History – Old Man’s Musings

Is Biden the Worst President in History?

When people say that Biden is the worst president in history, remind them that he doesn’t yet have the Blue and Red States in open warfare. This article by Dave Brenner is enlightening.

On April 28 in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, allowing indefinite detainment of political dissidents. The gesture provoked immediate controversy, ignited a constitutional crisis, and exacerbated political tensions in Maryland.

The move came after a series of events that plunged Maryland into the heart of the sectional crisis. As union troops marched through the neutral state of Maryland in April of 1861, a group of state militia forces – viewing the excursion through Maryland to be an invasion and violation of state sovereignty – fired upon the federal forces as they attempted to use the state’s railway system. Nonetheless, the event became known as the “Baltimore Riot of 1861” and “Pratt Street Massacre” in the North, and those killed and wounded became portrayed as martyrs to the union cause to prohibit seccession.

By all accounts, these circumstances forced Marylanders to choose sides, and the state populace became bitterly divided. Though the state legislature voted against seceding from the union on April 29, it also decided to disable northern rail links and made a formal request to the president to evacuate federal troops from the state. In response to the bloodshed, Maryland native James Ryder Randall wrote “Maryland, my Maryland” to support southern solidarity and condemn the Lincoln administration. Furthermore, local newspapers quickly began to dub the situation the “Lexington of 1861.”

By suspending habeas corpus, the president initiated a constitutional crisis. According to the United States Constitution, the Great Writ cannot be suspended unless “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion,” and the forces in Maryland purported that they were simply resisting the same. Furthermore, the power is noted only in Article 1, which is confined to the enumerated powers of Congress and their limitations. Because the Lincoln assumed the authority to suspend habeas corpus rather than Congress, his deed was viewed as a bold-faced usurpation.

After suspending the writ, the Lincoln administration arrested and detained many military and civil officers from Maryland. Among them was John Merryman, a Lieutenant in the state militia tasked with disabling state railroad bridges, such that they could not be used by union soldiers. In addition, the president’s agents had Baltimore’s mayor, police chief, Board of Police, entire city council, and sitting US Congressman Henry May arrested and sent to Fort McHenry without charges.

The controversial arrests culminated in the case of Ex parte Merryman, where Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger Taney opined that Lincoln’s arrests were blatant usurpations. “The President, under the Constitution and laws of the United States,” he declared, “cannot suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, nor authorize any military officer to do so.” Though public jubilation followed the opinion, its impact was limited. The Lincoln administration ignored the ruling, and according to historian Thomas DiLorenzo, attempted to place the Chief Justice himself under arrest.

After the mounting opposition to the military presence and presidential administration grew throughout the summer of 1861, the president doubled down on the policy by placing one-third of the members of the Maryland General Assembly under house arrest. Per the president’s order, the decision was carried out for fear that the assembly “would aid the anticipated rebel invasion and would attempt to take the state out of the Union.” The Lincoln administration followed the order by imprisoning presiding circuit court judge Richard Bennett Carmichael in November, due to his public criticism that administration’s arrests had been arbitrary, unconstitutional, and immoral. The federal troops that arrested Carmichael beat him into unconsciousness while his court was in session, igniting even more public outcry.

Even former president Franklin Pierce, who desperately sought to arrange a compromise to avert bloodshed on the eve of war, viewed the situation as impetus to attack the president. Professing that a “reign of terror” had overtaken the new administration, Pierce called Lincoln’s whimsical arrests “ruinous to the victors as well as the vanquished.” In a letter to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, he described the federal policy in Maryland as “the worst form of despotism.”

Ultimately, Maryland remained divided throughout most of the war. After the Republican Congress finally gave its assent to the suspension of the writ in March of 1863, the state remained occupied by union forces throughout most of the war. The prolonged imposition of martial law raised the indignation of many Marylanders, including John Wilkes Booth – the eventual assassin of Lincoln. Unable to convene its legislature, the state officially remained in the union throughout the duration of the war, while permitting slavery under law – and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation specifically omitted the state from a list of states it applied to.

Note: Dave Benner is the author of Thomas Paine: A Lifetime of Radicalism and Compact of the Republic: The League of States and the Constitution, which are available for at: https://davidbenner.square.site

https://davidbenner.square.site

History of Civilization

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. Beer required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can were invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That’s how villages were formed. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These two were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups: 1. Liberals. 2. Conservatives.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement. Other men who were less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly BBQ’s and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement. Some of these liberal men evolved into women. Others became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy Liberal achievements include the domestication of cats, the invention of group therapy, group hugs, and the concept of democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that Conservatives provided.

Over the years Conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass for obvious reasons. Modern Liberals like lite beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French food are standard Liberal fare.

Another interesting evolutionary side note: many Liberal women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most college professors, social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, film makers in Hollywood, group therapists and community organizers are Liberals.

Liberals meddled in our national pastime and invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn’t fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink real beer. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, engineers, corporate executives, athletes, members of the military, airline pilots, and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the Liberals remained in Europe when Conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today’s lesson in world history. It should be noted that liberals may start foaming at the mouth and threaten to kill me for posting this. Sane people will laugh and pass it on.

What Have We Done?

I cribbed this unattributed post from MeWe. While not my words, it expresses my thoughts.

What Have We Done?
By E.P. Unum January 21, 2021

Joseph R. Biden was just inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States yesterday. I have nothing further to say about this historical event attended primarily by 26,000 National Guard Troops, FBI, NSA, CIA Operatives.

That fact alone is a very telling story. Apparently, additional security was deemed necessary for a President-Elect who received allegedly 80 million votes, more than any other person in the history of our country. All of the “peaceful riots” throughout the summer and Fall, where stores and businesses were looted and destroyed, monuments toppled and police and citizens were killed, did not require the assistance of armed troops to quell these “activities”.

I also will not comment on the 17 Executive Actions signed by our new President on his first afternoon in office. None of these offer any hope or unity nor are they of any benefit to the American people or to America. Indeed, they will drive us further downward.

But here are some lessons we can learn from the new change in leadership to the America we know:

Perhaps now you understand why there was never any action against the Clintons or Obama, how they destroyed emails and evidence and phones and servers, how they spied and wiretapped, how they lied to the FISA Court, had conversations on the tarmac, sent emails to cover their rears after key meetings, how Comey and Brennan and Clapper never were brought to any justice, how the FBI and CIA lied, how the Steele Dossier, paid for by Hillary Clinton, was passed along, how phones got factory reset, how leak after leak to an accomplice corrupt media went unchecked, why George Soros is always in the shadows, why Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and George Bush and John McCain were all involved, why they screamed Russia and pushed a sham impeachment, why no one ever goes to jail, why no one is ever charged, why nothing ever happens.

Perhaps now you know why there was no wrongdoing in the falsification of the FISA Warrants, why the Durham Report was delayed, why Hunter Biden has not been charged, why the FBI sat on his laptop for almost a year while Trump was being impeached on his laptop for almost a year while Trump was being impeached on fictitious charges, why the Biden’s’ connection to China was overlooked as was unleashed the perfect weapon, a virus that was weaponized politically to bring down the greatest economy ever known to man and at the same time usher in an unverifiable and unnecessary system of mail-in voting that corrupted the very foundation of our republic.

Maybe now you can understand why the media is 24/7 propaganda and lies, why up is down and down is up, right is wrong and wrong is right, why social media can now silence the First Amendment and speak over the President of the United States.

This has been the plan by the Deep State all along. They didn’t expect Trump to win in 2016. He messed up their plans, and delayed them a little…four years to be exact. They weren’t about to let it happen again. COVID-19 was like manna from heaven for democrats and the socialist left, it was a tool to inject fear into all Americans and it was weaponized Governors who shut down their states and crumbled their economies out of fear. The media, never to let a good crisis go to waste, helped shame and kill the economy, and the super lucky unverifiable mail-in ballots were just the trick to make sure the 47- year career politician, allegedly with hands in Chinese payrolls, the man that couldn’t finish a sentence or collect a crowd, miraculously became the most popular vote recipient of all time. You have just witnessed a silent, bloodless coup, the overthrow of the US free election system, the end of our Constitutional Republic, and the beginning of the downward slide of capitalism and the free enterprise system into the abyss of socialism and communism. What a remarkable achievement!

We have sacrificed the greatest engine of freedom, growth, and prosperity known to man on the altar of ignorance and totalitarianism. What will happen next? Well, here’s a brief list:

Expect the borders to open up. Increased immigration.
Expect agencies like CBP and INS and Homeland Security to be muzzled or even deleted.
Law enforcement will see continued defunding.
Elimination of the electoral college will be attempted.
History as we know it will be erased. Our children will no longer study the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, II, Korea or Vietnam. These will be replaced with classes on “white privilege”, “how American racism stole lands from native Indians” and the “need for racial equity” because America is a terrible nation.

The Supreme Court will be packed with liberal judges.
Your 2nd Amendment will be attacked and there may be a gun confiscation or gun buyback programs enacted and you will find it difficult to own a weapon…and ammunition of any kind.
If you have a manufacturing job or oil industry job, get ready to be unemployed. If you own and run a business, brace for the impact of higher taxes and more governmental regulations.
Maybe you’ll be on the hook for slavery reparations, or have your suburbs turned into Section 8 housing.
Your taxes are going to increase dramatically and businesses will pay more.
We will be paying more for gasoline at the pump and we will soon find ourselves once again dependent on foreign oil.
President Trump made us energy independent. For the first time in our history, the USA became an oil-exporting nation. Biden’s illogical and corrupt dismantling of the Keystone Pipeline not only displaced 42,000 high-paying union jobs but now Canada will sell the oil in Alberta BC to China while we search for new supplies at higher prices. Well done Joe!

In a couple of years, we will see the onslaught of inflation, high unemployment, less productivity as more and more people become unemployed, less productivity as more and more people become dependent on the government for subsistence, all of which is the natural course of socialist economies.

The dollar will no longer be the world’s reserve currency and America will no longer be the bastion of freedom it once was.

America will be overtaken by China as the largest economy in the world and, because we have become so complacent, we will find ourselves in the middle of great turmoil and upheaval with lots of civil strife that will make 2020 look like a walk in the park.

I could go on and on. There is no real recovery from this. The national elections from here on will be decided by New York City, Chicago, and California. The Constitutional Republic we created will be dead. Mob rule and appeasement will run rampant. The candidate who offers the most from the Treasury will get the most votes. But the votes cast won’t matter, just the ones received and counted. That precedent has been set.

Benjamin Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when someone shouted out, “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?’” Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Ladies and gentlemen, we have now lost the Republic our forefathers bequeathed to us, the Republic we fought and bled for these past two hundred and forty-five years. Some of you are wondering how this came to pass. The answers are indeed quite simple. We did it to ourselves:

We turned from God. We erased God from our halls of Justice and the Town Square.
We turned from family.
We turned from our country, our Flag, our Monuments to our leaders who paved the way. We denigrated all of these with revisionist history and the tearing down of monuments to our civilization and way of life.
We replaced achievement and recognition by embracing “participation trophies” so that our children can all feel a sense of accomplishment even when there was none.
We embraced degeneracy culture, inviting pornography into our laptops and living rooms.
We became so infatuated with technology that we lost the human touch…we found it easier to send emails or Facebook or Twitter posts to a friend or co-worker ten feet away from us rather than walking over to chat with them. We have, in essence, become too high tech and low touch. It sort of begs the question…what does it matter if we wire the entire world if we lose our immortal souls?
We celebrated and looked to fools as our heroes, comedians whose idea of a joke is holding up a bloody head of our President. That’s not funny. It’s sad.
We worshiped ourselves selfishly and took for granted what brave men and women fought and died to give us. Their sacrifices are no longer valued, replaced instead with scorn because they may have committed “transgressions measured by today’s standards, not theirs”.
We disregarded history and all it teaches.

On our watch, America just died a little. It’s likely she’ll never be the same again. Not until the 74 million Americans who voted for President Trump stand up and shout “we will no longer tolerate this and we want our country back” and do something about it.

For starters, get off Twitter and Facebook and refuse to be a part of their efforts to disrespect the First Amendment. I did. And I don’t miss it at all. If companies want to insult all the people who supported President Trump by denying them jobs, fight back. Don’t buy their products. Shun them. Until we take those steps, they will continue to wield their power, but the ultimate power is in your hands…the power of the consumer.

We did this to ourselves. We made our bed, now we have to sleep in it…until we get off our asses and remake it. Some of you have no idea what you’ve done. You know now. It is time to do something about it. Sadly, some of you do know what you have done. To them, I say…if you kick a dog long enough, pretty soon he’s gonna bite. I am tired of being kicked and insulted and disregarded as if I don’t matter. We do matter.

We are Americans.

Kindest regards

E.P. Unum

Irish Lives Matter too (1625)*

Note: Sources such as the New York Times, Snopes, and other revisionist Left-wing propaganda sites will call this a myth, but this is true. Calling slavery ‘indentured service’ does not change what happened.

The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.

From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.

Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.

African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.

In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.

England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.

There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain finally decided on its own to end its participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.
If anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong. Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories.

*I cribbed this from a FaceBook post by a fella named Daniel Wissert.