Law Enforcement: The “Antibodies” to the Anarchy That Has Infected America

In the June 2020 issue of Newsmax magazine, an article in the Health Insider column (on page 86) describes a new compound that can battle antibiotic-resistant superbugs. British researchers have discovered that “[T]he compound is a metal complex based on the element ruthenium and ‘works by binding to the cell wall of the bacteria and disrupting so much the bacterial walls eventually burst open,’ says senior researcher Jim Thomas, professor of bioorganic chemistry at the University of Sheffield in England. Despots (Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ho Chi Minh) have always recognized the danger of gun ownership among the common people. The Weimar Republic banned gun ownership in pre-Nazi German (which made subjugating the people so much more efficient). The answer of any civilized society to protecting its citizenry from tyrants, thieves and murders (and sometimes each other) is a well-equipped, well-trained, disciplined military, state national guard, and county and municipal police department. In addition, that society guarantees the right of honest, law-abiding citizens to protect themselves with arms. Where people live in relative peace, the police force’s duties tend more towards civil rather violent crimes. Still, the knowledge that the police force is available allows the residents to live in peace and business owners to prosper. None of these are the goal of the Marxists. They permit themselves to use firearms in order to subdue the populace; for their enemies, they destroy the underpinnings of the law that allow others to carry firearms. “After the enemies with guns have been wiped out, there will still be enemies without guns;” Chairman Mao Tse-Tung wrote on March 5, 1949. “[they are bound to struggles desperately against us, and we must never regard these enemies lightly. If we do not now raise and understand the problem in this way, we shall commit the gravest [of] mistakes.” In other words, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1839. Still, unless you’re very clever, like Indiana Jones’ father in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and manage to get an old-fashioned pen out of your pocket and squirt your adversary in the eye with it (1989), a gun would suit your purposes better. Leftists will argue that a criminal could easily get the weapon out of a weak victim’s hands rather easily and use it on them. Any victim aware that they’re about to be attacked would never let the criminal get that close in the first place. Here in New Jersey, where we probably have the most blighted cities in America, we don’t go to places where the criminals are in the first place. But even if we did, New Jersey law prevents gun owners from even taking their guns out of their cases where dwellings are close together. Furthermore, when you travel, the gun has to go back in its case (unloaded, naturally). We would much rather, however, allow the police to handle the murderers, bank robbers, thieves, rapists, and drug dealers. We haven’t given much thought to how the police captured them, at least up until now. The Eric Garner case was an appalling example of excessive force used on an admittedly huge man committing the most harmless of “crimes.” The others? Well…if you commit a crime, get caught, and then resist arrest, at the very least we don’t have much sympathy for the perpetrator. Certainly, we would prefer that the criminal be brought to justice alive and tried by a jury that would determine whether the defendant was guilty, and then sent to jail. The problem with jail is that the Marxists, in their concern for the inmates, have provided them with exercise equipment – and drugs. Once they serve their sentence, they come out of prison stronger (if possible) than when they went in. The bigger you are, generally, the bolder and more arrogant you are. Law enforcement is hard pressed to deal civilly with suspects who are genetically bigger than they are and pumped up with exercise equipment and, probably, steroids. Now that they’ve seen that they have the upper hand, the Marxists are encouraging their followers to wreak mayhem on the cities they inhabit and urge the city councils, which are Democrat anyway, not to fight the revolution but to join it, to disarm and defund the police. Where are the Humvees the police were granted in the period after 9/11? I know our county sheriff’s department has them; I took pictures of them when I was doing free-lance photography. How are the police supposed to protect themselves – not to mention us – if they don’t have the equipment? The Marxists claim such equipment is “racist.” Well, they would, wouldn’t they? These neighbors are Black and Hispanic, and they are most certainly dangerous. What naïve city council could deceive itself into believing that they’re not. So, of course, the blue city councils and states know it. Allowing the criminals to rule the streets, guarantees that the Blacks and Hispanics will vote for them. Organized crime, drug cartels, and street gangs all have a hand in the corruption of their city councils. They considered these neighborhoods their territory and naturally they want those who represent law and order (and Capitalism) removed. The crime rate since George Floyd riots erupted has exploded. Thanks to violence and the virus, both Marxist-inspired, have conspired to bring down America’s economy, society, and structure. Marxist ideologues agree that violent revolution is the only way to bring about their so-called “utopia,” where man’s worst inclinations will be shackled, individual volition annihilated, and everyone in the collective will enjoy a guaranteed income and universal health care. Or so they claim. That is not what happened in the Soviet Union, China, or their satellite countries (i.e., Cuba, Viet Nam, North Korea). There, individuals who dared speak against the collective or engaged in non-government business where arrested and executed. That’s one of the things the Marxist professors either never tell their students or defend as “the ends justifying the means” of their professed “equality.” People in Communist countries do not enjoy freedom of speech and that right has completely vanished from America’s campuses, where students who proclaim liberty and freedom are beaten up. The CHOP block of Seattle, Wash., has now replaced the police force with their own “private” security service of Marxist jackboots. We can only imagine what is happening on those streets now to anyone who objects to the “secession” of the neighborhood. God help them. We cannot be protected by a police force that hands out lollipops and coloring books to neighborhood children but cannot successively arrest a growing number of jacked-up, drugged up criminals who need a troop of police officers just to subdue. The police are then charged with excessive force. Excessive size and strength generally requires excessive force. That’s just a common sense reality in a degenerating world. The other guy in Atlanta they probably could have let go since they had his car. In the case of the deranged George Floyd, releasing him would have created an unpardonable danger to the general public. We’ll say it again and again: it is not the police who need reforming; it’s the dangerous neighborhoods in which they patrol. They do wind up on an adrenaline high when the situation is most perilous. If they didn’t, what would happen to them. Criminals would get away, like the one in Atlanta did (he stole the cop’s stun gun, remember; that did warrant apprehending him, as forcefully as necessary short of killing him). People can be injured by those stun guns. What if he’d stolen the cop’s pistol instead? Drugs are a huge factor in these incidents. The drug trade needs to be ground to a halt. Far from surrendering in the War on Drugs, we should have increased our efforts. But the late Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials who’ve grown up on this poison can’t see any reason for them not to be legal. Drugs are what make useful idiots the most useful. Did you know that the effects of pot also tend to give its users a sense of superiority and even arrogance? It also infantilizes the mind, makes it susceptible to suggestion. Drugs change the brain. That’s why you parents have so much trouble reasoning with your college student children and grandchildren. They can no more reason than the clock on the wall. They’ve convinced themselves you’re stupid or ignorant. Or uncaring. Or even racist or too privileged. They have the attitude of the smartest person in the room. Adolescents have always been that way; it’s just that drugs and brainwashing have embedded their brains in a permanent state of infantile arrested development. As the police protect us from the neighborhood criminals, the sheriff’s department protects us on a county level, and the state national guard on a state level. The national guard is better trained and equipped for urban rioting than the local police are. They cannot protect us from an international invasion. At this point, an international invasion is unnecessary on the part of the Marxists. For the last 90 years, they’ve so thoroughly infiltrated our media, our universities and colleges, our corporations and businesses, and even our military and our government, that armed force on a national scale is unnecessary. Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev stated in an address to the Western Bloc at the Polish Embassy 1956, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within….Your children will tear down your own flag.” In another public speech Khrushchev declared: “[…] We must take a shovel and dig a deep grave, and bury colonialism as deep as we can.” Later, on August 24, 1963, Khrushchev remarked in his speech in Yugoslavia, “I once said, ‘We will bury you,’ and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you,’ a reference to the Marxist saying, “The proletariat is the undertaker of capitalism” (in the Russian translation of Marx, the word “undertaker” is translated as a “grave digger.” By the mid-Sixties, that’s precisely what began happening. Marxist-inspired students rioted over the Viet Nam War, white supremacy, poverty, and sexuality. They did, indeed, tear down and burn American flags, and their lawyers even convinced Supreme Court to declare the act Constitutionally-protected as free speech. During the riots, the Marxist students hurled many epithets at the police, including “Pigs!” and when the police broke up their riots – forcefully – they claimed “police brutality,” a phrase the current generation (the grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of the Hippies) has adopted. One of the Marxist goals was the break-up of the family unit. Their target was authority figures, which began with fathers. These professors and teachers encouraged their students to rebel against their fathers. In the Black communities, where crime and poverty were brothers, there were no fathers, for one of three reasons: 1) they were in jail; 2) they’d run off; or 3) they were there, but since the welfare state rewarded fatherless families, they remained unmarried or uncounted. Without fathers, the Marxists knew there could be no discipline or respect for authority in the home. Young blacks grew up fatherless and, consequently, undisciplined. Having learned no discipline in the home, they were unprepared even for kindergarten, and where the white counterparts (for the most part) learned the rules, they did not. As they fell farther and farther behind in school, the lower their employment prospects dropped. Most never finished high school and if fit for any employment at all, it was only for unskilled, manual labor. They certainly had no respect for the authoritarian figures of their bosses (who were almost always white in those days). The Marxists, with the help of an unfortunate white tendency towards discrimination, had a witches brew for their revolution. The only male authority figures in black communities were the police, who were White. The Marxists had no trouble painting the police as militaristic oppressors of the Black community and especially Black men. The Marxists stirred the pot as often as they could, confirming White people’s opinion of Black’s, and vice versa. The war was on. White people fled the cities for the safety of the suburbs. “White Flight,” Marxist journalists called it. Still, they had to work in the cities and the only thing that stood between the white workers and business owners, and total anarchy, were the police. Respect for the police was a difficult and stubborn idea for the Marxists to have to break down. They tried to claim that there were more White criminals than Blacks and that White people harbored a “racist” notion of Black crime. However, the White people were no more tolerant of White crime than Black. The newspapers and media were responsible for the reports of a Black crime wave. White crime, though, represented a smaller percentage of the population overall. They wanted the police to do their job, even when they were getting a speeding ticket. White people could get angry at the police, too. We recall a story of a white neighbor who cursed out a cop for giving her a speeding ticket. But usually they knew when to cool it. White people are taught that if you’re arrested, keep calm and don’t fight the police (and don’t talk to them, either, for Pete’s sake). They didn’t need a Miranda warning to tell them to not flag their gums. Eventually, you’ll hire or be assigned a lawyer who will help straighten things out. White people – generally – have always had a respect for law and order and the police, even when they don’t like it. They know that the same law enforcement officer who gives them a ticket for running a red light today just might be the same law enforcement officer who tomorrow saves you from a robber, or a heart attack, or a burning car. Respect for the police is one thing that survived – in white communities, at any rate – the turbulence of the Sixties. In fact, our pride in law enforcement is probably even higher than it was in my parents’ day, thanks to the very riots the Marxists have incited and 9/11. We depend upon local law enforcement, the county sheriff’s departments, the national guard, and our military to serve our communities and protect law and order, our persons, our property, and our freedom from those who threaten to destroy them. To attack the police, to disband them, is to attack and disband our laws and our peaceful order. We must not allow the Marxists and their puppets to do so.

America’s Immune System Has Been Compromised

America is sick. Oh, not just physically with the Chinese-engineered Wuhan Flu. America is compromised politically, ethically and morally. Marxists jeer that we want to return to the 1950s. Except for the advances in technology and medicine – yeah, that’s ride. As I scan slides from my mother’s and father’s “salad years,” I find myself envious. They knew what they were about. They’d come through the Depression and appreciated the value of hard work and saving money, of owning their own home with a backyard where we children could play safely. Women dressed modestly and men treated those women like the ladies they were. There was very little profanity, if any, in the films, although there were a lot of horror movies and detective films – film noir, it was called. The only real problem was job discrimination against women and minorities. That sure didn’t stop Mom from doing a man’s job. Even Blacks were properly educated in public schools, at least until the Marxists took over our education system. But they were also to prone to violence, as the conditions at Mount Vernon H.S. in Mount Vernon, N.Y. (just north of New York City) could attest. As far as Vladimir Lenin was concerned, violence was the only way to conduct a Marxist revolution. Chairman Mao Tse-Tung agreed. “A revolution isn’t a dinner party,” he said. “It is up to us to organize the people. As for the reactionaries in China, it is up to us to organize the people to overthrow them. Everything reactionary is the same; if you don’t hit it, it won’t fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself,” he wrote on August 13, 1948. “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another,” he write in March 1937. University professors have been well-versed in these theories since before Mao wrote the preceding paragraph. They were advised to teach their rather gullible students not to believe their parents and in fact, to do everything to encourage the natural inclination of adolescents to rebel. They taught their education students to teach their students to always put their adversary on the defensive, and then, admitting their “white guilt” or “white supremacy” to moderate their own views, while the Marxist stood fast on the so-called moral high ground. The Marxist argument against Capitalism is fairly easy to defeat. All you need to do is ask your smug college if they would give their grade of A to a student who has only managed to a C. Then sit back and listen to them bluster and squawk. Follow up on your advantage, because they’ll soon turn arrogant again. Their professors’ advice to quickly parry that argument by changing the subject. A tremendous mistake modern parents have made is trying to be their child’s friend. Today’s parents are too fearful of their children. Even the staunchest parent quails at their child’s threat that they won’t speak to them again if Mom or Dad tries to refute their Marxist teachings. The Marxist professors tell their students that the state, the government, even their parents, have lied to them about America’s history. How can parents account for slavery without apologizing for it? Students figure they have their parents in a Marxist corner. With today’s parents, that’s probably true, because they have no better knowledge of history – American history – than their children do. The crucible was the Civil War and the 300,000 who died for it. But then the children counter with what they know of the Emancipation Proclamation, that white people even in the North didn’t really support the War. That the Proclamation was a compromise, with Lincoln vowing not to ‘meddle’ with slavery, except where states were in open, violent rebellion. Nevertheless, where the Union Army triumphed, Lincoln freed them by Executive Order. The Constitution is where the Marxists fall silent and fail to teach their students. By the Constitution, the states had to ratify an amendment to the Constitution to free the Blacks from Slavery. Within nine months of Lincoln’s assassination, they do so, which was something of a record time for states to ratify an amendment. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments soon followed (the 14th granted citizenship to the Blacks, the 15th granted them the right to vote). Yet, Marxists gleefully continue to reopen a wound that had been healed by the sacrifice of Abraham Lincoln and the Union Army. On both sides they worked, after the Civil War, to stoke strife between the two races. Blacks were embittered by slavery; Whites, by the death of so many soldiers during the Civil War. Bitterness, resentment, anger, hatred. They’re all tools in the Marxist toolbox. They also encouraged strife between Christians and Jews, and later between those two groups and Muslims (who readily consumed the tents of Marxism), between rich and poor, between nationalities of all sorts, between employers and workers, between men and women, and between parents and children. The Marxists lit a slow-burning fuse so that the fire would consume America gradually, without its realizing it. The Soviet Union, my mother said, encouraged women to go into the workplace and leave the raising (and brainwashing) of their children to the state. The Marxists argued that for the “greater good” the education and raising of children should not be left to their own families. The “nuclear family” as they called it, needed to be destroyed. They advocated every sort of vice that could be used to bring about that end – alcoholism, drugs, poverty, pornography. The war of the sexes (which even Jesus recognized) was yet another bullet-point in the Marxist agenda. The Bolsheviks outlawed not only the ownership of private property in the Soviet Union, but the inheritance of such property as well. Property ownership is outlawed in China as well. You can buy a condo, but you can’t leave it to your child. This revisionist history, beginning with the introduction of African-Americans as indentured servants (not slaves), is the poison with which Millennial children’s minds have been turned. In addition, they have been infantilized to such a degree, coddled and nurtured well into adulthood, that they’re incapable of holding jobs. They are given the choice of easier, mundane college courses to ensure that they earn their degrees without actually having learned anything. They are then turned out into the working world to overturn the companies and corporations which hire them. We shouldn’t be surprised that large corporations are providing support to Black Lives Matter. The Gen-Xers who are running them were just as brainwashed in college during their party days. They’re taught that there is no criticism of the party teachings, or they’ll receive a failing grade, just as I received in high school. Petted and vetted, the students willingly regurgitate the Marxist teachings and even receive extra credit for participating in violent protests. Universities and colleges are, and have been, for the past ninety years, Petri dishes for Marxism. The final bioengineered aspect is the drugs that have infected their minds since the Sixties. The parents and even grandparents were so corrupted by the marijuana and gradually worse drugs that they took in that they don’t even recognize the danger any more. They don’t realize the neural damage that marijuana can cause with even casual use. Pot destroys the myelin, the white matter, that allows the delivery of information to the brain. It also destroys individual initiative, a central Marxist target. The Chinese may have delivered the final blow to freedom in the form of this noxious virus, for which there is likely no cure, although there are treatments. Even if our researchers (and why on earth are we inviting the Chinese to submit their treatments when they introduced the infectant?!) could find a cure, the Chinese would simply unleash another untreatable, bioengineered virus on us. Americans instinctively rejected, initially, the wearing of masks. Somehow, they could sense that the mask was a symbol for the blocking of freedom of speech. Unfortunately, the Wuhan Virus is the real deal. It really does kill and kills pretty quickly. Statistics indicate that it only kills one-tenth of one percent of all those infected. Or is it one one-hundredth? Scientists hoped that the disease would abate with the advent of hot weather. The trouble is, once it gets too hot, especially in places like Florida and Texas, people – especially older people – head indoors for the air conditioning, allowing the virus once again to flourish. Polls claim that President Trump has suffered a drop because of his “response” to the virus. Just exactly what response is he supposed to give to a virus that imprisons people indoors, away from all public involvement except shopping. A virus that keeps children from going to school and parents and other adults from going to work. How is this supposed to be his fault? Even if that fool Faucci advised not wearing masks, the American people weren’t obliged to listen him. Perhaps being nearer to a large outbreak, I had a better idea of just what was happening – and very swiftly. I studied the John Hopkins numbers every day. Numbers that were indicating a quick rise in cases – and even deaths – right in my own area. Once the company for which I was working handed out masks, I started wearing them, especially to the supermarkets. The supermarkets were slow to catch on that they were serving as superspreaders. Once everything else was closed up, they evidence pointed to these supermarkets as Ground Zeros. The wonderful thing about the individual initiative that Marxists hate is that here in America, you don’t have to do everything everyone else does. If you think or suspect that this Wuhan Flu flies through the air more like dust than droplets, or the droplets hitch a ride on the dust, you can wear a mask. You don’t have to wait for the government to tell you to do it. On the other hand, the President was reluctant to order Americans to wear masks. President Trump is a tremendous lover of freedom. He considers these masks an infringement on American’s rights. They’re also hideous-looking, especially the black masks. They also serve as a symbol of fear. I hate these masks. I already have trouble breathing. The masks make that task worse. They’re ugly, they’re annoying, you have to constantly clean them. But the practical, to my mind, had to outweigh the idealistic. I’m over 60 and already have health issues. Sort of. Nothing drastic. I’ve probably already had the thing, for all of one day when I felt really terrible for no good reason, and then it was over. Fortunately, I was already donning my mask at work at the time. In that office, we had tall cubicle dividers which I believe helped deflect the spread of the Wuhan Flu. That may be the answer for offices looking to open for business; increase the height of the cubicles. I finally received some help from the government. But I don’t want to be permanently dependent upon the government and certainly not for any length of time. Let someone who found themselves unemployed for longer than I would have wished: never mind living on the unemployment. Get back to work as soon as you can find someone to accept you. Companies take a dim view of those large gaps in your resume. Work is always preferable to unemployment insurance. Unemployment affects how much pension receive and how much Social Security you get in the end. Don’t do it! I don’t blame President Trump for this fiasco. I simply ignored him and Faucci when they said, “Don’t wear masks.” Remember 9/11? Well, I interviewed the relatives of employees who worked in the Twin Towers. They were given orders by the building management and the New York Fire Department to stay in their cubicles and not try to leave the building. Those who heeded the orders or tried to leave only to be turned back, especially on the higher floors, died. Those who disobeyed the orders and got out (and barely in time, at that) survived. I don’t blame President Trump. This is really a no-win situation for him and the Democrats know it. But so does the Silent Majority. This election is not going to turn out the way they hope it will. I don’t blame the President, as I say; I blame the Chinese Communist Party. I choose to wear the mask. But only when I absolutely must. I’ll be doggoned if I’ll be gagged into silence, either, any more than I’ll be fooled into breathing in the Chinese bioengineered bat-crap. Long live individual freedom of choice.

The Enormous Debt Blacks Owe Abraham Lincoln

In Clifton, New Jersey’s Main Memorial Park there is a life-sized bronze statue of World War II Signalman First Class Douglas A. Munro. During the Battle of Guadalcanal on September 27, 1942, he placed his landing craft broadside between the beachhead at Point Cruz, where the Japanese were firing on the U.S. Marines, and the soldiers who were off-loading from his craft. Munro saved hundreds of lives by his actions, but died of his wounds and was awarded the Medal of Honor. Munro was a hero in every sense. Yet his statue, which was dedicated in 1989, is guarded by a wrought iron fence. On the Mall in Washington, D.C., there is a statue called “The Emancipatin Proclamation” statue, depicted a Negro at Lincoln’s feet. Since statues are, by nature, static, the Negro’s position could be interpreted as kneeling in bondage, kneeling in gratitude, or rising, at Lincoln’s behest, in freedom. Guess which interpretation the Marxists use? Abraham Lincoln was probably the bravest President of the United States of America who ever held the office. In 2009, Federal Hall in Lower Manhattan sponsored an exhibit on Abraham Lincoln, on the 200th Anniversary of his birth on February 12, 1809. Among the exhibits was a miniature replica of the Emancipation Proclamation statue in Washington and hanging on the wall near it, a print of the Emancipation Proclamation itself. My company was one of the sponsors of the exhibit. Somewhere I still have copies of the pictures (as long as the pictures didn’t include the State Farm logo or brand, I can use the pictures – finding them is another matter) from the exhibit. Accompanying me was our Communications Supervisor from one of our other offices. Nearby was our department head. A man and a woman, respectively, they were both Black. JK and I were looking over the Emancipation Proclamation exhibit together. We both agreed that Lincoln was an incredibly brave man. I later took pictures of everyone with the character actor portraying Lincoln himself. We also agreed that when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he had signed his death warrant. Beside the statue was an historical explanation: the statue was commissioned by a group of slaves grateful to Lincoln for taking such a political and personal risk in writing and signing the proclamation. The Black man, it stated, was kneeling in gratitude to Lincoln, who is depicted as gesturing for the man to get up because he was free and would never have to bow to anyone again. President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, four months after declaring that he would do so. In his classic history book, “The Civil War: A History,” [Hansen, Harry. The Civil War: A History,” Signet Classics, The New American Library, 1961], Harry Hansen writes: This is generally considered the act that finally freed the slaves in the United States. It did not do so; that was done by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution [December 6, 1865]. The Emancipation Proclamation is ‘a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing rebellion’ and applies only to the seceded states that are not under the control of the United States armies. It makes specific exception of areas so controlled, and makes no mention of the Border States, where citizens loyal to the United States still held slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation proclaims free all persons held as slaves in the seceded states of the Confederacy, excepting certain parishes in Louisiana and the city of New Orleans, West Virginia, and specified counties of Virginia. It asks the people who are declared free to abstain from violence except in self-defense and to work faithfully for reasonable wages, and declares that they will be accepted in the armed service of the United States. The President characterized the act as ‘sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity.” Lincoln was treading on thin political ice by issuing the proclamation. The proclamation was considered an ‘authoritarian’ fiat which ignored the other two branches of the government, the Supreme Court and the Legislature, as well as the “states’ rights,” a common cry from the Southern states. He was flirting with a possible impeachment. Yet, after consideration, his political security was nothing to the immorality of enslaving people. According to the Wikipedia entry on the subject: On September 22, 1862, Lincoln warned that he would issue a mandate that all slaves in the Confederate would be freed if the Confederate states didn’t lay down their arms – and free the slaves through their own state legislatures. Lincoln believed that he had no authority as President to end slavery, which was a state matter. However, Lincoln was not only President, he was Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. As such, he could take military measures. His order carefully limited the Proclamation to those areas in insurrection, where civil government was not respected and his military authority, therefore, applied. It changed the legal status under federal law of more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americas in the South. The other states in the Union had already freed their slaves. New Jersey was the last state to do so, in 1809 As soon as a slave escaped the control of the Confederate government, either by running away across Union lines or through the advance of federal troops, the slave was permanently free. Ultimately, the Union victory brought the proclamation into effect in all of the former Confederacy. The remaining slaves, those in the areas not in revolt, were freed by state action during the war, or by the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865. The Proclamation followed a series of warnings in the summer of 1862 under the Second Confiscation Act, allowing Confederate supporters 60 days to surrender, or face confiscation of land and slaves. The act also ordered that suitable persons among those freed could be enrolled into the paid service of United States’ forces, and ordered the Union Army (and all segments of the Executive branch) to ‘recognize and maintain the freedom of’ the ex-slaves. The act did not compensate the owners, did not outlaw slavery, and did not grant citizenship to the ex-slaves (called freedmen). But in addition to the goal of preserving the Union, for the first time it made the eradication of slavery an explicit war goal. The symbolic importance of the federal government outlawing slavery, even on a limited basis, was enormous. For the first time, the Union (the country) was publicly committed to ending slavery everywhere. It meant escaped slaves would no longer be returned South, that the hated Fugitive Slave Laws were dead. It also said that former slaves could fight in the military against their former owners, using weapons the Northern army would supply. This would soon supply fresh troops for the Union army, but its psychological impact was also enormous. This was the South’s nightmare: a slave revolt supported by the North. Around 25,000 to 75,000 slaves were immediately emancipated in those regions of the Confederacy where the US Army was already in control. It could not be enforced in the areas still in rebellion, but as the Union army took control of Confederate regions, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for the liberation of more than three and a half million slaves in those regions. Prior to the Proclamation, in accordance with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, escaped slaves were either returned to their masters or held in camps as contraband for later return. The Proclamation applied only to slaves in Confederate-held lands; it did not apply to those in the four slaves states that were not in rebellion (Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri, which were unnamed), nor to Tennessee (unnamed but occupied by Union troops since 1862) and lower Louisiana (also under occupation), and specifically excluded those counties of Virginia soon to form the state of West Virginia. Also specifically excluded (by name) were some regions already controlled by the Union Army. Emancipation in those places would come after separate state actions (as in West Virginia) or the December 1865 ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which made slavery and indentured servitude, except for those duly convicted of a crime, illegal everywhere subject to United States jurisdiction. Abolitionists had long been urging Lincoln to free all slaves. In the summer of 1862, Republican editor Horace Greeley of the highly influential New York Tribune wrote a famous editorial entitled, “The Prayer of Twenty Millions” demanding a more aggressive attack on the Confederacy and faster emancipation of the slaves: “On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one … intelligent champion of the Union cause who does not feel … that the rebellion, if crushed tomorrow, would be renewed if slavery were left in full vigor and that every hour of deference to slavery is an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union.” Lincoln responded in his Letter To Horace Greeley from August 22, 1862, in terms of the limits imposed by his duty as president to save the Union: If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union…. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free. Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer wrote in this context about Lincoln’s letter: “Unknown to Greeley, Lincoln composed this [letter] after he had already drafted a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which he had determined to issue after the next Union military victory. Therefore, this letter, was in truth, an attempt to position the impending announcement in terms of saving the Union, not freeing slaves as a humanitarian gesture. It was one of Lincoln’s most skillful public relations efforts, even if it has cast longstanding doubt on his sincerity as a liberator.” Historian Richard Striner argues that “for years” Lincoln’s letter has been misread as “Lincoln only wanted to save the Union.” However, within the context of Lincoln’s entire career and pronouncements on slavery this interpretation is wrong, according to Striner. Rather, Lincoln was softening the strong Northern white extremist opposition to his imminent emancipation by tying it to the cause of the Union. This opposition would fight for the Union but not to end slavery, so Lincoln gave them the means and motivation to do both, at the same time. In his 2014 book, Lincoln’s Gamble, journalist and historian Todd Brewster asserted that Lincoln’s desire to reassert the saving of the Union as his sole war goal was in fact crucial to his claim of legal authority for emancipation. Since slavery was protected by the Constitution, the only way that he could free the slaves was as a tactic of war—not as the mission itself. But that carried the risk that when the war ended, so would the justification for freeing the slaves. Late in 1862, Lincoln asked his Attorney General, Edward Bates, for an opinion as to whether slaves freed through a war-related proclamation of emancipation could be re-enslaved once the war was over. Bates had to work through the language of the Dred Scott decision to arrive at an answer, but he finally concluded that they could indeed remain free. Still, a complete end to slavery would require a constitutional amendment. Lincoln first discussed the proclamation with his cabinet in July 1862. He drafted his “preliminary proclamation” and read it to Secretary of State William Seward, and Secretary of Navy Gideon Welles, on July 13. Seward and Welles were at first speechless, then Seward referred to possible anarchy throughout the South and resulting foreign intervention; Welles apparently said nothing. On July 22, Lincoln presented it to his entire cabinet as something he had determined to do and he asked their opinion on wording. Although Secretary of War Edwin Stanton supported it, Seward advised Lincoln to issue the proclamation after a major Union victory, or else it would appear as if the Union was giving “its last shriek of retreat.” In September 1862, the Battle of Antietam gave Lincoln the victory he needed to issue the Emancipation. In the battle, though the Union suffered heavier losses than the Confederates and General McClellan allowed the escape of Robert E. Lee’s retreating troops, Union forces turned back a Confederate invasion of Maryland, eliminating more than a quarter of Lee’s army in the process. On September 22, 1862, five days after Antietam occurred, and while living at the Soldier’s Home, Lincoln called his cabinet into session and issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. According to Civil War historian James M. McPherson, Lincoln told Cabinet members that he had made a covenant with God, that if the Union drove the Confederacy out of Maryland, he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln’s prayer was answered. Lincoln had first shown an early draft of the proclamation to Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, an ardent abolitionist, who was more often kept in the dark on presidential decisions. The final proclamation was issued January 1, 1863. Although implicitly granted authority by Congress, Lincoln used his powers as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, “as a necessary war measure” as the basis of the proclamation, rather than the equivalent of a statute enacted by Congress or a Constitutional amendment. Some days after issuing the final Proclamation, Lincoln wrote to Major General John McClernand: “After the commencement of hostilities I struggled nearly a year and a half to get along without touching the “institution” [of slavery]; and when finally I conditionally determined to touch it, I gave a hundred days fair notice of my purpose, to all the States and people, within which time they could have turned it wholly aside, by simply again becoming good citizens of the United States. They chose to disregard it, and I made the peremptory proclamation on what appeared to me to be a military necessity. And being made, it must stand.” It has been inaccurately claimed that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave; historian Lerone Bennett, Jr., [a Sixties Marxist “social historian”] alleged that the proclamation was a hoax deliberately designed not to free any slaves. However, as a result of the Proclamation, many slaves were freed during the course of the war, beginning with the day it took effect; eyewitness accounts at places such as Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Port Royal South Carolina record celebrations on January 1 as thousands of blacks were informed of their new legal status of freedom. Estimates of how many thousands of slaves were freed immediately by the Emancipation Proclamation are varied. One contemporary estimate put the “contraband” population of Union-occupied North Carolina at 10,000, and the Sea Islands of South Carolina also had a substantial population. Those 20,000 slaves were freed immediately by the Emancipation Proclamation.” This Union-occupied zone where freedom began at once included parts of eastern North Carolina, the Mississippi Valley, northern Alabama, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, a large part of Arkansas, and the Sea Islands of Georgia. Although some counties of Union-occupied Virginia were exempted from the Proclamation, the lower Shenandoah Valley, and the area around Alexandria were covered. Emancipation was immediately enforced as Union soldiers advanced into the Confederacy. Slaves fled their masters and were often assisted by Union soldiers. Booker T. Washington, as a boy of 9 in Virginia, remembered the day in early 1865: As the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night. Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom. … Some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper—the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see. Runaway slaves who had escaped to Union lines had previously been held by the Union Army as “contraband of war” under the Confiscation Acts; when the proclamation took effect, they were told at midnight that they were free to leave. The Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia had been occupied by the Union Navy earlier in the war. The whites had fled to the mainland while the Blacks stayed. An early program of Reconstruction was set up for the former slaves, including schools and training. Naval officers read the proclamation and told them they were free. Slaves had been part of the “engine of war” for the Confederacy. They produced and prepared food; sewed uniforms; repaired railways; worked on farms and in factories, shipping yards, and mines; built fortifications; and served as hospital workers and common laborers. News of the Proclamation spread rapidly by word of mouth, arousing hopes of freedom, creating general confusion, and encouraging thousands to escape to Union lines. George Washington Albright, a teenage slave in Mississippi, recalled that like many of his fellow slaves, his father escaped to join Union forces. According to Albright, plantation owners tried to keep the Proclamation from slaves but news of it came through the “grapevine.” The young slave became a runner for an informal group they called the 4Ls (“Lincoln’s Legal Loyal League”) bringing news of the proclamation to secret slave meetings at plantations throughout the region. The Proclamation was not such good to the plantation owners, of course, nor to extremists in the North. Wikipedia states further: The Proclamation was immediately denounced by Copperhead Democrats [a derogative term coined by the Republicans, depicting the so-called “Peace Democrats” as snakes] who opposed the war and advocated restoring the union by allowing slavery. Horatio Seymour, while running for the governorship of New York, cast the Emancipation Proclamation as a call for slaves to commit extreme acts of violence on all white southerners, saying it was “a proposal for the butchery of women and children, for scenes of lust and rapine, and of arson and murder, which would invoke the interference of civilized Europe.” The Copperheads also saw the Proclamation as an unconstitutional abuse of presidential power. Editor Henry A. Reeves wrote in Greenport’s Republican Watchman that, “In the name of freedom of Negroes, [the Proclamation] imperils the liberty of white men; to test a utopian theory of equality of races which Nature, History and Experience alike condemn as monstrous, it overturns the Constitution and Civil Laws and sets up Military Usurpation in their Stead.” Racism remained pervasive on both sides of the conflict and many in the North supported the war only as an effort to force the South to stay in the Union. The promises of many Republican politicians that the war was to restore the Union and not about black rights or ending slavery, were now declared lies by their opponents citing the Proclamation. Copperhead David Allen spoke to a rally in Columbiana, Ohio, stating, “I have told you that this war is carried on for the Negro. There is the proclamation of the President of the United States. Now fellow Democrats I ask you if you are going to be forced into a war against your Brithren of the Southern States for the Negro. I answer No!” The Copperheads saw the Proclamation as irrefutable proof of their position and the beginning of a political rise for their members; in Connecticut, H. B. Whiting wrote that the truth was now plain even to “those stupid thick-headed persons who persisted in thinking that the President was a conservative man and that the war was for the restoration of the Union under the Constitution.” War Democrats who rejected the Copperhead position within their party, found themselves in a quandary. While throughout the war they had continued to espouse the racist positions of their party and their disdain of the concerns of slaves, they did see the Proclamation as a viable military tool against the South, and worried that opposing it might demoralize troops in the Union army. The question would continue to trouble them and eventually lead to a split within their party as the war progressed. Lincoln further alienated many in the Union two days after issuing the preliminary copy of the Emancipation Proclamation by suspending habeas corpus in regard to Confederate prisoners of war. His opponents linked these two actions in their claims that he was becoming a despot. In light of this and a lack of military success for the Union armies, many War Democrat voters who had previously supported Lincoln turned against him and joined the Copperheads in the off-year elections held in October and November. In the 1862 elections, the Democrats gained 28 seats in the House as well as the governorship of New York. Lincoln’s friend Orville Hickman Browning told the president that the Proclamation and the suspension of habeas corpus had been “disastrous” for his party by handing the Democrats so many weapons. Lincoln made no response. Copperhead William Javis of Connecticut pronounced the election the “beginning of the end of the utter downfall of abolitionism in the United States.” Historians James M. McPherson and Allan Nevins state that though the results looked very troubling, they could be seen favorably by Lincoln; his opponents did well only in their historic strongholds and “at the national level their gains in the House were the smallest of any minority party’s in an off-year election in nearly a generation. Michigan, California, and Iowa all went Republican…. Moreover, the Republicans picked up five seats in the Senate.” McPherson states, “If the election was in any sense a referendum on emancipation and on Lincoln’s conduct of the war, a majority of Northern voters endorsed these policies.” As Lincoln had hoped, the Proclamation turned foreign popular opinion in favor of the Union by gaining the support of anti-slavery countries and countries that had already abolished slavery (especially the developed countries in Europe such as the United Kingdom and France). This shift ended the Confederacy’s hopes of gaining official recognition Since the Emancipation Proclamation made the eradication of slavery an explicit Union war goal, it linked support for the South to support for slavery. Public opinion in Britain would not tolerate support for slavery. As Henry Adams noted, “The Emancipation Proclamation has done more for us than all our former victories and all our diplomacy.” In Italy, Giuseppe Garbaldi hailed Lincoln as “the heir of the aspirations of John Brown.” On August 6, 1863, Garibaldi wrote to Lincoln: “Posterity will call you the great emancipator, a more enviable title than any crown could be, and greater than any merely mundane treasure.” Winning re-election in 1864, Lincoln pressed the lame duck 38th Congress to pass the proposed 13th amendment immediately rather than wait for the incoming 39th Congress to convene. Abolitionists feared that with the defeat of the Confederacy, their surrender would return the African Americans to a state of slavery. In January 1865, Congress sent to the state legislatures for ratification what became the Thirteenth Amendment, banning slavery in all U.S. states and territories. The amendment was ratified by the legislatures of enough states by December 6, 1865, and proclaimed 12 days later. There were about 40,000 slaves in Kentucky and 1,000 in Delaware who were then liberated. President Andrew Johnson, the 17th President of the United States, signed the amendment into law. President Lincoln did not have the honor of signing it personally because he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater on April 12, 1965, a week after the Confederacy officially surrendered. The Proclamation is then proof that enough white men were opposed to fighting for the Blacks, despite what we wrote the other day. Still, it would have been very hard for anyone to voluntarily give their life for that of another without being bitter. Wasn’t that the Marxist argument during the Viet Nam War, that it wasn’t “our” war? Nevertheless, willingly or not, those over 300,000 Union soldiers’ sacrifice saved the Union and freed the slaves. Wikipedia tells us that: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., made many references to the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil Rights Movement of the Fifties and Sixties. These include a speech made at an observance of the hundredth anniversary of the issuing of the Proclamation made in New York City on September 12, 1962 where he placed it alongside the Declaration of Independence as an “imperishable” contribution to civilization, and “All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations.” He lamented that despite a history where the United States “proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents,” it “sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles.” He concluded, “There is but one way to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation. That is to make its declarations of freedom real; to reach back to the origins of our nation when our message of equality electrified an unfree world, and reaffirm democracy by deeds as bold and daring as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation.” King’s most famous invocation of the Emancipation Proclamation was in a speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (often referred to as the “I Have a Dream” speech). King began the speech saying, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity. But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” At the time, that was true. Four years after the bill was passed, King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman’s Memorial or the Emancipation Group, and sometimes referred to as the “Lincoln Memorial” before the more prominent Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922, is a monument in Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Designed and sculpted by Thomas Ball, a white sculptor and musician, and erected in 1876, the monument depicts Abraham Lincoln holding a copy of his Emancipation Proclamation freeing a male African-American slave modeled on Archer Alexander. The ex-slave is depicted on one knee, with one fist clenched, shirtless and broken shackles at the president’s feet, with the President extending a protective hand over him. According (again) to Wikipedia: The funding drive for the monument began, according to much-publicized newspaper accounts from the era, with $5 given by former slave Charlotte Scott of Virginia, then residing with the family of her former master in Marietta, Ohio, for the purpose of creating a memorial honoring Lincoln. The Western Sanitary Commission, a St. Louis-based volunteer war-relief agency, joined the effort and raised some $20,000 before announcing a new $50,000 goal. According to the National Park Service, the monument was paid for solely by former slaves: The campaign for the Freedmen’s Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln, as it was to be known, was not the only effort of the time to build a monument to Lincoln; however, as the only one soliciting contributions exclusively from those who had most directly benefited from Lincoln’s act of emancipation it had a special appeal … The funds were collected solely from freed slaves (primarily from African American Union veterans) … The turbulent politics of the reconstruction era affected the fundraising campaign on many levels. The Colored People’s Educational Monument Association headed by Henry Highland Garnet wanted the monument to serve a didactic purpose as a school where freedmen could elevate themselves through learning. Frederick Douglass disagreed, feeling the goal of education was incommensurate with that of remembering Lincoln. Sculptor Harriet Hosmer (also White) proposed a grander monument than that suggested by Thomas Ball. Her design, which was ultimately deemed too expensive, posed Lincoln atop a tall central pillar flanked by smaller pillars topped with black Civil War soldiers and other figures. When Ball’s design was finally chosen, the commission insisted on certain changes. Instead of wearing a liberty cap, the slave in the revised monument is depicted bare-headed with tightly-curled hair. The face was re-sculpted to look like Archer Alexander, an ex-slave whose life story was popularized by a biography written by William Greenleaf Eliot. A critic wrote that compared to the original design, in which Lincoln’s hand seems to awaken the slave to his new freedom and to the realization that his shackles are gone, the current memorial is more of an amalgamation of approaches. It is no longer allegorical but realistic. In fact, Lincoln never met Archer Alexander, so it is historically inaccurate. While the original design poses a question — will this slave become a man? — the revision erases that query and instead implies a relationship between two men who never actually knew each other. You know what? Who cares? In the final design, as in Ball’s original design, Lincoln holds a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation in his right hand. The document rests on a plinth bearing patriotic symbols including George Washington’s profile ‘s profile, the emblem of the U.S. republic, and a shield emblazoned with the stars and stripes. The plinth replaces the pile of books in Ball’s original design. Behind the two figures is a whipping post draped with cloth. A vine grows around the pillory and around the ring where the chain was secured [an artistic symbol often used to symbolize – well, we hate to use the word, but – choking, as in the choking off of slavery. The monument was cast in Munich in 1875 and shipped to Washington the following year. Congress accepted the statue as a gift from the “colored citizens of the United States” and appropriated $3,000 for a pedestal upon which it would rest. The statue was erected in Lincoln Park, where it still stands. A plaque on the monument names it as “Freedom’s Memorial in grateful memory of Abraham Lincoln” and reads: This monument was erected by the Western Sanitary Commission of Saint Louis Mo: With funds contributed solely by emancipated citizens of the United States declared free by his proclamation January 1 A.D. 1863. The first contribution of five dollars was made by Charlotte Scott. A freedwoman of Virginia being her first earnings in freedom and consecrated by her suggestion and request on the day she heard of President Lincoln’s death to build a monument to his memory. A group of sculptors in Paris, France, upon learning of Abraham Lincoln’s death, had the same idea of a memorial to the slain president. The French presented America with the notion the same year the Emancipation Proclamation Memorial was erected. Eight years, the United States took delivery of the Statue of Liberty. The National Park Service is now building a wrought iron fence around the Emancipation Memorial, just as Clifton, N.J., had to create to protect the memorial to its Medal of Honor son, Douglas A. Munro. If the Marxists really want to do something, they should take down that hideous statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. We have no objection to a memorial statue to the Civil Rights leader; just the one that the sponsoring organization erected, showing a stiff, scowling King with his arms crossed angrily over his chest. Some claim that towards the end of his life, he was leaning towards Marxism. Judging by that statue, they must have been right. What a shame that would have been. What would have been better was a kinder, friendlier Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., surrounded by the rainbow of children he spoke about in his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. According to the 2009 Lincoln exhibit, the freed Blacks were eternally grateful to Lincoln for breaking the chains of slavery. They were horrified by his assassination. The figure of the Black man was partly kneeling, in gratitude to Lincoln, and rising from his enslaved state, and yes, probably looking hopefully to the sky to his future. The Marxists want nothing more than to fuel the divide between Blacks and Whites, in order to bring about their vaunted revolution for a worker’s paradise where, they claim everyone will be free but in fact, no one will be. Individual freedom, according to the Marxists, must be eliminated, as well as Capitalism’s and Freedom’s icons with their “racist” and “white supremacist” ideas. You have only to ask anyone who has escaped the tyranny of Marxism. So screamed my Senior year high school history teacher, when I asked him what “iconoclasm” was. “They must all be torn down and smashed into the Earth!” Over our dead bodies and those of every man and woman who died serving their country.

New Jersey Bans Out-of-State Travelers, Including the President

Along with New York and Connecticut, the state of New Jersey is banning out-of-state travelers from visiting the Garden State. We imagine this includes the thousands of Pennsylvanians who visit the Jersey Shore every year. Another anti-business move for our Blue State. President Trump plans to visit his golf course in Bedminster this weekend. The weather has been just gorgeous here in New Jersey this week. We think he should come on up and have a good time. Federal authorities state that since he’s the President of the United States, he’s exempt from travel bans. Since he’s President Donald J. Trump, he’ll just ignore the ban anyway. Florida also has a travel ban on travelers from certain states: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Louisiana. Those travelers must observe a 14-day quarantine period. We have friends with a home in Florida, so they were certainly able to sit the quarantine period. But for those trying to escape from New Jersey for a brief holiday, they might as well stay home. We can’t blame those people in other states from not welcoming residents from this Tri-State Blue area. Long before the Wuhan Flu few in, my former company transferred Tri-State area employees to Texas. An immediate surge in Democrat voting began overwhelming the Lone Star state. Yankees, go home! That name by the way. You notice White people – White northerners aren’t the least bothered by this very insulting name, which cropped up during the Colonial period and meant “coward”? The word comes from the Cherokee, “eankke,” According to some questionable entry on the Internet, In Japanese, the “yankee.” In Chinese “yang qi” refers to a blood disorder in the inner organs. The Southerners took up the word as an invective during the Civil War. Didn’t bother the White Union soldiers one bit. They still defeated the South and freed the slaves. Incidentally, Glenn Beck, God Bless him, pointed out a fact from the U.S. Census Bureau: Only 4 percent of families in the South before and during the Civil War owned slaves. “Of course,” they owned hundreds of slaves on these huge plantations. But he also cited another statistic that noted that between 20 and 40 percent of Black families owned other Black slaves (as well as Indian, no doubt). Louisiana had as many Black slave owners as White. This dichotomy is what the Marxists specialize in. My teachers would talk on about the injustices to the Blacks, to the Indians (a very popular subject in the Sixties), and Women. They told us that maybe we thought our white skin made us special, but that we weren’t (white privilege would emerge later as a concept). They told us we shouldn’t be proud of our American heritage and pointed out all the reasons why not. Christopher Columbus was no hero, since he enslaved Black people. What Black people? He captured some of the native Caribe Indians, it’s true, to bring back to Europe. And he wasn’t the first person to discover America. Leif Erikson had been on North American shores a thousand years earlier. They didn’t stick around, though. The Chinese claim to have reached America 71 years before Columbus did. They didn’t stick around, either. There’s some sense in the suggestion that the “Native Americans” originally migrated to North America over a land bridge between Asia and North America during a warm spell and made their way not West but East. However, the Lenni Lenape Indians of Northern New Jersey were acknowledged by all the other tribes to have been here all along. So they were probably the only true “Native American.” The aborigines of the North American continent did not all live in peaceful, farming communities. They habitually fought and killed one another. The victors took women and children as slaves. The Lenni Lenape were peaceful. Their neighbors were not. The Susquehanna crossed the Delaware River and made war on them. They claimed the survivors as slaves and then sold them, or rather their land, to the Dutch colonists. Then they took their Wampum and went back home to Pennsylvania. The clash of cultures between the Europeans and the aborigines resulted in much bloodshed on both sides. The Indians lived more or less communally – what’s mine is yours, while the Colonists, having come from rather larger communities had learnt the value of property ownership and labor, and living off the produce of their labor. They considered the Indians “thieves.” And what’s more, the Indians knew perfectly well that they were. Two centuries later, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote their little pamphlet encouraging a revolution against Capitalism, arguing that all should share equally in the profits of labor, even if a CEO or a company lawyer was more valuable than a single factory worker down on the floor. This was greed, our teachers exclaimed. “Corporate” America was built by greedy Europeans who only wanted to exploit the rich lands of North America. They didn’t come here for religious freedom; they came here for money! And what religious freedom they came for, our teachers condemned. Why, they built exclusive communities only for their own! If you were a Catholic, you couldn’t build a house in a Puritan village in Massachusetts! Which is why the colony of Maryland was originally created for Catholic settlers. Newark, New Jersey, the “Brick City” was originally settled by a group of Puritans who’d left New Haven, Connecticut in 1666, led by Robert Treat. The New Haven Colony purchased their land from the Natives, not the English government. Finding that the New England soil made for poor faming, they eventually settled in Newark. The colony’s success soon attracted other believers, as well as those who were not Puritans. They expanded into additional towns (called plantations), establishing Milford, Guilford and Stamford (in Connecticut) on the mainland in 1639, and other communities on the North Fork of Long Island in 1640, forming the original component of the confederation which called itself the United Colonies of New England. Branford joined in 1643 and was the last official plantation in the New Haven Confederation. They based their government on that of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Meanwhile, in New Jersey, the treaty with the Lenape placed no westward limit on the land west of the Delaware, which became the legal basis for a Connecticut “sea to sea” claim of owning all the land on both sides of the Delaware from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This set the stage for the Pennamite-Yankee War of 150 years later. In 1661, the judges who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England in 1649 were pursued by Charles II. Judges Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe both fled to New Haven to seek refuge from the king’s forces, and John Davenport arranged for them to hide in the hills northwest of the town. They purportedly took refuge in Three Judge’s Cave, a rock formation in West Rock Park park that today bears a historical marker in their name. Judge John Dixwell joined them at a later time. New Haven urgently needed a Royal charter, but the colony had made enemies in London by hiding and protecting the regicide judges. An uneasy competition ruled New Haven’s relations with the larger and more powerful Connecticut River settlements centered in Hartford. New Haven published a complete legal code in 1656, but the law remained very much church-centered. A major difference between the New Haven and Connecticut colonies was that Connecticut permitted other churches to operate on the basis of “sober dissent,” while the New Haven Colony only permitted the Puritan church to exist. A royal charter was issued to Connecticut in 1662, ending New Haven’s period as a separate colony, and its towns were merged into the government of Connecticut Colony in 1664. Newark was conceived as a theocratic assembly of the faithful, though this did not last for long as new settlers came with different ideas flooded into the town. On October 31, 1693, it was organized as a New Jersey township based on the Newark Tract, which was first purchased on July 11, 1667. Newark was granted a Royal charter on April 27, 1713. As the town grew, the church found that it could not keep its congregation on a firm foundation. Hearing of new settlements in Northwestern New Jersey, the Puritans left Newark for a new start. The oldest church now standing in Newark is the Old First Presbyterian Church (1787). The swelling population of the United States made it difficult, and finally, illegal, for church communities to exist. Some, who have managed to buy enough land, have compounds for their churches, both those only exist in rural areas. Belfast, Ireland, could not survive urbanization and colonization. No community in America was likely to do so. At least no city. Suburban towns were small enough in population but large in area for diverse churches to co-exist and still keep their communities together. But as city people (like my parents) converged on the suburbs in the Fifties and Sixties, church became less and less a part of family and community life. That’s not true of all families, of course. There are still many, many devout Christian families. But churches are closing, not opening, at least here in Northern New Jersey. Many Catholic schools have closed their doors as families move apart, parents die and/or children move far away. Black people, interestingly, are an exception to this rule. Wealthier white people seem to think they don’t need Jesus to help them, where poorer people do. Jesus said he came for the poor (in spirit and otherwise). The urbanization of Jerusalem, driven by the priests who drove the poor of the lands and into the city, may have been one reason why God felt it necessary to send his Son to sort things out. Shepherds weren’t even allowed to worship in the temples. My parents weren’t what you would call “church people.” In her childhood, my mother went to church. But once she was citified, she felt church had come to mean more about what you wore to church than worshipping God. She found our local suburban churches far too gossipy and too far from the doctrine she’d learned as a child. I love history. I wish I’d studied history instead of literature. Nothing to say I can’t study it now. But history begins with God. If you don’t understand that, you’re going to be lost. I picked up a pictorial Bible Atlas in a church store (I’d gone there on some now-forgotten photo assignment). This atlas has various maps of the Holy Land through history, beginning with a map of the Mediterranean area just after the Great Flood. The map shows where Noah’s sons and grandsons and future generations settle. You can find the mysterious Magog on the north shore of the Caspian Sea. From this map, and studying European folklore, you can trace the route of civilization from Asia Minor up through Central Europe to Scandinavia, where the folklore speaks of a granddaughter of King Priam of Troy, who escaped the burning of that ancient city (whose ruins archaeologists just recently discovered). There’s even a magazine about Biblical archaeology. We are part of Biblical history, no matter where our known ancestors came from. It all traces back to the Bible. We are part of Adam and Eve. But we’re also descendants of the first missionaries after Christ, whose mandate was to spread the Good News throughout the world. We should be proud of that heritage, not apologizing for the construction of statues of Jesus, any more than we should be apologizing for the enslavement of Blacks by (in the end) a handful of Southern plantation owners. What we should apologize for is allowing ourselves to be enslaved in sin.

Everything I Know About Communism, I Learned in Kindergarten

Yesterday, I got a call from a good friend and blog follower, thanking me for writing the posts of the last two weeks. He wanted to know how I knew everything I knew about Marxism. Everything I know about Communism – or whatever you’d like to call it: Bolshevism, Marxism, Collectivism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism – I learned in Kindergarten, beginning in 1964. I learned it from teachers, the student aides in Kindergarten, Marxist friends (whom I permitted to drone on and tell me everything they had in mind), history books (i.e., The Gulag Archipelago and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – the German people were terrified of the Bolsheviks. Russian immigrants told the Germans horror stories of what was happening in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, part of the deal for defeating Hitler was to allow Stalin to arrest the Russian defectors and either execute them or throw into the Gulags) and most importantly, my parents, who were staunchly anti-Communist. Marx and Engels laid it all out in their dreary tome, “The Communist Manifesto.” I’ve posted it about before. But just to refresh your memories, here it is again: The Ten Planks of Communism Marx and Engels preface the “planks” by noting: “The proletariart [the “workers”] will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie [the “Capitalists” or business owners], to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase to total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. “Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of the bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production. “The measures will of course be different in different countries. “Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable: 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communications and transport in the hands of the state. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the soil in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies [unions], especially for agricultural. [In other words, go to work or go to prison] 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in the present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. Marx saw society as a constant battle between the powerful and the oppressed throughout history. He promulgated one final battle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariats, in which the violence of the proletarians would prevail wiping away forever the old social class and leaving only one “Workers’ Paradise.” By the time of the Russian revolution in 1917, revolutionists such as George Bernard Shaw were already in place in Great Britain and the United States. The Fabian Society. The Dadaists of Berlin. They published many utopian novels about this future worker’s state. So did George Orwell, who warned of what was coming in his novel, “1984” [for adults] and “Animal Farm” [written for children]. By the 1930s, the Marxists had infiltrated academia. In the 1930s, they staged union riots at numerous colleges and universities across the United States. Ostensibly, they claimed to be merely fighting for economic advantages for teachers. But it was more than that. Much more. My father attended City College of New York in the 1930s and witnessed the riots first-hand and knew of the “Teacher’s Plan” – at least I think that’s what he called it – in which the first generation of Marxist teachers would eventually teach the next generation of education professors, until the entire education system from kindergarten through graduate school was thoroughly immersed in Marxism. They would then indoctrinate the students at large. By the 1960s, they were ready to indoctrinate the elementary schools. The friend who called yesterday and my late friend were the last students of the “old” pro-American education system. The Marxists began right at the kindergarten, before most students could even read. We were given “The Pencil Test” in which student aides from the local college (William Paterson) administered the test, instructing us to bow our heads and “pray” to God for a pencil. I was the class rebel. I didn’t close my eyes and certainly didn’t “pray for a pencil.” “That’s not the way God works,” I said stoutly. “God doesn’t do magic tricks.” My eyes were open and so I noticed a few other eyes pop open. I was told to be quiet. The student aides instructed us to open eyes. No pencils. Surprise, surprise. “You see,” one of them said. “God didn’t answer your prayers. He didn’t give you a pencil. And the reason is that there is no God.” Then we were told to close our eyes again, which I did not do. This time the student aides walked around, placing pencils in front of us. Now we were told to open our eyes again. Pencils! Amazing! “God didn’t provide those pencils for you; we did.” “But you didn’t make the wood of the pencils, or the lead that they’re filled with, or the rubber on the erasers. God made those things,” I declared. “Oh, but you don’t know that,” the student aide remarked. “Yes, I do,” I argued. My mother had taught me well about God and both my mother and father taught me well about Communists and the things that they did. They told me how children were used to spy on their parents. If a mother said something against the Party, she would be taken away to prison and her children sent to orphanages. Kindergarten was also the year that the Supreme Court of the State of New Jersey ruled that praying in school was unconstitutional. The announcement was made the very week that it was my turn to say the “Milk and Cookie” prayer. I was devastated. I’d practiced all week, too, I cried to my father. Thank Heavens my first and second grade teachers were “old school.” They taught us properly how to read, write, and ‘reckon. We learned to read from classic stories, like Heidi, and popular new children’s fiction, such as “Stuart Little.” But once we learned to read, from fourth grade on, our little heads were filled with nothing but Marxist trash, mostly short stories. If you want a teach a kid to hate reading, have them read something by Dalton Trumbo or my personal most-despised Marxist author, Ring Lardner, Jr. I’ll never forget and will never forgive the teacher who forced his garbage on us. We were taught that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were not heroes because they’d owned slaves. Betsy Ross didn’t really make the American flag. A Communist wrote the Pledge of Allegiance (true that; my father confirmed it and children used the Nazi hand salute to make the pledge). Oh and let us not forget learning Noam Chomsky grammar. By the end of high school, we were told that Washington died of syphilis, that he didn’t chop down the Cherry Tree, and that he never freed his slaves [because, like Jefferson, he couldn’t.]. Jefferson, they declared had had relations with one of his slaves, named Martha, just like his late wife. Turned out the Black Martha wasn’t Black, in the strictest sense; she was white-skinned, the by-product of a relationship between Martha Jefferson’s father and one of his slaves. However, in those days, white and black agreed that if you had even a drop of black blood in you, though your skin was lily-white, you were black. Guess Martin Luther King Jr. was right – the color of your skin really didn’t matter. Junior year was the big year of Communism because it was the American Bicentennial so our Communist teachers went all out. Junior year English was full of more communist writings. The teacher informed us not only that there was not God but that our animals could not understand us, could not understand verbal communication (her theory was later debunked by veterinary scientists). But having pets – dogs, cats, and birds – we knew perfectly our animals understood us. And what great senses they have! Our dog Stubby could hear our mother’s van when it was still turning from Main Street and on up the hill into our development. He put up a commotion until she pulled into the driveway. My cat Daisy understood words like “chair” and my current dog, Paula, can count to four. My Junior year English thesis was on the practice of Propaganda and how the “gate-keepers” of the press, or media, were controlling our news and how we perceived it, including the coverage of the Viet Nam War. My teacher was naturally vexed, not only because I had broached such a subject but because, separately, I had taken part in what became known as “The American History Revolution of 1976.” Midway through the school year, the teacher announced that we were no longer going to learn about American history – basically, he erased the World War II period, but since my father fought in the war and my grandfather taught the Merchant Mariners who risked their lives bringing supplies to Europe – there was nothing this guy could teach me about the war that I didn’t already know from my parents. Instead we were going to learn about “the glories of Communism.” Yes, he really said that. Now, normally, this was a subject that would have been taught in Senior year history, that is, World History. Later on, it would be, which I thought was a good thing, that all students should learn about Greek and Roman history and so on. But World History was an elective subject in 1976 and Prof. Trotsky there felt it his Bolshevik duty to make certain each and every student was inculcated. Upon making this announcement, five of us stood up in protest. We announced that we would boycott his class. He responded that if we did that, he’d have us suspended from school. Then, our leader declared, we would fail his class. We wouldn’t read any of the books, do our homework, or take his tests. This was a wily teacher. He started on the leading student first, who had stood up with (after the leader stood up and then I jumped up). The teacher told him that it would be very unwise for him to fail this class. A failure would endanger his standing as the class valedictorian. It would reflect on his admission to a good school. He didn’t want a failure on his school record did he? He told him to just sit down and take the class, pass the tests and all would be well. This was nothing. Later on, he probably wouldn’t remember a thing about this communist class. But the “red F” would be on his record permanently. His parents would be so disappointed. Why risk his whole future for something so insignificant. The kid’s girlfriend had stood up as well, on the other side of the room. The boyfriend signaled for her to sit down again. The teacher ignored the other two students, whom he told to sit down because “they weren’t worth” his time to argue with, and came straight for me. The snake. I swore I could hear him hissing as he slithered towards me. If he thought I was afraid of him, he was mistaken. “I know you. Your brother took my class. I taught him the same thing. He didn’t object and he got his A.” “You don’t have to tell me about my older brother. I already know he has a spine of Jello,” I responded. The teacher had to turn around and think for a moment. Of course, Brother B slunk down his chair just like the Valedictorian up front. I was much less grade conscious. And this guy knew it. “Why are you doing this? At best, you’re only a B student. Maybe even C. No one cares about your grade.” “Maybe I am only a C student. But the only thing the guys on the beach at Normandy and on Iwo Jima had to give was their blood [or was it “lives’?]. A “C” may be all I have to give, but I’m going to give it all the same. If I don’t do this, then they died for nothing.” The snake had no answer for that. He just smirked and turned and walked away. Probably he thought my parents would prevail upon me to pass the class. He was wrong about that, too. He underestimated my stubbornness. I overestimated my parents’ reaction. I thought they would be proud of me for standing and defying a Communist teacher, after all they had taught me. Instead, they were furious. My father knew it was no use arguing with me. I told him that he should be defending me and my classmates against this teacher. He, as well as some other parents, to their credit, to it to the school board. But it was to avail. The school board stood behind the teacher. Mom was the more furious of the two. She raged and thundered. I reminded her that I was acting upon what she had taught me. Always, my mother showed great courage in the face of adversity. Yet she wanted me to cower and just take the grade the way my older brother had. She carried on, as the teacher probably she would about grades and colleges. But since they’d already assigned me to secretarial school, what did I care about my grades? I felt – and knew instinctively – that I was right. What had all those men, from the Revolutionary War to Viet Nam, died for, fighting against Marxist and fascist tyranny, if I couldn’t tell a Marxist teacher where to go with his grade? My older brother received a grade of A in U.S. History II. I earned a grade of F in the same subject and was never prouder of a grade in all my life. I’d made my sacrifice for liberty and freedom and American history. My father really only scolded me on one point – that I should have read the Communist Manifesto. I would do so – and did – on my own time I said. “But I don’t understand?” I said to him. “You didn’t want me to read “Mein Kampf” but you do want me to read “The Communist Manifesto.” He said “Mein Kampf” was more devious and subtle. Hitler made arguments that might at first seem to make sense but in actuality couldn’t be more dangerous than “The Communist Manifesto” itself. I never did read it. I read William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” instead. Twice. What a history! Once in college, it was more of the same. Fellow classmates laughing about the subversion of children’s television in the Sixties. Some clown whose name I can’t recall encourage children to take a $20 bill out of their parents’ wallet and mail it to him (he even showed the bill on screen). They argued about the “benefits” of legalizing marijuana, that drugs were really harmless. “How do you know it’s bad unless you try it?” some useful idiot asked. “I don’t need to,” I replied. “I can see what it’s done to you.” I took Communications, not History, because I really wanted to write for the movies and television. Little did I know that the casting couch and the cocaine mirror applied to aspiring writers as well as actresses. Fortunately, I never made it that far. I made many Trotskyite friends whom, as I’ve said already, I allowed to tell me all their little ideas and revolutionary plans. This information, I figured, would prove useful in countering Communists in the future. Finally, some college friends talked me into taking an advanced psychology class. “Experiential Psychology”? Well, something like that. The professor spouted copious amounts of gibberish and nonsense, which my silly friends had been regurgitating to me before I signed up for this class. Then one day, in fact the very day after it was too late to drop the class, he announced that if we didn’t want him to fail us, we had to renounce our belief in God. “God doesn’t exist and if you can’t accept that, then I will fail you. Come, I want to hear you all say it together, right now: ‘God doesn’t exist.” The room fell completely silently. “I mean what I say,” he declared. “I will fail you, so make up your minds.” He sat down again, as if waiting patiently. I stood up. Again. As best I can recollect, I stated quite firmly, “I won’t say it! God does exist and you’re a liar!” He just snubbed his nose at me arrogantly. “As for the rest of you,” I cried looking down at the class, and in particular at my friend, “if you renounce God, you’re out of minds! I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when you meet up with Him one day and have to explain yourselves, what you’re about to do right now!” I then stomped to the door. “You don’t have to fail me,” I said to the professor. “I quit!!” With that, I went out, slamming the door behind me. I marched directly to the Registrar’s Office but as I feared, I was a day too late to drop the class. That meant I would lose my $200, or whatever it was. The poor student at the window apologized. She asked me why I was dropping the class. So I told her. She was shocked. But there was nothing to be done about it. My second sacrifice, this time for God. Well, I owed God Big Time, anyway. It was God I prayed to in the Fourth Grade to save me from the class bully. Within ten minutes, my mother showed up, like the cavalry, ordering the teacher to change my seat or she’d have the bully expelled and the teacher fired. Yay, Mom! (Yay, Jesus! That’s who I prayed to, come to think of it). So then, finally, I was out in the adult world and working as a secretary (“I want to be a writer!” I cried. “You’re going to be a secretary!” my parents replied. “A writer!” “A secretary!” By the end of high school, they’d won. I was enrolled in a county college to learn to type and take shorthand. However, eventually I was able to enroll in the four-school; the same one that sent its student aides to administer “The Pencil Test.” I graduated just in time. The next year, colleges required students to take “Sensitivity Courses” on Racism, Sexism, and Genderism (homosexuality). Indoctrination 101. Never mind about reading Shakespeare or studying the Greek myths before attempting English Poetry. In those years, Reagan had just been elected President. I remembered when he was Governor of California. Hurray for Ronald Rayguns. The New York City radio stations were trying to shred him to pieces, or at least make those who voted for him feel that way. They said the most horrible things about him, just the way they’ve been berating Trump. The Democrats have never, ever met a Republican president they didn’t hate. Remember how they heckled George W. during his inauguration parade? When his father was running for President, he held a rally in Madison. So the Democrat agitators, claiming they were Secret Service, demanded that the rally-goers surrender their pro-GWB signs, which they immediately tore them up. Being the rebel that I am, I challenged the two girly-girls posing as Secret Service. “You’re no more Secret Service than I am,” I said. “We have to take away the signs for security,” the bolder girl claimed. “Someone could hide a gun behind a sign.” “Oh yeah?” I replied. “What about all those people on the other side? No one’s taken their signs away.” At this point, the second girl became nervous. “Maybe this isn’t the right thing to do,” she whined. “They do have the freedom of speech and…” “The ends justifies the means,” the first little Trotskyite said. At that a professorially-looking man, with the rain cap and the plaid pants joined the throng. Secret Service agents dressed in black and white, didn’t they, and wear ties? “Is there a problem here?” he asked. “They’re complaining about us taking away their signs,” the first girl said. There were other rally-goers with me. “Oh, no, no. You can go into the rally but you can’t carry the signs. They’re a security risk. We can’t take the chance someone will shoot the president,” he said. “You mean like those signs over there?” I said, pointing to the other group. “Oh, well, tsk, tsk, now, now,” he chuckled. With that, one of the girls took away our signs and piled them up with the others. Today, they’d probably take away our American flags as well. After all, they could be hollowed out… After working a while, I returned to school to get a second degree in English. I earned a 3.77 GPA – for a lot of mostly awful literature. The only satisfying course was a 400 course (Senior Level) in Shakespeare’s Dramas. Because I had a previous degree, I was required to take any “sensitivity training.” There I met yet another Communist friend, whom I, again, allowed to teach me all about “the glories of Communism.” I asked her about the violence of Lenin, overthrowing the elected Socialist government and Stalin’s purges. She said that those were “just mistakes.” They would get it right “the next time.” What I missed in “sensitivity training,” I was required to take as an employee of the various companies for which I worked. What balderdash. Meanwhile, during my first job I received the first of many jury summonses. The trial was about some poor Hispanic bus driver who’d been beaten up by a gang of Blacks. The defense claimed that the police hadn’t followed proper procedure and instead of a police line-up, allowed the victim to view photographs in the hospital. They claimed everything under the sun: that the weapon, a piece of telephone pole, conveniently couldn’t hold fingerprints; that no witnesses would come forward to testify on behalf of the victim (no kidding – yet if this defendant was innocent wouldn’t the witnesses have been happy to come forward and exonerate him – Cochran said that the defendant did have to do anything to cooperate; he was innocent until proven guilty and it was all on the defense to prove he wasn’t); and finally, this was a case of racial injustice because the lead defendant was Black and the victim was considered a “White” Hispanic. The defense attorney was none other than O.J. Simpson’s future attorney, Johnnie Cochran. He told the jury that he was going to try a brand new defense strategy called “The Race Card.” We were instructed by Cochran to find the defendant not guilty on the basis of four hundred years of racism (the year of this trial was 1982). There were two Black female jurors who explained all about “The Race Card” to us. They were as militant Marxists as you could ever imagine. They said it was our “duty” to find this defendant not guilty, even if the evidence proved beyond a shadow of doubt that it did prove guilt, owing to four hundred years of White racism. “We haven’t even heard the evidence yet, and you’ve already decided he’s innocent?” the jury foreman asked them. “Yes!” The rest of us looked around at one another. We should have sent a note to the judge at the moment to have them removed on grounds of prejudice. The rest of us would not consent to making such a verdict. But in the end, the police had very little evidence, although we felt Cochran was dead wrong on claiming that the photos were inadmissible. The picture sure looked like him. Without a weapon with fingerprints and with no fingerprints, there was really no case. I still held out until the end, simply because I felt this should have been a mistrial from the beginning on account of those two girls. One of the defense attorneys (not Cochran) asked me afterwards why I held out so long. Or was it the judge? No this man questioning me was too nice; the judge was a bellicose jerk who never should have allowed the defense to make such a case as “The Race Card.” “I felt sorry for him. You were wrong about those pictures. This was the guy. In any case, I felt sorry for him. My mother had told me about a bus driver in Paterson who’d been severely beaten. I just didn’t realize that this was the same guy. I figured it was a white bus driver.” “He is white.” “No, he’s Puerto Rican. He’s Black. And I still feel sorry for him!” “If I’d known you felt sorry for him, I’d never have allowed you on the jury.” “Well you should have asked me, shouldn’t you? I wish you had! I hope I never have to sit on a jury again.” Alas, I did. Many times, including one in which a white girl falsely accused a black fellow of raping her. We knew he was innocent. It was only when a juror (guess) hissed at her, “Liar!” or “Get on with it!”when she dried her crocodile tears when no one (but the jury) was looking that she broke down and confessed. Hope that guy sued the skirt off of her. By the time I got to my last full-time job, I was used to the game. I’d better have because I was in the Internal Public Relations Department in a company that was full of Black people. I recall that during Sensitivity Training I was asked to apologize for slavery. I refused. I told them I was sorry that it happened, but my ancestors were in Ireland and Germany at the time. In addition, over 300,000 Union soldiers died to free the slaves. To which, the seminar leader provided a singular letter, purportedly from a Union soldier stating that he hated the Negroes and that he was in the fight to save the Union not the slaves. I responded that I didn’t know for a fact that the letter was genuine, and even if it was, I wondered how many of his fellow soldiers had been blown to pieces before he wrote the letter home. That sort of propagandizing smacks of the Lt. William Calley Jr. trial, who was found guilty of slaughtering a village of Viet Namese in 1968. What the press – the Media – didn’t tell America was that his platoon had been wiped out on a notorious, mined South Viet Namese trail. According to Gen. “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarkzkopf, this second wave of troops that arrived in Viet Nam around 1967 and beyond were poorly trained and often didn’t listen to orders. Norman, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, had been in Viet Nam. He volunteered to serve there, rather than teacher for three years at West Point. He arrived in Viet Nam in 1965. He noted in his autobiography, “It Doesn’t Take A Hero,” this particular trail was known to be mined and he ordered his own troops to stay off the trail. They didn’t listen to his orders and some of them were killed or injured. Calley wasn’t under Schwarpzkopf’s command. But word had gotten around that a North Viet Namese agent had set the mines in the trail and was hiding in a village up the trail. Allegedly, Calley lost it and wiped out that entire village. While there were mitigating circumstances, he was still found guilty. The “Media” played up the trial mercilessly, using the incident as an excuse for more war protests, riots and flag-burning. Neither have they ever noted that South Viet Nam never truly or democratically voted for the Communists. The opposition and their wealthier supporters were simply slaughtered before any true election was ever held. This is why it’s important to read, something the Marxists want to make sure your children and grandchildren never, ever do. But that’s a subject for another blog post. Once in my final job, I toed the line. I actually had no particular problem with Black People. Or Yellow people. Or Hispanic people. I had some issues with Mexican food. But what can I say? I was the building photographer and my job was to photograph their very many Diversity and Inclusion parties. And I loved it. Especially the food (except for Mexican and Indian food – yikeys!). I loved making friends and seeing different activities – dancing, music, festive decorations. Diversity & Inclusion was A-Okay by me. Made for thousands of terrific pictures. Truth was, as long as someone was making an honest living, they were A-Okay by me, too. No problem. Barrack Hussein Obama was definitely not A-Okay by, although I took photos of people watching the televised first inauguration as requested. I read all the books about him (and Hillary Clinton) and it all added up to President Marx. That’s when I started my blog. All that summer – 2007 – I wrote in my blog everyday about what I’d read about him. How his mentor, Marshall Davis, a friend of Obama’s Communist maternal grandfather, “inspired” him. How he believed “white privilege” (first introduced by his good buddy Bill Ayers in his book “The Handbook of Social Justice” was responsible for all that Black people and other people of different colors had suffered. How suburbia should be basically torn apart, which his minions have done an excellent job of doing on the Bloomingdale/Pompton Lakes border in New Jersey (there was yet another explosion today; another “Obama Bomb” destroying an original wilderness. Believe it or not, by 2012, my blog had been nominated one of the 20 Most Dangerous Conservative Blogs in America by Russia Today. I couldn’t believe my good luck! Finally, there was the 2009 Tea Party, in reaction to Obama’s financial policies and the recession which he greatly worsened. We here in New Jersey wanted our share of throwing the taxes overboard. At the time, this was the most taxed state in the nation. But how did one go about hosting a Tea Party? There was message board site through which we would-be Tea Partiers communicated with each other all over the country. Newark was listed as one of the sites; Trenton a second, and Morristown, a third. Newark?! They had to be out of their minds, we all agreed. None of us was going to risk our lives and automobiles going to Newark – on a workday – for three hours. We wanted something closer to home, and Morristown was it. But the guy who volunteered for Morristown suddenly dropped the ball. If someone didn’t pick, there’d be no TEA Party for suburbanites, the people who needed it most. Everybody on board was eager for Morristown, only they didn’t know anything about hosting a TEA Party. “Oh, yes you do! You just don’t realize it, that’s all. If you’ve ever planned a wedding, a birthday party, an anniversary party, a PTA meeting, a business meeting, then you know how to do this!” “But we don’t know how…” they whined. So I whipped up an agenda for them, having attained the knowledge from our local Event Planner, whom I often accompanied on many events, tailored to a patriotic, Conservative TEA Party rally, scheduled for outdoors in March, an awfully cold time for an outdoor gig here in Northern New Jersey. Then I sent to them. They immediately go the picture. “I know how to do this!” “Oh! I know how to do that!” “I know people who can help build a podium.” The Morristown TEA Party was on its way – and it was a tremendous success, with 2,000 people filling The Green in Morristown. Not that we didn’t have our organizational problems. The first meeting, we had about 20 people. The next meeting, a thousand people showed up, all wanting to donate money. Well, we didn’t have the structure for that, and gave the people back their money, with our sincere regrets. The big problem was Marxist Moles who infiltrated our meetings. At the meeting to decide upon the MTP’s mission statement, some agitators insisted that the statement read “non-partisan.” I had declined an invitation to serve on the organization’s committee. Not my thing, dealing with other people. I tell people what they need to do to be successful, they do it, they’re successful, then they pat themselves on the back and I go home to do the next patriotic thing. That’s the way I roll. “So what role would you be willing to play?” the elected president asked me. “Watch dog.” “What?!” “Guard dog. Terrier. My job will be to protect you from infiltrators. And you won’t like me for it,” I told him. “In fact, you’ll wind up hating for being a troublemaker.” He laughed. I did my job, indeed, and he didn’t hate me. But a lot of other people, especially the infiltrators, and most particularly, the Republican infiltrators who threatened us with lawsuits no less if we carried on with our rally. At the “mission statement” meeting I stood up on “hind legs” and told the officiating organizer that under no circumstances should the group use the phrases “non-partisan” or “bi-partisan.” Those types of words would undermine our Conservative efforts. I told him to make no references at all to partisanship. “This is a Conservative organization!” I shouted – it’s the only way anyone can hear me because I have such a soft voice. “If there’s anyone here who doesn’t like Conservatism, then they can just go start their own TEA Party. But as long as I have breath in my lungs and I’m involved, this will be a Conservative organization!!” The leader smiled and said, “Very well. Our mission statement will make no mention of partisanship.” The next meeting, I believe it was the meeting just before the rally, but I’m not certain, some RINO Republicans invited themselves to our meeting. They began to complain again about the “partisan” nature of the group and the topics which our speakers would be covering at the rally. Conservatism also encompasses social issues (like abortion, which is someplace we weren’t going anyway, or school choice, which one of the speakers was going to cover – me! – although they didn’t know that at the time and neither did the organizers). I don’t recall what happened now, because I was furious that anyone was messing with “my” TEA Party. I jumped up and yelled at the top of my lungs that no one was going to tell our TEA Party what to do or what to say or how to conduct itself. We were a Conservative organization and anyone who didn’t like it could just leave by that door over there! And they did. They gave a big harrumph and declaring they could tell when they were not wanted, gathered their precious belongings and stomped out the door in a huff. I think the audience cheered, but I’m not sure because I’d used up all the oxygen in my lungs in hyperventilating and was about to pass out. Still, the RINOs were successful in intimidating the Morristown TEA Party organizers to stand down after the Tax Day TEA Party or the RINOS would sue them. They sent an e-mail like that. I just told them where they could stuff their lawsuit. I’m not a team player and seeing that my TEA Party was on the right track (more or less), I only went to two more meetings. The first meeting was a reorganization as the original organizers had resigned due to the intimidation. Something the original organizer. The group wanted me to come to a meeting in late April, but I told them no, that I had a parade to go to. I was mad. They weren’t listening to any of my ideas or my warnings about refusing to allow participants to carry their home-made signs. Big mistake. They’d lose attendance and after the Fourth of July rally they did. Still, I went to that reorg meeting, armed with newspaper clippings from all over the state and Pennsylvania, congratulating the Morristown Tea Party. Everybody looked at me funny. They thought I was one of the “conspirators.” After listening to what was going on, I left the clippings with the official writer of the group, who was afraid to touch them because he thought I’d brought incriminating evidence on the leader. What nonsense! The last meeting I attended was in Morristown itself. What with work and band and all, I was just too tired. I’d quite literally run out of oxygen and energy. After the pre-rally outburst, I had to lay down for three days, except when I wasn’t working. I had to reschedule some photo shoots so I could stay at my desk. I spoke to my pal, the President. I’d seen a possible “Montclair Mole” in the audience. Our “members” were generally older, relaxed people. They came to meetings in TEA Party tee shirts and jeans, jackets if it was cold. This woman was clad in a London Fog raincoat for Pete’s sake, high-end shoes and far too much jewelry for a TEA Partier. I told the President, look I don’t want to interfere with the meeting, but this woman over here in the raincoat (I pointed her out); she’s not one of us. I’d swear on my mother’s Bible that she’s a Liberal from Montclair (the capital city of Marxist Liberalism in New Jersey). You’ve got to keep an eye on her. She’s going to try to disrupt the meeting. Which, of course, she did. I let her know we could tell the wheat from the chaff and I wasn’t about to let her disrupt the meeting. “If you would just listen, if we could just compromise…” That was the last word. I advised her that the Morristown TEA Party would never compromise on its Conservative values and that she should go back where she came from.” Whereupon, yet another Liberal fled my wrath. But I couldn’t keep doing this. If I kept it up, I would be on oxygen. Nor did I want to interrupt the TEA Partiers themselves with shouting down the troublemakers. I apologized to the President, who laughed, and promised him my sharp tongue and I wouldn’t be back again. I needed something else to do now. Something quieter. I still had my blog. But there was much, especially about history, that I wanted to know. Looking for new employment sure wasn’t working out. I did freelance photography for a while. I loved that, too. But my arthritic hip did not. There came an event, down in Nutley, where I barely made it back to my car, even with the aid of my monopod. I finally had to call it quits on the photography. While working an event in Clifton, N.J., a plainclothes police officer approached me while I was sitting on a bench in Main Park. “Was I [Meryl Streep]?” “Yeah…” I said cautiously. “Why do you want to know?” I was suspicious because this had happened before. I knew why he was asking me. “Well, you know there’s a picture of you in our police headquarters? Wanted for bank robbery and some other crimes.” Those who know me know my “winning smile.” So I smiled broadly for him, knowing what he was going to say to this, too. “Does she have a smile like this?” I asked, with my coyest, most winsome smile. I even batted my eyes at him. He was sitting casually on the top part of the bench, smiling, too. As I smiled, he smile vanished and he put a hand on the bench to hold himself in place. “No,” he said shaking his head. “Good! Can I go now?” I asked. He just nodded and I skipped as merrily away as my arthritic hip would allow me. I believe my doppelganger is the real reason I’ve had so much trouble finding work. It’s no surprise that they could find her. Years ago, she committed life insurance fraud and she’s now living on a nursing home’s charity. I can’t name the nursing home, of course. But I learned all this from a cousin who has the name as two of our cousins (one on each side of the family and the country). This “cousin” once dumped a car in my condo parking lot. When the association asked me about it, I told them, “Tow it away, by all means. She’s no relative of mine.” So here I am now, working on my next and final project: teaching History. Oh, I don’t have a teaching certificate, although with today’s online universities, I daresay I could obtain one. But I want the Big One, the gold ring, the big enchilada. There are some universities willing to allow you to bypass the Master’s and go for the Ph.D. Some don’t even require the GREs anymore because they’re considered racist, or at least, elitist. Middle class kids get barely a smattering of Greek mythology and inner city kids, none at all. They’d sure be surprised at how far back drug use actually goes. The Ivy Leagues, indeed. Once I’m retired, I want to be a tutor. I want to be the Old Woman of Myth, or something, who teaches students all the banned subjects: history, literature (kind of), geography, the arts (music and art – kids really need a good dose of good music appreciation) maybe even a bit of economics. Big brother is really the guy for that. Maybe I can recruit him. Oh and piano and flute. I’ll throw some music lessons in just for good measure. The point of all this is that we have to prepare for a future we may not like very much. Before the coronavirus, I would have said that Trump is a shoe-in. With all the riots, he’s an even bigger shoe-in. The problem is the older generation, his biggest fans, are dying out from this virus. He seemed put out that he didn’t have a bigger audience in Tulsa. The Media made great fun of his bedraggled appearance upon returning to Washington, his red tie all undone. Very unlike our Mr. Trump, who’s fastidious about his appearance. We’re sure he felt much better after learning that Fox had its highest ratings EVER after airing his rally. He should try to understand that people are really, really scared of this bug, especially people who live here in Northern New Jersey. We can’t afford to lose a single Republican voter. What luck that the virus struck hardest on Long Island, Westchester County in New York, and Bergen County in New Jersey, and of course, New York City, which are not just solidly Blue but concretely Blue. Those places don’t even have Republican parties anymore. Paterson, N.J., is trying, gamely. At least they haven’t given up yet. This virus is no conspiracy theory; it’s for real. People I know have died from it. My sister-in-law’s doctor just died from Wuhan Flu. We aren’t really counting on a vaccine to cure it. We don’t believe the Chinese when they claim it was an accident. In a U.S. election year? Seriously? Conspiracy or not, though, there’s no question that it’s deadly and we here in Northern New Jersey are positive that spreads through the air on moistened dust particles from the “dust” of some Chinese bats. I still haven’t gotten my Primary Election ballot yet and it has to be postmarked no later than July 7th. One of our newspapers just reported that a mail truck in Morris Township in New Jersey “caught fire” destroying all the ballots that it was carrying. These Marxists mean business. They’ve playing the long game for a long time. They also know people like me (and others) are onto them and announcing it. The Marxists play dirty and they play for keeps. Lose this election and we may very well lose America, for real, this time. She’s been on the brink for a long time, at least as far back as when our father was in college. Our children and grandchildren have been or are being drugged and brainwashed by a firmly established Marxist academia, which in turn is supported by a Marxist administrative state. We have to plan on some sort of intervention for our (your) grandchildren, at the very least. Get them off of the drugs (which they are almost certainly using). Police them, if you must, but keep them away from the drugs, even the supposedly “harmless” marijuana. Reprogram our cultural choices. Create our own from scratch if we must and preserve that which the Marxists are about to throw out (i.e., Gone With The Wind). Reeducate the grandchildren in American history, literature, grammar, mathematics, science. They should also do two other things: serve in the military and learn a trade. And bring them back to God. You have to lead them, for they certainly won’t follow of their own accord. Until Jesus returns Himself – whenever that might be – we have to fend for ourselves and hold ourselves as upright as we, feeble as we are, can.

Absolutism and Anarchy Versus Absolution and America: The Hypocrisy of the Left

Today’s American Marxists would have their mobs denude America of every semblance of its amazing history: its monuments and statues to the brave men who made freedom possible, the accurate history books that recount our Republic’s growth, and even its legal foundation, the United States Constitution. In short, everything that carries even the slightest taint of “racism” as it relates to slavery should be abolished. And yet. Up until the Mid-1960s, America’s major newspapers: The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune carried discriminatory help-wanted ads. Big companies and small businesses, as well as homeowners were permitted to select the type of employee they wanted. White, male, black, female. In the past, advertisements specifically noted certain groups need not apply, particularly the Irish Catholic. Even as late as January 3, 1960 (and still later, because I remember) them, jstor.org gives a sample of the help wanted ads for that date: The New York Times • COOK, housekeeper, Negro preferred, experience essential, prominent family, permanent position, high salary • HOUSEKEEPER, cook, European, must be honest, clean, reliable; own room & bath; other help; recent references, good salary • COUPLE, $400-500, white for business couple with 2 adult children. Private home. Man to work in business. The Washington Post • BOYS-WHITE, Age 14 to 18. To assist route manager full or part=time. Must be neat in appearance. • NURSE (practical) white, for small nursing home. Car necessary • DRIVERS (TRUCK) Colored, for trash routes. Over 25 years of age, paid vacation, year-around work, must have excellent driving record The Los Angeles Times • GIRL, white, 25-40, Lite household duties. Rm. Board, sal. • HOUSEKEEPER – European or Oriental – 2 adults pri. Quarters, under 45. Ref. • HSKPR, white 22-45, 2 school boys. Must live in. Refs. The Chicago Tribune • LABORATORY TECHNICIAN. Experienced, modern southside medical center. White, Salary open. • WAITRESS – White. Good tips. • SINGLE white man – work in first class table. Room, board, plus [salary] Actually, the authors of the article, “Evidence on Discrimination in Employment,” William A. Darity and Patrick L. Mason, published in The Journal of Economic Perspectives, doesn’t even reveal the entire tip of the iceberg. The New York Times has archives of their newspapers, going all the way back to the founding in 1851, before the Civil War. All except their classified section. Would we find ads for slave auctions in that issue? Probably not since New York had already abolished slavery. The Times readily admits to discriminating against the Irish. In their day, the Irish were pretty feisty. But today, they’re the Middle Class, not a protect minority. However, we can tell you, since our father read the Sunday New York Times religiously, the newspaper certainly did have segregated help-wanted columns. “Whites Only.” “Blacks Only.” “Men Only.” Not until 1972 was this practice outlawed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and the charge was largely mounted by women. Didn’t the Inner City Blacks care about EEO? Or were they complacent because they already had their welfare and didn’t need to work? Gee, we thought the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was supposed to take care of that. But it seems that while employers couldn’t discriminate against minorities, nothing prevented them from discriminating against minorities in the help wanted ads they took out. And the New York Times obliged them. Will there now be a protest of the New York and L.A. Times? The Chicago Tribune? The Washington Post? After all, if mobs can tear down statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who didn’t live to see the Civil War, surely the New York Times should receive similar treatment for defying the Civil Rights Act after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.? What do you say? They rectified the situation, so it’s different with them? They’re on your side, so you won’t attack them? The Democrats weren’t on the side of the Blacks. The Democrats were pro-Slavery and against Reconstruction. They fought every single Civil Rights Act until 1965 when President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who frequently called Blacks the N-word, had the brilliant idea of building the Great Plantation – er – Society, in which Blacks would receive government assistance in everything from housing to food to child care in exchange for their votes. Meanwhile, Southern Democrats, not Republicans, tried to prevent Blacks from voting. Democrat mayors and their police captains used violence against Martin Luther King Jr. and his (mostly) peaceful protestors. Southern Democrats put King in jail, not Republicans. Marxist agitators in the Sixties urged Blacks on to live in the cities where welfare benefits were the most generous. Blacks, indeed, were living in poverty since employers wouldn’t hire them (mainly because they were uneducated but also because they were, yes, Black). The white people of the day didn’t just sheepishly watch as their cities burned in the Sixties. The problem was the Marxists tied racism to their protests of the Viet Nam War and also to college unrest. These older men with families had fought the Nazis and the Japanese. Another mistake was school busing in an attempt to “desegregate” schools. Didn’t work too well. The suburban schools experienced all sorts of problems (including outbreaks of lice; drug dealing was another) and that was the end of that. Suburbia pushed back. President Richard M. Nixon called them “The Silent Majority.” For their part, the Black parents who cared really didn’t want their children being bused to schools miles and miles away, no matter how much safer they were. Will the Blacks ever realize that the Democrats and the Marxist agitators are selling them a bill of goods (that is, they’re all talk and all action, yet “Black Lives” have scarcely improved, save for the tax-payer funded welfare system)? Will they ever realize that the Marxists are playing on their emotions rather than reason? For if you don’t want to burn down the New York Times building or the Washington Post’s offices for their egregious racism right up until the Seventies, then you have no business tearing down the statue of Christopher Columbus at Columbus Circle (which is an affront to Italian-Americans) in New York or any statue of George Washington. The Marxists want absolutism, that is, their way or the highway, with an oligarchic, administrative government to replace the representative government we have right now. They want to completely expunge American history; that’s why they’re tearing down our statues. History has shown that every Communist government began as a socialist oligarchy and wound up as a tyrannical autocracy. They also want anarchy. They want chaos from which they intend to build their promised New World Order. They need violence in order to break our society down and rebuild it. They need people threatening one another, kept apart, so that no majority can swell up against their ambitions. In short, they need useful idiots, as Vladimir Lenin so quaintly put it: young, poor and stupid. Our American heroes were courageous leaders who were ultimately granted absolution, a Christian concept, by history, and particularly the Civil War. You can sling mud on them, but the truth will wash the grime away. The Left’s hypocrisy will seep back into the ground from which it emerged so boldly. They were made of flesh and blood. Their ideals, the ideals that have made America great, were constructed from something harder than granite or iron and more precious and durable diamonds. Those ideals were forged from a love of freedom.

The Marxist Iconoclasm Continues Unchecked

First it was Robert E. Lee and the Confederate flag. Well, you say, you could hardly blame the “protestors” for wanting them removed from public place. But as some Conservatives warned it wouldn’t stop there, with Confederate generals. Lee, in one instance, was removed to a Confederate cemetery, which is probably the proper place for that statue. Soon, though, it was George Washington and Thomas Jefferson – Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Now it’s Theodore Roosevelt, whose statue stands in front of the Museum of Natural History in New York City. What? Why, what did Rough and Ready Teddy do? It seems he was keeping company with a “Native American” and an “African American” and because he was sculpted horse and they weren’t the piece of artwork was deemed “racist.” Iconoclasm is when someone tears down statues and other symbols venerated by the enemy, in this case, us. Iconoclasm goes back to ancient times, when conquering armies would smash the noses and break the arms of statuary in the conquered country. Not that it mattered to the conquered because they were generally slaughtered. Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, which is the first mark against him, even though he was a very liberal Republican. Roosevelt became president of the board of police commissioners and radically reformed the police force. Roosevelt implemented regular inspections of firearms and annual physical exams, appointed recruits based on their physical and mental qualifications rather than political affiliation, established Meritorious Service Medals, and closed corrupt police hostelries. During his tenure, a Municipal Lodging House was established by the Board of Charities, and Roosevelt required officers to register with the Board; he also had telephones installed in station houses. In 1894, Roosevelt met Jacob Riis, the Evening Sun newspaper journalist who was opening the eyes of New Yorkers to the terrible conditions of the city’s millions of poor immigrants with such books as How the Other Half Lives. Riis described how his book affected Roosevelt: When Roosevelt read [my] book, he came… No one ever helped as he did. For two years we were brothers in (New York City’s crime-ridden) Mulberry Street. When he left I had seen its golden age… There is very little ease where Theodore Roosevelt leads, as we all of us found out. The lawbreaker found it out who predicted scornfully that he would “knuckle down to politics the way they all did,” and lived to respect him, though he swore at him, as the one of them all who was stronger than pull… that was what made the age golden, that for the first time a moral purpose came into the street. In the light of it everything was transformed. Roosevelt made a habit of walking officers’ beats late at night and early in the morning to make sure that they were on duty. He made a concerted effort to uniformly enforce New York’s Sunday closing law; in this, he ran up against boss Tom Platt , the boss of the state Republican Party, as well as Tammany Hall. Interestingly, Roosevelt was notified that the Police Commission was being legislated out of existence. His crackdowns led to protests and demonstrations. Invited to one large demonstration, not only did he surprisingly accept, he delighted in the insults, caricatures and lampoons directed at him, and earned some surprising good will. Roosevelt chose to defer rather than split with his party. As Governor of New York State, he would later sign an act replacing the Police Commission with a single Police Commissioner. On September 6, 1901, President McKinley was attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., when he was shot by American anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Roosevelt was vacationing in Vermont, and traveled to Buffalo to visit McKinley in the hospital. It appeared that McKinley would recover, so Roosevelt resumed his vacation in the Adirondacks in New York State. Roosevelt was climbing Mount Marcy in New York with his family when word came to him that McKinley had died from his wounds on September 14. Roosevelt was sworn in as the 26th and youngest President of the United States. During Roosevelt’s second year in office it was discovered there was corruption in the Indian Service, the Land Office, and the Post Office Department. Roosevelt investigated and prosecuted corrupt agents who had cheated the Creeks and various tribes out of land parcels. Land fraud and speculation were found involving Oregon federal timberlands. In November 1902, Roosevelt and Secretary Ethan A. Hitchcock forced Binger Hermann, the General Land Office Commissioner, to resign from office. On November 6, 1903 Francis J. Heney was appointed special prosecutor and obtained 146 indictments involving an Oregon Land Office bribery ring. U.S. Senator John H. Mitchell (R-Ore.) was indicted for bribery to expedite illegal land patents, found guilty in July 1905, and sentenced to six months in prison. More corruption was found in the Postal Department, that brought on the indictments of 44 government employees on charges of bribery and fraud. Historians generally agree that Roosevelt moved “quickly and decisively” to prosecute misconduct in his administration. Roosevelt responded to public anger over the abuses in the food packing industry by pushing Congress to pass the Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Though conservatives initially opposed the bill, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, published in 1906, helped galvanize support for reform. The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 banned misleading labels and preservatives that contained harmful chemicals. The Pure Food and Drug Act banned food and drugs that were impure or falsely labeled from being made, sold, and shipped. Roosevelt also served as honorary president of the American School Hygiene Association from 1907 to 1908, and in 1909 he convened the first White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children Of all Roosevelt’s achievements, he was proudest of his work in conservation of natural resources and extending federal protection to land and wildlife. Roosevelt worked closely with Interior Secretary James Rudolph Garfield and Chief of the United States Forest Service Gifford Pinchot to enact a series of conservation programs that often met with resistance from Western members of Congress, such as Charles William Fulton. Nonetheless, Roosevelt established the United States Forest Service, signed into law the creation of five National Parks, and signed the 1906 Antiquities Act, under which he proclaimed 18 new U.S. National Monuments. He also established the first 51bird reserves, four game preserves, and 150 National Forests. The area of the United States that he placed under public protection totals approximately 230 million acres (930,000 square kilometers). Roosevelt extensively used executive orders on a number of occasions to protect forest and wildlife lands during his tenure as president. By the end of his second term in office, Roosevelt used executive orders to establish 150 million acres (600,000 square kilometers) of reserved forestry land. Roosevelt was unapologetic about his extensive use of executive orders to protect the environment, despite the perception in Congress that he was encroaching on too many lands. Eventually, Senator Charles Fulton (R-OR) attached an amendment to an agricultural appropriations bill that effectively prevented the president from reserving any further land. Before signing that bill into law, Roosevelt used executive orders to establish an additional 21 forest reserves, waiting until the last minute to sign the bill into law. In total, Roosevelt used executive orders to establish 121 forest reserves in 31 states. Prior to Roosevelt, only one president had issued over 200 executive orders, Grover Cleveland (253). The first 25 presidents issued a total of 1,262 executive orders; Roosevelt issued 1,081. And that, children, is why Theodore Roosevelt’s statue is outside the American Museum of Natural History and why an Indian, at least, is standing by his side. That was the tribute that America owed Roosevelt. He also proposed income and property taxes which didn’t pass in his time. Instead, Woodrow Wilson got the two passed, which ever since have paid for a burgeoning administrative state that has served Blacks and Hispanics very well, indeed. The end of the Civil War, with the Union victorious, put paid to any debt the United States of America might have owed to the African slaves. Let’s take a closer look at one of those soldiers, shall we? We’ll take a look at the Medal of Honor site and find one. The Civil War citations are generally short. But there are some unusual citations. These were all heroes of the Union Army who lived, but risked their lives, all the same. For instance: Major George Palmer, Musician, U.S. Army, 1st Illinois Cavalry – 1861 Volunteered to fight in the trenches and also led a charge which resulted in the recapture of a Union hospital, together with Confederate sharpshooters then occupying the same. Private Orlando Caruana, U.S. Army, Company K, 51st New York Infantry – 1862 At New Bern, N.C., brought off the wounded color sergeant and the colors under a heavy fire of the enemy. Was one of four soldiers who volunteered to determine the position of the enemy at South Mountain, Md. While so engaged was fired upon and his three companions killed, but he escaped and rejoined his command in safety. Private Elwood Williams, U.S. Army, Company A, 28th Illinois Infantry – 1862 A box of ammunition having been abandoned between the lines, this soldier voluntarily went forward with one companion, under a heavy fire from both armies, secured the box, and delivered it within the lines of his regiment, his companion being mortally wounded. Johann Langbein, Musician, U.S. Army Company B. 9th New York Infantry – 1862 A drummer boy, 15 years of age, he voluntarily and under a heavy fire went to the aid of a wounded officer, procured medical assistance for him, and aided in carrying him to a place of safety. Thomas Flood, Ship’s Boy, U.S. Navy, U.S.S. Pensacola – 1862 Served on board the U.S.S. Pensacola in the attack on Forts Jackson and St. Philip and the taking of New Orleans, 24 and 25 April 1862. Swept from the bridge by a shell which wounded the signal quartermaster, Flood returned to the bridge after assisting the wounded man below and taking over his duties, “Performed them with coolness, exactitude and the fidelity of a veteran seaman. His intelligence and character cannot be spoken of too warmly.”,,,, Private Delano Morey, U.S. Army, Company B, 82nd Ohio Infantry After the charge of the command had been repulsed, he rushed forward alone with an empty gun and captured two of the enemy’s sharpshooters. Fireman Charles Kenyon, U.S. Navy, U.S.S. Galena On board the U.S.S. Galena in the attack upon Drewry’s Bluff, 15 May 1862. Severely burned while extricating a priming wire which had become bent and fixed in the bow gun while the ship underwent terrific shelling from the enemy, Kenyon hastily dressed his hands with cotton waste and oil and courageously returned to his gun while enemy sharpshooters in rifle pits along the banks continued to direct their fire at the men at the guns. Sergeant Hiram Purcell, U.S. Army, Company G, 104th Pennsylvania Infantry While carrying the regimental colors on the retreat he returned to face the advancing enemy, flag in hand, and saved the other color, which would otherwise have been captured. Private John Hunterson, U.S. Army, Company B, 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry – 1862 While under fire, between the lines of the two armies, voluntarily gave up his own horse to an engineer officer whom he was accompanying on a reconnaissance and whose horse had been killed, thus enabling the officer to escape with valuable papers in his possession. As for those at Gettysburg: Major Charles E. Capehart, U.S. Army, 1st West Virginia Cavalry, July 4, 1863 “While commanding the regiment, Major Capehart charged down the mountain side at midnight, in a heavy rain, upon the enemy’s fleeing wagon train. Many wagons were captured and destroyed and many prisoners taken.” 1st Lieutenant Alonzo H. Cushing, U.S. Army, Battery A, 4th U.S. Light Artillery – July 3, 1863 Refusing to evacuate to the rear despite his severe wounds, he directed the operation of his lone field piece continuing to fire in the face of the enemy Colonel Luigi Palma di Cesnola, U.S. Army, 4th New York Cavalry – June 17, 1863 Was present, in arrest, when, seeing his regiment fall back, he rallied his men, accompanied them, without arms, in a second charge, and in recognition of his gallantry was released from arrest. He continued in the action at the head of his regiment until he was desperately wounded and taken prisoner in the Battle of Aldie (in Virginia), in the march towards Gettysburg Sergeant Andrew J. Tozier, U.S. Army, 20th Maine Infantry – July 2, 1863 “At the crisis of the engagement this soldier, a color bearer, stood alone in an advanced position, the regiment having been borne back, and defended his colors with musket and ammunition picked up at his feet.” Didn’t receive MOH until Aug. 18, 1893 Colonel Wheelock G. Veazey, U.S. Army, 16th Vermont Infantry , July 3, 1863 “Rapidly assembled his regiment and charged the enemy’s flank; charged front under heavy fire, and charged and destroyed a Confederate brigade, all this with new troops in their first battle.” Didn’t received MOH until Sept. 8, 1891 Sergeant Major William B. Hincks, U.S. Army, 14 Connecticut Infantry – 1862 During the high water mark of Pickett’s Charge on July 3rd. the colors of the 14th Tennessee Infantry C.S.A. were planted 50 yards in front of the center of Sgt. Maj. Hincks’ regiment. There were no Confederates standing near it but several were lying down around it. Upon a call for volunteers by Major Ellis to capture this flag, this soldier and two others leaped the wall. One companion was instantly shot. Sgt. Maj. Hincks outran his remaining companion running straight and swift for the colors amid a storm of shot. Swinging his saber over the prostrate Confederates and uttering a terrific yell, he seized the flag and hastily returned to his lines. The 14th Tennessee carried twelve battle honors on its flag. The devotion to duty shown by Sgt. Maj. Hincks gave encouragement to many of his comrades at a crucial moment of the battle. These were the Union soldiers – along with volunteers in the bands that accompanied the troops to battle – who lived to tell the tale of the Civil War. President Ulysses S. Grant was one of them. Grant’s military strategy ended the war and made emancipation possible. Yet the Marxist agitators want to remove his name from history on a specious account of his owning a single slave – a present from his father-in-law – whom he immediately freed, being an abolitionist. More Northerners died in the Civil War than Southers (360,222 vs. 258,000) including combat, disease, and starvation. New York State reported the most deaths. Nearly as many died in captivity as on the battlefield. They died by the tens of thousands at Vicksburg, Manassas, Antietam, Shiloh, The Virginia Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Chickamauga (the second-worst battle of the Civil War), and of course, Gettysburg. One and a half million men served in the Union Army. The average age of a soldier was 26. Not to mention those who served in the U.S. Navy. To think: over 620,000 Northern men perished to free the slaves, the same descendants of these animals who are now occupying our cities, looting, burning, destroying, raping and killing, in addition to topple the monuments of men who led our nation to freedom. The one president they haven’t touched is Lincoln. Don’t think these monsters wouldn’t like to. The Marxists have told these ignoramuses that Lincoln hated the Blacks and that it was only at the instigation of Frederick Douglass that he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Whatever mistakes Washington and Jefferson made, at a time when slavery was as common as drug use is today, those 620,000 Northern soldiers wiped the slate clean with their blood. Yes, racism persisted. The African slaves packed their hatred into their baggage and brought it North with them where they met the hatred of the families whose men – husbands, fathers, brothers, and other kin – died to free them. It took another century to ensure that Blacks could enjoy the right to work, the right to vote, and the right to drink out of a public water fountain or use a public restroom (for Pete’s sake!!). That should have been enough for them. But the sons and daughters of former field hands are going to milk American society for all its worth and even refight the Civil War until there is no more United States of America and the white people who had nothing to do with slavery become slaves themselves. And they’re going to do so with the help of the Marxist Democrat Party. The education system has been under assault for 90 years, back when our father was in college. Even most students couldn’t tell you where the Battle of Shiloh (you’d think the Marxist teachers would at least teach them about the Civil War. But no. That was a “White Man’s War.” So it’s considered unteachable or non-teachable. The Battle of Shiloh was in Tennessee, incidentally and took place on April 6-7, 1862 (I had to look up the date, but not the state), with the Army of Tennessee led by then-Major-General Ulysses S. Grant, near the Tennessee River. So why now? Well, obviously, because it’s an election year. Some other “police shootings” happened during Democrat presidencies, although there were still riots. Then, too, the drug cartels fear losing their territories if President Trump continues into a second term. If you’ve lived long enough, you might have noticed that since Clinton was elected, we’ve been living in a perpetual era of the 1960s. The girls with the long hair, the peace symbol everywhere, and of course, student riots and suppression of free speech on campus. It’s the drugs that are finishing us off. George Floyd was high on crack cocaine. Some think that Officer Derek Chauvin – who worked with Floyd at a notorious nightclub – may have even been paid by the Marxists to carry out the deed and serve as the spark that would light the fire of the Marxist revolution. We need a serious public discussion about drugs and the decline in education, starting with Kindergarten. If we go into that now, we’ll never finish. However, history is the history of humanity, not angels. Ancient history had the same problems as ante bellum and present-day America – slavery and drugs. If our students were taught properly, they’d know that. Ancient History – being able to read and write Latin and Greek – would be part of the curriculum from the fourth grade on. They’d learn American history, with all the proper perspective. Not only do we need to take our cities, back; we need to take our schools back before the Marxists erase history – and not for the first time, either.

SCOTUS Revives DACA Nightmare

MSN/NBC News reported that “The U.S. Supreme Court dealt President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration efforts a fresh blow Thursday when it rejected his cancellation of a program protecting 700,000 “Dreamers,” undocumented migrants brought to the United States as children. “In the high court’s rebuses of administration polices, justices said Trump’s 2017 move to cancel his precedessor’s Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was “arbitrary and capricious.” “Chief Justice John Roberts, who sided with the court’s liberal members in a five-to-four decision, stressed it was not an assessment of the correctness of the 2012 DACA program itself. “Instead, they said the Trump administration had violated government procedures in the way it sought to quickly rescind DACA in September 2017 based on weak legal justifications. “The ruling suggested there are legal administrative methods Trump could use to cancel DACA, putting the onus back on the administration if it wants to pursue the issue. “The decision gave a reprieve, though possibly only temporary, to hundreds of thousands of people brought or sent to the United States as youngsters. They grew up here, went to school, worked and started families — without ever having legal status.” “Capricious” is just the way we would describe Obama’s original 2012 program in the first place, in addition to being outrageously designing in its efforts to tip the demographic scales to ensure more Democrat voters would be registered. You just can’t seem to find Conservative justices truly committed to the U.S. Constitution. The only piece of legislation that matters to them any longer is the 1964 Civil Rights Act, originally meant to prevent discrimination in employment and housing, now extending to protect criminals and illegal aliens. The 1964 CRA and its companion legislation, the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act which abolished national origin quotas and allowed extended families of immigrants already in the United States to join their kin, have supplanted the original Constitution’s clearly and rationally created protections for residents born in the United States and naturalized citizens, to prevent an insurrection of illegal aliens from overthrowing our form of government. In short, the Constitution allowed the United States to prevent insurgents from Communist countries from emigrating here. In Portland, Ore., the Black Marxists just toppled a statue of George Washington after burning an American flag on its face yesterday. This is what Marxist do; they erase any history that celebrates freedom. Washington was toppled on the specious argument that he was a slave-owner. George Washington was a hero and the first official President of the United States of America (not counting the others before him who presided over the nascent confederated American states, including John Hancock). At best, his slave ownership was a minor matter in the greater picture of America. It was a case of “everyone did it” for those times. Our legislators have made that same excuse for legalizing marijuana, a demonstrably dangerous drug, if anyone bothered to read about it. Still, that’s okay. Slavery goes all the way back to ancient times and is still practiced in some nations today. Whatever the “sins” of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, they were washed clean by the blood of the Union Army – 300,000 deaths – from 1861 to 1864 – as well as that of future President Abraham Lincoln, for signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Those brave soldiers paid the debt. The creation of a welfare state for the Blacks repaid the financial debt. The activists began with the statue of Robert E. Lee and the Confederate flag, for which they had a better case. Conservatives were mainly silent because, well, Lee was a traitor. He led the Southern Army in rebellion against the United States. The Confederate flag – the Stars and Bars – was their symbol. But George Washington led the Colonies in the battle for freedom and Thomas Jefferson wrote the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence. History tells us that he intended to include Blacks in that independence, but the words were edited out. Southern legislators insisted on slavery remaining legal. Otherwise, they would not join the Union. The Northern states submitted to their demands. Within the state legislatures, the Southerners wrote some quite labyrinthine laws that made it illegal to teach slaves to read and write, to allow them to vote (until it suited the Southerners to count them as part of the Congressional population in order to gain more seats in Congress), and to free them. Slaves could not be freed; they could only be sold. Considered legal chattel, a plantation owner could only sell to another owner or sell them along with the property. Nor could they, as George Washington (or Ashley Wilkes) intended, to free them post-mortem. The Mount Vernon slaves were considered part of the estate of Martha Washington’s first husband (Martha having no more rights than the slaves themselves), so that Washington could not free them in his will. Nor could Thomas Jefferson. Even though the slaves were his, future buyers refused to purchase Monticello unless the slaves were included. So Washington and Jefferson were in a bind. They did not want to sell the slaves, in the sense that they did not want to be further involved in the slave trade. But nor could they, by law, free them. As for the statues of Washington, Jefferson, Columbus and others, let them be moved out to the suburbs where they will be properly honored and respected as the heroes that they certainly were. In their place, the Marxists will erect statues of Che Guevara, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky. A statue of Guevara is already in place in New York City’s Columbus Circle. Washington, D.C., has a statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. already. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, except that it’s an unflattering, rather belligerent sculpture of him. In the nation’s capital, the Blacks have their hero. Leave ours alone. But they won’t. The Marxists have captured all of our major cities. To the last, they are rife with crime and corruption. In Atlanta, the utilities don’t even bother to bill their “customers” anymore; they simply place more fees on the residents in the suburbs. Tearing down the heroes of the opposition is a major tactic for the Marxists. When they took over Eastern Europe, they tore down the statues of local heroes and replaced them with the aforementioned Lenin and Stalin. Those benighted cities may be the legacy of slavery, populated by the great-great-scions of ignorant Black field hands and insurgents from Communist countries in South America. But to the Marxists, they are the future, the great juggernaut that will flatten and desecrate individual freedom and the Capitalism that makes liberty possible.

What’s for Breakfast? Racial Signaling

The radical Left is on a rampage these days about advertising and marketing figures. Even the three little whatever-they-are guys on the box of Rice Krispies are under attack. The R. T. Davis Milling Company, which produced Aunt Jemima pancake mix, hired a black woman, Nancy Green, as a spokesperson for their products in 1890, until her death on August 30, 1923. Green was born a slave in Montgomery County, Kentucky. As Aunt Jemima, Green appeared beside the “world’s largest flour barrel” operating a pancake-cooking display at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The Aunt Jemima pancake mix debuted in 1889, and became one of the most recognized brands in U.S. history. By 1915 the brand had changed trademark law: the “Aunt Jemima Doctrine.” The brand is currently owned by The Quaker Oats Company of Chicago, now a subsidiary of PepsiCo. The current image was updated sometime in the 1980s or 1990s in order to meet racially-sensitive criteria. Since her first appearance, “Aunt Jemima” was shown as a Negro slave, a character borrowed from 19th Century minstrel shows, with a white man in black face portraying Jemima. Green’s hiring gave a real face to the character to try to avoid stigmatization. The idea of “Aunt Jemima” – a creation of advertising artists, just like our modern Santa Claus – was to appeal to Northerner’s romanticized versions of plantation life and “down-home cooking.” Initially, she was portrayed as a “Mammy” right up until the 1970s. “Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice” had nothing to do with any character but rather a Black farmer whom the company wished to honor for his particularly well-grown rice. In the 1910s, the German-British scientist and chemist Erich Huzenlaub (1888–1964) and the British scientist and chemist Francis Heron Rogers invented a form of parboiling designed to retain more of the nutrients in rice, now known as the Huzenlaub Process. The process entailed vacuum drying the whole grain, then steaming, and finally vacuum drying and husking. Besides increasing rice’s nutritional value, it also made it resistant to weevils and reduced cooking time. In 1932, Forrest Mars, Sr., moved to the United Kingdom with a remit to expand the Mars food company internationally. While in the United Kingdom, Mars learned of Erich Huzenlaub’s work with rice. Huzenlaub’s London-based company was Rice Conversion, Ltd. The two eventually formed Mars and Huzenlaub in Houston, Texas, which gave Forrest Mars partial ownership of the Huzenlaub Process rice conversion patent. In 1942, through Mars’s guidance and sponsorship, Huzenlaub created, together with Houston food broker Gordon L. Harwell, the company Converted Rice, Inc., which sold its entire output to the U.S. and British Armed Forces. The advantage of this product was that it could be air-dropped to troops in the field without risk of weevil infestation, and it could be cooked more quickly than other rice products. Additionally, the converted rice product would retain more nutritional value. In 1944, with additional financing from the Defense Plant Corporation and an investment by Forrest Mars, it built a second large plant. In 1959, Forrest Mars purchased Erich Huzenlaub’s interest in the company and merged it into his Food Manufacturers, Inc. Since 1946, Uncle Ben’s products have carried the image of an elderly African-American man dressed in a bow tie, which is said to have been based on a Chicago maitre d’hotel named Frank Brown. According to Mars, Uncle Ben was an African-American rice grower known for the quality of his rice. Gordon L. Harwell, an entrepreneur who had supplied rice to the armed forces in World War II, chose the name Uncle Ben’s as a means to expand his marketing efforts to the general public. In March 2007, Uncle Ben’s image was “promoted” to the “chairman of the board” by a new advertising campaign. The original boxes of Cream of Wheat, a farina-based breakfast cereal were handmade and lettered, and they were emblazoned with the image of an African-American chef produced by Emery Mapes. The character was named Rastus and was developed by artist Edward V. Brewer. Rastus was included on all boxes and advertisements. It has long been thought that a chef named Frank L. White was the model for the chef shown on the Cream of Wheat box—a claim White himself made. White’s headstone contains his name and an etching taken from the man depicted on the Cream of Wheat box. “Rastus” is said to be a derogatory name for Black people (it’s the first we’ve ever heard of it). The name was derived from Erastus of Corinth. According to Romans 16:23, Erastus was a steward in Corinth, a political office of high civic status. The word is defined as “the manager of household or of household affairs” or, in this context, “treasurer.” The King James Version uses the translation “chamberlain,” while the New International Version uses “director of public works.” A person named Erastus is also mentioned in the 2 Timothy and Acts, and these mentions are usually taken to refer to the same person. According to the tradition of the Orthodox Church, Erastus is numbered among the Seventy Disciples. He served as a deacon and steward of the Church at Jerusalem and later of Paneas in Palestine. The Church remembers St. Erastus on January 4 among the Seventy, and on November 10. Mrs. Butterworth’s is an American brand of syrups and pancake mixes owned by ConAgra Foods. The syrups came in distinctive bottles shaped in the form of a matronly woman, Mrs. Butterworth. The syrup was introduced in 1961. Later,, the original glass bottles began appearing as plastic bottles. Even the Indian girl who appears on Land of Lakes Butter products is being removed. Putting a face to a product, whether human or a humanized animal or other figure (i.e., the Pillsbury Doughboy), sells a brand better than a generic image, has been a long-held precept in advertising and marketing. Don’t tell you kids, but the modern Santa Claus was a creation of advertising, though based on known images of the real St. Nicholas. That kindly bishop’s appearance would have seemed stern to little children, although the fat, jolly man with the white beard in a red suit, I can tell you as a former Santa photographer, has frightened more children than I can count (including my own nephew when he was little). It resulted in some hilarious photos of little throats exposed to the tonsils but also produced some unhappy parents. I told them not to worry; ten or twelve years from now, they’d be doubling over with laughter at the picture. As we recall, the Mrs. Butterworth bottle resembled no one in particular. Aunt Jemima was, indeed, an odd figure in those Civil Rights day. But the company since bowed to political pressure and gave her a very pleasant update. We can’t think what the problem is other than that bane of all evils, Capitalism. Since the character for Cream of Wheat was based on African-American chef, we can’t think what the problem is with him, either. Is there something “racist” about being a chef? That would come as a surprise to the chef at the White House. True, in earlier days – about a hundred or more years ago, he was characterized as being ignorant – but that was then. We suspect that underneath all this, the real issue isn’t “racism” but “Capitalism.” Black Marxist agitators consider using black characters for advertising as “racist.” They call it “cultural appropriation.” But does that mean that after all their efforts at diversity and inclusion, State Farm and Allstate should be boycotted for using Black spokespersons (Kevin Mimms and Dennis Haysbert, respectively). The original Jake from State Farm (Justin Campbell), who was white, was an actual employee. At the time, only actual agents and employees could appear in the company’s commercials. Campbell left State Farm and a new CEO took over, who apparently rewrote the company’s considerable rules on advertising. We would have rather liked to see our former regional director, who’d been a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam, do commercials. Jake, being locked into his cubicle, has relatively little room to move around whereas BC (who had incredible charisma – he lit up every room he ever entered) could have gone all over the country in his State Farm helicopter. Pity. But at least State Farm now has Jake. They have a recognizable face to put to their service. People relate, more or less, to other people, especially smiling faces. Just look at Facebook’s success. The more faces you have on your page the better. We don’t what sort of White people the Black Marxist activists have been consorting with. But the average White person knows about their own family history to about two generations and that’s about it. Their knowledge of local history is sketchy, American history appalling, and world or ancient history, practically non-existent. They have no clue who either Rastus was. They know the thumbs-up sign from World War II, not KKK meetings (although in other countries it means the same thing as the middle finger but we use it in the Ancient Roman context), and Gone With the Wind is still a classic movie, even with its absurd, fairy tale preamble. You people really need to get a life. Or better yet, a job. But not in advertising.

Don’t Send Law Enforcement to Reform School

President Donald Trump signed an executive order at the White House on Tuesday to reform policing standards after the George Floyd incident in Minneapolis. “What’s needed now is not more stoking of more fear and division, we need to bring law enforcement and communities closer together,” Trump said at the signing ceremony in the Rose Garden on Tuesday. Breitbart.com reported that “The president acknowledged the pain felt by black communities after meeting privately at the White House with families of Americans killed by law enforcement — Botham Jean, Ahmaud Arbery, Antwon Rose, Atatiana Jefferson, and Darius Tarver. “’Your loved ones will not have died in vain,” Trump said to the families. “We’re one nation, we grieve together and we heal together. I can never imagine your pain or the depth of your anguish. I can promise to fight for justice for all of our people.” “The president also stood with police officers and members of law enforcement, recalling their acts of heroism to protect the American people and the lives lost in the process. “’Americans know the truth,’” Trump said. “Without police, there is chaos; without law, there is anarchy; and without safety, there is catastrophe.’ “The president strongly opposed calls from the left to defund police departments, noting that reducing crime and raising police enforcement standards were ‘not opposite goals.’ “’We have to find common ground, but I strongly oppose the radical and dangerous efforts to defund, dismantle, and dissolve our police departments,’ he said. “Trump said that Democrats did nothing to fix the problems between police officers and communities during their eight years of President Barack Obama. “’President Obama and Vice President Biden never even tried to fix this during their 8 year period… We have to break old patterns of failure,” he said. “The presidents of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association were present for the executive order signing, as well as the executive director of the International Union of Police Associations. “Under the executive order, the Department of Justice offers incentives for police departments meeting modernized enforcement standards set by independent organizations. “Trump said that the standards would include a ban on chokeholds with an exception of when an officer’s life was in danger. “The Department of Justice will also create a database tracking police officers who repeatedly violate excessive force guidelines, forcing local departments to report to the system in order to receive federal grants. “The order also requires the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services to offer resources and training to help police in cases of mental illnesses, addiction, and homelessness. “Trump maintained that only a few police officers in the country had real problems that he was t trying to eliminate, countering the Leftist narrative that the police had become ‘systemically racist.’ “’They are very tiny, a very small percentage, but you have them, but nobody wants to get rid of them more than the overwhelming number of really good and great police officers,’ he said.” The President sympathized with the black victims’ families – as he must, if he expects to be re-elected. However, in any case where police officers are charged with shooting a suspect, more information must be known about the suspect involved. Were they armed? Were they impaired either with alcohol and/or drugs? Did they have a previous record? Were they fleeing from the police or fighting them – in short, resisting arrest? While we would prefer that suspects be brought to trial, relatively unharmed, rather than having law enforcement shoot first and ask questions later, we wonder what choices the arresting officers have in the heat of the moment when the suspect is fighting or fleeing them and their own adrenaline is pumping? Especially when suspects like George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks are bigger and faster than they are? The President did stipulate that police officers have the right to use force if their own lives are in danger. But how else are they supposed to apprehend violent criminals who pose a danger to the public? Sing them a lullaby? Use a Jedi mind trick? Hypnotize them into submissiveness? Pardon our skepticism. Until we know more about what the President has in mind in regard to “reform,” we wonder just what the cops were supposed to do in the George Floyd case. Certainly holding the man down for eight minutes until he suffocated wasn’t the answer. Floyd was tearing up the police vehicle. Maybe the police need to invest in the old-fashioned paddy wagons, with as few creature comforts and as many restraints as possible. Perhaps they’re going to have shackle future suspects’ feet as well as their hands to subdue them. New York City used to have them and the Blacks cried “Racism!” when one of the suspects managed to free himself and collided with the back door of such a vehicle. As long as Black suspects can cry “Racism,” as long as they continue to commit crimes and violently resist arrest, instead of waiting for their day in court, and as long as Marxist mayors support them in return for their votes, there will be death and violence and more riots until we have the society that the Marxists want. In Seattle, the mayor has reluctantly opened the closed-off streets at the behest of the local business. But the Marxist agitators are still barricading the roads singing that tune from the musical Les Miserables, the story of an 1848 Parisian revolution that failed because the tax-paying citizens didn’t support it. The residents of Paris wanted their trolley car system back up and running so they could go to work and provide for their families. 1848 was the same year that Marx and Engels’ “Communist Manifesto” was published. The university students of Paris regarded the publication of the book as the signal to set off a revolution. Only not that many people were starving and those who were working weren’t about to destroy – or allow to be destroyed or taken – the city where they earned their livings. Even fewer people are starving today, thanks to tax-payer funded welfare. The only thing that is stopping working people from earning a living now is the Wuhan Flu, which was, we suspect, deliberately released from one of the most Marxist-Maoist nations on Earth – China. Do you hear the people sing? Singing the songs of angry men. It is the music of a people Who won’t be slaves to Xi Jin Ping.