As insane policies by bankers and special interest technocrats lead to a loss of faith in fiat currencies generally, the precious metals markets have awoken from a near century long manipulated rest. Asserting themselves increasingly as the money of choice among savvy investors and a deep-seeded freedom movement, the future of money does not lie in the U.S. Dollar. Silver, in particular, has become an exciting prospect for the younger generation, many of whom purchase silver not as an investment, but, rather, as a store of wealth or means of savings. Those who affiliate themselves with the Silver Liberation Army, furthermore, see it as a weapon against demise-of-the-state globalist banks.

In late 2010, silver made exciting moves. Moving from $18-$31 an ounce from August-December, individuals were given a taste of what was to come the following spring. Before making its parabolic run in April, silver would pull back a bit in January, thus shaking out some of the market’s weaker hands. To be sure, despite this January dip, silver had not broken below quarterly moving averages, and certainly had not come close to that $18 price. For that reason and others, many were predicting an end of the year silver price of approximately $45-$50. Then, they thought they had gotten it way wrong, from the underside, when silver tested $50 at the end of April.

In January, reports surfaced that Eric Sprott was having trouble locating silver. Plus, Harvey Organ reported in early January that the Central Fund of Canada had not added to its inventory of silver and gold. Increasingly, people were taking valuable gold & silver out of the market and the clutches of central bankers.

That same month, newsletter writer Bob Chapman, of The International Forecaster wrote that there was a “distinct” possibility that the US Treasury had little, if any, of the gold it claimed to have. John Williams argued that, when real inflation since 1980 was considered, gold should be trading at around $7,700 an ounce. Bob Chapman stated his staff and he believes silver should be trading at more than $100.00 an ounce. He wrote this on the heels of a gold and silver “mini correction.” The International Forecaster also states:

…Again 95% of newsletter writers, analysts and economists were wrong. As we say, go long and stay long. These fools continue to try to justify their existence. As you can see the US government, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and HSBC cannot hold prices down for more than several days. The physical demand is overwhelming.

Chapman goes onto elaborate on the then incipient Max Keiser, “Crash Banksters, Buy Silver” campaign. He suggests it is working. The movement was not envisaged by Max Keiser to literally bring down JPMorgan, as much as it was to bring to light the rampant corruption the banking institution applied to the commodities exchange. Later in the year, as MF Global collapsed, reports would surface that the exact amount of silver missing from customer funds at MF Global, turned up at the JPMorgan operated COMEX vault. JPMorgan became first-in-line for bailout funds in the wake of MF Global. In MF Global, the world witnessed another financial assassination in a financial war that leads towards increasing power consolidation.
Scant spoken, in April 2011 the price of silver rose above the price of the JPMorgan stock price, what amounts to a psychological victory for those in favor of historically based money in the S.L.A.

By mid-February rumors were cropping up on the internet claiming that fine silver bullion was further and further out for delivery. Silver would indeed become backed up for weeks, from Hong Kong to New York, in the spring.

In early March, the political status of silver in Utah sparked excitement in many fans of the poor man’s gold, silver. On March 4th, Utah took the initial steps towards a gold standard when the state House passed a bill that would acknowledge gold and silver coins issued by the federal government as legal tender. This means the Gold and Silver Eagles produced by the U.S. Mint. The House voted 47-26 in favor of the legislation which also exempted the sale of gold from the state capital gains tax and calls for a committee to research possible alternative currencies for the state. The use of the coins would not replace any paper currency, but would be used as a voluntary option of payment.
Backers of the bill in Utah said they wanted to send a message to the rest of the country.

“People sense that in the era of quantitative easing and zero interest rates, something has gone haywire with our monetary policy,” said Jeffrey Bell, policy director for the Washington-based American Principles in Action. His organization helped to shape the bill.

“If one state recognizes gold as a valid currency, I think it would embolden people not just in other states but in Washington,” he said.

By March 24, silver reached as high as $38.17, but did not close above $38. At the close of March trading, silver closed at $37.87—the highest month-end price ever, ignoring inflation.

In early March, upon release of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s monthly Bank Participation report, it was clear that the largest 1-4 banks with positions in the COMEX silver market had increased their net short position by 30 million ounces. Of course, JPMorgan Chase most likely owns most of this short position, as has been reported by multiple sources. Also, tens to hundreds of millions of ounces of silver due for delivery to fulfill maturing COMEX March 2011 contracts were settled with little silver actually removed from COMEX warehouses. Of course, these keystone banking institutions in the shorting silver business did everything they could to settle the contracts with cash, probably paying in excess of $50 per ounce.

Foresight of the parabolic move up in silver became rampant on the internet by mid-march 2011. Charts such as this one were presented in mid-march so as to demonstrate the possibility for silver over the coming weeks and months:

For the chartists, the price movements leading into March 2011 looked similar to the silver price blow-off of 1978-1980, which sent silver to $50 an ounce—a price still yet achieved 31 years later.

At that time, in mid-March 2011, the dualism of market predictions indicated that the price of silver was going to result in one of two things: either an end to the spike of the last 2-3 years or a base formed on which a parabolic price movement would build. Sideways movement would be highly unlikely unless the market were faced by unprecedented price manipulation. It was indicated by many chartists that, in order for a price spike in silver to build a formidable foundation, gold would have to breakout of its $1400-$1450 range. This would indeed happen, as by the end of April, after silver broke-out from around $33 an ounce all the way to just shy of $49.70, gold had reached as high as $1539. At that time, the dollar had dropped for four straight weeks against a basket of major currencies and China had signaled that it would be diversifying its reserves into precious metals.

An important theme in April was a closing of the gap in the gold:silver ratio. By April 4 the gap was about 37:1. By the month’s end, the ratio had targeted 30:1. This price run up, which had silver flirting with $50 an ounce was the start of great long-term volatility. In April, except for the end, there was little volatility and the market moved consistently to the upside. By the low to mid $40 range, $50 began to seem like a reachable target.

As silver came closer to the $50 psychological record, mass media began trumpeting it, most likely in anticipation of the coming blood bath. On April 25, Reuters quoted Hakan Kaya, commodities portfolio manager at Neuberger Berman, who bearishly said: “Silver has transformed itself from an inflation hedge to a speculation tool…At current prices, we find it highly overvalued with no fundamental reasons backing it up.”

Kaya offers up an offhand analysis, submitting that the silver had been somehow “transformed,” although it had long been a speculation tool, as made obvious by the enormous silver shorting going on on behalf of the ruling international banks, in particular JPMorgan and HSBC. While true that silver speculation had increased considerably in the aggressive April run-off, speculation was nothing new to this market. To his credit, he did foresee the move in silver being unstable and due to a correction in this extraordinary, secular bull market.

By April’s end, though, the silver market had transformed itself into a frothy killing field. And, in the slim markets of early Monday Asian trading, which opens up on Sunday in the U.S., enormous sell-offs continued from the end of the following week.

The climactic top, however, was clear when one recognized the market was seeing record volume, just like in November of previous year right before there was downside action in silver. The ten-day moving average of $42 was to be quickly found before silver tumbled still into May. Of importance to note is that, in the high-forties, the silver price was all over the map in a chaotic manner, thus foretelling of its coming collapse.

Silver was in for a shellacking, receiving 3 margin increases in 5 days from the CME, who is in charge of futures (paper) contracts, upon which the “spot price” is based. The banking establishment, waging wars forever against the markets, gave the silver market no love then, whilst obviously profiting wholesale off insider trading.

This period created a whole new breed of silver holder: The 49’er. I am here, dear 49’ers, to assure you that your sentiment was not in vain: the power of dollar-cost averaging, although it might be hard to get up the courage and buy more silver, cannot go understated. Here you sit today, down nearly $25 an ounce on your initial investment, if not more. What a great opportunity to “keep on stackin’!” Buy more silver! Why were you worried in the first place when you traded your Fed Notes for Silvers rounds and bars? You were thinking that this must be the final run for silver, with gold to follow shortly. It must be the end of the dollar! Now is a great time to buy silver not out of fear, but out of reason. Bring down your average cost per ounce.

As gold climbed all the way to a whopping $1,920 an ounce over the summer, apparently targeting $2,000 an ounce, silver continually tested the $36-$37 price range, only to be brought down as it flirted with $42-$44 price range down to $26 in late September. For the remainder the year, silver would do scant, barely flirting with the mid-$30 range.
Throughout the rest of 2011, Europe would be the center of worldwide attention, as the Eurozone pact seemed to be disintegrating before everybody’s eyes. In pavlovian obedience, money fled Europe for the U.S. Dollar, as well as gold and silver. But what went into the U.S Dollar promoted strength in the U.S. Dollar Index. Anyone want to book a trip to Europe, quick?

For that reason, the metals markets, in dollar denominated terms, remained relatively quiet, until the last week of trading, when in seeming desperation paper pushers took advantage of quiet markets—during the week between Christmas and New Year’s—to bring down the gold and silver prices for a telling year end close.

Silver finished down on the year, approximately 8%. This year, those who champion silver as a sound investment or savings vehicle were wrong. Well, maybe the dollar was worth less by year’s end than it was at the beginning? Despite huge swings down towards 73 on the Dollar Index, the Dollar finished the year one point up from where it began the year at 79. And so, it finished right around 80.

But, with 2011 in the history books, silver trends did not change much, with worldwide faith in the dollar evaporating and individuals searching for inflation hedges. Riding the coattails of these inflation/collapse hedge seekers are those who have begun to view silver as a savings account or even as a social movement geared at bringing down criminal banks who operate above and beyond the traditional values of the population, as well as above law. Their actions only serve to increase demand for silver, and their actions will only continue.

Chaos will be the theme for 2012, and even the government knows that, as Obama signed into law NDAA on New Year’s Eve, a bill codifying into law the arrest and detention of Americans without right to council or a trial. Expect the real possibility for the Occupy protests against greed and corruption to begin morphing into food riots. Welcome to the Neo-Soviet Union: The United States of America. This is the reality on the way to a one world state in a totalitarian and command-and-control model, of which much has been written in philosophy, literature and social sciences.

For all that is good, if even solely out of moral efficacy, get out of U.S. Dollars.
Buy Silver! Crash JPMorgan!

All the Best,

Compare Silver Prices

Dead Iraqi baby never found out who wrote the newsletters.

=================================================================================

Angela Keaton spoke at the Libertopia Festival 2011 in San Diego
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“Under a Communist Party Government, South Africa will become a land of milk and honey.”        

                                                                      -Nelson Mandela

 Occupy Wall Street is providing a refreshing new insight into how the collectivist mind works (or does not).  Now that the global warming business is starting to fall on deaf ears, the hard left government supremacist hive mind is having to find new vehicles and venues to press their agenda for universal slavery.  The assault on the tattered remnants of private business is now the subject of much mewling and teeth-grinding by the usual suspects.  I did want to express my personal condolences to Hillary Clinton on the death of Kim Jong Il, her dreams of a happy marriage to more straight-forward partisan of her most secret ambitions is now dashed on the rocky shoreline of history unfulfilled.

Let’s get back to fundamentals.  What is a private business?  It is a method of trading products and services for wealth to generate profits to enrich the owners and workers in the enterprise and additionally seed the investment, growth and expansion of the business.

What is the business of government and politicians?  To earn wealth and establish punitive control over individual transactions with no merit whatsoever; in other words, to employ the monopoly powers of violence to enrich the few at the expense of the many.   Bastiat said it more eloquently but there it is.  Politicians love to project an image of stately dignity and honorifics for the terrific and self-sacrificing service they do.  The deception is blatant and they are no more than thieves wrapped in expensive state regalia with armed guards to protect them from their victims.  Those victims they have not mentally turned to eunuchs already through the insidious ministrations of television, government education and the soothing bastardization of the language to manipulate the sheeple, are waking up to the sheer audacity of the heist that has been called the state.  Turning the Bolshevik idyll on its head, it speaks to the true nature of government and governance.

Hence some examples of the government “business model”:

What is American-Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) return on its investment of approximately 15 million per annum in memberships and grants?  About 2.77 billion taxpayer dollars plus the special dispensation granted by the DoD and other government agencies for grants and giveaways (30% of the acknowledged US foreign aid budget).  Of course, we all know that per Federal Election Commission (FEC) v. Akins, et al., AIPAC is not a political organization so it is not required to file the onerous minutiae required for political lobbying even though they have five or six registered lobbyists and a host of espionage allegations.

What is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU)?  Both of these fetid organizations would have no reason to exist if the Federal Government weren’t there to provide the backdoor trough from which they rob the taxpayer.  Unsurprisingly, a tremendous amount of socialist and communist influence permeates both ACORN and SEIU.  Along with the radical Apollo Alliance and the Tides Foundation, they helped craft the monstrous stimulus bill which further bankrupted what is increasingly a zombie economy in these united States.

What do the aforementioned organizations have in common?  As with countless other entities in America and around the world, they would not be here except for the existence of the state.  The government is the parasite and these are the looters and tax-eaters that live upon other’s production and sweat equity.  These are the government analogs of organized crime, muggers and other miscreants whose sole purpose is to thrive off of other members of the community at the point of a gun.  Politicians are very well-heeled and equipped highwaymen who are a menace to peace and prosperity throughout the world as history has ably demonstrated.  These are simply the latest group of sociopaths and their enablers who maintain that man should not be free but under harness and micromanaged for their own good.

They have even developed a sophisticated academic rationale and industry to provide the apparent intellectual rigor to justify the rapine and murderous behavior that government creates and endorses as it merrily destroys all that is good in the world and replaces it with the hordes of shambling and compliant shells of humanity that shuffle off to work every day to pay their taxes so they feed the Machine.  When you consider the tax burden just in America, it almost rivals Denmark and France.  I think the graphs and charts once finds on the internet are deceptive because they don’t address the aggregate tax burden (federal, state, local, excise, corporate, etc).  As I have pointed out before, when all is said and done, Americans pay nearly 60% of their income in taxes once all Federal, state and lower echelonment taxes are accounted for not to mention the impossible task of putting a dollar figure on the mountains of regulation that impede and strangle business every day.  Far greater than the estimated 10% of labor the medieval serfs were yoked with.  The universities and major news organs are choked with vine-ripened apologists for statist excess and murder.  Whether it is the “right-wing” talk radio celebrities popping the bubbly for more strangers killed overseas or the massive “left-wing” herd of apparatchiks on the news media mewling benignly about the efficacy of more laws and restrictions on human behavior, the message is the same:  more government power moves us ever closer to perfection of humanity in this mortal coil. They seek the same enigmatic creature:  Homo Sovieticus.

You have to hand it to the self-described socialists and communists like Bernie Sanders and Van Jones, at least they are honest (even though I think all collectivist thought is a form of intellectual drunkenness) in who they are instead of mouthing platitudes about safety, the children and national security to disguise their unbridled lust for power and control over others.  At least they have the fortitude to precisely describe their child-like reverence for the state without resorting to the intellectual gymnastics of the usual suspects in the media.

I have often thought that to be a Communist at the beginning of the twentieth century was possibly an intellectually defensible position looking at the scant history of the movement in power and practice yet one hundred years later this extreme form of collectivism should be universally reviled and is intellectually and morally indefensible; and here in 2009, not only are the same miserable failures and barbaric practices heralded but endorsed by no less than the President of this decaying country known as America.

Do you want to get a chill that makes your hair stand on end?  Visit the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) website and read the naked advocacy of Obamunism.  It would be fascinating to hire some historians to go through the 12,000 cartons of donated archives of the CPUSA at the Tamiment Library at NYU.  They had to move the archives to clear out four floors of the office building housing CPUSA.  Not to mention the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, Socialist Workers Party, Progressive Labor Party and other morally handicapped organizations.  There is yet another future political forensic project to see how much money these organizations have received from the government and how many of its members have jobs in the administration.    RedDR’s administration was so filled with Soviet agents, communist sympathizers like Vice President Henry Wallace and fifth columnists that it dominated the political paradigm in Washington.  The New Deal was informed by all manner of collectivism during what is considered the American Communist Party’s golden age in the 1930’s and now the cycle begins anew.  I highly recommend the books by Harvey Klehr and Robert Conquest if you want a deeper understanding of the juggernaut.

We often take it for granted in the libertarian orbit that it is a slam-dunk intellectually that private individuals in a cooperative sphere absent coercion are the best form of human society.  If the twentieth century taught us anything, it is this: certain sociopaths in our midst have a penchant to rule and legions of willing and able followers are waiting for the chance to don the yoke and assume the role of loyal serfs.  The argument on optimal human order is far from over and the individualists among us have a huge fight ahead of us to convince our fellow man of the merits of volunteerism, persuasion, cooperation and spontaneous market forces.

While the behavior of the Democrat Party makes it self-evident that they are an unabashed socialist enterprise, the behavior of the Grand Old Politburo has certainly gladdened the hearts of dictators around the planet and put the full strength and manpower of the national security state behind the efforts to track diaper purchases.  We have all heard the tired old saw about the satisfaction of the Communist Manifesto in America but what about the Socialist platform from 1912?  The first preamble:

The Socialist party declares that the capitalist system has outgrown its historical function, and has become utterly incapable of meeting the problems now confronting society. We denounce this outgrown system as incompetent and corrupt and the source of unspeakable misery and suffering to the whole working class.

That could have been pulled from the latest editorial by Paul Krugman in the New York Times.  Here is the list of platform demands and I have italicized which items have culminated and made comments in brackets where appropriate.  I offer this thought experiment:  of all the items which have not been adopted, would the regime in Mordor on the Potomac advance and endorse them today if the opportunity availed itself? To wit:

Working Program

As measures calculated to strengthen the working class in its fight for the realization of its ultimate aim, the co-operative commonwealth, and to increase its power against capitalist oppression, we advocate and pledge ourselves and our elected officers to the following program:

Collective Ownership

1. The collective ownership and democratic management of railroads, wire and wireless telegraphs and telephones, express service, steamboat lines, and all other social means of transportation and communication and of all large scale industries. [This has been effectively achieved through comprehensive vertical and horizontal regulation of the marketplace especially in the Federal arena.]
2. The immediate acquirement by the municipalities, the states or the federal government of all grain elevators, stock yards, storage warehouses, and other distributing agencies, in order to reduce the present extortionate cost of living. [Read some of the Homeland Security edicts and the emerging law on hoarding.]
3. The extension of the public domain to include mines, quarries, oil wells, forests and water power. [Look at the percentages of Federal land in the Rocky Mountain Western states for a chilling view of DC ownership of resources and land.]
4. The further conservation and development of natural resources for the use and benefit of all the people . . .
5. The collective ownership of land wherever practicable, and in cases where such ownership is impracticable, the appropriation by taxation of the annual rental value of all the land held for speculation and exploitation.
6. The collective ownership and democratic management of the banking and currency system.

Unemployment

The immediate government relief of the unemployed by the extension of all useful public works. All persons employed on such works to be engaged directly by the government under a work day of not more than eight hours and at not less than the prevailing union wages. The government also to establish employment bureaus; to lend money to states and municipalities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works, and to take such other measures within its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist class.

Industrial Demands

1. The conservation of human resources, particularly of the lives and well-being of the workers and their families:
2. By shortening the work day in keeping with the increased productiveness of machinery.
3. By securing for every worker a rest period of not less than a day and a half in each week.
4. By securing a more effective inspection of workshops, factories and mines.
5. By the forbidding the employment of children under sixteen years of age.
6. By the co-operative organization of the industries in the federal penitentiaries for the benefit of the convicts and their dependents.
7. By forbidding the interstate transportation of the products of child labor, of convict labor and of all uninspected factories and mines.
8. By abolishing the profit system in government work and substituting either the direct hire of labor or the awarding of contracts to co-operative groups of workers.
9. By establishing minimum wage scales.
10. By abolishing official charity and substituting a non-contributory system of old age pensions, a general system of insurance by the State of all its members against unemployment and invalidism and a system of compulsory insurance by employers of their workers, without cost to the latter, against industrial diseases, accidents and death.[Social Security and its appendages satisfied this plea.]

Political Demands

1. The absolute freedom of press, speech and assemblage. [One of the few sane proposals in the entire platform.]
2. The adoption of a graduated income tax and the extension of inheritance taxes, graduated in proportion to the value of the estate and to nearness of kin-the proceeds of these taxes to be employed in the socialization of industry.
3. The abolition of the monopoly ownership of patents and the substitution of collective ownership, with direct rewards to inventors by premiums or royalties. [How do you incentivize innovation in the absence of sowing the fruits of individual labor?]
4. Unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and women.
5. The adoption of the initiative, referendum and recall and of proportional representation, nationally as well as locally.
6. The abolition of the Senate and of the veto power of the President.
7. The election of the President and Vice-President by direct vote of the people.
8. The abolition of the power usurped by the Supreme Court of the United States to pass upon the constitutionality of the legislation enacted by Congress. National laws to be repealed only by act of Congress or by a referendum vote of the whole people.
9. Abolition of the present restrictions upon the amendment of the constitution, so that instrument may be made amendable by a majority of the voters in a majority of the States.
10. The granting of the right of suffrage in the District of Columbia with representation in Congress and a democratic form of municipal government for purely local affairs.
11. The extension of democratic government to all United States territory.
12. The enactment of further measures for the conservation of health. The creation of an independent bureau of health, with such restrictions as will secure full liberty to all schools of practice.
13. The enactment of further measures for general education and particularly for vocational education in useful pursuits. The Bureau of Education to be made a department.
14. The separation of the present Bureau of Labor from the Department of Commerce and Labor and its elevation to the rank of a department.
15. Abolition of federal districts courts and the United States circuit court of appeals. State courts to have jurisdiction in all cases arising between citizens of several states and foreign corporations. The election of all judges for short terms. [Another meritorious platform requirement
16. The immediate curbing of the power of the courts to issue injunctions.
17. The free administration of the law.
18. The calling of a convention for the revision of the constitution of the U. S. [I would prefer the abolition thereof and the break-up of these united States.]

With very few exceptions, this and the Communist Manifesto is the intellectual backbone of America’s political leadership.  Excepting Ron Paul, what politician at the Federal level is championing states rights, freed markets and non-interventionism domestically and overseas?  Not a soul.

“We shall tax and tax, and spend and spend, and elect and elect.”

-Harry Hopkins*

*Harry Hopkins was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s closest advisers. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country. In World War II he was Roosevelt’s chief diplomatic advisor and troubleshooter and was a key policy maker in the $50 billion Lend Lease program that sent aid to the allies.

His Soviet code name was Zamestitel.

Copyright © 2011 by zerogov.com

Jeff Riggenbach

Good afternoon, Jeff.  Tell us how you view revisionist history and how it sharpens our perspective on how the world really works.

We should always remember that history is written by the victors.   Or, to put the same idea in a slightly different way, history is invariably written by people who have a dog in the fight – people who have a stake in how the events of the past (and their consequences in the present) are viewed.  These people will, naturally, put what they regard as the best possible face on their accounts of past events.  It is therefore extremely foolhardy to read a book on, say, World War I, by a celebrated, honored, thoroughly mainstream historian who teaches at Harvard or Princeton or Stanford or Berkeley and has served as president of the American Historical Association (AHA) or the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and then say to yourself, “Okay, now I know what happened during World War I and why.  Now I can move on to some other topic.”  Nothing could be further from the truth.  You have only begun your investigations.

 The next step is to ask yourself how a person becomes a celebrated, honored, thoroughly mainstream historian who teaches in the Ivy League or its equivalent and is elected to run the AHA or the OAH.  Isn’t it by telling readers what they want to hear?  Isn’t it by going along with the conventional wisdom – with whatever is almost universally “known” to be true – in order to get along?  Are there historians who take another tack?  Who either adduce different facts or who argue that the agreed upon facts should be understood in a different way, looked at from a different perspective, examined in a different light?  Who are these writers who care so little for their career advancement?  What do they have to say?

Now there can be many reasons why someone might accept the conventional wisdom on any particular subject.  Maybe the conventional wisdom is the truth.  More often, however, I’d say people buy into the conventional wisdom out of naïveté – it never occurs to them that what “everyone” knows and believes could possibly be wrong – or out of opportunistic careerism – you live more affluently and enjoy more influence if you go along to get along.  And, of course, there are many people outside the historical professions for whom the most compelling reason of all pertains – boredom.  History bores them and they really don’t care who’s right about a controversy they never knew existed to begin with.

On one level, you can’t really argue with that position.  The person who is bored by history knows far more about what genuinely interests him or her than I can ever know.  On the other hand, a part of me wants to cry out to such a person: Don’t you understand that you’re missing one of the great eye-opening experiences possible in this life?  You have a chance to read a conventional presentation of a historical topic or period and then read a revisionist discussion of that very same topic or period.  Point, counterpoint.  It makes you realize in a way I guarantee you never have before just how much more there is to say about any subject really worth talking about than initially meets the eye.

Most people associate revisionist history with the history of wars; in fact, Brian Doherty, in Radicals for Capitalism, his very valuable book on the modern American libertarian movement, uses the term “war revisionism” whenever he refers to revisionist history.  This is understandable, certainly.  Through its control of most “education” in this country, and through its enormous influence on the mass media, the State has more to do with shaping the public’s beliefs about American history – especially recent American history – than any other person or institution you can name.  The State also has more to hide than anyone else in society.  It is guilty of more and greater wrongdoing than anyone else.  And its wrongdoing reaches its apex (or, depending on how you look at it, its nadir) in time of war.  During wars, States not only add mass murder and vandalism on a gigantic scale to their ordinary daily crimes of robbery, extortion, abduction and imprisonment; they also use the wars as pretexts for new exercises of State power over the individual or for vast expansions of powers they already had.  Little wonder, then, that revisionists have often focused on wars.

But historical revisionism is a concept that applies everywhere and should be heeded everywhere.  We need a revisionist history of American literature – one that stresses the individualism that lies at the heart of our national letters, exposes the Eurocentric bias of almost all traditional discussion of American literature, and unapologetically acknowledges the literary importance of the so-called “genre fiction” that is one of the greatest and most original contributions Americans have made to the imaginative literature of the world.  We need a revisionist history of American journalism – one that offers a different and more instructive portrayal of the “bad old days” of the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries when newspapers were openly partisan and there were not yet any established “standards” for those who wrote periodically about current events to adhere to.

I happen to think a libertarian perspective tends to bring the world into sharper relief.  One tends to be free from a partisan political filter that unbalances evidentiary bars; in other words, believers in a certain system tend to be more credulous of evidence that supports their respective positions.  We tend to look at history as a contest to attain power over others.  What do you think?

I agree that a libertarian perspective casts the world into sharper focus.  Because a libertarian understands the difference between government and the State and between a country or a people or a culture and the State that attempts to control it, a libertarian is less easily bamboozled by mainstream journalistic and historical accounts that portray the State as some sort of hero, “defending” or “rescuing” ordinary people from some menace or other.  On the other hand, I think “confirmation bias,” which is to say, “the tendency to judge a statement according to how conveniently it fits with one’s settled position,” is quite as common among libertarians as it is among our uncomprehending liberal and conservative friends.  I strongly recommend a short but very instructive piece on this question in the December (2011) Atlantic by the libertarian economist Dan Klein, who teaches at George Mason University in suburban Virginia, outside Washington.  It was Klein’s words I quoted just now on the nature of “confirmation bias.”  His piece in The Atlantic is called “I Was Wrong, and So Are You.”  Read it and weep.

Read the rest here:  http://zerogov.com/?p=2507

Chattel slavery abolitionists stood in defiance of slavery. They argued that men do not have the moral right to own other men, and of course they were correct. The truth was on their side, and it was only a matter of time before the morality of the rest of the population caught up. Now, chattel slavery is seen as universally wrong, and the fact that this abhorrent institution existed for so long has left one hell of a scar on the moral history of mankind.

Despite all of the courageous efforts of the abolitionists, a particularly nasty form of slavery still blankets humanity. It is a dangerous form of slavery, because men have been tricked into thinking this form of slavery is the very pinnacle of freedom. The slavery that infects the world now is more of a free-range style of slavery; an evolutionary adaptation of human ownership. The ballot box is the master, but it is still the individual who is enslaved.  The tyrannous will of the majority has taken the place of the will of the single despotic master. The only civil recourse the individual has against this democratic offensive is to cast a vote himself in order to try and protect his life, liberty, and property. A feeble and incapable defense perhaps, but there are only two other avenues of recourse: peaceful secession, or violent revolution. One only happens when the other cannot peacefully be realized.

To wield power over an individual’s ability to choose is the same as wielding power over his body. It is the power of choice that makes us who we are. The body is the vehicle for free choice, and when the individual’s ability to freely choose is coercively forced, then the individual has become nothing more than an organic robot. An individual’s individuality spawns from the choices he makes; it is what makes up his personality. To remove the decision making from a person because you think he is too stupid or too selfish to decide for himself is to remove the very thing that makes him human. There is no point of having the freedom of movement if the individual does not have freedom of choice. Self-ownership is so much more than just ownership of the body, it is also ownership of the choices we make, good or bad. It is also the ownership of the consequences of those choices, good or bad. An example that we are all too familiar with: how many of you feel charitable on April 15th? I’ll bet not too many. The choice to give money voluntarily to the needy has been almost wholly removed from us. We did not freely decide to give, so we do not feel the goodness that usually accompanies the act of being charitable. This is what collectivists fail to grasp, and what most social scientists fail to admit. Nothing will fix the problems that face humanity, except for letting humans be humans. I have trust in humanity because I have trust in myself.

The collective is made up of individuals, so it’s power is derived from the individual. It is the only logical explanation. From taxation to secession, the group can only possess the powers of the individual. If the group claims the power of taxation then this means the individual has the power of taxation. This would mean that I have the power to not only lay taxes on my neighbor, I would also possess the power to collect, by force if necessary, the taxes I have laid on him. This is called theft, and having a super-majority of individuals who think it’s not theft doesn’t change the reality of it. Providing me with roads and schools with that money does not change the fact that  the money was stolen using force or the threat of force. To possess the power of secession is to possess the power to say no to the collective. Secession usually prompts thoughts of the separation of countries and nations. It’s almost always thought of as the fracturing of the collective; it’s never used in the context of the individual. If the individual does not possess the power to secede from the group, then the group does not possess the power to secede from the bigger group. The power of secession resides in the individual, but it is seen as absurd to take this position. I have actually been ridiculed by others claiming to be secessionists. The same argument that is used against the secession of the individual can be used against the secession of the collective. The insanity of this situation is that taxation is considered to be right, while secession is considered to be wrong. The reason it’s insane is because it’s perfectly backwards.

Secession down to the individual level would be considered to be anarchy and in the minds of most people chaos, but it is considered to be taking a stand for freedom when it’s done in a group. I don’t know where the breakdown comes from, but if an individual cannot hoist his own flag in defiance of the group, he is indeed a slave. If he cannot take his property and go home, then he does not own his home, his property or himself. This is why I am an anarcho-abolitionist/secessionist. I am for abolition and secession all the way down to the individual, it is the only moral choice. In order for one to be able to secede from the group, the group has to be able to identify the powers that reside in the individual, and also be able to identify the powers that collective could never possess, like the power to deny secession. That is the power of enslaving your fellow human, and no individual or group has ever possessed that power. To argue against secession is to necessarily argue for slavery, and that is what I stand in opposition to. Many people fear what would happen if this kind of thinking was ever embraced, but not me. I have studied history and I know the greatness the human race can achieve once they let each other be free.

I don’t have to prove freedom to be true; I only have to prove slavery to be false.

“[The average man] is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty — and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies.” ~ H.L. Mencken

See more essays like this here:  http://zerogov.com/

  Russell, tell us about the journey.  Are you a native-born libertarian or is there a road you took to get there?  How far did you go?  Have you arrived at the logical conclusion of ethical anarchism?

I grew up in a Christian Republican home in West Michigan, son of a building contractor. Being Republican was like being Christian…I didn’t know anything else. But by late teen years (’69-’71) I was questioning everything. That didn’t endear me to my father. But despite the doubts, I stayed Republican until about 1996, and Christian until about 2009. I am now a Deist Anarchist Secessionist.

I moved from West Michigan to the Atlanta area in 1992. We luckily landed in Cobb County, the most Republican county in the state. Soon thereafter, I began attending the every-other-Saturday Cobb County Republican breakfasts. Every statewide or national candidate for anything had to pay obeisance to the Cobb group. I got to meet lots of interesting people. But then, in 1994, my 6^th District Congressman, Newt Gingrich, leapt from back-bencher to the Speaker of the House. We were all giddy. In the months after that, I got to see first-hand that all it was about was who got to hold the Federal checkbook.

During this time, I was reading voraciously.  Bastiat, Mises, Tom Payne,  Rothbard, Hazlitt, Lysander Spooner…and the list goes on. The more I read, the more disillusioned I became with politics. But the hungrier I became for real liberty.  I left the Republican Party.

I found the Libertarian Party.  They said all the right things, wrote the right things…but didn’t DO all the right things. It was like herding cats. The Libertarians didn’t seem capable of agreeing on anything. And the more I became familiar with the National Libertarian leadership, the more I felt like they simply looked at politics as the answer, not liberty. I left the Libertarians too.

In the ensuing years, I read more and more. In May of 2009, I started a blog simply to vent my own spleen about my thoughts about liberty. I had come to the irrevocable conclusion that the only way to solve the problems in the United States of America was secession. But I was not resigned to secession as merely one tool among many. I was convinced that it was…and is…the ONLY possible solution to restore individual liberty and property rights on North American soil.

You and I have both written on secession and I am so grateful for the voice you give to it.  Tell us why secession is the only virtuous form of voting.

You’re welcome, Bill. First let’s define secession. It is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or especially a political entity.  The very act of secession demonstrates individual liberty, since it is a physical manifestation of the Unalienable Rights of Free Speech, Ownership of one’s Labor, Property Rights, Right to Contract and Free Association.  If a person or group of persons cannot freely secede, then they are slaves. There is no middle ground. We must acknowledge that there will be consequences from the withdrawal. But the act of secession is sacrosanct. It refuses to keep participating in the membership of the entity from which it seeks to withdraw. So its virtue is found in its act of withdrawal…the final vote, so to speak. And the post-secession liberty is instant. Whatever burdens, whatever court decisions, whatever taxation, whatever regulation that exists in the old organization no longer hold sway or jurisdiction over the secessor. You. Are. FREE.

What is your response to those who claim that a fractured united states will quickly become a satrap or wholly owned subsidiary of larger foreign powers.

How often do you get to use the word “satrap” in a sentence? Good show! My opinion is that it’s entirely possible that some states or regions could align with a seemingly benevolent master…theoretically. Those who would do so would likely be of the socialist world view, so for them, the politics wouldn’t change much, only the flag on the podium of their church. (Did I say that?)

But let’s be very real here. Secession is NOT EVER GOING TO HAPPEN without a cataclysmic trigger. There is no political will in America for secession now, nor will there be, even during hyperinflation and bank runs. There will have to be an economic collapse in America before secession will begin to rise. And the INEVITABLE economic collapse will turn much of this nation back to the 18^th Century. But unlike the 18^th Century, there will be massive crime, massive starvation, massive death and disease, with the cities the locus of the carnage.  Eventually, one or two of the states will turn to secession as they try to simply survive. But I expect that most of the 50 states will just sit and wait for Washington to tell them what to do next.

Do you think that there is a powerful government media-education complex initiative that makes the word secession a four letter word in polite circles?

I think that the government education system since the 1860s has been dedicated to turning people into subservient worker drones. Think about it. If you were the state and Federal governments, given the task of educating the very people who are supposed to control you…what would YOU do? Teach them how to control you strictly, or just omit or alter a bunch of information? Over a hundred years or so, the societal memory of liberty’s rights and responsibilities would wane into the past…which is exactly what has happened. The few that remember what liberty is supposed to be are laughed into derision and thought kooks…or terrorists.

The stars align and the nation formerly known as Mordor on the Potomac is no more, what will the political landscape in America look like?

Grim in the beginning. There are a couple ways this could go. First, it could go the way of the Soviet Union in 1989. The second mightiest nation in earth’s history simply dissolved in a few short months. The Red Army did not hold the USSR together. And the Ruble wasn’t the world reserve currency. The Federal Reserve didn’t exist in the USSR. The IMF wasn’t in Moscow. Washington has insurmountable CRIMINAL problems that make the Soviet Union look like kindergarten by comparison. If America goes this way, secession may be more widely accepted. But the economic collapse still must happen. The second way it could go is for Mordor to try to hold America together, even if it takes an army of Orcs and Uruk-hai (our troops and mercs) to do it. The nation would settle into civil war, and the Federales would find a rifle behind every blade of grass (paraphrasing Admiral Yamamoto, 1941.) IEDs and 4^th Generation warfare would be the order of the day. Guys like you and me would be early targets. My money is on the first example.

How do you suppose the break-up will look geographically?  For instance, I suspect the northeastern states will become much like their Pacific brethren and form socialist republics that will give the Russians cramps from nostalgia.  What do you see the map becoming?

I believe that Texas will secede first. There may be a Northwestern confederation of states that secede…Montana, Wyoming, Idaho. Maybe New Hampshire and Vermont will secede. Alaska and Hawai’i are good candidates due to their distances from DC. And North Dakota already has a state bank, so they are the only state in the Union that already controls the Power of the Purse. Most other states will just wait for DC to tell them what to do next. And even if it means some one-world government, the remaining states will just kneel and lick the hand of their new master.

Give me the top three reasons why America will no longer exist in the next ten years and tell me why you think the best efforts of the Federal government to keep itself together will fail.  If you disagree with that notion, tell me why.

Perfection. The earth would need perfection in money management. Every bondholder worldwide would have to sell their government bonds with perfect timing so as not to cause a bond market meltdown. Statistically, that is not possible. Someone somewhere, either a bondholder or a bond issuer, is going to default. That could cascade the economic collapse. Think Europe. Which economic entity has the shorter fuse or the least wiggle room? I submit that it’s Washington.Almost no one truly knows how much debt Washington has. Washington cannot stop spending and doesn’t really want to. Washington only has one arrow left in its quiver…massive money printing. Eventually, hyperinflation will kick in that will make Zimbabwe’s collapse look orderly.Eventually, the world will reject the Dollar as reserve currency. I don’t know what it will turn to, but the debacle of the Dollar has to end soon. I don’t think it can last another ten years. I don’t think it can last another five.The second part of your question is amusing. What you may describe as “best efforts” is likely vastly different than DC’s definition. Normal people would support DC living within its means. Washington cannot retreat. Washington cannot stop itself, and the states are sofar powerless to stop DC like they should. So what eventually happens to an engine running wide open, past the redline? It either flies apart or runs out of gas. The engine of DC will do both.

I think we both consider government to be a sophisticated organized crime syndicate.  Once the break-up occurs, what will stop us from adopting more of the same?

Nothing. But secession could. Remember what we’re proposing here. We are proposing a drastic downsizing of governance from a 50-state nation to a single sovereign nation of a few million people. Small government is always easier to control. The leadership and supporters of secession in any state will be a small percentage. But a small percentage of Colonials whipped King George’s ass. Leadership is everything.

You and I have both been writing blogs for some time and I happen to be a severe skeptic of the Constitution as an engine for freedom and liberty.  I get a tremendous amount of grief for this notion but each day passes and seems to confirm my worst suspicions.  Even Chuck Baldwin’s son is having a contretemps with the very documents whose name graces his father’s political party.  How do you see the Constitution?

The US Constitution is a hologram [thanks to Kenneth Royce aka Boston T. Party]. Looks like something, but is merely an image. Lysander Spooner wrote the epic book <i>”No Treason,”</i> which takes apart every possible argument for the validity and lawfulness of the Constitution. The Constitution has been dead pretty much since its ratification. The Articles of Confederation were vastly superior. And for a state that secedes, I recommend starting over, not using any portion of the US Constitution for a template for a new nation. I have actually invented a new form of governance for a new nation, modeled after a corporation. It melds individualism with the representative republic. The article about it is at my website archive.

What advice do you have to have for folks who are preparing for what I consider the inevitable break-up of the united states (afterwards, we will christen it the untied states)?

Keep preparing. Turn lots of your Federal Reserve notes into silver coins and bullion. Buy as much ammunition in various calibers as you can. It will be crucial for barter. Stock your shelves for at least a six month supply of food. And start to discuss NOW what you will do when neighbors, friends or even family show up at your door after the collapse. You cannot take in everyone. If your stores would support a family of three for six months, and you take in another three family members, you’ve just cut your stores to three months. And start thinking NOW about your threshold for pulling the trigger on someone. I promise you that no matter where you see yourself along that continuum, reality will call you to change your mind or die. Some very sobering decisions await you.

But think of what it would be like to live in a new sovereign state where the money was backed by precious metals. There would never be inflation. The wealth of the world would flood into that new nation, seeking a haven. The best and brightest would want to live there. Unemployment would not exist. All business would boom. The prosperity would be the greatest in the history of the world. That state would make Galt’s Gulch a living, breathing reality.

Thanks, Bill for this chance to share my passion for secession. Secession is the only hope for individual liberty and property rights on the planet. Who will be first?

For more, go to:  http://zerogov.com/

Copyright © 2011 by zerogov.com

Before I continue with the story I have to tell you the amazing tale of this man’s father. He was a soldier in WWII, and he fought at the battle of the bulge. In a German artillery bombardment, he had one of his legs blown off. As he lay there severely wounded, German soldiers approached him. Seeing this man was still alive, they raked him with automatic machine gun fire at point blank range. I’m not too sure how this man got out of there alive, his son told me that he didn’t remember much after he was shot up by the Germans, only that he remembered waking up in an American field hospital and thankful to be alive. He served with the 101st Airborne Division. Years later he was a foreign correspondent for the Voice of America. While covering the Vietnam conflict, his son, my friend, was born in Thailand. After he came back from Vietnam, he went to work for a newspaper out of Colorado.
My friend came into work one morning to find that a confidential letter had been slipped into his toolbox. It was a letter from the records department informing him that his social security card copy they had on file for him was illegible. This department was in the middle of an internal audit, and they needed him to provide a copy of his social security card that was readable. Returning home that night he retrieved his card and found that his copy had become worn over the years, and concluded it needed to be replaced. He ventured down to the local social security office to see about getting his battered card replaced, and that’s when the fun began. It seems the local bureaucratic tyrant takes his job a bit too seriously. My friend instructed the socialist security bureaucrat that he needed to replace his card. He explained that the card that was on file for him at his employer was illegible, and his current card was unable to be recopied. He said the bureaucrat became very upset about this and he said, “you tell your employer that they are breaking the law by copying social security cards, you tell them I said so! You tell them the Federal Government says so!”

After the bureaucrat was done ranting and needlessly flexing his petty power, he asked for my friend’s name and social security number. After he punched in his name and socialist tracking number, he looked up at my friend with a shocked look on his face. At this time the bureaucrat motioned to another bureaucrat to come over and observe his computer screen. They both looked at each other and then they went back to looking at the screen. The bureaucrat that was “serving” my friend looked up at him and asked him if he was born in this country, and he responded with a no. The bureaucrat then preceded to tell him he is not a “legal citizen”, and that in fact he is an “illegal alien”. My friend explained that he was born in a military hospital, and that his father was a government employee when he was born. The bureaucrat said he didn’t care about any of that, and he would not help him anymore until he produced a specific piece of paper that was given to his parents in Thailand over forty years ago. He explained to me that he has no idea where this paper is, and he has no idea what to do.

See the rest: http://zerogov.com/?p=2440

What!  I hear this familiar refrain again and again every November.  I am appalled whenever this unthinking salutation is proffered.

I am a retired career Army officer and like USMC General Smedley Butler before me, I find these sentiments to be hogwash.

The only service rendered was to the American political power structure in the dishonorable hands of the Democrats or Republicans; the former have, of course, gotten America involved in WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Starting with the shameful expropriation of the Mexican territory from 1846-48 to the War of Northern Aggression from 1860-65; the United States went into hyper-colonial overdrive in 1893 in the Hawaiian Islands and has not stopped since. The entire history of American arms on Earth has been a shameful and expansionist enterprise culminating in the first ever post-WWII attack on American state soil in 2001 (the Japanese attack on American territories in the Aleutians during the War to Save Josef Stalin and the minor coastal skirmishes in Oregon).  I am frankly astonished at the length of time it took for a substantive attack of any kind to be initiated on American soil with the breadth, ferocity and long sordid history of American mischief and mayhem abroad.

The sheer number of military expeditions the US has embarked on over time is breathtaking.  One worthy notes there have been 234 military expeditions from 1798-1993.  Another posits 159 instances of the use of United States armed forces abroad from October 1945 through December 2006. “This list does not include covert actions and numerous instances of US forces stationed abroad since World War II, in occupation forces, or for participation in mutual security organizations, base agreements, and routine military assistance or training operations.”

Good God, if I were a Martian who landed on Earth ten years ago and found myself attending government schools, to include college, and watching television for any additional cultural education,  I would not be aware of any of this.  The constant drumbeat emanating from the State is the Orwellian chorus about America making the world safe for freedom and liberty and never using force abroad except in self-defense.  The history proves otherwise.

Read the rest:

http://zerogov.com/?p=2428

Recently, I represented Students For Liberty at a conference that opened my eyes to a completely new side of libertarianism, Libertopia.

Having interned in DC this summer, I had the good fortune of attending quite a few pro-liberty conferences. However, I did not expect Libertopia’s unconventional and refreshing attitude towards a movement that some consider to be primarily political. For those of you who are unaware, Libertopia is an annual convention that appeals to libertarians with more voluntaryist and anarchist leanings. It takes place in San Diego and places a strong emphasis on using art, music, literature, and trade to eventually transcend the belief that politics are the key to achieving social change. Claiming that California is a hub of government coercion, a group of around 100 free-market voluntaryists in San Diego decided that it would be the perfect setting to congregate and encourage a freer society. Thus, last year, Libertopia was born.

The conference was a fantastic experience and there was so much to do. Music and art was everywhere, a constant creative background of freedom of expression. David Friedman, Stephan Molyneux, Roderick Long, and Gary Chartier were among the top speakers and organizations such as the Free State Project and the Ladies Of Liberty Alliance (LOLA) sent representatives. These are scholars and organizations that place a strong emphasis on invoking social change through living liberty in order to set an example for the rest of society. I immediately noticed that the other exhibitors at Libertopia had a knack for incorporating the message of liberty into their greatest talents. These people are creative and innovative; they are incredible contributors to our common goal of social change.

While there, I met a brilliant young entrepreneur who happens to be one of Peter Thiel’s 20 Under 20. While I didn’t manage to get his number, I did get to ask him what appealed to him about libertarianism. While Christopher Rueth began his career in internet technology by hacking his high school’s internet restrictions, he has far bigger goals for his future. Ultimately, he believes in freedom of information and intends to use his talents in computer science to bring the internet to all people. Libertopia’s overarching message of freedom of thought and expression really resonated with his intellectual pursuits. What I was most impressed with was Chris’s ability to escape the presumption that libertarianism is a purely political movement and to embrace his own strengths in order to create a freer world.

All too often, activists become narrow sighted about how to best spread a message. Being able to articulate a certain idea is a great strength, but it does not necessarily mean that people will listen. If the liberty movement wants to bring about true social change, we need to involve all kinds of people, perhaps especially those with non-political passions who may not initially be interested in the economic or philosophical rhetoric behind libertarianism. This is Libertopia’s great success; although it did not have the funding or the big name speakers that a conference such as FreedomFest might, it attracted a more diverse crowd.

Liberty will never be achieved if every libertarian finds a job at a think tank or university. Don’t put yourself in a box, and don’t feel useless if policy or academia is not your path. Because if you do, you are not only short-changing your own happiness but you’re also short-changing everybody that you could have inspired by pursuing your own personal and unique interests. Libertopia taught me that everyone has his or her comparative advantage, and every different personality is of great value in our joint pursuit of liberty. So, I strongly encourage every all to attend next year’s conference, if only to discover the more unconventional ways that people have come to promote liberty. After experiencing it for yourself, I’ll be curious to know how you will use your greatest gifts to advocate the ideas that we all hold so highly.

I just got finished reading two books on the emergence of American empire in the Pacific.  The War Lovers by Evan Thomas and The Imperial Cruise by James Brady both treat the influence of Theodore Roosevelt as the sin qua non of America’s imperial ambitions come to fruition at the end of the nineteenth century.  In 1898, we defeated the Spanish in their colonies in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines after the imaginary pretenses for the war were arranged.  We occupied and colonized these island nations and the barbarity visited on the Philippine peoples during these long conflicts was brutal and horrifying.

Here are some letter excerpts from 1899 and the war only got worse over time.

Private Fred B. Hinchman, Company A. United States Engineers, writes from Manila, February 22d:

“At 1:30 o’clock the general gave me a memorandum with regard to sending out a Tennessee battalion to the line. He tersely put it that “they were looking for a fight.” At the Puente Colgante [suspension bridge] I met one of our company, who told me that the Fourteenth and Washingtons were driving all before them, and taking no prisoners. This is now our rule of procedure for cause. After delivering my message I had not walked a block when I heard shots down the street. Hurrying forward, I found a group of our men taking pot-shots across the river, into a bamboo thicket, at about 1,200 yards. I longed to join them, but had my reply to take back, and that, of course, was the first thing to attend to I reached the office at 3 P.M., just in time to see a platoon of the Washingtons, with about fifty prisoners, who had been taken before they learned how not to take them.”

Fred D. Sweet, of the Utah Light Battery:

“The scene reminded me of the shooting of jack-rabbits in Utah, only the rabbits sometimes got away, but the insurgents did not.”

Ellis G. Davis, Company A, 20th Kansas:

“They will never surrender until their whole race is exterminated. They are fighting for a good cause, and the Americans should be the last of all nations to transgress upon such rights. Their independence is dearer to them than life, as ours was in years gone by, and is today. They should have their independence, and would have had it if those who make the laws in America had not been so slow in deciding the Philippine question Of course, we have to fight now to protect the honor of our country but there is not a man who enlisted to fight these people, and should the United States annex these islands, none but the most bloodthirsty will claim himself a hero. This is not a lack of patriotism, but my honest belief.”

Burr Ellis, of Frazier Valley, California:

“They did not commence fighting over here (Cavite) for several days after the war commenced. Dewey gave them till nine o’clock one day to surrender, and that night they all left but a few out to their trenches, and those that they left burned up the town, and when the town commenced burning the troops were ordered in as far as possible and said, Kill all we could find. I ran off from the hospital and went ahead with the scouts. And bet, I did not cross the ocean for the fun there was in it, so the first one I found, he was in a house, down on his knees fanning a fire, trying to burn the house, and I pulled my old Long Tom to my shoulder and left him to burn with the fire, which he did. I got his knife, and another jumped out of the window and ran, and I brought him to the ground like a jack-rabbit. I killed seven that I know of, and one more I am almost sure of: I shot ten shots at him running and knocked him down, and that evening the boys out in front of our trenches now found one with his arm shot off at shoulder and dead as h___ ; I had lots of fun that morning. There were five jumped out of the brush and cut one of the Iowa band boys, and we killed every one of them, and I was sent back to quarters in the hurry. Came very near getting a court-martial, but the colonel said he had heard that I had done excellent work and he laughed and said: “There’s good stuff in that man,” and told me not to leave any more without orders. Well, John, there will always be trouble here with the natives unless they annihilate all of them as fast as they come to them.”

Read the rest:  http://zerogov.com/?p=2406