“Reconstruction” never really ended.

By Al Benson Jr.

Several years ago author John Chodes wrote an article about education in the South during “reconstruction.” He observed that, although Yankee public school teachers flocked to the South after the War, supposedly to educate all those ignorant rubes in the backwater south, their real intent with public (government) education was not the promotion of readin, writin, and rithmetic, but rather to teach “the rebel’s children respect for national authority.”

That and the systematic rewriting of history in the South, especially in regard to what the War of Northern Aggression was really all about, was the main function of public education in the South. It was, to be sure, all a major part of the “reconstruction” program—a cultural revolution that was instituted to make sure the South was brainwashed into such submissiveness that she would never again entertain the thought of daring to defend her God-given rights. To that end, even today, public schools must be safe, but never free.

The first phase of “reconstruction” lasted 12 years, and then the federal troops left, after the carpetbaggers had stolen all that was worth taking. It seemed at that point, as if the federal government was going to back off a little, maybe even leave the South alone for awhile. Well, not completely alone—they left that propaganda vehicle called the public school system firmly in place to do its insidious work and make sure the “rebel’s children” were taught that respect for “national authority.”

Then, along in the early 1950s it was time for the second phase of “reconstruction” to be put into place, with all the “civil rights” and desegregation problems—most of which had been caused in the first place by the first phase of “reconstruction.” This was a classic Marxist tactic. Create a problem, let it fester awhile, and then come back into the situation to “solve” that problem with a solution that always restricts people’s liberty even further.

Having accomplished massive federal intrusion into what little remained of the affairs of the states during the 1950s-70s, the feds and their leftist stooges turned, in the late 80s and the decade of the 90s to their final goal—total destruction of any remembrance of the former Southern culture, via a relentless cultural war on Confederate symbols, statues, flags, you name it. The public schools played their part in this campaign when they finally abandoned all pretense of diversity and started to toss out students for wearing Confederate symbols—the same way they tossed God out when He was no longer convenient as window dressing for their purposes. The war against Southern symbols and flags has continued at a frantic pace since then. My files are full of articles about students that have been tossed out, send home, barred from having a Confederate bumper sticker on their car or truck, all in the name of “peace and safety.” It seems the white Southern kids are called upon to surrender their heritage, while everybody else gets a pass.

You have to begin to understand that this is the real intent of “reconstruction”—the submission of the Christian South to the deities of the New World Order. “Reconstruction” (political correctness) has never been allowed to deviate from that agenda from when it was instituted in the mid-1860s until now. After all it was Karl Marx that first used the term “reconstruction” when he talked about Lincoln and his efforts at “the reconstruction of a social world.” You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize he was referring to the South.

We are now in a third phase of “reconstruction” the total destruction of our Christian history and heritage and, unless we begin to wake up and start getting our kids out of public schools, this may be the last phase needed.

Perhaps we need to get on our knees before a sovereign God and ask His guidance as to what we need to do to resist. “Ye that love the Lord hate evil.”

Communism Comes To America Earlier Than We Think

By Al Benson Jr.

Recently I read an article by someone with the interesting nom de plume of Bionic Mosquito. It was called Communism Comes to America and was about a book written by Herbert Hoover in which Hoover warned of the Communist threat to this country during the Roosevelt administration.

According to Hoover we should have stayed out of World War 2 and let Germany and Russia slog it out with each other. I can’t disagree with that. Someone recently sent me an email about this article and his comment was that we “fought World War 2 to make the world safe for Communism.” He’s right. Although most folks don’t want to think about that, it is the real reason we fought the war. All you have to do is look at who got what out of the war and it makes sense.

The Roosevelt administration was riddled with Communists and their fellow travelers in the State Department, the Department of Agriculture, and many other departments. If you doubt this I would invite you to read The Web of Subversion by James Burnham or While You Slept–Our Tragedy in Asia and Who Made It by John T. Flynn, and you might want to read that classic by Whittaker Chambers Witness..

All these will give you a picture of the Roosevelt administration many folks would rather not have but need to be aware of anyway.

The only problem with this is that, after reading some of this material, many will be tempted to think that we never had any problems with Communism in this country until the Roosevelt administration, and that just isn’t so. For Roosevelt to be able to do as much damage as he did there had to have been an underlying foundation of unspoken, if not above board, acceptance of Communist ideology at the federal level, and probably lots of other levels too.

Walter “Donnie” Kennedy and I have written the book Lincoln’s Marxists published by Pelican Publishing  of Gretna, Louisiana. In this work we deal with the Communist and socialist beginnings in this country and have found that they extend all the way back to the 1820s—not the 1920s but the 1820s. Most people think of that time period as our “good old days.” It wasn’t. And, unfortunately, much of the communistic foundation we discovered was home-grown. It did not all come from Europe, although some did.

There were communistic settlements in various places in the United States during the 1820s and 30s and they attracted many of the elite of that day just like Communism has attracted many of the elite in our own day. It seems that the wealthy and the powerful somehow become enamored of these movements and end up supporting them, which is good for the communistic movements because they would never make it on their own without such support.

This country, even over 150 years ago, had more than its quota of leftist radicals, all the way from the Unitarian founders of the public school system to socialists like Robert Owen of New Harmony, Indiana fame. Then there was utopian socialist Horace Greeley, owner of the influential newspaper the New York Tribune. Mr. Greeley hired a number of leftist radicals to write for his paper, among them Karl Marx, and he gave them opportunity to spread their communistic ideas far and wide.

Then there were the communist and socialist radicals fresh from the socialist revolts in Europe in 1848. They had sought to change a number of countries in Europe from decentralized states into centralized nations (with their people in control naturally). Their revolts in Europe failed and several thousand of them ended up coming to the United States, mostly in the North and Midwest. Many of them were atheists and freethinkers and so the leftist climate in the North was much more agreeable to them than was the cultural climate in the mostly Christian Southern states. They all claimed they hated Southern slavery. What they really hated was private ownership of slaves. They felt ownership should be public (government controlled). They wouldn’t have said it quite that way but that’s what it amounted to. All you have to do is to look at “reconstruction” in the South and what followed it—reconstruction of the entire country. Today it is called Cultural Marxism or political correctness. It’s all the same animal.

Many of these 1848 communists and socialists ended up in the Union armies prior to the start of the War of Northern Aggression, and when that war started quite a few of them became brigadier generals and other high-ranking officers in Lincoln’s armies. Others who did not make it into the armies ended up as journalists and politicians, many of them working in the formation of the new Republican Party in the 1850s. Lincoln knew a good number of his generals were either communist or socialist by conviction. That didn’t bother him in the least. After all, he had championed their cause in Europe in 1848 and now they were in the United States returning the favor in 1861. Anyone who thinks these people abandoned their leftist proclivities before coming to the United States must be dreaming. Their leftism came with them and helped to infect this country long before the 1930s.

Our “history” books seldom mention any of this. It seems the “historians” have decided that the American public is better off not being aware of all this. That is why Mr. Kennedy and I wrote Lincoln’s Marxists. We feel the public should be aware of it. No longer should the Republican Party
be able to parade itself as the “party of small government” when much of its foundation was leftist-influenced and very much in favor of big, centralized government. Of course today both major parties are advocates of big government, but at least the Democrats admit it.

We need to get our history straight. Knowing accurate history should help us to better understand what has happened to this country and why we are in the mess we are in. There are many well-meaning conservative and patriotic people out there that do not like what we have become, but unless they have some idea of where and when it all started they will be hindered in their efforts to change things for the better. If our view of the past is faulty then our vision for the future will be also.

More Pro-Obama Public School Propaganda

by Al Benson Jr.

Just this past week I read another article that displayed, for anyone with eyes to see, where the public school system is really at. This is not the first time I have read about this kind of thing, and I doubt, knowing where the public school educrats are theologically and politically, that it will be the last.

It seems that a middle school teacher in Fairfax, Virginia gave his Civics Honors class the assignment of doing research on each of the Republican presidential candidates to find “weaknesses” in them and their positions.  He broke the class down into four groups–each one to do research on the weak points in a specific Republican candidate. When all this information was gathered the students were then to collaborate on a strategy paper on how to exploit these weaknesses and this paper was to be sent to the Obama campaign.

Now how’s that for an “objective” class assignment? All the Republican presidential candidates get to have their faults researched, listed, and then submitted to Team Obama, to be used against them if possible. You might almost call this assignment “no Republican candidates’ faults left behind.”

What about doing the same thing for Obama?  Seems to me that would be fair wouldn’t it? Well, folks, that’s not part of the game.  They don’t quite plan on being that objective. Ironically, the name of the school where this pro-Obama indoctrination has been carried out is Liberty Middle School.

So far, the teacher, who originally gave this assignment back in January has no comment.

I read on one blog spot a comment claiming this teacher was a conservative Christian, a “follower of Jesus” and that was why he had not commented. I can’t say one way or the other whether he is or isn’t, but it does seem awfully strange that a conservative Christian would be handing out this type of assignment to a Civics class. If he were going to do it objectively it would seem that he would have all the candidates in both major parties, and even third parties, critiqued equally for their faults and not just the Republicans. Heaven knows the Republican candidates have enough faults, but let’s at least distribute the faults equally among all parties and not just confine them to Republicans. All men are sinners, not just Republicans.

I wonder just what Jesus this teacher follows. Is it the Jesus Christ of the Holy Scriptures, the Son of God and second person of the Trinity, or is it the Jesus that the socialists and Marxists preach about being a revolutionary? The two are not the same Jesus.The biblically-based Jesus is the real thing–the socialist Jesus is a parody used for propaganda purposes.

One article I read noted that the teacher had not been disciplined. Come on now, do you really  think that’s going to happen? Had he done this to the Democrats he would have been censored but he will probably get a pass for doing it to the Republicans.

It all goes along with what I have said in previous articles about public schools.  They do not and never have existed to educate. They exist to dumb down and propagandize, just as has been done in this middle school in Fairfax, Virginia, and Christian parents need to, at some point, begin to realize this and get their kids out of them. Until they do they will constantly be forced to deal with this type of propaganda and nothing will change.

Situations such as this are the main reason I would not want my children or grandchildren learning their “history” in the public school system.

We Are Not Ready For Secession Yet

by Al Benson Jr.

Since I have been a part of the Confederate and Southern Heritage Movements for something like twenty years now I expect this article will get more than a few people ticked off at me on all sides. However, upon some reflection and observation of recent events, I felt this needed to be said

I have naturally heard much discussion of the question of secession from many angles. Some have wrongly accused secessionist-minded people of treason. In so doing they display their shallow view of history, or maybe the shallow view really belongs to those who taught them.

Secession was not treason. Even the legal experts in the “reconstruction” government after the War of Northern Aggression  knew that. That was the reason they never dared to bring Jefferson Davis to trial. They wanted to try Davis for treason for leading the secessionist government of the Confederate States The rabid abolitionists were out for blood, but their own legal eagles had to talk them out of that one because they realized that if they tried Davis for the “treason” of secession that he would be found innocent and they would have egg all over their judicial faces. Again, secession was not treason, even though misinformed media pundits today loudly proclaim it to be.

However, this is not a treatise on the legality of secession but just a general commentary dealing with what I have observed in the past few years.

For many years secession was known as “that S word” that no one dared to say out loud in polite company.  You waited until most of the guests had gone home and then talked about secession in the privacy of your library or your study with a small handful of very select friends.

Yet, for all of that, the political correctness and all, there was a certain sentiment attached to the term for Southerners and good Copperheads, and with the corrupt Marxist government in Washington becoming even more corrupt (if such is possible) in spite of the “hope and change” we had been promised, the word “secession” has gained some currency in the past couple years.  Some politicians even started flirting with the term openly. None of them really planned to do it, but they thought discussing its possibilities might be a vote-getter in some areas and make it sound as if they were pushing the envelope (which they really weren’t).

Thee are different schools of thought about secession in the Confederate and Southern Movements. One segment feels we need to secede all over again–to start from scratch again as it were. Yet another group feels that is not necessary, that because the Confederate States never officially surrendered, that they are still seceded and do not have to repeat the process. Both sides have strong adherents and I have friends, good people, in both camps, which can be “interesting” at times. My own feeling is that the latter group may well have a valid point and we don’t really need to do it all over again.But even that is not what I really want to say here.

My main contention is that, no matter which group you believe or belong to, we are just not ready for secession, and we won’t be in my lifetime, nor in my children’s  lifetimes. We are simply not mature enough at this point to deal with it, no matter what we might wish or think and no matter which position we take.

When the Southern states seceded in 1860-61, they did not have a federally mandated public education system to deal with. They had one in the North, but we, thankfully, didn’t. Public education as we know it had not existed in the South.  Since the War’s end we have had 150 years of it and that has made a huge difference. We no longer have the capabilities or the mindset of the original secessionists.  We have been intentionally dumbed down until, North or South, we don’t know upside down from inside out. We are no longer able to think or reason as the original secessionists did.  The “education” thrust upon the South by our Northern schoolmaster/change agents has ensured that we no longer have the concepts of self-government possessed by our ancestors.

I have watched various groups in the Southern states as they have sought to deal with the secession question. Inevitably, they end up quibbling with each other and so remain unable to work together to promote what should be a common concern to all of us.  We end up with some groups, whose leadership tries to promote the thinking that they are, somehow, “commanding generals” and as such they have the right to tell the rest of us what we should be doing and they do not hesitate to issue broad insults to those who refuse to go along with their “revealed” agendas.  I have seen this more than once–and it reveals a Yankee/Marxist mindset some of these folks do not even realize they possess, yet it is there. Do you possibly think their public school “educations” could have anything to do with that???

Over the years I have written many articles dealing with public education and I always try to urge Southern folks, or any folks for that matter, especially if they are Christians, to take their kids out of the public schools. I know several good folks that have worked in public schools. Some still do. However, most of the one I know have left public education and gone on to urge others to remove their kids from the public system. So I am not saying here that every single public school teacher is “the enemy.” Some are, but some are not, but the system they work for is the enemy and Christian Southerners need to start waking up to that fact.  Sadly, most do not.  They are oblivious. Many, who want to deal with the secession question sincerely, continue to leave their kids in public schools, with no intention of ever removing them. I guess they think that if we ever do secede the kids can just move over into a Southern-style public school. That won’t ever happen. Don’t kid yourselves. The public school in the South is a tool of “reconstruction” even today. If you all want your kids to grow up as reconstructed Yankees, leave them in public school and they will. When I tell this to Southern folks all I usually get back are blank stares. Many don’t have a clue as to what I am talking about. Fifteen decades of “reconstruction education” has left them clueless–and yet some talk of secession!

One question I have is this–if you can’t take your children and secede from the public school system, how in Heaven’s name are you going to take your states and secede from the Union? If you can’t do the one you will never be able to do the other.

If we can’t begin to practice “cultural secession”  and remove our kids from public schools and ensure that they get good, Christian education, with accurate history, then we will not be able to make secession work no matter what camp we are residing in.

We need a couple generations of youngsters, not a majority, but a good active minority that knows its history, and is educated at home or in good solid Christian schools with a generational worldview so that we can get all the public school baggage educated out of them. Only then will we be ready to go anywhere with secession.

My generation won’t make it. We’ve got the public school baggage and no matter how hard we’ve tried to get rid of it, some of it still lingers.  Many of our kids went to public schools and so they have some of it. If we tried to be diligent they won’t have as much as we did, but still some. We need a couple (at least) generations free from that mindset, who have known nothing but Christian education and good history before we can even think about the secession question and these kids need to have been taught the truth about secession also.

When we reach that point, then we can begin to seriously think about the secession question. Until we do, let’s quit kidding ourselves. We ain’t ready!

Another Phase of Ongoing “Reconstruction” Part Two

by Al Benson Jr.

G. Gregg Singer has aptly pointed out in his book A Theological Interpretation of American History that the real aim of Thaddeus Stevens and his fellow Northern revolutionaries was a program of “reconstruction” that would start in the South and would be handled in such a way as to eventually include the entire country. The entire fabric of American life in all areas was to be “reconstructed” according to their revolutionary aims.  And guess what, folks, partially due to the advent of the government school system, first in the North and then in the South–it has worked. In fact it has worked so well that today there is hardly a trace left of what the Founders started out with. What we are saddled with today is no longer recognizable as truly American and it is most certainly a far cry from anything truly Christian. We are now living in post-America.

Those who have, for decades now, advocated just putting a few more “conservatives” in Congress as the way to solve our national problems have not been truly aware of what our national problems really were and are. What many of them really want is a few more pseudo-conservatives in Congress to somewhat slow down the pace of the anti-Christ revolution so they won’t have to learn to digest it all at once. But, a return to our Reformed Christian roots and the resumption of God-given responsibilities–forget about that buddy. That’s too much like real work!  Well, we’ve had the “few more conservatives” in Congress on and off since 1994 now. Where has that gotten us? Has anyone noticed any reduction in big government since then? No! In fact we now have even more government to deal with and if our current Marxist administration has their way we will soon have total government.

Let’s look at the parallel. The “reconstruction” in the South set forth a policy of reverse discrimination where there was no equal protection under the law for Southern whites because it was determined that reverse discrimination in regard to freed slaves served the “important government objective” of working to assure the “perpetual ascendency of the party of the Union.” That was the Republican Party, folks. They were the original party of big government (Lincoln’s Marxists–Pelican Publishing, Gretna, Louisiana)..

Both North and South lived through the first phase of “reconstruction” and both became reconstructed enough so that most memories of a truly Christian America, as originally constituted,  were obliterated.

That having been accomplished, it is now time for us to begin to realize that we are, at present, in the midst of the second phase of “reconstruction.”  The perpetually ascending federal deity, via its court system, is busily enacting quotas and racial preference agendas, and telling local school districts that they have the power to raise taxes on their own, even if the voters have voted down the proposed tax increase. After all, the “lucky” taxpayer will foot the bill, whether he wants to or not and whether it is right and moral or not.

Some Southerners resisted the first phase of “reconstruction” not so much with any hope of real victory, but simply because it was the right thing to do. How many, today, will still have enough knowledge or intestinal fortitude to resist the second phase of “reconstruction?” The Bill of Rights you say? Pray tell, what is that? Haven’t some of those antiquated old amendments like the Tenth Amendment been done away with so that our ruling elite can run things without worrying about all those old, outdated rules that were supposed to restrict the federal government? And besides, we have the Patriot Act, which pretty well guts the Bill of Rights, given to us by that sterling “conservative” George W. Bush.

The chickens of American apostasy,  turned loose in the 1820s, have now come home to roost.  They sit in long rows, like vultures, in front of our churches, fouling the pathways into those churches. Will Christians in our day, or in the next generation, work to again cage those apostate chickens, or have they learned to live with them–fouled pathways and all?

Over a hundred years ago now Rev. R. L. Dabney, in his Defense of Virginia and the South wrote: “A righteous God, for our sins toward Him, has permitted us to be overthrown by our enemies and His.” Although he was speaking at that time to Southerners, the condemnation is appropriate for the entire country in our day. One of the fruits of apostasy is more and ever repressive government. Until apostasy is repudiated and a truly Christian culture is sought after and worked for, things will only get worse, and today’s current events are living proof.

If our view of the past is faulty, our vision for the future will be also.

Another Phase of Ongoing “Reconstruction”

by Al Benson Jr.

The so-called “reconstruction” period in the South after the War of Northern Aggression set in motion an insidious trend that has yet to be reversed in this country. That avoidable war brought monstrous federal intrusion into the private lives of individuals on a heretofore undreamed level–as it was intended to. “Reconstruction” in the South  set up virtual military dictatorships in all of the (still un-surrendered) Confederate States. The banner of what today is referred to as “reverse racism” was raised atop the federal flagpole and flown on high. It has yet to be taken down.

This trend toward centralized pre-eminence (the state as god) has never been reversed. Several years ago my family and I took a trip and on the way back home we visited the National Historical Park at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. At that site the town has been in the process of being reconstructed (no pun intended) so that it will eventually appear as it did when abolitionist and terrorist John Brown first visited it. It would seem that those doing this, the National Park Service, I think, must approve of his terrorist tactics, as long as they were aimed at the South. Many claim that Harpers Ferry has been turned into a shrine for Brown, and I don’t doubt that this is the objective of all this work. Interestingly enough, they filmed segments of the movie Gods and Generals in Harpers Ferry.

While on our visit there, we chanced to visit the building that housed the Provost Marshall’s office. A lady there, dressed in the costume of the day (1859) explained to the visitors that, during the War of Northern Aggression (she didn’t use that term) Harpers Ferry was under federal jurisdiction and was, therefore, under the control of the Provost Marshall. When this lady explained what powers this man had, I could not help thinking that the Provost Marshall was, for all intents and purposes, the local federal dictator. As I pondered how the War had paved the way for future federal dictatorships–a vivid picture of the Supreme Court suddenly flashed through my mind.

Court watchers have noted, with some apprehension, some of the “interesting” decisions from our “conservative” (I use that term in the loosest possible sense) Supreme Court in recent years. There was the decision in the state of Connecticut in 2005, I think, that allowed a city to use eminent domain to attempt to seize the property of several homeowners so a shopping mall could be constructed.

George Will has never been one of my favorite columnists, but on occasion he has come up with columns that show interesting insight.  Several years ago now he did a column dealing with a decision of the Supreme Court. He observed “The Court bestowed, prospectively, its constitutional imprimatur on virtually any racial spoils system Congress enacts.  The court selectively overturned a series of precedents that had at least limited the proliferation of what are euphemistically called ‘race-conscious’ policies.”

In this particular instance Will noted that the court, by a 5-4 majority ruled that Congress “may assign special benefits to particular government-preferred minorities (to the detriment of all who do not make the ‘preferred’ list) and Congress may do so without regard to any injury resulting from discrimination. Reverse discrimination is now cut loose from the pretense that it is merely a remedial measure.”  Go back and look at Will’s comment again.  Doesn’t that give you a warm, fuzzy feeling if you happen to belong to a group that has not made the government’s “preferred” list? You’re not happy if you belong to some unpreferred group that can now be discriminated against? Well, gee, that’s tough baby–welcome to the real world of Yankee/Marxist “reconstruction.”

Some have even taken exception to court rulings of this discriminatory nature, arguing that they violate the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law. Sorry to burst your bubble, folks, but that one was thrown out a long time ago. According to Will: “Equal protection is not violated if the injury done by reverse discrimination serves ‘an important government objective.'” How’s that for pragmatic rationale?  “Equal protection” is not violated as long as “important government objectives” are being served. Question–where is this any different than what occurred during the first phase of “reconstruction” after the Marxist/Lincolnist Revolution of 1861?

To be continued.

Federal Precedence Over The States–Part Two

by Al Benson Jr.

Some students of history have, upon reflection, observed that the adoption of the 14th Amendment opened the door for the adoption of the 17th Amendment, the direct election of Senators by “popular” vote. One can, almost in overview, see an evolutionary process in this, whereby we first lose our state citizenship, then eventually, even national citizenship, until we all finally become “citizens of the world” much like Karl Marx’s “workers of the world.” Do you supposed there’s any connection?

So Thaddeus Stevens was a moving force in favor of helping to bury the concept of state citizenship in favor of national citizenship. There may be some naive souls who would believe that Stevens didn’t really know what he was doing. I, however, have a suspicious mind. Thaddeus Stevens, the professional South-hater, knew exactly what he was doing!

Stevens and his crowd were apostate revolutionaries of the first order. Their main intent was to alter the American system of government, keeping the forms to fool the uninitiated, but changing the substance. Unfortunately, their revolution, with the help of the socialists in the Republican Party, succeeded and we today live with the results of that, most of us not even realizing it thanks to the mis-education we received in public schools. Whatever vestiges of what the Founding Fathers left to us died with the Southern loss of the War of Northern Aggression–the Marxist/Lincolnist  Revolution of 1861. Those who fail to realize this have missed the boat.

We hear so much talk today from sincere and patriotic people who have not been on the firing line long enough to know the difference. They shout about “taking America back.” Back to what??? What most of them fail to realize is that what they want to take it back to is what they grew up with–their version of the “good old days.” What they don’t grasp is that they grew up after the Marxist/Lincolnist Revolution had already been accomplished. They are 100 years too late!

When Stevens introduced the 14th Amendment, some of the more cautions Republicans threatened to remove his third section of it, dealing with the ineligibility of former Confederate leaders to run for Congress until at least 1876. Stevens, through adroit political maneuvering, at which he was a past master, put together a coalition of radical Republicans and Democrats to prevent that change. He pled with them to retain that third section.  His vindictive anti-Southern mindset clearly showed as he pleaded: “It is too lenient for my hard heart. Not only to 1870, but to 18070, every rebel who shed the blood of loyal men should be prevented from exercising any power in this government.” Stevens was a truly shining example of abolitionist charity and forgiveness!  Had Stevens been willing to shape his attitude to conform to Biblical standards the country might have been bettor off. No need to worry, though, Stevens was not about to go there.

Long after Stevens’ death, an old political opponent, Jeremiah S. Black, noted of him that: “When he died he was unequaled in this country as a lawyer. He said the smartest things ever said.  But his mind,as far as his sense of obligation to God was concerned, was a howling wilderness.” So noted Fawn Brodie in her biographical work on Stevens.

God stated in both Deuteronomy 32:35 and Romans 12:19 that vengeance belongs to Him, that man is only to execute that which God entrusts to him, and he is to leave vengeance to God.  Stevens, in the manner of most true revolutionaries and apostates, ignored this, as he did most of the rest of Scripture.  With his abolitionist mindset, and for his own twisted reasons,  he sought vengeance on all whites in the South, the vast majority of which had never done him any harm. His twisted hatred would not allow him to do anything else. Suffice it to say that Thaddeus Stevens is not someone you want your children to emulate.

The 14th Amendment, in its final form, dealt with four different areas.  In the first, it made the radical departure of redefining citizenship as a national rather than a state matter. This was an important first step toward making the states mere vassals to the federal deity in Washington.  The second section reduced representation in Southern states to  basis of the voting population only.  The third section excluded Confederate leaders from office indefinitely, barring a two-thirds vote by Congress. The fourth section repudiated the Confederate debt and upheld the Union’s national debt.

Attempting to explain all the implications of this radical amendment would take more space than we have here. Hopefully, these brief comments will give some others the incentive to dig into the 14th Amendment, as well as the 13th and 15th Amendments to see what implications these hold for us that we have not been informed about, especially in regard to our modern “civil rights” movement.

Federal Precedence Over The States

by Al Benson Jr.

Reviewing the infamous 14th Amendment in a nutshell, we can see that it accomplished certain ends that were entirely consistent with Northern revolutionary aims for both the War of Northern Aggression and for the revolutionary period after that war. We might as well get used to referring to the war as a revolution, for, in truth, it was the real American Revolution. It was a revolution in which God-given liberties were exchanged for “privileges and immunities” granted by an all-powerful federal government in Washington–the same as today.

After the shooting phase of that revolution was over, the United States played the part of Esau on a national scale. We had traded our God-given rights for a mess of federal pottage, and now we weep, as did Esau, because we do not have God’s blessing. We don’t have that blessing now because, in our apostasy, we don’t deserve it now.

Instead of enjoying God’s blessing, we now labor under such apostate vehicles as Thaddeus Stevens’ inglorious 14th Amendment.

I have heard conservatives and patriots defend the 14th Amendment and I can only wonder what public brain laundry they were “educated” in. How many realize that the 14th Amendment redefined citizenship in this country? Up until the War, a man was a citizen of the United States due to being first a citizen of a particular state. A man was a U.S. citizen because he was first and foremost a citizen of Texas or Louisiana, or New Jersey. His state citizenship gave him status as a U.S. citizen.

After the adoption of the 14th Amendment, however, a man became foremost a citizen of the United States. His state citizenship was, to all intents and purposes, secondary at best and beneath notice at worst. This and the mindset it produced was consistent with Northern revolutionary aims and opened the door for future federal intervention in the various states, in areas the federal government had no business being in, such as education, and today, health care and oversight of school lunches and all manner of programs so dear the the hearts of those who run the Nanny State.

The Kennedy Brothers in their informative book The South Was Right (Pelican Publishing) noted the political gyrations of Thaddeus Stevens and his revolutionary cohorts.  They said: “To secure enactment of the amendment, the Northern Congress had to accomplish the following: Declare the Southern states outside of the erstwhile indivisible Union. Deny majority rule in the Southern states by the disenfranchisement of large numbers of the white population,. Require the Southern states to ratify the amendment as the price of getting back into the Union from which heretofore they had been denied the right to secede.”

And they continued: “The third point could be turned into a Yankee brain teaser. The North, in 1866, removed the Southern states from the Union. This was the same North that in 1861 refused to allow the South to secede from the Union.  This same North now declared the Southern states to be non-states.  To get back into the Union (that originally the South did not want to be part of anyway, and from which it had previously been denied the right to secede) it was required to perform the function of a state in that Union, while still officially no longer part of that Union, by ratifying an amendment that previously as states in the Union it had legally rejected!  Words alone fail to meet the challenge of such pure Yankee logic.” It almost makes you wonder what brand of revolutionary weed Stevens and his pals had been smoking!

To be continued.

The Continuing Establishment Deception

by Al Benson Jr.

Just about every year some “newspaper” somewhere, at some point, carries a survey asking people to name their favorite American president and to explain in a few words, why he is their favorite.

Not surprisingly, the president that usually pulls in the most votes in these little propaganda ploys is Abraham Lincoln. And the reason–because he “freed the slaves.”  It has been increasingly apparent in recent years that this fable is what passes for “history” in most public school classrooms around the country, with a few exceptions here in the South. Even most high school kids don’t know the truth, and they are not necessarily to be blamed. Most of their history teachers may not even be to blame, but those that wrote the textbooks they learned their history from are most certainly culpable.

Lincoln’s “Emancipation Proclamation” when issued, was simply a war measure. It did not free any slaves in any territory controlled by the Union, but only those slaves in Confederate territory where the Union had no legitimate authority. All the slaves, even those in states that remained in the Union during the War, were not technically “freed” until the 13th Amendment, which was not ratified until December, 1865, several months after Mr. Lincoln had gone on to his eternal reward–done in by the hand of a man that may well have had indirect ties to some in Lincoln’s own cabinet.

Be all this as it may, it doesn’t make the history books and the myth of Lincoln freeing the slaves continues to be propagated today, passed off as “history” as well as the myth that the North fought the War only to free the slaves while the racist South fought only to keep the slaves. This myth is a most convenient peg for contemporary “historians” to hang their radical hats on as they continue to propagate it–and there’s lots of revenue to be accrued writing books that peddle this flawed story. Even some of the national parks having to do with the War now peddle the line that it was all about slavery. No  true reasons need apply! The fact that the South could have kept whatever slaves she had if the Southern states had remained in the Union is an issue seldom raised. After all, why deal with the truth when you have an agenda to promote? If the truth doesn’t agree with the leftist agenda it just gets in the way–and why confuse people with the facts?

It is a fact that the winners in any war get to write the history of that war and the reasons for it. Years ago historian James F. Rhodes stated: “Of the American Civil War it may safely be asserted that there was a single cause, slavery.”  Other historians such as J. G. Randall, gave a more realistic assessment of the War’s causes, but Rhodes’ simplistic theories are the ones that are so often parroted today by those who fervently hope and pray that we never look further than the slavery issue.

Starting in the Fall of 1990, public television, at least in the area of Northern Illinois we were in at the time, started showing Ken Burns’ “Civil War” series. They seemed to show it so many times in the next several years that I was surprised they didn’t wear the film out.  It seemed like this abomination was on at least twice a year for the next six years.  Burns, a modern New Hampshire abolitionist, spent five years and untold thousands of dollars in foundation money “exhaustively” researching (so we were told) the period of the War and the reasons for it. And, after all that time and foundation money, Burns came up with a major media breakthrough–the war was fought over slavery!  Wow! What a revelation!  Somehow I was unimpressed. With all the establishment cash spent on this project, would Mr. Burns have dared come up with any other reasons or causes? Had he really presented some independent research instead of the propaganda he dished up it is doubtful whether his vaunted series would ever have seen the light of day. It probably would have disappeared on the cutting room floor.

Even after his program was aired it was widely criticized–and justifiably so–it wasn’t complete truth or history. In fact, inadvertently, it may have helped to contribute to the rise of the Southern Heritage Movement.  However the establishment historians keep right on trying. They persist, it seems, in pouring out reams of literary fertilizer  and calling it history–and they will persist–because they have an agenda that will not be denied. Therefore it must be opposed. Radical leftist agendas never quite go away. They may retreat in the face of opposition but they, like bad pennies, always return. Case in point–the global warming hoax of a couple years ago. After email had surfaced that exposed it as a fraud its proponents remained quiet for several months. Now, if you follow the news, they are seeking to make a comeback. They hope people have forgotten.

Way back in 1991 I came across a book called Lee Considered–General Robert E. Lee and Civil War History written by Alan T. Nolan and published by the University of North Carolina Press. I’d heard about this book from friends in both North and South, and none of what I heard was good. Having procured the book, I began to read. In my opinion, not only did the book impugn Robert E. Lee, a devout Christian gentleman and soldier, but it was little more than a printed rerun of Ken Burns’ television docudrama passed off as “history.”

Lest anyone think Mr. Nolan was attempting objectivity in his work on General Lee, it turned out that, according to the Indiana Historical Society News for September/October, 1993, Mr. Nolan was a member of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP–hardly glowing qualifications for an objective book on Lee. Mr. Nolan is certainly free to join such leftist organizations if he wishes, but his membership in them, with their leftist political slant, certainly begs the question of his historical “neutrality” or “objectivity.”

Such offerings, along with the bleatings of establishment historian James McPherson, are mostly what the American public has had to contend with for decades. Thankfully, in the last few years, books such as the Kennedy Brothers’ The South Was Right and Was Jefferson Davis Right?  have begun to make some dent in the establishment hogwash we have all been fed. Just last year Lincoln’s Marxists (Pelican Publishing) came out, further denting the propaganda armor of the “great emancipator.” All of these, including Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln and Lincoln Unmasked just may be part of the reason there has recently been such a fevered push to again try to re-convince a gullible public  that the real cause of the War was only slavery. It seems the establishment is beginning to see ominous signs that not everyone is buying their line anymore so they must continually try to inundate us with new material, new books, and television plots to keep the slavery issue myth alive. You have to realize that Cultural Reconstruction is still alive and well in our day. The solution–Ephesians 5:11-13. Do the homework and expose them.

John Brown–from business failure to terrorist and media hero–part three

by Al Benson Jr.

John Brown’s terrorist activity in Kansas before he went to Harpers Ferry, Virginia seemed to catch the fancy of the Abolitionist elite, especially in New England.  Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May Alcott of Little Women fame stated: “Our best people…contribute something in aid to his plans without asking particulars…such confidence does he inspire.” I can well imagine some of the ivory tower elites in New England didn’t want too many “particulars” about what Brown did in Kansas and how he did it.  That way they could contribute to his terrorist schemes and not feel too uncomfortable. Had they had to be on hand in Kansas and stand with the wives and children of those he and his men hacked to death with broadswords in the middle of the night, they might have gotten a tad bit squeamish about what their money was going to support–but then, maybe not.

One wonders how Brown became so well accepted in New England anti-slavery circles. Funras told us: “For some years he thus beglamored antislavery groups in Chicago, Cleveland, New Haven, Worcester, as well as Alcott’s Concord.” He even got to speak before a committee of the Massachusetts legislature that was debating over sending money to aid the abolitionists in Kansas.  So how did Brown become so well-known that all these people across the Northeast were clamoring for his attention? How did a man who was a total flop in business until he turned his hand to murdering Southern folks in Kansas gain so much national attention? Again, Furnas informed us: “He owed much of this special renown among Abolitionists to the imagination of James Redpath, a young Scottish-born journalist with a ‘total disregard of facts’ whose heavily anti-slavery dispatches to eastern papers made Old Brown sound like an ascetic Robin Hood.” In other words, the “news” media took special pains to “spin” Brown into the figure most northeastern abolitionists thought he really was. How different was this from much of what goes on today? We are fed political candidates who promise us “hope and change” but we really know almost nothing about them, are not able to find out anything of substance about them, and the media refuses to give us any information about them except what fits their agenda.  Do you detect a trend here?

Otto Scott, in his definitive work on Brown, has noted some things that biographers and “historians” usually leave out. He has told us that two of Brown’s men in Kansas were refugees from the failed 1848 socialist and communist revolts in Europe–the revolts  that furnished the sainted Mr. Lincoln with so many of his Major Generals. See Lincoln’s Marxists (Pelican Publishing) for more information on that. How many other “history” books have you read that in? Not too many, I’ll wager. I recently picked up a fairly new biography of John Brown which was on sale at a good price and I looked in the index to see if the two forty-eighters were there. They aren’t even mentioned.  Why am I not surprised? But, then, the man that wrote this latest biography was no Otto Scott..

Speaking of the bloody violence Brown perpetrated in Kansas, Scott noted: “The appearance of such deliberate and coordinated violence, however, could not have been possible, nor could it have proceeded  without a covering legend by northern newspapermen, who shrouded its significance from the nation. That legend was woven and spread by a small coterie of rabidly abolitionist journalists in the territory…” Little has changed. During the Communist conquest of China after World War 2 many news media people covered up what Mao Tse Tung really was, a bloody butcher and they constantly referred to him as an
“agrarian reformer.” By the time America found out the truth Mao had savaged China and no one ever called lying media people to account for their falsehoods. The more things change the more they stay the same it would seem.

Scott went on to tell us how Redpath met Brown in his hideaway camp, and he told us also how Redpath was also a friend of good old “Mad Dog Jim Lane.” Anyone who has ever studied the history of either the War of Northern Aggression or the preceding Missouri/Kansas border wars already knows who Jim Lane was, so I won’t go into that here except to note that Mr. Redpath could not have found a more unscrupulous friend. Jim Lane was the kind of person of whom you could truthfully say “He was so crooked you could screw him into the ground.”

A bit later, Redpath, himself, wrote a book about his meeting with Brown in which he described Brown as “…both a Cromwellian figure, all biblical quotes and stern rules for clean living and high thinking, as chief of noble outlaws sequestered in the forest.”  In more plain language he was a terrorist and murderer hiding out from the authorities. If Brown were such a “noble outlaw” that he had to be in hiding, how did Redpath find him? And what did they talk about when he did find him? You can bet the media will never tell. So who turned Redpath onto Brown’s trail? Obviously someone who wanted to make sure Brown got lots of media attention without too high a regard for accuracy.

Yet another “news” media figure involved was Richard Hinton, a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. As an abolitionist he was a friend of Redpath’s and Otto Scott has told us that he filed an account of the horrific work Brown did at Osawatomie, murders and all, that was much help to the Free State Movement. Yet more spin!

All of this should go to show you that no matter how much of a murderer or terrorist someone may be, when the media gets through sanitizing him he will resemble John the Baptist’s second cousin or a little old lady who teaches Sunday school. The media, and their friends, in this case, had a vested interest in making sure a Yankee terrorist looked good to the folks up north, while at the same time they took great pains to demonize the people of the South. Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Folks, nothing has changed in the last 150 years with either the media or the politicians except the names. Over  the years the Marxists have told us all they really wanted was “power to the people.”  And the media dutifully bought into that lie with great abandon and sought to pass the lie along to us. They neglected to tell us that what the Communists really wanted was “power for their people” not us. The Communists told us they wanted “peace” when what they really wanted was absence of resistance to their agenda.  The media didn’t bother to explain that to us either. Now we are inundated with Cultural Marxists–the bastard grandchildren of “reconstruction.”

We have been lied to about everyone from John Brown to Abraham Lincoln to Obama by the “news” media. They are nothing more than paid prostitutes for the establishment that wants to lead us down the garden path into a New World Order. If they lied to us about John Brown the terrorist, shouldn’t we be asking who they are lying to us about today???