Non-Socialist College Students Hardly Have a Chance Anymore!

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

It seems, on many, if not most, college campuses in this era of extreme cultural Marxism (political correctness) the only way for conservative and patriotic students to survive is to keep their heads down and their thoughts totally to themselves about anything political–and cultural as well. There is no one on campus that will go to bat for them if they dare to utter anything but the most recent interpretation of Leftist dogma.

There was a recent article on https://www.dailywire.com for October 17th of this year that dealt with the extreme liberal/leftist leanings of not only professors, but also of school administrators. An American Enterprise Institute scholar Samuel Abrams wrote a report on this that was published by the New York Times, of all papers. I don’t know how long the report is, but you can find it at https://www.aei.org/publication/think-professors-are-liberal-try-school-administrators/

Abrams observed that: “I found that liberal staff members outnumber their conservative counterparts by an astonishing ratio of12-to-one. Only 6 percent of campus administrators identified as conservative to some degree, while 71 percent classified themselves as liberal or very liberal. It’s no wonder so  much of the nonacademic programming on college campuses is politically one-sided. The 12-to-one ratio of liberal to conservative college administrators makes them the most left-leaning group on campus…” And you thought the professors were bad! Well, they were–and are–but the administrators are even worse! Keep in mind, many of those that identify as “very liberal” are probably socialists of some kind, and if they’re not they are kissin’ cousins. Whatever they are, they are on the left, and that fact alone bodes ill for any poor student that does not hew their line of class struggle, white privilege, identity politics, or whatever the Marxists are pushing for their agenda at the present.

Abrams noted that the most severe liberal to conservative administrator ratios were among schools in guess where–New England–where the Unitarian/socialist influence has been at work in this country the longest. The ratio there was 25 liberals to one conservative amongst college administrators. Years ago, I worked at one college in New England, with still another college right next door to it and so I saw students from both schools. You’d have been hard put to find any conservatives in either school as far as faculty. And if there were any they kept their mouths shut about it.

Even the Left Coast (known to the naïve as the West Coast) didn’t have a ratio that bad. There’s was only 16-1, while the ratio in the Great Lakes area was a mere 10-1. The other university I worked at was in Indiana and while it wasn’t quite as liberal as the one I worked at in New England, there was still enough leftism to go around. Abrams stated that the closest to a “balanced” ratio existed in the Southwest, and the liberal to conservative ratio there was still 2-1.

The Daily Wire article  said: “Abrams notes that the severity of the bias ranges by two-thirds by average in public and Christian schools to three-fourths in private secular schools, but the bias is always overwhelmingly left-wing.

And Abrams has said: “While considerable focus has been placed in recent decades on the impact of the ideological bent of college professors, when it comes to collegiate life–living in dorms, participating in extracurricular organizations–the ever growing ranks of administrators have the biggest influence on students and campus life across the country.”

“Only the Left is Left at College”

by Al Benson Jr.
Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Anyone who has followed the college scene in the last several decades has to realize that most college campuses in our day are so far to the left they are almost over the edge. Some of the leftist sponsored programs at some college campuses are strickly exercises straight from La-La Land and I often wonder if some of the students involved realize the ramifications of this cultural Marxist drivel and how it will impact their lives, and even the lives of their children. Obviously they don’t because they continue to “wallow in the cultural Marxist garbage” thinking they are making the world a better place when all they are really doing is playing the part of useful idiots for their leftist manipulators.

In this vein, I did read an interesting article by J. T. Young from back in March, 2017. It was posted on https://www.washingtontimes.com in 2018. The title of the article was Why Colleges Lean Left.

Young observes: “The better question for those lamenting this lack of intellectual diversity is why its absence continues to surprise. It would be hard to find conditions more condusive to a leftward tilt than our campus Cominterns…Yet focusing only on today’s temporary temper tantrums is to miss the permanent perturbation on campus against all things right. As far back as most remember, the right has been wrong, until only the left is left at college.”

Young posits an interesting reason for this, one most folks probably don’t even consider. I know it wasn’t listed in my top ten. Young says “America’s college campuses rest on subsidies from top to bottom. Students, the overwhelming majority of campus populations, are the most subsidized of all.” The subsidies start with parents and when parents can no longer do more, they continue in the forms of grants, scholarslhips and college loans (a good part of which loans are seldom repaid).

Colleges also get government funding, most notably at the state level. Young also noted that: “Teachers and professors are also in on the subsidies. Further, they live in the system that promises perhaps the quintessential subsidy of all: tenure, the benefit of which is to be divorced from performance standards for life and virtually immune from dismissal…This top-to-bottom subsidy system produces an entitlement culture like no other in America…”

That’s probably one reason you see all these youngsters out there protesting because they can’t have free education, free health care, free this or that or whatever. They want it all for free. Who do they think will pay for all that free stuff? Free college educations don’t grow on trees, contrary to what all the Demoncratic socialist congressional candidates seem to think. And actually, they know all that, but part of their agenda is to make sure you don’t think about it. Should you think about it you might be tempted not to vote for them!

Government educational subsidies must be a brainchild of the left, because ultimately, what the government subsidizes the government controlls. This is why private Christian education is so vitally important in this country, education totally free of any government funds from kindergarten through college. The concept of government-controlled education, at any level, is a Marxist concept, and therefore to be resisted. For those that truly want to “make America great again” public education at any level is not the way to do it. When “only the left is left on campus” you are not getting true education, you are getting Marxist propaganda!

March Into College and Turn Left!

by Al Benson Jr.
Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Anyone in this benighted age who tries to tell me colleges and universities do not have a very decided Leftist bent is someone I will probably tell to go and whistle Yankee Doodle. I have worked at two of these “institutions of learning” over the years and have seen firsthand the direction they travel in and try to push their students in. And this is not just in the Left-leaning northeast but all over the country, even here in the South, although far too many Southern folk seem to have a problem grasping that fact.

The college that grand-daddy went to ain’t the same school you are paying scads of money to so junior can be “educated” or rather, in our day, indoctrinated.

One college I worked at had an identified Communist as a guest speaker for an extended period in the winter one year. Although it was several years ago, I never forgot it. Someone called the school, pointed out the Communist’s affiliation, to which the college president told him “We want out students exposed to all different viewpoints.” Somehow I rather doubt he would have wanted his students exposed to the viewpoints of the John Birch Society, which his students would have been much better off with than those of this Communist. This was a perfect illustration of the Leftist tilt of most colleges, and with all the political correctness (cultural Marxism) being promoted today it’s even worse.

And so it was that I recently came across an article on https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=11153 by someone called Peyton Dillberg. I’ve, never read any of Mr. Dillberg’s material before to the best of my knowledge, but when it comes to the college scene, he is right on target.

Dillberg noted: “With more than 40,000 card carrying members, DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) is a growing leftist force in not only our political system, but in our systems of higher education. So why is the left, especially in our universities, embracing an ideology that has resulted in the deaths over a hundred million people? Here are three reasons why socialism is making a comeback on college campuses.” I am not going to go through all three in detail, except to give readers some idea of what is going on at college.

Reason 1–socialism is “intellectually” appealing. Dillberg observes: “So how do they create such intellectual appeal? It’s actually quite complex, as the indoctrination occurs throughout a student’s career. Professors, most of whom are already well-versed in leftist ideology, begin by setting up parameters for their students. Within these parameters lies an acceptable range of ideas–a relatively easy feat, as students tend to be rather malleable with regard to their own ideology.” The professor, once he has done this, can frame his lectures “along leftist talking points.” In other words, he (or she) gives the students a range of ideas, mostly leftist, beyond which they should not go. They are taught not to think outside the Leftist box, hence they, if they follow the professor’s lead, never think outside the range of idea the leftist professor has pictured as legitimate. The student may be exposed to a range of leftist ideas but he or she will never experience anything beyond that.

I ran across students like this back in the 1970s. They had been so shaped by Leftist dogma that they were incapable of ever thinking beyond that and if you threw some concept at them that was beyond their limited range of Leftist thought, they simply rejected it out of hand. No need to try to engage them in rational discussion about it. They couldn’t grasp that. If it disagreed with what the professors taught, then it was wrong–period! You couldnl’t even say “end of discussion” because the discussion never began! The Leftist “educators” taught them what to think, not how to think!

Reason 2–there is a crisis of meaning. Part of that has been the decline of religion–Christianity in the West–and there are people in some of our churches that have willingly contributed to that decline. When you run across pastors in mainline denominations that have been members of over 100 Communist front groups you can’t exactly look to them as erstwhile promoters of Christ-centered Christian faith. Back in the 1950s there was a Methodist bishop who was so involved with Communism that they called him the “Red Dean of Religion in America.” Most people want there to be some meaning to their lives, and if churches get to the point where they fail to provide that, then people, especially young people, look elsewhere. Dillberg has said that: “Socialism can be intoxicating to those starving for meaning. Its promise of both physical and metaphysical reward from the efforts of the collective can entice those not careful enough to realize the morbid realities it creates.”

Reason 3–they have never experienced socialism in living color. I have talked to people who lived under socialism, and believe me, it ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. Dillberg notes the “more than 100 million people…(who) have been killed by the very ideas that are pushed by socialists every day.” Socialists and Communists will then rant that real socialism and/or Communism has never been tried. Hogwash! They don’t dare admit that their system has killed millions because if they did, then who’d want it–especially college students!

I’ve written before about the lady from Ukraine that I knew who was a child when World War 2 ended. She and her family were in a German labor camp. When her father found out that he and his family were going to be sent back to the Soviet Union he actually planned to find a way to kill his family and himself so none of them would be forced back into that socialist paradise. By God’s grace he found an alternative and they made it to America. Had he not he would have killed himself and his whole family rather than let any of them go back to the nightmare that was socialism in the Soviet Union–the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST Republics!

Dillberg ends his commentary, in part, with this observation. “The far left is a much greater threat to our nation than any neo-Nazi group will ever be, and our universities are the gateways to the left.”

Pink Indoctrination Posing As Education

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate  Society of America

“Free education for all children in public schools” has been the rallying cry of the Left, both in this country and others, for over a century and a half. If there is actually anyone still left that wonders why the political and theological Left has such a passion for promoting public “education” let me say this. Public education, as presently constituted, is an ideal platform from which to promote Leftist indoctrination of future generations. It’s made to order and the Left has been exploiting it for longer than most of us have been alive. Those wishful thinkers that want to reform public education to get it back to the “good old days” have yet to figure this out.

Just this past week I ran across an article by Maria Biery from July 6, 2017 on https://www.theamericanconservative.com  Miss Biery brought up many worthwhile points to consider. The main point she sought to make was that American students, particularly in public schools, are much exposed to liberal, Leftist bias in their classrooms long before they ever sit foot on a college campus. It was an astute observation, and one that most folks fail to make.

She noted her personal experience with this.  She wrote: “In my own experience, during my years in a public high school, I had a teacher who aired his left-leaning political views on a daily basis during class hours, when we were supposed to be learning biology. I can remember sitting in the back of the class with my fists clenched asking myself, ‘what are we learning right now besides what he thinks about politics?’  There was no space to debate him. Numerous students told their parents about it, but at the end of the day, we all knew we couldn’t do anything.” The students were a captive audience. The teacher probably had tenure and so the school probably couldn’t get rid of him unless he did something really outrageous. As long as he stayed within certain parameters this teacher could spout his socialist clichés all day long and the students had to sit and take it.

You have to wonder, in this instance, whose interests were really being served–the students’ or those of this Left-wing ideologue posing as a teacher. This situation is one that has been repeated in public schools all across America for decades now–at least since the advent of the Frankfurt School in this country. And probably before!

Miss Biery had other issues with the public school system besides this one teacher. One other gripe she had,  and it’s a legitimate one, is that the schools only teach the kids what they need to know to pass those standardized tests that all public school kids everywhere have to take. If the kids do well on those tests then it makes the school look good–even if the kids learn almost nothing worthwhile. I’ve heard this complaint from all manner of people over the years. If the local school looks good, with fantastic standardized test results, then a compliant “news” media puffs that and runs with it and it creates the false premise that public education is light years ahead of all other kinds of education–and those fantastic test results prove it! Sorry to burst the bubble, but it’s all a scam. Ask most of these kids about anything they didn’t have on that test and they don’t have a clue!

Biery quoted from a College Fix article that said: “The public school system is a microcosm of the socialist system, one that is bureaucratic, wasteful, and does not serve its original and intended purpose.” Biery quoted that and I don’t know who wrote it but I have some disagreement with the sentiment. Recognizing the public school as a microcosm of the socialist system is downright prescient, but feeling that it failed in its original intent to educate is not. Any socialist system does not exist to educate, but rather to indoctrinate with a Leftist worldview. Real, true and accurate education has nothing to do with socialism.

She notes how public schools fail to teach much of our history. They ignore critical areas and stress indoctrination, especially in U.S. history, to “support an agenda…”–such as, the “Civil War” was only fought over slavery, or, in elections, we’d do better to get rid of the Electoral College and just do it all by “majority rule.” The question of majority rule vs. minority rights is never dealt with. You just aren’t supposed to ask about that. Biery stated that she never really found out how horrific a system communism really is until she attended a private school.

You can bet the farm that the school Miss Biery attended is quite typical of public “education” establishments nationwide. So if you wonder why so many college kids are so Leftist-oriented, look no further than the public schools they attended and the teachers that taught them.

Admittedly, there are exceptions to the public school teachers. I have been privileged to know several over the years who sought to truly educate the kids committed to their charge. Sadly, these folks are the exception rather than the rule.

The quote I began this article with was one taken from the Communist Manifesto, and made by Karl Marx.  It is a sentiment advocated by Marx and a whole bevy of other socialists, Marxists, Unitarians, and Transcendentalists . Maybe if we can ever wrap our minds around that fact, we will stop supporting that system and start to separate our kids from it. Until then, sadly, most will continue to let those committed to our cultural destruction continue to educate our kids and then wonder why we, and they, have problems.

More on socialist “education” (indoctrination) in schools as the Lord enables.

Education As Civil War

by Al Benson Jr.
Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Civil war via “education” (mostly public education) was declared on the American public long, long ago, back in the 1830s, as a matter of fact.

You had a certain intelligentsia in this country (and other places) in the early years of the nineteenth century that had a vision for the united States that did not include that which was envisioned by those who came here to escape religious persecution or for a better life for their families, and, by extention, for their descendants. This intelligentsia was composed of “an artistic, social, or political vanguard or elite.” In other words, these were the people that were going to show and tell the rest of us how to live–whether we wanted what they had to offer or not.

And so we began the early stages of a civil war over who was going to control our destiny–ourselves or “the political vanguard or elite.” This civil war has continued right up to and including our day, and because most of us have not been taught or made to understand that we are involved in this civil war, the elites seem to be winning it, mostly be default.

This civil war is not only political, it is theological at root, and the elites totally understand this. Because we have been ill-educated, thanks to our adversaries, we mostly don’t. Until we learn to reverse the trend of letting our anti-Christian adversaries “educate” us and our children nothing will change.

Orestes Brownson, an early 19th century elitist, expressed it very explicitly when he said: “The great object was to get rid of Christianity, and to convert our churches into halls of science…The plan was not to make open attacks on religion…but to establish a system of state–we said national–schools, from which all religion was to be excluded, in which nothing was to be taught but such knowledge as is verifiable by the senses, and to which all parents were to be compelled by law to send their children.”

Brownson, a Universalist clergyman, was, at one point, a disciple of socialist Robert Owen and he was active in a political party, oddly named “The Working Men’s Party.” Notice how they always give themselves the nice-sounding names that pander to people’s ignorance. At one point, Brownson stated: “The purpose for the formation of this party was to get control of the political power of the state, so as to be able to use it for establishing our system of schools.” Reflect on that last statement just a wee bit. They worked for control of the state so they could force our kids to be “educated” according to their agenda.

They declared a form of civil war on us so they could force us to educate our children the way they, not us, wanted them educated! They have been fighting this civil war ever since and the stakes of this war are who will control what our kids learn–us or them. This civil war for the hearts, minds, and souls of our children and grandchildren (and formerly us) has been going on at least since three decades before the War of Northern Aggression. Do you begin to grasp now, at least one of the reasons we fought that War?

This civil war has always been about who will control our faith, history, heritage and culture–us or them–and until we learn to quit entrusting our children to their socialist agenda it will be them! In over 160 years most Christians haven’t figured that out yet. I sometimes wonder if we will ever wake up

Does this mean that all public school teachers are bad people? No. Had it not been for some dedicated Christian public school teachers it might have been even worse than it is. Does that mean we should leave our kids in that system just because there are some Christian teachers in it? No way! I’ve known several Christians who have taught in public schools who have gotten out of them because they realized nothing was going to change in them and they could no longer take it.

So this civil war, for the hearts and minds of our kids continues, though it is mostly the anti-Christian side doing the fighting, while too many naive Christians keep funneling their kids into their system and berating those of us who have refused to do that. And after that, there is the question of college–and that’s another biggy!

Censorship As Civil War–hide the truth and keep your enemies silent!

 

by Al Benson Jr.
Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

Civil war comes in many forms–two opposing factions vying for control of a government; one group striving for control of a government while their opposition (usually ordinary folks) don’t even recognize what is going on; one revolutionary group (usually behind the scenes, often in government, financing and guiding radicals in the streets and enabling them to commit “uncivil acts” (Hillary’s term) against the general population to scare them in order to keep them from exercising their mandate to vote and take part in the political life of the nation. There are probably other examples, but you get the idea.

A major part of these forms of civil war is censorship, either by hiding information the public needs to be aware of or trying to censor out of existence those that try to inform the public about what is really going on. Usually both the hiding of facts and the censoring of those who seek to reveal those facts go on simoutaneously. You see, all the facts can’t always be hidden, and there are those who follow the political scene who are able to dig out at least some of the truth–hence they must be silenced, lest they reach enough people with what they have found that those who operate behind the scenes surreptiously would be politically embarrassed.

None of this is new. It has gone on since at least the French Revolution and it reared its ugly head in this country awhile before our War of Northern Aggression in the form of censorship and propaganda.

As the War of Northern Aggression gained steam the beneficent Mr. Lincoln made sure no voices of dissent against his agenda would be heard in the North. To that end, many opposition newspapers were shut down and individuals who dared to disagree with Lincoln were routinely silenced. Some were treated to the motel-like conditions of Old Capitol Prison for extended “vacations.” These included newspaper editors, politicians,, even clergymen, among others. Depending on what sources you refer to, anywhere from 13,000 to 38,000 Northern folks were treated to the “country club” conditions of Yankee prisons during the War. And these people were not all raving Southern sympathizers either. All you had to do to be treated to the joyful experience of a Yankee prison was to disagree with Mr. Lincoln about most anything from the conduct of the war to the high price of groceries–and if someone chanced to hear you and reported you, you were hauled off to the slammer. Evidence of your “crime?” Hell, no! No evidence needed, just someone’s word that you said what he said you did. In light of recent events in Washington does that scenario sound familiar?

And in Lincoln’s situation, you almost, in a sense, had a government within a government–because the agendas of Edwin Stanton, Thaddeus Stevens and others in Congress were most definitely not the agenda of Lincoln in the final analysis. Of course this has mostly been censored out of the “history” books, lest too many ask questions. Has anyone recently noticed a parallel situation in the Trump administration–a situation where the President has a direction in which he wants his administration to go while many in his administration under him have a different path they want to take us down?

Now I’m not trying to compare Trump and Lincoln, although I think Trump would be flattered. He shouldn’t. The only reason he might be is that he doesn’t understand the real history, having bought into the fables the historians peddle. I don’t think Trump is nearly as devious as Lincoln was. I’m not saying he is dumb by any means. He wouldn’t have gotten where he did if he was, but I don’t think his level of deviousness remotely approaches Lincoln’s. Often Trump will say straight out what he thinks about something–a habit most politicians don’t like. Too forthright! With Lincoln you hardly ever knew what he really thought and he couched his comments in a way that you could often take them the way he wanted you to instead of the way he really meant. A good example of that is the way he parsed words regarding the Fort Sumter situation that he used to start the war. I realize that saying that will cause any Marxists reading this to explode and they will scream that the South really started it. No they didn’t. Lincoln pushed them into a situation that made them appear to have started it. It was an example of Lincoln’s truly devious nature. Again, this stuff is censored out of the “history” books because you don’t need to know the truth–lest you learn to fight back! In the sense that the censors seek to keep you from knowing the truth, they have declared war on you.

But Lincoln was far, far from the only devious personality in his administration. I recently read an article on http://www.wadeburleson.org about the Lincoln assassination and John Wilkes Booth. In part it said: “The historical account of the actual assassination of our sixteenth President of the United States is without factual dispute. What has been open for debate is the number of men (and women) involved in the conspiracy to either kill or kidnap President Lincoln. The Lincoln Conspiracy, a 1977 book by David W. Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier Jr. seeks to prove that in 1865 Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, and other Radical Republican allies, sought to kidnap Lincoln. They intended to hide Lincoln for a time while bogus articles of impeachment were drafted to remove him as president. The primary motivations for this plot were strong opposition to Lincoln’s liberal Reconstruction plans…” While there are some items in this article I don’t necessarily totally agree with, this part rings mostly true–except that Lincoln’s “liberal” Reconstruction plans were mostly formed to benefit Lincoln and not the South. Any president that could have allowed what Sherman did in Georgia was no friend of the South. His Reconstruction agenda would, in some way, have benefitted him in his second term.

Does some of this about impeaching Lincoln strike a similar note to what some officials today want to do to Trump? They didn’t have the 25th Amendment in Lincoln’s day, but the name of the game was the same.

Just yesterday I watched a video on You Tube called Missing pages of J. W. Booth’s Diary by a man named Don Thomas, which he made on July 9th 2016. Mr. Thomas has also written a book, The Reason Lincoln Had To Die. You can find it on Amazon. He self-published it in 2013 because he couldn’t find a publisher that would touch it with a ten-foot pole. Whenever publishers shy away from this kind of stuff I like to check it out. I got the impression, watching the You Tube video that Mr. Thomas had really done some homework, and he came up with many of the conclusions that the authors of The Lincoln Conspiracy did. I think Thomas’ book will be worth a read and his You Tube video worth watching–provided some politically correct censor doesn’t discover it and decide we all don’t need to see it.

I guess, looking at our current situation, I am forced to reiterate something I have said previously–we are engaged in a cultural civil war. The establishment has declared war on us ordinary folks by hiding the truth from us as much as possible and when certain people try to get that truth out there they are censored because the establishment, Deep State, whatever you want to call those people that feel they have the right to dictate to us how we should live cannot afford to allow us to grasp the real truth–in history, politics, theology, or any important place. We have to be kept in the dark so we will not have enough real truth to know how to oppose their agenda for us–total subjugation. Because, if enough learn the truth, they will fight back. And if they do, whether I see it in this life or not (and I don’t expect to), we will find that the truth, in Christ, will eventually set us free, provided we are, in Christ, willing to stand up and defend and promote it. Those that oppose us cannot stand the light of truth shining on their evil deeds. Thar fact, alone, should reveal to us their true origins (John 8:44).

Cultural Marxist Mentality on Display

by Al Benson Jr.
Well, it seems as if Bill Clinton’s better (or more vindictive) half is calling for less civility in politics. Is anyone even surprised? When was she ever civil to her adversaries? She labeled those who dared to vote against her vaunted presidency as “deplorables.” And in very typical cultural Marxist style, she continues to accuse them of what she and her socialist Democrat friends routinely do. It’s alright for her but not for her adversaries.

“Madame President” has been quoted as saying “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” So what does she spend her time trying to do to her adversaries but the exact thing she is accusing them of? But after all, isn’t she entitled to do that to us? If she isn’t, well, she should be. And aren’t her adversaries then entitled to return the favor? Oh no–no way. The game doesn’t work that way.

Hitlery, oh, sorry, I meant Hillary, Saint Hillary no less–the patron saint of the radical Left, is just taking a page out of Saul Alinsky’s playbook, you know, the one he dedicated to Lucifer. The radical Left is not particularly noted for its “civility” as one can quickly grasp by watching the antics of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, among others.

The game plan of both the Leftists and those who pay them seems to be to so scare their opposition that they never even begin to fight. Part of the way to do that is to work to destroy their cultural distinctives. The Frankfurt School has been working at this for decades. Just today there was an article on https://www.infowars.com/is-cultural-marxism-americas-new-mainline-ideology

It stated, in part, that “therefore, for the revolution to happen, the movement must depend on the cultural leaders to destroy the existing, mainly Christian, culture and morality and then drive the disoriented masses to Communism as their new creed. The goal of this movement is to establish a world government in which the Marxist intellectuals have the final say. In this sense, the cultural Marxists are the continuation of what started with the Russian revolution…The Russian Revolution was not the result of a labor movement but of a group of professional revolutionaries.” They couldn’t have cared less about freeing Russians from the tyranny of the Czar. Their overthrow of Russia was to be the “launchpad” for world revolution, which is still going on and is more and more manifesting itself in this country as our first real civil war.

If you wonder at the rise of moral corruption and cultural disintegration in this country, look no further than the cultural Marxists. If you wonder about the continuing rot in our public education system (which is not new by any means) look no further than the cultural Marxists. In fact, the above noted Infowars article notes: “The way toward the rule of the cultural Marxists is the moral corruption of the people. to accomplish this, the mass media and public education must not enlighten but confuse and mislead. The media and the educational establishment work to put one part of the society against the other part.” This is part of the old “class struggle” technique, but the cultural Marxists have expanded on it by creating new groups of victims and oppressed people.

So, political correctness, which is really nothing more than cultural Marxism flourishes. Notice how Columbus Day has now become “indigenous peoples day” and how Thanksgiving, originally a Christian holiday, is all but ignored except for football, or how you are not supposed to say Merry Christmas anymore, lest some unbeliever  or apostate become “offended.” How many people unthinkingly buy into this cultural drivel because the educational establishment, and even some of their churches, give them no real moral leadership or the information to recognize what is happening to them and to the country?

So the first civil war in this country is being waged by the cultural Marxists because they know that in order for them to prevail the Christian faith must be suppressed. How many Christians have even begun to realize this? How many preachers realize it, or even want to?

I realize Scripture promises that the Lord will prevail in the end, but maybe, just maybe He might want to use some of us in that process. And if we just sit back and don’t bother to learn what goes on, how much use will we be to Him?

Our Current Civil War Heats Up

by Al Benson Jr.

Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

After the farce that the violent Left tried to make out of the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination process, plus their promises to make their future actions “more ruthless” the normal American public must start to confront the fact that those people consider themselves at war with us “deplorable dregs” and that they are willing to do anything, no matter how vulgar or violent, to win that war.

I read a comment this morning that asked the question “now that the confirmation process is  over, will the Democratic operatives just go away?” My first thought was “You’ve got to be kidding.” That someone could still be naïve enough to even think that almost had me rolling on the floor laughing! People–what does it take to wake you up??? Do they have to batter down your front door and beat up your  wife and kids before you finally begin to get just a glimmer of the possibility that, maybe, just maybe, these violent Leftists,  and those that pay them to create mayhem, are at war with you??? They want you, your history, your culture, and your way of life gone and like most Left-wingers, they are willing to do whatever it takes to  promote their agenda and worldview–even to the point of taking innocent life–they couldn’t care less! As promoters of abortion, their concern for innocent life is less than negligible.

Their futile attempt at storming the halls of Congress to shut down the Kavanaugh confirmation actually backfired on them. It helped some (not all) Republican senators to actually begin to develop a backbone. We can only pray, in the weeks to come, that the senators who started to wake up won’t go back to sleep again as the Leftists, urged on by those that foot the bills for  them, continue to engage in evermore violent tactics.

At this point, this is an actual civil war because we do have a duly elected administration in Washington, whatever its faults, and those  people on the Left are working to overthrow that administration and replace it with some sort of Hillaryesque socialist Demoncrat democracy!

Please don’t think that because they have been dealt a few setbacks that they are going away. They are like the people that are working to take down our Confederate monuments and flags–in fact, some of them are those people! They are committed to our destruction and they ain’t going anywhere until they have destroyed us. After they do that, they will turn on one another, and “the revolution will eat its own.” Unfortunately, most of us won’t be here to see that.

Those people don’t just do this on their own. There are high-tech and One World Government types that use the violent Leftists to carry out their agenda for our destruction because they don’t want to get their own hands dirty. They don’t want our blood on their hands so they hide in the background and  pay the Leftist rabble to do their dirty work. We need to realize that the people that finance Leftist violence are at war with all of us too.

Nowadays, most of those that  promote the violence are Demoncrats, though there are Republicans among them. One hundred and fifty years ago the promoters of this violent attempt to destroy our culture and way of life were mostly radical, abolitionist Republicans of the Edwin Stanton and Thaddeus Stevens type. They hated the South the way their spiritual descendants today hate the whole country.

And don’t think that because you are a Christian and try to “be nice” and not to offend anyone that you will be spared. When push comes to shove, they want you gone worse than anybody, because if you are a believer in Jesus Christ and the Bible, you have the ultimate truth that can destroy them and they know that. So you and your faith have to go too. They’ve just  got to keep you fat, dumb and happy so you won’t realize what they are doing to you until it’s too late to reverse it.

A friend of mine in Oklahoma (good state Oklahoma–I used to live there) Jeff Paulk, recently wrote an article I published in my hard copy newsletter, The Copperhead Chronicle. The title of the article was We Face a Spiritual and Political Battle. And Jeff got them in the right order–first the spiritual and then the political–because the political is an outgrowth of the spiritual. We truly do fight against “spiritual wickedness in high places” both spiritual and political. Boys, we need to grasp that fact, and most of us don’t have a clue!

We think we can beat these Leftist Captain Billy Whizbangs once and they will  go home. Never  gonna happen! That’s what we do–beat them once and then we go home. They stay in their fox holes and plan the next phase of their never-ending campaign for our destruction. We don’t even lay a good covering fire over their fox holes before we leave.

I am not advocating that we go our and start shooting Leftists, or even their paymasters, although if we are attacked we still have the right to defend ourselves and our families. What I am advocating is that we do what Scripture says for us to do expose the unfruitful works of darkness. If we are willing to do the homework,  we as Christians, can aid mightily in that process. If we are just too lazy to be bothered, then we can remain the fat, dumb and happy playthings the Leftists and their allies have worked to mold us into at least since the 1830s. I guess it’s sort of up to us as to what happens to our children, grandchildren, and the culture they will inherit.

So the Leftist civil war raging even as I write this continues. And certain highly placed people continue to employ the Leftists to destroy our country. Question is–what do we plan to do about it?

From 1865 to 2018 Part 3

by Al Benson Jr.
Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

It should come as no surprise that Edwin M. Stanton sought to manipulate the civilian court trial of John Surratt Jr. I suppose he felt that being Secretary of War gave him certain “prerogatives” not usually available to mere mortals.

A man who was a special War Department counsel, Albert Gallatin Riddle, was tapped by Stanton to oversee the “general management of the case.” Campbell observed that: “In other words, tlhe war secretary had arranged to dictate the trial of a civilian in a civilian court, as he had dictated the trial of civilians in a military court. Assisting the prosecution, the House Judiciary Committee worked night and day on plans to remove the president, and turn over to the War Department any information its members thought would help to unseat Andrew Johnson and hang John Surratt. Looking at this whole sorry situation it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to, in the words of Patrick Henry, “smell a rat.”

Surratt’s lead attorney, Joseph Bradley knew what the game really was. He was no neophyte. Although he was a Democrat he had supported the Union, but for all that, the Lincoln administration had never been on his top ten list of favorites. Campbell has stated that: “He (Bradley) knew, as all Washington now knew, that these radicals had used perjured testimony not so much to obtain the death of an innocent woman as to ensure political control…He knew all about Lou Weichman’s false testimony in court and his retractions in private…Infuriated by the prosecution’s bland denial of War Department control, he showed malicious delight in leading unsuspecting prosecution witnesses to admit they had been examined in Judge Advocate General Holt’s office.”

A big problem for the prosecution was to show that John Surratt had been on the scene to help Booth with the Lincoln assassination and they worked mightily trying to do that. They came up with all manner of people who said they saw Booth and Surratt together in Washington on April 14th. They had an impressive list of liars to “prove” this, as well as some who were actually mistaken.

Does this sound like the current situation with Kavanaugh? People are literally coming out of the woodwork (or from under rocks) to testify that they have seen Kavanaugh falling down drunk, gang-raping girls by the score, both he and his friends. Of course the stories fail to hold up and most people called on to admit they were at these “parties” state they know nothing about them. And there is no evidence to contradict them. But as I said in an earlier article–who needs evidence in today’s atmosphere? Isn’t just making the accusation enough? And if it isn’t enough for us, then we are all racists or whatever other perjury they can dredge up for us. After all, none of these people would ever lie to us, right? Right? Don’t all answer at once!

Just as this current situation is all about keeping Kavanaugh off the Supreme Court and dragging this sorry farce on until the midterms in hopes of a Demoncratic victory so they can impeach Trump, so the Surratt situation was all about validating the guilty verdict for the Lincoln “conspirators” so Stanton and company would not look as if they had railroaded the whole thing through, and if John Surratt were not found guilty, especially after all the perjured testimony, that’s exactly what it would look like. Stanton stood to have egg on his face. The price of removing that egg was attempted military control over a trial in civil court.

But hold on, to go back to the trial of the Lincoln “conspirators” it gets worse. Campbell noted, on page 277 that: “Sunday’s newspapers carried a bombshell: the majority of Mrs. Surratt’s judges had not been convinced of her guilt. Five of her nine judges had recommended mercy for her to the president. At last, the truth was out. The source of the information was incontrovertible. The reporters had seen the official Report of the Trial of the Conspirators. More specifically, they had seen, attached to the end of the report, the half sheet of paper on which the request for mercy had been made to the president. It bore the signatures of the five judges. The defense lawyers had not touched the report; it had not been admitted as evidence. At the end of the session Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt had come to the courtroom to retrieve the document, but the newsmen had already seen its explosive contents.” On Sunday next, the 4th of August, Andrew Johnson read in the news the commentary that blamed Mrs. Surratt’s death on him. The very next day, immediately, if not sooner, a messenger was sent to the office of Edwin Stanton, with orders to come immediately to the president, with the official trial report in hand.

The messenger carried this identical message to Mr. Stanton three separate times. After the third attempt, Stanton dispatched a ribbon clerk to the president with the report. No way was he going to face Johnson personally.

Enter again William P. Wood, former superintendent of Old Capitol Prison, who had been “a lackey to Stanton.” He showed up at the White House and spent some time with Johnson. Campbell noted that “He told the president that after Mrs. Surratt’s arrest he, Wood, had been sent to her brother, Zad Jenkins, with the promise that she would be released if she or her family gave any information about Booth’s whereabouts.” Relying on Wood’s promise, Zad gave him some information he had heard. “This tip led to Booth’s apprehension but Stanton had refused to honor his promise. Wood then tried to reach the president, but upon Stanton’s written order had been refused entry to the White House.”

Wood’s story shook Johnson up, and as Campbell noted: “Yet there before him lay the proof, the formal Brief Review of the Case which two years before had been delivered to him personally by Judge Holt. The long pages of report, convictions, statements of death warrants, all tied together will yellow linen tape. But there was something else; a half sheet of paper on which was written a recommendation for mercy for Mrs. Surratt. A black sheet of legal length paper separated it from the last page of the report…The pages were fastened together at the top and each page as read was turned back and folded under the unread portion. In that way the little half page had been hidden from sight.” Odd that Judge Holt had neglected to mention it. Odder still that it hadn’t been included in the “official publication of the trial, approved and released by Stanton, nor in the judge advocate’s annual report to the Secretary of War.” It would seem that, the way the report was presented to the president, that he never saw the clemency request–which was probably Mr. Stanton’ intention.

All this considered, Johnson wrote a letter to Stanton in which he said: “Sir: Public considerations of a high character constrain me to say that your resignation of Secretary of War will be accepted.”

Though Johnson removed Stanton, the radical Congress simply reinstated him under the Tenure of Office Act, but, thankfully, Johnson had the will to persevere–at which point Stanton simply refused to leave his office until he was removed by force. So the would-be dictator who would be president finally got his comeuppance–and Mrs. Surratt had to die so he could cover up his actions both before and after the Lincoln assassination. There are questions to this day as to his involvement in that situation.

So if you want to grasp the degree to which radicals in government usurp power to promote their own leftist agendas today, take a good look at what Edwin Stanton did in his day. Outside of the names, there is very little difference in the actions of radical leftists in and out of government. 1865 and 2018 ain’t all that much different.

From 1865 to 2018–The name of the game is the same

by Al Benson Jr.
Member, Board of Directors, Confederate Society of America

The previous article, with material taken from the book Confederate Courier about the trial of John Surratt Jr. almost reads like a playbook for much of what goes on in Washington in 2018. It’s truly amazing how little some things change. Or maybe you could say the more they change the more they stay the same.
The trial of John Surratt Jr. was never only about Surratt. He was the vehicle used by the Deep State of his day i.e. Edwin Stanton and the Radical Republicans, the Yankee Marxists.

On page 138 was noted a letter that said, in part, “Mr. Matchett then requested me to mention to Surratt there was a means by which he could save his neck, have the shackles struck from his arms, and have his mother’s name rescued from odium if he would give the name of someone high in position who might have prompted the assassination as he and his party were no doubt tools in the hands of more important personages and that he need not look to Andrew Johnson for pardon as he dare not do it.

Needless to say “The power behind these and other events that preceded Johnny’s trial was Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, and leader of the radical faction of the Republican Party. He had been the power behind the military trial of the alleged conspirators , and his determination to convict the defendants had brought about Mrs. Surratt’s death…Stanton had a double interest now for unless John Surratt was found guilty, thus upholding the verdicts of the earlier trial, the whole radical faction might be destroyed politically.”

It was no secret in the right circles that Stanton really wanted to be president, i.e. dictator. Supposedly votes from the North and West could enable the radicals to hold onto power, but Southern votes had “to be reduced to a trickle. The strategy to accomplish this had been to disenfranchise Southern white men and bestow suffrage on the Freedmen, who would support their Northern liberators at the polls, thus preserving the radicals. But to their discomfiture the Radicals discovered that the new President, Andrew Johnson, would not follow blindly where they led. At first they threatened him with party power but when he continued to pardon Rebels and to revert to many of Lincoln’s conciliatory and personal vote-winning policies, they cast about for means of getting rid of him.” Any of this sound familiar today–a sitting president who goes his own way (and the way of those that elected him) instead of kowtowing to the Deep State and letting them call the shots, as they had for decades?

Campbell noted, on page 140, that shortly after Surratt’s arrest, Representative James H. Ashley from Ohio “had introduced before the House of Representatives a resolution to impeach President Andrew Johnson. The House Judiciary Committee thereupon had launched the necessary investigation. When the Committee began its search for evidence useful in removing President Johnson from office, it first of all requested the Secretary of War to supply copies of all information in his possession concerning persons accused of complicity in the murder of Lincoln. After the astounded committee read the Conover material, they immediately tried to locate the witnesses at the conspirators’ trial and bring them in for further questioning. The first of these, William Campbell, broke down under questioning. ‘This is all false,’ he cried miserably. ‘I must make a clean breast of it. I can’t stand this any longer.’ All the testimony by himself and the seven others had been manufactured, he confessed. Conover had written it out and coached the witnesses in delivering it.

His pupils had then traveled to Washington, made depositions at the War Department and, using their assumed names, had testified at the Conspirators’ Trial.” Do you realize what has just been said here? The Lincoln “conspirators” were convicted on false testimony!!! We have the identical situation going on right now in Washington–a Supreme Court Justice nominee is in the process of being convicted on false testimony–no evidence–just fake charges. However, in this sorry day and age you don’t even need a scintilla of evidence or proof–all you have to do is make the accusation and that’s enough–no evidence needed!

At least, in Surratt’s day, the promoter of perjury, Conover, was arrested and convicted of perjury, and sentenced to eight years in jail. Ironically, when John Surratt Jr entered the District Jail in February of 1867, Conover was there, in the cell across the hall opposite his, waiting to be transferred to the Federal Penitentiary in Albany, New York! Nowadays the perjurer wouldn’t be going to jail, he’d be going to Washington to receive an award from the Democratic National Committee.
To be continued