To the Front

To the Front

Thomas Allen

To the front I must go,
In the realm of death, I must live;
To the outer rim of time’s most lethal battle, I must cling;
In Flanders, I must fight and die.
To the front I go,
To be lacerated and punctured,
To bleed and die,
To hear shells roaring up into the sky,
And the agonizing crying of the dying.
I become one of the countless human moles;
I become one of the living dead with corpse-white face.
In the fields of Flanders, I am bathed with slime and mud,
With the stench of dead and dying.
Here pass I my last days in a crazy-quilt of thunder and blood,
Waiting with indifference for death of deliverance.
And when in the mud I lie dying,
My comrades, good and true,
Pass me by, saying,
“I can’t give you a hand,
You’re for the Promise Land.”
After the rats have glutted themselves with my flesh and blood,
And my remains are absorbed in the blood and mud of Flanders,
Another nameless being shall take my place,
As before him did I take another’s,
But that’s all that ever changes.
In the fields of Flanders shall I push up poppies forevermore.


From the Glory of War by Thomas Coley Allen (Franklinton, NC: TC Allen Co., 2006)
Copyright © 2006 by Thomas Coley Allen

Mencken on the Two Types of Democracy

Mencken on the Two Types of Democracy

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes the two types of democracy, pages 79-85. Below is an overview of his discussion of the two types of democracy; my comments are in brackets.
    [Representative democracy and direct democracy are the two types of democracies that Mencken discusses.]
    Mencken states, “Sovereignty is in him [the lowly Christian, i.e., the inferior man], sometimes both actually and legally, but always actually. Whatever he wants badly enough he can get. If he is misled by mountebanks and swindled by scoundrels it is only because his credulity and imbecility cover a wider area than his simple desires.” Continuing, Mencken writes, “The precise form of the government he suffers under is of small importance. Whether it be called a constitutional monarchy, as in England, or a representative republic, as in France, or a pure democracy, as in some of the cantons of Switzerland, it is always essentially the same. There is, first, the mob, theoretically and in fact the ultimate judge of all ideas and the source of all power. There is, second, the camorra of self-seeking minorities, each seeking to inflame, delude and victimize it. The political process thus becomes a mere battle of rival rogues. But the mob remains quite free to decide between them.” Occasionally and miraculously, the mob chooses the relatively honest and enlightened. More often, it chooses the thieves “because their words are words it understands and their ideas are ideas it cherishes.” Nevertheless, the mob “has the power to throw them off at will, and even at whim, and it also has the means.” [As the lowly Christian is now a minority of the mob in most democratic countries, if Mencken were to write this today, he would need to use another descriptor of the mob. Possibly, he uses “Christian” because he has a low opinion of Christians.]
    Mencken contends, “A great deal of paper and ink has been wasted discussing the difference between representative government and direct democracy.” Many of these pundits conclude that representative government is full of defects. “Not only does it take the initiative in law-making out of the hands of the plain people and leave them only the function of referees; it also raises certain obvious obstacles to their free exercise of that function.” Being scattered and unorganized, the people are unable “to formulate their virtuous desires quickly and clearly, or to bring to the resolution of vexed questions the full potency of their native sagacity. Worse, they find it difficult to enforce their decisions, even when they have decided.”
    Liberals cry over this fact. Their remedy is usually a “purer democracy.” That is, they propose “the recall, the initiative and referendum, or something else of the sort, and so convert the representative into a mere clerk or messenger.” Thus, they place “the final determination of all important public questions . . . in the hands of the voters themselves.” Only the voters “can muster enough wisdom for the business, and they alone are without guile. The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.” [As witnessed in the United States, as the qualifications needed to be a voter has been lowered, the quality of government has declined. As the quality of government has declined, its power over and control of the people have grown.]
    Mencken notes that more democracy has never cured the evils of democracy. He adds, “Certainly no competent historian believes that the citizens assembled in a New England town-meeting actually formulated en masse the transcendental and immortal measures that they adopted, nor even that they contributed anything of value to the discussion thereof.” Mencken remarks that this “notion is as absurd as the parallel notion, long held by philologues of defective powers of observation, that the popular ballads surviving from earlier ages were actually composed by the folk. The ballads, in point of fact, were all written by concrete poets, most of them not of the folk; the folk, when they had any hand in the business at all, simply acted as referees, choosing which should survive.” Likewise, “the New England town-meeting was led and dominated by a few men of unusual initiative and determination, some of them genuinely superior, but most of them simply demagogues and fanatics. The citizens in general heard the discussion of rival ideas, and went through the motions of deciding between them, but there is no evidence that they ever had all the relevant facts before them or made any effort to unearth them, or that appeals to their reason always, or even usually, prevailed
over appeals to their mere prejudice and superstition. . . . Some of the most idiotic decisions ever come to by mortal man were made by the New England town-meetings, and under the leadership of monomaniacs who are still looked upon as ineffable blossoms of the contemporary Kultur.” [What would one expect from Puritans?]
    Nevertheless, “the difference between representative democracy and direct democracy is a great deal less marked than political sentimentalists assume. Under both forms the sovereign mob must employ agents to execute its will, and in either case the agents may have ideas of their own, based upon interests of their own, and the means at hand to do and get what they will. Moreover, their very position gives them a power of influencing the electors that is far above that of any ordinary citizen.” [Thus, incumbents usually win elections.]
    Mencken adds that “both forms of democracy encounter the difficulty that the generality of citizens, no matter how assiduously they may be instructed, remain congenitally unable to comprehend many of the problems before them, or to consider all of those they do comprehend in an unbiased and intelligent manner.” [This inability to comprehend in an unbiased and intelligent manner is also true of most members of Congress and State legislatures.]
    Continuing, Mencken remarks that “the great masses of Americans of to-day, though they are theoretically competent to decide all the larger matters of national policy, and have certain immutable principles, of almost religious authority, to guide them, actually look for leading to professional politicians, who are influenced in turn by small but competent and determined minorities, with special knowledge and special interests.” [Liberals and progressives consider the people intelligent and competent enough to decide who will govern the country, at least until they elected Donald Trump, but they consider the people too stupid and incompetent to govern their own lives. The people need enlightened liberals and progressives whom they have elected to govern the country to govern their lives.] By this means, the plain people were shoved into World War I. “They were, in overwhelming majority, against going in, and if they had had any sense and resolution they would have stayed out. But these things they lacked.” [The same thing happened with World War II. Roosevelt maneuvered the people into war that most did not want by maneuvering Japan into attacking U.S. territory.]
    In conclusion, the difference between representative democracy and pure democracy is more apparent than real.

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Mencken on Politics under Democracy

Mencken on Politics under Democracy

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes politics under democracy, pages 29-35. Below is an overview of his discussion on politics under democracy; my comments are in brackets.
    Since fear controls politics under democracy, politicians use it to manipulate the mob. “The demagogues, i.e., the professors of mob psychology, who flourish in democratic states are well aware of the fact, and make it the corner-stone of their exact and puissant science.” Thus, “[P]olitics under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase and scotching of bugaboos. The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere witch-hunter, a glorified smeller and snooper.” The whole history of the United States “has been a history of melodramatic pursuits of horrendous monsters, most of them imaginary: the red-coats, the Hessians, the monocrats, again the red-coats, the Bank, the Catholics, Simon Legree, the Slave Power, Jeff Davis, Mormonism, Wall Street, the rum demon, John Bull, the hell-hounds of plutocracy, the trusts, General Weyler, Pancho Villa, German spies, hyphenates, the Kaiser, Bolshevism.” [Many of these threats were real; however, politicians exaggerated them to terrorize the mob. Politicians used this tactic of fear to get the American people to beg for the police state following 9-11. Fear has been used to terrorize the people to demand just about every enslaving program that the US government have ever adopted.]
    Under democracy, the plain people “never vote for anything, but always against something.” Consequently, the democratic state tends “to pass over statesmen of genuine imagination and sound ability in favour of colourless mediocrities. The former are shining marks, and so it is easy for demagogues to bring them down; the latter are preferred because it is impossible to fear them.” [The demagogue is a democratic man and is, therefore, part of the mob. Thus, being one of them, the plain people understand him and do not fear him. Does this explain the rabid fear that the common Democrat and many Republicans have of President Trump and especially his supporters and their embracement of Hillary Clinton?] Mencken continues, “The demagogue himself, when he grows ambitious and tries to posture as a statesman, usually comes ignominiously to grief, as the cases of Bryan, [Theodore] Roosevelt, and Wilson dramatically demonstrate.”
    Using Bryan as an example, Mencken shows the rise and fall of a demagogue. “If Bryan had confined himself, in 1896, to the chase of the bugaboo of plutocracy, it is very probable that he would have been elected. But he committed the incredible folly of throwing most of his energies into advocating a so-called constructive programme, and it was thus easy for his opponents to alarm the mob against him. That programme had the capital defect of being highly technical, and hence almost wholly unintelligible to all save a small minority; so it took on a sinister look, and caused a shiver to go down the democratic spine.” [Consequently, most political campaigns consist almost entirely of slogans and mudslinging with little or no details about what the candidate plans to do if he wins.] Continuing, Mencken writes, “It was his cross-of-gold speech that nominated him; it was his cow State political economy that ruined him.”
    According to Mencken, “[g]overnment under democracy is thus government by orgy, almost by orgasm. Its processes are most beautifully displayed at times when they stand most naked — for example, in war days.” He uses World War I, which was then known as World War, to illustrate the use of fear to manipulate mob psychology. “[T]he World War is simply a record of conflicting fears, more than once amounting to frenzies. The mob, at the start of the uproar, showed a classical reaction: it was eager only to keep out of danger. . . . In 1916, on his fraudulent promise to preserve that boy from harm, Wilson was re-elected.” Then came the task of the demagogue to convert the people to warmongers. “The problem was to substitute a new and worse fear for the one that prevailed — a new fear so powerful that it would reconcile the mob to the thought of entering the war.” Right after the election, all agencies of the US government began clamoring for war. “No ship went down to a submarine’s torpedo anywhere on the seven seas that the State Department did not report that American citizens — nay, American infants in their mothers’ arms — were aboard. Diplomatic note followed diplomatic note, each new one surpassing all its predecessors in moral indignation. The Department of Justice ascribed all fires, floods and industrial accidents to German agents. The newspapers were filled with dreadful surmises, many of them officially inspired, about the probable effects upon the United States of the prospective German victory.” As a result, the mob became convinced “that a victorious Germany would unquestionably demand an accounting for the United States’ gross violations of neutrality.” Thus, the demagogue gave the mob a choice of fears. “The first was a fear of a Germany heavily beset, but making alarming progress against her foes. The second was a fear of a Germany delivered from them, and thirsting for revenge on a false and venal friend.” The second fear won. Soon the mob “was reconciled to entering the war — reconciled, but surely not eager.” Now the demagogues had the task “of converting reluctant acquiescence into enthusiasm.” A new fear was the solution. Thus, the government strove to throw “the plain people into a panic. All sense was heaved overboard, and there ensued a chase of bugaboos on a truly epic scale. Nothing like it had ever been seen in the world before, for no democratic state as populous as the United States had ever gone to war before.” By the end of 1917, the American people “were in such terror that they lived in what was substantially a state of siege, though the foe was 3,000 miles away and obviously unable to do them any damage.” Only the draft “gave them sufficient courage to attempt actual hostilities. That ingenious device, by relieving the overwhelming majority of them of any obligation to take up arms, made them bold.” Mencken continues, “Before it was adopted they were heavily in favour of contributing only munitions and money to the cause of democracy, with perhaps a few divisions of Regulars added for the moral effect. But once it became apparent that a given individual, John Doe, would not have to serve, he, John Doe, developed an altruistic eagerness for a frontal attack in force. For every Richard Roe in the conscript camps there were a dozen John Does thus safely at home, with wages high and the show growing enjoyable.” Mencken concludes, “So an heroic mood came upon the people, and their fear was concealed by a truculent front. But not from students of mob psychology.” [Today, the same use of fear is being used to manipulate psychology in the War on Terrorism with all agencies of the government and their collaborators in the media inciting war. President Bush’s inane remark that “if we do not fight them over there, we will have to fight them here” was an insult of the highest magnitude of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. How could anyone with no air force and no navy attack the United States, unless the Bush regime let them into the country?]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Mencken on the Democratic Man

Mencken on the Democratic Man

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes the democratic man, pages 9-15. Below is an overview of his discussion on the democratic man; my comments are in brackets.
    Emerging “as Rousseau’s noble savage in smock and jerkin,” the democratic man came forth “to shame the lords and masters of the civilized lands.” Being at the bottom of the social scale, i.e., being inferior, he acquired “a mystical merit, an esoteric and ineradicable rectitude” that “by some strange magic became sort of superiority — nay, the superiority of superiorities.”
    Thus, enlighten countries have moved evermore “toward the completer and more enamoured enfranchisement of the lower orders.” For, in this democratic man “lies a deep, illimitable reservoir of righteousness and wisdom, unpolluted by the corruption of privilege.” Whatever baffles statesmen, the democratic man can solve “instantly and by a sort of seraphic intuition.”
    Moreover, his “yearnings are pure.” Only he is “capable of a perfect patriotism,” and in him “is the only hope of peace and happiness on this lugubrious ball.” [If true, no hope exists for peace. The democratic man is as much of a warmonger as are the aristocrat and the upper class; only his wars are far more brutal and destructive as World War I and World War II demonstrate.] Thus, “[t]he cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!”
    This notion of the democratic man “originated in the poetic fancy of gentlemen on the upper levels — sentimentalists who, observing to their distress that the ass was over-laden, proposed to reform transport by putting him into the cart.” These gentlemen were “the direct ancestors of the more saccharine Liberals of to-day, who yet mouth their tattered phrases and dream their preposterous dreams.”
    Then Mencken gives a description of the rise of the democratic man during the French Revolution. “Early democratic man seems to have given little thought to the democratic ideal, and less veneration. What he wanted was something concrete and highly materialistic — more to eat, less work, higher wages, lower taxes. He had no apparent belief in the acroamatic virtue of his own class, and certainly none in its capacity to rule.” [Thus, the democratic man seems to have shown more common sense than his aristocratic overlords and other members of the upper class who propelled him into governing.] Extermination of the baron was not his goal; his goal was “to bring the baron back to a proper discharge of baronial business.” In his attempt to force the barons back to baronial business, the baronage ended and others from among the democratic man took the barons’ place. The democratic man quickly showed his “opinion of them by butchering them deliberately and in earnest.” Once the blood began flowing, “it was a great deal more dangerous to be a tribune of the people than to be an ornament of the old order.” “[H]aving been misled into killing its King in 1793,” the democratic man “devoted the next two years to killing those who had misled” him. Then he got another king [Napoleon], “with an attendant herd of barons, counts, marquises and dukes, some of them new but most of them old, to guard, symbolize and execute his sovereignty.” So overjoyed was the democratic man at the return of a king, “that half France leaped to suicide that their glory might blind the world.”
    The blood flow in Europe slowed the rise of the democratic man. However, America had been spared such slaughters; thus, the popularity of the democratic man rose more quickly in the United States.
    Nevertheless, the conditions of the democratic man improved. “Once a slave, he was now only a serf. Once condemned to silence, he was now free to criticize his masters, and even to flout them, and the ordinances of God with them. As he gained skill and fluency at that sombre and fascinating art, he began to heave in wonder at his own merit. He was not only, it appeared, free to praise and damn, challenge and remonstrate; he was also gifted with a peculiar rectitude of thought and will, and a high talent for ideas, particularly on the political plane. So his wishes, in his mind, began to take on the dignity of legal rights, and after a while, of intrinsic and natural rights, and by the same token the wishes of his masters sank to the level of mere ignominious lusts. By 1828 in America and by 1848 in Europe the doctrine had arisen that all moral excellence, and with it all pure and unfettered sagacity, resided in the inferior four-fifths of mankind.” [In 1828, the supporters of Andrew Jackson formed today’s Democratic party got Jackson elected President.]
    Then in 1867, a philosopher [Marx] arose from the gutter and declared “that the superior minority had no virtues at all, and hence no rights at all — that the world belonged exclusively and absolutely to those who hewed its wood and drew its water.” Within a few decades, “he had more followers in the world, open and covert, than any other sophist since the age of the Apostles.” [Today, in the United States, his disciples dominate the Progressives, Liberals, Neo-conservatives, the Democratic party, and even the Republican party.] As the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Soviet Union showed, this extreme philosophy had some problems. [Unfortunately, for Americans, the followers of the ruling elite have learned little from the experience of the Soviet Union, as the ruling elite is trying to turn the United States into its version of the United Soviet States of America.]
    The failure of the democratic man’s dictatorship of the proletariat did not slow the march of the democratic man. World War I was fought in the name of democracy, and all the defeated countries embraced it “with loud hosannas.” All Christendom now embraced the fundamental axioms of democracy: “(a) that the great masses of men have an inalienable right, born of the very nature of things, to govern themselves, and (b) that they are competent to do it.” [Viewing all the democratic and so-called democratic countries of the world brings into question that the democratic man is competent to govern. They present an argument much greater that he lacks the competence to govern.] When the democratic man is  “detected in gross and lamentable imbecilities,” it is because he is “misinformed by those who would exploit [him]: the remedy is more education.” [Education is the solution to all problems in a democratic society, even when, or especially when, education means indoctrination.] If, at times, he is “a trifle naughty, even swinish, . . . it is only a natural reaction against the oppressions [he] suffer[s]: the remedy is to deliver them.”
    Further, liberation of the democratic man is the “central aim of all the Christian governments of to-day,” which seek to augment his power. Moreover, a good government is one that “responds most quickly and accurately” to the desires and ideas of the democratic man. A bad government is one that “conditions [his] omnipotence and puts a question mark after [his] omniscience.”
    [Mencken’s description of the democratic man is a fairly accurate description of the typical supporters of the Democratic party and the typical supporters of RINOs {Republicans in name only}. Perhaps, this is because, as Mencken notes, the ancestors of Liberals and Progressives are the progenitors of democracy, i.e., ever expanding suffrage.]

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Allen.

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Is the Gold Standard Is Antiquated?

Is the Gold Standard Is Antiquated?

Thomas Allen

    Opponents of the gold standard use the events of the 1920s when the leading countries of the world returned to a pseudo gold standard. They use these events to prove that the gold standard is antiquated, a barbaric relic, and unworkable and needs to be abandoned for a managed currency, i.e., fiat money.
    Like most major wars, World War I was fought with credit money. Withdrawal of this credit money led to the depression of 1920-21. Again, banks expanded credit money during the 1920s, which caused the Roaring Twenties. When they withdrew the credit money, the Great Depression followed. However, the gold standard received the blame.
    By 1928 most countries had returned to the gold standard or more correctly, a bastardized gold-exchange standard. (The United States had maintained their gold-coin gold standard except about two years at the end of World War I when exportation of gold was prohibited. Domestically, paper money remained redeemable in gold until 1933.) Beginning in 1931, countries began abandoning the gold standard. By the end of the year, most countries were off the gold standard. In 1933, the United Stats finally left it.
    Many things contributed to the failure to maintain the gold standard after World War I. They include:
    1.    interference with or not facilitating the movement of gold;
    2.    war debts and reparations and how they were paid (large payments had to be paid at specified times to specific countries despite exchange rates among other problems);
    3.    interference with the natural movement of goods, such as tariffs;
    4.    imprudent foreign lending, which allowed foreign countries, especially Germany, to buy goods on credit and enable Germany to pay its reparations;
    5,    inflexibility in prices caused by international cartels and governmental price fixing and inflexibility in the system of wages (strong resistance by workers to a reduction in pay);
    6.    abandonment of the real bills doctrine so that international trade could be controlled; and
    7.    a lack of confidence that caused large sums of money to be transferred from place to place based on emotions rather than economic factors.
The problems that lead to the fall of the gold standard had nothing to do with the gold standard itself. Defects in the gold standard did not cause it to fall. Defects in the political situation did.
    The gold standard only functions under proper conditions. As the above list illustrates, the belligerent powers refused to allow the conditions under which the gold standard flourishes that exist before the War to return. About the demise of the gold standard, Frederick Bradford comments, “The gold standard itself is no more a failure than an automobile which refuses to run smoothly because there is dirt in the carburetor and the front wheels have been detached from the steering gear. The really surprising thing is that the gold standard was able to function at all under the circumstances.”
    A real problem with the gold standard is that paper money and other credit money promising to pay in specie soon accompanies it. Before long the government becomes involved in the name of protecting the people from counterfeiting and failure to redeem notes. Such protection is a legitimate function. However, the government does not stop here unless the people remain vigilant. The next step is to require bank notes to be secured by government debt — thus, ending their issuance for economic needs. At this point, if the government has not usurped the authority to issue notes or granted a bank such a monopoly, it soon will. Fiat money adherents like this attribute because they can now get the government to end convertibility and change the paper money into a fiat currency.
    After governments, i.e., the elite who really controls the governments, had tasted the power and wealth that fiat paper money brought them, they were reluctant to relinquish such a monetary system. Being unable to bend the gold standard to their will, they abandoned it. To them it was an antiquated system.

Copyright © 2015 by Thomas Coley Allen.

Nationalism and Imperialism

Nationalism and Imperialism

 Thomas Allen

    Nationalism is often accused of being the cause of many wars. It has been accused of aggressive war-making. It has been accused of causing one nationality to impose its will on another nationality. Nationalism has been falsely maligned. Much of what is blamed on nationalism should be placed on imperialism.

    Before proceeding, a distinction needs to be made between a “nation” and a “country.” A “nation” is a community of people of the same race having a common origin and language and with common traditions, culture, economy, etc. that is capable of forming a nation-state, i.e., a politically organized relatively homogenous people inhabiting a sovereign state. A country is the territory that a political state governs. A nation is the people, and a country is the land.

    Much confusion exists between nationalism and imperialism. Nationalism seeks to preserve a nationality. It seeks to preserve a nation (not to be confused with a country, most of which today are empires) and its culture, language, race, laws, economy, etc. On the other hand, imperialism seeks to impose the culture, laws, economy, etc. of one nationality on another nationality. Nationalism is essentially the opposite of imperialism.

    Nationalism acquired its belligerent reputation in the nineteenth century when various nations attempted to secede from various European and American Empires. The Irish attempted to secede from the British Empire. Several nations of the Austrian Empire attempted to secede. They were unsuccessful. However, Hungry did manage to obtain parity with Austria; hence, Austria-Hungry was born. Secession from the Turkish Empire was more successful as Greeks, Serbians, Romanians, Bulgarians, and Albanians won their independence. In North America, the Southern States failed in their attempt to secede from the American Empire.

    Many historians agree that the fundamental cause of World War I was imperialistic in nature. Few blame nationalism for the war. As destructive as that war was, it did advance the cause of nationalism — at least in Europe.

    The Irish gained independence although the status of Ulster has yet to be satisfactorily resolved.

    The Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed into several nations. Although they lost part of their nation (part of Tirol) to Italy and were not united with the Bavarian provinces of Bavaria, the Bayuvar (or Austro-Bavarians) formed a new Austria. Although they lost part of their nation (Vojvodina) to Serbia, the Hungarians formed a new Hungary. The Czechs gained their independence although they held the Slovaks in subjection until 1992 when the Slovaks gained their independence and the Ruthenians until the end of World War II when they were transferred to the Soviet Union. In the south, the Croats, Dalmatians, Slovenes, Bosnians, and Herzegovinians were not so fortunate. They were merged into the Serbian Empire (commonly called Yugoslavia) along with the Montenegrins and Macedonians until the collapse of the Soviet Empire precipitated the collapse of the Serbian Empire. (However, the Montenegrins remained under Serbian rule, and the Dalmatians remained under Croat rule.)

    Out of the fall of the Russian Empire came homelands for nations of the Finns, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Kashubians in Gdansk, and Poles. The Byelorussians were divided between Poland and Russia.

    Germany’s African and Asian colonies were transferred to England, France, and Japan. The Alemanni of Alsace and the French of Lorraine were placed under French rule. Much of the German Empire that was Polish became part of Poland.

    The French replaced the Turks as the rulers of the Syrians, Druzes, and Christian Lebanese. The English replaced the Turks as the rulers of the Palestinians, the Arabs of Amman, and the Shiite Arabs of Baghdad and Basra.

    World War II is what really caused the undeserving reputation of nationalism as the cause of aggressive belligerence. The fascist movements in Italy and Germany claimed to be nationalistic, and the gullible, who included just about everyone in academia in the West, believed the fascists and still do. Hitler went so far in this deception that he named his movement National Socialism. Both Germany and Italy were imperialistic, not nationalistic. They sought to conquer other nations and to impose their values, ideology, economy, laws, etc. on these conquered nations.

    Germany and Italy could not have been acting in a nationalistic spirit because both were, and still are, an empire of nations. Germany consisted of at least eight nations: the Bayuvars, Alemanni (who were, and still are, divided among Germany, Switzerland, and France), Franconians (or Upper Germans), Germans (or Middle Germans), Brandenburgians, Plattdeutsch, Wends (a Slavonic people), and Prussians (who lost their homeland to the Poles as a result of World War II). Italy consisted of at least thirteen nations: the Piedmontese, Gallo-Italians, Venetians, Tuscans, Latins, Neapolitans, Sicilians, Sardinians, Friulians, Ladins, Bayuvars in Tirol, Savoyards in the northwest (the remainder of whom live under French rule) and Slovenes in Istria (who were reunited with their kindred after World War II in the Serbian Empire).

    Following World War II the map of Europe again changed. The Soviet Union absorbed the Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians. The eastern boundary of Poland was redrawn, and all of the Byelorussians and Volhynians (whom the Ukrainians now rule) were placed under Russian rule. The Ruthenians (whom the Ukrainians now rule) traded their Czech rulers for Russian rulers, and the Lemks and Boyks (whom the Ukrainians now rule) traded their Polish rulers for Russian rulers. The Rumanians of Bessarabia were also absorbed into the Soviet Union.

    The Prussian states (Prussian, Pomerelia, and Pomerania) were absorbed into Poland, and the Prussians for the most part were driven from their homeland. The eastern portion of Brandenburg also became part of Poland as did Gdansk (Danzig) with the resulting loss of autonomy for the Kashubians.

    At least in Europe, World War II was not nationalistic in nature but was imperialistic. Because of the war, several nations lost their countries, and no nation gained independence. However, in Asia and Africa, things were different. The European colonial empires collapsed. Many new countries were born. Unfortunately, for the most part, these new countries were not nations in the true sense but were a conglomeration of nations.

    One new country that was a nation born following World War II was the Jewish nation of Israel. However, this nation soon shifted from nationalism to imperialism as it conquered and imposed its rule on the Palestinians.

    Between the end of World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Empire, several nations have cried out for independence — some even to the point of armed insurrection. Some of these nations are the Punjabi in India, the Kurds in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, the Palestinians in Israel, the Boers in South Africa, the Corsicans and Bretons in France, the Basque in France and Spain, the Welsh and Scotts in Great Britain, the Quebeckers in Canada, and the Southern Americans in the United States.

    The collapse of the Soviet Empire brought nationalism to the forefront and has caused imperialism to retreat. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the puppet governments in Eastern Europe, many new countries, most of which are true nations, came into being. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are again independent. Byelorussians now have an independent homeland for the first time in history. Ukraine is an independent country although it continues to contain several nations along with the Ukrainians. The Rumanians of Moldavia (Bessarabia) have gained independence. In the Caucasian region, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaidzhan are independent. Georgia still consists of four different nations. Armenia’s union with the Armenians of Erzenrum in Turkey remains. Also, remaining is the union of the Azeris of Azerbaidzhan with the Azeris of Iran. In Central Asia, the Tajik now have an independent homeland in Tajikistan. The Turanian countries of Kazakh, Turkmen, Uzbek, and Kirghiz have also gained independence.

    In Eastern Europe outside the old Soviet Union, several new countries, which for the most part consist predominately of one nation, have been born. Czechoslovakia has divided. The Czechs (Bohemians) have their homeland, and the Slovaks have theirs. Yugoslavia has divided. The Slovenes, Croats, and Macedonians have their independent homelands.

    Although the growth of modern-day nationalism began long before World War I, it really began to bear fruit with the collapse of Turkey’s European empire that began several decades before that war with the creation of several new countries that were true nations. Then nationalism was driven back as imperialism reared its ugly head as the Italian, German, Russian, and Japanese empires began expansion. Imperialism peaked with World War II. Since the conquests of the Soviet Union at the conclusion of World War II, imperialism has been retreating, and nationalism has been advancing. Empires have collapsed, and none have risen to take their place although the United States have been striving to establish an empire of puppet states throughout the world.


Copyright © 1994, 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More articles on politics.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression
Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in original are omitted.]

An important aspect of World War I was that it had transferred enormous wealth to the international financiers while enslaving the American people. World War I was the cap stone of a process that began with the Great Depression to transfer massive amounts of wealth to the Illuminists and to convert the United States into a fascist country controlled by the Illuminists.

The most important actor in causing the Great Depression was the Bank of England, headed by Montagu Norman, who was called “the currency director of Europe,” in conjunction with the British government and the international financiers in the City of London. Benjamin Strong, the governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was Norman’s chief American coconspirator in this endeavor. Strong had great influence over Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury for Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. In Germany, Norman’s chief coconspirator was Hjalmar Schacht, Governor of the German Reichsbank and later Hitler’s Finance Minister.

In 1925, Montagu Norman, Hjalmar Schacht, and Charles Rist (deputy governor of the Bank of France) came to New York and met with Benjamin Strong. The purpose of this meeting was to inflate the money supply in the United States, which was done by lowering the interest rate in the United States. Norman returned in 1927 to promote once again inflation and speculation. Again the Federal Reserve System cut the interest rate. The 1928-1929 bull market resulted. In 1929, Norman visited Mellon in Washington. Soon after this visit, the Federal Reserve System abandoned its easy money policy, began raising interest rates, and contracting the money supply. Furthermore, to collapse the speculative bubble in the United States, the Bank of England began raising interest rates in Great Britain. The bubble burst.

The Illuminists put Franklin Roosevelt, who was a high degree Illuminist and a shrewd servant of the international financiers, into office in 1933 to do their bidding. They were through with President Herbert Hoover and wanted to replace him with Roosevelt. They wanted Roosevelt to bring fascism to the United States, which he did by building on and expanding programs that Hoover had started. Once in office, Roosevelt processed to complete the work begun by President Woodrow Wilson to reduce the American people to slavery under the crushing power of the international financiers.

The Illuminists created the Great Depression and used it to make Roosevelt President. The Great Depression started during Hoover’s first year as President. Between 1923 and 1929, the Federal Reserve System greatly expanded (inflated) the money supply. Then the bankers who controlled the Federal Reserve System started the Great Depression by greatly contracting the money supply. Although the Federal Reserve System could have alleviated much of the misery by expanding the money supply, which the law required it to do so, it did not. (If it had complied with the law, it would not have expanded the money supply during World War I and the 1920s.) When Roosevelt took office, the Federal Reserve System began expanding the money supply by creating money to buy government securities.

Congressman Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, correctly explained the Great Depression, “It was not accidental. It was a carefully contrived occurrence. . . . The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as the rulers of us all.”[1]

To ensure that Roosevelt would do their bidding, the Illuminist surrounded him with their agents. Among them were five communist agents: Alger Hiss, John Abt, Nathan Witt, Nathaniel Weyl, and Charles Kramer. Another agent was Stuart Chase, a Fabian, who believed in executing people who did not obey the government’s economic edits and who is credited with writing Roosevelt’s order stealing the gold owned by Americans.

Through Roosevelt and their other agents in his administration, the Illuminists destroyed most of what remained of the United States Constitution. One of the biggest achievements of the Illuminists was transferring legislative powers from Congress to “independent” presidentially controlled boards and commissions, which the Illuminists could more easily control than they could control Congress.

Another coup achieved by the Illuminists was to control that they gained over the States, universities, and farmers with federal aid and over business and labor unions with contract money. They also gained controlled over business, labor unions, farmers, and universities through new regulatory agencies. (Illuminists used these controls to prolong the Great Depression.) The success of this illuministic coup was guaranteed when Roosevelt appointed four Illuminists to the United States Supreme Court: Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Stanley Reed, and William O. Douglas.

Once in office, Roosevelt raised taxes enormously. By greatly increasing public indebtedness, he transferred debt from the rich to the poor.

He outlawed gold as domestic money and forced Americans to exchange their gold for federal reserve notes. While Americans received $20.67 per ounce of gold that they were forced to sell to the Federal Reserve System, foreigners received $35.00 an ounce after Roosevelt devalued the dollar.

Claiming that he was going to bring prosperity, he greatly increased federal expenditures. Yet, he and the bankers knew that the Federal Reserved System, which they controlled, would not allow prosperity to return until the war that they wanted occurred. War was to the way to prosperity that they chose. Posing as the protector of the common man and as a great philanthropist, he gave the people insufferable debt and taxes.

The purpose and result of the Great Depression were (1) to punish the American people for not joining the League of Nations, (2) to increase greatly Illuminists’ control over business and finance in the United States, and (3) to bring about an enormously larger intrusive government. Illuminists who knew in advance that the international financiers were going to crash the stock market and economy, many lesser Illuminists lack this knowledge, sold their stock holdings early. Then, after the average stock price fell 90 percent, they bought blue chip companies far below their natural price. They were able to consolidate industries under their control.

Roosevelt prolonged the Great Depression to give the Rockefellers and other Illuminists more opportunity to buy stocks cheaply. It was also prolonged so that the United States government could usurp more power. The more people suffered, or perceived themselves suffering, the more willing they would be to sell their birthright and enslave themselves to the Illuminists, who controlled the United States government, for a morsel of security. The longer the misery lasted, the more willing the people would be to exchange their liberty for the security of slavery—though they would not perceive, or admit, that they were slaves.

With the Great Depression and World War II, Roosevelt crushed the American people under undreamed of federal control for the benefit of the Illuminists and their New World Order. He enslaved them for the Illuminists.

To transfer enormous amounts of wealth to the Rothschilds and other international financiers, the Bretton Woods pact was created. Its documents were made inviolable and placed beyond the reach of any government or court. It was exempted from taxation, so no government could levy taxes on any of its earnings. Furthermore, its officers and personnel were placed above the law in that they were immune from legal processes. Out of the Bretton Wood pact came the general agreement on tariffs and trade (GATT), which destroyed the British Empire and is now destroying the American empire.

More importantly than leading the United States into war, was Roosevelt’s deathblow to the Constitution. Roosevelt completed the work of converting the United States from a federal republic under common law to a fascist democratic state governed by bureaucratic fiat. Collective responsibility replaced individual responsibility.

Endnote
Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy (Seal Beach, California: Concord Press, n.d.), p.55.

References
Allen, Gary. None Dare Call It Conspiracy. Seal Beach, California: Concord Press, n.d.

Allen, Gary. The Rockefeller File Secret. Seal Beach, California: '76 Press, 1976.

Cuddy, Dennis L. The Globalists: The Power Elite Exposed. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2001.

Cuddy, Dennis L. Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000.

Davidson, Mary M. The Profound Revolution. Omaha, Nebraska: The Greater Nebraskan, n.d.

Griffin, Des. Anti-Semitism and the Babylonian Connection. Clackamas, Oregon: Emissary Publications, 1992.

Larson, Martin A. The Federal Reserve and Our Manipulated Dollar. Old Greenwich, Connecticut: The Devin-Adair Company, 1975.

Mullins, Eustace. Secrets of the Federal Reserve. 1991.

Mullins, Eustace. The World Order: Our Secret Rulers. Second edition. Staunton, Virginia: Ezra Pound Institute of Civilization, 1992.

Roberts, Archibald E. Emerging Struggle for State Sovereignty. Fort Collins, Colorado: Betsy Ross Press, 1979.

Still, William T. New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1990.

Stormer, John A. The Death of a Nation. Florissant, Missouri: Liberty Bell Press, 1968.

Stormer, John A. None Dare Call It Treason. Florissant, Missouri: Liberty Bell Press, 1964.

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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