Wednesday, December 5, 2012

A Journey Down The Road to Serfdom Begins With a Single Step

By, Chris Rossini
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Those individuals who seek to centralize power are all cut from the same cloth.

Whether it's modern day Europeans, who are feverishly searching for a way to create a "United States of Europe", or even the modern day U.S. which (at all times and everywhere) seeks to expand its Empire...centralizers all operate on the same wave length.

Their weapon? A story that sticks.

It doesn't have to be true. In fact, truth is usually nowhere to be found.

It just has to stick:


Things were no different after The American Revolution. The ink was barely dry on the peace treaty between England and the 13 independent American states, when the centralizers began their hunt for a story.

Numerous attempts were made to get the states together to consolidate power, but nothing stuck. However, much like today, the centralizers were patient. They would remain alert for their opportunity.

In 1786 (remember...only a measly 3 years after the peace treaty) a rebellion in western Massachusetts took place.

Perfect!

Unless you're running some kind of Mickey Mouse operation, you better be able to capitalize on a rebellion!

And they did.

What became known as Shay's Rebellion set the stage for the very secretive and mischievous Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

It wasn't supposed to be a Constitutional Convention to consolidate power...It was only supposed to be a meeting to possibly amend the Articles of Confederation. But the wind that the centralizers had at their backs was too strong to stop.

Shay's Rebellion is a key part of the American Story. Who better than Tom Woods to give the version that the U.S. Department of Education has kept from you?

Woods speaks truth about the story that stuck in 1786, and got the momentum going toward what would become the world's biggest empire:


8 comments:

  1. LOL! You ripped the Liberty Classroom video. I love Tom Woods, the guy is blunt and honest.

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  2. Thanks Chris, great post. The Constitution was essentially a coup, almost nobody knows that. I've been holding off on joining the Liberty Classroom because there's so much good free stuff out there and I don't have time to read as much as I'd like as it is. You're doing a great job of selling Tom's program.

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  3. Thanks guys...this video is clipped, but from a publicly available video on YouTube.

    I'd never publish anything that's only meant for LibertyClassroom members.

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  4. Wow, where have I heard this before, citizens paying higher taxes to pay off bad speculative bets. At least Shay and his compatriots rose up and objected to the corruption

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  5. I am also exploring some of America’s founding documents in terms of what they say, how they came to be, the individuals involved, what went on. If any facts are deemed incorrect by readers, please correct them, as my take is culled from limited sources, in a limited amount of time. But here goes . . .
    The Articles Of Confederation was a predecessor to the U.S. Constitution. There were interests such as Alexander Hamilton and others that believed the Articles were too weak as they did not have an executive or judicial component, nor did they have a taxation component, as such they pushed for a meeting that was supposed to simply upgrade the Articles, but in fact The Articles were totally done away with (interesting background story on the shenanigans by Hamilton, others to do this) and the Constitution emerged. There appear to have been two sides in the debate over the Constitution, one side called Federalists believing in greater powers for the central state (versus leaving power with the states and by extension people) with key Federalists being Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (who penned under pseudonyms what came to be called The Federalist Papers, as a means to seek to explain and sell (PR) what was in the Constitution). There were the anti-Federalists, of which key were Patrick Henry, George Mason, that believed the Constitution was taking too many rights away from the citizenry and opposed it.

    I found this item of interest in terms of what is transpiring as we head into the year 2013, and what appear to be relevant concerns at that time: “Historian Ralph Ketcham comments on the opinions of Patrick Henry, George Mason, and other antifederalists who were not so eager to give up the local autonomy won by the revolution:
    Antifederalists feared what Patrick Henry termed the "consolidated government" proposed by the new Constitution. They saw in Federalist hopes for commercial growth and international prestige only the lust of ambitious men for a "splendid empire" that, in the time-honored way of empires, would oppress the people with taxes, conscription, and military campaigns. Uncertain that any government over so vast a domain as the United States could be controlled by the people, Antifederalists saw in the enlarged powers of the general government only the familiar threats to the rights and liberties of the people.[37] “
    (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation )

    Each state had to ratify the Constitution, and some were balking in part based on the anti-federalist arguments. Not so unlike modern times, a selling (PR for public consumption?) tool was come up with in the form of 12 Amendments, with the promise they would be added to the Constitution after ratification. Post ratification, only 10 Amendments made it into The Constitution, what we now call The Bill of Rights.

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    1. Didn't they threaten to blockade Rhode Island if it didn't ratify the CONstitution? Yeah, voluntary union my ass...

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    2. Weren't the articles themselves bad though because even there you still have the establishment of a state? I mean who is anyone to force anyone else into any sort of agreement?

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  6. "Weren't the articles themselves bad though because even there you still have the establishment of a state?"

    Well, from a 2013 perspective, yes. From a 1777 perspective, no. The mood at that time was still tainted with the Jeffersonian belief along Lockean and Sydney pretexts in the Declaration of Independence that the individual was the sovereign and the states were delegated high level powers to protect those individual rights. The further away you went from the individual, the less power was to be delegated.

    Nobody got what they wanted in 1777, nor in 1789. The issue is that those who wanted the United States to follow the "British System" of government were relentless in their pursuit to undermine those who wanted a Lockean system of government. While there were issues from the beginning, it took until the war against southern independence and Abraham Lincoln to finally see that those who wanted the "British System" were willing to murder and enslave the whole country in order to get their way.

    After that, the very reasoning behind our independence from England was shown the door.

    "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

    Lincoln nullified the Declaration of Independence and enslaved a nation. The 17th and 18th amendments were the final nails in the coffin.

    It ultimately boils down those who wish to corrupt a system that has its foundation in mere words on paper, will find a way to contort those words to fill their needs.

    Until our species decides that individual liberty and property are sacrosanct, no words on paper, no laws, nothing can change the master / slave relationship the state holds over us.

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