfare clause, the commerce clause, and the “necessary and proper” clause.)
Southern Secession—1st Wave
With Lincoln elected President but not yet inaugurated, seven states seceded from the Union: first South Carolina, then Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The people in these states considered him unsuitable for holding that office.
Lincoln and Clay
Entering politics in 1832, Abraham Lincoln announced:
“I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many friends to become a candidate for the legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system, and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles.”
Lincoln was a disciple of Henry Clay, from Kentucky, who promoted Alexander Hamilton’s “American System.” This included high import tariffs, freeing the U.S. from dependence on imports; a national bank to regulate the country’s banking system and ensure a consistent supply of credit; and federally financed internal improvements, especially for canals and railroads.
Lincoln admired Henry Clay and described him as “My beau ideal of a statesman.”
Jefferson and Hamilton
Thomas DiLorenzo, in Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution—and What It Means for Americans Today (2008), writes:
“Jeffersonian federalism is the true history of America. The union was created by voluntary compact of the states, and peaceful secession was considered an essential part of any genuinely federal compact… Either the people are sovereign over their government or they are not. If not, they are mere serfs, serving at the pleasure of their tax-collecting lords.”
Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) was the godfather of centralized government and interventionist economic policies. He despised the Jeffersonian principal of limited government and sought to establish political support for the pursuit of “national greatness” and “imperial glory.” He argued that the U.S. should have a permanent president charged with appointing governors along with veto power over all state legislation.
The Morrill Tariff of 1861
Justin Morrill, a Congressman from Vermont, followed the nullified Tariff of Abominations with a new one that President Buchanan signed into law two days before Lincoln’s inauguration. Throughout his political career Lincoln had made it perfectly clear that he, like Hamilton and Clay before him, favored, not just tariffs—federal taxes charged on products imported into the country--but protective tariffs—high taxes imposed on imports to protect similar domestic products from external competition.
The Charleston Mercury wrote: “The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States.”
Charles Dickens wrote: “The Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece of specious humbug disguised to conceal its desire for economic control of the United States.”
And Karl Marx, as only he could, put it this way: “The war between the North and South is a tariff war. The war is, further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for power.”
US Tariff Rates
In the days before there was a sales tax on domestically produced goods, property taxes, and an income tax, import tariffs were the principal source of income for funding the federal government. Tariffs collected on goods coming through southern ports covered 90% of the federal budget.
Like with the earlier Tariff of Abomination, the Morrill tariff once again tripled the import tariff rate from 15% to 47%, which the South again viewed as intolerable.
Fort Sumter: Start of War
In his first Inaugural Address, Lincoln stated:
“The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts [tariffs]; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.”
Apparently, Lincoln thought Southern secession would be acceptable so long as the Union could continue collecting its protectionist tariffs on imports collected mainly in southern ports harbors, especially at this one, in Charleston’s Harbor.
After South Carolina succeeded, Federal forces stayed in the Fort. The Confederates started shelling it, and the ladies of Charleston came to watch. Three days later, when the fort was running low on food, its commander surrendered. There had been no casualties, but Lincoln nevertheless had maneuvered the South into firing the first shot, and the War Between the States began.
The First 13th Amendment
Civil War court historians don’t write about this first 13th Amendment!
Lincoln instructed New York senator William Seward to push through Congress a 13th Constitutional Amendment named after Congressman Thomas Corwin of Ohio that would prohibit the federal government from ever interfering with Southern Slavery.
It read:
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service [slavery] by the laws of said State.”
And the fugitive slave law would remain, so northern states receiving escaped slaves must continue to return them to their owners in the South.
In his first inaugural address regarding this amendment, Lincoln said: “I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
Armed with this amendment, Lincoln and his fellow Republicans were willing to permanently enshrine slavery in the U.S. Constitution in order to keep the Southern States paying those tariffs.
The Amendment passed easily in both the House and Senate, meeting the required 2/3 majorities. And five states, Kentucky, Ohio, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Illinois had ratified the amendment before the war rendered it mute.
Dates of Southern Secession—2nd Wave
When the war started after the Confederates shelled Fort Sumter, Lincoln, without consulting Congress, called up 75,000 troops. Four more states then quickly succeeded and joined the Confederacy: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Kentucky and Missouri wanted to secede but stayed under Union control.
The Real Lincoln
In 1861 no American politician—including President Lincoln—said that the federal G was launching a war against the South to end slavery.
Tom DiLorenzo writes, in his book The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (2002):
“The Declaration of Independence was the cornerstone of the states’ rights doctrine embraced by the Southern secessionists of 1861 and was seen as the most important defense against the tyranny of centralized governmental power.”
A key Jeffersonian dictum, he notes, is:
“Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed and that whenever a government becomes destructive of the rights of life, liberty and property, citizens have a right to secede from that government and form a new one.”
This was the basis for America’s two wars of secession in 1776 and 1861.
Union vs. Confederate States
The Confederate Constitution was much like the Union one, with these differences:
The Confederate President could serve only one, six-year term.
It outlawed protectionist tariffs and permitted nullification and secession.
It outlawed government subsidies for “internal improvements,” except for dredging harbors.
Congressional appropriations required approval by a two-thirds majority vote.
It lacked plans for a central bank, especially not one under the control of politicians.
Prohibited the importation of slaves, and each state could unilaterally free its slaves when it so chose.
Non-slave states could join the Confederacy.
The Confederacy was an agrarian-based economy that produced five million bales of cotton a year for export to Europe and for sale to U.S. manufacturing firms, located mainly in the North. In 1860 the South produced 80 percent of the world’s cotton. Its two largest cities in 1860 were New Orleans, soon captured, and Charleston, soon blockaded. The Confederate currency emphasized the importance of its overseas cotton trade by showing four ships on its dollar bill exporting its cotton to Europe. The South was known as the “Cotton Garden of the World.”
As the war dragged on, the Confederate currency became worthless. Now, however, a well-preserved Confederate dollar bill goes for $100 on eBay.
Resources of the Opposing Forces
The 22 Union states in 1861 had a population of 22 million: the 11 Confederate states, 5.4 million Whites and 3.7 million Black slaves, with 130,000 free Black people. In addition to its much smaller population, the greatest disparities, all strongly favoring the Union, were in manufactured goods, iron production, merchant ships, miles of railroad tracks, and banking capital.
Eastern Theater of War
Sixty thousand troops fought the first and only major battle in 1861, at a small stream named Bull Run near the town of Manassas in northern Virginia, close to the Union capital. The Union named it the First Battle of Bull Run, and the Confederates, the First Battle of Manassas since they fought a second battle there in 1862. (The Confederates won both.)
Both sides then engaged in a major buildup of troops and supplies. A year later, the Union had 192,000 troops in the Eastern theater under General George McClellan, and the Confederates, 73,900 troops under Robert E. Lee.
Rather than march directly south to take Richmond, the Confederate capital, McClelland ferried his troops and supplies down the Potomac River to Virginia just outside Richmond. General Lee had Stonewall Jackson bring his troops down from the Shenandoah Valley to assist him in the defense of Richmond.
Robert E. Lee proved his mettle defending Richmond in the 7 Days Battles between June 25 to July 1, 1862. These 8 Battles in Seven Days resulted in McClellan withdrawing all his troops, ordnance, and supplies and sailing back to Washington.
Antietam
Flushed with success, Lee moved his troops for the first time into a Union State, Maryland. He first won a siege of nearby Harpers Ferry, capturing 12,400 Federal soldiers there. Next was the Battle of South Mountain on September 14 and then the Battle of Antietam on Sept 17.
Antietam turned out to be the bloodiest single day of the Civil War. The Confederates had 13,724 casualties–comprising killed, wounded, and missing or captured–34% of its 40,000 soldiers who fought in this battle. The Union had 12,400 casualties, 17% of its 75,000 soldiers who fought there.
Lee held close to the same ground at the end of the day as he did at the beginning of the battle.
The Emancipation Proclamation
With General Robert E. Lee consistently winning battles for the Confederacy, European leaders were becoming increasingly convinced that the 13 Confederate States were going to win their War for Independence, especially if one or more European powers recognized them as a new country and provided aid like France did for the 13 American Colonies when they seceded from Britain.
With slavery ending everywhere Lincoln wrote an Emancipation Proclamation for America. But, as advised, he waited until the Union finally won a victory before releasing it!
The Battle of Antietam was tactically a draw, but when Lee moved his troops back across the Potomac River to Virginia after the battle, the Northern press began calling it a strategic victory for the Union.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was a smart, deceptive move. It made Britain, especially having freed its slaves, shy away from recognizing a country, like the Confederacy, having slaves. With this Proclamation, Lincoln took credit for freeing America’s slaves. But, in fact, the Proclamation did not free a single slave: It did not apply to border states loyal to the Union—Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland. Slave owners in those states who professed loyalty to the Union could keep their slaves.
It also didn’t apply to portions of Confederate States that Union troops held, in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
A leading Civil War historian, Bruce Catton, puts it this way:
“The Proclamation was almost absurd. It proclaimed freedom for all slaves in precisely those areas where the United States could not make its authority effective and allowed slavery to continue in slave states which remained under Federal control.”
The British Punch on Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation
This famous cartoon in the British Punch shows Lincoln playing his black ace of spades—the last card he held in his struggle with the Confederate States of America.
This poem reads, in part:
Here I lead the Black From the slaves of Southern Rebels
If I win the South must pay for it Thus I strike the chain
Pay in Fire and Gore But the slaves of loyal owners
If I lose, I’m ne’er a dollar Still shall slaves remain.
Worse off than before
Lincoln actually called the Emancipation Proclamation his “last card.”
Course of the War
The Civil War lasted 4 years. There were 69 battles, each involving more than 20,000 combatants; 95 engagements; 81 actions; and various skirmishes and sieges. Instead of calling this a “Civil War” a better, more accurate name for it would be, “The War for Southern Independence.” The Confederate States simply wanted to secede and go their own way, leaving the Union states and their capital alone.
There were twelve major battles in the Civil War. The two most important ones were at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (July 1-3, 1863) and Vicksburg, Mississippi (surrendered on July 4, 1863, following a short siege,).
The Union strategy for the war was to institute a naval blockade of all the Southern ports, put military pressure on Richmond and the rest of Virginia and Tennessee, and take full control of the Mississippi River, dividing the Confederacy in two. The Confederate strategy was simply to press forward along the line dividing the northern and southern states and invade the Union states of Maryland and Pennsylvania.
The Battle of Gettysburg was the largest and bloodiest one ever fought in North America, by 85,000 Union troops against 65,000 Confederates. There were 50,000 casualties, affecting one-third of the 150,000 combatants. On the third day of the battle, Pickett’s Charge on the center of the Union line failed, where the Confederates lost close to half their men in it. Lee stopped the fighting, pulled back and left Gettysburg unpursued, and took his remaining troops back to Virginia.
Grant’s Historic Vicksburg Campaign
The town of Vicksburg is situated on a 200-foot bluff above the Mississippi River. Lincoln appreciated its significance, saying, “Vicksburg is the key. The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket.” The way Grant captured Vicksburg with its 30,000 troops was brilliant.
Working closely with the Navy, Grant had a fleet under Admiral Porter come down the Mississippi, running the gauntlet of guns firing from the Vicksburg bluff and landing miles downstream to ferry Grant’s waiting army across the river to its east side.
Given the topography of the Mississippi river there and its surrounding environs, the only way Vicksburg could be captured would be to approach it from the East. With Grant’s 40,000 troops now on the East side of the river, cut off from his base of supply and living off the land, he first captured Jackson, Mississippi’s capital and then conducted a siege of Vicksburg, obtaining its surrender on July 4, 1883. Lincoln declared, “The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.”
After Vicksburg, Lincoln, with Congressional approval, made Grant a 3-star Lieutenant General, the first one since George Washington, with command of all the Union troops, East, and West. Then, after a stunning victory at Chattanooga, he moved his headquarters to Virginia. Then, following a protracted, multi-month siege of Richmond and Petersburg, the war ended when Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Grant at Appomattox.
Grant: the Greatest General of the Civil War
Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Union General Ulysses S. Grant were the two greatest generals of the Civil War. General Grant comes out on top. This “simple, honest, and unpretending man,” as General Sherman described him, was the first general in American history to then attain the rank of a 4-star Full General.
Mark Twain persuaded Grant, near the end of his life, to write his memoirs and have Twain’s firm publish them, which Grant did, despite his becoming afflicted with fatal throat cancer. Grant’s lucid, compelling, candid, and brutally honest The Complete Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (1885-6) occupies a special place in American letters as the greatest American autobiography.
I recommend two recent biographies of Ulysses S. Grant. One is U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth, by Joan Waugh, a Professor of History at UCLA, published in 2009 by the University of North Carolina Press.
American Ulysses
The other one is American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant. by Ronald C. White, published in 2016. General (Ret.) David H. Petraeus declares this biography:
“Certain to be recognized as the classic work on Grant. American Ulysses is a monumental examination of one of the most compelling figures in American history.”
Ronald White places two quotes about Grant at the beginning of the book. The first one is by Frederick Douglass, author of what people agree is the best book on the Kennedy assassination, JFK and the Unspeakable. It is especially touching:
“In him the negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior.”
And this one by Theodore Roosevelt:
“Mightiest among the mighty dead loom the three great figures of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant.”
President Grant
After the war, Grant served two terms as 18th President of the United States (1869-1877) and then went on an uninterrupted two-and-a-half-year world tour with his wife, Julia, to worldwide acclaim.
Grant was not as bad a President as historians make him out to be. He held office during Reconstruction, sought freedom and justice for Black Americans, and worked to crush the Ku Klux Klan. Frederick Douglass called him “the vigilant, firm, impartial, and wise protector of my race.”
He issued 91 Presidential Vetoes, more than all previous Presidents combined, and the House and Senate were only able to overrule four of them.
Ulysses Grant was the first President to serve two full terms in office, following Andrew Jackson, who served two terms in 1829-1837, 11 presidents later. And after Grant, the next ten Presidents served no more than one term each, until Woodrow Wilson, with his two terms, 1913-1921.
Most importantly, in his second term Grant restored the gold standard, creating U.S. prosperity for the next half-century.
Grant and his Family
Ulysses S. Grant came from Ohio. Only 5 feet 1-inch tall when he went to West Point, he was widely recognized right away to be an expert horseman. He grew to be 5 feet 8 inches tall, considerably shorter than his favorite bay horse “Cincinnati,” and 8 inches shorter than 6 feet 4-inch President Lincoln.
Grant met his future wife, Julia Boggs Dent, from St. Louis, through her brother Fred, Grant’s roommate at West Point. She was a skilled pianist and an expert equestrian. They had four children. Julia was very devoted to Grant, as he was to her. She would accompany him on his campaigns, staying with him at his headquarters whenever possible. Bruce Catton writes, “The fact is that they shared one of the great romantic beautiful loves of all American history.”
Grant’s Tomb
Joan Waugh writes about Grant’s Tomb in the last chapter of her book on Grant. It is in Morningside Park, 270 feet above the Hudson River, at Riverside Drive and West 122nd Street in Manhattan.
This privately funded mausoleum opened to the public on April 27, 1897, on the 75th anniversary of Grant’s birthday. For a time, it was New York’s most visited monument, more popular than the Statue of Liberty.
Groucho Marx liked to ask contestants on his quiz show, “Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?” Most contestants would get it wrong. Grant and Julia are entombed side-by-side together above ground in sarcophagi. No one is buried there.
Unfortunately, Morningside Park has become, like places in other cities around the country, a dangerous, crime-ridden neighborhood, what the New York Times has called a “graffiti-scarred hangout for drug dealers and muggers.”
Military Bases in the U.S. Today
A 158 years after the Civil War ended, there are now some 318 military bases in the United States, at least one in every state, with forty-one in California, thirty in Virginia, and twenty-one in Florida.
The U.S. military has grown since its triumph in the Civil War, followed by the Spanish-American war in 1898 with its acquisition of the Philippines being the springboard for American exceptionalism, imperialism, and empire.
U.S. Military Bases Abroad
The U.S. maintains some eight-hundred military bases in eighty countries around the world. And with Finland recently joining NATO the U.S. has offered to build additional bases there.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., after announcing that he is running for President in the 2024 elections, says that when elected he will close all those 800 U.S. military bases in other countries and bring the U.S. troops stationed in them home.
The United States has the highest military spending of any country, 12.2 times more than Russia, and more than the next fourteen countries combined.
U.S. Government Revenue and Expenditures
In fiscal year 2022 alone the U.S, Government had a deficit of 1.37 Tillion dollars in one year.. National defense expenditure (including VA affairs) was 765 Billion. For FY 2024 defense expenditures will exceed one trillion dollars. Interest payments on the Federal debt was $480 Billion in 2022, when interest rates were low. This cost will rise in the coming years.
With the Federal debt rising at an increasing amount along with interest payments on the debt, made with printed currency not backed by anything, the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises tells us what will happen:
“There is no means of avoiding the collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”
Cycles and Turnings
William Strauss and Neil Howe show in The Fourth Turning (1997) that history unfolds in cycles, each cycle lasting the length of a long human life. Each Cycle is composed of four Turnings: a High, an Awakening, an Unraveling, and a Crisis–like in nature, with its four “seasons” Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.” Each human cycle has four “seasons,” called Turnings. There have been four Cycles, each with their four “Turnings” in American history:
The Crises in first three 4th Turnings in American history each resulted in a major war: The American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II. The U.S. has not yet begun directly fighting in a major war in this Millennial Cycle’s current 4th Turning.
Strauss and Howe say that this current Fourth Turning might either “end in apocalypse—or glory.” They write:
“The nation could be ruined, its democracy destroyed, and millions of people scattered or killed. Or America could enter a new golden age, triumphantly applying shared values to improve the human condition. The rhythms of history do not reveal the outcome of the coming crisis, all they suggest is the timing.”
Before this Millennial Cycle’s 4th Fourth Turning is over, the risk that the U.S. could become involved in a nuclear war is real.
The American Century
The idea of the “American Century,” with America dominating international relations and the global economy began, according to historian David Traxel, in 1898 with America’s war against Spain in Cuba and the Philippines, which with the acquisition of the Philippines turned the U.S. into a world power.
Others say that American hegemony began in 1918 at the end of World War I; or especially in 1945 at the end of World War II.
But with the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine not turning out well, and the Great Recession of 2008 heralding the onset of this Millennial Cycle’s Crisis Fourth
Turning, with more trouble to come, it would appear that the “American Century’ is essentially over.
Jacob Hornberger, Founder and President of The Future of Freedom Foundation, in his January 31, 2023 article, “Why Not Defund the Military,” writes:
“The conversion of the federal government to a national-security state was the worst mistake our nation has ever made. Not only is it a major factor in the out-of-control federal spending, debt and monetary debauchery that is threatening our nation with bankruptcy, it also is now threatening our nation with life-destroying nuclear war. We need to repeal and dismantle our national security establishment and restore a [Jeffersonian] limited-government republic with a small military force. We need to do it now. Our liberty, peace, prosperity, harmony and even our survival depends on it.”
Our country’s decades-long journey embracing military imperialism must stop. Instead, we must once again become the exemplar of Jeffersonian peace, freedom, and democracy that once inspired the world.
Concluding thoughts
A war was not necessary to end slavery in the United States.
People in the southern states would have ended slavery peacefully in the 19th century, without war, as happened in every other country in the Western Hemisphere.
Southern secession would have been a good thing.
The North’s drive for empire and global dominion may not have occurred if another large country like the Confederate States of America with its free markets had come to occupy a substantial part of the North American continent along with the United States and Canada.
Ulysses S. Grant was the premiere general in the Civil War.
We need another general of Grant’s caliber now to steer our country away from a 4th Turning nuclear war.
Our country needs to dismantle its national security establishment.
And restore a Jeffersonian limited-government republic with a small military force but armed with a state-of-the-art nuclear deterrent.
Notes
The Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Website (ddponline.org) will be posting the complete video of this talk with its fifty-two slides in the Videos section of site. (The last slide shows my southern family’s connection with the Confederacy.)
My 2001 article “A Jeffersonian View of the Civil War” is accessible here.
In the attached “Recommended Reading” list for this article, the books I recommend in this updated article on the 158-year-old Civil War were all published in the last 25 years, except for these two classics: Grant’s 1885-6 Personal Memoirs and Bruce Catton’s 1960, 1969 Grant Moves South, 1861-1863, Part 1; and Grant Takes Command, 1863-1865, Part 2.
Recommended Reading
Adams, Charles. 2000. When In The Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.
Bennett, Lerone Jr. 2000. Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co.
Brager, Bruce. 2020. How Ulysses S. Grant Won the Civil War. Mechanicsburg, PA. Stackpole Books.
Catton, Bruce. 1960, 1969. Grant Moves South, 1861-1863, Part 1; Grant Takes Command, 1863-1865, Part 2. Boston: Little Brown and Company.
Dwyer, John J. 2005. The War Between the States: America’s Uncivil War. Benton, TX: Bluebonnet, Press.
Davis, William C. 2014. Crucible of Command: Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee—The War They Fought, The Peace They Forged. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, A Member of the Perseus Books Group.
DiLorenzo, Thomas J. 2002. The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda and An Unnecessary War. Roseville, Calif.: Prima Publishing Company, Random House.
——– 2006. Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe. New York: Crown Publishing Group, A Division of Random House, Inc.
——– 2008. Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution—and What It Means for Americans Today. New York: Crown Publishing Group, A Division of Random House, Inc.
——– 2020. The Problem with Lincoln. Washington DC: Regnery History, Salem Media Group.
Gordon, David, ed. 1998. Secession, State & Liberty. Chapter 7, “Yankee Confederates: New England Secession Movements Prior to the War Between the States,” by Thomas DiLorenzo. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Grant, Ulysses Simpson. [1885-6] 1995. Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc.
Griffin, David Ray, 2018. The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic?Atlanta. Clarity Press, Inc.
Herman, Arthur, 2001. How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything n It. NY: Three Rivers Press.
Miller, Donald W. Jr., 2014. “World War Redux: The Fourth Turning Fourth Time Around.” LewRockwell.com. Also accessible online by googling the title.
Scaturro, Frank J. 1998. President Grant Reconsidered. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
Scruggs, Leonard M. 2011. The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths. Asheville, NC: University Media, Inc.
Strauss, William and Howe, Neil. 1997. The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy. NY: Broadway Books.
Thorton, Mark and Ekelund, Robert B. Jr. 2004. Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of The Civil War. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc.
Waugh, Joan. 2009. U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Wright, Ronald C. 2016. American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant. NY: Random House.
Woods, Thomas E. Jr. 2010. Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in The 21st Century. Washington DC: Regnery Publishing Inc.
Donald Miller [send him mail] is a retired cardiac surgeon, a Professor Emeritus of Surgery and former Chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and Dr. Miller's articles are collected in the "Authors" section of this site.
Any multi-engine
pilot can tell instantly which side has the failed engine. Very simple:
"Idle engine, idle foot." If your right engine is losing power, it will
take left rudder to maintain straight flight.
You
should believe the flight manuals which come with the engine and
airframe. I was learning to fly the DC-3, and the owner said "Increase
power to 32" and reduce rpms to 1800." "The flight manuale says don't do
this Sir." "Just listen to how quiet this thing is!" he replied. Thirty
seconds later the owner's son came up and said "Your left engine is on
fire!" By golly he was right. By the time we got the fire out half the
cowling had melted off. It had swallowed a valve and raw fuel was being
dumped right into the exhaust. (We were on final approach so the booster
pumps were on.)
"I sure wish I could blame you for this, but I can't," said the owner.
In '51 they tried to ground the noble DC-3,
And so some lawyers brought the case before the CAB,
The Board examined all the facts behind their great oak portal,
And then pronounced these simple words, "The Gooney Bird's immortal."
THEY PATCH HER UP WITH MASKING TAPE,
WITH PAPER CLIPS AND STRINGS,
AND STILL SHE FLIES, SHE NEVER DIES.
METHUSELAH WITH WINGS.
The Army toasts their SkyTrain now in lousy scotch and soda,
The Tommies raise their tankards high to cheer their old Dakota,
Some claim the C-47's best, or the gallant R4D,
Forget that claim, they're all the same, the noble DC-3.
(chorus)
Douglas built the ship to last, but nobody expected,
The crazy heap would fly and fly no matter how they wrecked it.
While nations fall and men retire and jets get obsolete,
The Gooney Bird flies on and on, at 11,000 feet.
(chorus)
No matter what they do to her, The Gooney Bird still flies,
One crippled plane was fitted out with one wing half the size,
She hunched her shoulders, then took off, I know this makes us laugh
One wing askew, and yet she flew ... The DC-2 and a half.
(chorus)
She had her faults, but after all, who's perfect in this sphere?
Her heating system was a gem, and we loved her for her gear.
Of course, her windows leaked a bit when the rain came pouring down,
She'd keep you warm, but in a storm it's possible you'd drown.
(chorus)
Well now she flies the feeder routes and carries mail and freight,
She's just an airborne office or a flying twelve ton crate,
THEY PATCH HER UP WITH MASKING TAPE,
WITH PAPER CLIPS AND STRINGS,
AND STILL SHE FLIES, SHE NEVER DIES.
METHUSELAH WITH WINGS.
In today's encore selection - from Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back by Andrew Zolli & Ann Marie Healy. The internet was created by the U.S. military as a way to preserve communications to missile silos in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack:
A visualization of routing paths through a portion of the Internet.
"From its inception as a U.S. military funded project in the 1960s, the Internet was designed to solve a particular problem above all else: to ensure the continuity of communications in the face of disaster. Military leaders at the time were concerned that a preemptive nuclear attack by the Soviets on U.S. telecommunications hubs could disrupt the chain of command -- and that their own counterstrike orders might never make it from their command bunkers to their intended recipients in the missile silos of North Dakota. So they asked the Internet's original engineers to design a system that could sense and automatically divert traffic around the inevitable equipment failures that would accompany any such attack.
"The Internet achieves this feat in a simple yet ingenious way: It breaks up every email, web page, and video we transmit into packets of information and forwards them through a labyrinthine network of routers -- specialized network computers that are typically redundantly connected to more than one other node on the network. Each router contains a regularly updated routing table, similar to a local train schedule. When a packet of data arrives at a router, this table is consulted and the packet is forwarded in the general direction of its destination. If the best pathway is blocked, congested, or damaged, the routing table is updated accordingly and the packet is diverted along an alternative pathway, where it will meet the next router in its journey, and the process will repeat. A packet containing a typical web search may traverse dozens of Internet routers and links -- and be diverted away from multiple congestion points or offline computers -- on the seemingly instantaneous trip between your computer and your favorite website.
"The highly distributed nature of the routing system ensures that if a malicious hacker were to disrupt a single, randomly chosen computer on the Internet, or even physically blow it up, the network itself would be unlikely to be affected. The routing tables of nearby routers would simply be updated and would send network traffic around the damaged machine. In this way, it's designed to be robust in the face of the anticipated threat of equipment failure.
"However, the modern Internet is extremely vulnerable to a form of attack that was unanticipated when it was first invented: the malicious exploitation of the network's open architecture -- not to route around damage, but to engorge it with extra, useless information. This is what Internet spammers, computer worms and viruses, botnets, and distributed denial of service attacks do: They flood the network with empty packets of information, often from multiple sources at once. These deluges hijack otherwise beneficial features of the network to congest the system and bring a particular computer, central hub, or even the whole network to a standstill."
|
|||
| author: Andrew Zolli & Ann Marie Healy | |||
| title: Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back | |||
| publisher: Free Press | |||
| date: Copyright 2012 by Andrew Zolli |
Our Titanic Juneteenth Pride
JUN 24, 2023
For a time in the late 1990s, after the hit movie Titanic was released, I became immersed in the subject. Which was a bit uncharacteristic for me, given its general non-conspiratorial nature. Only later would I learn about the critics of the upcoming Federal Reserve Act perishing, and even theories that the entire thing was faked.
This week, America 2.0 has been inundated with coverage of a handful of men becoming lost while sinking to the bottom of the ocean, in an effort to get a closeup view of the sunken liner. They were all wealthy enough to pay $250,000 each for the ultimate One Percent adventure. I didn’t pay much attention to the story at first, but once they claimed that the leader had made some ridiculous comments about not hiring any “50 year old White guys,” my spidey-sense was triggered. And then I learned that one of their wives was a descendant of a famous Titanic couple. Oh, the irony! But when I saw the craft they were in….
Really, that piece of junk looked a lot like one of those Apollo spacecrafts, which we are told traveled through the Van Allen radiation belt (which is supposedly impenetrable now), and the unimaginable dangers of space, protected by about four inches of aluminum foil lining. Aluminum foil isn’t even that foolproof on leftovers, but as we’ve been told many times, things were different in 1969. It was the Space Age. A president could make a phone call to the moon using a land line. That’s when men were men, and transgenders were not seen or heard. At any rate, if you’ve seen the craft, which is in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, you’ll understand my point.
So this submersible thing really reminded me of those ramshackle Apollo crafts with the aluminum foil lining. And apparently these daring One Percenters didn’t even really test it out first. Well, to be fair, NASA never tested the Lunar Lander on earth, either. So they were just following the strategy of greater men than you or I. I don’t know what a craft that is going to plunge 13,000 feet to the ocean floor is supposed to look like, but I don’t think it ought to look like that. It kind of resembled a Disney ride from Animal Kingdom or something. But then again, I don’t think the Apollo spaceships looked like craft capable to flying to the moon and back should look, either. But what do I know? I’m a community college dropout.
When I started paying attention to this drama, it seemed to me there weren’t really any actual attempts at rescue going on. According to our habitually lying mainstream media, the Navy can only send a submarine down to the depths of 10,000 feet. What? So a craft that looked like it came out of some twelve year old’s back yard, which some wildly rich guys nevertheless paid a fortune for, was trusted to go deeper down in the water than our military submarines? Does that make any sense whatsoever? Shouldn’t a naval submarine be able to go as deep as it wants? Aren’t we the greatest country in the world? Reminded me of how our military did nothing at all while hijacked aircraft headed towards the Pentagon on 9/11. That’s some Military Industrial Complex!
It’s kind of mysterious how they can allegedly send unmanned probes to the outskirts of our solar system, but evidently can’t probe the deepest parts of our earthly oceans. It reminds me of how the Hubble telescope can give us those cool pictures of the Milky Way galaxy and such, but not zoom in on one of the Apollo landing sites on the moon. Or for that matter, give us a nice view of the giant spinning ball we all inhabit. Universal Studios came up with that iconic spinning ball image almost 100 years ago, when our space program was a mere twinkle in Werner von Braun’s then-Nazi eye. And yet they knew what it looked like. Somehow they knew. But they can’t get to a depth of 13,000 feet to perform a rescue. It’s a science thing, you wouldn’t understand.
Our military, like the rest of our monstrously expensive but useless bureaucracy, is really good at telling you what they can’t do. Which is pretty much anything that might make life better for people. Can’t control the border. Can’t cure cancer. Can’t end poverty. Can’t win the “war” on drugs. Can’t plow the roads during blizzards. Can’t keep the power on. Can’t hold the rich and powerful accountable under the law. So, saying they can’t conduct some kind of rescue for people 13,000 feet below the ocean- not 13,000 light years away, or even 13,000 miles, is par for the course for them. Which is why we have to keep giving them trillions to spend on…other things. Something. Like the police, they will never be there when you need them.
The state controlled media makes the excuses for them. They are their publicity agents. I wish I had a publicist like them. I’d sure sell a lot more books. But common people- the Sheeple who vote back in 96 percent of incumbents every election- also make excuses for them. I’ve encountered them on forums and social media. And they’re not getting paid millions like the “journalists” whose job it is to defend these corrupt and incompetent authorities religiously. They do it for free. Angrily speaking up for those who are Experts in Not Getting it Done, as Charles Dickens called them over 150 years ago. Try making excuses like that for not doing your work. You certainly won’t get any online trolls defending you.
Now this dramatic event, which was undoubtedly distracting us from other, more important things, took place very close to Juneteenth, the most preposterous federal holiday in our history. And also during Pride Month, the most preposterous celebratory month the “Woke” folks ever invented. Well, there was a lot to be proud of in just this one event. Proud of the trillions we’ve lavished upon our bloated defense budget, which is so incompetent it couldn’t even launch an effort to rescue Americans stranded on the ocean floor, near the beloved wreckage of the Titanic. Now, we could probably understand if they didn’t have the time to rescue some common riff-raff, but these were billionaires, or at least multi-multi millionaires. Don’t their lives matter?
That just doesn’t make me proud. But exactly who is supposed to be proud during Pride Month? What are we supposed to be proud of? As the late, great Norm MacDonald once said, it’s not an achievement. You haven’t accomplished anything by being gay. Can boring heterosexuals be proud of being heterosexual? How about sadists, or masochists, or exhibitionists? Voyeurs? I don’t know, stare into a window, even from a distance, and if you’re common riff-raff, you might go to jail. Be listed as a sex offender. I would advise any prospective voyeurs to dress in drag and see what happens. My guess is it will no longer be considered a crime.
Do bisexuals get to have “pride?” Like half-Blacks, maybe only half-pride? What about the impotent, who can’t afford Viagra? Can they be “proud” of their erectile dysfunction? Aren’t they very tangible victims, like so many others? How about the nuns and monks who actually honor their vows of chastity? Shouldn’t that be a source of pride? Isn’t celibacy some kind of virtue? Do the dwindling number of parents with very large families get to be proud of their broods during Pride Month? That used to be the case- parents being proud of having lots of children and all. It seems the definition of “pride” has changed quite a bit. Now, a parent can only be proud of their child if they come out of the closet.
During Pride Month, I want to speak up for all the lonely guys, the incels out there. The ones who get castigated as “creeps,” for looking at females, and even going so far as to ask them out on dates. Again, I suggest you dress in drag, and try staring. Or asking out. You will no longer be considered a “creep,” even if you remain an incel. You might even be able to fix that, too, by charging the woman you want to have sex with as a “transphobe.” After all, as a school system close to my area has shown, you can physically rape a girl in a public school restroom, and as long as you were dressed as a woman during the crime, you won’t be prosecuted.
The possibilities for transgenders are endless. The world really is their oyster now. You can be 6’4 and keep all your male equipment, like “Lia” Thomas, and be permitted to change in locker rooms next to pretty biological females before winning swim meets against them. You may well be awarded a “Woman of the Year” thing. And my guess is that, if Lia or some other “trans female” athlete has a “sexual emergency” in one of those locker rooms, like that forgotten migrant did when he raped an eight year old boy at a public pool, they probably wouldn’t be charged with rape. Or anything. I never heard the migrant with the “sexual emergency” was prosecuted.
So there are a lot of Idiocracy-style elements colliding all at once in just this month. Juneteenth? The name denotes stupidity. It’s basically an Ebonics name, for an Ebonics holiday. And if they kept it at the level of St. Patrick’s Day, or Valentine’s Day, I guess that would be alright. But when you make it a federal holiday, it’s in rarified company, representing the things your society considers most important. So how is a holiday most of us can’t even understand, and which has dubious historical significance, given the status of Christmas or Thanksgiving? Forget Easter, that’s about as important to this collapsing culture as National Pizza Day is.
I remember when Stevie Wonder and other Black celebrities began pushing for a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King back in the 1980s. Now I love Martin Luther King, but was he really the greatest American who ever lived? You’d have to believe that, since no other individual historical figure has a federal holiday in his name. George Washington got bumped down to Presidents Day, where he shares the stage with the likes of Millard Fillmore. And those same Blacks weren’t quite as interested in exposing the truth about King’s death. Not interested in anything but getting the “racist” White establishment to cave in to their demands. To pander. What they do best. And it was no contest. Only Jesse Helms really spoke out against it.
So, in terms of honoring our past, America presently has Independence Day, Martin Luther King Day, and now Juneteenth as federal holidays. So two out of three concern the same 12 percent of the population that dominates commercials and the sports world. Our second largest minority group. That ought to tell you something about the cuckization of our society. Matt Gaetz, by the way, was caught in Congress the other day accusing John Durham, and by implication the conservative mainstream, with being the Washington Generals. That’s kind of amazing, given that ‘s become one of my talking points. I haven’t heard anyone else make that comparison. Maybe someone on his staff listens to my show.
Essentially, Juneteenth is George Floyd Day. No one had heard of it before the mostly peaceful protests in the summer of 2020. While pandering to his almost nonexistent Black support, Donald Trump promised to make Juneteenth a federal holiday during his 2020 campaign, and for good measure designated the truly invisible KKK as a terrorist group. But not Black Lives Matter. Congress didn’t pass a law making Juneteenth a federal holiday until June, 2021, when Joe Biden signed it. There is no doubt that Trump would have signed it, too. It’s not like it was legislation to station troops on the border and end government benefits for illegal immigrants.
“Fearless” podcast host Jason Whitlock, who happens to be Black, is the only voice I’ve heard who has exposed Juneteenth for the farce it is. Certainly no White voice is going to do it. Or any Hispanic or Asian voices either, apparently. Whitlock and his mostly Black fellow contributors do a nice job of calling out the “Woke” tyranny, and the celebration of ghetto culture. Whitlock and his frequent guest, former NBA first round pick Royce White, come very close to what I envisioned with my character Phosphate Jefferson, in my novel The Unreals. Phosphate represented my ideal Black figure, and the kind of Black person I would be. Like me, he pontificated and ranted a lot. So do Whitlock and White. Much of what they say could have come from my book.
Whitlock has the courage to tie everything he says to a Biblical world view. As he has pointed out, we are supposed to be reminded that pride goeth before the fall. Pride used to be considered a character flaw, if not a sin. But once they started propping up certain groups- recall Aretha Franklin’s iconic hit Respect Yourself, and inserted scenes in every Hollywood production of skinny females coldcocking large White males, that saying went down the memory hole, right alongside “There but for the grace of God go I.” Isn’t “White Supremacy” derived from pride? Why then, isn’t that being celebrated? The outfits of the Klan would coordinate nicely next to the garish and colorful costumes of the transgender brigade. Who are all, of course, very proud.
If they had wanted to make a federal holiday to honor lifelong street criminal George Floyd, how many Republicucks would have opposed it? Maybe they’ll throw Whitey a crumb and devote a federal holiday to Dylan Mulvaney. Or Lia Thomas. They could call it Mulvaney/Thomas Day, kind of like the antiquated White Supremacist Lee/ Jackson Day. To make conservatives happy, why not Caitlin Jenner? “She” was once the world’s greatest athlete, you know. But no dead, White “racist” males, like Thomas Jefferson. Remember, Harriet Tubman is the greatest woman in American history, according to our soon to be digitalized fiat currency. Our second largest minority group is truly a special lot. Who else can play cornerback or running back in the NFL?
So perhaps the fallen billionaires of the unimposing Titan didn’t die in vain. Maybe they got to see the actual Titanic before they blew up. The military is now informing us that they pretty much knew this laughable craft had exploded five days earlier. So they let the sheeple breathlessly follow the inane “journalists” covering the story, sitting tensely on the edge of their seats, when they already knew they were dead? Again, does that make any sense? All that’s left is for MSNBC or The New York Times to claim that their dying words were, “Long live Pride Month and Juneteenth!” If only there had been a Black on board, maybe they too could get a federal holiday.
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