What makes sense strategically

(The final post)

My mother always said that I was optimistic. For the past several decades, I endeavored to roll the rock of liberty another mile or two, because it mattered to me personally. Most of my work was abstract and theoretical. It's time to discuss specifications, if the United States is to reclaim its sanity, shed the burden of piggish plunder, and focus on national defense.

abbreviated as concisely as possible:

Coast Guard & Corps of Engineers (one integrated agency)
Navy to defend North America, plus strategic Trident submarines
Air Force continental tactical air defense, air traffic control
Space Command (NASA subordinated or disbanded)
DEA reinforced by Marines and Special Forces
Passports, Visas, Customs & Border Patrol
CIA, NSA, DIA (one integrated agency)
covert cooperation with Britain, Poland, and Australia
FBI to pursue fugitives, gangsters, and terrorists
commercial airlines responsible for travel security
commercial overseas consular services
State Dept disbanded, U.N. expelled from New York
Army disbanded, Commerce, Interior, and Energy privatized

Budget $200 billion a year, plus R&D, testing, procurement
(at present we have a big inventory of ships, aircraft, and nukes)

education, medical care, housing, retirement pensions privatized
charities, states, and counties can provide welfare if they wish
TVA, GSA, USDA, BLM, USPS, VA, and Amtrak to be auctioned
Judiciary reorganized, judges chosen by lawyers and term-limited
Washington DC buildings auctioned, made into museums, etc
seat of government moved to Andrews Air Force Base
IRS closed, national security funded by shareholder "cash calls"
one share one vote, to elect a term-limited board of directors
price of shares will fluctuate according to security demand
big tech, big banks, insurers, and billionaires will bid for shares
political parties and PACs will probably want shares, too
no foreign shareholders, no foreign debt, zero foreign aid
no market regulation, SEC, FDIC, GSEs, FCC, and FRB privatized

Obviously, this can't happen overnight or absent social circumstances that necessitate grim constitutional revision. Converting the U.S. Government from a $7 trillion boondoggle to a $200 billion national security enterprise will be wrenching revolutionary upheaval -- huge write-offs and millions of pink slips. How could such a terrible thing happen?

Nuclear war between (take your pick) Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, China, North Korea, Russia, or USA in defense of Japan or South Korea could do it. Conventional war in the Persian Gulf could do it, which seems likely enough. And we face imminent disaster at home.

I hope you understand that we're bankrupt. Two or three terms of Democrat rule will wreck the United States, no different than driving off a cliff in a crowded bus with bald tires and a drunken committee of incompetents at the wheel. Obama cut military spending and funded the "Arab Spring" that destabilized Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Arabia, and Yemen. His domestic policies crippled California, Texas, New England, and every U.S. city. A "Green New Deal" would not merely throttle the United States, it would kill it. Reelection of Trump as a last ditch, desperate, defiant rear guard war for the soul of America would be worse.

It's good to start a conversation about change. There is no divine right of stupidity, or race riots, or infinite spending on free shit at home and a world cop empire that failed in every lopsided war of choice from Vietnam to Afghanistan. The CIA didn't see the Iranian Islamic Revolution coming. No clue that a gang of Saudis would attack the World Trade Center. FBI warnings were ignored. Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Mossad phony evidence and Jewish neo-cons manipulating dumbshit George W. Bush like a frightened child. Trump is no better, bamboozled by NIH and CDC bureaucrats and kneecapped by Pentagon skunks. The conspiracy of Congress, the Deep State, and Obama judges stinks worse than rotten eggs, a nonstop assault on middle class white families who fear for their children.

I know how important Social Security, Meals On Wheels, and free health care are for millions of elderly. I depend on all three of those entitlement programs to survive, because I'm old, ugly, isolated, and impoverished. It would be swell to have another check for $1200 from the Treasury. However, ponzi schemes are destined to end in disaster for everyone.

War, inflation, and chaos are only a matter of time. In 1776 the issues were similar, tyranny and tumult inflicted by a corrupt Parliament. Centuries of rivalry and warfare among France, England, and Spain roiled all of Europe, the Americas, Australia, Indochina, and Africa. The way our Founding Fathers dealt with it was to let the world go to hell, stay out of it, after we won independence. Our government was small, focused on defense of the United States, and funded by wealthy citizens. See www.robert-morris.com

The genius of federalism is a laboratory of States, free to experiment with gun ownership, taxes, abortion, LGBT, interstate pipelines, welfare benefits, renewable energy, etc. An implicit constitutional guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness means that a citizen can vote with his feet, move from one state to another. People are fleeing New York, Illinois, and California in droves, but the blessings of liberty have been quashed by decades of national fascism, imposing Federal laws, regulations, unfunded mandates, and taxes.

My strategy is no Federal taxes, no Federal legislation, privately funded national security. That's how the United States began and why we prospered as a formerly free society. What happens overseas is irrelevant to our national interest. Admitting millions of refugees is a policy question for the several States to consider, costly California sanctuary, for instance. Other states are equally free to request Executive deportation of illegal immigrants. Stern interdiction of narcotics should be a national priority. Mexico is nearing collapse as a civil society. I would send in the Marines, with DEA scouts and CIA interrogators.

Unfortunately, I will not live long enough to witness the cataclysm that will anguish a nation and paralyze its bankrupt government -- until a committee of moneyed patriots offer to buy the damn thing, to rescue and refocus national defense. My job is to bequeath six words to future shareholders, a simple creed that should be chiseled in stone at Andrews.

Justice is the defense of liberty.

If there's any doubt that national security can be achieved on a preposterously cheap $200  billion budget (in 2020 dollars) I will remind you that 3/4 of current Federal disbursements are entitlements, 3/4 of military spending has nothing to do with defense of North America, and 100% of the remainder is bloated bureaucracy and emergency handouts because you were forbidden to work, operate a business, or go to school. Our cities and towns have been flooded with narcotics, riots, and murder. Police recruitment collapsed. Heather McDonald summarized the domestic social situation in two words: "It's over."

The $25 trillion we owe China, Wall Street, Tel Aviv, oil sheiks, Grand Cayman, Isle of Man, and Bahamaian drug money launderers? Like Heather said: "It's over." Try and collect from a bankrupt government that was sold at auction and stiffed millions of unionized workers.

It's best to view the U.S. Government as an insurance company that became insolvent and can't provide to its beneficiaries the security and cash that it promised to deliver, having collected revenue and borrowed funds for that purpose. It's irrelevant that it was organized as a public member-owned mutual company. It has to be wound up by a receiver, its assets auctioned, and outstanding claims settled for pennies on the dollar. I would give priority to disabled military veterans who were promised medical care, and a lump sum Social Security settlement. Nothing for politicians and bureaucrats who drove government into a ditch.

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How to fight crime

The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, whether God given or as an assertion of constitutional principle makes no sense. It doesn't apply to dead people, the terminally ill, noncitizens, people trapped overseas, terrorists, prisoners, crime victims, or aborted babies. It's debatable whether the right of liberty applies to small children or the insane. No one is free of taxation, regulation, national sacrifice in war, or collision with others that vaporizes liberty. Your freedom ends at my property line, and no one is free in a car, an airplane, or a crowd. Personal pursuit of happiness seems remote if you work for a corporation, a family business, or a government agency. It would be more accurate to say that you have a right to die, obey, and suffer numerous unwanted consequences of cohabiting a complicated world. Fraud, divorce, cancer, rape, paraplegia, and child abuse have ruinous lifetaking impact.

When Jefferson advanced the notion of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there was historical context, a King and Parliament who were distant from sparsely populated towns and homesteads in American colonies that became accustomed to democracy. Our founding fathers routinely ignored the edicts issued in London, which reached them in fair weather a couple months later. No one would have thought to declare human rights, except that Tory judges and redcoats were dispatched to Boston. Somehow the colonial Declaration of eternal human rights in 1776 evolved into a $7 trillion tyranny of our own making. It's settled custom in the U.S. today that you're guilty until proved innocent if the IRS decides to audit you, or if Democrat conspirators launch a Deep State war of lies and leaks. No one is safe at home, at work, or at school, silenced by intersectionality, gunfire, and idiotic government lockdown. The mortality rate from Covid-19 has fallen below seasonal flu. Young adults and children are immune or suffer mild symptoms, but family lockdown was fatal to elderly with pre-existing conditions and obese people of color. Total "cases" are a fake statistic, inflated with false positives, lies about 100% positivity at Florida labs, asymptomatic hospital admissions for childbirth, and multiple retests for burger flippers. Tens of thousands of drug overdoses, car wreck victims, and heart attacks were listed as Covid-19 "cause of death" because hospitals were paid a bounty every time they intubated a patient, killing them. Half of all virus deaths in New York were mass murder by Andrew Cuomo, sending infectious hospital patients to nursing homes as a political gambit, rather than use thousands of empty Navy ICU beds and Javitz Center ICU beds provided by President Trump. Human rights? Are you joking?

The way I approach rights is simple. Justice is the armed defense of innocent liberty. It has nothing to do with voting or legislation. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away, unless you live in Brooklyn, Seattle, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, or Chicago. Buy a gun, get trained in tactical defense, carry every day, and plan ahead if you have to shoot. Don't hang around and depend on lawyers to rescue you. Scram and get rid of the gun. Toss it in a lake. You can always buy another one. Stockpile ammo, which is becoming hard to find.

There is a political question to address, which Wendy McElroy answered as follows. She is morally opposed to voting, as I am, but said that she would have shot Hitler to stop him from taking office and directing Nazi genocide and conquest. This presumes that we agree with Hegel, that world historical figures and the clash of dialectical ideas shape history, therefore shooting Hitler could have prevented World War II. Killing charismatic individuals usually creates martyrs, like Jesus, Joan of Arc, Gandhi, and MLK. The world is not improved by it. Few have done more harm recently than the idiot savant from Sweden, but it would be an error to shoot Greta, amplifying her mystique. It's too late to kill Al Gore or Bernie Sanders. Neither of them are world historical figures and the crap they plopped in the public square were little turds of derivative, garbled nonsense. We have worse problems than bumbling opportunists like Pelosi, Obama, and AOC.

The fundamental problem is constitutional law. Until and unless Americans stand up as free moral agents, no obligation to God, or Gaia, or whatever government our neighbors vote to continue, there is no hope of social progress. We see ourselves as free in a defacto sense, almost secretly, evading the opinions of others as much as possible, choosing who we love and hope to cherish and defend, which work we want to do for our own satisfaction, how to spend our days so they mean something to us personally. Patriots fight for national security. Cops pit their courage and training against evil. Those are personal choices, no different than ambitious entreprenuers like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, both of whom did enormous social harm. Brave patriots and good cops do harm by defending the morally indefensible evil of political whims, whether in Afghanistan or Milwaukee.

Crime? Be situationally aware. If possible, run. If not, shoot first, shoot to kill, and keep firing until the threat is ended. You will not succeed without tactical training, 100 hours minimum. The carry weapon of choice is a mid-size 9mm automatic in a gunbelt with a good holster. A normal belt is no good. Ladies have special front carry holsters. Understand where you are and what is downrange. Bullets travel up to a mile, go through doors, windows, sheet rock. Know your weapon. Know your ammo. Know how to deal with malfunctions.

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Food

Forgive an old man for reminiscing. As a child, there were lots of swell discoveries like devil's food (soft toffee foam covered in dark chocolate) and honest milk shakes (ice cream, whole milk, and real whipped cream), but five items from my childhood stand out so clearly that I can still taste them. Gone now and impossible to recreate. There was a Luxemburger bakery that made a unique cheesecake, tan on top, a light airy cake with raisins. Another baker had hot crisp jelly filled donuts at 4 a.m. that no longer exist anywhere on the planet. Each day Smith Bros. brought in a catch of lake perch that were fileted, breaded, and deep fried. My uncle took me to a butcher's walk-in cold room, fresh raw ground beef on saltines. As a Boy Scout, the climax of a troop meeting was bursting hot juicy sausages and fresh kaiser buns.

The Dutch know cheese better than anyone else. Miniature Gouda (HOW-da) and Edam (AE-daam) are rubbery, inferior exports. Dutchmen eat "young" cheese that's soft, smooth, and sweet, and "old" cheese, a sharp, mouth watering slab in a sliced brodje, chewy round rolls that are baked daily in the millions. Dutch ham is marvelous. I had numerous gastronomic adventures in Holland, broiled garlic escargot, clear bright boujelais nouveau, "frit saus" on french fries, and an astounding Trappist Triple that had to be poured carefully because there was thick silt at the bottom of an ancient dusty unlabeled bottle. Breakfast in Holland is a joy, especially an Uitsmieter (literally: "thrown out the window") two sunnyside eggs with hot ham and cheese on two slices of fresh bread, a hard working farmer's midmorning meal.

Some discoveries were weird, like the chicken and rice casserole prepared by my Javanese housekeeper. It had two chicken claws sticking up in the middle of it. She also used a pail to splash water all over my big tile bathroom. She didn't know what toilet paper was, or why it might be desirable to avoid soaking it with cold water. I'm trying to remember a meal that I enjoyed anywhere in Indonesia. The beer was okay, a robust Dutch lager license. Australia did not have drinkable beer, and Aussies do ghastly things to sandwiches. However, there was a French baker in Subiaco with nice baguettes and gingerbread men. I paid $35 a pound for imported Costa Rican whole bean coffee at a Greek specialty shop in Northbridge.

Oh, jeez, England. No matter how much I spent at their finest restaurants, I never enjoyed a meal there, and if you want to torture someone, make them eat breakfast at a seaside hotel. For truly excellent food everywhere, even at a train station, go to Brussels.

It was a shock coming back to America. Giant portions, enough for two people on every plate. Saltgrass in Houston was okay. That's about all that anyone can say about U.S. dining, except little out-of-the-way French provincal cafes in Forestville and Wynnewood. I liked cooking at home better than eating out in America, but it was always a challenge to find a decent fish or fresh meat. I made up for it by drinking Dewars, the only label I liked, never cared for pricey single malts or Irish whiskey. In Scotland, I sipped Bell's straight up and my favorite dinner was deep fried cod and chips wrapped in slick brown paper.

I think there should be a law against anything liquid or solid in Germany. Their pancakes are stupid, wines and spirits are intolerably sweet, and I've had better pretzels in Philly. Unless you've had a cheesesteak on Sansom St., you don't know what a cheesesteak is, and mussels in South Philadelphia come with bulletholes in the booth and Sinatra on the jukebox.

Did I mention giant prawns in Singapore?

One last anecdote of the weird. There was a corner shop in Copenhagen that had ice cream novelties in a freezer, an afterschool treat for my eight-year-old daughter. She picked what looked exactly like a thick disc of ice cream covered in dark chocolate on a popsickle stick. She took one bite and spat it out. It wasn't chocolate. It was black licorice. Those zany Danes! -- excellent neighborhood bakeries, a million bicycles that have their own traffic lanes and stop lights, big train stations, big empty trains, and a bureaucracy that makes molasses slow DMV people look like superhuman wizards. To throw away a dinky bag of trash, I had to use a key and stuff it through a locked porthole the size of a coffee can lid in a block wall garbage annex. There were six portholes that emptied into little bins, most of them jammed full. You had to get lucky after unlocking four or five portholes to find one with space for another bag.

Made perfect sense in Surakarta to have a rebar rack on a pole, to keep rats from chewing up a big thick 30-gal plastic bag of kitchen waste, papaya rinds, cigarette butts, fish guts, chicken carcasses, etc. One day during a downpour, a little brown guy on a bicycle stopped, emptied the trash on my lawn, poked holes for his head and arms, and rode away with a raincoat.

In the middle of the night, I woke in terror. A voice shouted "EE-e-e-e!" outside my window. A friend explained that it was the baker, inviting me to buy fresh roti (bread) at 3 a.m. The neighborhood night watchman came an hour later and banged on my gate with a club, to let me know he was on duty and all was well.

Less sane than Surakarta, a Fox radio bulletin just now: Atlantic City casinos are allowed to reopen. No food, no drinks, no smoking. Why the hell go there?!

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White Lives Mattered

Those who would tear down monuments, damn capitalism, and wage war on white privilege are brainwashed idiots, blind to the obvious. Every bite of food you eat is a debt you owe to private property, common law, and industrial civilization that you impede at your peril.

White lives mattered, too many to recite. You'd need an encyclopedia. Without them, no electricity, no medicine, computers, automobiles or aircraft. No iron and steel, no oil wells, dish soap, satellites, or filtration plants. White people are synonymous with civilization.

Our national monuments are few and cherished.

Robert E. Lee disliked slavery and was opposed to secession. Lincoln offered him command of the Union Army and Colonel Lee declined, respectfully, would not take up arms against Virginia, hallowed land of Jefferson, Washington, Patrick Henry, and James Madison, without whom there would have been no United States, no Constitution or Bill of Rights. It's difficult to exaggerate Jefferson's contribution, author of the Declaration, diplomat who brought France into the Revolutionary War, visionary president who doubled the size of the United States, and advocate for the separation of church and state, at a time when the Anglican Church was tax supported and Washington resisted disestablishment. Jefferson prevailed and freedom of religion allowed Catholics, Noncomformists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Enlightenment deists to make common cause as a new nation, "E Pluribus Unum."

People misunderstand why the Civil War was fought. It had little to do with slavery. It was fought over protectionist trade tariffs that enriched the North and penalized the South. The South had no factories to manufacture rifles, bullets, or blankets. One third of Confederate soldiers who fought in Gettysburg were barefoot. Slavery was not unique to the South.

Franklin had slaves, household help who were treated with dignity, like employees. Slaves labored in Massachusetts Bay Colony during the harsh, uncertain years of its settlement. No one in America wanted a slave to starve or suffer. They were housed and fed far better by Christians than by West African tribal warlords who enslaved them. Whites did not capture slaves. Bristol merchants traded gold for them, saving women and children from torture and grisly death. Slavery in white America was infinitely better than African slavery. Let's talk about a hero who owned 500 slaves and played a pivotal role in their future liberation.

Andrew Jackson was one of the most striking figures in American history. Without Jackson, there would have been no "one man one vote" democracy and no Union for Lincoln to rally and emancipate. Jackson's victory in New Orleans saved us in 1814. He vetoed construction of the Cumberland Road, declaring that Congress had no lawful power of pork barrel spending to enrich themselves, to the detriment of other Americans. When he was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning removal of Indians, President Jackson scoffed, "How many divisions does the Chief Justice have? He made an order, let him try to enforce it."

Native American Indians were tribes led by kings, many of which battled tribe versus tribe before Pilgrims landed at Plymouth and Old Boston Harbor. In Massachusetts and Georgia, Indian property rights were acknowledged, provided that they did not attack white settlers. Northern tribes became pawns of English and French rivalry. Plains war parties slaughtered white women and children or took them as slaves. Nothing turned out well in the Old West, made infinitely worse by land grants for transcontinental railroads and mines. If anyone is owed reparations, it's the Sioux, Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Comanche.

Let's skip ahead and consider a cavalry charge in Cuba. Osage oil millionaires in Oklahoma, Cherokee steelworkers, Navajo code heroes of World War II, tax exempt casinos, fireworks superstores, and smoke shops were distant future horizons when a company of volunteers led by a future president charged uphill against Spanish fortifications.

Teddy Roosevelt never expected to be President, but his legacy was profound. He broke up powerful Wall Street trusts and created the first national park, in Yellowstone, a confident, cheerful champion of rugged individualism, nature conservancy, and physical fitness, the only "modern" white American president honored on Mount Rushmore.

I despise politically greasy government monuments, but they're there for a reason, like the idolatry of Crazy Horse a few miles from Mount Rushmore and a giant black fist in Detroit. Taskmasters and laborers of antiquity built pyramids, castles, and cathedrals, completed by generations of stone masons, taxpayers, and kings. America was different. Until recently, American monuments and statues were erected privately by free men and women to honor patriots like Perry, Revere, and John Paul Jones. Newly freed slaves contributed $17,000 to build the controversial statue of Lincoln and a rising black man with broken shackles. Think about it. $17,000 in 1876 was serious money, voluntarily paid in, pennies and nickels from black families who had little, except an overwhelming urge to honor the fallen Lincoln.

There are three national monuments in Washington DC that must be protected at all costs, including fixed bayonets and bullets if necessary, the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, and Washington Monument. All the misery and shame of bankrupt Chicago and Detroit will be our grim national fate if we tarnish or disown America's great white liberators.

Mobs want to destroy something? Let them wreck the monument to a rich, laughing king of bureaucracy, lies, monetary chaos, improvised folly, brazen threats, and personal complicity in the Soviet enslavement of Europe. Fellow travelers gave them atomic bomb secrets. FDR became president for life by promising to cut the size of government 25% and growing it to more than 60% of GDP, seizing every U.S. factory and farm to supply Stalin. His legacy is a ponzi pyramid of public entitlements, regulatory paperwork, unpayable debt and inflation. White people have their share of villains who should be torn from the public square, LBJ in particular, ten times worse than FDR, killed two million Vietnamese and betrayed 10 million stable two-parent negro families. The Great Society rewarded single mothers, drunks, drug dealers, incompetent black teachers, and corrupt "community organizers."

NPR constantly advances the notion of black heroism, creativity, and scientific genius. That's shameful pandering, an absurd distortion of history. The intellectual contribution of Africa was tribal genocide, slavery, disease, starvation, drum worship, and child rape, which were incurable by European colonization or American largesse. British transportation of slaves to Brazil, the Carribean, and U.S. colonial plantations was social disaster for all concerned. 90% of African slaves went to Brazil, worked to death or perished from disease. The 6% of slaves who were transported to America were treated better. They had families and children. The Civil War and Reconstruction were ruinous and rocky, but by 1948 there was racial harmony and mutual respect in the industrial north. Count Basie was famous. Republicans enacted equal rights, over the objections and attempted filibuster by Southern Democrats, historic black oppressors and segregationists, many of whom were members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Flash forward to today: 43 million African-American citizens. After 100 years of civil liberty, followed by 60 years of lavish welfare, preferential hiring and education, blacks are 100% responsible for savage street crime, chronic illness, academic gibberish, and bankruptcy of formerly prosperous majority white cities coast to coast. It's no excuse that immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and Puerto Rico wanted a piece of the drug trade. Black mayors, black cops, and black politicians wasted decades and did nothing except to line their pockets and rant about imaginary, highly-taxed "white privilege" and the national anthem. Hollywood movies and multiple decades of jazz, Motown, rap, pro sports, and TV lavished loot on black actors, musicians, athletes; black millionaires and billionaires departed Detroit for Beverly Hills. Obama abandoned Chicago for the White House, white schools, a gated mansion, an army of loyalists in majority black Washington DC, and control of the Democrat Party.

White flight has taken on renewed urgency. Apartment dwellers in Manhattan and Brooklyn are under bombardment by fireworks every night, and Obama ordered HUD integration of the suburbs, Section 8 welfare housing erected in single family white neighborhoods.

The general election of 2020 will be a body blow to the Republic. If Trump is reelected, there will be violent insurrection by murderous black mobs. If sock puppet Joe and black nationalist Michelle triumph with an avalanche of fake ballots, our heritage will crumble to dry white dust, to be swept aside by a Green New Deal and "racial justice" intimidation. As I explained many times, justice is the armed defense of innocent liberty. It has nothing to do with race, climate, elections, entitlements, public education, protest marches, looting or arson. Cops are being targeted with gunfire and filthy verbal assault daily. If they fight back, they are suspended, smeared, investigated, indicted, financially and professionally ruined by black prosecutors and black juries, deaf to reason or respect for allegedly racist cops.

"Eventually a society becomes too stupid to survive." (Mark Steyn)

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spanneticuts

I write in my sleep, often search for words and the meaning thereof, like "spanneticuts" as I awoke from a nap. No idea what I was trying to express. The ties between people and shared notions that bind them to an illusion, I think. Short circuits that choke the truth. Bored with dumbshit bartender Hannity repeating himself again, I changed the channel. NPR announced that Reddit has rewritten its rules, banned hate speech and incitement to violence.

KILL, PUSSYCAT, KILL!   (I lack imagination today.)

Alice Cooper is 100 times sharper than I am. A record company clod challenged him to rhyme the word "orange." Without hesitation, Cooper said: "Door hinge."

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Rights and Reality

I don't know why I have to explain this repeatedly. The Declaration was a memo to George III, Parliament, and a majority of American colonists who did not like the idea of upsetting their existing relations of obligation and comfortable privilege. In Common Sense, Thomas Paine blew a raspberry at Quakers in particular -- fat, prosperous Tories. The Committee of Safety in Boston had similar problems. Merchants and the governor saw themselves as Englishmen. A handful of lawyers, tradesmen, and clergy refused to accept limitation on the freedom and self-government that was created by accident in Massachusetts Bay Colony. I don't want to discuss that in detail. Suffice it to say that all American colonies had democratic assemblies, necessitated by the great distance from English authorities, absence of representation in Parliament, and colonial circumstances that required immediate attention, like Indian wars, heretics, and trade with the West Indies. Arbitrary, bizarre taxes were imposed, withdrawn, and reimposed on the colonies by Parliament and enforced by Royal tax judges sent from London. "An act against natural equity is void," James Otis thundered in tax court. He was clubbed unconscious by tax bailiffs and suffered brain damage. Sam Adams had to replace him as leader of the Committee of Safety. Sons of Liberty threw a shipment of tea in Boston Harbor. A company of Redcoats arrived and fired on Boston protestors.

Bottom line, the Declaration was calculated to foment united action. Ignore its assertion of natural human rights, a glittering generality without definition. It relied on Biblical faith in celestial Commandments that John Locke said justified authority of moral government. The best way to read the Declaration is to study its itemized indictment of George III, who was alleged to have terminated the obligation of colonial loyalty to the Crown because he failed to preserve their rights as Englishmen. We celebrate the wrong date. The Declaration was adopted July 2, 1776 by a congress of revolutionaries, chaired by a bootlegger.

Without the French fleet, we would have lost the War of Independence. Washington was a terrible general. At the conclusion of eight years of conflict, all of the colonies and Congress were bankrupt and deeply in debt to lenders and suppliers who were paid in worthless scrip (Continental paper dollars). Each colony saw itself as an independent state, and each had a separate "foreign" policy with respect to other states. Some were friendly to England, others to France. The Articles of Confederation were a toothless, unenforceable system of levies on state governments. States refused to pay troops who fought in the Revolution. They refused to pay Continental debt. They taxed each other's commerce. Dissolution into rival alliances was threatened, and all 13 states suffered worsening economic weakness.

Two young lawyers were alarmed, James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. They petitioned Washington to convene a conference in Annapolis to discuss amendments to the Articles of national government. Some states sent delegates, most did not. Those who attended had no authority to agree anything, but they pledged to meet again in Philadelphia at a convention of all 13 states. Washington chaired the convention of 1787. Madison recorded a meticulous journal of their debates. Hamilton argued for monarchy, rejected immediately, and he left in disgrace. The two other New York delegates said they had no authority to consider a new constitution and likewise left after a single week of sitting there like bumps on a log. Slave States refused to yield, despite the logic and moral authority of Northern abolishionists. If slavery was outlawed, the South would secede. Small States wanted legislative power equal to Large States. George Washington said nothing as presiding officer. Ben Franklin was too feeble to stand and speak. His ideas, generally ignored, were read aloud by a friend.

After 55 days of stifling summer heat in a closed chamber, drinking barrels of whiskey every night, they mooted compromise upon compromise, fractions of advantage to be blurred and fudged by constitutional complexity. No one wanted to sign the resulting document. Franklin spoke and implored them to sign it because the economic and political crisis was desperate, and if no constitution was adopted, the United States would fail and dissolve, easy prey for England and France to divide and conquer. Hamilton returned to sign on behalf of New York.

Public debate for and against ratification raged for two years. In New York, a special state convention voted 30-27 to ratify, a decision tipped by two swing votes. In Virginia, the vote was 89-79, another skinny margin of only six delegates. Who knows what corrupt promises were made to win those votes?

What did the U.S. Constitution provide? Slavery. A post office. Minted gold dollars. Checks and balances to frustrate legislation. Tariffs. Excise taxes. Frequent elections. No inalienable rights, other than due process and compensation for property the government might take. Did it prevent civil war? No. Did it solve the problem of Continental debt? No. The only thing it established instantly and permanently was political parties, Federalists versus Democrats, spoils of office, and "gerrymandering" by Elbridge Gerry, delegate from Massachusetts, sly architect of a salamander shaped Congressional district to guarantee his election.

It's too much to recite all the waste, fraud, idiocy, and tragedy in U.S. history. It began with unpayable debt, roiled by slim majorities who ran roughshod over nearly equal "minority" political opponents, everyone in favor of more debt, more government, more payola. In reality, the people of America had no voice, past or present, no right to resist whatever the political elite decided to impose by horse trading or expedient improvizations. Removal of Indians. Land grants for Union Pacific. Ejection of Mormons from Nevada. Carpetbaggers. Segregation. Billions for Stalin. Stalemate in Korea. Duck and cover. Assassinations. Riots. Genocide in Vietnam. Alliance with Israel. Invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

None of it was necessary. Self government is liberty. If you continue to vote for politicians, they will tax and regulate every aspect of life, borrow and spend, stupify and indoctrinate your children, throw trillions at idle "consumers" and tens of trillions at a Green New Deal, relying on a corrupt compromise that had little to do with liberty in 1787 and less today.

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