Dixie Heritage News – February 2, 2018
MARYLAND MY MARYLAND or not?
Proposed legislation to remove Confederate statues or memorials or to rename highways died in two separate committees Wednesday.
In the House, a Counties, Cities and Towns subcommittee voted 6 – 2 – with one Democratic vote from Del. Steve Heretick of Portsmouth – to effectively kill bills that would have permitted local governments to move Confederate monuments. Last week we reported that a Senate committee had already killed similar bills.
VIRGINIA SCHOOL SEEKING INPUT
Residents of Hanover County are getting a chance to weigh in on whether two county schools with Confederate names and mascots should consider a change.
The school board will collect input from residents via an online survey. Printed copies can also turned in at several locations around the county, including public libraries and the school board office.
All input must be received by February 23.
The schools in question, Lee-Davis High School (the Confederates) and Stonewall Jackson Middle School (the Rebels), are both named after Confederate figures.
There has not yet been a formal proposal to change the names.
THE BIG EASY? OR JUST A BIG BLANK?
Last April and May in New Orleans, crews removed the Liberty Place Monument, the first of four Confederate Statues around the city set to come down, followed by the statues of President Jefferson Davis, General P.G.T. Beauregard, and General Robert E. Lee.
Now the statues are still believed to be sitting in city-owned warehouses. The spots where those statues once stood, also sit untouched.
A request for an update from the City was not given when requested on Monday so at her Tuesday press conference, Mayor-Elect LaToya Cantrell let it be known what she plans to replace the statues with likenesses of black people. When asked who she had no specifics simply saying they could be NFL “Saints players,” or “Katrina heroes,” or “anyone African-American.”
The following statement was released by the Monumental Task Committee: “The MTC continues to believe the city would be best served by the restoration of these historic artifacts to their original locations. The removal of historic art work from prominent public spaces was a disservice to New Orleans as the city enters its 300th year. The discussions on the future of the confiscated monuments and the stripped sites should be open and transparent and the Monumental Task Committee looks forward to participating.”
JUDGE SETS DATES IN MEMPHIS
A judge says a Tennessee nonprofit must preserve and cannot sell statues of three Confederate-era leaders secreted out of Memphis parks in December.
Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle barred Memphis Greenspace Inc. on Monday from moving the statues of three figures – Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, Capt. J. Harvey Mathes and President of the Confederate States Jefferson Davis – pending a hearing before the Tennessee Historical Commission within 60 days.
The commission will decide whether Memphis violated state law when it “sold” the parks and statues to Greenspace for $2,000 on Dec. 20. By making the parks private property, city officials have said it allowed the removal of the statues.
That was on Monday.
On Wednesday Judge Lyle ordered the City of Memphis and the Sons of Confederate Veterans were ordered to try mediation to resolve a dispute over the recent removal of the city’s Confederate statues.
Judge Lyle ordered the two sides to participate in mediation by March 16.
The City and the Sons of Confederate Veterans agreed to participate in mediation last year before the statues were removed. Mayor Jim Strickland decided to instead move forward with selling the parks after mediation was postponed into the new year.
The two parties have until Feb. 9 to choose a mediator or to leave the decision up to the judge, according to the order. The parties previously selected former Tennessee Supreme Court justices Janice Holder and William “Mickey” Barker.
Memphis City Attorney Bruce McMullen said in a prepared statement Tuesday: “…it should be noted that the city no longer owns these statues; they are the property of Memphis Greenspace.”
Judge Lyle also denied a request by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to inspect the statues for possible damage.
NORTH CAROLINA SEEKS ONLINE INPUT
In the first 48 hours of public comment on three Confederate statues outside the North Carolina capitol, more than 2,000 people offered their opinions through a state website.
Gov. Roy Cooper proposed removing the memorials from the capitol grounds in Downtown Raleigh while State lawmakers have argued over the legality of moving the monuments. According to a law made in 2015, Confederate memorials can only be moved in cases involving public safety concerns. Cooper sought the insight of the North Carolina Historical Commission, which decided in the fall to postpone a decision until April. The plan was to accept public input, and at a meeting on January 22, the committee opted to launch a website on January 29 for online submissions.
Click to respond to survey: https://www.ncdcr.gov/comment-relocation-monuments
We need to use this as an opportunity to politely remind the State of North Carolina that they do not have the legal ability to remove the statues. Jake Sullivan provided a statement on behalf of the NCSCV which said that the qualification of a monument for putting public safety at risk means the physical condition of the monument creates a danger to people nearby.
Public safety does not come into play when there is a threat of a mob, and the government should not give in to a mob.
So we “are asking our readers and the members of the general public to register their disgust with Governor Cooper and the Historical Commission via the public comment portal.
The Historical Commission has not set a deadline for people to complete their online submissions. There will be at least one public forum where people can voice their opinions in person, but the committee has not set a date.
DON KING IS ALMOST IN
Florida’s Senate voted unanimously Wednesday to replace the State’s statue of a Confederate general in the U.S. Capitol with a figure of someone who looks a LOT like boxing promoter Don King.
The picture above is of educator Mary McLeod Bethune. But you tell me that when that image is cast in stone or bronze if it won’t look like Don King? They better make sure to put up some good signage so that everyone looking at the statue will know who it really is.
The Senate vote does not seal the deal. Now the matter needs to be approved by the State House and signed by Gov. Rick Scott. Go ahead and start calling the Governor now and tell him that Florida does not need to erect astatue that will look like it is of Don King. General Smith needs to stay! Our veterans need to be honored – call the Governor: (850) 717-9337
NON-HERITAGE NEWS EFFECTING THE SOUTHLAND:
What really happened at the World Economic Summit? President Donald Trump stole the show and blew everyone away. He was BY FAR more popular than and more well recieved than anyone else there.
The European cameras had the colors set right and he was not orange. But the American cameras were tweaked to show him orange, and they screwed up because anyone the President was with showed up orange also.
Donald Trump is not orange. I was fortunate enough to have an education good enough to cover Communist tactics, and what they do to smear people. If you ever see anyone show up orange it means the communists hate that person. Orange is the worst color you can possibly put on a face, and all the old communist posters always showed their opposition with orange tinted faces.
It was really interesting to see the Mexican newscast switch between different cameras, where about half of them showed him with his true colors (he is perfectly normal) and the other half showing him orange, with obvious juvenile quality fakery where everyone else was orange also -but you are just supposed to think Trump is orange and not notice it is really a poorly tweaked camera.
Anyway, the Mexican media did not show Trump deceptively (at least on the Imagen network). They showed the “boo” episode and it was B.S. They showed all the top world leaders and people treating Trump respectfully, he was the major center of attention for everyone and he was very well liked.
There was one media source that made the comment “My god, he’s like a rock star” but that does not mean he’s liked, lots of people hate rock stars!!!! I kid you not, they actually said that!
Even the US “media” showed enough of his speech to clearly prove he absolutely OWNED, AND I MEAN OWNED the economic summit. It was amazing. The Mexican media showed how the American “three rat” media portrayed Trump in a very biased way.
THE PRESIDENT’S IMPACT ON THE JUDICIARY
One year into his term, President Trump is making a significant impact on the nation’s courts despite his contentious relationship with liberal judges within the judiciary. With help from Republicans in the Senate, the President has won confirmation for 23 federal judges, including one Supreme Court justice, 12 circuit court judges and 10 district court judges.
In 2016, 56 percent of Republican voters said the Supreme Court was the most important factor in their support for Mr. Trump. But the White House is also making its mark on the lower courts where the president is looking to fill 145 vacancies nationwide.
“What the president’s doing with the courts is truly transformative,” said Leonard Leo, an outside adviser to the president on judges. He helps lead the conservative legal group, The Federalist Society. “These are people who believe in self-government — that most of the big issues in our country need to be decided by the people and their elected representatives,” Leo said.
There have been missteps at the district court level. Two of the president’s nominees were forced to withdraw over questions about their qualifications, including Matthew Peterson who testified he had never tried jury or civil trials. But on the appeals courts, the new judges are highly credentialed, conservative powerhouses – what you’d expect from a “traditional Republican president.”
Democrats say their shared philosophy could lead to a rollback of civil rights and protections for everyone from gays and lesbians to blue-collar workers. Delaware Sen. Chris Coons has called it “an alarming trend of more and more extreme judicial candidates,” and Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin has said, “We have seen President Trump nominate people far outside of the judicial mainstream.”
On the nomination of Judge Amul Thapar to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said: “The goal is not just to get a few ultra conservative judges on our federal courts. It is to capture the entire judicial branch.”
Leo said the judicial battles show elections have consequences. “The president made it very clear the kinds of people he was going to nominate… and that’s what he is delivering,” Leo said.
With Republicans in control of the Senate, filling those 145 vacancies is clearly within reach. But if Democrats take back the Senate this year that could complicate things, especially if another justice decides to retire while President Trump is in office.
SENATORS APPROVAL RATINGS DROP
The prospect of another term isn’t looking like such a sure thing for 12 senators seeking reelection in 2018. Ten Democrats and one Republican have declining net approval ratings that show their constituents less favorably disposed toward them now than at the start of the 115th Congress in January of last year.
One “vulnerable” Democrat, Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, has remained stagnant at 9 percent net approval. That’s according to the new Morning Consult Senator Approval Rankings for the fourth quarter of 2017.
The data doesn’t look good for the 10 Democratic incumbents seeking another term in states that Donald Trump took in the 2016 election. Nine are on the list of senators who have seen their net approval ratings drop since the start of 2017.
The lone Republican on the list, Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV), is holding on to a two-point net approval. He’s lost 9 points of net approval in his state, which presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won in 2016.
All of this happened against a bleak backdrop for senators. Average net approval rating for senators of any party dropped 8 points, from 22 percent to 14 percent, from the first to last quarters of 2017. Senators on the list whose 2018 bids seem safest right now include Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) with a 17-point net approval rating, Sherrod Brown (D-OH) with an 18-point net approval rating, and Bill Nelson (D-FL) with a 25-point net approval rating.
THIS SHOULD SCARE YOU!!
As the Senate rushed a spending bill through to end the government shutdown, the top Republican and Democrat on the Intelligence Committee both warned that the bill contains language that would end Congress’s ability to oversee “Intelligence.”
The intelligence community, in its latest grasp, has gone too far even for Richard Burr. The Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence committee has long been one of the Senate’s staunchest advocates for the intelligence agencies, leading the fight to reauthorize surveillance programs and fighting to bury the results of the Senate’s five-year investigation into CIA torture. But he took to the Senate floor Monday to warn that it would end Congress’s ability to oversee intelligence programs.
The provision, first reported by The Intercept, appeared in the House version of the spending bill last week and modified the 70-year-old-law that first chartered the CIA. It removed language requiring intelligence agencies to spend money according to Congress’s instructions, and replaced it with a provision that allows the agencies to move money around freely and without Congress’s knowledge.
Scarier, Blackwater founder Erik Prince has recently pitched the administration on a private intelligence force that would report directly to President Donald Trump and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. While I might Trust President Trump to oversee such a private activity, what happens tin the future when another Bill Clinton, or worse, another Barak Obama is in the Oval Office?
Burr asked for unanimous consent to substitute replacement language into the bill that would restore Congress’s ability to dictate spending and found himself in a jurisdictional turf war with the Appropriations Committee. “We should have inserted this new language. But because of a fight between Appropriations and the Intelligence Committee in the House, we weren’t able to do that. And I have a feeling that Senator Warner and I are going to find that there is now a fight between the Intel Committees and the Appropriators of the U.S. Senate, because I fear somebody might object to the unanimous consent,” Burr said, noticing Sen. Thad Cochran, the Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, conspicuously present in the chamber. Cochran did indeed object, and Burr then yielded the Senate floor “with great disappointment.”
Cochran’s entry into the debate adds another wrinkle, as the veteran senator, at 80, has struggled cognitively in recent months. Politico reported last year that he appeared “at times disoriented during a brief hallway interview.”
Cochran had to be guided by staffers around a security checkpoint inside the Capitol. He started to walk into a first-floor room – though the Senate chamber is on the second floor. He was then ushered by an aide up to the Senate.
When another reporter asked whether leadership had pressured Cochran to return for a vote on the budget resolution – a key moment in the tax reform debate – Cochran smiled and responded, “It’s a beautiful day outside.”
Cochran sat quietly in his seat during Wednesday’s lengthy vote session. He smiled and responded when a fellow senator stopped by to offer greetings, but generally did not speak to anyone else.
On one amendment, Cochran voted “yes” despite being told by an aide to vote “no.” The staffer tried to get the senator to switch his vote, but Cochran kept flashing the “thumbs up” sign, even walking over to the clerk tallying the vote and doing so. GOP floor staffers repeatedly told him the leadership wanted a “no” vote. Several more moments passed before Cochran realized he was voting the wrong way and then changed his vote.
EXTRA – EXTRA – READ ALL ABOUT IT!!
If you are not reading the American Free Press you probably missed the story of the year – so far – that earlier this month Cliven Bundy was released.
He’s FREE!
The Feds failed to make a case.
My guess is they never tried.
The Feds knew that the “media” would faithfully report his arrest and forget to cover his release and innocence:
http://americanfreepress.net/victory-for-the-bundys/
Lies and Hypocrisy of the Civil War
by Dr. Jacob G. Hornberger
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Born and raised in Laredo, Texas he is a graduate of Virginia Military Institute and the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas.
More than 150 years after the Civil War, the nation is engulfed in controversy over statues of people who fought for the Confederacy. Many people want the statues taken down. The statues, they say, depict men who were slaveowners, slavery proponents, and traitors. Those who want the statues to stay in place are said to be racists. The feelings run so deep on both sides of the controversy that one would think that the Civil War ended just yesterday.
As a libertarian, I question why government should erect statues in the first place, to anyone. That’s simply not a legitimate role of government. Moreover, why should people be taxed to fund a statue of someone whose beliefs or behavior they dislike or oppose?
Private entities, of course, should be free to erect any statues they want, so long as they aren’t subsidized by the state and the statues are on privately owned property. In fact, in 2003 a group spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to establish the Confederate Memorial Park in Lookout Point, Maryland, which features a statue and battle flags that celebrate the Confederacy. It is privately funded and people are free to boycott it or even protest it. It is an example of how things operate in a private-property system.
The statue controversy exposes lies and hypocrisy that characterize the popular depiction of the Civil War.
The most popular lie is the one that says that Abraham Lincoln waged the war to free the slaves. That’s just a plain lie. Ending slavery was the result at the end of the war but it was clearly not Lincoln’s goal at the beginning of the war.
Lincoln had one reason and one reason alone for initiating war against the Confederacy: to keep the nation intact by suppressing the South’s secession. That was it. That was Lincoln’s sole aim. Prior to the war, he had made it clear that slavery was legal under the U.S. Constitution. Thus, he believed, the only way to end it legally would have been by constitutional amendment.
Indeed, further proof of Lincoln’s aim is seen in his Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves only in certain areas. If he were waging the war to end slavery, wouldn’t he have proclaimed the freedom of all slaves, not just some of them?
Let’s assume that there was no slavery in the South and that the South had seceded for some other reason, say, tariffs, or simply because Southerners had decided that they no longer wanted to associate with the North. Even without slavery, there is no doubt that Lincoln would have initiated the war to prevent the South from seceding.
What if the Confederate States seceded today and declared their independence? Does anyone doubt that federal forces would be sent into the South again to suppress the secession? Obviously, their aim would not be to end slavery but to keep the nation intact, the same aim that Lincoln had when he ordered federal forces to invade the South.
So why the lie? Why not teach American children the truth – that the Civil War was waged to prevent secession and that ending slavery was simply a byproduct of the war?
I suggest that the reason for the lie is that proponents of the Civil War know that suppressing secession might not be considered by many to be a noble cause for a war that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed half the country, not to mention that it damaged the freedom and democratic processes of the country.
Not so with ending slavery. That’s something noble. That’s something that many people would say was worth the tremendous sacrifices in life, limb, freedom, and prosperity.
Thus, the lie comes into existence: The Civil War was waged to end slavery, it is said, which is a noble cause, one worth sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and the destruction of half the country.
Treason?
Why do some proponents of the Civil War consider the suppression of secession to be less than a noble cause?
With secession, people are simply saying, “We don’t want to be associated with you anymore. We wish to separate our states from this country and establish our own country.”
With the suppression of secession, people are essentially responding, “Tough luck. We don’t care whether you want to continue associating with us or not. We are going to initiate force against you to prevent you from going your way. We will force you to remain associated with us. We will kill and destroy you until you change your mind.”
It is fairly obvious that that position doesn’t have the nobility that ending slavery does. That’s undoubtedly why the lie began.
In fact, I believe that Lincoln himself began realizing that as the war progressed and the death and destruction mounted exponentially. When he provoked the incident at Fort Sumter, I think he figured that the war would be quickly brought to a conclusion and that the seceding states would be quickly defeated.
Lincoln’s mindset was much like the Washington, D.C., crowd of socialites and sightseers that gathered in Virginia to watch the first Battle of Bull Run at the inception of the war. They viewed the battle as sort of a big sports event, one that would be over rather quickly, with the federal team winning. Once it was clear that the Confederate forces were prevailing in the battle, the D.C. socialites and sightseers ran for their lives back to D.C. in fear that they would be captured or killed.
That’s essentially what many supporters of the Civil War have done. They have fled from the truth and convinced themselves that the Civil War was initiated principally to end slavery and only secondarily to suppress secession.
During the statue controversy, people have accused the secessionists of being traitors. They say that it was treason for Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, and others to secede from the Union.
But isn’t treason a legal concept? If the Constitution permitted secession, which many people believed, then how could it be treasonous to secede? Indeed, at the end of the war, federal officials took Davis into custody and threatened to prosecute him for treason. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, however, they dropped their prosecution. One reason might have been that they didn’t want to risk a Supreme Court ruling on the matter.
There is an important point about secession that needs to be made, one that exposes the hypocrisy of those who condemn the South for seceding. That point is: The United States itself was founded on secession. And most of the people who condemn the South for seceding nonetheless celebrate America’s secession from Great Britain in 1776.
We call it the American Revolution, but that’s really a misnomer. It wasn’t a revolution at all. A revolution is an attempt by rebels to oust the existing regime and take control of the central government. That’s not what the American colonists in 1776 were doing. They had no interest in taking control over the British government. They simply wanted to secede from it.
Keep in mind that the people who signed the Declaration of Independence were not Americans. They were British subjects, just as people in the Confederacy were American citizens. The British colonies were part of Great Britain, much as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands are part of the United States today.
So the men who signed the Declaration were simply saying, “We don’t want to be part of your country anymore. We don’t want to associate with you. We wish to establish our own country.” They didn’t want to take over the British government. They simply wanted to secede from Great Britain and establish their own country, just as Southerners wanted to do nearly 90 years later.
Today, some Americans celebrate George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Patrick Henry as patriots for seceding from their country while, at the same time, condemning Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson as traitors for seceding from theirs.
Of course, often it’s a question of who wins and who loses that determines whether a secessionist is a patriot or a traitor. Great Britain certainly did not consider its rebelling British colonists to be patriots. On the contrary, it considered them to be traitors and criminals, the same way that many Americans today view Davis, Lee, Jackson, and other Southerners who lost their war for secession.
Sovereign states
People claim that Southerners were fighting to preserve slavery and, therefore, cannot under any circumstances be considered patriots.
They miss two important points, however. One is that the secessionists in 1776 intended to preserve slavery in their new country and, nonetheless, they are still considered to be patriots.
The other point is related: It’s possible to fight for two principles, one noble and the other ignoble. Lee provides a good example. When the war broke out, Lincoln offered him command over all Union forces. Lee turned down the offer and returned to Virginia, where he assumed command over the Confederacy’s Army of Northern Virginia. At the time, his wife was also a slaveowner.
Critics today call Lee a traitor. They say that he betrayed his country by taking up arms against it (just as some people considered George Washington, who was also a slave-owner, to be a traitor for taking up arms against his country).
The problem is that such critics are looking at the situation from the standpoint of a 21st-century American, one who has been indoctrinated into viewing the federal government and the nation in a way that is entirely different from how 18th-century and 19th-century Americans viewed them.
Today’s Americans are taught to view the United States as one nation, consisting of states that are inferior and subordinate to the federal government.
That was not the mindset of our ancestors. They viewed the nation as a collection of sovereign and independent entities (i.e., states) that had simply confederated together to facilitate matters of common interest.
In the process, however, the states understood that they were not surrendering their separate, independent, and sovereign status. That was manifested in the type of political structure that they established. The charter by which they came together was called, appropriately, the Articles of Confederation. That’s because they came together simply as a confederation and without losing the independence and sovereignty of each state. Under the Articles the federal government was given very few powers. It wasn’t even given the power to tax.
Most people considered their home state to be their real country. That’s where their loyalties lay. That’s where their allegiance was – not to the United States but rather to Virginia or South Carolina. People didn’t see themselves as citizens of the United States. They saw themselves as citizens of their respective states.
That mindset was reflected by the way Americans prior to the Civil War referred grammatically to the United States. When doing so, they would use the plural form: “The United States are moving in a different direction.” Sometime after the Civil War and continuing through today, the country is referred to in the singular: “The United States is moving in a different direction.”
It was with that mindset that Lee turned down Lincoln’s request to command the Union forces. In his mind, to do so would constitute treason because it would entail waging war against his own country, which was Virginia. And that was the mindset of most Southerners. In their minds, they were fighting for their country against an illegal invader, notwithstanding the fact that their system was based on slavery. That is, they would have had the mindset with respect to patriotism even if there had been no slavery in the South.
Proponents of the Civil War ignore some other important points.
If the war was actually about slavery rather than secession, U.S. forces could have invaded the Confederacy, freed the slaves, and returned home, leaving the Confederacy as an independent nation. After all, doesn’t the U.S. government justify some of its foreign interventions in that way today? After the infamous WMDs failed to be immediately found in Iraq, U.S. officials said that they were actually invading and occupying Iraq to free the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. In the process, they didn’t absorb Iraq into the United States.
They could have done the same thing to the Confederacy – invade, free the slaves, and return home without forcibly re-absorbing the Confederacy. The reason they didn’t is clear: the war was about secession, not slavery.
Moreover, there was another way to bring an end to slavery without all the massive death and destruction that Lincoln’s war entailed. The North could have acceded to the secession and then declared itself to be a sanctuary for runaway slaves.
What about the Fugitive Slave Act, which required Northern states to return slaves to their owners? It would have been gone. Remember: with secession, there would now be two separate and independent countries – the United States of America and the Confederate States of America. There would be nothing the Confederacy could do to force the North to return runaway slaves.
That would have undoubtedly broken the back of the slave system in the South. After all, slavery was a dying institution anyway, not only in a moral sense but also in an efficiency sense. Operations based on slavery could not compete against enterprises based on consensual, paid employees. It was just a matter of time before the entire system collapsed. A sanctuary system in the North would have accelerated its demise.
War crimes
Finally, in the matter of statues and the honoring and glorification of Union leaders, it’s important to keep in mind the grave war crimes ordered by Lincoln, and committed by Philip Sheridan and William T. Sherman, especially in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and in Sherman’s March to the Sea.
Traditional rules of warfare precluded the waging of war against civilians, a principle that had been taught to Sheridan and Sherman at West Point. Yet, that is precisely what those two men and the troops under their command did. They intentionally targeted women, children, seniors, and other noncombatants by burning their homes, their crops, and their towns and villages, with the intent of killing them by starvation or exposure to the elements. The idea was that it would bring the war to an earlier conclusion, especially by demoralizing Confederate soldiers who would be losing their wives, children, siblings, and parents.
It’s a rather straight line from what was done in the South to the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. carpet bombing of North Korean towns and villages, the bombing of civilian targets in North Vietnam, the killing of civilians at My Lai and countless other villages in South Vietnam, and the several missile and drone attacks on wedding parties in Afghanistan. Every one of those war crimes is based on the notion that it’s okay as long as it saves American lives by ending the war sooner, especially by demoralizing the enemy. They all stretch back to the war crimes that Sheridan and Sherman committed in the South.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention the extreme dictatorial actions committed by Lincoln. His arrest of the Maryland legislature. His jailing of critical journalists. His suspension of habeas corpus. His embrace of conscription. His enactment of the Legal Tender Laws. They were all illegal under our form of constitutional government. They are also characteristic of some of the most brutal dictatorships in history.
Indeed, let’s not forget that while Lincoln opposed slavery prior to being elected president, he was also a white separatist, believing at best that blacks and whites should be kept separate and that blacks should be forcibly deported to Africa.
Lincoln ended up winning and slavery was ended, which was the one good thing that came out of the war. But it’s not necessary to honor war criminals and white separatists simply because they won, especially when ending slavery wasn’t the reason they initiated the Civil War. Indeed, does winning mean that lies and hypocrisy have to be a major legacy of the Civil War?
*This article was originally published by the Future of Freedom Foundation and is reprinted here with permission.
Secret Society in FBI and DOJ, Naw
by Al Benson, Jr.
Al Benson, Jr., is the editor and publisher of the Copperhead Chronicle, a newsletter that presents history from a pro-Southern and Christian perspective. In addition to writing for Southern Patriot and other publications, he is a member of the Confederate Society of America and the League of the South.
Back 40-50 years ago there was a big fuss among the liberals, Leftists, and communists (but I repeat myself here) about how the John Birch Society was a “secret society” out to do the country harm, a “secret society” on the Right. Needless to say the Birch Society was never a “secret” society and all that bovine fertilizer about them was just that-an eight letter word we don’t say in polite company. The Birch Society has been an excellent educational organization and I never hesitate to use their documentation in articles because their research is impeccable.
They are the folks that exposed the unelected rulers of American government-the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group, who are, in a sense, this country’s “invisible government” because members of these groups infest government, the “news” media, the military, major universities and all manner of other places that affect the lives of ordinary Americans. These groups all push, in one form or another, some sort of world government where national sovereignty is destroyed. Tower of Babel here we come!
And now, after decades of Leftist psychobabble about rightist “secret societies”, lo and behold, we are being told about one in the FBI/DOJ, infested by Leftists who wanted Clinton elected president instead of Trump. All kinds of testimony seems to be coming out about this secret society in these two governmental agencies. As the man says “you can’t make this stuff up!”
The deliberate attempted destruction of the Trump presidency by these Leftists and those who are financing them seems to be of such gigantic proportions that it makes Seven Days in May or The Manchurian Candidate look like child’s play-a Sunday School picnic!
The American people, minus those on the Far Left and those “useful idiots” they have managed to brainwash, elected Donald Trump to be president. But these Far Left Swamp Creatures and their “running dogs” don’t like what the American people voted for and so they think it is their bounden duty to overturn what we voted for and possibly replace it with (gag!) Hillary and her Loony Left cohorts. In their unlimited wisdom these people think they know better than we do what’s good for us-America last and deepening socialism- and if they can somehow deep six Trump you’d better believe that’s their plan for us. And you can bet the three groups mentioned earlier in this article will all be gung-ho for that scenario. A major part of their One World Government agenda is the total shafting of the American middle class and the destruction of our God-given liberties.
It seems (and I hope it is accurate) that some congressional committees have heard about this FBI/DOJ “secret society” and they plan to investigate it. Congressman Trey Gowdy stated: “I’m going to want to know what secret society you are talking about, because you are supposed to be investigating objectively who just won the electoral college.” Good statement, but let’s don’t kid ourselves. There has been absolutely nothing objective about this Russian collusion delusion or anything else involving Trump. Mueller’s committee has been busy trying to do a hatchet job on the Trump Administration for almost a year now.
Even one of the most vocal anti-Trumpers involved has had to admit that there “is no there, there.” What he’s saying is that there is really nothing to investigate regarding Trump’s collusion with Russia-it’s all hocus-pocus, smoke and mirrors, basically a gigantic farce designed to make Trump look bad. And they’re spending millions of our tax dollars to do it. Ain’t that nice?
Unless Trump, somehow, manages to have these people exposed there are people in his own administration working just as hard to unseat him as Hillary ever did. Do you suppose any of them have possibly interlocking memberships in the CFR/Trilateral Commission/Bilderberg Groups? Trump made some lousy choices when picking his team to run the country and he is going to need to get rid of some of these people. One of his chief advisers, H. R. McMaster, belongs to the CFR. That being the case he doesn’t belong in a Trump Administration, and he is only one example.
Lets face it, The Swamp does not want to be drained. It’s denizens enjoy slopping around in the political ooze and they will resist anyone who tries to drain their Homeland and give the American public half a chance. They hate this country, they hate God, they hate YOU! Their agenda is to destroy all three! However, on their way to their own destruction they will make lots of people miserable.
FROM THE EDITOR
Dr. Ed is a pastor, author, public speaker, radio personality, lobbyist, re-enactor, and the Director of Dixie Heritage.
The Maryland General Assembly will consider two bills this year that propose changing the State song,”Maryland, My Maryland,” now criticized for its Confederate sympathies.
The Legislature has been there before, but I fear this may finally be the year members act, given the recent removal of Confederate statues in various communities throughout Maryland.
Right now the two bills are in the House of Delegates. I am certain that both will move over to the Senate.
House Bill 508 provides for the repeal of the current song, followed by a convoluted process to pick an entirely new state song. The bill calls for the creation of an advisory panel, which would receive and review submissions of lyrics, melodies and other suggestions for a new state song, and hold at least three public hearings on the matter before making recommendations to the governor and legislature by Dec. 1. (This would be the second such state song panel created by the General Assembly. The first one was created in 2015.)
House Bill 608 would strip away the “disgusting and offensive” lyrics from the current state song (among them decrying the “Northern scum” and referring to Abraham Lincoln as a “despot”), keeping the third stanza, which most people would consider inoffensive. It is the stanza that is sung at the Preakness Stakes each year. The only difference is that the line “Remember Howard’s warlike thrust” would be replaced with the line “May Tubman’s name remain august” – a reference to abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
The revisions in HB608 follow suggestions that the first advisory panel made, including to make the third stanza the official state song, and that the song honor Tubman in the lyrics.
The current third stanza also honors Charles Carroll of Carrollton and John Edgar Howard. Both men are certainly Maryland heroes, but since they both owned slaves – well you know how thats supposed to go. Still there is a proposal to keep Carroll, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and cut Howard in favor of Tubman. Because putting Tubman on the $20 bill just isn’t enough for some people.
The State song under the revised HB608 would therefore be:
Thou wilt not cower in the dust,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust,
Maryland, my Maryland!
Remember Carroll’s sacred trust,
May Tubman’s name remain august,
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland, my Maryland!
While I believe that Bill 508 will get out of committee the contest bill will be costly, calling for the Maryland State Archives to provide the staff to assist the panel, and the bill calls for the panel to be reimbursed for expenses incurred during the marathon. Can you imagine the state spending money reimbursing panel members for expenses they incur while listening to contest entries when Baltimore City is fighting for the funding to help city schools and community development? And the song contest itself is a disaster waiting to happen. Virginia had a state song contest several years ago, and it was a mess.
Bill 608 on the other hand really scares me. They could pass it with little notice or opposition. Who cares if the revised state song would be more like a college pep rally fight song then the current rally cry against tyranny? Also, HB608 is essentially free. It will cost the state not one single penny to implement, other than perhaps song reprinting efforts.
And, the members can pass Bill 608 under the guise of opposing bill 508, playing a slight of hand trick on the citizens of Maryland.
That slight of hand trick would of course remove the following from the State Song – the “offensive” lyrics:
The despot’s heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Hark to an exiled son’s appeal,
Maryland!
My mother State! to thee I kneel,
Maryland!
For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Remember Howard’s warlike thrust,
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Come! ’tis the red dawn of the day,
Maryland!
Come with thy panoplied array,
Maryland!
With Ringgold’s spirit for the fray,
With Watson’s blood at Monterey,
With fearless Lowe and dashing May,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Come! for thy shield is bright and strong,
Maryland!
Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong,
Maryland!
Come to thine own anointed throng,
Stalking with Liberty along,
And chaunt thy dauntless slogan song,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Dear Mother! burst the tyrant’s chain,
Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain-
“Sic semper!” ’tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back again,
Maryland!
Arise in majesty again,
Maryland! My Maryland!
I see the blush upon thy cheek,
Maryland!
For thou wast ever bravely meek,
Maryland!
But lo! there surges forth a shriek,
From hill to hill, from creek to creek-
Potomac calls to Chesapeake,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll,
Maryland!
Thou wilt not crook to his control,
Maryland!
Better the fire upon thee roll, Better the blade, the shot, the bowl,
Than crucifixion of the soul,
Maryland! My Maryland!
I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The Old Line’s bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she’ll come! she’ll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!
Until Next Week,
Deo Vindice!
Chaplain Ed
Dixie Heritage
P.O. Box 618
Lowell, FL 32663
