By Anna Von Reitz
Quite often I receive posts that merit both thought and reading. Here's one for all my readers to take to heart. We have indeed been the victims of failures by our military leaders to protect and defend our interests, as well as the victims of politicians and international bankers. Exactly how and why this is, is not difficult to perceive once one overcomes indoctrinated assumptions--- such as the assumption that our government is moral and exists to protect us.
In
fact, the government protects itself first and foremost and only later
stops to consider the people and resources that are its bread and
butter.
Our relationship with the government
must be that of a Master to a vicious guard dog. We may never sleep upon
our obligation to impose limits on the government for our own sakes and
for the sake of the entire rest of the world.
For
too long we have failed to listen to an hear the warnings that have
come to us from our Forefathers and from our contemporaries and
immediate forebears, including Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and Smedley
Butler, and honest political leaders including JFK and Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., both of whom were murdered by the criminal interests
that still stalk us today.
US FOREIGN POLICY FOR THE IGNORANT
by michael.d.gaddy@gmail.com
(And Republican Warmongers)
Many,
many, years ago our founders warned us of the dangers of maintaining a
"standing army" and how that would hinder our pursuit of Liberty.
"In
time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to
the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War has the same
tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans, it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people."
Madison
pretty well described where we are today in a nutshell; we certainly
have the "constant apprehension of war" promoted by the media and most
government employees. To believe we do not have an overgrown Executive
is to border on insanity for has the Congress not relinquished their
power to declare war to the executive branch and most "conservatives"
defend their right to do so much more than they defend their own rights.
Madison warned a standing army and an overgrown executive are not "safe companions to Liberty." Need I say more than the Patriot Act or The National Defense Authorization Act?
Are
we not pelted daily with claims of foreign dangers by those same
forces: government employees and the media, and have they not become the
instruments of tyranny here at home? Republicans finally got an "in
your face" dose of this in the 2016 election cycle.
What
about the Roman maxim of exciting a war anytime there exists a threat
of a revolution among the people? Would one be out of line to mention
the Oklahoma City bombing or 9/11? Did they both not excite war among
the people and justify the existence of both a standing army and a more
powerful executive branch?
Prior
to WWII, America indeed did not have an organized armament industry as
was stated by President Eisenhower in 1960. We also did not have the
National Security Act and all of its attendant federal bureaucracies
prior to 1947. In what could be considered President Eisenhower's
farewell address, he warned us of just such a combination of powers. He
referred to them as the military/industrial complex. In all candor, he
should have called them the military/industrial/banking complex.
Eisenhower said,
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Unfortunately, another warning that has been ignored to the detriment of freedom and Liberty.
Were
we warned even earlier than the warning from Eisenhower and after the
warning from Madison? We certainly were. Writing in the early 20th
Century, even before the winds of war in Europe that became WWI, a man
by the name of Randolph Bourne admonished the people that war was
indeed "The Health of the State." What Bourne outlined so well
was how the government (state) derives powers taken from the people and
how government grows beyond its constitutional boundaries, with the
people's blessings, all the while little realizing they are endorsing
their own slavery to the forces of government. Read for yourself if
anything Bourne wrote has relevance in our world today, all these 99
years later?
"Government
is obviously composed of common and unsanctified men, and is thus a
legitimate object of criticism and even contempt. If
your own party is in power, things may be assumed to be moving safely
enough; but if the opposition is in, then clearly all safety and honor
have fled the State... The republican State has almost no
trappings to appeal to the common man’s emotions. What it has are of
military origin, and in an unmilitary era such as we have passed through
since the Civil War, even military trappings have been scarcely seen.
In such an era the sense of the State almost fades out of the
consciousness of men... With the shock of war, however, the
State comes into its own again. The Government, with no mandate from the
people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the
negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations,
which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and
gently and irresistibly slides the country into war. For the
benefit of proud and haughty citizens, it is fortified with a list of
the intolerable insults which have been hurled toward us by the other
nations; for the benefit of the liberal and beneficent, it has a
convincing set of moral purposes which our going to war will achieve;
for the ambitious and aggressive classes, it can gently whisper of a
bigger role in the destiny of the world. The result is that, even in
those countries where the business of declaring war is theoretically in
the hands of representatives of the people, no legislature has ever been
known to decline the request of an Executive, which has conducted all foreign affairs in utter privacy and irresponsibility, that it order the nation into battle... The
moment war is declared, however, the mass of the people, through some
spiritual alchemy, become convinced that they have willed and executed
the deed themselves. They then, with the exception of a few malcontents, proceed to allow
themselves to be regimented, coerced, deranged in all the environments
of their lives, and turned into a solid manufactory of destruction
toward whatever other people may have, in the appointed scheme of things, come within the range of the Government’s disapprobation. The
citizen throws off his contempt and indifference to Government,
identifies himself with its purposes, revives all his military memories
and symbols, and the State once more walks, an august presence, through
the imaginations of men. Patriotism becomes the dominant feeling, and
produces immediately that intense and hopeless confusion between the
relations which the individual bears and should bear toward the society
of which he is a part... The patriot loses all sense of the distinction
between State, nation, and government."
Time
and space prevent me from including more of Randolph Bourne's
brilliance, but readers may access the entirety of his work at their
leisure.
Then,
in 1935, a genuine military hero, a two-time recipient of the
Congressional Medal of Honor, provided us with the wisdom of his 30 plus
years of service in the United States Marine Corps. Major General
Smedley Butler revealed that indeed not only was "war" the "health of
the state" but it was also a "racket." Butler told us,
"WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It
is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most
vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one
in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in
lives... In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the
conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made
in the United States during the World War[I]. That many admitted their
huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war
millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How
many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug
a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a
rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened
nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of
them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were
wounded or killed in battle?... And what is this bill? This bill renders
a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled
bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability.
Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for
generations and generations.
For
a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a
racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
So,
there we have it; from two former presidents; one a founder and the
other a military leader of the free world. We also have the words of a
philosopher and the words of a genuine, highly decorated war hero. But,
we still continue on the path of destruction. We embrace American
exceptionalism where we readily accept the insane belief that if another
country does something it is wrong, but if our country does the exact
same thing it is permissible and acceptable.
We
have lost our collective minds, we embrace our government which
tyrannizes other countries and ignore the fact we are victims of tyranny
by that same government. We can't understand why other countries fear
the same government we fear here at home and wish to defend themselves
from it.
to be continued...
