It’s Not About
Winning
by Michael
Peirce
Last year Braves fans would have lynched me writing a piece
with that title. Exiled Rhodesians and despairing American
constitutionalists might take issue with it as well. So let’s
examine what "winning" means to Americans.
The last year of the War of Northern Aggression pitted a
Union general, Grant, who knew how to win, against General Lee, a
man who knew how to lose. Which of them fought the better fight?
Which of them is remembered as a man of dignity and honor? A better
question might be, which of them thought it a sound military tactic
to burn people’s homes and farms?
Grant and his master, Lincoln, had no honor, but they won.
The history books excoriate the Union general McClellan, remembered
by Lee’s staff as the cleverest of all the Yankee generals, because
he failed to take "stern" measures against Southern civilians. He
was not prepared to fight a "total war" and so the result was, he
failed to "win." But he died with no hint of dishonor attached to
his name, and that counts for something.
That same Federal government decided at the turn of the
century, that America should take her place among the world powers.
What better way than by killing a lot of people? After liberating
the Philippines from the feeble clutches of the Spanish, we
proceeded to slaughter a quarter million of the folks we
"liberated." Their ingratitude still astounds some Americans. It was
a taste of "victory" that should have left a bitter taste in the
mouths of Americans, but it didn’t.
Great power that we now were, we used our place on the world
stage to turn a war that was already a general massacre, into an
outright catastrophe for human kind. In his search for "peace in our
time" President Wilson managed to break the stalemate in that
murderous European war and create a situation that virtually assured
that there would be another and worse war to follow. His "genius"
for leadership was such that the United States, having lost one
hundred thousand dead in a war that had exactly nothing to do
with our national interest, would fail even at his own silly dream
of a league of nations. To the rare American who is even mildly
aware of history, Wilson is typically remembered as a great leader,
proving the premise that slaves are born, not made.
Wilson pursued a personal agenda. Wilson can be said to have
"won." His countrymen however, might take a different view but maybe
not, since we continue to pursue "peace" through military
aggression.
Fast forward to the Second World War. Winston Churchill
declined Hitler’s peace overtures after the fall of France and
continued to work furtively to drag the United States into yet
another European military adventure. Churchill claimed to have spent
his life opposing the communists but in his crazed fanaticism he
pursued a policy that drowned the world in blood and turned over
much of Eastern Europe to his former enemies. How many Jews, Poles
and other civilians were killed in that insane war? How many German
civilians, and soldiers of many different nationalities, including
our own, were to die because of Churchill’s intransigence? Could he
not have turned the horror off, then built up his war machine and
followed a policy of containing the Germans at the channel and in
Africa? Did he really care about Poland, the country over which
England ostensibly went to war? The answer is obvious – Poland was
delivered into the hands of Stalin, who continued the same barbaric
policies as Hitler! And Churchill sat at the table with those
sinister men at Potsdam as they sealed the fate of millions, smoking
his cigar and posturing.
Ultimately, Churchill did what he did, simply because he felt
like it. Remember, at that time (1940) Hitler was not practicing
genocide and had merely won a first rate military campaign against
the French and British, with relatively low losses on both sides.
Even the air war had not yet escalated to the terror bomber raids on
civilian targets – not that is, until Churchill ordered his
ludicrously inaccurate "area" bombing against major German cities.
Since he lacked the power to do them any real harm at that time,
it’s pretty obvious that he was trying to provoke retaliation from
the Germans. He was sadly, quite successful. Soon much of the world
was in flames.
Hitler too thought winning was everything, and did it, he
said, for the German people. Yet who suffered more than the German
people whom Hitler claimed to cherish? As Alan Clark put it in his
classic Barbarossa,
"…Hitler’s lust for blood seemed only to grow, when the price was to
be paid in good Aryan coin." God save us all from politicians who
"do it for the people." Hitler and Churchill, like two vicious
school yard bullies, inveighed against each other across the radio
waves and stirred their darker natures with ad hominem attacks,
until there could be no turning back. The dignity of dictators seems
hardly worth dying for but to those men, it was certainly worth
killing for.
Now everyone, sharpen your sticks and light your torches –
this bum must be talking about appeasement! Am I really? Or am I
talking about what I learned at the US School of Law Enforcement,
years ago? There is a thing called the triangle of violence – at the
wide base of it, no one gets killed – when it escalates to the point
of the triangle – blood flows. Law enforcement types (and
diplomats!) are supposed to keep it down around the base of the
triangle – for truly, sticks, stones (and cruise missiles) may break
our bones, but words? Nah… I used to train labor relations teams
(security guys for strikes) by abusing them and talking about their
families, their race and their bad breath. The ones who got angry
were off the team. Should we not hold diplomats to a similar
standard?
How many wars are caused by very small men, who find
themselves thrust into very large circumstances? Consider the United
States, a military super power with enough weaponry to knock this
planet out of orbit, like a bloody great billiard ball, and send it
spinning off into space. Then carefully consider the qualifications
and the selection process of the men who command this vast military
machine. Better take a Valium now.
Our leaders are those who "win" an election, starting with
small elections right up to the recent debacle in Florida. An
ability to say things sufficiently bland to be pleasing to those on
both sides of an issue, an ability to project "gravitas" and
charisma across a TV screen, and an ability to raise money, are the
key ingredients we require of a successful leader. Ronald Reagan was
an effective president (in some ways) because he was an
actor, not despite it.
There is a point to this history lesson and it is this:
the last just war waged by Americans was lost in 1865. The
principles we fought for in that war were not however, lost. Those
folks who risked all, and lost, were the spiritual and political
heirs of those who risked all and won, in 1776. From the day the
constitution was ratified until that black day in April 1865, there
were in America people who believed in the principles our founders
had fought and died for. Who spoke on issues like foreign
entanglements, and wars of aggression. There are still a few of us
around – but now we are called "extremists" by those in the
majority, and our republic has morphed into a mobocracy.
It was not however, an accident that both Lee and Grant spoke
of the Mexican war as ultimately unjust.
So we ask ourselves, how could they have formed that
conclusion? Partly because they were educated so much better than
men are today – they actually understood the basis of our freedom.
They understood that freedom could only exist under the most limited
of governments. They were educated privately in those days – no
government schools censoring history and pushing satanic lies upon
hapless children. Both Lee and Grant subsequently attended West
Point, a quintessential government school. That government schooling
is effective is proven by this sad statistic, over half the men who
attended West Point before the War of Northern Aggression, chose to
fight for the oppressor. To get a feel for how horrific this really
is, consider that Douglas Southall Freeman wrote that nearly forty
percent of Virginia’s officers chose to fight against their own
homes and families, after being trained in that "school." Yet how
many of the officers educated at VMI turned their coat? None?
We can infer then, that men of honor, brought up to conduct
them selves with dignity, schooled in history, theology, philosophy,
linguistics and the politics of our founders, can be corrupted at a
rate of about fifty percent by what they learn in college. Corrupted
to the point that they will support a tyrant, mock the constitution,
burn the homes of others and turn their backs on the history of
their own country, and that in only four years. In a school where
the common background of those attending was largely Christian and
morally superior to those of us in this age by a considerable
margin. Now remind yourselves that our children spend all
their formative years in state schools. Columbine and other such
incidents reveal pretty clearly what these kids are learning. Now
take the ones who didn’t blow up the school, who quietly took their
Ritalin and nodded their heads in bovine agreement as they were
taught the wonders of diversity. Put ‘em in a black SWAT costume and
you get Waco…
Our colleges too, have become virtual insane asylums,
deconstructing all that is good, and holding students to a strict
code of "ethics" that harks back to the Red Guard of the unlamented
Mao Tse Tung. Thousands of years of Western civilization reduced to
jokes about "dead white guys." A favorite writer of mine, Joseph
Sobran, likes to debate the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, but
sadly he’ll soon be talking to himself since Shakespeare after all,
was a racist, a sexist, and all the other unkind epithets our
masters of academe shower upon those suspected of having real merit
or ability. So we don’t talk much about Shakespeare any more, it
might offend somebody. This sounds like some kind of a cruel joke
but nobody is laughing. Take a long look at those people who peddle
this nonsense and you will notice something very sad about them –
they never smile. But then, they have little to smile about.
Deconstructing the history of man is a serious task.
What of the free press, self-appointed fourth estate and
defender of all that is good? In those early days, before government
took over the schools and crushed the South, media was local.
Southern papers were Southern and Midwestern papers Midwestern – the
media reflected the cultures of the communities in which they were
published. Journalists even then leaned toward the sensational and
breathed fire at the very hint of a war. There was at least, some
accountability because the journalists of that era lived in the
communities they served.
Today we have the horror of a single newspaper, nationwide.
Oh yeah, I know, it goes by different names but take a hard look at
the content and you’ll find it’s exactly the same everywhere.
The pathetically silly and left wing Atlanta Journal
Constitution is ideologically the twin of the boorish LA Times.
Both print from the same editorial slant as the New York
Times, mouthpiece of the government. All of the big city
newspapers are staffed by "journalists" who are quite unable to
follow a logic path or string words together in a coherent sentence.
Such posers are ubiquitous in the print media today, and exist
merely to pontificate against those who have violated the strictures
of political correctness, and to function as the "amen corner" for
government.
Isn’t it interesting that our big media conglomerates are all
left wing to the point of being pro communist, yet are owned by
fabulously wealthy men? I hate to shatter the faith of liberals, but
now, as always, the folks on the left are people of privilege, who
want their socialist strictures to apply to you, not them.
Shall we tie all this together?
- It
is men who lead countries into unjust wars, men to whom too much
power has been vouchsafed. Our founders new this to be true and
tried to build in checks and balances to restrain us from such
folly.
- The
path to such power is one not likely to be taken by men of honor
and decency. Men who strive for power for it’s own sake are
dangerous. Again, the founders were aware of this proclivity and
attempted to build a system of government "service" rather than
"privilege."
- Government schools teach that power should be centralized
and to that end censor history and political thought. They teach
that patriotism should be directed to the government rather than
to the country. The founders believed very much in education yet
made no attempt to form state schools and would have been appalled
at those who consider education a proper role for
government.
- The
public media has a symbiotic relationship with government and
routinely extols the state schools, plus assisting in the rise to
power of the worst men, and the deconstruction of history. Compare
Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine, journalists and commentators of the
early days in America, to their pathetically inept successors, and
weep. Note that serious analysis of political issues will not be
found on television or in the newspapers; how long the Internet
will remain free is anybody’s guess.
- Our
government is overly centralized, putting a dangerous amount of
military and political power in the hands of morally and
intellectually feeble men. Even our generals and admirals have
their heads deep in the trough – so when we ultimately blunder
into the next war, a price in blood will be exacted of us, in the
form of our children. The founders warned us against foreign
entanglements and the danger of large standing armies. They knew,
like Mao, that power comes out of the barrel of a gun, and created
a republic where the guns were to be in the hands of the people,
not the state.
- Corporate America has contributed greatly to the
destruction of entrepreneurial capitalism by use of lobbyists and
lawyers to manipulate the power of government to further their
business aims. The government regulations our corporate captains
of industry complain about so loudly are largely a Frankenstein
monster created in their own labs. The founders would have been
amazed to find that government has itself become one of the
largest corporate interests in America.
We ponder these things and ask ourselves, has there been some
awful conspiracy to erode our freedoms and destroy our fundamental
principles? Sure, lots of them. But men are so fallible that to
assume what has happened to the United States is the result of one
or more conspiracies is downright silly. Napoleon warned us to
"…never attribute to malice what is merely incompetence." The
problem is that men are imperfect critters – the Bible thumpers
(like me) are quite right about that. I won’t waste print arguing it
– consult your encyclopedia. Man’s folly and wickedness has been
well documented over the years. That is why the key is to put chains
on the government, to tie it tightly and minimize its ability to do
harm. Governments are composed of men. That should put up a red flag
right away!
The folks who clamored for public schools were highly
motivated for what they saw as a good cause – they wanted to do it
for the children, of course. Since it was a good cause, we
allowed it to happen, violating the principles upon which we founded
our republic. It is the same with firearms - The idea of all of us
disarming has a surface level appeal, sort of like watching "Little
House on the Prairie." Yet to buy into the anti gun nonsense we must
reject our history as a country founded by men who believed in
carrying personal side arms. We have to assume that they were either
stupid or wicked. And yep, that’s just what we are hearing from the
state media these days.
When we have wicked men subverting the body politic with
promises of largess in place of freedom, we should reject their
proffered "gifts" but we don’t, do we? When we see good people with
a cause that makes some sense, it can be tempting to say "Yeah,
maybe there ought to be a law…" We should resist that temptation to
bully our neighbor but it’s mighty hard to some times. Like when
Republicans and other so-called conservatives actually strengthened
the Federal Department of Education – it feels good so let’s do it.
This is what we get these days, instead of reasoned analysis. When
you combine the bad deeds of the wicked with the foolishness of the
good people, you end up with a great big mess. And that is why
government should be minimal – power should not be concentrated in
the hands of anyone, any group. They will abuse it, all of them,
always. With that power is the power to coerce, and history has
proven it to be a power that will be used, by any and all
governments, if not somehow restrained. It is an irresistible
temptation.
Equally irresistible is the temptation of the masses to seek
a master. They usually don’t have to look very far to find
one.
We have, through our willingness to attack problems from a
simplistic, emotional perspective, handed our freedom over to folks
who know how to crack the whip. We wrote a constitution to protect
our freedoms, knowing that freedom is to be cherished; then we
created a nanny state to care for our needs, gave it our children
and our weapons, and trusted that very state to protect our freedom.
When I think about that I feel like we must be a very stupid group
of people, we Americans. Me included, since I’m sitting here in my
office in my home, knowing full well that I don’t really own it and
never will since I will continuously pay tribute to the state for
the privilege of staying here.
There was never such silly infantilism among the founders,
who knew that government had been the source of their problems, and
would be again if they failed to prevent it. That they did fail is
obvious – they had anticipated men of character following them, but
alas, it was not to be. It has all taken a dreadful slide to the
left: government, "art", education – even our use of words is now
tinged with an unspoken suggestion of compliance with oppressive and
intrusive codes enforced by very small men.
So it appears we are in a battle, and with a little more
thought it becomes apparent that this battle has been raging since
the beginning of time, and we have been largely unaware of it. What
happens next is anyone’s best guess. The Internet has helped a lot –
many people have been exposed to knowledge by sheer serendipity. The
interpersonal communication of it helps to make up for the loss of
community engendered by suburban sprawl (ain’t it grand?)
If we’re in a battle we should first do what our government
routinely fails to do, when going to war, and that is define a clear
objective. To me, that objective is to create a world where my
successors will have the same level of freedom envisioned by the
founders of the United States. I think we all understand by now that
freedom is not a clear personal goal with many people; it never was.
The rise of the Southern Confederacy was the one bright moment in
American history, since the time of the revolution, when a
substantial number of Americans stood up to the usurper and resisted
with arms. The vision is revealed by the letters of the men who
fought for the South, they are full of sentiments relating back to
the founders and what they called the "first revolution," theirs
being the second. They fought a defensive war when invaded by
soldiers recruited from the Northern and Western states by the
central government. This war was lost and a serious attempt made to
extinguish the memory of the principles that motivated the men who
fought under the cross of St. Andrew.
What of us today? There are so few of us that arms are hardly
an option. Numerous readers have written to me expressing their deep
pessimism as more and more of our freedoms are corroded. Others
wonder, "What can we do?" Can freedom-loving individuals ever "win"
against the government behemoth?
In truth, we can never lose. Freedom is not something
to be won. It is a gift of God and comes from within. Free men can
be killed but not enslaved. We can live free every day of our lives,
in the midst of the most appalling conditions. The future is to be
feared only if we create a future that is less than what our best
efforts can make it. Consider that much of our current mess is a
result of the sloth and ignorance of the American people. What’s the
solution? Why it’s quite simple actually – don’t be slothful and
stupid!
That includes never voting for local officials who are
willing to accept money from the central government. A simple enough
starting place – so let’s start on that today.
It’s time to make informed decisions and stop making excuses.
A radio commentator noted that of black activists whining about the
so called "digital divide," all the whiners were quite able to
afford a color TV of sufficient value to be equal in cost to a
decent computer. We live or die by the decisions we make. Many of us
know what the public schools are doing to our children but won’t
pull them out – we claim we are too busy or we lack the money to do
so. Fine, but if that is the case we must not complain about losing
our freedom – we are already in bondage to "stuff."
Rather than complain about the corrupt media we must simply
opt out. Don’t buy their newspapers, don’t watch their TV shows. We
have the Internet, we have the public library, we have two thousand
years of civilization waiting to tell us all we’ll ever need to
know. It is a waste of valuable time to complain that ABC/NBC/CNN is
showing a slanted view of some issue or the other. Of course they
are! That is what they do. Why act surprised by that which we
already know to be true? We can use that time to get on with the job
of creating something better.
We complain with all the justification in the world, that our
government is corrupt and war like. But we use their services, we
vote for bums and we tolerate their intrusions into our lives. We
don’t have to though. Consider what happened when OSHA decided to
come after those of us who work in our homes. That was quite
interesting and even inspiring, since OSHA found such a wall of
resistance that they backed down and sought weaker prey. We all know
what happened to Smith and Wesson – they displeased freedom loving
gun owners in America by licking the boots of the oppressor – so
long guys! The tyrannical attempts of state governments and teachers
unions to oppress home schoolers is having the happy effect of
forcing freedom loving people to concentrate in specific
geographical areas, and is doing more to alert Americans to the
danger of our dreadful public school system than scribblers like me
could ever do. Our power increases the more they attack
us.
We have the power – we must use it and use it frequently. And
we must use it consistently and thoughtfully.
We have Christ: the Way, the Truth and the Light; Who is the
very source of all freedom.
So it’s not about winning, which assumes some sort of contest
with an ultimate goal – it is about freedom, which is not merely a
goal but also a means to an end. A wall is built one brick at a
time. So is a revolution, and that is what is required. We may
accomplish our goal through the electoral process (not likely), or
through secession (my personal favorite), or worst case, by simply
picking up the pieces when then this farce of a culture finally
collapses under its own weight. What we do today, will most
assuredly influence what we are able to accomplish tomorrow. If our
children are the only ones left who can read, we will have
accomplished peacefully what our ancestors failed to accomplish
through force of arms – we will have taken our country back from
those who would enslave us. Our duty is merely to do what is right –
it sounds so simple because it truly is that simple – evil is always
illogical and works against itself.
A man who finds himself in a fight for that
which is right, has already won at the game of life. The task itself
is an honorable one. Perhaps instead of bemoaning the scope of the
opposition, we should be praising God, who honored us by assigning
us to such an important task. This sort of thing is not of course,
for the weak in spirit – there can be a cost associated with
standing up for freedom. To which I say, "So what?"
Southerners are in the habit of signing off with "Deo
Vindice" which means "God is our defender." That being the case, who
can stand against us?
May 22, 2000
Mr. Peirce [send
him mail] fought with the Rhodesian freedom fighters (the Ian
Smith side, of course).
Copyright 2001 LewRockwell.com
Michael
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