Sunday, June 20, 2004
"Public Schools...a sacred institution"
by Al Benson Jr.
The Southern Baptist Convention in its annual meeting in Indianapolis in June, 2004 had the golden opportunity to do some real groundbreaking work for the Christian community at large and they very quickly and willingly let that opportunity slip by. It was another one of those issues that church leaders don't want to "get involved" in, quite possibly because so many of them, lacking any historical perspective, view it as a "secular" issue. And showing concern for a secular issue might just divert peoples' attention away from a concern about the immanent return of Christ and the "rapture" and if that happened then all of those "end times" books out there would not sell as well.
According to an article on WorldNetDaily a resolution was presented to the convention by "Baptist activists" Bruce N. Shortt and T. C. Pinckney which "calls upon the millions of members of the denomination to take their kids out of public schools and either homeschool them or send them to Christian schools." Mr. Shortt stated that: "They didn't want to touch this (government schools) issue; its radioactive." Shortt noted that "there was a parade of SBC leaders and members of the Resolutions Committee speaking vehemently against it." Short, being a realist, was not surprised at the outcome. He observed that Baptists have traditionally supported the government schools, and he said "(Public schools) are almost viewed as a sacred tradition." More's the pity!
Shortt noted that there were six resolutions of one sort or another offered on education. The Resolutions Committee, rather than dealing with any of them only sent out a resolution that warned against "the cultural drift of our nation toward secularism." This anemic resolution totally avoided dealing with any real issues and solved no problems for anyone except those on the committee who apparantly wished to wash their hands as quickly as possible of the whole affair.
Of course anyone with a brain can easily discern that much of our cultural drift toward secularism is caused by and takes place within the confines of the government school system, but hey folks, let's dont bother calling a space a spade. One can only conclude from all this that, at the leadership levels, the Southern Baptists (and unfortunately the leaders in many other denominations as well) are committed to and sold out to the government school system. So they "preach the Gospel" on Sunday morning and then on Monday morning they sent out their youthful charges back into an "educational" system that totally denies that what they preached on Sunday has any meaning or relevance in the lives of our youth, and apparently they love to have it so. It would appear that much of the church leadership in this country takes the same position in regard to government schooling that the Yankee mentality assumes toward Abraham Linoln.
There will never be any meaningful change in the direction this country is going in until the Christians finally wake up and realize that, in their love for government education, they are allowing the souls of their children and grandchildren to be subverted. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to find out the mindset of those that originated the government school system in this country. A few years ago I published a little booklet called "The Unitarian/Socialist Foundations of Public Education. I only have a handful of copies left but would be willing to sell them for $3.00 apiece to anyone interested. In this booklet I described the mindset of those that founded pubic (government) schools in this country. Surely if I could come up with that information then some of these church leaders could also.
Part of the problem is that assuming the responsibility for your children's education requires just that--responsibility--and sadly, most Christians today do not really want that. It's much easier just to send the kids off to the public brain laundry and then sit back and gripe when all does not go well, as it usually doesn't. Until Christians wake up and realize the crying need to take their children and secede from the government schools then the current "drift toward secularism" will continue, and many Christians will be found to be supporting it. Sorry folks, but that's the way it is.
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
"TO PRESERVE THE UNION"
(and make a little money for my friends)
by Al Benson Jr.
We have been fed so much baloney over the years about the reasons for the War of Northern Aggression that you almost get sick of listening to some of them. We have been told that the war was fought so the South could keep her slaves. The fact that she could have done this by remaining in the Union is never mentioned--and the establishment "historians" hope you never think enough about it to bring it up. The more inane and transparent the slavery question becomes the more its proponents push it--almost to the level of irrationality. It's like, for them, the only issue in the world that has ever existed or ever will exist is one over a slavery that died over 140 years ago. Slavery in Africa today, forget that, it's not relevant to the slavery question. You can't beat white Southerners
over the head with present-day African slavery so it's just not important.
Then there are those that seek to take a somewhat more realistic approach to the question and they state that Lincoln inaugurated and fought the war to preserve the Union. The question then naturally arises, who was he preserving it for, certainly not "we the people."
In his book "North Against South" Professor Emeritus of History at the College of William and Mary, Ludwell H. Johnson, has observed, in regard to the war that: "The Republicans could recruit their ranks by using the war as a bountiful source of patronage, as well as by accomodating the various interests that had rallied to their banner. Many people at every social and political level regarded the Union cause primarily as an opportunity to make money or to advance their public careers, or both." Not to be outdone, the federal government, on March 3, 1863, passed the Captured and Abandoned Property Act. Professor Johnson has noted that "The latter's main concern was cotton, and its execution confirmed Southerners in their belief that the real object of the war was to rob them. Property of a non-warlike nature taken by Federal forces was regarded as 'captured'; property whose owners were absent, presumably within Confederate lines, was considered 'abandoned.' The Treasury Department was responsible for its collection or administration. This led to a great proliferation of the department's bureaucracy,..." And Johnson continued: "The full extent of fraud perpetrated by these swarms of agents will never be known. In corrup collusion with army officers, they got up expeditions whose sole purpose was to capture cotton." So, between Yankee bureaucrats and corrupt Yankee officers, they were all going to make a bundle off Southern misery. It could well be said of them that, in their support for the Union, "their hypocrisy knew no bounds."
The ill-fated Red River Campaign of Yankee General Commissary Banks was a prime example. In his interesting book "War Along the Bayous" author William Riley Brooksher has told us that: "Despite Banks' strenuous efforts to control activities involving cotton, Washington and (Rear Admiral) Porter together were too much for him. So pervasive was the scramble for cotton and so broad was the influence of some speculators that even Banks' own headquarters boat had brought a 'whole regiment' of speculators, most 'bearing licenses from Washington.' Everybody seemed to be in on the act as civilians and a portion of the military scrambled for cotton taking it with little regard for ownership or the needs of the expedition. So determined and desperate were they for transportation for their bonanza that cotton was piled on gunboats and coal barges emptied to make room for it. The use of threats and bribes was not overlooked either." Brooksher relates the story of one naval lieutenant, patrolling the mouth of the Red River, who was offered another stripe if he would let cotton through and he was threatened with dismissal if he wouldn't. Rear Admiral Porter had his hand in the pot too. He detailed several vessels to go out collecting cotton. In fact the Navy was so much into grabbing Southern cotton that according to Army Captain John S. Cooney it "was about the principle thing the navy did." One observer rather cynically noted that while the army did all the dirty work fighting the Confederates, the Navy then rolled in, once the fighting was over, picked up all the Southern cotten they could get their hands on, and they got one third of the money it brought in as a prize, while all the soldiers that slogged through the bayous and fought the Confederates got nothing, except casualties. As I said earlier, it really makes you wonder who Mr. Lincoln was "preserving the Union" for.
Such situations demonstrate an ongoing trend in the Lincoln administration--the blending of big government and big business, something we still struggle under today--a kind of coroprate fascism.
Frank Conner has noted in "The South Under Siege 1830-2000" that Northern capitalists "turned increasingly to the federal government to pay the high peripheral costs of industrializing the US." And Professor Thomas DiLorenzo in "The Real Lincoln" observed that, at the war's end "Government became more militaristic and began a quest for empire; myriad socialistic income and wealth-transfer schemes were adopted(and are still being adopted); and the Jeffersonian notion that 'that government governs best which governs least' was abandoned in favor of today's philsophy that nothing--not even the rules of golf--should be beyond the control of the federal government."
So Lincoln "preserved the Union" and the incomes of his fat cat establishment friends, but only the Almighty fully comprehends the cost of that to the rest of us. And today we live in a culture and with a government "education" system, both of which must be seceded from if we are ever to have any chance at making things better for our grandchildren or their children.
(and make a little money for my friends)
by Al Benson Jr.
We have been fed so much baloney over the years about the reasons for the War of Northern Aggression that you almost get sick of listening to some of them. We have been told that the war was fought so the South could keep her slaves. The fact that she could have done this by remaining in the Union is never mentioned--and the establishment "historians" hope you never think enough about it to bring it up. The more inane and transparent the slavery question becomes the more its proponents push it--almost to the level of irrationality. It's like, for them, the only issue in the world that has ever existed or ever will exist is one over a slavery that died over 140 years ago. Slavery in Africa today, forget that, it's not relevant to the slavery question. You can't beat white Southerners
over the head with present-day African slavery so it's just not important.
Then there are those that seek to take a somewhat more realistic approach to the question and they state that Lincoln inaugurated and fought the war to preserve the Union. The question then naturally arises, who was he preserving it for, certainly not "we the people."
In his book "North Against South" Professor Emeritus of History at the College of William and Mary, Ludwell H. Johnson, has observed, in regard to the war that: "The Republicans could recruit their ranks by using the war as a bountiful source of patronage, as well as by accomodating the various interests that had rallied to their banner. Many people at every social and political level regarded the Union cause primarily as an opportunity to make money or to advance their public careers, or both." Not to be outdone, the federal government, on March 3, 1863, passed the Captured and Abandoned Property Act. Professor Johnson has noted that "The latter's main concern was cotton, and its execution confirmed Southerners in their belief that the real object of the war was to rob them. Property of a non-warlike nature taken by Federal forces was regarded as 'captured'; property whose owners were absent, presumably within Confederate lines, was considered 'abandoned.' The Treasury Department was responsible for its collection or administration. This led to a great proliferation of the department's bureaucracy,..." And Johnson continued: "The full extent of fraud perpetrated by these swarms of agents will never be known. In corrup collusion with army officers, they got up expeditions whose sole purpose was to capture cotton." So, between Yankee bureaucrats and corrupt Yankee officers, they were all going to make a bundle off Southern misery. It could well be said of them that, in their support for the Union, "their hypocrisy knew no bounds."
The ill-fated Red River Campaign of Yankee General Commissary Banks was a prime example. In his interesting book "War Along the Bayous" author William Riley Brooksher has told us that: "Despite Banks' strenuous efforts to control activities involving cotton, Washington and (Rear Admiral) Porter together were too much for him. So pervasive was the scramble for cotton and so broad was the influence of some speculators that even Banks' own headquarters boat had brought a 'whole regiment' of speculators, most 'bearing licenses from Washington.' Everybody seemed to be in on the act as civilians and a portion of the military scrambled for cotton taking it with little regard for ownership or the needs of the expedition. So determined and desperate were they for transportation for their bonanza that cotton was piled on gunboats and coal barges emptied to make room for it. The use of threats and bribes was not overlooked either." Brooksher relates the story of one naval lieutenant, patrolling the mouth of the Red River, who was offered another stripe if he would let cotton through and he was threatened with dismissal if he wouldn't. Rear Admiral Porter had his hand in the pot too. He detailed several vessels to go out collecting cotton. In fact the Navy was so much into grabbing Southern cotton that according to Army Captain John S. Cooney it "was about the principle thing the navy did." One observer rather cynically noted that while the army did all the dirty work fighting the Confederates, the Navy then rolled in, once the fighting was over, picked up all the Southern cotten they could get their hands on, and they got one third of the money it brought in as a prize, while all the soldiers that slogged through the bayous and fought the Confederates got nothing, except casualties. As I said earlier, it really makes you wonder who Mr. Lincoln was "preserving the Union" for.
Such situations demonstrate an ongoing trend in the Lincoln administration--the blending of big government and big business, something we still struggle under today--a kind of coroprate fascism.
Frank Conner has noted in "The South Under Siege 1830-2000" that Northern capitalists "turned increasingly to the federal government to pay the high peripheral costs of industrializing the US." And Professor Thomas DiLorenzo in "The Real Lincoln" observed that, at the war's end "Government became more militaristic and began a quest for empire; myriad socialistic income and wealth-transfer schemes were adopted(and are still being adopted); and the Jeffersonian notion that 'that government governs best which governs least' was abandoned in favor of today's philsophy that nothing--not even the rules of golf--should be beyond the control of the federal government."
So Lincoln "preserved the Union" and the incomes of his fat cat establishment friends, but only the Almighty fully comprehends the cost of that to the rest of us. And today we live in a culture and with a government "education" system, both of which must be seceded from if we are ever to have any chance at making things better for our grandchildren or their children.
Sunday, June 13, 2004
A LITTLE MORE ABOUT MR. LINCOLN
by Al Benson Jr.
Professor Thomas DiLorenzo, author of the excellent book "The Real Lincoln" which is reported now to have around 75,000 copies sold, has passed along to us much valuable information on Mr. Lincoln that you can just bet will never make the "history" books for the brainwashed in the government's re-education camps people mistakenly refer to as public schools.
In a recent article on LewRockwell.com, Professor DiLorenzo gave much documentation on Lincoln's economic policies that people never find out about.
Professor DiLorenzo informed us that: "Lincoln was an advocate of a central bank that could print paper or fiat money that was not necessarily redeemable in gold or silver. Central banking was the third plank of the Lincolnian/Mercantilist agenda which, along with the protectionist Morrill tariff and corporate welfare for railroad corporations, was put into place during the Lincoln administration with the National Currency Acts...Lincoln's banking legislation was the precursor to the Fed, and all the monetary instability Americans have suffered because of it."
This is interesting information, something you simply will not get most places. Lincoln was an advocate of a central banking system. So was Karl Marx. Lincoln advocated a banking system that could print basically fiat money that you would not necessarily be able to redeem for gold or silver. That's exactly the same way our federal reserve notes operate today.
DiLorenzo, taking information from the book by Jeffery Hummel, "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men" has told us that "the pre-Lincoln American banking system that existed roughly from 1845-1862, known as the 'free banking era' was arguably the most stable banking system in American history despite all of its flaws and imperfections (which exist in all banking systems). Central banking introduced the instability of inflation that only fiat currency that is not backed by gold or silver can create."
Over the years many conservatives have lauded Lincoln for his monetary policies and gotten quite angry at those who would dare to attack their patron saint. One conservative publication, back in the 1990s actually had to request of one of its columnists that he stop writing articles exposing the truth about Lincoln because that expose' was costing the owner of the publication the partiotic subscribers he needed to make a living from the publication. It is a pretty sad state of affairs when the conservatives and the patriots get mad at those who tell them the truth. It reminds one of the old question from the Scriptures "Am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth?" In some patriotic circles the answer to that question today is a resounding "yes!!!"
Professor DiLorenzo and others in our day have turned up a wealth of information exposing the "great emancipator" for what he really was, just another socialist-minded, grasping, pragmatic politician, who was quite adept at quoting Scripture to fool the uninitiated who listened to his speeches. And it must have worked, because the trend has continued and is continuing in our day, and the government school-educated sheeple never question any of it. It gives new meaning to that car bumpersticker that says "The brainwashed never wonder."
by Al Benson Jr.
Professor Thomas DiLorenzo, author of the excellent book "The Real Lincoln" which is reported now to have around 75,000 copies sold, has passed along to us much valuable information on Mr. Lincoln that you can just bet will never make the "history" books for the brainwashed in the government's re-education camps people mistakenly refer to as public schools.
In a recent article on LewRockwell.com, Professor DiLorenzo gave much documentation on Lincoln's economic policies that people never find out about.
Professor DiLorenzo informed us that: "Lincoln was an advocate of a central bank that could print paper or fiat money that was not necessarily redeemable in gold or silver. Central banking was the third plank of the Lincolnian/Mercantilist agenda which, along with the protectionist Morrill tariff and corporate welfare for railroad corporations, was put into place during the Lincoln administration with the National Currency Acts...Lincoln's banking legislation was the precursor to the Fed, and all the monetary instability Americans have suffered because of it."
This is interesting information, something you simply will not get most places. Lincoln was an advocate of a central banking system. So was Karl Marx. Lincoln advocated a banking system that could print basically fiat money that you would not necessarily be able to redeem for gold or silver. That's exactly the same way our federal reserve notes operate today.
DiLorenzo, taking information from the book by Jeffery Hummel, "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men" has told us that "the pre-Lincoln American banking system that existed roughly from 1845-1862, known as the 'free banking era' was arguably the most stable banking system in American history despite all of its flaws and imperfections (which exist in all banking systems). Central banking introduced the instability of inflation that only fiat currency that is not backed by gold or silver can create."
Over the years many conservatives have lauded Lincoln for his monetary policies and gotten quite angry at those who would dare to attack their patron saint. One conservative publication, back in the 1990s actually had to request of one of its columnists that he stop writing articles exposing the truth about Lincoln because that expose' was costing the owner of the publication the partiotic subscribers he needed to make a living from the publication. It is a pretty sad state of affairs when the conservatives and the patriots get mad at those who tell them the truth. It reminds one of the old question from the Scriptures "Am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth?" In some patriotic circles the answer to that question today is a resounding "yes!!!"
Professor DiLorenzo and others in our day have turned up a wealth of information exposing the "great emancipator" for what he really was, just another socialist-minded, grasping, pragmatic politician, who was quite adept at quoting Scripture to fool the uninitiated who listened to his speeches. And it must have worked, because the trend has continued and is continuing in our day, and the government school-educated sheeple never question any of it. It gives new meaning to that car bumpersticker that says "The brainwashed never wonder."
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