The cascading, negative effects of the intervention of the U.S. government into the affairs of other sovereign nations are well known. However, I would point to three examples of societies where the populations that were affected extreme intervention by the U.S. government rose above the results of the intervention to build strong, stable civil societies.

Those examples are, in order:

Southerners in the eleven conquered states of the Confederacy after 1865

Germans in what became West Germany after 1945

Japanese in the home islands after 1945

In each case, the populations had suffered the effects of total war, the utter destruction of most major cities, total or near total breakdown of commerce, and occupation by victorious enemy armies in addition to the fact that a large percentage of their young men had died fighting. In each case the populations rebuilt not only the physical infrastructure of their countries, but strong, functioning, high trust civil societies.

So, whatever negative effects alien intervention may have on a society, I believe that clear, systemic, and continuing dysfunction is caused more from the internal weakness of that society than any outside force. Cultures with a strong tradition of individual and social responsibility, that honor hard work and self-sacrifice, and which reject the notion that the one is owed everything by the many…those are the ones that rebuild from disaster or pull themselves up from the dirt. The rest stay where they lay.

Importing millions of people who come from sub-par societies only makes sense if they come into a do-or-die environment where they will have to adapt to the rules of their new enviroment, adopt the broad values of the local culture, and work to live, as did the many millions of immigrants from Europe and Asia who came to the United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Letting in a similar flood now, when Europe and America have well developed welfare societies, is just asking for trouble where many (though not all) of the immigrants will come only for the benefits, and thus will be courted by politicians who aim to buy votes by giving away “free” stuff bought by debt serviced by the labor of the shrinking and dying productive class.

It is a recipe for conflict, strife, and civil breakdown. And it seems to be the way the West is headed, either through design or negligence.

The rational solution, to my mind, would be to enact a moratorium on future immigration while stepping up the collection and expulsion of illegal immigrants who have engaged in crime (murder, rape, theft, etc.) and offering a track to citizenship to those who work as productive members of society. Such a track should include demonstrated proficiency in English, a strong knowledge of the history and civil institutions of the U.S. and the state in which the individual resides, and the withholding of all civil welfare benefits to that person until some period of time after they have become a citizen.

To be honest, I think the same requirements should be made of natives as well. Citizenship should not be a birthright, but something that is both desired AND earned. There is no real value placed on anything which comes free of charge.

The congress, the president, and the supreme court started abolishing the Constitution the day after the ink dried. Even a cursory glance at history shows that the only real restraint on the depredations of the State is the ability, and more importantly, the WILLINGNESS of the people to stand up to protect their rights. As loath as I am to agree with G.W. Bush, the Constitution is nothing but a piece of paper. It doesn’t protect a damn thing.

Sadly, it seems the American people have lost the willingness to defend their rights after 200+ years of wippings and seventy someodd years of living well beyond their means in a gilded cage. Moreover, the ones who do have the gumption generally seem more interested in attacking the rights of people with whom they disagree than the common enemy of all free peoples.

Ah, once again Fred sees the truth of the big picture. He’s right. There’s no recovering the America of his youth or, indeed, mine (80s child here). History is cyclical; all great societies fall, and most rot from within.

Take comfort. History is cyclical. From the death of the old will spring the new. The kingdoms that grew out of the decaying edifice of the Western empire became something that far outshone the glories of Rome, but between the dusk and the dawn there was the night.

We are well past the apex now, thundering down the track into the dark. Keep your eyes open, enjoy the ride, and if you’ve talent with the pen, jot down some notes. Scholars of the future will want to know about our turn in the wheel.

Armchair warrior, you will be cowering in your basement IF this armageddon occurred. But, I get it, it’s wishful thinking on your part, since you are impotent to do something about it on your own.

Well, I don’t have a basement, and I wouldn’t be cowering because I’d probably be dead as the most of folks if things fall apart. The term armchair warrior is used as a negative because it describes someone who makes decisions that get other people killed while he sits safe and sound, with no skin in the game. My skin is on the line when these jackasses play their games.

I honestly don’t know if you missed the spirit of my comment or just willfully ignored it.

Think of it this way-the government of the United States, with the tacit support of most of the population, has engaged in an orgy of destructive, unnecessary, and aggressive war across a large part of the globe for the better part of a century. I’ve come to look at it as a toddler acting up because he never faces negative consequences of his actions. Sometimes a baby needs to be spanked to learn the limits of acceptable behavior or even to understand the sharp edges of the world.

The American people and their government have been too insulated from those edges. A dose of reality would do them some good.

Did he need to be hooked? I don’t know. He’s certainly as in love with militarism as all of the armchair warriors who preceded him in office. I mean, here is a man who just signed off on yet another bloated federal spending bill because he really, really wanted that extra 60,000,000,000 for the military industrial complex.

It’s no wonder certified Conservatives continue to defend the man no matter what he does or does not do. He’s doubled down on protecting their favorite welfare queens.

He’s failed to even begin get us out of Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, sub-Saharan Africa, Poland, the Baltic states, Korea, and…well, everywhere else. He seems to have settled on getting into a pissing match with Russia over Syria and is in no hurry to let the Pacific rim nations start funding their own military deterrents against China’s rising power.

Yeah, I get it, some things he can’t do as president. Some things take time. But he’s shown that he is much more interested playing “the Great Game” than restoring U.S foreign policy to some semblance of sanity. Long gone is any talk of non-intervention. So much for “America first”.

Maybe the guy actually believed what he said on the campaign trail, but if he did he’s still crumbled like a marshmallow over a campfire to the trough-feeding warmongers who fill the streets of D.C.

On my bad days I kind of hope he stumbles into what the War Party so covets-a hot shooting war with Russia or China. A few select strikes on the oil refineries and fuel distribution hubs and the folks in America will be eating each other in a couple of weeks. It would build some character in the survivors, anyway.

Fred gets a lot right in this column-especially in the first few sentences. A realistic, achievable solution to the problems of mass immigration into the United States would be to:

A: pull the military out of the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe, and redeploy to guard the southern border

B: put an immediate stop on all new immigration while working to assimilate the people already here into American society (or what is left of it…)

Taking twenty, or even ten years to assimilate the people who have come from other parts of the world and getting THE HELL OUT of the rest of the world’s business is the only way America will survive as even a shadow of her former self. If things keep going the way they have been the whole thing will crack apart and fall to dust within our lifetimes.

I know which possibility I believe is most likely. The final act should be interesting to watch, at the very least…

I didn’t vote for Trump, much for the same reasons as I didn’t vote for Obama before him, despite the contempt I felt towards the sitting administration and the (quite psychotic) woman who was running against him for the emperor’s chair. The simple why is that U.S national elections are a farce. There is no real choice, because the American people cannot stomach a real leader.

A real leader has true conviction, a set of morals and values that inform his world view and help him frame his words and actions. He cannot be a power seeker because those who actively seek power will, always, say or do anything to obtain, keep, and grow that power.

Trump said a lot of great things in his quest to gain power. So did Obama. Heck, GW has a few good things to say on the campaign trail. But, look at what they wrought.

Actions, not words. Can a man stand true to his word, and to his values, in the face of vicious attack, slander, and opposition?

Not if he has no base of principles on which to stand. A blathering weather vein with no foundation will swing its face in which ever way the wind blows, and will eventually be swept away by the storm.

I always thought Trump was exactly that, though I had hoped I was mistaken. He’s gone back on most of the promises he made. There will be no wall, no serious enforcement of immigration law, no withdrawal from foreign entanglements, no stopping of foreign aid, no real help for the poor and middle class…

At this point, even the most rabid Trump supporter must have drawn one of two conclusions. One, the man lied about whatever he needed to lie about to gain office. Or, two, the man is so incompetent, egotistical, and spineless that he cannot stand up to the Establishment powers and has allowed them to browbeat him into submission.

The sad thing about all of this is that the Republicans, and so called conservatives in general, had the opportunity to elect a man of genuine conviction in both 2008 and 2012. They rejected Ron Paul decisively both times primarily due to his stance on foreign policy.

I suppose the three things I like about Trump are that he has not yet gotten us into a shooting war with Russia (pretty sure that was on Hillary’s to-do list), he brings the circus back to town whenever he’s in the public eye, and he’s giving Republicans and conservatives exactly what they deserve.

So, long live the king. But I’m keeping my guns too, thank you very much. Things are only going to get more interesting from here on out.

Dr. Paul is right in this, as he usually is on foreign policy. There will never be any consequence for the people who promoted and executed the destruction of Iraq, and Syria, and Libya. They do whatever they want, and even if the average American does not support each war of choice, it has gotten to the point where the emperor…er, I mean, the president, whoever he may be and whichever party he belongs to, may launch attacks on people across the globe at will, and there will be no consequence to him or his enablers.

What are we to do? Our representatives, such as they are, will not hold themselves, the executive, or the judicial branches of the federal government accountable to their oaths, or even to the basics of morality. Not when doing so will likely end their time at the trough.

This is too big to stop. It will go on until the whole rotten edifice of what used to be America collapses in on itself. That won’t be a fun time, but if there is such a thing as karma, this country will have more than earned the pain that is coming.

The article frames the real world situation and potential outcomes of a U.S attack on North Korea very well. Specifically, the economic and political ramifications would be far-reaching, and possibly paradigm shifting in regards to the balance of power in the Pacific.

Frankly, the U.S military does not have the man power or capability, in terms of infantry, to fight the kind of war it would need to in order to overthrow the current regime that rules North Korea. Take that fact, and add it to the reality that such regime change and a military occupation of the country would be the only way to actually coerce disarmament or to prevent further development of nuclear weapons by the North. Sanctions, and the hot-air bluster of Washington won’t do it.

Most Americans, I think, would not really approve of a first strike on North Korea, much less yet another aggressive war of choice that would likely reap much higher casualties for American soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors than the last twenty years of war in the greater Middle-East. However, Americans have exactly as much to say in whether their government goes to war as the people of Germany did in 1939. The congress has completely ceded all of it’s power in that regard to the executive branch. Donald Trump can sent U.S forces to war at any time, anywhere around the globe, for any reason. Just like Obama, and Bush, and Clinton, and daddy Bush, and…well, you get the picture.

Of course, while most Americans might not gladly embrace another war, neither would they care much about it so long as it did not impact their day to day lives. The wars of my lifetime (I’m a child of the 80s) all fall into that category. Unless you knew some poor bastard in the military who got killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, or Africa, those conflicts haven’t impacted your life outside of the taxes and monetary debasement the government uses to fund its little adventures.

Sad as it is-should the U.S government launch a war against North Korea, or anyone else, it might be better for the country in the long run for it to be a clear, decisive defeat. Maybe then the cult worship of military power in Washington, and by much of the population, would finally pass away. Maybe then we could again be a republic that seeks peace, trade, and honest friendship with the world.

We’ll see.

There are exactly two reasons to go to Baltimore which I can speak of from personal experience. Reason one, Johns Hopkins hospital, which is one of the best hospitals in the world and has a truly amazing staff. Reason the second being the excellent sea food you can get at a number of bars and restaurants ranging from fancy pants to sass and brass.

Still, even though the locals who actually work are pretty friendly, visiting this dirty cesspool of homelessness and crime for the food alone seems foolish, so I’ll change my initial statement. There is exactly ONE reason to visit Baltimore-that being the hospital-but if you have to go than you should absolutely eat the seafood.

Otherwise, stay clear of the place, along with Philadelphia (dirtier than Baltimore, if you can believe it), and Washington D.C.-or pretty much the whole of the urban sprawl that has eaten the formerly beautiful coastal regions of the Mid-Atlantic states…

The simple fact that a bunch of well paid football players are refusing to worship the national idol has become the big story of the day fills me with wicked glee. I can’t wait for Fred Reed to come back from vacation. This is absolute gold.

The herd will always find distraction, and in the meantime the wars, looting, and other depredations of the state gang will go on unabated. Trump was elected because people (mistakenly) believed he would use his bombastic and forceful personality to accomplish some real change in US national policy. He ran on building a wall on the southern border, pulling the US military out of protracted, useless foreign conflicts, and repealing the ACA.

He’s done none of this. In fact, he’s committed more troops to old wars and opened up new ones while backing down on the wall and compromising his position on the ACA to the point where there is no chance it will ever really be eliminated.

But, boy, can he tweet up a storm about football players kneeling on a field.

And the Conservatives will defend him to their last breath. Just as the Liberals did for Obama long after he’d betrayed so many of the promises he made to them in order to get elected. That is probably the greatest similarity between Conservatives and Liberals (you know, aside from being mirror images of each other). They stand by their man. Always, and no matter what.

You’re probably right, though I didn’t intend for the comment to be a comparison of female Mexican immigrants to native white women. Low income folks from anywhere in the world probably suffer from similar lifestyles (little exercise or very rough work related exercise, poor diet, etc.) that cause physical attractiveness to fade quickly.

I know girls who were very, very attractive in their late teens/early twenties who came from, for lack of a better label, white trash families who lived that lifestyle and are now absolute wrecks. Others who came from the same background, but didn’t live the hard and fast life, have generally aged much more gracefully. It is interesting that those women are often the ones who either kept up with their education, found good full time jobs during or right after high school, or married a man from a higher income bracket than the one they grew up in.

Lifestyle and self respect are certainly important factors in living well past our youthful prime.

Anyway, I’m not a racial purist. I wouldn’t mind to marry and have a family with a woman of a different race so long as I found her attractive and shared at least some commonality in culture and worldview. I believe that maintaining a strong culture of Christian values and individual liberty is far more important than keeping the skin tone of the general population uniform.

That’s just me, though.

Speaking of small towns in Tennessee…mine has a chicken factory. You know, where they manufacture chickens? Smells great. Half of northern Mexico works there. White folks manage it. Lot of immigrants, both legal and illegal have settled the area.

And there are the usual problems. Many drive, often badly, and almost always without licenses or insurance in the case of the illegals. Some commit crimes. This does not differentiate them from their white and black neighbors.

I honestly don’t care. The Mexicans (catchall term for anyone from south of Texas) seem to be mostly employed, pregnant, or raising kids. They keep to themselves and are generally polite. Conflict outside of the political theatre that afflicts us every two to four years is pretty rare, probably because they come from a nominally Christian culture, much like my fellow native East Tennesseans.

I’d be much more concerned if there were, say, hundreds of thousands of fighting age males from Africa or the Middle East being ported in and given free reign outside the law. It is wise to count your blessings, even if they don’t seem like blessings at the time.

One thing, Fred, and I know this cannot encompass all Latinas, but I see very, very few attractive Mexican women up here. Maybe it’s be cause of the region most of the come from is less mixed than others, but most are short, round, and a bit rugged looking.

A wave of beautiful young women of the sort pictured at the top of your article would be a welcome event indeed.

I’m curious as to why a private contractor, paid by the government, who preforms the same tasks in pursuit of the same goals as government soldiers, sailors, airman, and marines is due any more or less scorn than “the Boys”. If the actions are the same than there is no real difference between a “mercenary” and a government soldier.

Example:

1. A man kills his neighbor because his father told him the neighbor was bad. This is murder.

2. A man kills his neighbor because his father paid him 1,000 dollars. This is murder.

3. A man joins the army because he wants to defend his people, is ordered to a country that has never attacked his people and kills the men who fight him and his comrades. This is murder.

4. A man joins a mercenary company for money and participates in the invasion/occupation of a the same country as the soldier in accordance to his company’s contract with the invading government, killing the men who fight him and his comrades. This is murder.

There is no difference in the action. The soldier and the mercenary are the same. They deserve the same scorn or praise, depending on how you view the morality of their actions.

Born and raised in E. TN, and lived in Knoxville while this was going on. Truly horrific. The crime, they way the “justice” system handled it, and the way the media protected the animals who perpetrated the atrocity.

Everyone around here who cares and pays attention knows what the KNS is, which is a soap box for the Liberal Establishment. Fortunately, it is dying, like most other dinosaur media. I’m pretty sure it’s only kept alive by outside investment and not a solid bottom line from online add sales and paper subscriptions.

Thing is, at the time I worked in what you might call the Black neighborhood in Knoxville, or at least one of them. Worked with a lot of blacks both as co-workers and customers. This case brought genuine horror to everyone, black or white, who had a sense of common decency. A lot of the people who I talked to about it were outraged when most of the defendants escaped the death penalty.

Of course, all of those people were folks who worked, had families, and were trying to do the best they could in the world. I didn’t have much to do with the thug population unless I ran into some when doing home inspections.

Those are the ones, the one’s with dead eyes and no soul, who keep whole neighborhoods in Knoxville, and dozens of other cities besides, in a state of fear. The community is hostage to them, but I don’t have it in me to feel sorry for them anymore.

The last few years have been pretty bloody in town with shooting after shooting. And of course the vast majority is black on black gang violence. It got so bad that at one point, after a drive by that killed a fifteen year old boy who dove in front of some other kids to save them, that I thought the community down there would actually do something to clean itself up-to stop protecting the thugs, which they do on a regular basis whether out of fear or out of familial loyalty, but it didn’t happen and we’re back to the same ol’ same ol’.

I don’t believe the situation has all to do with race. I believe it has to do with a community, in one city and across the country, that tolerates this culture of violence. Until that changes we’ll keep seeing blood on the streets and, more often, atrocities like the Knoxville Horror.

Unfortunately, I don’t see anything changing outside of some massive upheaval.

Sharp, as is often the case. Fred’s picks for heads of the ABC departments of the federal leviathan make more sense than anyone (or anything, in some cases) who’s been nominated by a president in my memory. I also favor the institution of a well oiled guillotine to be placed by the front doors of every federal department building with a random lottery instituted that would, potentially, send the crown of anyone coming or going from said departments into the Big Wicker Basket.

Having been inside the government education system, both as a student and as an employee, I’d have to agree that the system at large needs to be abolished and not replaced by anything that could be designed, funded, or influenced by the feds. If the people of a state absolutely cannot conceive of a world without tax funded schools they can scrap about the details amongst themselves and leave the rest of us to our own fights.

Civilizations have risen, thrived, declined, and fell in the past without anything like the massive fraud of state sponsored “education” that has grown up like a weed in the U.S. of A. Reducing the current system to ash would do no harm and might lead to something better.

Given the practical limitations of what an American president can do without the support, overt or tacit, of the congress and state and local governments, I believe that if the only thing that Trump does is to avoid a war with Russia and build better commercial relations with the rest of the world he would be the best president in my lifetime.

Most of the bad stuff is here to stay. Obama Care, open boarders, deficit spending on domestic entitlements and a too large military, all of that will continue apace. There are too many snouts in the trough and they provide too much fodder for election conflict between the “two” parties, which helps keep them relevant in peoples minds. Any actions by Trump that could have the potential to REALLY upset the apple cart (ending the Federal Reserve money printing monopoly, reigning in the NSA/CIA/FBI/ATF Stasi) will be the actions that get him killed.

Having a half way sensible, business minded foreign policy is about the best we can hope for from a POTUS these days. If Trump can do that I’d be relieved.

Will Americans in states and regions which will roundly reject Hillary at the ballot box have to accept an administration that has publicly stated utter distain for them? Short answer is, no.

Absolutely not.

Nullification and, if things get too bad, secession, are all workable solutions that should be dusted off an examined. Hell, they should be examined if Trump wins, since it’s not the head man, but the system that has declared Americans to be the enemy that should be subdued and/or exterminated.

You know you are living the good life when you have the time to get fussed about something as asinine as a few guys hitting the dirt instead of saluting a piece of cloth…

I agree with Cletus. Professional sports (and I would include the college football corporatist hustle in that category) has become one big celebration of militarism and state worship. I’ve seen people harangued for not stopping and joining the worship service (national anthem) because they were walking in the concourse trying to get to their section or find a bathroom.

It is good to leave childish things behind, and I would count the hysterical, idolatrous worship of nationalist symbology as among the most childish behaviors that are still celebrated by the majority of American adults.

The manufactured hysteria caused by a handful of athletes taking a knee instead of worshiping at the alter with everyone else, regardless of motivation, just shows how much the same people of all stripes really are when their sacred cows are ruffled.

You want examples of strong men? I’ve got plenty. They are my family, my neighbors, and my friends who care not a whit what these players do. They are concerned with taking care of their families and living decent lives.

There are real problems out there, folks. It may be more productive to focus on those, and not the BS the masters use to distract. Just a thought.

Ending prohibition? Way too simple for America 2016, at least on the national level. This solution, while undoubtedly effective at reducing violent street crime and kicking the legs out from under the drug cartels, leave no room for politicians to profit by graft or by pandering to the Left/Right zombies.

Here’s another solution (even less likely to occur in my lifetime). Abolish government police forces and allow subscription based patrol services to take their place. Such businesses would only be concerned with protecting the lives and property of their customers, and would not wish to take on the financial risk of killing someone over something as inane as a “traffic stop”. It would also shift the perceived responsibility for the defense of the individual’s self from the police back to the individual or to a business or 3rd party which has taken up that responsibility via contract.

Just sit back and watch as the prisons empty and the real thugs get cut down by an armed, aware, and independent citizenry.

Ah, one can dream…

Fred makes some astute points, though I agree with the posters who have pointed out that it is not impotence that has kept the local (sic), state, and federal law enforcement agencies from stopping the violence directed against Trump supporters. I believe the mayor of San Jose flashed the elite’s hand when he laid responsibility for the attacks at Trump’s feet, rather than the individuals who did the attacking.

Of course, that may just have been the now Standard Liberal Mindset that says no-one who is not white and/or Christian is actually responsible for his own behavior. Who knows?

Anyway, I don’t see this playing out in anyway but a slow, painful disintegration of the United States into a hollow shell of what it used to be. Think about every other empire in history-that’s where we are headed. Eventual the shell will break up and something new(ish) will grow from the decaying husk of the fallen giant.

Personally, as dangerous as the world is likely to get during the darkest days of this process, I believe that there is opportunity for those who value individual liberty, responsibility, and the Western/Christian mode of civilization to carve out a place for themselves and rebuild a society that is not overshadowed by the monolithic edifice of the modern, libertine, secularist state.

Speaking as a native East Tennessean, I don’t see a lot of the rot that is talked about on the news or on websites such as unz.com. Not personally, anyway. Relations between the white and black communities are not perfect, but hardly antagonistic. The immigrant communities are still relatively small across the region and in most cases are not vocal in the political sphere. God and family are still the bedrock of the working community, although that seems to be changing little by little as parents continue to submit their children to the state college and university systems.

Now, there are plenty of problems. The region, overall, suffers from an epidemic of prescription opioid additions, poor health due to diet and lifestyle choices, and declining economic prospects for everyone but the politically connected top dogs (or at least that’s what it seems like). Still, my neighbors and I tend to look at what is happening to the rest of the country with a sort of detached horror. It hasn’t come here yet, really, and barring a major disaster or economic meltdown, it will take decades for us to catch up.

I honestly can’t imagine the black community, which is concentrated in Knoxville and other urban centers, rioting and burning down their own neighborhoods, and while I have my issues and concerns about the local police they don’t seem to be in the habit of shooting people in the back or killing men for reaching for a cell phone.

There are, I suspect, quite a few places like my home still left in the USA. Maybe we’re all doomed to eventually be consumed by the post-America gloom that Fred and others predict. Maybe not. As for today, the sun is shining, the dogwoods are blooming, and I am fortunate enough to live in a place where I can take the time to post a comment here, rather than fuss about whether I will be able to find food or clean water.

It’s not all bad, not everywhere.

To clarify, I did not say that chattel slavery is evil. I just said that it is morally indefensible if one claims to believe in the sanctity of the individual right to self ownership. IF you don’t hold to that absolute, than slavery in some form or another could easily be justified and defended by any number of arguments. History is full of societies built on slavery of some kind or another, and each of those societies had reams of arguments justifying the practice.

Regarding the political slavery/chattel slavery comparison, I mostly agree with you. The modern State practices a form of institutionalized coercion and extortion that can be compared to chattel slavery in that both relied on A) the threat of/use of violence to enforce obedience to the demands of the owners/rulers, and B) the acceptance of the majority of the enslaved/ruled population of the legitimacy of the system under which they live.

Total freedom may very well be impossible for whole societies. In fact, societies exist because populations of individuals agree, either implicitly or explicitly, to certain rules governing behavior in regards to association. However, individuals may operate in that condition if they choose. For example, I could choose to walk into a fast food joint buck naked, wave a pistol and demand ALL of the hamburgers. I’m free to do that in the sense that I could make that choice and act upon it.

Of course, actions have consequences and I, like all the rest of us, would be subject to the consequences of my actions. In that particular scenario I imagine those consequences would range from internet fame/humiliation to severe and embarrassing grease burns. Oh, and probably jail time…

I feel like I started out tying to make a point here, but ended up rambling. Sorry about that. I’ve enjoyed reading the more thoughtful comments on this article though. I liked your point about political action being driven by potential benefits to certain favored groups.

If there is no profit for someone (at cost to someone else, naturally), why bother putting it to a vote?

Aaron, you are right in that I would apply the notion of individual rights/responsibility to a soldier in uniform. Would you mind explaining why you believe this is an absurd idea? To my mind, we are either responsible for our actions, or we are not. Wearing a costume or badge does not absolve us of bearing responsibility for what we choose to do. Likewise, being the victim of wrongdoing cannot absolve us of our personal responsibility for our actions.

The question of when violence is justified or morally acceptable is, of course, one of the oldest and most subjective questions ever put before man. Like most such questions the answer is going to vary greatly between individuals and peoples. My answer is not going to be the same as your answer, which in turn will be different from the answer an Amish man might give. It’s still an interesting question, and I hope your presumption is correct and this movie somehow addresses it, even if the to comes up with is different from mine (or yours).

So, has anyone actually seen this movie? I understand the suspicion of the bent of content and the narrative, but to my knowledge it’s only been screened at one film festival so far.

Point of view counts for a lot when it comes to what we get out of stories, and movies are no exception to this. The movie “American Sniper” could be seen as a moving tribute to a patriotic war hero, or a jingoistic war-porn glorifying the murder of men defending their homeland from foreign invaders.

Is the murder of innocents ever justified in war or rebellion? Who defines an innocent? Were the German and Japanese civilians who died in Allied bombing raids less innocent than the people who were murdered in the concentration camps or the women who were raped to death in Nanking? Does the fact that violence and oppression has been directed against an individual or a people justify the same returned upon the defenseless families of their tormentors?

Here is a fact. Slavery is morally indefensible if one believes in the sanctity of the individual. If we, each of us, own our selves than any system that justifies the subjugation of our God given right of self ownership must be condemned and resisted. May justifiable resistance include the indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, and children simply because they have some connection to a slave owner?

Again, if one holds to the idea that each person is endowed with the right to life and liberty than the answer to that last question must be a firm, uncompromising “No”. I would press even further and say that the murder of a slave owner cannot be justified if he is not actively trying to violate the rights of another person.

So, a slave would be justified in using violence, even lethal violence, to resist actions that violate his individual right to self-ownership and free association, but would not be justified in using the same violence in the course of revenge for past wrongs. If he were to try to escape, and kill his “master” when said master attempts to stop him, I believe that is justifiable self defense. However, if he escapes, and then kills his master while the man sleeps in his bed, that is simply murder and a violation of the other man’s right to life.

Given the actual facts of Nate Turner’s rebellion seem to indicate that this was an orgy of vindictive murder, rather than a genuine attempt at escape, it is impossible to view the event as morally justifiable. Understandable, sure, given the brutal reality of slavery and human nature, but not justifiable. Does that make him a hero, a villain, or just one more man acting terribly against his fellow man while believing his actions are justified?

I haven’t yet seen this movie, and am interested to see if it may, impossibly, address some of these questions.

Mr. Buchanan is correct in that there is a forever war against the symbols of Old America. This is a predictable event and follows the same pattern as other such purges. Once an ideologically driven group captures power, anywhere, they almost always set about destroying physical links to what came before them.

Consider what the Protestant revolutions in Britain did to that island’s Catholic heritage. There are few churches in England, Scotland, or Wales where the beautiful stained glass and grand interiors of Medieval times survived the Puritans righteous fire. Becket’s bones were scattered before the new wave.

The only remedy is to hold fast to the defense of private property rights (which are under attack from the Left and the Right) and to be willing to push back against those who refuse to leave us alone. Pushing back could include refusing to do business with companies that actively go along with the purge (I don’t trade on Amazon or at Wal-Mart anymore for that very reason), organizing writing campaigns to newspapers and local elected officials, and NOT waiting for some politician to stop what’s happening. Writing your US rep or Senator will not help-and like as not the same is true of state representatives. Holding local politicians feet to the fire when the purge comes for your local Confederate monument (or other un-approved symbol) is the best way to hold things up through official government channels. Going out and physically protecting a targeted location is always an option when all else fails (and it will).

And buckle up. The New Reformation is going to be a rough ride.

I believe that the latest campaign against the Confederate battle flag and all other symbols of the Confederacy can be understood at two levels.

One, the emotional level of your average flag hater. This comes from educational conditioning or cultural conditioning (and one can easily influence the other). In government schools across America the overreaching story is that the Confederacy was evil and had to be destroyed. Often the comparison to Nazi Germany is made. This is educational conditioning.

Most, if not all blacks see the flag as a symbol of racism and state mandated segregation. This is understandable because it was used as such from the 60s through to the present by organizations such as the Ku Klux clan and others. That is a cultural bias that is reinforced by the educational conditioning. The general population, and the black community in particular, has never been taught about the history of the Klan as a nationalist organization in the early 20th century whose preferred symbol was the flag of the United States.

The second level is, I believe, the cynical attack by various interests who wish to obliterate even the memory of any resistance to the current regime. The flag, and other Confederate memorials, stand not only for resistance to centralizing power, the banking cartels and mercantilism that dominates todays world, but the remnants of a culture that stood in direct opposition to the cultural revolution that has been pressed for more than half a century. That is a culture unified by a common language and faith that did not accept easy divorce, bastardry, or homosexuality as morally acceptable ways of living.

But, hell, as long as Wal-Mart keeps selling crappy Chinese goods at low, low prices and you can get a one dollar cheese burger at McDonalds Southerners, and the rest of ex-America, won’t say boo about the destruction of their culture.

We were never destroyed by our foes. We destroyed ourselves.

You do? Everyone in the South then, and more than a few in the South today, considered such people to be the worst sort of criminal.

Yes, I do. Have you had a lot of conversations with living, breathing Southerners where they stated that the nullification attempts of northern states regarding the fugitive slave law and the operatives of the underground railroad were criminal? I’ve lived in the South my whole life and have never once heard anyone say any such thing. Of course, the only time nullification was ever discussed in my school was in relation to the nullification crisis of 1832-1833, and the overall message was that nullification is baaaaad.

Sending bounty hunters into northern states to retrieve escaped livestock was, in their minds, a perfectly justifiable exercise, even though it made a mockery of the very state sovereignty they demanded for themselves. (However, they generally respected the sovereignty of Upper Canada.)

Very true. Hypocrisy is very common in politics. There was constant conflict between various groups which wanted to control the central government in order to promote or enforce their own interests from the moment the Constitution of 1787 was ratified. That just shows me that the creation of a much more powerful central government was, ultimately, a mistake.

Great summery. If the original seven Confederate state seceded due to a real or perceived threat to slavery on their home soil that does not automatically give moral justification to Lincoln’s war, because as you pointed out he waged the war not to free the slaves but to enforce the territorial extortion racket claimed by the U.S. government.

Furthermore, as loathsome as chattel slavery is-I would submit that even if Lincoln had, from the very first, stated that he was waging the war only to free the slaves, it would still not have made the war morally justifiable because in my view governments and nations must be held to the same moral standards as individuals. If an individual sees a man being held in involuntary servitude does that individual then have the right to murder the captor? Does he have the right to burn his home, rape his wife, and starve his children in order to pay some kind of blood debt owed to the captive?

It is not wrong to help someone escape unjustified captivity, so long as the person escaping has made the choice to be free. No one is a slave, truly, unless he consents to that status and using injustice perpetrated against others as an excuse to initiate violence is an unbelievably slippery slope. That’s why the use of violence, especially deadly violence, should be reserved only for true self defense.

That is why I hold the attempts by many state and local governments in the north to nullify the fugitive slave law in great esteem, and find those who risked so much to establish and operate the Underground Railroad to be true heroes, while still seeing Lincoln and his armies as the thieving, murderous bandits that they were.