The Illuminati = The Deep State

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

One characteristic of the Illuminati over the years as been that, when it is discovered somewhere, it will go underground and seemingly disappear–only to arise again after a cooling off period with a different name or names and under different leadership. Communist front groups have operated in much the  same fashion. When exposed they seem to vanish, only to be resurrected later on in a different guise, but the agenda never changes.

The “Deep State” often refers to people who have served in some government capacity literally for decades. But it also refers to the people that control the different government agencies.

Some insightful observers have concluded that the Deep State is simply the modern version of the Illuminati.

Alex Jones of https://infowars.com  has noted that: “The Illuminati have been around for centuries trying to push their  Luciferian  one-world government views, but they have adapted. Now they go by the Deep State. Agents of the Deep State also have membership in the Illuminati. The CIA and the FBI are great places to be if you want to secretly control the world.”

Even Newt Gingrich, who I have major disagreements with, had to admit of Donald Trump that “he didn’t belong to the secret society” and that’s why he is so universally hated by the Establishment.  Interestingly enough, in 2004, both Bush and Kerry did belong to one of the secret societies–Skull and Bones. When asked about their membership in that group they said they both belonged but that “we can’t talk about that.” Obviously!

For those that would like to do a little reading about the Deep State  and what they are really all  about, I would urge you to get a copy of the January 2018  issue of The New American magazine, entitled Deep State–Pulling Strings From Behind the Scenes    They are $3.95 each, plus  shipping from ShopJBS, P O Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin 54912. Their toll free number is 1-800-342-6491. This will really give you some in-depth information on how the Deep State operates in several different areas. Of particular interest is the article on page 33 by Alex Newman where he makes the connections between several of these Illuminist groups right down to our day.

We, in our day, need to be aware of this history so we will understand what is going on in our day and its origins and how long it has been around. We need to understand why some of the things that are happening in our day are happening and we need to realize they are not just happening randomly or “by accident” for in  politics, almost nothing happens by accident.

And although I firmly believe that God is in control of it all, I think that in many cases, He chooses to exercise some of that control through His people. If His people don’t have a clue about what has gone on or is currently going on and how the two are related, then they are not capable of exercising that control, are they?

The Abolitionists Were Really Globalists

 

By Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

 

We’ve all read about the Abolitionists and about their supposed noble endeavors to “free” the slaves. Most of what we read about these people would lead us to believe that’s the only thing they were all about—that freeing the slaves was their total agenda and once that was done, like old soldiers, they just sort of “faded away” never to be  heard from again. Suffice it to say that narrative is slightly less than accurate—for obvious reasons. We are not supposed to be aware of what else  the Abolitionists were involved in, lest we be alerted to what their game really was. The Abolitionists were really the globalists of the 19^th century—and some of them were among the foremost terrorists of the 19^th century.

Although, in their day, they were much more “up front” about their objectives, our present day “historians” have seen fit to drastically tone this down. These people are treated as heroes and compared to today’s Pro-Life Movement, which is a  terrible disservice to the Pro-Life Movement. Most of your pro-life folks are Christian oriented, and that’s the main reason they do what they do. The same can’t be said for the Abolitionists. Many of them were apostates and many were deep into the Spiritualist Movement.

William Lloyd Garrison, one of the  leading lights among the Abolitionists was quite plain about the agenda of the movement when he said: “The motto of our banner has been, from the commencement of our moral warfare, ‘our country is the world—our countrymen are all mankind.’ We trust that will be our only epitaph.” That definitely sounds like a totally globalist worldview. He went on to  say that, next to the overthrow of slavery, the cause of “peace” would command his attention, and  he ended up biy saying that: “As our cause is universal emancipation—to redeem women as well as men from a servile to an equal  condition,–we shall go for the rights of women to their utmost extent.” If you didn’t know better you’d think Garrison and Karl Marx had the same script writer. And then, on second thought…

We are never told that the Abolitionists had a strong leaning toward socialism. Many of them were Unitarians, and the Unitarians had the same leaning.

Enter the International Workingmen’s Association 1864-1872, in the United States. This group had ties to a group in London with the same name that was commonly known as the “First International.” Wikipedia has noted that: “The International made its way to American soil in 1866 when Italian socialist  Cesare Orsini, brother of an attempted assassin of Napoleon III,  arrived in the United States and attempted to organize an American section. Orsini managed to win the support of a number of a handful of ‘émigré’ socialists in New York City, in addition to gaining a sympathetic hearing from several prominent political figures,  including newspaper editor Horace Greeley, abolitionist orator Wendell Phillips, and radical Republican Senator Charles Sumner.” No matter what other positions any of the three above-mentioned men here held, they were all radical Abolitionists.

Supposedly the International started out  as a non-revolutionary union organization, but that charade didn’t hold too long, especially with members like Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Such men saw this organization as “a tool for the winning of state power from the bourgeoisie.”

Interesting to remember that the London branch of this group is the one that sent Abraham Lincoln a congratulatory letter after he had won a second term as president.

Another article http://pentracks.com/2016/03/illuminati-connections-to-unitarian-universalist-church-29-mar-16 gives a little more information about where some of the Abolitionists were really coming from. It says, in part, Illuminized Freemasonry intended to change the world by revolution. The book Occult Theocracy gives a good detailed background how so many of these revolutionary groups connected to the Occult Theocratic leadership (aka the Illuminati). She describes in detail the Illuminati member and revolutionist Giuseppe Mazzini. The Illuminati not only created revolutions throughout Europe, but wanted to split the U.S.A. Mazzini helped create the American Civil War by working with a secret group of 6 American UU ministers, who had created a secret group  that they called the Bird Club. The Bird Club was created to create a revolutionary type of war in the U.S.A. Gerrit Smith of the Bird Club appears to have been an Illum. Mmbr. Charles Sumner, a member of the Bird Club and a student of Freemasonry & revolution, made personal visits to occultic revolutionists in Europe, including Mazzini…” Gerrit Smith was also an Abolitionist and we see Mr. Sumner making yet another appearance. You can see that Abolitionists are scattered throughout     these revolutionary socialist groups.

And let us not forget the group called The Secret Six, that funded terrorist John Brown’s bloodbath at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. All of those men were radical Abolitionists, and one of them was the above mentioned Gerrit Smith. Another was Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a Unitarian minister who was “always ready to invest money in treason.” Incidentally, Rev. Higginson lived on into the 20^th century and helped found the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Of igginsonH  Higginson Rev. R. J. Rushdoony noted  in The Nature of the American System that “On Higginson, as on other Unitarians of his era, the influences of French Revolutionary     thought  and English Fabianism  were extensive.”     This socialist mindset and its strong globalist tendencies is where your radical Abolitionists were really coming from and, as you can see, there was lots more involved than just “freeing the slaves.” All that was was a means to an end, but the real agenda stretched far beyond it.

 

Some Hidden (in plain sight) American History

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

The first place I ever read anything about Benjamin Bonneville was in a historical fiction novel by Janice Hold Giles, published back in 1968, called The Great Adventure.

Mrs. Giles did not have lots of information on Bonneville except to note that he was an army officer, traveling in the Far West during the fur trading days and she seemed to have some questions about an army officer traveling around out there on his own with no apparent military responsibilities.

Recently, I watched a video on the internet of a speech given by Arthur Thomson, CEO of the John “Birch Society. It was an excellent video, one I would reccomend. The title of it is What you are not supposed to know about America’s founding. I found it on https://duckduckgo.com search engine, something else I would recommend. Mr. Thompson has done a lot of historical homework about the country’s early days and not all of what he has found makes for fun reading. And though it’s not fun, it’s probably necessary. If we don’t understand our history we will never know what to do about our future. Whoever controls your history also controls your future.

In his video Mr. Thompson mentioned several people who had been part of the Illuminati in Europe. One noted one was Nicolas De Bonneville. Many of you have heard the name Bonneville before–the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah; there’s a Bonneville County in Idaho; and even the Pontiac Car Company  named one of their models after him several years ago.

You’d be surprised at how much stuff there is about the Illuminati out there on the internet–in plain sight! Of course you have to realize that some of it is propaganda to cover the true intent of the group.

But I came across one site that was interesting, https://illuminatiofbavaria.wordpress.com/article/nicolas-de-bonneville- that contained some interesting stuff. The article stated: “The best means to understand the French Revolution of 1789 is to study the importance of Nicolas de Bonneville and the Cercle Social organization he led with 8,000 members…James Billington, the U.S. Librarian of Congress wrote in Fire in the Minds of Men  (1980) (2007 reprint) at page 12 that Nicolas de Bonneville (1760-1828) of Paris was one of the ‘founding fathers’ of the modern revolutionary tradition’. Since October 1789, Bonneville was the founder and leader of the Cercle Social–a publishing house at Paris operated by a masonic-style secret society.” It seems that Bonneville had no problem with admitting his allegiance with the Bavarian Illuminati founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776, supposedly on May 1st of that year. Ever wonder why the Communists always celebrate the first day of May with all their parades? Now you know.

There’s even a book out there by Bonneville, L’Espirit des Religions which has been translated from one he wrote in 1792. Supposedly this book clarifies the “True Illuminati’s political aims.” I’d never even heard of this book until I started researching for this article, so I can’t tell you what’s in it, except to note that Karl Marx honored Bonneville’s “fraternal order and printing house as having commenced  the (modern) revolutionary movement.” Enough said.

Interestingly enough, Nicolas Bonneville’s son, Benjamin, was born in France and eventually graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in just two years. So here we have the son of a top Illuminati member attending West Point! His and his mother’s journey from  France was paid for by Thomas Paine, who Arthur Thompson tells us  in  his video, slept with Bonneville’s mother. Thompson also informs us that Paine was involved with the Illuminati. And he noted that Paine, the author of Common Sense was a truly radical writer and that Common Sense was the only decent thing he ever wrote. He said that, after that book, you could toss the rest of what Paine wrote in the trash can. Paine was an ardent supporter of the French Revolution and stridently anti-Christian. No one for your children to  emulate!

Most of this kind of information will never appear in your history books. You can find it on your own by digging for it if someone points you in the right direction. You do have to wonder, if the Bonneville so many things in this country were named for had a father who was a prime mover in the Illuminati, where was his son politically–and spiritually? And how much association over the years did he have with anti-Christian Thomas Paine?

In the first book I mentioned in this article, Mrs. Giles’ book,  I must have noted something  about Bonneville somewhere back along the line,, because, under the author’s note in the front of the book I had written: “Bonneville had Illuminati connections so you have to wonder what he was doing in the West at that time.” I still think that’s a legitimate query.

How much of our history that we are never told about had Illuminati-type people inserting themselves in there to do damage to further someone’s internationalist agenda? And is some of what they did responsible for some of the problems we have today?

 

To Change Society And Culture

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

If you change a society or culture, you will eventually change its form of government. It may not happen overnight, but it will happen. One major way that will happen is through mass immigration, especially by groups that refuse to assimilate and who continually demand that the society they refuse to assimilate into start to accept the cultural norms of those who refuse to assimilate. You see that with the push for Sharia Law in areas of this country and especially in Europe. The Marxists and those they front for realize they can’t change your form of government unless they can manage to change your society. Another way they can do it is with war, especially a war right on your own soil, but more about that later.

The Marxists (and those they front for) have several main objectives in any country they seek to subvert. One of the most overriding is the destruction of religion–especially Christianity.  The Marxists cannot share the throne with God, for they can never claim the total allegiance of a people that continue to put God first. This defines the Marxists, cultural and otherwise, as anti-Christs. More Christian people should be aware of this. Sadly, today, not enough are.

In the late 1800s the Marxist mindset penetrated Christian publishing. The Marxists were devious, in that they did not always question the truths of Scripture, but what they did instead was to subtly stress that Christians not “get involved” in “worldly” issues such as politics. How many of you all have heard that old saw that says “the only two things you should never discuss in public are religion and politics.”  If enough Christians adhere to this highly dubious admonition they will never question anything any government says or does because it would be “worldly” to do so. So, if a government does  something that is ungodly,  the Christians are just supposed to keep their lips buttoned and say nothing? I’m sorry, but that’s hogwash! What about Acts 5:29?

Another main tenet of the Marxist agenda is the abolition of private property. You shouldn’t really own anything–land, houses, cars, businesses, etc. Such “wealth” should be “redistributed” and belong only to “the people.”  You never get a firm answer as to who “the people” really are, but I have a sneaking suspicion that, when push comes to shove, it’s really those people that are trying to make the rest of us live by their Marxist”rules.”

Another one high on the Marxist agenda is the death of individualism and also the death of the family as defined in Scripture. The Marxists don’t want individualists. They think for themselves and that’s not something the Marxists want to encourage. Independent thought is verboten. There are parts of this country where that concept has taken hold. New England, with its history of Unitarian apostasy comes to mind. Independent thinking, and the family, have to go if you plan to change the society. So the Marxists repudiate traditional marriage between one man and one woman. Rather they promote all  manner of deviant substitutes as described in Scripture.  The deification of sensuality is promoted because it waters down the traditional culture.

And, one of the most important, they have to gain control over the  educational system. Marx mentions this in The Communist Manifesto.  That means they have to control what is taught (the curriculum) and the way it is taught. The Marxists long ago realized  what  the vast majority of Christians have not even begun to think about, let alone grasp–that whoever controls the educational system of a country will eventually control where the next generation goes. Ask the people in Kanawha County, West Virginia about this one.  You are ever only one generation away from losing your liberty. All the above and much more need to be done to advance the program of One World Government, or the New World Order or whatever catchy title the Deep Staters care to attach  to it.

And you all need to realize that all this did not originate in the febrile brain of Karl Marx. All that Marx did in the Manifesto was to take the program handed to  him by the League of the  Just (Illuminati) and write it  down in codified form. The first edition of this  monstrosity never even had Marx’s name on it.  After that they let him put his name on it because, then, most people would think it was his brainchild and he was  its original source and therefore, the Illuminati would be one step removed from public consciousness.

More on this as the Lord allows.

The BLM–Agenda 21’s Stooge In The West

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

I have written about the United Nations Agenda 21 program in the past. It is the United Nations thinly veiled attempt at land-grabbing trying to hide under the very dubious cover of “sustainability.” Supposedly there are way too many people in the world (there aren’t) and the UN has to keep all the land “sustainable” by taking people off of it and herding them together in mega-ghettos and leaving untold millions of acres unpopulated and unused for guess who? The political commissars who thought all this up, that’s who. Private property and single family homes will be a thing of the past. You won’t need your cars because there will be no place to go when you are not allowed out of the city limits. Those of you who follow this sort of thing already know the drill.

However, in this country it seems there are lots of folks, most particularly in the West and the South, who put some value on private property, particularly if it has been in their  families for generations. And the Agenda 21 spooks need someone to be able to deal with that sticky situation. It seems, at least in the West, they have found their stooge of choice to help them divest people of their property–and no one is supposed to connect the dots between Agenda 21 and the Bureau of Land Management–an organization that has managed to make itself almost universally despised west of the Mississippi–and not without reason.

I recently read an article by Tim Brown, published on https://sonsoflibertymedia.com back on October 15, 2016. It quotes a Nevada assemblywoman, Michele Fiori, and she labels the Bureau of Land Management a “Domestic Terrorist Agency.” The article observes: “On Thursday morning, Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiori stood on the Nevada Assembly floor to point out several things regarding the Oregon occupation, the Bundy Ranch siege and the sheriffs who were involved in both. She also pointed out at the center of both of them was the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and she referred to them as one of several ‘Domestic Terrorist Agencies.’ I stand in support of and know that Blue Lives Matter…But there have been Sheriffs that hand their elected positions over to the Federal Government and some of the outcomes have been fatal. Sheriff David Ward of Harney County did just that. Under his watch a man, Lavoy Finicum, was murdered.” And she noted: “The Bureau of Land Management has become quite aggressive across our Nation,  from continual harassment of our indigenous Native Americans to our Ranchers, who are just trying to protect their livelihoods.” But the ranchers believe in  private property rights and that is becoming a no-no more and more.

Another article, this one by Michael Snyder on April 23, 2014 on https://freedomoutpost.com/agenda-21-blm-land-grabbing-endgame pretty succinctly lays it all out. Mr. Snyder says “Why is the federal government so obsessed with grabbing more land? After all, the federal government already owns more than 40 percent of the land in 9 different U.S. states. Why are federal bureaucrats so determined to grab even more? Well, the truth is that this all becomes much clearer once you understand that there is a very twisted philosophy behind what they are doing. It is commonly known as Agenda 21, although many names and labels are used for this particular philosophoy. Basically, those that hold to this form of radical environmentalism believe that humanity is utterly destroying the planet and therefore the goal should be to create a world where literally everything that we do is tightly monitored and controlled by control freak bureaucrats in the name of ‘sustainable development.’ In their vision of the future, the human population will be greatly reduced and human activity will be limited to strictly regulated urban areas and travel corridors. The rest of the planet will be left to nature. To achieve this goal, a massive transfer of land from private landowners to the federal government will be necessary.” What do you think this will do to our ranchers and farmers in the West, or even here in Louisiana where I live?

And Snyder adds “So the conflict between rancher Cliven Bundy and the BLM is really just the tip of the iceberg. The reality is that the BLM has their eyes on much bigger prizes.” There was the BLM’s attempted land grab along the Texas-Oklahoma border back a few years ago.

Snyder noted that  the feds claim to own 84% of the state. In Utah they claim 57% of the state and in Alaska they claim 69%, and 53% in Oregon, to mention a few.

The federal government flat out doesn’t need any more land. They’ve got way too much as it is. But there is this constant obsession to grab more and more–so the dictates and agenda of Agenda 21 can be fulfilled. In fact, let’s be honest–they want it all and ranchers, farmers, miners, or folks that just want a little retirement place down on the bayou or out in country will just have to go. End of conversation! And besides they will be dispensing with lots of people with independent ideas–and that just won’t float in a UN-dominated environment.

So just remember, when the BLM comes along to wrest your land from you, who they are really working for, and brother, no matter what they say, it ain’t you!

The Fat Lady Stepped Up To The Counter And Said “WHERE’S THE EVIDENCE?”

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Many of you may remember the television commercial from several years ago where this small lady stepped up to the lunch counter and hollered “Where’s the beef?” It was some sort of fast food commercial but it caught peoples’ attention and the short lady in the commercial ended up doing more commercials for different companies along the same lines.

Someone with imagination today could probably do a similar commercial where some old lady steps up in front of a Robert Mueller or Adam Schiff facsimile and shouts “Where’s the evidence?”

It would be an interesting question to be approached in this manner, seeing that after almost two years of all kinds of allegations about Russia hacking the 2016 election for Trump and even more allegations about Trump’s dealings with Putin to make double sure Trump won the election, there seems to be somewhat of a dearth of any real evidence to support these highly questionable claims.

This is confirmed by an article by Ray McGovern on Consortium News for June 7th,  https://consortiumnews.com/2018/06/07/still-waiting-for-evidence-of-a-russian-hack  Mr. McGovern notes: “More than two years after the allegation of Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election was first made, conclusive proof is still lacking and may never be produced. If you are wondering why so little is heard these days of accusations that Russia hacked into the U.S. election in 2016, it could be because those charges could not withstand close scrutiny…Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity–including two ‘alumni’ who were former National Security Agency technical directors–have long since concluded that Julian Assange did not acquire what he called the ’emails related to Hillary Clinton’ via a ‘hack’ by the Russians or anyone else. They found, rather, that he got them from someone with physical access  to Democratic National Committee computers who copied the material onto an external storage device–probably a thumb drive.” In other words, it was an inside job, not the Russians! Is anyone surprised? Some have wondered if this had anything to do with the Seth Rich “robbery”/murder.

One of the greatest congressional snake oil salesmen who has mercilessly promoted the Trump/Russian collusion fable has been the Democrat’s professional prevaricator, Adam Schiff. To listen to Schiff you would think there were, literally,  mountains of evidence out there conclusively proving that Trump and Putin were in bed with one another and that Putin was really running Washington! However, for some arcane reason, Mr. Schiff “can’t share the evidence” but we are all supposed to believe that he is sitting on it, mountains of it! McGovern noted in his article “…I had a chance to challenge  Schiff personally on the gaping disconnect between the Russians and WikiLeaks. Schiff still ‘can’t share the evidence’ witlh me…or with anyone else, because it does not exist.” Schiff continues to protest that he has all this evidence, but he just can’t share it with anyone–we’ll all just have to take his word that he has it and continue to believe what he and the other Democrats  have been telling us about how ensnared Trump is with the Russians–who are really running the White House, because, after all, haven’t they told us this is what’s going on? And isn’t that good enough? Maybe, if you are a blithering idiot, what the Democrats say is good enough for you, but for anyone with at least half a brain, it shouldn’t be.

Over the decades the Democrats have been famous, from St. Hillary and her significant other, on down,  for falsehood, illusion and delusion–and yet now we are supposed to believe them???  I don’t think Mr. Schiff would know the truth if it jumped out of his office wastebasket and belted him in the chops! And all that is not to say that the Republicans are pure as the driven snow by any means.

All of what has gone on via the continuing efforts of Mueller, Schiff, and company has been a major part of the prolonged effort by the Deep State to destabilize Trump’s presidency because the Deep State really doesn’t want him there–they wanted Hillary–but God intervened and now they are ticked.

It should have occurred to these rocket scientists by now that this really isn’t working out quite the way they planned and what they are really doing is exposing their own efforts to illegally remove Trump from office. The American people, thanks to the alternative media, have begun to see all this and they are tending to get fed  up with it.

There has been lots of talk of late about another “civil war” in America. Should that happen, some of these Deep State denizens may not like some of the results. In the meantime, Mr.Mueller, Mr. Schiff–Where’s the Evidence???

 

Email and/or internet censorship–perish the thought

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Back when Comrade Obama was still in office there was talk of internet censorship, but when he reluctantly departed (though he didn’t go very far–certainly not far enough) we all thought that might not occur.

Seems we may have been wrong.

I and others have taken note lately  that several messages we have sent out on our various email sites do not seem  to be getting through to many of those we send them to.

A couple months ago I did an article for this blog spot and in the subject line on my email server I had the word “secession.” One email server just would not send it, no matter how hard or often I tried. No matter what I did that link with “secession” on the subject line wasn’t going no place. Perceiving that I may have pricked the tender feelings of some poor soul in the forwarding process I changed the word secession to “separation” and resent the message. It went through  immediately.

I have since attempted to be a bit more temperate in what I put on the subject lines of emails going out of here. On one article I was going to put “Big Brother” on the subject line, but then reflected a bit and thought, no way will Big Brother make it past the censor, so I changed the subject line title and the article title to “The elder sibling is watching over you.” That went through. Im sure “Big Brother” would never have made it.

The mode of email censorship doesn’t seem to be universal. Yesterday I sent out an article someone had forwarded to me about a big Confederate flag being  put up somewhere in Alabama. I felt, in the face of all the ethnic cleansing we had experienced in the last couple of years, it was a positive article and an encouragement  to folks so I passed it on to many.

Today I got some response. One man in Texas said they must have shut the site down as he couldn’t get into it at all. A man in West Virginia said he could open the article but not get the picture of the flag, and a lady in Georgia said the same thing. It would appear that most other folks go it–at least so far.

Reminds me of a friend in North Carolina with a big email list who used to include a small pic of a Confederate flag at the bottom of the emails he sent out. One find day the emails started bouncing back as undeliverable. Now my friend is a person who has been known to connect the  dots as  it were, and so he tried sending the same messages out minus the Confederate flag at the  bottom. Guess what? All his messages started going through again! Seems the Confederate flag was a major impediment to email being forwarded. Wonder why that was. You don’t suppose there’s some grumpy old censor somewhere down the line that hates Confederate flags do you? Why perish the thought! Our emails are supposed to be private, are they not, and unless you put really horrible language or something like that in them I always thought they were to be left alone. Guess I  was wrong. It seems that the personal like and dislikes of the email censors are now what really counts. Political correctness seems to rule and if you have something some cultural Marxist doesn’t personally like in your email, guess what? It ain’t going anywhere or you will  end up getting that ever-useful comment “There was a problem loading the message.” Translation–Forget it! Unless you go to a different email server and even there the censors have their code words they watch out for.

Then we get these adds on email  sites about how concerned they are for our “privacy.” What they are really concerned about is that we don’t say anything that would be politically incorrect (not culturally Marxist).

Well, I’ve got this posted. Now lets see how well I do sending it out. I’m sure the mention of Confederate flags here will offend the sensibilities of some tender soul somewhere that will want to make sure this article gets no further than him–lest someone down the line be contaminated with a little truth!

Evangelicals and the Culture War

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Four years ago last January, in 2014, I did a four-part series titled Evangelical Marxism for this blog spot.  I don’t know if it woke anybody up but I hope it did reach some. If you care to check back, it is still up. I suppose I could call this part five, or maybe just the continually sleeping church, as it seems to take an awful lot anymore to wake the church up to much of anything. In many cases we seem to be sleeping our way through history and then we wonder why in heck we are losing the culture war.  Maybe if we just woke up and started to fight back we wouldn’t lose so often. The Lord ain’t about to bless the efforts of the comatose to remain asleep.

The New American magazine for June 5, 2018 had an informative article by Alex Newman,  https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/faith-and-morals about some of what is going on in the Southern Baptist Convention, which is to have their annual meeting this year in Dallas, Texas between June 12th and 13th.

Mr. Newman wrote, in part, “The Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest protestant denomination and a historically conservative wing of the Christian church in the United States is on the verge of falling to organized ‘progressive’ social-justice forces and anti-Trump activists, according to media reports and insiders involved in the battle. One leading opponent of the scheme has even blasted what he described as the ‘Evangelical Deep State’ working to infect the church with unbiblical ideologies. The goal of these forces, dubbed ‘neo-Marxist’ by some critics, include softening and eventually quashing Christian opposition to homosexuality , normalizing gender confusion in the church, promoting left-wing politics at all levels of government, fueling constant obsession and angst over race and gender, facilitating mass Islamic  immigration into the United States, and much more. Most rank and file Southern Baptists remain oblivious to what is happening, insiders said. But the implications for the church, the culture, the nation, and politics could be earth-shattering.”

That’s the main problem right there–most Southern Baptists remain oblivious to what really goes on in the denomination. And you can’t just point the finger at the Southern Baptists–the same situation holds true in many denominations.  Lots easier to just stay asleep and let the church leaders handle everything. The question of what to do if they don’t “handle everything” never comes up until it is too late.

There is a resolution scheduled to be introduced into this year’s annual Southern Baptist meeting by conservatives that will “…strongly condemn the ‘unbiblical’ and ‘Marxist-based’ so-called ‘social-justice’ movement. We’ll have to keep an eye out to see what happens to that resolution. The man who introduced the resolution suspects there may well be an effort to prevent its being voted on. The purpose of the resolution is to wake people up to what the Left is trying to do within their denomination. He said “Most of these churches in the heartland,  most of these are rural churches and most of them have no idea of what is going on.”

He said: “My fear is that if progressives get in control of the Southern Baptist Convention–(Summit Church Pastor) . J. D. Greear is one of their guys–the people in the heartland are going to start seeing this stuff infiltrating the literature, the bookstores, but by then it will be too late and these progressives will be running the show. At that point the response will be too little too late.” There’s a lot of meat in Mr. Newman’s article that I can’t include here for space reasons. Check it out on the internet and read the article in its entirety.

Another article I came across along this same line is one written by Rev. Thomas Littleton back in July of 2017 entitled How Evangelicals Lost the Culture War Before it Started. You can probably find this by typing the name of the article and the author. Just for kicks, try that on duckduckgo.com search engine. Lots of stuff on that one I haven’t seen other places, and supposedly they don’t track what you look up like Google and others do.

Rev. Littleton wrote: “Hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent to change the churchs’ biblical stand on LGBTQ. In 2014, the Human Rights Campagn (HRC) came to the deep south with $8.5 million to push Project One America with ‘A Christian Conversation Guide’ training manual  to organize and mobilize the LGBTQ community into the churches.  The Reformation Project and gay activist Matthew Vines have since made their way into many churches and onto Bible college campuses like Biola University. Just this week a LGBTQ won Faculty approval on Southern Baptist affiliated Samford University. Why is this happening? While the church is being manipulated and distracted, pre-K-12 schools are being invaded by the LGBTQ.” Some of you who know what goes on in public schools already realize that. Seems like your churches are now going to get it too.

Maybe the evangelicals need to begin to realize they are losing the culture war because the other side is the only one doing any real fighting! Most evangelicals (with some exceptions) are just sitting it out–hoping all this really nasty stuff will just go away if only they are “nice enough” to the anti-Christ types on their block. It won’t. And you all better realize that you are in a spiritual battle that you won’t win unless you start resisting the evil being thrust upon you.

Observations About Vicksburg

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

 

Recently I attended a meeting where the guest speaker was Samuel W. Mitcham Jr., who has been a history professor at several colleges here in the South. He has written several books about World War 2, and also some about the War of Northern Aggression. Years back he did one about Richard Taylor and the Red River Campaign here in Louisiana that I loved. A couple years ago he did a biography of Nathan Bedford Forrest which I have not gotten around to yet but will add it to my list.

Just this year he has gotten a new book published about the Vicksburg Campaign which I was able to get a copy of and I’m now working my way through it. Eventually, I hope to do a regular book review of it, but right now I just want to pass along some of Mr. Mitcham’s observations while they are fresh in my mind, as well as adding a bit of my own commentary.

I’ve been to the battlefield at Vicksburg twice over the years and don’t recall learning as much on those trips as I have gotten from Mr. Mitcham’s book. I don’t know if it’s just me or what, but the battlefield at Vicksburg always seemed like a dreary place. The fact that it rained both times we were there, sometimes quite hard, might have had something to do with it. We ended up going over the battlefield “between the rain drops” as it were. Then, too, it might be what Vicksburg represents to me, and others I have spoken with–part of the death  knell of the old Confederate States, which, though they never officially surrendered, were not able to win the day either. And the ensuing “reconstruction” period after the War (which continues in various forms until this very day) has been the most shameful period in this country’s history.

Going over the battlefield, even with listening to the narrative tape they let you borrow at the visitor center, doesn’t give you the whole history of what went on there and now, with all the  political correctness (cultural Marxism) going on today, you might get even less of the real history than we did years ago.

Mr. Mitcham noted in his book that, during 1862-63, there were ten separate attempts by the Union to take Vicksburg. He details them all. The battles at Port Hudson, Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, Raymond, Champion Hill, and others were all major parts of the Union campaign to take Vicksburg.. They did it from different areas, in different stages, but it was all part of the Yankee/Marxist plan to reduce Vicksburg and render the Mississippi River unusable to the Confederacy, thus cutting the Confederacy in half and separating the trans-Mississippi area from that part of the Confederacy east of the river.

As I’ve read in other  places, doing this accomplished several things for the Yankee/Marxists. Lots of cotton moved south through Texas, across the Rio Grande into Mexico, where ships the Union blockade couldn’t touch anchored at or near Matamoras. Many of these ships picked up cotton and off-loaded guns, new Enfield  rifles from England, as well as powder and ammunition and other goods needed in the South that couldn’t make it there because of the Union blockade. This material was then freighted  up out of Mexico into Texas and from there shipped east as needed.  But this could not  aid the Confederacy as a whole if this war material could not get across the Mississippi  to the Confederate States east of the river.

Over the years I have read many comments about General John Pemberton who was in overall command in Vicksburg. Many of these comments would lead you to believe that General Pemberton, who was Northern-born, was a weak and ineffective general and that’s why Vicksburg fell. Mr. Mitcham presents Pemberton in a much more positive light, and he goes into the fact that, had General Joe Johnston been more willing to help Pemberton with reinforcements Vicksburg might not have suffered the fate it did. Johnston had reinforcements he could have sent, but he vacillated until it was too late for them to do  any good.

All things considered, with what General Pemberton had to work with, as far as troops, and very diverse personalities in the commanders serving under him, he probably did as well as anyone could have. He wasn’t perfect. None of us are. But he was not the bumbling ineffective personality he has been made out to be. I would not want to be dealt the hand Pemberton was dealt and then be forced to try to make a go of it.

Mitcham’s approach to the Vicksburg Campaign  is anything but politically correct. He notes in several places in the book how the Yankee/Marxists  plundered and destroyed private property and how, in many cases, they just outright stole everything that was not nailed down. And if they couldn’t steal it they destroyed it!

He noted their, in most cases, brutal incivility, toward all Southerners, black as well as white–and when it came to raping Southern women, the Yankee troops were  “equal opportunity” rapists. They didn’t care about color–only sex! He noted in one place where a Southern woman demanded to know of Yankee soldiers if they had come south to free the slaves.They just laughed! They thought that idea was ludicrous!

Mr. Mitcham also observed how Sherman treated Southerners and how he loved to find some reason, any reason, to burn property, private as well as military. I have often contended that Sherman was a pyromaniac, and Mitcham’s book does nothing to change my mind.

He also commented how, in many cases,  some Confederate generals would not cooperate with or help one another when the chips were down, and there were some important battles that were lost because one general couldn’t be bothered sending some of his men as reinforcements to another general to assure a victory. There were little, individual fiefdoms that had to be protected–even if you lost the country doing it. And you could always write a book later on, blaming the general you refused to help (preferably after he was dead) for losing the War because he didn’t have enough men on hand to win a particular battle.

Anyway, this is enough to give you a small taste of what Mr. Mitcham had to say about Vicksburg, along with my own commentary on what he said. Hopefully when I finish the book I can do a regular review, but you can tell from this much that Mr. Mitcham has really written an interesting book–one I recommend.