For the most part, excepting the bit about us being a democracy, what Joe Biden said about how we define being American is essentially true. Here are his words:
“I’ve often said that America is the only nation in the world founded on an idea,” Biden said. “Every other nation in the world is founded on the basis of either that — geography or ethnicity or religion. You can define every — almost everyone else based on those characteristics, but you can’t define America. I defy you to tell me what constitutes an American. You can’t do it. We’re an incredibly diverse democracy.”
“But there is one thing that does define us a country: We were founded on an idea that, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…Life, Liberty, [and] the pursuit of Happiness,’” he added. “It sounds corny to Americans, as we learn this in grade school and high school. We’ve never fully lived up to it, but we’ve never, ever, ever walked away from it. Every generation opens that aperture a little bit wider.”
Basically, he is saying America isn’t based on geography, race, or religion. While our highest idea, that everyone is created with certain inalienable rights, among which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, hasn’t been lived up to completely, we have never walked away from it. And, as he said, every generation opens that aperture a little bit wider.
President Biden is right.
His base of supporters, however, don’t see it that way. Critical race theory, which is based on totalitarian disregard for human dignity and human rights, is actually a deliberate walking away from this central idea. Radical, violent, irrational, and intolerant to the maximum, Biden’s rioting mobs which helped him into office after some serious electoral chicanery, are diametrically opposed to America’s great idea!
So how can President Biden rely on a base of supporters who don’t actually embrace this, like NPR who essentially denounced the Declaration of Independence as being “deeply flawed”? How can President Biden push CRT so hard when its central idea is quite literally totalitarianism?
(The chief aim of “critical theory”, of which CRT is a subset, like “Marxist Racism”, is the justification of totalitarianism.)
America as a union of commonwealths, small republics, and national peoples can become a diverse, pluralistic, free society of equals in terms of opportunity and treatment under the law where this great central idea reigns. But the growing authoritarian response, especially, but not exclusively, from the left and Democrats in this land to every real, histrionic, or outright fake (bogeyman) problem is moving us backwards significantly for the first time in our history.
If President Biden or others want to insinuate or claim that an American “nation” exists whose only idea is this, even though this is, broadly speaking, a great idea, then they don’t understand how national identity creates and enables a form of organic cohesiveness. This organic cohesiveness allows vast numbers of people to act in their own individual self-interest while serving a greater good and shared purpose without the need to rely on a top-down system of control.
Nationhood without strong shared beliefs (especially religious), values, and convictions just isn’t a thing. But in a country with a dwindling ‘Christian” majority, most of whom do not hold consistently to historic Christian orthodoxy, making being a Christian a condition of being an American is intolerance and untenable.
America is a country, not a nation. And that’s OK. If the great idea of this country is something like freedom based on virtue, liberty, and independence, then this is a good thing as well. It is the basis of a true “empire of liberty” that acts as a homeland and protector to multiple nations of people within.
I’m an American because I love this country, I embrace its big idea for freedom with liberty and justice for all, I reject bigotry, racism, and intolerance, and I respect the original spirit and intent of our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights as the highest ethical and moral law of this land.
America isn’t a nation and it isn’t a nationality! Therefore, any persons or national peoples within our borders who start with respecting this big idea would fit in with and enhance this country.
There was a time when the American nation was almost exclusively Christian in character and beliefs, but never was it based solely or mostly on ancestry. Times changed and America has lost a national character based on Judeo-Christian beliefs and values to become this diverse union where citizenship and adoption of our great idea was all that made you an American.
Whether for good or ill, America is a country without a distinct national identity in the sense of the classical, ancient concept of nationhood. We are a country, not a nation, but a country whose core identity is supposed to be freedom with liberty and justice for all.
While for the most part President Biden said the right things, his reliance on a radical base who defy those things and his policies that undermine those things make his words as hollow as those who may have signed the Declaration of Independence while owning slaves.
Doubling down on the Marxist-based totalitarianism of “critical theory”, in this case “critical race theory” (also known as “white people are morally inferior and so is freedom” theory), the NEA wants all children indoctrinated with Marxism. This radical totalitarian front group enjoys the support of most public teachers and therefore represents the true nature of what is being done in these government-run radicalization centers called schools.
Cis white boys will be mercilessly bullied by teachers to accept their moral inferiority and do penance by voting Democrat when they get old enough and, also, by fully participating in the whole rainbow of sexual activity.
Critical race theory is race-based Marxism that aims at cultural genocide of so-called “whiteness”, teaches children they are either demonic offspring of oppressors or oppressed little angels who can do no wrong and who the white kids owe something to. The “solution” to the “problems” is, of course, totalitarianism.
The National Education Association represents 3 million public teachers, most of whom embrace the radical authoritarianism of this front group. The teaching profession has devolved into a “revolutionary” position from which to brainwash future voters to support America’s authoritarians, the Democratic Party.
Critical race theory, like the whole rainbow fascism agenda, is basically also child abuse. For the “oppressed” it renders them powerless victim and for the “oppressor”, well, their only path to some limited form of rehabilitation is to renounce themselves and enthusiastically vote Democrat to prove their evolution.
(There is no “white genocide”, the real aim is to demonize “whiteness”, associate freedom values with whiteness, then banish freedom for all, white or other, in the name of “racial justice”, but for the purpose of creating an authoritarian state.)
The National Education Association is euphemism for the National Enforcers of Authoritarianism, which is all this un-American, anti-freedom organization has devolved into. Most public teachers either love and embrace this totalitarianism and will it upon children or they go along for fear of losing their jobs.
This Marxist front group also went on in its recent Representative Assembly to attack heterosexuality and even capitalism, both of which it wants to banish from schools as much as Democrats want them outlawed.
There’s no telling what will happen if, in 10 years, little Johnny dares to say he only likes girls and doesn’t want to watch the naked drag show at the school assembly.
Letting your children attend schools run by NEA thugs is opening them up to serious psychological damage.
After the deaths of over 100,000 people, costing the US over $2 trillion, America’s two decade “war on terror” has resolved little and achieved virtually nothing. Fighting for the freedom of people who refuse to fight for themselves has never been a fruitful proposition.
In Afghanistan, the US has never enjoyed popular support for its “nation-building” mission and the Afghan people seem more desirous of Islamic extremist rule than anything approaching freedom. Contrary to the claims of politicians, freedom isn’t sought universally.
As the US has exited the scene, the Afghanistan government is crumbling and the Taliban are marching in, seizing the very weapons meant to fight against them. Regardless of peace talks, it is probable the Taliban will be back in Kabul, back in charge, in a matters of weeks or months. The reset to the previous status-quo may even see a rebirth of Afghanistan as the nexus and safe-haven for Islamic terrorism.
Pictured above, Kabul, target of the Taliban
But aside from the effort to punish Al Qaeda for the attack on 911, the last almost 20 years fighting a “war on terror” have caused some 15,000 US deaths (military and contractors), over 50,000 were injured, but tens of thousands more suffer psychological trauma, such as PTSD, from the failed conflicts. The damage to American prestige and our economy had been immense.
Another casualty has been civil liberty, thanks to The Patriot Act, by which illegal spying Americans and serious undermining of our values for freedom has occurred. Presently, as the failure of a “war on terror” is being whitewashed, the full power of apparatus erected to fight that war is being turned on Americans at home by a Biden administration who deems anyone who is woke to their authoritarianism as a potential domestic terrorist.
As the Taliban marches toward Kabul in US vehicles, they are bound to make ISIS look trifling and soon enough some US politicians looking to burnish their street cred will begin banging the drums of “nation building” again in Afghanistan.
(Satitre)- While many were stunned by publicly-funded NPR’s woke cancel culture renouncement of the Declaration of Independence, the Freedomist was “thisclose” to issuing our own demands to fire NPR from ever associating with the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Publisher Bill Collier said of this firing, “Every July 4th the NPR host would read the Declaration of Independence on air and every year it was just grating on us to know these people were not the sort who should be allowed to read such an ennobling document whose sentiments they stand against so strongly.”
The reading was always done in such a tone that one could clearly tell it was never meant and just never jibed with the true ideology that animates the people who run NPR: a blatant hatred for their fellow humankind on the basis of a woke cancel culture authoritarianism.
Collier addded that, “this year it was our intention to finally put an end to this blatant hypocrisy, the idea of them reading out this document just seemed like dishonorable to the original spirit and intent, a spirit and intent that transcends the writers themselves.”
Also, the Freedomist wishes it to be known that, while NPR quit their association with such principles as inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and are openly embracing their woke cancel culture authoritarianism, it remains true they were fired. As Publisher Bill Collier stated, “They knew our official announcement was eminent and the paperwork was already sealed, they announced they quit before we could make their firing official, but, in the end, they were fired.”
As to life, they are for killing the unborn right up to the moment of birth and, paradoxically, preserving the lives of the worst murderers, whose henious deeds don’t match those of the unborn child who might be an inconvenience to its mother, which, evidently, is a crime worse than murder.
As to liberty, this one always draws a guffaw from the NPR crowd whose version of “liberty” is akin to “freedom through slavery”, or something like that.
Finally, as it relates to happiness, these people are too angry at ghosts and bogeyman to ever be happy and, what is more, they want everyone else to also be miserable with them.
NPR were also fired from associating with the Bill of Rights whose sentiments are as far removed from their woke cancel culture authoritarianism as heaven is from hell.
Their lame “justifications” for quitting, when they were fired, further reveal the vapidness of their intellect and the depravity of their moral character. The truth is, authoritarianism has no place being associated with the founding principles of freedom which built this country and which we still strive ever more perfectly to actualize.
The fact some woke authoritarians cannot see this and wish to deconstruct our past in order to destroy our future, and the fact public money supports these people, is another matter altogether. But for now we are at least relieved some woke authoritarian loon won’t be pretending their totalitarian ideology is in any way connected to our Declaration of Independence by reading from it in some simpy little tone.
China’s lying down movement is quietly resisting the new Chicom rat-race mandates, but could it become something serious?
China demands productivity while the top 1% in China earn what the lower 50% earn and the authoritarian dictate of long hours without real pay is simply breaking the younger workers.
The “lying down campaign” is all about exiting the rate race. The truth is, no matter how hard you work, the cost of housing is so high, you will not be able to afford a decent place to live. While TFO Global paints this as a political movement, it may not be that simple.
Today’s workers almost all come from one-child families thanks to China’s unforgiving totalitarian “one-child” policy. They are used to pretty much having their own way, being spoiled, and not being asked to make sacrifices. They usually had two sets of grandparents and a mother and father doting on them.
But just as China needs to grow its own consumer economy and increase productivity as its population becomes older, with every one person now being responsible for two retirees, the cost of raising a family and buying a home have also risen dramatically, artificially. China now has a three-child policy and is pushing young people to reproduce as a patriotic duty, but these young people simply have no stomach for it.
Hence the lying down campaign. The idea is that just working real hard and getting married to have three children, all very expensive, is too much of a sacrifice and is materially impossible. Chinese housing prices in its cities is well in excess of the earnings of its workers, by a factor of 10-20 times in most cases. So lying down, putting the breaks on the mad rush to meet unrealistic quotas and exiting the rate race, is the only logical step.
This is not necessarily a political movement. Nobody is screaming “down with communism!” But the potential for this movement to become political, and dangerous, is not lost on the Communist dictatorship, which is actively shunning the lying down campaign as barbaric, unpatriotic, and criminal. Que the calls for rounding up the ringleaders.
These younger workers, all one-child policy victims who never had to learn to get along with other siblings or to hear a word of discipline from their parents and grandparents (who often lived with them), simply don’t feel any need for or see any benefit in working harder, much less having three children!
It’s hard to predict that this will be China’s undoing. The range of possibilities is large, the government is likely to find new ways to push conformity, to dramatically increase the birthrate and present productivity, and to even use robotics and automation, to assist. Moreover, the potential for forced euthanasia targeting infirm people and efforts to force older people to do some kind of work are also not off the table.
But this could become political, the countermeasures could not only fail but backfire, and what is now just a rebellion against a rat-race mentality could become rage against the entire system. A heavy-handed response could actually engender something deeper and more dangerous than people not wanting to work so hard or have so many children.
Bill Collier- Canada has a long and ongoing history of the government dictating sociocultural norms at the end of a gun barrel. Today Canada is grappling with a horrendous “discovery” that doesn’t surprise anyone in the Native community: potentially thousands (over 1000 so far) of unmarked graves of Native children who died while in residential schools meant to brutally obliterate their culture, language, and way of life.
The Bible say of the Disciples that people will oppress them and think they are doing a service to God (see John 16:12), thus revealing the depths of evil and hypocrisy human beings are capable of. And with the cultural genocide waged by Canada from 1874 until 1996, tearing children from their parents and assaulting their Native culture at its core, this was the case. The oppression and abuse were done in the name of Christ, who most certainly did not author such evil.
What happened was children of Native parents were forcefully taken from their homes and placed into residential shcools where they could not speak their language, were forced to convert to “Christianity”, and were treated generally very harshly, especially if they showed any of their Native culture like language, religion, or dress.
Invariably, and perhaps owing to harsh conditions, some children died. They were then buried, never sent home, and often in unmarked graves or in graves where markers were later removed.
This wasn’t the government alone. The state did force these chidlren into these schools, but the schools were run mostly by Catholic and Anglican churches, with 70% being Catholic. Thus, the institutions affiliated with Christ, and in His Name, actively conducted this cultural genocide in a brutal manner. This let to many premature deaths and the traumatic experiences scarred generations of Native children.
Those who would oppress others need only the slightest pretense. The pretense here was an alleged need to assimilate Native children into the broader Canadian society. The people doing this may have convinced themselves they were helping these kids and, worse, doing a service to God.
As Canadians grapple with this brutal history, the question remains, has the spirit of oppression in the very name of things like God, or Christ, or Justice, or whatever, been exorcized from the heart of the country? With tables turned, it is now Christians in Canada who face “forced assimilation” through the “human rights commission” that forces acceptance of practices condemned in the Bible.
The same churches that went along with the religious persecution of non-Christians are now being oppressed and having what they say over the pulpit dictated by the government. That they may garner little sympathy for their fate is owing to their own history of being an instrument of oppression.
Canada has no “Bill of Rights”, and whether it is locking up Native children or Christian pastors, all in the name of forced assimilation to what sociocultural milieu the state favors, the long tradition seems to be a gross disrespect for human rights and human dignity.
The use of Christ as a banner of oppression is certainly baneful to the Native peoples of Canada and it is morally repugnant to any true follower of Christ, first because of the victims and also because it is a abominable taking of the Lord’s Name in vain.
Canada must search its very soul and ask why whatever its government decides the sociocultural norm must be always becomes something one either submits to or is brutalized for refusing to conform thereto.
Bill Collier- Angry mobs and talking heads inspired by clickbait rage content demand absolute fidelity to their party line on pain of banishment. That’s not a partisan problem and it is a reflection of a deeper battle within the culture against any and all forms of authoritarianism.
Authoritarianism is the enforcement of strict obedience to authorities, often with a loss of personal freedom, and often at the expense of the victims themselves. This expense is exacted through taxes, regulations, exploitation, and consumer fraud through the monopolization of the economy by a coterie of the top 100 corporations.
The ability of people in authority to show tolerance for and deference to the citizen in their opinion or interests is being eroded. Defy the “conservatoria”, the galaxy of leading conservative influencers and thought leaders, and you will get ramrodded into oblivion for your lack of purity. Likewise on the left, whether or not your opposition comes from the right, the left, or the middle.
This cultural devolution has now seeped into the masses, well, especially those keyboard warriors who occupy every space online. Often, any criticism of their side, or any of their heroes, will earn instant negative reactions that are usually angry outbursts that seem disconnected from what you have actually presented.
The average netizen who is ready to pounce rarely goes beyond a headline and a shallow, knee-jerk reaction. What is more, they often speak in the most intolerance language. We would provide examples, but most everyone knows of examples or has experienced these reactions.
The now abandoned saying about freedom used to read: I may not agree with what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it. Now we might worry about divisive language, hate speech, extremism, misinformation, and fake news and think, “there oughtta be a law!”
Is the next exit some form of dictatorship in the shape of a “hive minded” two-party duopoly and corporate monopolies all dancing to the same drums whose tune is called by the same people?
This is a cultural problem, not a political problem. We do not impart logic, tolerance, civil discourse, love of freedom, or any of these virtues. Instead we fight a winner-takes-all battle without mercy until all signs of opposition are gone.
A society bounded by the four core ideals of our spiritual constitution as a new and free civilization is capable of handling divisive language, hate speech, extremism, misinformation, and fake news without resorting to dictating and controlling speech problems reducing individual freedom.
These core ideals need a balanced application and our understanding of them cannot be separated from the historic moral and ethical orthodoxy of a Judeo-Christian worldview. We have Unity in diversity, Popular sovereignty, Democratic equality, and Rule of law.
Within belaboring this, let’s stipulate that what we have in mind for each is this:
Unity in diversity means a free and pluralistic society of equals before God and our fellow humans, bounded by the shared values and a shared identity based on those values so that most decisions which effect most people are made through freewill participation and local civic participation.
Popular sovereignty is the spiritual sovereignty of each person actualized mostly through freewill participation and through an accountability of those who hold public office and any public trust to those they serve and profit from as well as the right and ability to exercise and preserve our own concept and convictions about culture and society with people we freely associate with.
Democratic equality represents the true and perfect democracy of free exchange through mutual profit (the free market bounded by justice and fairness is the only true democracy) and an equitable meritocracy that ensures equality of opportunity and treatment for all, for the benefit of each person and society at large.
Rule of law is the shared consensus as to the truth and standards of righteousness and justice which comport with the laws of the universe wherein the law is made by all, consented to by all, beneficial to all, and equally, fairly, and redemptively applied to all.
When we explore these ideals from their Judeo-Christian roots, when we apply them at the level of interpersonal relationships instead of mere politics, and when how we view and apply each harmonizes with all the the others, we form the basis of a cultural shift away from the top-down, centralized systems of influence and control. These systems lord it over us and also infect us with the same spirit of intolerance and imposition by manipulation, legerdemain, and even force.
We ourselves are learning from the people and corporate/government entities that are lording it over us to despise and seek to punish all those who do not agree with us. We are the problem!
But if we are the problem, perhaps we are the cure. If we examine these core ideals for a “commomwealth of freedom” built on the voluntary pursuit of civic and moral virtue, liberty in our persons and free associations, and both ideational and material independence, we can craft a cultural shift away from the petty tyrants and toward a free, prosperous, and pluralistic society of equals.
Bill Collier- On this fourth of July, it seems fitting to post an article from back in 2009 about the man we consider to be essential to American independence.
What did Sam know that we do not know?
Sam knew that when your opponent does wrong this is not the time to despair, it is the time to use their wrong by exposing it and rallying the People against them. Sam knew that it was always best to provoke your opponent into doing wrong by forcing them in the open than to despair of ever being able to effect their decisions.
When the Sugar Act was initially announced in Boston, placing a tax on many items including sugar, most of the colonists were not concerned, the taxes were not that great, the cost was buried in the price of the items, and the total price was still reasonable. Samuel Adams saw in this tax the seeds of something much more sinister. Adams saw in this the seeds of endless taxation and of endless violations of the original charter from 1690 which granted autonomy for the Massachusetts Colony, which in one form or another all 13 colonies had enjoyed, and he was appalled at the apathy of the People.
In April of 1764 the Sugar Act was passed and what could a man like Sam do? Sam had nothing to recommend himself as a political player: he was a failed businessman, he was a tax collector who was in arrears because he was loath to force people to pay their taxes, he knew nobody in the Court, in the House of Commons, or in the House of Lords over in London, he was merely a committee member for various committees assigned by the Town Meeting (all Freeholders attended, there was no city council or mayor) and of some political clubs called Caucuses.
He was, essentially, a nobody, and while he was fairly well known in Boston, he had little political power in his Colony, he had no connections to London, and the people in his own town were apathetic to the extreme: they just did not care very much.
Have you ever seen an act by government that alarms you or have you ever felt alarmed at a certain candidate’s election to office but had a hard time rallying people to your cause?
Sam knew how to rouse the people and, by the way, at the end of our story you will see that Sam was able to force the British to back down on the Sugar Act but beyond this, Sam was able to single handedly spark the fires of independence in America. As early as 1743, when he wrote a college thesis asking whether it was prudent to resist the authorities when it seemed that this was the only way to preserve the commonwealth (he had concluded that it WAS prudent).
Rather than weigh his odds and focus on what he lacked, he chose to focus on what he had. In the movie “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” Queen Elizabeth is shown saying that while she understands what is possible, the impossible is much more interesting and Will and Ariel Durant once wrote, and I am paraphrasing, that the occurrence of unlikely and impossible things was one of the “humors of history.” On that score, Sam was an interesting humor of history and he has shown us how to make the impossible possible by starting with what you have.
What did Sam have?
Adams knew that he could control his own elected members of the House, who as delegates received instructions from the Town Meeting that had elected them. He knew that he could control what instructions they received. He knew he had the means of getting his information out through newspapers he was friendly with. He knew he could speak directly to the People at the next Town Meeting.
His basic strategy was to put his opponents in the wrong and keep them there.
How did he do this?
He exposed the reasoning behind their acts an the logical possibilities that their acts envisioned (if they could tax sugar without your consent, could they not also your land, your personal income, etc.). He took measures to force his opponents out into the open, for instance sending petitions he knew would be ignored or would be refused, going to court, knowing he would lose but forcing the court to show whose side it was on. He knew that using peaceful acts of civil disobedience would force his opponents to behave badly.
Sam knew that you had to identify your opponent, identify the logic and possible intentions behind their acts, and identify the possible logical conclusions or results of their acts. He knew how to expose their wrongness and keep them in the wrong. Sam knew how to use whatever resources he had to reach an audience and rally them around his cause against the opposition.
In the case of the Sugar Act, Sam identified the weak spot in the enemy’s armor. He could not go and lobby London for repeal of the Sugar Act but he knew how to create an army of lobbyists for his cause by hitting them where it hurts. You see, the London Merchants were America’s source of manufactured goods because American colonies were not allowed to manufacture their own goods. Sam decided that he would instigate a Boycott of all impost from England: Americans would be asked, in Boston first, to make do without these goods, to make what they needed or repair what they had, and to especially refrain from buying luxury goods and non-necessities.
How did he rally his people?
What Sam needed was to unify the 13 colonies behind this boycott (the word did not exist and Sam was the FIRST person in human history to use such a strategy on a systematic basis for political ends) but even this would be difficult, it had NEVER been done before.
Sam started with what he had and he built on that, he did not wait until things were more favorable or focus on what he lacked.
At the Town Meeting, Sam used his oratory skills, which he had learned listening to great preachers like John Edwards and many others who passed through his church, and like a fire and brimstone preacher he laid out his argument. He argued that their freedom rested on the autonomy of their colony, he argued that self taxing and self governing were the vital ingredients of that freedom, and that if an outside power could lay direct taxes on the people, without them having any say, then what else other than sugar could be taxed? Sure, these taxes were not that heavy and hard to bear, and indeed if the Massachusetts Assembly had passed such taxes this would not be an issue.
The issue was not the cost of the tax but the ideas behind it: the idea that the original Charter was now to be ignored in this area, the idea that Parliament had unlimited power over the colony, and the idea that the wishes of the People were irrelevant. If the tax on Sugar was not resisted then, in short order, the whole colony would be reduced to a miserable state.
He also spoke to the English themselves. One of the ideas behind the taxes was that during the late 7 Year’s War the English had accrued a national debt of 140 Pounds Sterling and they wished to recoup part of this cost from the Colonies, arguing that the colonies must bear part of the cost of their own defense. Of course the colonies had born the cost in manpower and money, in the millions, and the fact was that the war itself was an English war against a European power and would not have been fought in America at all if America was not part of Britain.
Sam told the English merchants that the true value of the colonies was not taxes they might pay, which would never be that much of a benefit to the English treasury, but the amount of trade: the colonies purchased hundreds of millions of pounds sterling in English goods every year. Why would the English jeopardize this trade with such taxes?
Sam was the first person, presaging Adams Smith by 12 years, to posit the idea that higher taxes would actually decrease revenue and cause a decrease in trade, something that the economists and political leaders of the day were completely ignorant of.
Now Sam turned his quill to the people of his city, and to the colonies, in addressing them.
Could the people go to the Admiralty Courts, the highest courts in the land, and appeal to them? Sure, they could do this, but these Courts were themselves a violation of the rights of self government because they did not answer in any way to the People and were completely beholden to the Crown.
No, the People would have to take other measures.
The People would have participate in a non-importation agreement and forego all English goods until the Stamp Act was passed and until Parliament disavowed its claim to be have the authority to tax the colonies directly.
Sam invoked a principle that was embodies in the Magna Charta but that was ignored and not much mentioned in his day, that there could be no taxation without representation and that it was impossible for the colonies to be represented in Parliament by reason of the distance (how could they instruct their delegates, as was their custom in their own colonial assemblies, from such a distance?) The idea of virtual representation was also refuted: the English believed that their Parliament represented all Englishmen in a “virtual” way even though not all could participate in election.
Sam exposed these ideas as nonsense, he invoked the principle of no taxation without representation, he exposed the logic behind the Act, that Parliament could tax the colonies at will, and he exposed the possible intentions or results of the Act, that if a small tax on a few items could be levied then taxes on things the colonists deemed un-taxable, their lands, their homes, the tools of their trade, and their personal income, would soon follow.
Sam used his voice in rallying his own Town Meeting, he used what outlets to the people he had, the newspapers, and he was able to get the Town Meeting to approve instructions to their delegates to urge the passage of a resolution by the House that would call for all 13 colonies to adopt a common, united plan to resist these unjust taxes in a lawful and peaceful manner, namely his non-importation agreement.
There were many machinations and tricks by the other side, for instance governors adjourning legislators to prevent them from passing any resolutions in agreement with this call for a non-importation agreement. he instructions he had given to the delegates from Boston, which were passed, went out to the colonies and one man, Patrick Henry from Virginia, was thereby inspired to join the cause of the rights of the Colonists.
Words well spoken and well written inspire people when they are actually placed in front of them.
Sam knew that you had to use what you had, you had to build on that to control whatever you could control by your words, you had to put your opponent in the wrong and keep them by exposing the ideas behind their acts and the possible results of those acts, by overcoming your own weakness, and that you could overcome apathy by making an appeal based on real needs, fears, and concerns and by presenting the best possible approach to defeating the opponent, namely finding the weak link in their chain and going after it.
In the case of the Sugar Act, Sam had the ability to control his own delegates, he had the power to get his message into the public through newspapers and speaking, he could build on that by winning the day in the colonial legislator, he exposed the fact that these Acts violated the principle of no taxation without representation and the idea that Parliament now thought it could tax anything, he exposed the potential for the Parliament to tax everything, he identified the disunity of the colonies as their weakness and proposed a a unified plan of action, the non-importation agreement, and he identified the English merchants as the weak link and therefore a non-importation agreement as a unified act of peaceful protest as the best form of resistance.
He did not stop there. He started the boycott, again the word was not in use at the time (it was invented in 1880 in Ireland when tenants boycotted an “Estate Agent” named Charles Boycott), in Boston first, even as he was working to get the colonies to participate in the boycott, which they began to do all over New England. He was active in going to all the political clubs and merchant’s clubs and urging them to each endorse his plan and help to enforce it. These clubs would provide people who would go to all the stores in Boston and look for any goods that had been imported, these people would observe ships brining goods and spy on where they were going, and the newspapers they controlled would actually print the NAMES of those merchants who were violating the agreement urging readers to not patronize those merchants.
A boycott does not work if it cannot be supported. Sam knew that he had to show the rest of the colonies that this non-importation agreement could be maintained and enforced. True, a boycott by the people of Boston may have little effect on the British by itself, but a boycott that was enforceable there could be used as proof of concept.
The Sugar Act was followed by the Stamp Act, which required stamps to be used for printing and various kinds of business or to be stamped onto goods for the sake of getting more revenue from the taxes. Initially, it seemed that Sam was failing, while he was getting support all over the colonies, the process was being hindered by the governors who were suspending legislators in order to prevent them from moving on the call for a congress. Clearly, the enemy then, as now, was seeking to divide and conquer.
The congress did eventually convene as The Stamp Act Congress and both the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act were repealed, although Parliament still claimed the RIGHT to tax the colonies and still clung to their idea of virtual representation.
During the next 10 years, from 1765 to 1775, Sam was to go through many ups and downs, many successes and failures, and often he found himself as a lone voice. When in 1772 he was trying to launch his idea of the Committees of Correspondence, which is the root idea behind our own “Information Committees”, he was again met with apathy.
To say that Samuel Adams dragged the country kicking and screaming into the path of Independence is a most accurate statement.
Sam knew what many did not know, he knew what all these new British policies were intending, that eventually the colonies would be reduced to total serfdom, but rather than complaining about the apathy, he sought to overcome it.
In the case of the Committees of Correspondence, which he saw as a way of getting around the Royal governors who constantly suspended legislatures whenever they opposed the King’s policy, Sam decided to make his opponent demonstrate the NEED that the people did not currently see, for some means by which the People could directly communicate with one another to plan united actions for peaceful resistance.
Sam went back to his Town Meeting and asked them to vote to approve a petition to the Governor to call the legislature into session. In the past, under the Charter of 1690, the Governor would receive the petition from a Town for calling the legislature in session and would generally agree to the petition or respond by offering a different time or, at least, he might request more information.
The Governor would not, back when the Charter was followed, before the new policies of the past 20 years, deny that Town Meetings had a right to ask for such a session, indeed part of the inherent power of Town Meetings was their ability to make such a petition.
Sam knew that the present governor would not be so amenable, that the petition he had seemingly innocently had the Town Meeting pass, would be treated with contempt. It would, in short, fail.
Why did Sam push for this petition knowing that it would be denied, knowing that it would thereby fail?
Same knew that if you want to keep your opponent in the wrong, you had to force them to do wrong publicly. If your opponent had a certain belief, force them to act in a public ways that will make it clear to all what their beliefs are.
The Governor did respond by denying the petition and saying that Town Meetings had no authority at all to make such a request but only the Governor and the King.
Sam knew this was the only possible response and when he had it published far and wide he explained, ever so patiently, even gleefully, that the Governor had just demonstrated what Samuel Adams had long said was true but that too few had understood, that the British and their appointed officials in America were hell bent on eliminating all forms of representative government and reducing the colonists to mere “subjects” who would be powerless before the might of the British Empire.
It was time for the People to create new agencies for communication and united action, it was time to institute a means by which local people could list grievances, compare notes with other communities, and communicate between communities to devise united plans of resistance.
The Town Meeting, aroused by the Governor’s letter, passed the proposal and a 21 member Committee of Correspondence was created. This Committee sent letters to other towns in the Colony and asked them to set up their own Committees to communicate regularly with Boston and other towns. These committees soon spread all over the 13 colonies, sharing information, comparing notes, sharing strategies, maintaining a line of communication that was independent of the Royal authorities, and devising unified actions at the regional level, on the level of the Colony, amongst groups of Colonies, and throughout the whole united 13 colonies.
Sam knew that when the people do not see the need for independent organizations that can serve as an alternative to organizations controlled by the opposition you have to force the opposition to demonstrate how those existing organizations cannot be trusted or used.
Sam was the original blogger, he and a group of friends formed what we would call an information committee and started a newspaper, the Public Advertiser, which was the first, in 1748, to publicly talk about the need to resist the Royal authorities while calling on united actions by all 13 colonies.
Sam knew that time was on his side: his opponents would act in ways that would prove the validity of his suspicions, while most Americans were appeasers, wanting just to get along, they had limits to their tolerance and they would stand up and fight when it became clear that the other side was never going to be satisfied with anything other than abject surrender, and he knew that he could get the truth out, that he could start with just a few people, and eventually, even if it took time, the people were with him in spirit and would eventually follow his warnings and his advice.
It isn’t really unexpected news to hear that a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences of The United States of America exposed the simple fact that going hostile and negative gets more engagement.
The study reveals:
…. posts about the political out-group were shared or retweeted about twice as often as posts about the in-group. Each individual term referring to the political out-group increased the odds of a social media post being shared by 67%. Out-group language consistently emerged as the strongest predictor of shares and retweets: the average effect size of out-group language was about 4.8 times as strong as that of negative affect language and about 6.7 times as strong as that of moral-emotional language—both established predictors of social media engagement.
Click-bait that is negative about the out-group gets more clicks, therefore, to get more clicks, people use hostile out-group click-bait, and in doing so perpetuate the disintegration of society. We don’t just disagree, we condemn. We revile. Or so the theory runs.
But is this a chicken or the egg scenario? Does the penchant of the masses for more engagement about the out-group, a tendency for angry reactions to get more engagement, reflect sentiment or is the phenomenon of online flame wars actually the source of the division?
Considering the source of the study, one wonders if the conclusion being sought isn’t a new call to somehow further tighten the reins on speech while focusing only on the “angry out-group language” of the “right” while pretending it doesn’t come from the left.
However, to credit this study, conducted in November of 2020 and released in late January 2021, this phenomenon was documented across the board for left and right. Both groups tended to give more engagement, and therefor more clicks, to out-group hostility than to saying good things about their in-group.
Click-bait, which is content that is sensationalized to get clicks even though the truth is far from that sensational, tends toward out-group hostility. And, moreover, hostile out-group click-bait tends to get more engagement when the source is a leading political figure than if it is a news site.
But what if the “other side” really are being awful? What if the myth “it takes two to tangle” isn’t true, what of one group is in fact pushing all the wrong buttons and doing all the wrong things? If, for instance, our condemnation of woke neocomm totalitarianism, with outright demands to censor and cancel the right and sic the entire “anti-terrorism” apparatus on them, contributing to the division or is it actually just honest reporting?
We are certainly not guilty of only zinging the left for bad behavior, our true north is pro-freedom and anti-authoritarianism. When we see “the right” being authoritarian we are just as ready to decry that. For instance, the “war on terror”, the “Patriot Act”, and NSA spying, all favorites of the right in their inception, were always viewed by us as totalitarian responses.
But because our audience, and generally our content, tends to overlap more to the right than the left, albeit not entirely, content about authorian offenses by those considered on the right gets less engagement and fewer views.
The tendency of both sides to resort to ham-fisted reactionary and authoritarian policies in response to their political opponents is becoming worrying. Decrying this may get more clicks, but if the substance is truth, then the problem is with the trend toward authoritarianism.
On the other hand, many of the more outrageous content peddled by left and right to get clicks isn’t substantively true and only serves to falsely demonize the out-group.
The bottom line is that, while actual trends toward authoritarian reactions to things one’s political opponents do is growing, the use of hostile out-group click-bait is exasperating the problem and actually leading to more and more authoritarianism.
Chinese President Xi Jinping made a 100th anniversary speech on July 1 that set a new, more strident tone at home and abroad. Xi demanded loyalty, called for more militarism, threatened to return to a more Marxist economic system, threatened China’s neighbors, and called for the advancement of China’s totalitarian system around the world.
In essence, China is becoming as much an existential threat as the USSR, perhaps moreso because our country is so entangled with them economically and because our ruling class essentially want to be China, albeit with the corporate monopolies using the state and not the other way around.
Lest we forget, China’s Marxism is brutality at home and imperialism abroad, the aim being a global communist empire.
Missing from the festivities, as if celebrating totalitarian wokeness ala Mao Zedong is even possible, was the military parade. This may be a sign of growing disconent in the military ranks as, while being missing, the PLA was urged to show loyalty and devotion, which many mean this is a problem.
At home, Xi has been burnishing his image as a successor to Mao and has begun rolling back China’s liberalization of the economy and of any semblance of freedom. Arrests and a social credit system that suppresses dissent are all part of the Chinese system or absolute control. Many Americans of the woke communist variety can only envy Xi.
By this speech, Xi, in his effort to gain the support of the 95 million Party members who lord it over the rest of society, is signaling a fresh and open aggressiveness against internal and foreign foes on par with the worse days of the USSR.
Stocks in China and Hong Kong tumbled as news of the extreme language of the speech got out. Xi warned that anyone who tries to bully China “will face broken heads and bloodshed.”
It is often forgotten that China’s system is totalitarian Marxism. His own words confirm this view:
We must continue to adapt Marxism to the Chinese context. Marxism is the fundamental guiding ideology upon which our Party and country are founded; it is the very soul of our Party and the banner under which it strives. The Communist Party of China upholds the basic tenets of Marxism and the principle of seeking truth from facts. Based on China’s realities, we have developed keen insights into the trends of the day, seized the initiative in history, and made painstaking explorations.
We have thus been able to keep adapting Marxism to the Chinese context and the needs of our times, and to guide the Chinese people in advancing our great social revolution. At the fundamental level, the capability of our Party and the strengths of socialism with Chinese characteristics are attributable to the fact that Marxism works.
Of course there is nothing factual about Marxism and Marxism doesn’t work. China’s success is almost entirely to the credit of Western sycophants who traded short-term material gain for economic arrangements that benefited China at the expense of the American people. The “new model” for Marxism is not to just use the state but to proactively control and use the corporation.
China’s totalitarian vision with the triple threat of woke authoritarian platforms and their social credit system, the corporate and financial sector monopolism that serves the Party, and a ruthless state that labels dissent “domestic terrorism”, is envied by America’s ruling class.
But China is also announcing by this speech a drive for global empire, an international neocomm order controlled by Beijing, although puppets in “allied states” may be given autonomy. China seeks world domination, of that there cannot be any mistake.
China is returning to a more brutal totalitarianism and is moving outward toward a new communist imperialism aimed straight at the United States of America.
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