Sunday, May 31, 2009
Just Say No To Big Government
From the Campaign for Liberty
By Jack Hunter
Frustrated with Gov. Mark Sanford's refusal to accept $700 million in federal stimulus dollars and his opposition to the state budget, S.C. Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell addressed the governor in an open letter this month, writing, "Time and again, you have failed to address problems in a constructive manner and proactively work with the Legislature to find solutions."
Noting Sanford's constant opposition to the Republican-dominated state legislature, McConnell added, "While the attacks you have launched may have been intended to build your national image as a reformer, in the final analysis, the work of a true reformer is measured not by words or TV ads or by press releases, but by what he or she has been able to accomplish."
McConnell has a point. But it's also nearly impossible to accomplish anything when there's only one reformer.
There are two types of "conservative" Republicans. The first type believes that government is broken, but simply needs Republicans to better manage it, while the other believes we need to actually reduce government. The first type can enjoy long careers by peppering their continuing support for the status quo with conservative-sounding language. The second type tends to make fewer friends because their career-long language consists of telling Democrats, Republicans, and even their constituents one word: "No."
Texas Congressman Ron Paul earned the name "Dr. No" in the House of Representatives for opposing most legislation brought to the floor. During his tenure in Congress, Sanford joined Paul in saying "no" more than any other congressman. Would America have been better served if Paul and Sanford tried to work more with the rest of the legislature to help bring us to our current state? Or might we have been better off if there were more leaders willing to consistently say "no" to more laws, more spending, and more government in general?
Consider the example of New Mexico's own "Dr. No," former Republican Gov. Gary "Veto" Johnson, who earned his nickname for vetoing 750 bills from 1995 to 2003, more than all the vetoes of the other 49 governors combined. Johnson also cut the growth of his state's government in half, privatized half of the state's prisons, reduced state employees by 1,000, oversaw the longest period without a tax increase in the state's history, and left office with a budget surplus. No doubt, New Mexico leaders wanted to spend as much money as South Carolina's legislature or any other state government. But Johnson constantly said "no," and was able to do some good.
The bloated budget and massive debt that continues to plague the state of South Carolina is a microcosm of the bloated budget and massive debt that continues to plague the entire United States. Everyone from across the political spectrum will generally agree that such reckless behavior is a problem and we cannot go on forever conducting business as usual. Yet when any leader dares to reverse course by saying "no," such leaders will invariably find themselves being attacked for daring to obstruct business as usual. The same state legislature that created our current economic woes are the same leaders who are now saying Sanford is the problem, as if a more cooperative gubernatorial extension of themselves would be preferable and somehow produce different, better results.
When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, the new president hung a portrait in the White House of his hero, President Calvin Coolidge. Author Ivan Eland described Coolidge as a president who believed the United States had too many laws. He once said, "We would be better off if we didn't have anymore ... The greatest duty and opportunity of government is not to embark on any new ventures." But as it was in his own time, Coolidge's conservative philosophy remains unpopular today, where "good" or "great" leaders are always defined as those who expand the power of government to accomplish certain goals. The opposite is also true, and it was for this reason that Time magazine once felt compelled to declare Sanford one of America's "worst governors" for his habit of constantly opposing government.
I'm often criticized for bashing Republicans, but I do so because it's hard to take most of them seriously. Any Republican who talks about "fiscal responsibility," yet spends as much as any Democrat, whether at the national or state level, is completely worthless. Unfortunately, this description fits the bulk of the Republican Party. Most Republicans aren't the least bit serious about their conservative rhetoric.
And as America continues to spiral downward the longer spending goes upward, the few, serious conservatives willing to say "no" to government will always get the loudest "yes" from me.
The "Southern Avenger" Jack Hunter is a conservative commentator (WTMA 1250 AM talk radio) and columnist (Charleston City Paper) living in Charleston, South Carolina. See his blog.
Noting Sanford's constant opposition to the Republican-dominated state legislature, McConnell added, "While the attacks you have launched may have been intended to build your national image as a reformer, in the final analysis, the work of a true reformer is measured not by words or TV ads or by press releases, but by what he or she has been able to accomplish."
McConnell has a point. But it's also nearly impossible to accomplish anything when there's only one reformer.
There are two types of "conservative" Republicans. The first type believes that government is broken, but simply needs Republicans to better manage it, while the other believes we need to actually reduce government. The first type can enjoy long careers by peppering their continuing support for the status quo with conservative-sounding language. The second type tends to make fewer friends because their career-long language consists of telling Democrats, Republicans, and even their constituents one word: "No."
Texas Congressman Ron Paul earned the name "Dr. No" in the House of Representatives for opposing most legislation brought to the floor. During his tenure in Congress, Sanford joined Paul in saying "no" more than any other congressman. Would America have been better served if Paul and Sanford tried to work more with the rest of the legislature to help bring us to our current state? Or might we have been better off if there were more leaders willing to consistently say "no" to more laws, more spending, and more government in general?
Consider the example of New Mexico's own "Dr. No," former Republican Gov. Gary "Veto" Johnson, who earned his nickname for vetoing 750 bills from 1995 to 2003, more than all the vetoes of the other 49 governors combined. Johnson also cut the growth of his state's government in half, privatized half of the state's prisons, reduced state employees by 1,000, oversaw the longest period without a tax increase in the state's history, and left office with a budget surplus. No doubt, New Mexico leaders wanted to spend as much money as South Carolina's legislature or any other state government. But Johnson constantly said "no," and was able to do some good.
The bloated budget and massive debt that continues to plague the state of South Carolina is a microcosm of the bloated budget and massive debt that continues to plague the entire United States. Everyone from across the political spectrum will generally agree that such reckless behavior is a problem and we cannot go on forever conducting business as usual. Yet when any leader dares to reverse course by saying "no," such leaders will invariably find themselves being attacked for daring to obstruct business as usual. The same state legislature that created our current economic woes are the same leaders who are now saying Sanford is the problem, as if a more cooperative gubernatorial extension of themselves would be preferable and somehow produce different, better results.
When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, the new president hung a portrait in the White House of his hero, President Calvin Coolidge. Author Ivan Eland described Coolidge as a president who believed the United States had too many laws. He once said, "We would be better off if we didn't have anymore ... The greatest duty and opportunity of government is not to embark on any new ventures." But as it was in his own time, Coolidge's conservative philosophy remains unpopular today, where "good" or "great" leaders are always defined as those who expand the power of government to accomplish certain goals. The opposite is also true, and it was for this reason that Time magazine once felt compelled to declare Sanford one of America's "worst governors" for his habit of constantly opposing government.
I'm often criticized for bashing Republicans, but I do so because it's hard to take most of them seriously. Any Republican who talks about "fiscal responsibility," yet spends as much as any Democrat, whether at the national or state level, is completely worthless. Unfortunately, this description fits the bulk of the Republican Party. Most Republicans aren't the least bit serious about their conservative rhetoric.
And as America continues to spiral downward the longer spending goes upward, the few, serious conservatives willing to say "no" to government will always get the loudest "yes" from me.
The "Southern Avenger" Jack Hunter is a conservative commentator (WTMA 1250 AM talk radio) and columnist (Charleston City Paper) living in Charleston, South Carolina. See his blog.
Will France Really Be A Muslim Country?
The following translation from a Muslim forum is an extraordinary insight into the thinking of Islamists about the future of France. The Islamization of other European countries is happening at an even swifter pace.From The Brussels Journal
By Tiberge
There's a 16-page discussion at a Muslim forum called Mejliss el kalam, linked by François Desouche. To translate the entire discussion is out of the question. But here is the first page somewhat simplified....The initial question, dated April 11, 2009, comes from ShamsTabrizi, from Somalia:
[Note: He links to another thread where Israelis are said to call for the slitting open of the stomachs of pregnant Muslim women. "Parisien" was eventually suspended from the forum, not surprisingly.]- Salam. In a city of 22 thousand inhabitants a few miles from Paris, more than 6 thousand persons participated in the Friday prayer at 2:00 p.m., including a significant number of converted Frenchmen and Frenchwomen. At the end of the prayer, seeing these people, I began to wonder in how many years France will be a mostly Muslim country.
- (Abelatif from Belgium responds): You must not have any illusions, my brother. France as a Muslim country will be several generations form now, or more. But it's true that it's beautiful to see Muslims of all origins at the mosque... Praise be to Allah
- (ShamsTabrizi): I don't agree. considering the evolution of the situation I have been witnessing, I do not give it more than 30 years before we will see mayors giving sermons on Friday to the faithful.
- (Abdel93600 from The Netherlands): Salam. The French are no longer having many children. Let's do France a favor and ensure the renewal of generations. It's a problem for many European countries! The birth rate in France recently reached a record, the highest in Europe, due in great part, to immigrant women.
- (Prince.Hakim from Belgium): I think we're heading for a Franco-Creole-Maghrebin civilization with massive intermarriage under the aegis of Islam.
- (Maléikite from Belgium): Brussels will be majority Muslim in less than 20 years (these are non-Muslim statistics). Inch'Allah.
- (MonSpeudo2 from France): Stop dreaming up tales about our country. It will never belong to you
- (ShamsTabrizi to Prince.Hakim): Then you agree with me. France will surely be a Muslim land for our grandchildren, maybe our children. So we must begin to construct a good basis to avoid unpleasant surprises for them in the future.
- (Maléikite to MonSpeudo2): Don't worry, we'll protect your rights, you will have the status of dhimmi.
- (ShamsTabrizi to MonSpeudo2): Ask your father if he ever imagined so many mosques and Muslims when he was your age. Then you'll have the answer as to whom France will belong. I like France, and I will like it even more when it's Muslim. Don't worry, we will be lenient on Christian minorities.
- (Prince-Hakim to MonSpeudo2): It will not be a matter of conquest, but of adherence to a joint effort between Frenchmen and Maghrebins. You should consider converting to Islam.
- (Ilyas_95 from France to MonSpeudo2): Bah! As far as I know France belongs to me as much as to you, doesn't it?
- (Parisien from France to Ilyas_95): No. I don't think so...
- (Prince.Hakim to ShamsTabrizi): I would even say the French deserve to be a part of the Umma.
- (Ilyas_95 to ShamsTabrizi): It's ridiculous to use threats... We're stuck in the suburbs and the high-rises. To say things like we're going to turn France upside-down, when we are not even able to agree on the best way to scratch our noses...
- (Ilyas_95 to Parisien): Really? Why not?
- (El-che from France): In 1974, at the UN, the Algerian president Houari Boumediene, declared: "One day, millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere to go north. And they won't go there as friends. Because they will be going to conquer. And they will conquer and people the land with their sons. It is the womb of women that will bring us victory."
In Le Figaro, December 19, 2006, our great friend Muammar Quadhafi declared: "Without sword, without rifles, without conquests, the 50 million Muslims in Europe will transform it soon into a Muslim continent!"- (Prince.Hakim from Belgium): I think we should have a friendly attitude towards the French and convince them to join us.
- (ShamsTabrizi to Ilyas_95): There is no threat but a simple observation, and when you say we can't agree among ourselves you're off the topic. I don't see what that has to do with the evolution of society advancing in the interests of Islam and Muslims. And that is precisely why I said earlier that we must begin to construct a good basis for the future of our children.
- (Abdel93600 from The Netherlands): Salam. Are there any cities in France that are already majority Muslim or close to it? Except for Roubaix (that goes back a long time) and Marseilles? We're off to a good start, one at the northernmost end the other at the southernmost end?
- (Ilyas95 to ShamsTabrizi): The political power is now in the hands of a minority that remains in power. The numbers do not in any way change the rules of the game... we just have to see to what extent "our" cities (those that are majority Muslim) represent an enviable model for the entire world...
- (Le Compagnon from the UAE to MonSpeudo2): It already belongs to us. First mission accomplished, second mission: children, third: Islamization. End of operation. You will have the right to attend school without a veil.
- (Shams Tabrizi to Prince.Hakim): Salam. That's the way things are going. In the mosque where I prayed on Friday, it was the number of French Muslims that surprised me the most. Naturally, Islamization of society will take place with their help.
- (Ilyas_95 to ShamsTabrizi): What is "Islamization" of France??? The fact that everybody is Muslim???I say this because it is an important point after all...
- (Parisien from France): Then the Israelis are right after all.
[Notice that he said TEN million, not the usual five or six we so often hear about.]- (Need_Peace from Morocco): Assalam alaikom to all. I was in France just once, in August 2007. I spent two weeks there on holiday. I did not make any particular acquaintances with our brothers and sisters of Islam, but for the entire time, I had the certitude that it was a country where Islam will be majority, and I said to everyone that France will be glorified by Islam. Inch'Allah. It warms the heart to see the number of committed sincere converts.
- (ShamsTabrizi to Ilyas_95): Who said anything about taking power? Here we are talking about a majority of the population and it's already a good start. If you also want power, then instead of thinking of yourself as weak and saying that we'll never succeed, rise up and give yourself the means to do it. Don't look for excuses to stay in bed.
- (Didyme from France to ShamsTabrizi): Hello. There are about 3 thousand converts to Islam each year. Let's be liberal and say 5 thousand. Let's forget about the Muslims who become apostates. In order for France to become a majority Muslim country only through conversion, 20 million Frenchmen would have to convert (half of the 60 million Frenchmen minus the 10 million who are already Muslim).
At the rate of 5 thousand conversions per year it would take... 4000 years! So it's difficult to count on conversions alone.[Note: If he thinks Sarkozy is expelling many immigrants, he is perhaps fooling himself. Larger numbers are coming in than returning home.]
You can count on the higher birth rate among immigrant Muslim families than among non-Muslims. But as Muslim immigrants attain the same standard of living as non-Muslims, the birthrates will become equal.
You can count on immigration even though the current policies indicate the opposite, that is, a policy of expulsion.But some can always dream about a majority Muslim France in a "maximum of 30 years."
- (El-che to Prince.Hakim): We are not supposed to be a people who terrorize and who seek to wage war and cause blood to be shed, so yes, we must have a friendly attitude towards them.
-(Prince.Hakim to Parisien, re: the Israelis): They should go back to Russia or Poland or Ethiopia.The conversation goes on for 15 more web pages. I have not had time to read through it all, but French readers may be interested. The comments at François Desouche are worth a look, although I can only post a few at random out of the 200:
- I will not have my children baptized, so that they don't appear on the lists of Christians. Islamists, when they are in power in France, like the Nazis before them, love to consult lists.Like the discussion at Mejliss, this goes on and on. It's very interesting, but the main question still remains: What will really happen when the tipping point has been reached? Will the French wait until that happens, then rebel in violence? Violence can be prevented by sane immigration policies, a refusal to build mosques and an affirmation of nationalism, if not Christianity. If violence does erupt it will be chaotic and directed at the "collaborators" as much (possibly more?) as towards the Muslims.- History always ends with massacres and bloodbaths! If you know how to read between the lines, you know what you have to do!
- (...) In short, I'm very pessimistic for the future of France. I think that the only element that could change the situation might come from international events and a possible conflict with Iran. The Muslims of France will feel threatened and I think very violent riots are foreseeable on French territory, even kamikaze attacks! At that moment, a possible civil war between pro-Iranian and ethnic Frenchmen (of Christian origin) could break out.
- What a bunch of rats... but frankly, even if the country becomes Islamized, I don't think it will become a Muslim country so easily. I have hope that the French people in their majority will finally revolt before that happens.
- We still have time. You don't need 50% Muslims in France for chaos to reign. there are about 4-5 million Muslims in France, or 6 to 8% of the population. They already have quite a bit of nuisance value. Not to mention the non-Muslim foreigners. In all, perhaps 8 million non-Europeans, or 13% of the population.
- (...) Really I would tend to say there are about 8 to 10 million Muslims in France.
- With respect, I feel that the number of 5 million Muslims in France was surpassed long ago. There are at least 10 million!!
- I would say 10 to 12 million. Sometimes, I feel like leaving this country. It's becoming too hard, like seeing a woman you love, with her veins slashed, in a bathtub, and not being able to help her.
- Nobody is really fooled. At any rate not the ethnic Frenchmen. Almost everybody knows that there will be violence at the moment of the "passing of the torch", when the Muslim community is almost in the majority and their "cultural demands" become laws... There will always be a temptation on the part of this community to affirm its domination. It's then that things will begin to go badly.
- (...) Our friends the immigrants, Islamists, collaborators should not worry too much: the French are patient, very patient, too much so, but above all they are unpredictable and the day when the fire is lit, no one will be able to stop it. History has already proven that. (...)
- Having worked a various maternity hospitals in Paris and the nearby suburbs, I can attest that black women are in a very large majority. And they don't have just one child... I saw fewer Maghrebins.
- (In response to the reader who said he wants to leave the country) And that doesn't take into account the social climate. I don't know how it is where you work, but at my job it's war.
- At my job if they're unhappy, they back off. But there's a Frenchman who praises the "virility" of the immigrants, but when it's said about a white man, that's no good, it's Le Pen. Yet in his heart, I feel sure that he suspects it will end in complete chaos. But he prefers to live like an ostrich.
One recurring theme is that despite outward passiveness, the French, in general, know that violence will come. This seems to indicate a higher level of awareness on the part of the population than is generally acknowledged. Notice that the Muslims calmly plot the takeover without any thought of a rebellion from the natives.
Pentecost Sunday
"And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and
resting on each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit..."
Acts 2:3
resting on each one of them. And they were filled with the Holy Spirit..."
Acts 2:3
Roberta Invernizzi - "Veni Creator Spiritus " - Niccolò Jommelli
"Pentecost (Whitsunday), with Christmas and Easter, ranks among the great feasts of Christianity. It commemorates not only the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and Disciples, but also the fruits and effects of that event: the completion of the work of redemption, the fullness of grace for the Church and its children, and the gift of faith for all nations."
Undercover at an Evangelical University
From NPR
Taking a semester off to travel and focus on writing isn't that unusual for a student at Brown University. But instead of studying comparative literature in Europe, Kevin Roose decided to go to Lynchburg, Va., and enroll at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. Roose passed himself off as an evangelical Christian to blend in with students at the school founded by the late Moral Majority leader. The experience led to a book, The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University.
Roose, the product of the "ultimate, secular, liberal upbringing," got the idea to go undercover after meeting a group of Liberty students while a freshman at Brown. "I had never really come into contact with conservative Christian culture," he says. "It became clear very quickly that we had almost no way to communicate with each other."
Read the rest of this entry >>
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Yankee Genocide Still Here
From NewsWithViewsBy Alan Stang
Our source for the present discussion is War Crimes Against Southern Civilians, by Walter Brian Cisco (Pelican, Gretna, Louisiana, 2007). It is important to establish that the spiritual and political inheritors of the war criminals who committed those crimes do not deny them. They ignore them, hoping that if they say nothing those crimes will fade away; and so far they have been successful. Remember, the winner of a war writes the history of the war. They will respond only if their crimes become sufficiently known.
It is important to correct the record. The crimes and the criminals need to be named. More, they must be explained, because the motives that inspired them continue to motivate the men who run our country, regardless of political party. As we shall see, little has changed. Only if we drag this continuing horror into the light do we have a chance of exorcising it.
Let’s begin with a revealing contrast. In 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee invaded the North. The South by then had suffered two years of Yankee crimes and some Southerners thought the invasion was their chance to retaliate. Not so, said Lee. In a proclamation he reminded his men that “the duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own.”
“The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed and defenseless and the wanton destruction of private property, that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country. . . .”
Remember that at the beginning of the war Lincoln offered Lee command of the Union army. Imagine the humane result had he been able to accept. We make war “only upon armed men,” said Lee. Taking vengeance for the “atrocities of our enemies” would lower ourselves and offend “against Him to whom vengeance belongeth.” What atrocities is he talking about? Our source is divided into the states of the Confederacy. Let’s begin with Missouri.
Union Brigadier General James H. Lane: “We believe in a war of extermination. I want to see every foot of ground . . . burned over – everything laid waste. . . .” Whoa! A war of extermination? Why? Wasn’t the restoration of the Union the goal of all this? Wouldn’t that have been accomplished simply by occupying the offending states? As we shall see, some other motive was at work.
But so it was. Civilians, male and female – yes, female – died by the hundreds in diseased Yankee jails. The Yankees stole everything they could lift. Lane himself stole a carriage, a piano and women’s dresses. My favorite was his chaplain, Rev. Hugh D. Fisher, who stole the altar furnishings from an Osceola church. He needed them for his own church in Kansas. “Brethren, let us worship.”
A long caravan of stolen property wound its way to Kansas. Arson, theft and murder became commonplace. No citizen was allowed to own guns or ammunition. At war’s end, vast sections of Missouri were uninhabited. Lane’s policy of extermination had been imposed.
General William T. Sherman wrote that “rebel” farms should be given to immigrants from the North. “Enemies must be killed or transported to some other country.” Deported Missourians left the state in miles-long wagon trains laden with household effects. Foraging Yankees robbed and killed them on the way. One report speaks of a road “crowded with women and children, women walking with their babies in their arms, packs on their backs and four or five children following after them . . . .”
There is a word for all this. At the time, the word had not yet been coined. It is “genocide.” Indeed, that is what the UN calls forcibly removing one population and replacing it with another. Genocide was settled Yankee policy imposed from the top.
In Tennessee, pastors were told to declare allegiance to the Union. They refused and were jailed. Episcopal rector George Harris was arrested and told to pray for Lincoln or be hanged. Happily, he was able to escape. The Yankees used his church to store munitions. The Communists would later do something similar to churches in Russia. The Yankees closed every church in Murfreesboro and all the schools in Nashville. In that city, there was an election for circuit court judge and the secessionist won. He was arrested, charged with treason and sent to the penitentiary.
How did the Yankees treat blacks? In Athens, Alabama, they raped a slave girl at the home of Charlotte Hine. At the John Malone plantation, they went to the slave quarters and raped again. A black woman charged a soldier with the crime; his commanding officer refused to prosecute: “I would not arrest one of my men on Negro testimony.” Doesn’t your Communist school textbook say the Yankees had come to free the slaves, not to rape them?
In New Orleans, Cpl. William M. Chinock raped Mary Ellen De Riley, a black woman. He was fined $40 and reduced to private. Captain S. Tyler Reed fired his pistol at William Bird, a black boy, and put out an eye. His sentence? A reprimand. Major General Benjamin Butler, known as the “Beast,” made crooked millions in New Orleans, committed outrageous atrocities and was the only Union commander the Confederacy called a criminal. After the war the people of Massachusetts elected him Governor, proving that, with some noble exceptions, they were already as stupid as they are now.
In occupied Virginia, Union Brig. Gen. Robert H. Milroy wrote his wife that “my will is absolute law – none dare contradict or dispute my slightest word or wish . . . both male and female tremble when they come into my presence . . . I feel a strong disposition to play the tyrant among these traitors.” Wow! They actually trembled, Bob? So then, you must have been something like a god, correct?
In South Carolina, “. . . The free blacks who made up Charleston’s force of firefighters struggled heroically to protect their city and its people.” Free blacks? In South Carolina? Trusted to run the fire department? Hmm!
In Louisiana, Union brigadier general William Dwight wrote: “The scenes of disorder and pillage . . . were disgraceful to civilized war. Houses were entered and all in them destroyed …. Ladies were frightened into delivering their jewels and valuables into the hands of the soldiers by threats of violence toward their husbands. Negro women were ravished in the presence of white women and children.” The Union, forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah.”
“The home, barn, and store of Samuel Schmulen were looted and burned. . . . Benjamin George, a fifty-year-old slave who lived nearby . . . tried to help his neighbor at least try to save the store. The effort was in vain. Then a group of drunken soldiers surrounded George, demanding to know why he, a black man, would try to assist this white Southerner. They demanded his money, and when George pleaded that he did not have any, one of the soldiers shot him in the right thigh. He survived the wound but was crippled for life.”
The forced evacuation of Atlanta saw “aged grandmothers upon the verge of the grave, tender girls in the first bloom of young womanhood, and little babes not three days old in the arms of sick mothers, thrown out upon the cold charity of the world.” A Yankee reported, “The African Methodist Episcopal Church, built by the colored people with their hard earnings, was also demolished by our soldiers.”
Union war criminals even introduced a criminal scheme later perfected by Chicago gangsters. One of them told a lady he had orders to burn her house, but, “I’ll insure it for fifty dollars.” Selling “insurance” against their own depredations was one extortion technique they used. “You buy my insurance or I breaka you head. Capish?”
In Columbia, South Carolina, Union terrorists stole everything. “Purses, watches, hats, boots, overcoats . . . were taken from victims, white or black.” A witness says: “Commissioned officers, of a rank so high as that of a colonel, were frequently among the most active.” They took the rings from the fingers of a dying woman. They urinated on the beds. They opened graves in search of lucre and left the corpses on the ground.
But here is la pièce de résistance. “Countless women had earrings ripped from bleeding ears.” A foreign diplomat wrote: “I have myself seen a lady with the lobes of both ears torn asunder.” Witnesses saw soldiers torching the Catholic convent. “What do you think of God now?” they shouted to the nuns. “Is not Sherman greater?. . .”
In St. Landry Parish alone, in western Louisiana, there were 1,596 free blacks just before the war. Some owned sugar plantations and slaves. What? Yes, blacks owned slaves. Invading Yankees were shocked. One Connecticut officer was indignant because they dared “call themselves Americans.” The Yankees stole from these free blacks as well as from the whites.
In Nashville, in September, 1862, blue bellies couldn’t find seats in a crowded theater. They ejected blacks from the “Negro gallery,” beat them and threw them down the stairs. After enjoying the performance, they attacked every black they found in the streets. In Gallatin, in May, 1864, they torched two new schools for black children, murdered one freedman and swore they would kill every black in town.
In southeast Georgia there were many free blacks who had accumulated substantial property. Indeed, so had hard working slaves. Union goons stole it all, even threatening black wives. In some cases, black husbands had to rescue them. They stole everything from a black nurse and killed her animals. “Honey, I never knowed a Yankee that wasn’t mean as dirt. . . . What can you spec from a hog but a grunt.”
And finally, in Columbia: “One black woman . . . was raped by seven soldiers of the United States Army. She then had her face forced down into a shallow ditch and was held there until she drowned.” William Gilmore Simms reported how “regiments, in successive relays,” committed “gang rape on scores of slave women.” On the Sumter District plantation, the corpses of eighteen black women were found. Each had been stabbed in the chest with a bayonet. Yankee war criminals had done with them.
Remember, these are just a few examples. You really need to read the book. So what are we looking at? Obviously it is considerably different from the mostly mythical war to “free the slaves” your high school textbook told you about. Notice that it is motivated by an insane, messianic fury. The war criminals are enraged, utterly out of control. About what? Obviously not about slavery. Men outraged by slavery do not rob, rape and murder slaves. And remember that chief war criminal Lincoln was as foul a racist as ever lived, even discomfited other racists, staunchly defended slavery and wanted to ship American blacks “back” to Africa.
No, what drove these Yankee war criminals insane was that the Southerners had dared to come out from under, to say no to the Leviathan state, to total government, to go their own way. They had expressed their freedom through secession. They had invoked their inalienable right to depart.
A debate endures about whether they had the constitutional right to secede. I don’t know why. I can solve the problem for all time. The Founding Fathers seceded from England. In the Declaration of Independence – the nation’s birth certificate – they said that whenever a people find their government oppressive, they have the right to alter or abolish it. To argue that there is no right to secede is to say that only a few years later, these same men, would concoct a document – the Constitution – in which they would deny themselves that blood-bought right.
Indeed, there were a few incipient attempts to secede before Lincoln. No one tried to argue that secession was illegal. One area that seriously considered secession was New England. What? Yes. And all through the Twentieth Century, did not the United States vociferously advance the right to secede for other people? We even fought a couple of wars, and lost thousands of the best of the best, to ensure the independence of South Korea and South Vietnam. Could there possibly be a straight-faced argument that other people deserve independence but we do not?
The Founding Fathers did not create slavery; they inherited 150 years of it. Many Southern slaves were sold to the South by Yankee slavers who no longer had need of them. Slavery was an intolerable stain on the American record. That stain could only be expunged by total abolition. Other countries, including Russia, abolished it without violence. Only ours did so at the cost of some 600,000 men and the destruction of the Union, by men who claimed to revere it and who had owned slaves themselves – and who did all this to keep the South in economic subjection.
But even this is not the core. Remember the strutting Yankee generals who confused themselves with God. Indeed, remember the terrorist assertion that insane mass murderer Sherman actually outranks God. Consider the messianic fury we have mentioned. Something more than mere greed was at work.
It is literally a satanic perversion of Christianity, a perversion pretending to be Christianity, which erupts time and again across the centuries. From time to time people who are smarter than God appear, usurpers who have the temporal power to do the job right. If you disagree with them they burn you at the stake. If you try to get out from under them, they scream you are a rebel. You have betrayed them. They will rob and rape you, they will kill you; they will invade and burn your country to the ground, to persuade you to see it their way. Either do that or die. They are disciples of Satan.
The reason this is so relevant is that this very mentality rules the nation today. That is why the federal juggernaut is so merciless, so confiscatory, so totalitarian. Reconstruction continues, not just of the South; this time of the whole nation, conducted by men consumed by hubris, who believe they can improve upon God.
But Sherman is still dead. God is alive.
There is a word for all this. At the time, the word had not yet been coined. It is “genocide.” Indeed, that is what the UN calls forcibly removing one population and replacing it with another. Genocide was settled Yankee policy imposed from the top.
In Tennessee, pastors were told to declare allegiance to the Union. They refused and were jailed. Episcopal rector George Harris was arrested and told to pray for Lincoln or be hanged. Happily, he was able to escape. The Yankees used his church to store munitions. The Communists would later do something similar to churches in Russia. The Yankees closed every church in Murfreesboro and all the schools in Nashville. In that city, there was an election for circuit court judge and the secessionist won. He was arrested, charged with treason and sent to the penitentiary.
How did the Yankees treat blacks? In Athens, Alabama, they raped a slave girl at the home of Charlotte Hine. At the John Malone plantation, they went to the slave quarters and raped again. A black woman charged a soldier with the crime; his commanding officer refused to prosecute: “I would not arrest one of my men on Negro testimony.” Doesn’t your Communist school textbook say the Yankees had come to free the slaves, not to rape them?
In New Orleans, Cpl. William M. Chinock raped Mary Ellen De Riley, a black woman. He was fined $40 and reduced to private. Captain S. Tyler Reed fired his pistol at William Bird, a black boy, and put out an eye. His sentence? A reprimand. Major General Benjamin Butler, known as the “Beast,” made crooked millions in New Orleans, committed outrageous atrocities and was the only Union commander the Confederacy called a criminal. After the war the people of Massachusetts elected him Governor, proving that, with some noble exceptions, they were already as stupid as they are now.
In occupied Virginia, Union Brig. Gen. Robert H. Milroy wrote his wife that “my will is absolute law – none dare contradict or dispute my slightest word or wish . . . both male and female tremble when they come into my presence . . . I feel a strong disposition to play the tyrant among these traitors.” Wow! They actually trembled, Bob? So then, you must have been something like a god, correct?
In South Carolina, “. . . The free blacks who made up Charleston’s force of firefighters struggled heroically to protect their city and its people.” Free blacks? In South Carolina? Trusted to run the fire department? Hmm!
In Louisiana, Union brigadier general William Dwight wrote: “The scenes of disorder and pillage . . . were disgraceful to civilized war. Houses were entered and all in them destroyed …. Ladies were frightened into delivering their jewels and valuables into the hands of the soldiers by threats of violence toward their husbands. Negro women were ravished in the presence of white women and children.” The Union, forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah.”
“The home, barn, and store of Samuel Schmulen were looted and burned. . . . Benjamin George, a fifty-year-old slave who lived nearby . . . tried to help his neighbor at least try to save the store. The effort was in vain. Then a group of drunken soldiers surrounded George, demanding to know why he, a black man, would try to assist this white Southerner. They demanded his money, and when George pleaded that he did not have any, one of the soldiers shot him in the right thigh. He survived the wound but was crippled for life.”
The forced evacuation of Atlanta saw “aged grandmothers upon the verge of the grave, tender girls in the first bloom of young womanhood, and little babes not three days old in the arms of sick mothers, thrown out upon the cold charity of the world.” A Yankee reported, “The African Methodist Episcopal Church, built by the colored people with their hard earnings, was also demolished by our soldiers.”
Union war criminals even introduced a criminal scheme later perfected by Chicago gangsters. One of them told a lady he had orders to burn her house, but, “I’ll insure it for fifty dollars.” Selling “insurance” against their own depredations was one extortion technique they used. “You buy my insurance or I breaka you head. Capish?”
In Columbia, South Carolina, Union terrorists stole everything. “Purses, watches, hats, boots, overcoats . . . were taken from victims, white or black.” A witness says: “Commissioned officers, of a rank so high as that of a colonel, were frequently among the most active.” They took the rings from the fingers of a dying woman. They urinated on the beds. They opened graves in search of lucre and left the corpses on the ground.
But here is la pièce de résistance. “Countless women had earrings ripped from bleeding ears.” A foreign diplomat wrote: “I have myself seen a lady with the lobes of both ears torn asunder.” Witnesses saw soldiers torching the Catholic convent. “What do you think of God now?” they shouted to the nuns. “Is not Sherman greater?. . .”
In St. Landry Parish alone, in western Louisiana, there were 1,596 free blacks just before the war. Some owned sugar plantations and slaves. What? Yes, blacks owned slaves. Invading Yankees were shocked. One Connecticut officer was indignant because they dared “call themselves Americans.” The Yankees stole from these free blacks as well as from the whites.
In Nashville, in September, 1862, blue bellies couldn’t find seats in a crowded theater. They ejected blacks from the “Negro gallery,” beat them and threw them down the stairs. After enjoying the performance, they attacked every black they found in the streets. In Gallatin, in May, 1864, they torched two new schools for black children, murdered one freedman and swore they would kill every black in town.
In southeast Georgia there were many free blacks who had accumulated substantial property. Indeed, so had hard working slaves. Union goons stole it all, even threatening black wives. In some cases, black husbands had to rescue them. They stole everything from a black nurse and killed her animals. “Honey, I never knowed a Yankee that wasn’t mean as dirt. . . . What can you spec from a hog but a grunt.”
And finally, in Columbia: “One black woman . . . was raped by seven soldiers of the United States Army. She then had her face forced down into a shallow ditch and was held there until she drowned.” William Gilmore Simms reported how “regiments, in successive relays,” committed “gang rape on scores of slave women.” On the Sumter District plantation, the corpses of eighteen black women were found. Each had been stabbed in the chest with a bayonet. Yankee war criminals had done with them.
Remember, these are just a few examples. You really need to read the book. So what are we looking at? Obviously it is considerably different from the mostly mythical war to “free the slaves” your high school textbook told you about. Notice that it is motivated by an insane, messianic fury. The war criminals are enraged, utterly out of control. About what? Obviously not about slavery. Men outraged by slavery do not rob, rape and murder slaves. And remember that chief war criminal Lincoln was as foul a racist as ever lived, even discomfited other racists, staunchly defended slavery and wanted to ship American blacks “back” to Africa.
No, what drove these Yankee war criminals insane was that the Southerners had dared to come out from under, to say no to the Leviathan state, to total government, to go their own way. They had expressed their freedom through secession. They had invoked their inalienable right to depart.
A debate endures about whether they had the constitutional right to secede. I don’t know why. I can solve the problem for all time. The Founding Fathers seceded from England. In the Declaration of Independence – the nation’s birth certificate – they said that whenever a people find their government oppressive, they have the right to alter or abolish it. To argue that there is no right to secede is to say that only a few years later, these same men, would concoct a document – the Constitution – in which they would deny themselves that blood-bought right.
Indeed, there were a few incipient attempts to secede before Lincoln. No one tried to argue that secession was illegal. One area that seriously considered secession was New England. What? Yes. And all through the Twentieth Century, did not the United States vociferously advance the right to secede for other people? We even fought a couple of wars, and lost thousands of the best of the best, to ensure the independence of South Korea and South Vietnam. Could there possibly be a straight-faced argument that other people deserve independence but we do not?
The Founding Fathers did not create slavery; they inherited 150 years of it. Many Southern slaves were sold to the South by Yankee slavers who no longer had need of them. Slavery was an intolerable stain on the American record. That stain could only be expunged by total abolition. Other countries, including Russia, abolished it without violence. Only ours did so at the cost of some 600,000 men and the destruction of the Union, by men who claimed to revere it and who had owned slaves themselves – and who did all this to keep the South in economic subjection.
But even this is not the core. Remember the strutting Yankee generals who confused themselves with God. Indeed, remember the terrorist assertion that insane mass murderer Sherman actually outranks God. Consider the messianic fury we have mentioned. Something more than mere greed was at work.
It is literally a satanic perversion of Christianity, a perversion pretending to be Christianity, which erupts time and again across the centuries. From time to time people who are smarter than God appear, usurpers who have the temporal power to do the job right. If you disagree with them they burn you at the stake. If you try to get out from under them, they scream you are a rebel. You have betrayed them. They will rob and rape you, they will kill you; they will invade and burn your country to the ground, to persuade you to see it their way. Either do that or die. They are disciples of Satan.
The reason this is so relevant is that this very mentality rules the nation today. That is why the federal juggernaut is so merciless, so confiscatory, so totalitarian. Reconstruction continues, not just of the South; this time of the whole nation, conducted by men consumed by hubris, who believe they can improve upon God.
But Sherman is still dead. God is alive.
Alan Stang was one of Mike Wallace’s original writers at Channel 13 in New York, where he wrote some of the scripts that sent Mike to CBS. Stang has been a radio talk show host himself. In Los Angeles, he went head to head nightly with Larry King, and, according to Arbitron, had almost twice as many listeners. He has been a foreign correspondent. He has written hundreds of feature magazine articles in national magazines and some fifteen books, for which he has won many awards, including a citation from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for journalistic excellence. One of Stang’s exposés stopped a criminal attempt to seize control of New Mexico, where a gang seized a court house, held a judge hostage and killed a deputy. The scheme was close to success before Stang intervened. Another Stang exposé inspired major reforms in federal labor legislation.
(Reprinted with permission of the author.)
Tiananmen Square Cleared But Not Forgotten
Twenty years ago today the Goddess of Democracy stood in Tiananmen Square and thousands of students and their supporters hoped for a more just and democratic China. Within a week their peaceful protest was brutally put down, with thousands murdered, and families billed for the bullets that killed their loved ones. The square was cleared, but the memory of those that gave their lives will surely not be forgotten in China and around the world. The following video documents those extraordinary days.
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