Archive for the ‘History’ Category
As Benjamin Franklin was leaving the building where, after four months of hard work, the Constitution had been completed and signed, a lady asked him what kind of government did the convention create. A very old, very tired, and very wise Benjamin Franklin replied; "A Republic, ma'am if you can keep it."
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I want to start by pointing out that I am a big fan of the author of this article, Becky Akers. She is straightforward, and writes in a strong, and clear manner that which should concern us all.
This article is reprinted with the permission of Becky, and the generous FREEMAN. Please visit the site if you are concerned with the course of the nation.
by Becky Akers
Boston lies under a foot of snow this Monday March evening in 1770, so icy and cold that anyone who can huddle at home on the hearth should. Instead, much of the town is abroad and abuzz like an angry hive. Bostonians are infuriated at something their descendants will take for granted, indeed, will prize so highly they’ll pay for it: police are patrolling their city.
And have been for many months. In September 1768 a thousand British Redcoats disembarked at the town’s wharves. From there they “marched sword in hand through the principal streets of [Boston], then in profound peace.”1 Their purpose was not to protect the 15,000 inhabitants but to keep them in line, much as police presently do. And, again like modern officers, they will collect money for the government, though rather than writing traffic tickets, they will enforce customs duties.
The colonists do not share their descendants’ idealism that the police “protect and serve,” nor do they mistake the Redcoats for “Boston’s Finest.” They see the soldiers stalking among them as the government’s bullyboys, and they despise them for it. Tonight, that antagonism will explode, becoming famous as a Massacre for killing five civilians and wounding others.
Historians offer a bevy of explanations and excuses for that calamitous confrontation: Americans resented the British as an occupying force; off-duty soldiers worked at odd jobs for low pay, stealing opportunities from Boston’s day laborers and provoking more resentment; the Redcoats were naturally arrogant, the colonists naturally touchy. But behind it all lies the simple fact that the soldiers were policing Boston. They marched through the city searching for contraband, infractions of the government’s rules, and anyone the administration deemed suspicious.
They also reintroduced His Majesty’s customs officers at the point of their bayonets. Prior to the Redcoats’ advent in 1768, Bostonians had so intimidated these officials that they fled the city. Ann Hulton was sister to one; she wrote, “Every officer of the Crown that does his duty is become obnoxious & they must either fly or be sacrificed. . . .” Ann flew with her brother and others to Castle Island, now part of the mainland but then a fort lying at a safe distance in Boston Harbor. From there, Miss Hulton continued her account of the colonists’ cowing of Customs: “These Sons of Violence after attacking Houses, breaking Windows, beating, Stoning & bruizing several gentlemen belong’g to the Customs, the Collector mortally & burning his boat.”2 Only when the Redcoats could ensure their safety did the officers return to Boston. They remained for the next 18 months, retreating again with the troops after the Massacre: “The inhabitants of the town assembled in Faneuil Hall . . . unanimously resolved, that no armed force should be suffered longer to reside in the capital . . . . [T]he people, inflexible in their demands, insisted that not one British soldier should be left within the town . . . . [W]ithin four days the whole army decamped. . . . The commissioners of the customs and several other obnoxious characters retired with the army” to the fortified Castle Island.3
Could we whisk the army from their eighteenth-century fort to a modern precinct, the Redcoats would likely agree that their policing differed little from today’s—except in one remarkable detail. They would be astounded at the enormous authority most Americans grant the police and at the enormous respect, even glorification, following from that.
Both are centuries removed from the ridicule and revulsion red-coated police rated in eighteenth-century Boston. Perhaps the difference in attitude arises partly from our powerlessness against a force armed far beyond what most of us can manage. The Bostonians milling about the freezing streets that night carried pistols and swords every bit the equal of muskets and bayonets. If a man didn’t own a gun or blade, he hastened toward the coming showdown with the “invaders” and “foreign enemies” openly bearing a wooden stave or club, a knife, a hatchet, even a chunk of ice scooped off the street.4
Their weapons rendered the colonists boisterous and aggressive when standing up to the Redcoats. British General Thomas Gage reported that “The people were as Lawless and Licentious after the Troops arrived, as they were before. The Troops . . . seemed only offered to abuse and Ruin . . . to suffer ill usage and even assaults upon their Persons till their Lives were in Danger. . . .”5
That “lawlessness” bedeviled the Redcoats from their first moments in Boston, when they began hunting barracks. Thomas Hutchinson, Massachusetts’s royally appointed governor, offered a large public building to the soldiers, ignoring the “outcasts of the Workhouse and the scum of the Town”6 already renting rooms there. The “scum” objected to the governor’s exercise of eminent domain as much as Hutchinson would have had they offered the Redcoats his mansion. They promptly barricaded themselves inside the building.
Boston’s sheriff, backed by some soldiers, soon arrived. He discovered an unlocked window, climbed into the building, and ordered the “outcasts” out. They promptly barricaded him inside, too.
Meanwhile, the sheriff’s martial escort stood helpless, unable to rescue him, because the scowling, muttering townspeople surrounding the place heavily outnumbered the soldiers. This standoff continued for two days after Boston’s Council sided with the “scum” and refused to authorize their eviction.
Nor did the colonists’ “ill usage” abate over the next year and a half. Before the shooting began on the night of the Massacre a citizen scolded a group of British officers: “Why don’t you keep your soldiers in the barracks? . . . Are the inhabitants to be knocked down in the streets? Are they to be ...
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Where do we go when the federal government abandons all pretense of adhering to the limits placed upon it by the States, and ratified in the Constitution?
Obviously we can't depend upon the Supreme Court, which picks and chooses the cases it will hear, and then legislates from the bench.
We can no longer depend upon those we send to congress to abide their oath of office. They are just paid-off pawns in what appears to be an agenda designed to eliminate liberty.
Author, and historian Tom Woods talks about Nullification and the importance it played when forming this nation in this interview at Press TV.
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Two Hundred Thirty Four years ago, some incredibly brave people placed their lives, their fortunes, and their destiny on the line by signing the Declaration of Independence.
Today people such as Barack Obama, Janet Napolitano, and Eric Holder would label them terrorists. Members of congress, and the media would cringe at the notion that men such as Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry were not yet hunted down and prosecuted for daring to speak out against the abuses of government.
It is our right and our duty to speak freely against the tyrant, but we have set in office those who believe otherwise. We have done so through our own negligence, ignorance, and in some part, our greed.
Instead of studying, and teaching the marvelous words written into the Declaration of Independence, our school administrators are much more content instituting criminal actions against boys who do what boys do, get into scuffles.
Instead of adhering to the rule of law as set out in our Constitution, congress and the courts would much rather conspire to diminish and destroy the Republic by creating and confirming acts that have no basis in enumerated powers.
Instead of protecting our rights the state would much rather take bribes from the federal government, institute petty laws, and harass its citizens at every level by regulating not only our lives, but also our property.
Instead of screaming freedom as we arrest judges, prosecutors, and legislators for violations of the oath of office, we are far more likely to put out our hands and ask for benefits while we give away our rights, and liberty.
Instead of reason, fortitude, and pride we have degenerated in to the most contemptible, lazy, and self-indulgent people the world has known. The kind of citizenry that always signals the end of an era.
The Fourth of July is the day that this nation declared that when “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them” they ought to explain what brought them to this most grievous determination.
A consideration of all the evils that the king, and parliament had placed upon the colonies was therefore debated, and in grand and rhythmic script laid upon a broadside, and signed by fifty-six, and make no mistake, brave, and resolute men.
Today as a tribute to their strength, we drink beer, barbeque, set-off fireworks, elect men such as Barak Obama who has so little respect for this country and its laws that he gives us people such as Sonya Sotomayor, Eric Holder, and now Elena Kagan. This is a group of thugs that have no respect for the rule of law, and believe that they can change what was written long before they came to this plane of existence in order to achieve their own doctrine of how this country should exist.
Kagan, the most recent buffoon to be nominated for the supreme court, believes that our government, that which is subject to our will, can change the law of the land to deny free speech if it offends government officials, and to remove our mark of last resort, the right to keep and bears arms, should we the sovereign citizens believe that we have no recourse but to physically dismantle the tyrants as was done by our Founding Fathers.
What have we done to be part of the destruction of this nation? Why is it that so many of our fellow citizens sit idly by while our country disintegrates into a ‘banana republic’?
Have we become a country so devoid of the spirit of liberty that we care not what happens to ourselves, or more importantly our children?
“Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”
But this Fourth of July, as the many that I have lived through passes into history; my fellow citizens are content for the most part. While our young men are cast into a meat grinder half-way around the world, our economy sinks, and our freedom slips away, those of us who can still enjoy the trappings of a descent life will barbecue, drink our beer, and ruminate over the tragedy of why our team slipped out of first place, or how it was that he cheated on her, or how it was that stock market rose or fell on the most curious of government figures.
We are at a crossroad, and we must recognize the situation as dire. We must prepare ourselves if no one else will listen. We must do what we can, as did Samuel Adams when he evaded the British. We must learn from our history for it is the truth that “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.”
This Fourth of July I will pray that our men come home safe, that we might awaken to the fact that all is not well, and that we must act, or be cast into a conflagration that will tear the very fiber of humanity apart.
This Fourth of July I will prepare because I have little hope that the decadence that has cast itself upon this nation will relent, and we will regain the fighting spirit that once shone upon this nation.
‘Nick’
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