Observations and Lamentations on the Way We Are Now
by Clyde N. Wilson
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Evil rulers then are a sign that God is wroth and angry with us. —William Tyndale
Though there is little personal likeness, the President that Junior Bush most resembles in actions and conduct in office is Grant—incompetent, corrupt, clueless, easily led, elected under a false impression, misusing the military. However, Grant, unlike Junior, was articulate and had physical (though not moral) courage.
In America, political discourse has now been completely absorbed by commercial advertising. Facts no longer matter, only images.
The irrelevance of facts extends beyond electioneering and discourse. It now prevails in governing as well. Neither the government, the presidential candidates, the Congress, nor the major media pay the slightest attention to the economic, demographic, educational, and military crises facing the U.S. The crises do not exist in “mainstream” public discourse.
Apparently the old tradition of Presidential ticket-balancing to win big States is dead—with Vice-Presidential candidates from Delaware and Alaska.
Is there any other country where boys dream of growing up to be—sportscasters? Only in America. Of course, some still want to grow up to be rock musicians.
In American higher education, the right wing is represented by the National Association of Scholars, a “conservative” organisation of Trotskyites who are miffed because coloured Maoists have threatened their dominance of academic patronage.
You have to hand it to Junior Bush. He may not have got Osama bin Laden, but he sure did kill a million or so of those other terrists.
Like the American Empire, the Roman and British Empires began unintentionally. However, the Roman and British Empires at their height had smart, tough leaders at the imperial center and in the field. They operated realistically, got some benefit for their people, and spread civilisation and order. The American Empire has Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Bremmer, and Sanchez. We spread rap music, fast food, and collateral damage, and burden our people with unpayable debt.
Our American mandarins gained their places by political image-mongering and bureaucratic infighting. They lack the ethics and the wisdom to manage an empire or to be in charge of the lives and wealth of the American people. They are the accidental figureheads of an immense machine which they do not begin to comprehend but pretend to direct (to ends that are largely puerile and self-referential). Yet they are busy playing incompetent games of manipulation in every place in the world. The last American leader who had any remote claim to statesmanship was Eisenhower, who left office almost a half century ago.
People who complain about Bush’s police state activities against internal dissent are the same people who think Lincoln is the greatest of all Americans for doing the same thing only more so.
A few years ago on a trip to California I was wearing my cap with the South Carolina palmetto and crescent, a symbol of Revolutionary War heroism and of my old and noble State. The Asian-American at the hotel desk thought it was an Islamic symbol. I was a secessionist even before that but the occasion added weight to my conviction that “America” is no longer a viable proposition.
The Presidential campaign may be summed up by an old term that would come readily to mind if the English language had not been so badly adulterated in this country: cant. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary—cant: the expression or repetition of conventional, trite, or unconsidered opinions or sentiments; the insincere use of pious phraseology.
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1 Comment by Rob on 14 September 2008:
“However, Grant, unlike Junior, was articulate and had physical (though not moral) courage.”
How so? Grant showed a great deal of moral courage when he wrote his autobiography despite failing health; when he sold wood in the streets of St. Louis despite his West Point education; when he sold his watch so his kids could get Christmas presents; when he freed a slave instead of simply selling him (even though he needed the cash); and he showed great moral courage when he simply did not back down-not after the first day of SHiloh-not after the various attempts to get Vicksburg failed-not after the bloody month of the Overland campaign. If you want to talk about a lack of moral courage, someone like Joe Johnston fits the bill-if only Sherman had fought me here, oh if only I had more troops at Jackson, oh if only I had not been wounded when I was running up the Penninsula, oh if only Jefferson Davis would back up my command, if only, if only (if only Longstreet had…..hmm maybe Jubal Early was something of a moral coward the way he went after Old Pete instead of focusing on how he pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory in the valley). It takes more courage to get back up after you have been knocked down-something Grant did more than a few times in his life. Grant was steel; W. is silver spoon.
2 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 14 September 2008:
Well said Clyde!
The USA must be the dumbest empire ever, we’ve invaded Mesopotamia and couldn’t even steal their oil, let alone divide and conquer. The good news is that we caused North Korea to develop a working atom bomb, and inspired Iran to do the same thing.
Our “leadership” has become so bad that they don’t even admit to the consumers, sports fans, voters and taxpayers that our homeland has been turned into nothing more than a colony where foreign criminals (and their home-grown lawyers) can come and prey without penalty — just as long as they contribute to politicians. We’ve been sold out! I’ll be watching for the symbolic firing on Fort Sumter, and in the meantime I’ll wear my Palmetto State tie.
3 Comment by Arius on 14 September 2008:
Yes, its bad and after the election no matter who wins it will get worse. Behind the two cardboard cutouts are people representing the ‘Washington Consensus’. You know what is, a mix of Russophobia with fighting the Islamic jihad with the right hand while supporting it with the left hand.
4 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 14 September 2008:
@1 Rob
I believe Dr. Wilson was comparing Bush and Grant by their performances as Chief Executive — not in their prior experiences. Grant and Bush are equally incompetent, as well as easily led by their inner circles.
The only difference is that Bush had better put his tomb in a more secure location than Grant’s which is constantly urinated upon by New York’s low-class freed slave riff-raff.
5 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 14 September 2008:
I’m in agreement with Dr. Wilson. On the subject of Grant, since when is it moral courage to simply keep expending the lives of your soldiers to eventually win by sheer force of numbers? Of this type of “moral courage” Stalin had even more than Grant.
6 Comment by Kearney Smith on 14 September 2008:
Rob,
Moral courage is a willingness to stand up for what is morally right. Bravery on the battlefield is physical, not moral courage.
Knowingly violating standards of civilized behavior in warfare by making war on civilians shows a lack of moral courage.
7 Comment by robert m. peters on 14 September 2008:
Dr. Wilson,
Your words:
“…cant: the expression or repetition of conventional, trite, or unconsidered opinions or sentiments; the insincere use of pious phraseology.”
Cant is so bad and pervasive that I must often remain silent so that I myself do not become its agent.
Rob @ 1.
Yes, Grant was steel. So was Uncle Joe Stalin, as per his nom de guerre. There is no moral courage to be found there, however.
8 Comment by Chuck Hicks on 15 September 2008:
Rob — Sherman was no doubt delighted when Hood was subbed for Johnston. The latter wasn’t aggressive, but he knew how to preserve an army, sustain its morale, and inflict disproportionate losses on its enemy. I’d take that over recklessness — which seems to generally characterize America — anytime.
9 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 15 September 2008:
Rob #1. As Etienne #4 correctly points out, I was discussing Grant AS PRESIDENT, not as soldier or man.
10 Comment by Rob on 15 September 2008:
Thanks for the clarification Dr. Wilson. That makes a lot more sense.
11 Comment by Livy on 15 September 2008:
Interesting column – a few co-workers and I were discussing the way we are now over lunch. A few additions as to how we are now:
1. Fat. More Americans than ever are obese. Take a look around at an airport or mall. We’re all paying for this, of course, in “super-sized” health care premiums. And just wait – in ten years, obesity will be an ADA classification. What’s to blame? – where were the snack food and TV industries 50 years ago. They were nowhere because they didn’t exist as they do now. We are encouraged, nay verbally blugeoned, into making long periods of sedentary TV watching while eating into a weekend “activity”. Ha!
2. Dumb. Does anyone read anything intelligent any more? Most people probably wouldn’t know that US Grant actually was a President, much less how he performed. It’s truly pathetic to hear about how our local library my be forced to close for lack of funding and/or support, but that the new Guitar Hero video game is still selling strongly and that even more great songs are going to be available soon. (!)
3. What to do? Either learn to be in the world, but not of it, or leave. But then where to go? I once thought of Alaska, but that may not be isolated enough now.
12 Comment by Justitia on 15 September 2008:
“3. What to do? Either learn to be in the world, but not of it, or leave. But then where to go? I once thought of Alaska, but that may not be isolated enough now.”
Every year in history class some of my students ask me if there is a place on earth where they can go to get away from all this nonsense. Its a hard question to answer for two reasons; 1. There really is no place on earth where one will be safe from liberalism/modernism/idiocy/ or whatever it is our country is that you choose to run from in your life. 2. God has placed us in our times/country for a reason.
I love reading Dr. Wilson’s posts as they really get me thinking on what I have to do as a husband/father/school teacher to get those under my care to go against the flow. I try and push those in my care towards doing something about the state of things and not just being an indifferent, apathetic, mall shopping, fast food eating, sports worshiping, text messaging, tree hugging, MTV watching, follower like 95% of the country.
Thomas Fleming made a good point on one of his earlier articles where he generally stated that our biggest worry shouldn’t be who sits in the White House, but what are we doing for our souls and those of our children, what are we doing to culture them, what values are we instilling in them? He is absolutely correct. If we are not doing these things at home, where education begins, then why are we surprised when our nation has these problems? We as a nation have let our morality and that of our children decay to the point of good=bad and bad=good and then wonder why our leaders and government are so bad. As Dr. Wilson quoted above:
Evil rulers then are a sign that God is wroth and angry with us. —William Tyndale
We should start asking ourselves, “Am I aiding this cultural/moral decay of my country by my life and the example I give?”
I hope to one day read an article by Dr. Wilson entitled “Observations and Lamentations of the Way We Once Were”.
I
13 Comment by Sebastian on 15 September 2008:
For the past year I have read little but Roman historians and twentieth century accounts of the Gracchi, Caesar, Augustus, Claudius…and what strikes me is how readily they acknowledged Rome was an Empire. Tell a GOP operative that we are an empire and they call you an anti-war naïf; a liberal or antiquarian or a Gore Vidal “wimp” and such and such.
There are arguments one can make to defend imperial policies (whether any of us accept them or not). But to manage an empire while simultaneously denying it exists must be a new phenomenon in world history, one that forever obscures questions readily asked by Romans, such as: is imperial government compatible with republican virtue. Not us – we know better.
14 Comment by Michael Hill on 15 September 2008:
Great piece, Clyde. But don’t be so hard on the rock musicians . . . ole’ Duane Allman and the Skynyrd boys ain’t bad.
15 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 15 September 2008:
#14, Yes, Chief, but as you know, that is SOUTHERN rock.
16 Comment by H.F. Wolff on 15 September 2008:
Dr. Wilson,
You have amply described the problems burdening the USA and the western world, along with the causes and perpetraters thereof.
And here is my 62 thousand, (trillion, quadrillion??) dollar question:
Given a leaderless revolution, what can leaderless revolutionaries do, the-man-in-the-street if you will, on an individual or perhaps small group basis to change and improve the situation that faces us in the western world?
Please do not misunderstand me; I do not advocate rioting in the streets or other mindless/illegal activities since these do not improve conditions for the revolutionaries.
What I envisage are quiet, behind-the-scenes activities that are liable to shake-up the existing powers-that-be to their foundations. Perhaps civil disobedience, personal sacrifice, etc.
Of course one may do nothing and just wait until the system collapses; but it would be satisfying to be able to steer it a little to a more desirable outcome.
Any ideas, suggestions, pointers (to literature) that might provide guidance would be appreciated.
Thank you.
H.F. Wolff
17 Comment by james1 on 15 September 2008:
Didn’t Lincoln inspired economic policy post civil war see the largest industrial development in human history over the shortest period of time?
Post Lincoln industrial development inspired Germany’s industrial development.
Southern secessionists were alleged to have link to Britain who wanted the US divided as it had a counter monetary system to that of the UK since Andrew Jackson bank reforms.
The amazing thing I find about the US is that the Federal Reserve is a private bank whose shareholders are from the wealthiest banking houses in Europe not owned by the government.
Is it the Federal Reserve that is licensed to print US money or is that another institution.
What is the Federal Reserves purpose?
The US didn’t have one until the 20th Century what changed?
18 Comment by H.F. Wolff on 15 September 2008:
James1,
Read “Mystery of Banking” to really make your hair curl. Among other things it explains how the FED systematically fleeces the US taxpayer through built-in inflation.
It is an on-line book by von Mises institute.
H.F. Wolff
19 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 15 September 2008:
@14 Michael
Duane and Lynard are sadly gone, but Georgia is chock full of great bar bands that make those 70’s artists look lame.
Check out Bearfoot Hookers, Holy Liars, Legendary Shack Shakers, and Patterson Hood’s great band Drive-by Truckers who received a glowing review in the pages of Chronicles.
20 Comment by Chuck Hicks on 16 September 2008:
Etienne — the Drive-by Truckers, like Lehman Bros, are originally from Alabama.
James — a substantial portion of the “money” supply is created through fractional-reserve banking, i.e., lending of funds that don’t actually exist as deposits. The Fed’s control of interest rates steers that process. The slashing of rates under Greenspan & Bernanke led to the malinvestment that resulted in yesterday’s (necessary) catastrophe on Wall Street.
Take away central banking (Hamilton’s device, copied from Britain, for empire-building) and you take a giant step back toward what most of the original Framers had intended for these United States.
21 Comment by Livy on 16 September 2008:
Chuck Hicks –
Of course, President Washington himself signed the charter for the first Bank of the US, though I wish he hadn’t.
My understanding is that much of the Federal Reserves’ power and interest rate manipulation were a consequence of 1929 and the New Deal. I would disagree that the investment bank crises was predicated on low interest rates – the crises was precipitated by poor business decisions in the sub-prime mortgage market. Poor risk selection is poor risk selection; that’s as simple as it can be. Sub-prime mortgages can be analogized to doing drugs – initially it seems like a lot of fun, but after a couple of years, things usually take a severe downturn.
22 Comment by H.F. Wolff on 16 September 2008:
The Federal Reserve was “authorized” in 1913 after a meeting on Jekyll Island located off the east coast of the USA.
One can only surmise what was necessary to “convince” the US president of the day and congress to go along with this Ponzi scheme which is of no benefit whatsoever to the taxpayer or the government. The only beneficiaries are the shareholders, the stateless international bankers such as Schiff, Rothschild, etc.
I often wonder what is used to coerce politicians to kow-tow to these powers-behind-the-throne. Surely not every politician is bribable???
H.F. Wolff
23 Comment by Michael Hill on 16 September 2008:
#19 Etienne Yes, I am familiar with most of these bands. I know Pat Hood personally, and have jammed with Jason Isbell, formerly of the DBTs. I live in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and we have a great music scene here. Ever heard of The Decoys? The Midnighters? Soul Preacher?
One thing, however. No one will ever make Duane Allman sound “lame.” He sounds as fresh today as he did in 1970. He was a great fellow. I have the privilege of getting to know him and get some good advice as a young guitarist.
24 Comment by Chuck Hicks on 16 September 2008:
Livy (#21) I understand your point, and you make a good analogy. However, we would probably agree that the Fed ought not manipulate rates, especially not to “stimulate” growth.
Michael (#23) I agree with you. In their heday, no one could touch the Allmans.
25 Comment by Theodore Van Oosbree on 16 September 2008:
Grant gave an example of his lack of moral courage as a soldier in his memoirs. While leading his 21st Illinois against a Confederate position in Missouri, he became more and more nervous and fearful as his regiment approached the Confederates. He dearly wished to back in Illinois but (he wrote) he lacked the moral courage to give the order to retreat. As it happened, the Confederate unit abandoned its position on his approach and there was no fight. Grant took this lesson to heart in his subsequent military career: the enemy was likely to be just as worried about him as he of the enemy.
26 Comment by Livy on 16 September 2008:
@22 & 24 – yes, I would agree about rates with an exception only for the direst of circumstances. I thought I recalled from a college economics course, however, that before 1933 the Fed had no actual power to adjust rates; it could appeal to larger banks to do certain things, but did not the teeth that it does now…I could be wrong, but I specifically remember one of my professors using the words “moral suasion” to describe the extent of Fed power before 1933. Of course, economically, 1913 is notable in my mind not so much for the Fed authorization, but for the constitutional amendment passed that year…
27 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 16 September 2008:
The economic issue has been buried under so many obfuscations by politicians, exploiters, historians, and journalists that the truth is hard to come by. The essential poiint to remember is that the key issue is control of the currency. Who controls the currency has a lever for tremendous profit. It has not generally been true that capitalist financiers favour “hard” money. They favour fractional reserve banking. That is, banks may loan out much more than they have. Thus they create currency. The currency thus created returns them face value. It declines in value as it circulates because it is merely paper credit, thus everyone else loses. Control of the currency is a tremendous power that the Constitution gives to the Congress. Alexander Hamilton devised the scheme whereby a bank, later banks, essentially controlled the currency. This wqs closely related to the federal debt question. The financiers, through most of American history, have bought government debt at a discount, with their paper, receiving back full face value in hard money with tax free interest.
This is still what the government does. Now they are paying the profits to foreigners as well. Jeffersonians tried to pay off the debt and not to create more. By issuing a currency, which was sound because backed by the government’s credit, the government could pay its expenses without debt and at the same time provide a sound circulating medium for the people. At the same time the government fulfilled its constitutional duty to regulate the currency. This eliminated a currency created by fractional reserve bank notes, which gave the banks the power to manipulate the credit and currency of the country to their own immense profit. Too much is made of the Federal Reserve. All the Federal Reserve did was consolidate in one place what was already taking place under the federal National Banking system.
The Jeffersonian position mostly prevailed until the Lincolnianscreated the National Banking System. All the business that people insist on citing about Andrew Jackson and the National Bank is a red herring. Jackson thought he was for “hard money.” But the real complaint of his suppoirters and manipulators against the National Bank was that it was doing too good a job of restraining fractional reserve banking. With the Bank eliminated, and in addition Jackson putting the federal money (illegally) in a host of politically selected banks, what he did was not serve hard money but empower the banks with the greatest orgy of floating worthless paper in American history, resulting in the correction of a sever panic in 1837.
This is my summary based upon years of hard study. generally, everything you read about these questions is wrong.
28 Comment by Cato_the_Younger on 16 September 2008:
“We sread rap, fast food and collateral damage”
LOL, classic !
29 Comment by Sean Busick on 17 September 2008:
“A few years ago on a trip to California I was wearing my cap with the South Carolina palmetto and crescent, a symbol of Revolutionary War heroism and of my old and noble State. The Asian-American at the hotel desk thought it was an Islamic symbol.”
Alas, I sometimes get the same response in Alabama.
30 Comment by Phiz on 18 September 2008:
Sir,
I admire the Grant administration, since he did nothing while in office, which is no small accomplishment.
We would be fortunate if we could say of our next President that they did as little as Grant.
31 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 18 September 2008:
Phiz, I am at a loss to understand how it can be imagined that Grant did nothing. He allowed his closest relatives and friends to commit the biggest graft in U.S. history. He was barely prevented from attacking Santo Domingo to benefit some of his capitalist friends. He sent the Army repeatedly to steal elections for the Republican Party in various Southern States and presided over a domestic military government.
32 Comment by Allen Wilson on 18 September 2008:
Not with the intention of changing the subject, but look at Eisenhower repeating Grant by militarily occupying Little Rock. Some may make excuses for this, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s all I need to know about him. Nothing good he may have done will ever make up for this. So much for the great hero-general and crusader for so-called freedom in Europe.
33 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 19 September 2008:
Mr. Wilson, I am no great admirer of Eisenhower (”the best clerk I ever had in my command” according to MacArthur). Appointment of Warren and Brennan to the Supreme Court and the Interestate highway system are enough to condemn anyone. I was merely pointing out that he was the last president who had some sort of sensible perspective on the U.S. role in the world.
34 Comment by Allen Wilson on 19 September 2008:
Dr Wilson, you are right of course, and in fact I wasn’t trying to be critical of what you said about him, since I actually agreed with it. I wasn’t even thinking about that when I made the above post, I just failed to word things correctly so that there would be no misunderstanding. You have my apologies.
What I really had in mind was the similarity of Eisenhower to post-war Grant in his treatment of Southern states, and how little had changed, or still has changed.
Eisenhower deserves credit for warning us about the ‘military-industrial complex’. He had more sense than perhaps any of his successors, and he sure would beat the two zombies running for office now. Even so, every time I try to give him credit, Little Rock comes to mind.
35 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 19 September 2008:
Mr. Wilson, I have a strong memory of Little Rock and of Oxford. Also of the “civil rights protests” in my North Carolina home town during which my father, a fire captain in charge of an all-black company, was repeatedly subjected to sniper fire while dealing with the work of arsonists in black residential areas.
36 Comment by Allen Wilson on 19 September 2008:
Dr Wilson, has anyone ever written an accurate, non-propagandistic, truthful account of the ‘civil rights’ ‘crusades’ and given an accurate description of what was really going on and why, and how it was actually planned, organised, and executed?
Surely, the powers that be would have buried it long ago. How many layers of digging and excavation would it take to find a copy of such a rare specimen, forbidden from being displayed even in museums?
I have heard that small-time members of local Klan chapters in Mississippi were ambushed and murdered by the FBI, among other things. I’ve also wondered whether some of the famous black murder victims of the time weren’t killed by someone other than the accused, to create martyrs. That sounds like weird conspiracy theory, but there seems to be a lot more to the story than people are allowed to believe.
I heard firsthand from a former city policeman about how they had to stay on the lookout for provocateurs and other such types coming into town from Little Rock, and how he was once involved in arresting a couple blacks who drove into town from Little Rock with a trunk load of homemade bombs. He also said that there was a mass arrest that took place in the parking lot of Central High, where homemade bombs were found in the trunks of multiple cars. They were going to blow the school building up. I cant verify any of that since it was years ago, he’s no longer around, and I dont know how to research it.
37 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 20 September 2008:
Mr. Wilson, what a great subject for a real historian to undertake! I do not know enough to make any firm assertions. I do know it was commonplace to believe that whenever the Klan met, half the members were FBI informants. Serious allegations have been made about government provocateurs being involved in a murder in Mississippi during the era. You will find relevant material in THE SOUTH UNDER SIEGE by Frank Conner and CAN THE SOUTH SURVIVE? by Michael Grissom. Interestingly, it was not only Southern resistance to “civil rights” that was targeted. It has been alleged that there was government involvement in the bombing of the laboratory in Wisconsin during the Vietnam War protest, and a respectable British journalist, as I recall, wrote a book about the Oklahoma City bombing resulting from a government manipulation gone bad. We do not know, and perhaps will never know, the whole story about any of these things. However, they are highly plausible—unless one believes that the U.S. government is simply too noble and virtuous to ever engage in dirty tricks—unlike every other modern government.
If anyone thinks that, I have some waterfront property in Florida that has been in the family a long time, but which I am willing to sell for the right price.
38 Comment by Allen Wilson on 20 September 2008:
Thank you very much for the information, Dr Wilson. You are very right, they certainly are plausible. Considering the covert operations underlying the government’s foreign adventures in Bosnia, Kosovo, Georgia, etc., there is no reason to think that covert operations haven’t been carried out here.
39 Comment by Phiz on 21 September 2008:
Sir,
My remarks on Grant should be taken with a grain of salt. I suspect his corruption would amuse modern professional politicians and is below the level of pocket-lining accepted in Illinois alone.
If we consider that when historians compile their lists of ‘Greatest Presidents’ they commonly mean ‘Presidents Who Most Expanded Federal Power’, then on that basis alone Grant being at the bottom of the list is in his favor. He has little to show for his years in office.
40 Comment by H.F. Wolff on 21 September 2008:
Dr. Wilson:
“This is my summary based upon years of hard study. generally, everything you read about these questions is wrong.”
Perhaps you could point out a number of good sources to educate the great unwashed?
Thank you.
H.F. Wolff
41 Comment by Mike Ezzo on 22 September 2008:
It may have been Ambrose Evans-Pritchard who wrote the book Dr. Wilson refers to (in #37). It is called The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories. Now if you can stomach that one you have fortitude!
42 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 28 September 2008:
@41 Mike
I read that book it’s great! It does not require a strong stomach at all.
I’m still working on I’ll Take My Stand by 12 Southerners — as relevant today as it was in the late 1920s when it was written.
@37 Clyde
I have heard the same thing about communist cell group meetings in New York City during the 1960s. That’s the problem with living in a police state, there are way too many of them with too much free time to make trouble. If the various agencies did their jobs properly, then they could arrest, try, and imprison every single criminal. However, they seem to be in the business of justifying their existence.