Showing posts with label protective tariff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label protective tariff. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Lincoln’s Curses

Lincoln’s Curses

Thomas Allen

 

1. Lincoln’s worst curse was converting the United States from a federation of independent sovereign republics to a consolidated national empire with the States reduced to administrative districts. As a corollary to this curse, the States lost their republican form of government; their governments remain republican in appearance but not in substance. (See “Returning Republican Governments to the States" by Thomas Allen.) He effectively repealed the Tenth Amendment.

2. Lincoln cursed America and most of the world with the notion that once a territory (State, province, country, or whatever) becomes part of another country, union, or federation, whether voluntarily or by conquest, it cannot leave without the consent of the country, union, or federation of which it is part. 

3. Lincoln cursed the United States with the “unquestioned mystique of might-makes-right and the coercive unitary nation-state.” This notion is the foundation of American hegemony and globalism.

4. Not only did Lincoln curse the country with an imperial president, which has grown stronger over the years, but he also cursed the country with a kritarchy. Following Lincoln, the Supreme Court began converting the country into a kritarchy. This goal was fully achieved with the Warren Court. Because of Lincoln, the United States have become a kritarchy with an imperial president and an impotent Congress. The Constitution means whatever the Supreme Court declares it to mean. (Thanks to Lincoln, kakistocrats, ideocrats, and kleptocrats have ruled the United States at various times.)

5. Lincoln suppressed the freedom of the press. Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt followed his example. Biden did likewise during the COVID-19 plandemic. Now, censorship primarily applies to the internet, as the oligarchs who control the federal government also control the press outside of the internet.

6. Lincoln cursed the United States with the income tax. He gave the country its first income tax. Later, the Supreme Court ruled that the income tax was unconstitutional. This ruling was followed by the Sixteenth Amendment, which made the income tax permanent. His income tax also cursed the country with the Internal Revenue Service.

7. Lincoln normalized and made the corrupt and cartelized business-government partnerships permanent. As a result, the military-industrial complex, the security-industrial complex, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Tech, Big Oil, Big Finance, Big Insurance, and other Big Businesses work closely with the federal government. In exchange for special governmentally granted privileges and benefits, they aid the federal government in expanding its power. (The oligarchs that control the federal government also control the collaborating businesses.)

8. Protective tariffs of Lincoln’s Republican Party were the primary cause of the secession of the States of the Lower South. Between Lincoln’s War and World War II, protective tariffs were the primary way that the federal government subsidized Big Businesses. Following World War II, Big Businesses began turning against tariffs. They discovered that they could profit more from producing goods in foreign countries and importing them into the United States.

9. Lincoln gave the United States their first legal tender fiat currency, the U.S. note or greenback. Although the country returned to the gold-coin standard in 1879, the fiat U.S. notes remained in circulation and were issued until their issuance was discontinued in 1971. (Unlike gold certificates, people were not required to turn U.S. notes in. They remained in circulation until they wore out or the banking system redrew them. One may occasionally find them in circulation. The author received one about ten years ago.) Between 1879 and 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt ended the gold standard, U.S. notes were redeemable at par in gold. 

10. With the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864, Lincoln nationalized the American banking system. In 1913, the Federal Reserve System replaced the national banking system.

11.  Other curses of Lincoln include establishing a large standing national army, legitimizing martial law even in areas where civil courts are open, ignoring habeas corpus and jailing dissidents and others without trial or due process, and establishing mostly permanent conscription (currently, conscription is out of favor; however, it can be resurrected at anytime, especially since the leaders of the United States want to subdue everyone in the world to their will).

Although Lincoln is credited with freeing the slaves, he freed no slaves. If he and the abolitionists wanted to free the slaves, they could have started by buying slaves with their own money and setting them free. Since they did not, they proved that they loved their money more than freeing slaves.


Reference

Rothbard, Murray N. “The Nationalities Question.” Mises Daily. April 18, 2022.


Copyright © 2026 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Saturday, April 12, 2025

Tariffs as Revenue

Tariffs as Revenue

Thomas Allen


Some people, like President Trump, suggest replacing the federal income tax with tariffs. Tariffs are heralded as a means to increase employment and wages and to reduce, if not eliminate, dependency on foreign sources.

The primary benefit of replacing income tax with tariffs is that the federal government's size would need to be reduced by 80 to 90 percent. That is about the size of the federal government that tariffs could support without exploding debt that would dwarf the current federal debt — this assumes that the tariff is for revenue and not protectionism

Replacing the income tax with tariffs will, at least in the short run, result in a large-scale loss of jobs. More than a million federal employees will lose their jobs. Likewise, a much larger number of people whose livelihoods depend on federal contracts will lose theirs. Also, many State and local employees will lose their jobs because these jobs depend on federal grant money. Many people whose jobs depend on the federal government will become unemployed.

Additionally, if the goal of the tariff is to promote and protect domestic companies, the federal government will collect even less revenue. The more effective that a tariff is at protecting domestic companies, the less the country imports. Fewer imports result in less revenue for the federal government.

Exports buy imports. The less the country imports, the less it can export. Conversely, the less the country exports, the less it can import. If the country imports less, the federal government collects less revenue. As the country approaches autarky, the federal government becomes smaller for want of revenue — if tariffs are the primary source of revenue. By then, most of the federal government’s budget will be used to prevent smuggling.

Also, many people believe that the exporters pay the tariffs. They do not. Consumers of the importing country pay the tariffs. In this respect, tariffs are like sales taxes; the buyer pays the tax; the seller does not.

One great advantage resulting from abandoning the income tax is that it frees the slaves from the largest slave owner in the country, the US government. Slavery is defined as one party or person owning the labor of another. The income tax is a tax on labor; that is, the amount of labor that it takes a person to pay his taxes is the amount of labor owned by the US government.

If the purpose of tariffs is revenue, then the same percentage should be levied on all imported goods without considering the product imported or the country of origin. Thus, the federal government does not pick favorites or winners and losers by levying higher tariffs on some imports than on others.


Appendix 1. Reciprocal Tariffs

President Trump has implemented reciprocal tariffs on countries that levy tariffs on imports from the United States. His goal is for these countries to eliminate their tariffs on imports from the United States in exchange for the United States eliminating their tariffs on imports from their countries. However, such reciprocal tariffs are unconstitutional — at least under the Constitution that the Founding Fathers gave the United States.

The Constitution delegates to Congress the authority to levy tariffs. It does not delegate the President such power. Consequently, Congress would have to levy the reciprocal tariffs and give the President the authority to implement them. Even if Congress enacted such a law, it would be unconstitutional. According to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, the Constitution authorizes Congress to levy tariffs for revenue and for no other reasons, such as protectionism or reciprocity. The goal of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs is to eliminate tariffs and, consequently, eliminate raising revenue from tariffs.


Appendix 2. Replacing the Income Tax with a National Sales Tax

For years, some people have been promoting replacing the federal income tax with a national sales tax. If a sales tax is to replace the income tax, it needs to be done by constitutional amendment. This amendment must clearly prohibit all taxes on income from whatever source (wages, salaries, tips, dividends, interest, capital gains, etc.). Also, it must fix the maximum tax rate. Further, it must clearly define in great detail what can be taxed and what cannot be taxed. Moreover, it must not provide any outs, such as national or economic emergencies or war. Most importantly, the amendment needs to be written so that someone with an IQ of 70, which is about the average IQ of federal judges, can understand it.


Appendix 3. Eliminating the Corporate Income Tax

The North Carolina General Assembly is moving toward eliminating the corporate income tax. If it retains an income tax, it should eliminate the personal income tax instead of the corporate income tax. Why? Corporations (C corporations, S corporations, B corporations, limited liability companies, nonprofits, closed corporations, professional corporations, etc.), unlike a natural person, are creatures of the government and have privileges that individuals do not have. Moreover, the personal income tax enslaves people. Corporate income taxes do not because corporations are not living beings (contrary to what the US Supreme Court and many libertarians believe).

Moreover, a natural person has a natural law right to privacy. The income tax is a massive invasion of privacy. On the other hand, being creatures of the government, corporations have no right to privacy; the government has every right to know what its creatures are doing. (If we have a government of, by, and for the people, and if the people are the masters and the government is the servant — as our politicians continuously remind us — then the people have the right to know everything about the government, including information classified as top secret; the government has no right to secrecy. By extension, the people also have a right to know everything that a corporation does.)

Proprietaries, partnerships, and associations that do not have a charter from a government should be treated as individuals. Likewise, churches that are not incorporated should be exempt from income taxes. Individuals and organizations exempt from income tax should not report any kind of income to the government.


Copyright © 2025 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Friday, March 10, 2023

Two Thoughts Related to Economics

Two Thoughts Related to Economics

Thomas Allen


The following discusses two errors related to money that Brandon Smith makes and protective tariffs and wages.

Brandon Smith’s Errors

Brandon Smith’s “Simple fixes to our economic problems that establishment elites won't allow” contains at least two errors.

1. “Basically, the Fed bankrolls the corruption through fiat money creation while government officials and corporations utilize the money to wreak havoc on our living standards. Ending the Fed would solve the fiat money problem” Eliminating the Fed would not eliminate the fiat money problem. The federal government can just print and issue government notes and their electronic equivalent. It did so during the Lincoln administration with the greenback, which was a fiat currency, that significantly reduced the purchasing power of the dollar. Merely cutting out the middleman, the Fed, does not solve the fiat money problem.

2. “[W]hile it is true that the Constitution explicitly states that the U.S. Treasury becomes the only issuer of U.S. currency, this was done at a time when our currency was backed by gold and silver and there was no corrupt middleman in the form of a central bank.” The Constitution does not make the US government the only issuer of US currency. It only delegates the federal government the power to coin gold and silver and to fix the weights and purity of the coins so minted. Also, the U.S. Treasury is not mentioned in the Constitution. Moreover, the federal government never issued paper money until the Lincoln administration. Before then, private banks issued all paper currency, and they continued to issue paper currency until Franklin Roosevelt’s administration. During that time the federal government issued several types of paper currency (US notes, gold certificates, silver certificates, and Treasury Notes of 1890). It continued to issue silver certificates until the 1960s and US notes until the 1970s. When the drafters of the Constitution removed the authority of the federal government to issue bills of credit, they thought that they had removed the authority for the federal government to issue paper currency. 

Protective Tariffs and Wages

Many people support protective tariffs because they believe that the tariffs will protect jobs and raise wages. If tariffs raise wages and protect jobs, it is only for those in the protected industries — and because of immigration, they may not even do that. However, they raise prices for everyone and, by that, they reduce the standard of living.

Historically, manufacturers have been the proponents of protective tariffs. They want protected markets for their inefficient companies. Also, they have been big supporters of large-scale immigration to suppress wages. Increasing the supply of workers suppresses wages and thwarts innovation.

Often, companies will use the argument of a lack of skilled workers so that they can import workers to work for less pay to suppress labor costs, i.e., wages. For example, companies may claim that a shortage of computer programmers exists because they have to pay computer programmers higher salaries than they want to pay. Consequently, these companies import foreign computer programmers who work for less pay. Importing foreign computer programmers to fill computer programmer jobs at lower wages prevents the market from signaling via higher wages that a shortage of computer programmers exists. Thus, fewer domestic workers learn computer programming skills. Allowing the markets to signal that a shortage of computer programmers exists encourages more people to learn the skills of computer programmers.

If people want to raise wages, they should severely restrict immigration. Fewer workers lead to higher wages and innovations that lower the cost of production. Moreover, immigration restrictions do so without increasing the cost of living.


Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Sunday, November 27, 2022

Calhoun and States’ Rights

Calhoun and States’ Rights

Thomas Allen


In Chaining Down Leviathan: The American Dream of Self-Government 1776-1865 (McClellanville, South Carolina: Abbeville Institute Press, 2021), Luigi Marco Bassani discusses John C. Calhoun’s concept of States’ rights. The following summarizes that discussion.

Calhoun used “State” to designate the people of a State and not its government, which the people (body politic of that State) created. Each State was a self-governing political community, and the people of each State were the sovereign authority — not their government. Concurrent majority and the concept that the Constitution was an agreement between the States were the core features of Calhoun’s political thoughts. Thus, he objected to the notion that a simple numerical majority should decide all political issues.

According to Calhoun, sovereignty belonged either to the States or to the Union. Because sovereignty was indivisible, it could not belong to both. He argued that sovereignty resided in the people of the individual States and not in the people of the Union as a whole.

Calhoun asserted that the Supremacy Clause invested no power in the federal government. It clearly did not establish the supremacy of the federal government. Further, he maintained that the authority of the federal government set up by the Constitution was limited to the delegated powers and that laws enacted pursuant to these delegated powers were supreme. However, the Supremacy Clause did not extend beyond these delegated powers, i.e., the supremacy of the federal government is not absolute. The States and the people of the States retained all authority not expressly delegated to the federal government.

Conflict, according to Calhoun, did not originate in society. Governmental action caused conflict by creating two opposite social classes: taxpayers and tax consumers. Moreover, suffrage led to conflict between the different interests in a community because each interest strove to obtain the power to protect itself from the others and to advance its own agenda. However, conflicting interests did not lead to a government. Politics was what caused the conflict between various interests.

Calhoun thought equalizing the fiscal appropriations of a government was impossible. Taxation and public expenditures caused two conflicting interests. While those who controlled the government benefitted from the taxes, those who did not control the government paid more in taxes than they received back in disbursements. Consequently, political power, government, is the cause of conflict in society.

For many years, Calhoun sought in the Constitution the defense against the federal government’s intrusions. He based his arguments on the individual States being contracting parties to and, therefore, the real principals of the Constitution.

The Constitution centered around the States. This centralness appeared in how Representatives and Senators were chosen. The people of the several States chose members of the House of Representatives. The legislatures of the States elected senators. (Now, the people of each State elect that State’s Senators via the seventeenth amendment.) Representatives and Senators must be inhabitants of the State from which they are elected. Moreover, Representatives were never considered a delegate of a part of the American people.

Calhoun noted that States were the source of the federal government’s political powers. Political power flowed from the States to the federal government and never vice-versa. The Constitution gave certain powers to the federal government and prohibited others. However, it never gave any powers to the States; it only prohibited certain powers. All powers that the States did not expressly delegate to the federal government, they reserved for themselves, i.e., the States retained all powers not expressly delegated. Thus, the Constitution established a federal government with highly limited powers.

For Calhoun, the States were the sole actors in the Union. Unlike Jefferson, who favored a federal-type relationship between centers of government within a State, Calhoun did not. He favored a simple administrative relationship between the State government and local authorities. However, he believed that the United States were an authentic federation.

Calhoun objected to governmental interference in the economic pursuits of individuals, who understood their own interests better than any government. Accordingly, he supported free trade and, therefore, low tariffs. Fervently, he objected to protective tariffs and the South paying disproportionately a much larger share of federal revenue than the North paid. Consequently, the North was exploiting southern producers and consumers for the benefit of the northern manufacturing industry. This redistribution of wealth was not limited to the South. It also was used against northern workers and would result in a class struggle — all courtesy of the federal government.

Furthermore, Calhoun recognized that the centralization and concentration of power in the federal government were being used for northern interest and were causing corruption that threatened the freedom of the country. Interposition by the States was the solution to this centralization of power. However, States could not interpose their authority to interfere with the powers that the Constitution expressly delegated to the federal government. Likewise, the federal government could not interfere with the powers that the States had retained for themselves.

Moreover, the Constitution was based on distinguishing between government and sovereignty. Governmental powers resided in the institutions either of the States or the federal government. Sovereignty resided in the people of each State respectively. Three-fourths of the States were the final constitutional authority.

Because the Constitution created the departments of the federal government, sovereignty did not and could not reside in any department of the federal government. Their sole purpose was to execute the provisions of the Constitution. Any act of the federal government that altered the nature of the Constitution or changed any condition of the parties to it was usurpation.

Calhoun believed that the Supreme Court might judge acts of a State whether they violated the constitutional prerogatives of the federal government. However, the Supreme Court should not and could not legitimately judge an act of the federal government whether it violated the constitutional prerogatives of a State. For the Supreme Court to do so placed it above the States that created the Constitution and vested in it the power to alter the powers of the federal government and the States. 

Calhoun recognized that the text of the Constitution could not impose practical restraints on the federal government. Reason and justice could never restrain power: Only power could restrain power. Only the States possessed sufficient power to restrain the federal government. Therefore, each State should have and did have the right to judge for itself if the federal government had violated any of its rights.

Calhoun maintained that the Constitution implicitly allowed secession because it was a contract between sovereign parties. The ratification process proved this conclusion. As distinct political entities independent from each other, the States ratified the Constitution. Moreover, no State was part of the Union under the Constitution until it ratified the Constitution. Furthermore, the Union was a union of sovereign States without a direct link between the federal government and citizens.

Secession had nothing to do with the federal government. It was an act of a State withdrawing from a partnership with the other States. Although secession was extreme, it was not foreign to the constitutional system. However, according to Calhoun, secession did not derive from the contractual nature of the Constitution; it derived from its political nature.

Calhoun rejected the notion of the will of the majority being the will of the people. For him, the “will of the majority” meant a particular interest or coalition of interests that prevailed over others. Like most people of his era, he believed that a government based on a numerical majority was tyrannical by nature. To overcome the tyranny of an absolute numerical majority, he advocated a concurrent majority on all important issues.

For Calhoun, the term “United States” was geographical and not political. However, he conceived of the United States as more than a league of States. Yet, the States should never become a centralized democracy where an absolute majority ruled. Such a rule would result in abandoning constitutional guarantees. Consequently, States should and did have the right to judge as the last resort the limits that the Constitution placed on the federal government. This right should be defended at all costs. Otherwise, the United States would become a dictatorship of the executive branch.

Both Jefferson and Calhoun considered a State to be the people of the State and not the governmental power. However, Jefferson believed that the United States were for a special purpose only while Calhoun believed them to be an assemblage of nations.

For Calhoun, nullification was peaceful in nature and did not damage the prerogatives of the federal government. When a conflict between a State and the other States could not be resolved, the State had to choose either secession or submission. As a political sovereign and partner with the other States in establishing the Union, each State acting individually and independently had the right to secede peacefully.


Copyright © 2022 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Monday, April 4, 2022

A Letter: Tariffs

A Letter: Tariffs
Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The following is a letter written in 1986 responding to two articles published in The New American magazine, which is associated with the John Birch Society.]

    There seems to be some disagreement between two articles in your April 21 issue. Chamberlain argues correctly that tariffs, especially protective tariffs, are detrimental to the economy. Lockman, apparently in agreement with Ellis and Kurowski, whose book he reviews, argues in favor of tariffs as a primary source of revenue for the U. S. government. He evens favors protective tariffs.
    Lockman surely favors taxing imported oil heavily to subsidize domestic oil producers. U.S. industry and military run on oil. They certainly should not rely on foreign supplies. Let us have autarky for everything that the U.S. government considers essential — especially chrome, platinum, and other strategic metals for which there is little or no domestic sources.
    Certainly, not all the Founding Fathers favored protective tariffs. John Taylor of Caroline and many other leading Southern statesmen and agriculturalists realized that tariffs made the farmer a serf and the agricultural Southern States colonies of the Northern bankers and industrialists.
    To rely on Hamilton’s arguments in The Federalist Papers is to rely on the representative of the bankers and industrialists. Hamilton, the author of the federal deficit, was part of what the JBS [John Birch Society] would call the Insiders.
    Another fallacy of Lockman is that tariffs on imports are paid by foreigners. Tariffs on imports are no more paid by foreigners than sales taxes are paid by retailers. If the objective is to get foreigners to support the U.S. government, an impost on exports would be much more effective.
    Tariffs may be an acceptable source of revenue for government — as long as the tariff is uniform without favor to product or country and is no more than about five percent. Once a tariff becomes protective in nature, it subsidizes inefficiency, incompetence, and the politically powerful. It injures the economy in the ways Chamberlain points out — and worse.
    The Southern colonies have but one hope of regaining their lost liberties, free trade, and low taxes. That hope is to follow the example of the Founding Fathers, who seceded from England. The time has come for a free and independent confederation of free and independent Southern States.

Copyright © 1986 by Thomas C. Allen.

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Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Some Random Thoughts on Political Issues

Some Random Thoughts on Political Issues
Thomas Allen

An explanation of how we got to where we are is summarized. Also, discussed are the beginnings of progressivism, compromise, socialist compassion, discrimination, education, forced vaccination, sanctuary cities, mental health and guns, and protective tariffs and piety.

How We Got to Where We Are
Augustine of Hippo, who was a father of Roman Catholicism, begot Calvin and Calvinism, who begot the Puritans of England. From the Puritans of England  came the Puritans of New England .
     In A History of the Christian Church (1870), Dr. Charles Hase describes the Puritans of England as follows: “In their morals and manners they were eminently pious, they looked upon all earthly pleasures as sinful, their own fancies were regarded as divine inspirations, and they thought that the state itself should be subject to their democratic hierarchy.” This description fits the Liberal Democrat of today, except what was considered pleasures then differs some from what is considered pleasures today.
The Puritan of New England begot the Yankee, who begot the abolitionist, who begot the Radical Republican, who begot the Progressive, who begot the Liberal Democrat. Augustine and all his philosophical and religious descendants to this day know how people ought to live, and they are determined to do everything in their power to make them live that way. Their god may differ, but their religiosity is the same. These are the people who have been controlling the country since 1860.

Progressivism: Its Beginnings
Progressivism began in the Washington administration with the struggle between the Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. The Hamiltonians captured the Federalist party and imposed its version of progressivism with the First Bank of the United States being one of its gems. The Jeffersonians eventually drove the Hamiltonians from power, and the Federalist party died. Later, the Hamiltonians organized the Whig party whose version of progressivism included a central bank, high protective tariffs, and federally financed internal improvements. Finally, the Whigs amalgamated with several smaller parties to form the Republican party. Afterward, the Republican party put that great progressive Abraham Lincoln in office. Lincoln’s version of progressivism included driving the Southern States out of the union with the highest protective tariffs that the United States had endured to that time. Then, he denied the Southern States their right to secede and warred against them. To do this, he destroyed the Constitution. His war against the Constitution was so successful that the country has never recovered from it. When Woodrow Wilson entered office, he implemented his version of progressivism. Since then both the Democratic and Republican parties have been advocates of the Hamiltonian philosophy and progressivism.

Compromise Washington Style
The following is an example of what passes for compromise in Washington. Politicians who want to remove the people’s ability to defend themselves from despotic government propose to limit the capacity of magazines for semiautomatic rifles, which they erroneously call assault weapons, to ten rounds. Eventually, a “compromise” is reached with those who wanted no restriction. Finally, a restriction of 15 rounds is adopted. (One of my bosses said that he always asked for more than he wanted so that he could “compromise” back to what he really wanted.) The side that wanted a restriction has won; they gained a restriction. Conversely, the side that wanted no restriction has lost; they gained nothing.
With a true compromise, both sides receive something. For example, in exchange for limiting the size of a magazine, the restriction requiring the purchase of a mail-order firearm through a licensed dealer is removed.
As the above example shows in the first paragraph, O’Sullivan’s Law rules Washington. According to O’Sullivan’s Law, any organization that is not expressly right-wing will become left-wing over time. Thus, the United States government has implemented about 80 percent of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto.
O’Sullivan’s Law is also revealed in what now passes as a “moderate.” Since the beginning of the progressive era, moderates have been drifting leftward politically, socially, and economically. Today, what is considered a moderate would have been considered a borderline communist fifty years ago.

Socialist Compassion
Socialists present themselves as compassionate — the ones who truly care about the common man and the little guy. Yet, the socialist president of Venezuela refused to allow food into the country for the starving masses, after he and the previous socialist president had destroyed the country with socialism. He proves that socialists care nothing for the common man and the little guy. Socialists just lust for power and want to control the common people and treat them worse than cattle. (At least they feed the cattle to keep them fat for the slaughter.) Of course, if anyone with a functioning brain cell would look at the best-known socialists of the twentieth century, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Hitler, he would see the real compassion that socialists have for the common man and the little guy.

Discrimination
Today, people are allowed and even obligated to discriminate against two ethnicities. They are the Southerner and the Palestinian. At least, so far, the Southerner has not been dehumanized to the level of the Palestinian. Just as the British hunted and killed Tasmanians with impunity, Israelis can hunt and kill Palestinians with impunity.

Education
All politicians say that they favor education and want to improve public education. If they were honest, they would use the phrase “government schools” instead of “public education.”
How do they want to improve government schools? Do they want to make them better at indoctrinating pupils and teaching them what to think, which is what government schools currently do? Or, do they want to make them educate pupils and teach them how to think?
One can easily tell where a candidate stands. If he wants to spend more money on the current system, he favors indoctrination and the continuation of dumbing down pupils. However, if he proposes prohibiting all the school systems in the State from accepting federal funds and using any material or books offered or recommended by the US Department of Education, he favors educating and teaching pupils how to think critically.
Nevertheless, the public school system cannot be reformed because it is socialistic. Being socialistic, it breeds scarcity and mediocrity. It is the government telling parents where, how, and what their children’s minds are to be fed. Moreover, it is based on the premise that children belong to the government, and parents merely provide for the physical care of the government’s property.
About the governmental (public) school system, which the Puritans originated in the United States, James A. Bayard writes that “the Yankee school system . . . may stimulate the brain but it ignores man’s moral nature and produces discontent with their condition among the masses. God help the country in which the masses are merely stimulated and trained to act in combinations which are always, sooner or later, controlled by demagogues.”

Forced Vaccination
Pro-abortionists should be at the forefront of protesting against forced vaccinations — if they are consistent and not hypocrites. They argue that women should have control of their bodies. Therefore, the government should not tell women what they have to do with their bodies. However, forced vaccination is based on the premise that the government can tell women what they must do with their bodies: receive a vaccine injection, i.e., receive an injection of such toxins as mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde (embalming fluid), propylene glycol (antifreeze), nagalase (prevents the body from killing cancer cells and strongly associated with autism [http://www.thebigriddle.com/2015/12/ murdered-holistic-doctors-discovered.html]), and cells of aborted babies. Of course, they probably do not mind ejecting people with aborted baby cells. Since pro-abortionists grew out of the culture of death and since many pro-abortionists favor forced vaccination, they must expect vaccinations to be more harmful than beneficial.
Most of those who favor forcing all American children to be vaccinated favor open borders. As a result of the mass immigration of illegal aliens, unvaccinated people carrying all sorts of contagious diseases, are flooding the country. One would think that these forced-vaccination people would be at the forefront in demanding that all immigrants be coerced into taking the 36 plus vaccines that they want to force American children to take, before entering the country.
If vaccines are safe and effective, why has Congress prohibited people from suing vaccine manufacturers for injuries caused by vaccines? Moreover, why is information exposing the dangers and the ineffectiveness of vaccines being suppressed? Also, why do people whose children have been vaccinated fear their children playing with children who have not been vaccinated? Should not the vaccine protect their children from unvaccinated children if it is effective?

Sanctuary Cities
Anyone who opposes sanctuary cities would, if he is consistent, have opposed cities and counties of the 1850s refusing to aid the US government in enforcing fugitive slave laws. Both are philosophically the same. Under both, local governments attempt to nullify a federal law.
Unlike their State governments, local governments have no legal or lawful authority to nullify a federal law unless their States have given them that authority. Being the creation of their State, local governments can only do what their State allows and must do as their State directs. Likewise, the States created the U.S. government; therefore, they have the right and duty to judge for themselves, acting independently and individually, whether the U.S. government has exceeded its authority. Thus, a State may nullify a federal law, as it applies in that State, that it decides is unconstitutional. A local government cannot nullify a federal law unless its creator State authorized it to do so.

Mental Health and Guns
On a talk radio show some years ago, the host and his guest were discussing mental health. They wondered why so many people did not seek professional help for their mental problems. While I was listening, they failed to mention one major reason. What was this major reason that they did not mention? Unlike being diagnosed with diabetes or heart problems, when one is diagnosed with mental problems, he is at a high risk of losing his constitutionally guaranteed inalienable right to own firearms — usually, forever.

Protection Tariffs and Piety
Following are some comments on “Protectionism as a Path to Piety” by John Howting that appears in the May 2019 issue of Chronicles. Mr. Howting asserts, or at least appears to assert, that protective tariffs are acts of piety.
Where is the justice in the politically powerful forcing, ultimately under the penalty of death, the politically weak to subsidize the politically powerful, which is what a protective tariff does? Protective tariffs require politicians to pick winners and losers. When have politicians excelled at this job? They will always side with the politically powerful.
How is forcing someone, the weak, to support another, the strong, which is what a protective tariff does, piety? Furthermore, is not forcing someone to pay more for products protected by tariffs somewhat impious?
How does a protective tariff today honor one’s ancestors from 200, 400, or 800 years ago? Moreover, how does a protective tariff today, even honor one’s parents who are dead? How do one’s children honor their parents by paying tribute to the politically powerful?
If protective tariffs promote piety, would not outlawing grocery stores, butcher shops, farmers’ markets, and the like and requiring every family to raise its own food promote piety even more? Would not this be the ultimate in piety as Mr. Howting describes piety?
Would not the piety that Mr. Howting describes be best achieved and can only be achieved when people are convinced to buy locally produced products, even if they cost more and are poorer quality, than to import them from other countries or even other States?
[Editor’s note: Mr. Howting wrote a formal response to this letter. His response was in the July 2019 issue of Chronicles.]


Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Sunday, April 26, 2020

Two Letters: The South and Secession


Two Letters: The South and Secession
Thomas Allen and Deborah Allen

[Editor’s note: the following are two letters sent to the Durham Morning Harold in 1988 addressing attacks on the South, Southerners, and secession by Mr. Curtis Frantz.]

Letter 1
    In his letter of March 25, 1988, Mr. Frantz is correct in that the South did provide an enormous, easily accessible market for the North. (Sounds like an imperialistic remark, doesn’t it?) That is a major reason that the North sought to subject the South even if it meant destroying the South. The North wanted a protected market and supported protective tariffs and import restrictions. The South wanted free trade. Tariffs were to raise revenue and not to limit imports.  (The more effective a protective tariff is, the less revenue collected.) Lincoln ran on a protective tariff platform, which benefitted the North at the expense of the South. In effect, the industrial North wanted to enslave the agrarian South. The protective tariff versus free trade issue had more to do with the South seceding than slavery.
    As for a democratic society, the majority rules. Numerical might makes right, as Mr. Frantz implies. If the United States were a democracy, the Whites, being a majority, could agree to exterminate all Blacks. Living in a democracy, Blacks, according to Mr. Frantz, could not object and secede, for the will of the people had spoken. If he were a good democrat, Mr. Frantz would abide by the will of the majority and accept the extermination as the proper, legal, and moral action to take.
    As for Northern racism, Indiana prohibited blacks from entering that State. The reason that the people of Kansas Territory opposed slavery was not that they abhorred slavery per se. They opposed slavery because slavery meant bringing blacks into their territory. They did not want blacks in their territory. This attitude was typical of the Free-soilers, who were predominantly Northerners.
    As for the abolitionist majority’s concern with the rights of all men, the abusive treatment that White Southerners received during Reconstruction refutes this claim. White Southern political and military leaders are the only group of people in the United States ever to be denied by constitutional amendment the right to hold public office.  The only concern that the abolitionists had about the rights of men was that which contributed to their Nimrodic dream (nightmare!) of universal brotherhood with its one world government, religion, economy, language, culture, and race. The abolitionists had to destroy the South because the South was the principal bulwark to their demonic goal.

Letter 2
    Mr. Curtis Frantz’s letter, which appears on the March 30 editorial page, needs some amplification.
    Slavery could have been abolished by law. But it was not except in the sense of laws enacted to carry out the results of the war. When the Northern States abolished slavery, Northern slaveowners generally sold their slaves to Southern slaveowners instead of setting them free. Many of the Northern emancipating laws had grandfathering clauses such that if the Thirteenth Amendment had not been adopted, there could have been slaves in some Northern States into the 1870s. If the North had desired to abolish slavery, it could have followed England’s example and emancipated slaves without bloodshed. The Northern industrialists, abolitionists, and reformers, however, wanted no part of a peaceful solution. They wanted to destroy the South and her agrarian way of life. And that is what they did. Slavery was just an excuse.
    As Mr. Frantz claims, the Confederacy did represent an antidemocratic movement. In a democracy the majority rules. The will of the majority is law. A democracy is a political system based on the concept that might makes right, where might is expressed in terms of numbers. Mr. Frantz implies as much when he writes that a democratic country cannot exist if any part thereof is free to withdraw. Hence, might makes right. In a democracy numerical might makes right.  (If the U. S. were a true democracy, the whites, being a majority, could agree to exterminate all blacks. Living in a democracy, blacks could not object and secede, for the will of the people has spoken. If he is a good democrat, Mr. Frantz would have to abide by the will of the majority and accept the extermination as the proper, legal, and moral action to take.) Yes, the Confederacy was an antidemocratic movement. The peoples of the Southern States fought to keep the numerically superior North from oppressing them and destroying their way of life.
    To the limited extent that he addresses the right of secession, Mr. Frantz shows his ignorance of the founding of the United States. The States existed before the United States. They created the United States. When ratifying the U.S. Constitution, several States, principally Virginia and New York, explicitly reserved the right to withdraw. Nearly all the leaders of any note of the United States, both North and South, until Lincoln became president acknowledged that States had the right to secede. Most of the Supreme Court rulings that addressed issues arising out of the war implied that the Southern States had the legal right to secede. The war did not prove who was legally or morally right. It did prove that might makes right, which is the lifeblood of a democracy.
    As far as racism is concerned  — and Blacks are as racist as Whites — the Negro has not fared any better in the North than the South. Have not nearly all race riots occurred in the North where Old Glory has always flown?
    I agree with Mr. Frantz that to display and honor the Confederate flag as a symbol of racist feelings is wrong. For the most part, Northerners fighting under the Stars and Stripes had the same, if not a lower, opinion of the Black man as Southerners fighting under the Confederate flag. Therefore, racism could not have been much of an issue or cause of the war.
    Being an antidemocratic person, I do believe that political and social minorities, as well as political and social majorities, should have the right to display their symbols.

Copyright © 1988 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Friday, August 7, 2009

Question for Protectionists

Questions for Protectionists

Thomas Allen

To aid those who are not enamored with protectionism to better understand protectionism, advocates of protectionism need to justify protectionism by answering the following questions.
Since when did free trade require unaccountable international agencies like NAFTA and WTO to manage it?

Since when did free trade require one mandatory international codex after another to make it fair trade?

Since when did free trade require subsidizing domestic companies to build factories in other countries as the United States have been doing for decades?

Why do many protectionists claim that the U.S. Constitution authorizes, even commands, Congress to restrict and prevent imports? Where does the U.S. Constitution authorize or demand protectionism? Isn’t the power delegated to Congress to levy tariffs (duties) on imports for the purpose of raising income instead of protectionism? Isn’t it true that the more effective tariffs are at preventing imports, the less revenue they raise; and when tariffs are 100 percent effective at preventing imports, they raise no revenue? If not, why?

If protectionism, i.e., restrictions on trade, is beneficial, why did the American colonists object to the trade restrictions imposed by the British government? Why did they not demand more trade restrictions?

Were Lincoln’s protective tariffs worth the 600,000 lives lost to impose them? Why?

When one country trades another country I.O.U. Nothing that can be repudiated at any moment for useful tangible products, such as steel, computers, or televisions, who has received the greater value, and who has the advantage?

If protectionism creates wealth, why not make the United States 50 times wealthier by creating 50 autarkic States?

If trade barriers at a country’s borders are desirable, shouldn’t internal trade barriers also be desirable? If not, why? Why the inconsistency?

Why is the scarcity of goods that results from protectionism better than an abundance of goods?

How does a country benefit from having less? For example, without protectionism, a worker can exchange a day of labor for one domestically manufactured pair of shoes or two foreign-manufactured pairs of shoes. Protectionism prevents him from buying foreign shoes. How does he benefit from having one pair fewer shoes? How does the country benefit from having one pair fewer shoes?

Why should people be forced to work longer for the same quantity of goods, which is what protectionism does?

Why are high prices, which is the result of protectionism, preferable to low prices? Why do retirees and others on fixed income benefit more from high prices than from low prices as they must under protectionism? Is this just and why?

As the objective of protectionism is to keep prices high, shouldn’t the government do all that it can to stifle and even prohibit innovations that drive prices down? If not, why? Why the inconsistency?

Why is "doing less with more," which is the outcome of protectionism, more desirable than "doing more with less," which is the natural inclination of mankind? Is not the objective of protectionism to direct resources from their most efficient use, "doing more with less," to less efficient use, "doing less with more"? If this is not protectionism objective, why is this the outcome of protectionism?

If a protectionist is going to be consistent, shouldn’t he seek to maximize his cost, labor, effort, and inefficiencies in his personal endeavors, which is what protectionism seeks to do for the country as a whole? If not, why? Why the inconsistency?

Why should consumers be forced, ultimately under the penalty of death, to buy overpriced and often inferior products, which is what protectionism does?

Why should the government arbitrarily pick winners and losers in economic activities, which is what it does with protectionism?

Why should the government (politics) decide what the people are to buy as it does with protectionism, instead of letting the people themselves (economics) decide what to buy?

Is transferring wealth from the politically weak to the politically powerful, which is what protectionism does, just and desirable? Why?

Why should the interest of producers be placed above the interest of consumers, which is what protectionism does?

Economically, what is the difference between restricting the importation of iron and steel to benefit iron and steel producers and restricting sanitation to benefit hospitals, doctors, drug manufacturers, and undertakers?

Why should consumers be treated as though they are the property of producers and their politicians, which is what protectionism does?

Why are voluntary exchanges undesirable and in need of prohibition?

Why should freedom of exchange be allowed for some products but prohibited for others?

Why do protectionists consider that which is good for an individual, a family, a county, and a State to be evil for the country? If not, shouldn’t they be advocating trade restrictions between families, counties, and States? If not, why? Why the inconsistency?

Which is more important: the amount that a worker is paid, which is the focus of protectionism, or the amount that a worker can buy with his pay?

As protectionism prevents workers from exchanging their labor for the largest quantity of goods and services possible, how can protectionism be just? Is requiring workers to pay artificially higher prices, which protectionism causes, just, desirable, and beneficial to workers? Why?

Does a worker’s pay depend on the supply of and the demand for labor or on the prices of goods?

Why is erecting obstacles to the movement of goods, which is what protectionism does, much more desirable than diminishing and eliminating obstacles? If the erection of barriers to the movement of goods is desirable, shouldn’t the government do all that it can to erect obstacles to the movement of goods everywhere? If not, why? Why the inconsistency?

Why should the government expend resources to remove natural barriers to trade such as building new roads and bridges while it is erecting artificial barriers such as protective tariffs? As the objective of protectionism is to prevent trade, why expend resources to improve trade?

What is the difference between reducing the supply of food with protectionism and reducing the supply of food by plowing under crops? If a protectionist believes that food should not be restricted, he needs to explain his bigotry against farmers and why farmers should be forced to pay higher prices for his supplies from protected industries.

If a farmer in Maine decides to grow coffee, shouldn’t Congress erect trade barriers to protect this new domestic industry from foreign imports? If not, why? Are some industries more worthy of protection than others? If so, why? Who decides, how do they decide, and why?

If the importation of products from Montreal is so injurious to Chicago that they must be stopped or at least greatly restricted, as protectionism demands, wouldn’t the importation of products from New Orleans also be injurious to Chicago? Shouldn’t importations from New Orleans also be stopped or restricted? If not, why? Why the inconsistency?

If, for example, tool manufacturers in Texas need protection from tool manufacturers in Brazil because Brazil subsidies its tool manufacturers, do tool manufacturers in Texas need protection from tool manufacturers in New York because New York subsidies its tool manufacturers? If not, why? Why the inconsistency? From the perspective of tool manufacturers in Texas, what is the difference?

As exporting countries give gifts to importing countries when they subsidize their exports, why should such gifts be prohibited or taxed away? Doesn’t consistency demand prohibiting or taxing away all gifts including Christmas gifts and birthday gifts? If not, why? Why the inconsistency? Do not Christmas and birthday gifts reduce the productivity of the recipient by relieving the recipient of the need to work longer to acquire the gifts?

If protectionism is used to equalize the prices of foreign-produced articles with domestically produced articles (this is a favorite argument of protectionists), shouldn’t the government require producers and sellers to sell all similar articles at the same price, preferably at the price of the highest producer or seller? If not, why? Why allow the inconsistency? Why should a competitive advantage be allowed in one case and not in the other?

If the country places restrictions on importation of goods to "equalize" the cost of regulations, taxes, labor, etc. shouldn’t States with high costs because of regulations, taxes, labor, etc. be allowed to restrict imports from States with lower costs? If they shouldn’t, why? Why the inconsistency?

If protectionism is needed to protect domestic workers from lower-wage foreign workers in another country, why isn’t protectionism needed to protect domestic workers in a State from lower-wage workers in other States? Doesn’t consistency demand protection in both situations? If not, why? Why the inconsistency?

If protectionism is needed to protect domestic workers from foreign workers, aren’t laws needed to protect workers from machines (mechanical labor) by forbidding labor-saving machines? If not, why? Why the inconsistency?

If high-wage countries need protectionism to protect themselves from low-wage countries, why do low-wage countries enact protectionism to protect themselves from high-wage countries? Conversely, if low-wage countries need protectionism to protect themselves from high-wage countries, why do high-wage countries enact protectionism to protect themselves from low-wage countries?

If protectionism stimulates industry and promotes prosperity, shouldn’t communities that are the most isolated show the greatest advancements, progress, growth, and prosperity? Why do they not?

If protectionism strengthens a country, why do countries, when they go to war, seek to prevent their enemies from importing goods? If protection strengthens a country, blockades, the ultimate form of protectionism, should make an enemy unbeatable, shouldn’t they? If not, why? Does protectionism strengthen in one case, and in the other it weakens? If so, why? Why the inconsistency?

If free trade weakens a country, when countries go to war shouldn’t they use their navies to open the enemy’s ports and dump goods there? Shouldn’t they use their air force to drop goods instead of bombs? As free trade, especially dumping goods below cost, destroys a country, shouldn’t dumping free goods bring down a country quicker and safer than the instruments of war? If not, why? Does free trade weaken a country in one case, and in the other, it does not? If so, why? Why the inconsistency?

When has authoritarian political control of the economy, which is what protectionism is, ever been superior to freedom?

As protectionism is the heart of mercantilism, why do protectionists insist on continuing the antiquated and archaic mercantile system that all economists of merit have denounced for 200 years?

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

More articles on economics.

Friday, July 3, 2009

A Conspiratorial View of the War for Southern Independence

A Conspiratorial View of the War for Southern Independence
Thomas Allen


[Editor's note: To reduce the length of this article, the footnotes in the original have been omitted.]

Our story begins in 1845 when Giuseppe Mazzini, an Italian revolutionist, came to the United States and organized the Young American movement. The Young American society was modeled after his Young Italy, a secret society whose objective was to overthrow the established governments of Italy and unite Italy under a republican government.

Mazzini was an Illuminist of the highest degree, probably the highest Illuminist in the world at this time. He was a believer in violent revolutions and a forefather of Communism. He organized the Revolution of 1848, whose purpose was to overthrow the monarchs of continental Europe and replace them with a communist state. Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Minister, backed Mazzini and his revolution with British diplomacy and money. After the failed Revolution of 1848, Palmerston replaced Mazzini as the head of the Illuminists. Mazzini went on, along with Garibaldi, to unify Italy 1860. (Lincoln offered Garibaldi command of the Union army.)

Illuminists are today’s globalists and supporters of world government and the New World Order. They include international financiers, Trilateralists, Bilderbergers, Communists; Talmudic Jews and Fabian Socialists; members of the Skull and Bones and the Council on Foreign Relations; and the inner most circles of the New Agers, Freemasonry, Rosicrucians, and Zionists.

In 1845, Mazzini organized the Young American movement in the United States, which he directed for some years afterwards. This movement was primarily active in rural areas as a farmer’s movement. It also was active in the abolitionist movement. Mazzini became the godfather of the antislavery campaign. The abolitionists became front men for the Illuminists, who wanted to destroy the United States and their Constitution. Years before the War for Southern Independence, the Young American Masonic conspiracy was active in the South promoting the abolitionist cause.

Also, involved in the founding of the Young America movement was Edwin DeLeon. DeLeon became an adviser to President Jefferson Davis and the chief propagandist of the Confederacy in Europe. While DeLeon led the expansionist wing of the Young America, William Lloyd Garrison, a spiritualist, led the abolitionist wing.

Garrison was a leading abolitionist and a friend of Mazzini. Garrison published the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which he started in 1831. Unnamed backers financed his paper, so it could be distributed free through the South.

The abolitionist movement was in effect an undeclared war against the Southern States. (Until the War for Southern Independence, most Americans viewed the United States as a "confederation of states associated under the provisions of a compact, the Constitution of the United States.")

Agitation over slavery, which many in the South had been working to eliminate, would be used to cause the war that the Illuminist wanted. This agitation was to conceal the drive for total control of the economy of the United States. Lincoln knew that the war was over the economy and not slavery, so did most Southerners. (Charles Adams goes as far as to describe the war as one large tax revolt by Southerners. They opposed the high protective tariff that Lincoln promised, which would make Southerners pay proportionally a much larger share, upwards to 80 percent of the total tariffs collected, than did Northerners while Northerners received proportionally a much higher benefit from federal expenditures.) Intelligent people in both sections knew that technological advances would end slavery. However, the Illuminists wanted war. They did everything that they could to cause war while remaining concealed in the background. They succeeded.

The abolitionist movement grew out of the Essex Junto of New England. (The Essex Junto was the New England secessionist movement that calumniated in the Hartford Convention of 1814.) Associated with the abolitionist movement were the pseudo religious cults of Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, which were often called "the New England religion." Both sects reduce Jesus to a mere human albeit an extremely good man. They also rejected the bodily resurrection of Jesus from death.

Transcendentalism was based on the Jewish Cabala. It invalidated the Bible by claiming that no final authority in any religious matter existed. Thus, the abolitionists like Garrison could deny any authority for slavery in the Bible in spite of the many passages to the contrary.

Fervently worked the abolitionists to thwart the Southern emancipation movement. They wanted a destructive war against the South. Emancipation was irrelevant except as an excuse for war.

In 1859 John Brown, the father of modern-day terrorism, led an armed invasion of the South. His objective was to promote a slave revolt. Prominent abolitionists financed his invasion: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Rev. Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns. This group became known as the Secret Six. Other leading New Englanders who aided Brown were Samuel Cabot and John Murray Forbes.

Higginson was from a leading New England banking family and a national leader of American Freemasonry. He funneled money from British radicals to abolitionists in Massachusetts who agreed with his goal of abolishing the United States Constitution and dissolving the United States. Stephen Higginson, who had been involved in the Essex Junto, was his grandfather.

Howe was from a wealthy banking family and husband of Julia Howe, who wrote the anti-Southern song the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Howe and his wife, Julia, founded The Commonwealth, an antislavery tabloid.

Parker was a leading Transcendentalist and Congregationalist minister and an activist in the Masonic tradition. He married into the Cabot family. He was the principal organizer of the Secret Six to finance John Brown’s raid.

Sanborn was a disciple of Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1857 he became Brown’s chief agent in New York.

Smith was the first to finance Brown. He was the son of John Jacob Astor’s business partner. Holding more than a million acres, he was the largest land owner in New York. Smith was also a financial backer of Mazzini.

Stearns was the leader of the Free Soilers (the Free Soilers were antislavery agitators in Kansas). He provided Brown and his terrorist gang money and a farm in Kansas from which to operate.

Cabot paid for rifles for Brown to use in Kansas. Later his bank, Cabot Bank, lent Brown money for his terrorist operations. This loan was never repaid, and no attempt to collect it was made.

Forbes was a wealthy railroad builder and a member of the Republican National Committee. Forbes was also a financial backer of Emerson.

Plans for the Harper’s Ferry raid were laid at the Massachusetts State Disunion Convention, which Higginson called in 1857. Its objective was to split the United States. This convention was little more than a continuation of the Essex Junto. However, instead of New England States leaving the Union, the Southern States would be driven out of the Union.

After Brown was executed, he became a martyr of the abolitionists. Emerson, ideological leader of the abolitionists conspiracy, eulogized him and promoted him as a saint. Emerson was a Young America supporter and an agent of the British imperialists.

Years before the War for Southern Independence, Illuminists had sent agents to the South to take control of key positions and to agitate for secession. These agents included John A. Quitman, John Slidell, and Albert Pike. Thus, Illuminists were behind the abolitionists and others in the North provoking the Southern States to secede and the provocateurs in the South advocating secession.

Quitman, a New Yorker, moved to Mississippi and married into a prominent Southern family. He carried a warrant to form a Scottish Rite organization in Mississippi. By 1848 he had been inaugurated as Sovereign Grand Inspector General of the 33rd degree, and all lodges in the South were directed to obey him. Quitman became an outspoken leader of the secessionist movement in the South. (Freemasons controlled the secessionist movement.) He also promoted the annexation of Mexico and financed an invasion of Cuba, which was a goal of Young America. (For his involvement in the planned Cuban invasion, he was indicted.)

Slidell, an agent of the Rothschilds, led the secessionist party in Louisiana. He was from New York and a Masonic protégée of Edward Livingston, Grand Master of New York. (Livingston, who was President Jackson’s Secretary of State, was a coconspirator with Aaron Burr.) Slidell became a commissioner to Europe assigned primarily to the Court of France. After the War, he went to England. Here he became one of the Queen’s Counsels in London and lived the remainder of his life in luxury.

Slidell’s second in command in Louisiana was Judah P. Benjamin, a Jew. Benjamin and Slidell were partners in the same law firm. Like Slidell, Benjamin was also an agent of the Rothschilds. Benjamin became the Attorney General of the Confederate government. Later President Davis appointed him Secretary of War and then Secretary of State. After the War, he too went to England and became one of the Queen’s Counsel for Lancashire.

Albert Pike moved from New York to Missouri in 1831 and then to Arkansas in 1833. He received 4th through 32nd degrees of the Scottish Rite in 1853 and the 33rd degree in 1857. Pike was then tasked with organizing Freemasonry for the political leadership of secession. Pike, a brigadier general, became Indian commissioner for the Confederacy and was sent to Oklahoma. Here he raised an army of Indians, which was so barbarous that President Davis disbanded it. After the war, Pike was convicted of treason (war crimes), but President Johnson soon pardoned him. (Pike was also a speaker and an official at the Republican Party convention in 1855. Freemasonry organized the Republican Party.) After his pardon, Pike would climb to the very pinnacle of Freemasonry and eventually become the most powerful man on Earth as the head of the Illuminists.

Howell Cobb was the chairman of the convention held at Montgomery, Alabama, that officially established the government of the Confederacy. He was the Scottish Rite Supreme Commander.

After the North had pushed the South beyond any reasonable forbearance, the Southern States sought independence. The Northern States were determined to reduce them to provinces to be exploited for the benefit of the North—primarily the banking and industrial interest in the North. Finally war broke out. To provoke a war, Lincoln sent a fleet to reinforce Fort Sumter.

Lincoln was an agent of the Illuminists if not an Illuminist himself. The Illuminist wanted war, and Lincoln gave it to them.

Thus, the Illuminists maneuvered the people of the North and the South into a war that neither wanted. With this war, the Illuminists achieved much of their goal of destroying the United States Constitution. The Reconstruction amendments, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, especially the last two, overturned much of the original Constitution and reduced the States to administrative provinces subservient to the United States government. Perhaps more importantly in furthering the Illuminists’ goal was the precedence set by the imperial presidency of Lincoln during the war and by the Radical Republicans in Congress and the Johnson and Grant administrations during Reconstruction.

Some people claim that a goal of the Illuminists was to split the United States into two small, weak countries that the Rothschilds could easily control. However, Russia prevented such foreign intervention by sending two fleets to the United States, one to San Francesco and the other to New York. This maneuver by the Russians prevented the French and Spanish troops in Mexico from entering the war for the Confederacy. Thus, James de Rothschild lost his domain of Mexico and the Southern States, and Lionel Rothschild lost his domain of the Northern States. Because Russia spoiled this Rothschild dream, it was chosen for the communist revolution and decades of brutal communist rule.

A flaw in this claim is Great Britain. At this time the Rothschilds had as much influence over the British as they did over the French. If they had really wanted to split the United States in two countries, Great Britain would have entered the war as an ally of the Confederacy. The Russian fleet would have been no match for the British fleet, which ruled the oceans. Furthermore, with British rule of the seas, Russia could not send troops to the United States. It could have only aided the United States by marching across Europe. Such action would have been highly unlikely. That Russia could have defeated the combined armies of Prussia and the other German states, Austro-Hungary, and lesser European powers on its way to invade France is highly unlikely. Great Britain, France, Sardinia, and Turkey had just defeated Russia in the Crimean War.

More important, Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister of Great Britain during the War for Southern Independence. At this time, he was a member of the inner most circle of the Illuminists and probably was the highest ranking Illuminist in the world. If the Illuminists had desired an independent Southern Confederation, Great Britain would have come to the aid of the South in spite of any domestic opposition. After all, Lord Palmerston had recognized the government of Louis Napoleon in 1852 in spite of opposition from his party, the Prime Minister, Parliament, and the Queen. He did have the support of the press as his Masonic brothers control the press.

Contrary to what many conspiratorial historians believe, the War for Southern Independence was not fought to split the United States into two or more countries. Members of the Knights of the Golden Circle, Young America, and descendants of the Essex Junto may have believed division was the objective. The objective, however, was not division, but the consolidation of power. True, the Illuminists wanted war, but they did not want war to divide the United States into multiple countries. They wanted war to destroy the United States Constitution and the sovereignty of the States. They wanted war to consolidate political power in the federal government (one government is easier to control than many, which is why the Illuminists want to consolidate all political power into a one world government) and to make the United States a great military power that they would control. All these goals they accomplished. If division were the objective, surely the European powers, which the Illuminists controlled, would have guaranteed a division by direct intervention instead of relying on the Confederate army, which they knew was no matched for the Union army over time. (The Union army essentially had the resources of the world behind it. The Confederacy had barely more than the resources of the Southern States.)

The war ended, like all wars, as a great blood sacrifice to Lucifer. On the altar of Illuminism, 365,000 Yankees and 258,000 Confederates had been sacrificed. Most of them were Aryans.

Southerners had fought to preserve the God-given unalienable rights and liberties of mankind embodied in the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights. They fought for the dispersal and decentralization of power as opposed to the illuministic goal of the concentration and centralization of power. The South had the highest concentration of anti-Illuminists of any place in the world. The great Christian revival and conversions that occurred among the Confederate soldiers during the war accented this anti-Illuminism. The Illuminists had to destroy the South. Destroy her they did.

When the War for Southern Independence concluded with the surrenders of Robert Lee, Joseph Johnston, Richard Taylor, Kirby Smith, and Stand Waite and the capture of President Jefferson Davis, Reconstruction began. Reconstruction was merely a continuation of the war on a different level. Reconstruction continued the plundering and destruction of the South.

During Reconstruction, the United States army occupied the South. State governments were not allowed to function without the consent of the federal government. While the newly freed slaves, who knew nothing of government, were allowed to vote, many Aryans were striped of their franchise. A coalition of Negroes, carpetbaggers, and scalawags backed by the United States army controlled the governments of the Southern States during much of Reconstruction. These antisouthern governments imposed ruinous taxation, acquired enormous debts, and in general improvised the South so greatly that more than one hundred years were needed to recover. Furthermore, the United States government undertook a policy to deny Southern Aryans justice.

For the Illuminists, the purpose of the war and Reconstruction was to punish Southerners because they had the audacity to oppose a basic principle of Illuminism—Oriental despotism. Southerners saw in Lincoln an Oriental despot, and his conduct during the war proved them right. Once in office Lincoln ignored the United States Constitution and establish a dictatorial central government. After his assassination, the Radical Republicans in Congress led by Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Representative Thaddeus Stevens (Stevens was a bachelor, who lived with a female mulatto) of Pennsylvania continued his and the Illuminists’ program of destroying the South.

How much involvement that the Radical Republicans had with Lincoln’s assassination may never be fully known. They certainly were not disappointed with his death. He showed that he would treat the Southern States much less harshly than the Radical Republicans desired. His death, which the Radical Republicans blamed on the South, was a propaganda victory for them. They used it to whip up popular support in the North and to squash any organized opposition to their draconian Reconstruction program. If high-level Illuminists did not actually order his association, they almost certainly consented to it.

The weapon that the Radical Republicans undertook to use to destroy Southern Aryans was the Negro. They promised Negroes social and political equality, which both President Lincoln and President Johnson opposed. White Northern scum was sent South to fraternize with Negroes in their shacks. Many freed slaves adopted the life of idleness—the United States government had become their new master and was supporting them, as it does even to this day. Many were vagrants, drunkards, and criminals. When the Southern States attempted to bring order by adopting antivagrancy work codes and laws proscribing immorality, miscegenation, and the like, Radical Republicans condemned them. Although these laws copied almost verbatim similar laws in the North, they were not appropriate for the South. The South needed destroying.

Furthermore, the United States government forced the Southern States to enfranchise Negroes while most Northern States did not allow them to vote. To increase the political power of the Negroes, and those who controlled them, many Aryans were denied the vote. Thus, Southern haters could easily manipulate ignorant Negroes to the disadvantage of the Southern States and Southern Aryans.

Negroes were organized into Union Leagues and Loyal Leagues. These societies had elaborate ceremonies, passwords, and solemn oaths. Members spent much time marching and drilling. Stern discipline was imposed. Members were intimidated and promised death if they voted for a Democrat. Negroes who deviated from the society’s directives were often whipped. Northerners filled them with inflammatory speeches promising them land owned by Aryans. Thus, racial hatred was instilled in Negroes.

The destruction of the South and the imposition of martial law on the Southern States were carried out, in part, through the Reconstruction Acts. Under the threat of military might, the Southern States were coerced into ratifying the three Reconstruction amendments to the United States Constitution. Samuel P. Chase, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, supported the Reconstruction Acts and resisted all challenges to them. He led the Court in declaring them constitutional.

Chase was a New York banker. Between 1830 and 1860, he actively aided fugitive slaves in Ohio. He was Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury. As Secretary of the Treasury, he developed the national banking system and issued the first paper money of the United States not backed by gold.

Reconstruction formally ended in 1877, but efforts to reconstruct the South into the image of Illuminism continue to this day. One of the most odious elements of Reconstruction still found in the South today is federal supervision of elections.

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Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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