About This Blog

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) was the greatest economist of my time. His greatest works can be accessed here at no charge.

Mises believed that property, freedom and peace are and should be the hallmarks of a satisfying and prosperous society. I agree. Mises proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the prospect for general and individual prosperity is maximized, indeed, is only possible, if the principle of private property reigns supreme. What's yours is yours. What's mine is mine. When the line between yours and mine is smudged, the door to conflict opens. Without freedom (individual liberty of action) the principle of private property is neutered and the free market, which is the child of property and freedom and the mother of prosperity and satisfaction, cannot exist. Peace is the goal of a prosperous and satisfying society of free individuals, not peace which is purchased by submission to the enemies of property and freedom, but peace which results from the unyielding defense of these principles against all who challenge them.

In this blog I measure American society against the metrics of property, freedom and peace.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Don't Believe The 4th Of July Bullshit!

Don't buy into today's patriotic crap. The 4th of July patriotic nonsense is designed to make you an unthinking tool of the right. The American Revolution is the biggest hoax perpetrated on the American public since the Holocaust. In point of fact: it didn't happen!

Think about it. The myth-makers want you to believe that a nation of British colonists, who happened to be more prosperous than their British overseers, rose up against the British King in open rebellion! Yeah, right.

Successful farmers, businessmen, laborers and lawyers threw away all they had worked for and joined together in this rebellion. This alone is reason enough to disprove the myth. The myth makers want us to believe that wealthy and content colonists shed their blood and livelihoods contesting the most powerful military force in the world for the single reason that a stupid and insignificant tax on stamps interfered with their effete concept of individual liberty!

I just watched a patriotic movie on TV called "The Howards of Virginia." The producers (and the pandering network that aired this saccharine, nationalistic film) want us to believe that 18th century farmers and plantation owners left their comfortable estates unattended to join Washington's pitiful band of ragtag miscreants.

According to the movie, these farmers were away from home shooting redcoats for several years, allowing their fields to go fallow and their slaves unattended. Supposedly, after the war, these gallant, rich farmers returned home and picked up the pieces where they left off, as if time had stood still.

Pure bullshit!

Any reasonable man knows that untended slaves would runaway, and unpaid property taxes would result in seizure of their farms by the local authorities for delinquent property taxes. Use your head! Such patriotic trash can make sense only if we abandon our reason and common sense!

Are we to believe these patriotic farmer/soldiers -- with barely a frozen potato to share among them and only rags to bind their feet -- marched hundreds of miles to trap and defeat Cornwallis -- the most brilliant General in the world at the time?

Never happened! Couldn't happen! Never mind that most of the colonists were Tories loyal and sympathetic to the King. Most early Americans loved their King! The revolutionaries were merely a handful of misguided terrorists.

The tall tales of Washington at Valley Forge purport to be true American history. Read the myth and laugh folks. The conditions described would stop a modern army of professional soldiers in their tracks, much less a band of gentlemen farmers:
Many wounded soldiers from previous battles died from exposure. Long marches had destroyed shoes. Blankets were scarce. Tattered garments were seldom replaced. At one point these shortages caused nearly 4,000 men to be listed as unfit for duty. Undernourished and poorly clothed, living in crowded, damp quarters, the army was ravaged by sickness and disease. Typhoid, jaundice, dysentery, and pneumonia were among the many diseases that killed 2,500 men that winter.
Even the myth of Valley Forge belies itself, for it says that these pathetic warrior citizens tried to desert and Washington had them shot for it!

But the most ridiculous aspect of the myth is that these pathetic souls endured it all for a fucking abstract idea.

Liberty? Freedom?

Please!

Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO union has exposed this absurdity for what it is, pure extremist right wing propaganda:
Let's call this right-wing "freedom" catch phrase what it really is: a grossly political strategy to dupe the public, which holds the word "freedom" as something sacred.
Our Department of Homeland Security is spreading the real truth as well:
A new study funded by the Department of Homeland Security characterizes Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.
Two hundred years ago people may not have had computers, but they weren't stupid. Take a look at this picture and tell me you would suffer the indignities shown in defense of a single, nebulous "sacred" idea. The absurdity of it all sickens me!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I'm with you. Freedom is a myth. We were put on this earth to involenteraly serve masters. By the way, slavery is a myth too. No one would be a slave for very long because they would rise up & kill their masters. Slavery is another right wing conspiracy.