I'm going to the March for Life!!!

Several months ago, I blocked vacation time at work for January, and over the course of the last few months have been planning the trip. Plane fare, a few sights to see, but most importantly, my trip by foot down Pennsylvania Avenue. Nothing is more important than this.

Or at least, when I marched in 2010 it was Pennsylvania Avenue where the Tea Partiers went. I can honestly say, those protests were some of the most fun I've ever had in my life, and I've been all around the country and seen and done many things. It's been too long, and it is time for me once again to proudly put on my activist hat and wave my sign.

Protesting is a Constitutional responsibility, listed right there in the First Amendment for all of us to read.

I will not shirk my responsibility.

Hopefully, I'll see you at the march on January 24th!

What is your cost to entry to learning the Founding Fathers?

I'd like to have a frank discussion about the cost of entry for you or others who wish to discover more about the Founding Fathers, and even moreso the barrier that presents toward educating others. As we approach the completion of the audiobook version of James Madison's Notes, one of the goals for this project is cost reduction. I would like for you to consider three aspects:

1. Time cost
2. Money cost
3. Exclusivity or efficiency

I assume people will automatically think in terms of money, and it is true that the scope of what I'm looking for could have been better asked in terms of "commitment" instead of "cost", but I prefer the original wording because time spent is a cost paid.

I would also like to explain what I mean about exclusivity as well. Do you like to sit down for two hours at night and read a book? Many people do. But that's a nearly 100% exclusive task. A warehouse worker isn't going to read a book at the same time they unload a truck during early morning receiving hours, for example. An audiobook, however, overcomes the cost of exclusivity and introduces the advantage of multitasking.

Now, I would just like to know, what's your money cost? Only for the Founding Fathers or immediately relevant to the Founding era. Have you purchased this book, that book, a three pack of something else. Was it $50? $345? Some other number? Thousands?

Now, I would like to know what is your time cost? How many minutes or hours or days or weeks did it take you to read those books? Be it the Federalist Papers, the Law of Nations, Novanglus, Jefferson's Notes, John Locke, Letters from a Farmer, or any number of other works? Because I'm quite sure that a handful sought out the text online and downloaded. But did you print? That wasn't free either.

Since most of the work of the Founders only exists as paper, you were stuck in exclusivity, weren't you?

This is a discussion of cost, and of course you know I'm looking forward toward cost reduction. If we want to defend our Constitution and advance the Founding principles, and help others around us do the same, then cost reduction in areas such as this need to be discussed and the bar must be lowered. Because if you're going to buy one copy of a book for yourself, and one for your friend? Now you have doubled your cost, and doubled the (reading)time investment. Do you think your less-committed friend will be just as inclined as you to do the same? Don't bet on it. They wouldn't even buy one copy, why would they purchase several copies?

But if the cost can be lowered, is it more likely you can get even more people involved? I think so!

So then, conservatives, don't produce audio that's commercially viable. Simple! Problem solved.

Not sure if you heard, but Google is going to be cutting off content that they deem to be "not commercially viable". Yes, I'm a conservative, and no, I'm not worried one bit. Why would I be worried, I already don't produce anything commercially viable.

Oh, you want to say that what I produced wasn't valuable? My personal favorite is the book The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, which according to the Archive page has been downloaded over ten thousand times since I released it. Not bad for something that's "not commercially viable". This book has a noted particular value for those who wish to engage in push-back against the race industry.

Here's another one, by Stuart Chase The Challenge of Waste, which according to the Archive page has been downloaded over thirty five thousand times. It was published early in 2017. Not bad eh?

The point I'm making to you is this - and this doubles up for content from the Founding era - there is a ton of content published prior to 1923 that needs an audio production which can be extremely useful in telling the story and educating your fellow patriot. Once I realized that the key for me was to elevate someone else's content, instead of my own - I can't tell you how liberating of an idea that is. In particular, let me leave you with this thought:

The Founding Fathers speak for me. So I speak for them. Here is one such example. Click on number 6 in the list of 20.

Honestly, I wish I had more personal time to create way more "commercially non-viable" content than I'm currently capable. The works of John Adams, early important history books written prior to the progressive era about the Founding and our Founders, such as by Jared Sparks. 3 to 5 well placed "not commercially viable" audiobooks could be used quite effectively against the false history promoted by the progressives, but it will take me years to get there.

So.

Any volunteers? Message me publicly or private with a little bit of your personal interests historically speaking and I'll show you how and more importantly where to get started. When is the last time you think you influenced thirty five thousand people? Only serious takers, please.

Shouldn't all of the states be taken off of welfare?

There's an interesting headline out there today, which can serve as a good educational moment. Due to the ravages of the fires out in California, the White House is threatening to cut off federal funding.

Now first off, The notion of this phrase "federal funding" (the article also uses the phrase "state funding") is offensive because it's dishonest. It's welfare, that's what it is. I'm not interested in P.C. comfort terms. As I wrote in May of 2017, when the progressives were starting off building their nanny-state empire, they had a very specific list of welfare queens - 48 of them to be exact. When progressives are determined to achieve a goal, they are very crafty in a deceitful way of achieving their goals.

The progressive notion of putting the states on welfare first, before turning individuals into welfare queens was destined for success.

But why are we keeping around such a relic from a discredited ideology? I mean, I know why the progressives want to keep it, it's because they really don't like the states and want to subjugate them just like they want to subjugate us. That's why they put together court rulings such as Wickard v. Filburn. Count me out. Wickard also needs to be repealed.

Now in the short term, there is probably some merit to getting California to actually do something useful about these fires. Federal Government does in fact have California on food stamps, so why not cut off said food stamps? Ok, well if we only want to engage in extreme short term thinking is that workable. That's not what I'm talking about though. I'm talking about the underlying issue of this long-standing welfare scheme, and looking out over America as a whole over the last 100+ years, these schemes of progressivism are an absolute horrific failure.

Lincoln: The Founding Fathers did not make America racist or slaver. They inherited America that way

See the Lincoln-Douglas debate #6.

Stephen Douglas:

We then adopted a free State Constitution, as we had a right to do. In this State we have declared that a negro shall not be a citizen, and we have also declared that he shall not be a slave. We had a right to adopt that policy. Missouri has just as good a right to adopt the other policy. I am now speaking of rights under the Constitution, and not of moral or religious rights. I do not discuss the morals of the people of Missouri, but let them settle that matter for themselves. I hold that the people of the slaveholding States are civilized men as well as ourselves; that they bear consciences as well as we, and that they are accountable to God and their posterity, and not to us. It is for them to decide, therefore, the moral and religious right of the slavery question for themselves within their own limits. I assert that they had as much right under the Constitution to adopt the system of policy which they have as we had to adopt ours. So it is with every other State in this Union. Let each State stand firmly by that great Constitutional right, let each State mind its own business and let its neighbors alone, and there will be no trouble on this question. If we will stand by that principle, then Mr. Lincoln will find that this Republic can exist forever divided into free and slave States, as our fathers made it and the people of each State have decided. Stand by that great principle, and we can go on as we have done, increasing in wealth, in population, in power, and in all the elements of greatness, until we shall be the admiration and terror of the world. We can go on and enlarge as our population increase, require more room, until we make this continent one ocean-bound republic.

Abraham Lincoln:

Judge Douglas asks you, "Why cannot the institution of slavery, or rather, why cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our fathers made it forever?" In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that, as a matter of choice, the fathers of the Government made this nation part slave and part free, he assumes what is historically a falsehood. More than that: when the fathers of the Government cut off the source of slavery by the abolition of the slave-trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from the new Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was in the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge Douglas asks me why it cannot continue as our fathers made it, I ask him why he and his friends could not let it remain as our fathers made it?

The Founding Fathers could not undo in just a few short years what the King spent over a century doing.

Because of the false teachings of progressivism, it has become one of the greatest of ironies that the "Great Emancipator" was also one of the most ardent defenders of the Founding Fathers - specifically on the topic of slavery.

Edmund Burke replies to Samuel Johnson about slavery and slave holders

The propaganda that progressives employ is in full bloom, now that they've spent the last 120 years dumbing us down through government controlled grade schools.

One of the favored propaganda devices that they use is that of Samuel Johnson, a well known British author at the time. Johnson examined some of what he heard coming from the Continental Congress and among other observations, asked this question:

We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

Just a month ago I wrote this about one of Burke's speeches, where he notes the hypocrisy of the British (of all people) offering freedom to slaves, after they were the ones who did all of the colonial shipping across the Atlantic! But anyways, in the same speech Burke gives what is actually a very concise answer to Johnson's query. Burke said:

There is, however, a circumstance attending these Colonies, which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the northward. It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks, among them, like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, sir, to command the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; but I can not alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these people of the southern Colonies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty than those to the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such, in our days, were the Poles, and such will be all masters of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.

Note that both Samuel Johnson and Burke are observing how the spirit of Liberty appears to be more vivid in southern colonies. Now of course Burke wasn't addressing Johnson at this time. However, it does render the question Johnson asked relatively useless.

What Johnson is responding to(without wording it that way) is their heightened sense of jealousy over their individual Liberty. Patrick Henry is very well known for using that specific word. "Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel." Jefferson also uses that word in the Kentucky Resolutions. "Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no farther, our confidence may go."

What did the Confederates agree on with Abraham Lincoln? That the Founders opposed slavery of course.

In his 1861 "Cornerstone Speech", Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander H. Stephens said the following:

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other — though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.

Now you know that if the VICE PRESIDENT of the Confederacy was saying this about the Founding Fathers rejection of slavery, he had plenty of agreement on it. In other more detailed(line by line) words, Abraham Lincoln agreed that the Founders rejected slavery. In his Peoria Speech, Lincoln said the following:

AT the framing and adoption of the constitution, they forbore to so much as mention the word "slave" or "slavery" in the whole instrument. In the provision for the recovery of fugitives, the slave is spoken of as a "PERSON HELD TO SERVICE OR LABOR." In that prohibiting the abolition of the African slave trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken of as "The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States NOW EXISTING, shall think proper to admit," &c. These are the only provisions alluding to slavery. Thus, the thing is hid away, in the constitution, just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death; with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time. Less than this our fathers COULD not do; and NOW [MORE?] they WOULD not do. Necessity drove them so far, and farther, they would not go. But this is not all. The earliest Congress, under the constitution, took the same view of slavery. They hedged and hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity.

In 1794, they prohibited an out-going slave-trade---that is, the taking of slaves FROM the United States to sell.

In 1798, they prohibited the bringing of slaves from Africa, INTO the Mississippi Territory---this territory then comprising what are now the States of Mississippi and Alabama. This was TEN YEARS before they had the authority to do the same thing as to the States existing at the adoption of the constitution.

In 1800 they prohibited AMERICAN CITIZENS from trading in slaves between foreign countries---as, for instance, from Africa to Brazil.

In 1803 they passed a law in aid of one or two State laws, in restraint of the internal slave trade.

In 1807, in apparent hot haste, they passed the law, nearly a year in advance to take effect the first day of 1808---the very first day the constitution would permit---prohibiting the African slave trade by heavy pecuniary and corporal penalties.

In 1820, finding these provisions ineffectual, they declared the trade piracy, and annexed to it, the extreme penalty of death. While all this was passing in the general government, five or six of the original slave States had adopted systems of gradual emancipation; and by which the institution was rapidly becoming extinct within these limits.

Thus we see, the plain unmistakable spirit of that age, towards slavery, was hostility to the PRINCIPLE, and toleration, ONLY BY NECESSITY.

Now isn't it interesting that the New York Times in its 1619 project disagrees with both the Confederates and Lincoln? What must it be like to have such a low quantity of shame?

This "Cornerstone Speech" does many things, but most importantly, it shows quite distinctly that there is a lineage break from the Constitution to the Confederacy. Not that the New York Times cares for facts, anyways. But I know that you do.