Category Archives: History

‘Purging America’s Heroes’

America, Founding Fathers, History, Nationhood, South-Africa

My book, “Into The Cannibal’s Pot,” warned that just as Saint Mandela’s ANC purged South Africa’s founders (Boers and Britons) from public life—so, too, would America’s Founding Fathers be consigned by similar forces to the dustbin of history.

To wit, an excerpt from “Tot Siens (Farewell) To The Taal (The Language),” Chapter 2 of “Into The Cannibal’s Pot”:

“He who controls the past controls the future.” So wrote Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The ANC now commands past, present and future. … It may be a trifling issue to deracinated sophisticates, but landmarks in the country’s founding history are slowly being erased, as demonstrated by the ANC’s decision to give an African name to Potchefstroom, a town founded in 1838 by the Voortrekkers. Pretoria is now officially called Tshwane. Nelspruit, founded by the Nel Family (they were not Xhosa), and once the seat of the South African Republic’s government during the Boer War, has been renamed Mbombela. Polokwane was formerly Pietersburg. Durban’s Moore Road (after Sir John Moore, the hero of the Battle of Corunna, fought in 1809 during the Napoleonic Wars) is Che Guevara Road; Kensington Drive, Fidel Castro Drive. Perhaps the ultimate in tastelessly hip nomenclature is Yasser Arafat Highway, down which the motorist can careen on the way to the Durban airport. …

Patrick J. Buchanan, who just gets better with age, on “Purging America’s Heroes”:

… All were white males. All achieved greatly. All believed that the people whence they came were superior and possessed of a superior faith, Christianity, and hence fit to rule what Rudyard Kipling called the “lesser breeds without the Law.”

Acting on a belief in their racial, religious and cultural superiority, they created the greatest nation on earth. And people who got in their way were shoved aside, subjugated, repressed and ruled.

As for the Confederates of the Lost Cause, they yielded to superior force only after four years of fighting, but their battle flag has ever after been seen as a banner of rebellion, bravery and defiance.

And those tearing down the battle flags, and dumping over the monuments and statues, and sandblasting the names off buildings and schools, what have they ever accomplished?

They inherited the America these men built, but are ashamed at how it was built. And now they watch paralyzed as the peoples of the Third World, whom their grandfathers ruled, come to dispossess them of the patrimony for which they feel so guilty.

The new barbarians will make short work of them.

[SNIP]

I depart from Pat on the matter of William Tecumseh Sherman. What’s his claim to greatness? Waging Total War on the South and on the Plains Indians? Corralling what remained of them onto reservations?

Take down any graven image of Gen. William Sherman. I’m fine with that.

UPDATE II: Big-Game Plunderer (& Progressive) Theodore Roosevelt

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, History, Republicans, The State

The reverence for authority and status, especially presidential, obscures the ability to distill the actions of The Revered One to their ethical essence. Last night, Fox News’ Sean Hannity’s moral assessment of the “sport” of hunting Africa’s big game amounted to: The [Progressive] Theodore Roosevelt (TR) did it. Do you condemn him, too?

You bet we do (and not only for plundering Africa’s wild life with cruel abandon).

Back from safari in Africa, the TR procession “through New York in June 1910,” featured “a fourteen-carriage parade from Battery to 59th Street, with luggage containing horns, heads, and skins from 13,000 specimens, ranging from elephant and rhinos to the rare dikdik, and antelope smaller than a jack-rabbit.”

(A History of The American People by Paul Johnson, p. 623.)

More about Teddy’s other proclivities.
https://www.ilanamercer.com/2011/12/who-s-it-to-be-teddy-no-1-or-teddy-no-2/

UPDATE I: To be clear, I am here making a moral argument, not a legal one. It’s true that big- game hunting is often a boon to the parks in these poor, backward countries. It’s true, too, that Zimbabwe has zero animal-conservation ethos; those are all western; as is it true that their leader is chief poacher of man and animal alike—and it’s still true that big-game hunters who derive pleasure from the rigged canned killing of an animal are MOTHER F-CKERS.
https://www.ilanamercer.com/2013/11/just-girl-gun-not-gratuitous-killer/ (Correct link)

UPDATE II: Via Myron Pauli:

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Sir Edward Grey, 22 January 1915

The Pledge Of Allegiance Introduced By A Socialist With Fascist Flare

America, Constitution, Fascism, History, Liberty

By Myron Pauli, Ph.D.

My father and his parents were lucky to get to America from Nazi-run Austria and my daughter was a refugee from China. So I certainly appreciate this country as there are few countries that are even remotely free. But as another 4th of July approaches, I often feel compelled to criticize the lack of appreciation of liberty in this nation.

The Pledge of Allegiance was introduced by a Christian socialist named Francis Bellamy in 1892. It even came with a “Bellamy salute,” which also later became commonplace in Central Europe 45 years later. Although the Constitution does not authorize an “official” Pledge and the 10th Amendment reserves those powers not granted to the Federal Government to the states and people—it was adopted by the Congress in 1942. Small children are indoctrinated to pledge even if they have no idea what the words mean. But aside from the salute, what does the pledge say?

“… to THE Republic for which it stands…” Hold on! The pledge has 50 stars – which stand for each state. And what does Article 4 Section 4 of the Constitution say? “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”. Thus, the flag actually stands for a Republic of republics not “THE Republic,” and the Pledge is in contradiction to the Constitution itself. And if the “United States” is just singular, how does one explain Article 3 Section 3 where, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against THEM, or in adhering to THEIR Enemies … .” Are you pledging to violate the Constitution? Do the stars refer to some Greek Constellation?

Then, of course, we have the Constitution’s Article 6 Section 3: “… shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required … .” But what is “under God” in the pledge if it is NOT a religious Oath? Or do we lapse into some Clintonism that it depends what “Oath” and “Pledge” mean?

As to “justice for all”: We commonly hear that since “black lives matter”, neither George Zimmerman nor Darren Wilson are entitled to a self-defense excuse because that would not be “justice” which requires a conviction regardless of a grand jury or petit jury. In Baltimore, indictments were filed by Marilyn Mosby so “you can stop rioting”. Did keeping Jose Padilla imprisoned for 43 months without an indictment constitute justice FOR ALL? Did trying defendants in Federal Court for crimes they were exonerated of in State Court constitute “justice” in light of the fifth Amendment’s prohibition on double jeopardy?

What about “libertyfor all”? In Minersville School District vs. Gobitis, the Supreme Court, by 8-1, endorsed government punishment of children who refused to pledge (and this was when the Bellamy salute – “Seig Heil!” – was still standard). How about adults? Yes sir, I pledge, under compulsion from the government, to support “liberty”! OK, the Supreme Court reversed itself a few years later when the US was now at war against a nation which mandated the same Bellamy Salute. Of course, we know how flighty the Supreme Court is. As for liberty in the nation with as many people in jail as in China and Russia combined, one MIGHT question whether we have “liberty for all”.

Let us instead proclaim: “I support the Constitution of the United States and the concept of limited government whose purpose is to secure our rights” as my personal Pauli substitute. Besides, one might even ask, “WHOM are you pledging to”? Obama, Boehner, TSA, CIA, NSA, DEA, BATF, Federal Reserve, Freddie Mae, HUD, SWAT teams, HHS, Departments of Labor or Energy or Education or Agriculture, Homeland Security, AMTRAK, NASA, INS, FDA, Bureau of Indian Affairs, NATO, Trans-Pacific Partnership?

The United States that I love guarantees individual liberties. In fact, I believe that the 4th of July did not come about from worship of Empire but from devotion to individual freedom. However, for those who prefer mindless displays of national patriotism, other nations truly put us to shame.

Behold The Bellamy Salute:

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes

Ann Coulter, Federalism, Founding Fathers, History, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Race, States' Rights, War

“Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes,” now on WND, offers a brief history lesson about the Confederate Battle Flag. An excerpt:

Fox News anchor Sean Hannity promised to provide a much-needed history of the much-maligned Confederate flag. For a moment, it seemed as though he and his guest, Mark Steyn, would deliver on the promise and lift the veil of ignorance. But no: The two showmen conducted a tactical tit-for-tat. They pinned the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia on the Southern Democrats (aka Dixiecrats). “I’m too sexy for my sheet,” sneered Steyn.

It fell to the woman who used to come across as the consummate Yankee supremacist to edify. The new Ann Coulter is indeed lovely:

Also on Fox, Ms. Coulter remarked that she was “appalled by” South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s call “for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state Capitol.” As “a student of American history,” Coulter offered that “the Confederate flag we’re [fussing] about never flew over an official Confederate building. It was a battle flag. It is to honor Robert E. Lee. And anyone who knows the first thing about military history knows that there is no greater army that ever took to the battle field than the Confederate Army.”

And anyone who knows the first thing about human valor knows that there was no man more valorous and courageous than Robert E. Lee, whose “two uncles signed the Declaration of Independence and [whose] father was a notable cavalry officer in the War for Independence.”

The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia—known as “Lee’s Army”—is not to be conflated with the “Stars and Bars,” which “became the official national flag of the Confederacy.” According to Sons of the South, the “first official use of the ‘Stars and Bars’ was at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis on March 4, 1861.” But because it resembled the “Stars and Stripes” flown by the Union, the “Stars and Bars” proved a liability during the Battle of Bull Run.

The confusion caused by the similarity in the flags was of great concern to Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard. He suggested that the Confederate national flag be changed to something completely different, to avoid confusion in battle in the future. This idea was rejected by the Confederate government. Beauregard then suggested that there should be two flags. One, the national flag, and the second one a battle flag, with the battle flag being completely different from the United States flag.

Originally, the flag whose history is being trampled today was a red square, not a rectangle. Atop it was the blue Southern Cross. In the cross were—still are—13 stars representing the 13 states in the Confederacy.

Wars are generally a rich man’s affair and a poor man’s fight. Yankees are fond of citing Confederacy officials in support of slavery and a war for slavery. Most Southerners, however, were not slaveholders. All Southerners were sovereigntists, fighting a “War for Southern Independence.” They rejected central coercion. Southerners believed a union that was entered voluntarily could be exited in the same way. As even establishment historian Paul Johnson concedes, “The South was protesting not only against the North’s interference in its ‘peculiar institution’ but against the growth of government generally.”

Lincoln grew government, markedly, in size and in predatory boldness. …

… Read the rest. “Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes” is now on WND