#preventing government tyranny

[reality-detective]

On this day in 1992, Randy Weaver and his family were attacked by Federal law enforcement at their home on Ruby Ridge in Boundary County, Idaho. What began on that day would quickly become known as one of the most egregious examples of Federal police tyranny in the nation's history. 👇

Randall Claude Weaver, who preferred to be called Pete as he hated his given name, was born in Villisca, Iowa to poor farming parents. One of four children, his family was extremely religious, though they often struggled to find a denomination that fit their beliefs. In 1968, Weaver dropped out of high school and enlisted in the US Military. 👇

While home on leave, he met his future wife, Victoria "Vicki" Jordison. In 1971, Weaver left the Army at the rank of Sergeant and a month later, he and Vicki were married. Randy quickly enrolled in Community College with the goal of becoming an FBI agent, but the high cost of tuition prevented him from completing school. He found work at the local John Deere factory while his wife became a homemaker as they began having children. 👇

Over time, they began developing a deeper and deeper distrust of the government, and Vicki began having "visions" that the Apocalypse was coming. The family decided their only option was to move off the grid. They spent time among the Amish, learning how to live without electricity. Then they emptied their life savings of $5000 to buy the small mountain property in northern Idaho. 👇

In 1984, their troubles began. Randy had a falling out with neighbor Terry Kinnison, over a $3,000 land deal. Kinnison lost the ensuing lawsuit and was ordered to pay Weaver an additional $2,100 in court costs and damages. Kinnison took his vengeance in letters written to the FBI, Secret Service, and county sheriff, claiming that Weaver had threatened to kill Pope John Paul II, President Ronald Reagan, and Idaho governor John Evans. 👇

Randy and Vicki Weaver were interviewed by the FBI, Secret Service, and the County Sheriff. Police were told that Weaver was a member of the white supremacist Aryan Nation and that he had a large gun collection in his cabin. Weaver denied the allegations, and no charges were filed. 👇

The Weavers filed an affidavit in 1985, claiming their enemies were plotting to provoke the FBI into killing them. The couple wrote a letter to President Reagan, claiming a threatening letter may have been sent to him, over a forged signature. No such letter ever materialized but, seven years later, prosecutors would cite the 1985 note as evidence of a Weaver family conspiracy against the government. 👇

One of the Weaver's neighbors, Frank Kumnick, was a member of the Aryan Nation, and invited Randy to attend a World Aryan Congress in 1986. Unknown to either man was that Kumnick was already a target of the ATF. 👇

While at this "Congress", Weaver met a man posing as a gun dealer who was actually an undercover ATF agent. Randy invited this man to his home to discuss forming a resistance group against what they called the "Zionist Occupation Government". 👇

Later that same year, the ATF would charge Weaver with selling that informant two sawed-off shotguns. 👇

The ATF offered to drop all charges, as long as Randy was willing to become a confidential informant. Randy refused. The indictments came down shortly after, claiming that Randy was a "bank robber" with an extensive criminal history. These allegations were of course fabricated. However, Randy was still arrested and then released, pending trial. 👇

Trial was set for February 20, 1991 and subsequently moved to February 21, due to a federal holiday. Weaver’s parole officer sent him a letter, erroneously stating that the new date was March 20. A bench warrant was issued when Weaver failed to show in court, for the February date. Randy was, despite being completely unaware of it, officially labeled a fugitive from justice. 👇

The U.S. Marshals Service agreed to put off execution of the warrant until after the March 20 date, but the U.S. Attorney’s Office called a grand jury, a week earlier. It’s been said that a grand jury could indict a ham sandwich and the adage proved true, particularly when the prosecution failed to reveal parole officer Richins’ letter, with the March 20 date.

The episode fed into the worst preconceptions, of both sides. Marshalls developed a “Threat Profile” on the Weaver family and an operational plan: “Operation Northern Exposure”. Weaver, more distrustful than ever, was convinced that if he lost at trial, the government would seize his land and take his four children leaving Vicki, homeless. 👇

Federal surveillance of Ruby Ridge began. Marshalls attempted to negotiate over the following months, but Weaver refused to come out. Several people used as go-betweens, proved to be even more radical than the Weavers themselves. In a rare show of reason under the circumstances, Deputy Marshal Dave Hunt asked Weaver neighbor Bill Grider “Why shouldn’t I just go up there … and talk to him?” Grider replied, “Let me put it to you this way. If I was sitting on my property and somebody with a gun comes to do me harm, then I’ll probably shoot him.” 👇

On April 18, 1992, a helicopter carrying media figure Geraldo Rivera for the Now It Can Be Told television program was allegedly fired on, from the Weaver residence. Surveillance cameras then being installed by US Marshalls showed no such shots fired and Pilot Richard Weiss, denied the story.  Even so, a lie gets around the world, before the truth can get its pants on. (Hat tip, Winston Churchill, for that bit of wisdom). The ‘shots fired narrative’ now became a media feeding frenzy. The federal government drew up ‘rules of engagement’👇

On August 21st, 1992, six Deputy US Marshalls entered the property to provide ground level reconnaissance and choose a spot to ambush and arrest Weaver. Deputy Marshall Art Roderick threw rocks at the cabin to see how the dogs would react. The cabin was at this time out of meat and, thinking the dog’s reaction may have been provoked by a game animal, Randy, a friend named Kevin Harris and Weaver’s 14-year-old son Samuel came out with rifles, to investigate. Vicki, Rachel, Sarah and baby Elisheba, remained in the cabin. 👇

When Striker discovered the team's locations, on of the Marshalls shot and killed the dog. This caused a brief firefight. By the time the shooting stopped, Deputy US Marshall William Degan had been shot and killed by Harris. Tragically, 14 year old Sammy was also dead, shot in the back by the Marshalls while trying to help his dog. 👇

The situation quickly spiraled. The National Guard was called in, as well as SWAT teams and helicopters. The Weavers moved Sammy's body into a small shed near the main house, then retreated into the house. 👇

The next day, August 22nd, Weaver and his 16 year old daughter Sarah, along with Harris, left the main house to enter the shed Sammy's body lay. FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi fired from a position some 200 yards distant. The bullet tore into Weaver’s back and out his armpit. The three raced back to the cabin. Horiuchi’s second round entered the door as Harris dove for the opening, injuring him in the chest before striking Vicki in the face as she held baby Elisheba, in her arms. Vicki did not survive. 👇

Two days later, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Danny Coulson wrote the following memorandum, unaware that Vicki Weaver lay dead:

“Something to Consider

1. Charge against Weaver is Bull Shit.

2. No one saw Weaver do any shooting.

3. Vicki has no charges against her.

4. Weaver’s defense. He ran down the hill to see what dog was barking at. Some guys in camys shot his dog. Started shooting at him. Killed his son. Harris did the shooting [of Degan]. He [Weaver] is in pretty strong legal position.” 👇

The siege of Ruby Ridge would drag on for ten days. Kevin Harris was brought out on a stretcher on August 30, along with Vicki’s body. Randy Weaver emerged the following day. Subsequent trials acquitted Harris of all wrongdoing and Weaver of all but his failure to appear in court, for which he received four months and a $10,000 fine. 👇

In August 1995, the US government avoided trial on a civil lawsuit filed by the Weavers by awarding the three surviving daughters $1,000,000 each, and Randy Weaver $100,000 over the deaths of Sammy and Vicki Weaver. Randy would pass away on May 11, 2022, after a long illness.

The atrocity at Ruby Ridge would not be the end of the story. Six months later, many of the same agents would be involved at the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

The story of the Weaver family and Ruby Ridge reminds us all that just wanting to be left alone is often not an option. The Federal government, in particular the FBI, ATF, and US Marshalls, used deception, outright lies, and terroristic tactics, all in an attempt to entrap a man who refused to become an informant against his neighbors. 👇

History is not what we were told. Everything is a fμ¢%in' lie. 🤔

Posted August 21, 2024

[arc-misadventures]

Vivat Libertas Soluta

His head was mounted on a pike. The false king, king slayer, the traitor, Adam Tauraus was dead.

Upon the ramparts of, Kuo Kuana Castle stood, Jaune Arcadia, first born son of, Duke Acheius Arcadia. A wondering knight who came to, Menageire, and saw the turmoil that befell upon the kingdom. He soon lead a hearty band of militia into a well trained army, and overthrew the tyrannical king, and restored freedom to the land. Now the battle was done, the war was over, but the real work was about to begin.

Jaune: Faunas of Menagerie! Adam Taurus has been defeated! The kingdom of Menagerie has been freed from his tyranny! You are now free! Long live the, Kingdom of Menagerie! Long live the freedom of the Faunas! Vivat libertas soluta!

Pure Fang: Vivat libertas soluta!

Jaune: VIVAT LIBERTA SOLUTA!!!

Pure Fang: VIVAT LIBERTA SOLUTA!!!

Jaune: VIVIAT LIBERTA SOLUTA!!!

Pure Fang: VIVIAT LIBERTA SOLUTAAAAAA!!!

~~~

Sienna: Ahh, Jaune there you are. How are you feeling?

Jaune was sitting in a chair in the great hall of, Kuo Kuana Castle. He looked to his second in command, the once proud leader of the, White Fang, until she too was betrayed by, Adam's secret combinations.

Jaune: I'm tired... I'm just tired... I helped you free your people, killed the tyrant who overthrew the royal family, and enslaved your people... and, now that all of that is over... now, the real work begins...

Sienna: The real work?

Jaune: There was this old solider I fought alongside once. We were attacking this fort to seize it from some, Mistralian troops, and we managed to take it. While we were celebrating our victory, there was this old solider sitting on the side mending his equipment. And, I asked him what he was doing, and why he wasn't joining in the celebrations. He said to me, 'My Lord, taking this fort was the easy part, holding it though, now that's the hard part.'

Jaune: We have done away with the traitor king, but now you must build a new, a stronger kingdom that will prevent such tyranny from rising again. The easy part is over, the hard work is about to begin.

Jaune: The government needs to be reorganized, the farmlands that the, White Fang torched will need to be resown. The fortifications at the coast need to be rebuilt. Above all, the treasury needs to be refilled. There's so much work to be done...

Sienna: I see... I was aware that we had work to do now that the, Adam's tyrannic reign has been overthrown. But, I wasn't aware that it would be that much work.

Jaune: That's just the ones at the top of my head. There will no doubt be dozens of smaller obstacles that will be needed to be overcome. As I said, we have much work to do.

Neon: 'We?' Wait, does that mean you're staying?

The duo stared to the side as, Neon Katt, Sienna's second after those in her former members of the, White Fang betrayed her to fight along side the traitor king.

Jaune: Ha! You think I was just going to leave after slaying, Adam? Hell no! I put in a lot of work into reforming the loyalist of the, White Fang into the fighting force that the, Pure Fang now is! And, I put in a hell of a lot more work into killing that welp, Adam, and freeing the people of, Menagerie! I'm thigh deep into this mess, you aren't getting rid of me just when the real work is about to begin!

Neon: Oh thank the gods!

Neon visibly relaxed as she heard, Jaune said those words.

Jaune: Eh?

Sienna: Many of us were worried that you being a human, and a part of your countries nobility, that you would eventually leave us behind, and go home.

Jaune: Ahh, well I'll have to send a letter to my father informing him him of all that has happened. But, that I have no intention of leaving. So sorry, Neon, but you're stuck with me.

Neon: Oh that's such a shame.

Jaune smiled as he heard the snark sass that emanated from, Neon's lips as she put on a sad display of sorrow, sad in the attempt, less so in the effect.

Jaune: Hehe... cheeky bugger.

Sun: Hey now! What's with sour mood people? We just won a civil war! We should be celebrating! Drinks all around!

Jaune smile grew as he saw his friend, Sun Wukong enter the room a bottle in his hands.

Sun Wukong, the Pirate Monky King. A pirate who traveled the seas between, Menagerie, and the rest of the world, looting, and plundering any ships he deemed worthy. More often then not, human ships, than faunas ships.

He joined, Jaune, and his marry band of freedom fighters to help arm, and supply, Jaune, and his forces as they fought to overthrow the tyrant king.

Jaune: So long as it isn't that cheap piss you call ale, you made me drink at that pub, I'm up for a round, or two.

Sienna: Agreed.

Sun: Ha! I'll have you know I just raided the castles wine cellar so I have the pick of the litter of the good booze!

Jaune: Did he pick the good booze?

Fiona: Uhhh... no.

Fiona Thyme, one of the few subordinates under, Sienna's command who did not betray her leader. She plucked the ale from, Sun's hand, and inspected it. Giving the bottle a look of disgust as she handed it back, whipping her hands of the bottles filth.

Sun: What?! I picked the perfect bottle!

Fiona: You picked a bottle of, Vaccuo brandy; This stuff is tasteless crap that no one likes to drinks.

Sun: What?! If no one drinks it, how come my ships stores kept getting emptied?

Jaune: Wait, that stuff is a drink? We were using it to as a fire bomb against the, White Fang.

Sun: Awww... my booze...

Sienna: I'll go check the wine cellar, and get us something good to drink.

Jaune: Thanks, Sienna. You can keep the bottle, Sun.

Sun: Fine! Not like I wanted to share my favourite drink with my friends...

Jaune: Okay... I'll try one small cup of...

Anubis: Lord Arcadia!

Jaune: Anubis? Are you alright, you seem to be in a panic?

Anubis Iwiw, the last surviving member of the royal guard, her fellow members of the royal guard sacrificed their lives to buy time for, Anubis to escape. To warn the others of, Adam's betrayal, and the death of the royal family.

Because of her combat experience, Jaune appointed her as his second in command. Giving him valuable information as they fought, such as the lay of the land, and how various forts throughout, Menagerie were built, or would have been built. Giving, Jaune valuable information to make this civil war end far sooner than expected.

Anubis: She's alive!

Jaune: Who, who is alive?

Anubis: My Lady! She's alive!

Jaune: What?!

Sienna: Queen Belladonna is alive?!

Anubis: Yes! Praise the Gods! My Lady lives!

Sun: She's alive?!

Jaune: I thought she was dead?

Fiona: Everyone thought she was dead! We all saw, Taurus paraded, King Ghira's head around when he declared himself king. We just thought she was killed along with him.

Anubis: Well, she isn't! My lady is alive, and well! And, she wants to see you.

Jaune: Me?

Anubis: Yes! My Lady desires to see you, Lord Arcadia.

Jaune looked at his friends as they shrugged their shoulders, and nodded towards, Anubis, a subtle gesture to follow her. A tired groan escaped his lips, as he walked towards, Anubis.

Jaune: Save me a drink fellas, I think I'm going to need it...

~~~

Anubis led, Jaune through the many halls of, Kuo Kuana Castle., leading him deep within the inner most parts of the castle. Including several attendants who stood before them, that bowed their heads in respect towards him.

Jaune: Are these the, Queen's attendants? I thought they were all killed. Then again, I thought the, Empress was killed alongside them.

Anubis: The King may be seen as the leader of the nation, but her, Majesty is the true power behind the throne.

Jaune: Wait, what? How is that so?

Anubis: The King is a figure head that helps lead, and unite the people under one banner. In times of war, he will lead our armies in the defense of our lands. But, while the king is away, her Majesty manages the finances, and maintains the social stability of the kingdom.

Jaune: Ahh clever. So. Adam couldn't kill her because of the possible ramifications the kingdom would face if she was suddenly killed?

Anubis: That is... one of the reasons she was spared.

Jaune: One of?

Anubis: I will let my, Lady explain it herself. There are things only she can explain.

Jaune arched an eyebrow at those cryptic words, he had long since learned that the faunas were a rather secretive lot. A habit of mind often used to protect others, and themselves from others evil scheming.

The duo stopped as they reached a sliding door with two attendants standing besides it.

Anubis: Tell her, Grace that I have brought, Lord Arcadia.

Anubis bowed her head, as the attendant bowed her head in turn, she whispered something through the door. They stood there for a moment before the doors slide open from the other side, granting them passage inside.

The room smelled of incense as a large veil stood before them, hiding her majesty from them. Anubis reached a mat on the floor before the curtain, and knelt down upon it. Jaune took the spot besides her, and knelt down as well. Anubis bowed her head low before raising it to speak to the lady behind the curtain.

Anubis: My Lady, I once again offer my most sincere gratitude to know that you are safe. And, as per your command, I have brought, Lord Arcadia before you.

Anubis: Lord Arcadia, may I present to you, Queen Kali Asrid Belladonna. The Shadow Queen of the Faunas Kingdom of Menagerie.

Jaune: I am honoured by this meeting I have been given to meet the, Queen of Menagerie.

Jaune bowed his head after giving a basic noble greetings, he heard a soft laugh as he raised his head.

Kali: You have done well, Captain of the Guard, my thanks. You may take your leave now. You, and the rest of my attendants present.

Jaune watched as, Anubis's body flinched in surprise.

Anubis: A-Are you sure my, Lady?

Kali: Fufufu~! Do you fear that this young man will do something untoward me without you, or my attendants present?

The Queen's laugh was a warm, joyful laugh that found it amusing that she thought, Jaune would do anything to her if she was left alone.

No, Jaune thought. The Queen thought it was amusing that, Jaune could have the possibility to do anything to her when she was all alone with him.

But, Anubis looked at, Jaune from the corner of her eye before she calmed herself, and spoke.

Anubis: No, my Lady. I trust, Lord Arcadia with my life. I'm just... I'm...

Kali: I know, Anu. We will have plenty of time to talk about things that have happened later. In the meantime, Lord Arcadia, and I have many things we need to discuss about. Privately.

Anubis: I understand, my Lady.

Anubis soon stood, and left the chamber with the rest of her, Majesties attendants. Leaving, Jaune all alone with the, Queen of Menagerie.

Silenced reigned in the room before, Jaune, almost nervously bowed his head before the, Queen.

Jaune: I offer my greeting towards the, Queen of Menagerie. And, I also offer my glad tidings at the news that her majesty is alive, and well. We were under the impression that the entire royal family had been killed when the traitor, Adam Taurus betrayed, and murdered the former king, King Ghira Belladonna. Or, more so I was under that impression, as that is a common practice when rebellions against the throne occur in my home country.

Kali: Yes... Your home country... Tell me, Lord Jaune Lunaria Arcadia, son of, Duke Acheius Calabane Arcadia. What is a, Valian knight doing all the way down here fighting in a civil war that he, and his country have no part with? Why put in so much effort in a world outside your own?

Jaune: ...

Jaune: I heard that the, White Fang were freedom fighters, that they fought with the, Dynasty of Mantle for years, decades even to free captured faunas slaves. As a young boy I used to look up to such noble actions. So, I decided to come here as part of my knight errantry quest to learn about, and from such freedom fighters.

Jaune: And, yet when I finally arrive here. I find faunas shoving other faunas into cages, and selling them off to the, Dynasty for coin. They say they are just expelling 'traitors...'

Jaune: The slavers liberators, became the slave traders... I find the idea of slavery barbaric, and cruel. But, to find out that the very men who once freed slaves, now make their fellow country men... Children into slaves... I couldn't stand for it...

Jaune: Slavers dehumanize their captives, viewing them as less then cattle to be bought, and sold for some coin. To see them shoving children into a cage... I lost it... I killed the slavers, freed the slaves, and I made sure that this would not happen again.

Jaune: As I was going about freeing the the slaves, Sienna Khan, and her followers found me, and I learned of, Adam's betrayal. Upon learning this, I joined her forces, and reform the loyalist members of the, White Fang into the, Pure Fang. I then lead them in a crusade of liberation to free the people of, Menagerie from the traitor king, Adam Taurus's vile reign.

Jaune: I did this not because I wanted glory, or fame, I did this because I thought it was right. That it was the right thing to do! I need not riches, nor titles for my deeds, your Grace. The meager gifts the people of, Menagerie have given me throughout my quest to liberate these lands are enough; I am contempt with these things.

Kali: Ohh~? That will surly not do noble knight. You have done a great service to the people of, Menagerie. Rewards for your service are to be given. I will hear no word to the contrary.

Jaune figured as much, he truly had no wanted no reward for his accomplishments. But, as he expected, that due to nobles honour some reward would have to be given. Least of, he could now request simpler items as a reward for his accolades.

Jaune: In that case your, Grace. I plan to stay on to help the people to rebuild, Menagerie. So, a house of my own would suffice.

Kali: A house? Hmmm... That could be arranged...

A manor would all that, Jaune would ask for. He did not desire anything more than that.

Kali: However... I wish to propose a better offer to you, my dear noble knight.

Jaune: What offer?

Jaune was now on high alert. Noble dealings was froth with traps, and pitfalls hidden behind honey words that the uninitiated brought forth into the game of noble politics.

Such fun.

Kali: The Belladonna royal family is in... dire states. And, because of that, so to is the nation... For, I did not loose just my husband, King Ghira Belladonna, by the traitors hand. I also lost my daughter, to his honied words...

Jaune: Your daughter? There is an heir to the throne?

Kali: Yes... there was an heir to the throne...

Jaune: My... my condolences...

Kali: Save your breath. She was dead to me long before her life was extinguished, by Sienna Khan's hands.

Jaune: W-What? What do you mean by that?

Kali: She died first in bond, and then again in blood.

Bond, and blood: That was a very worrisome combination. Suddenly the death of the king, and Adam's accension to power posed a far darker implications about how things when really happened.

Kali: Just like the queen, the princess of the, Royal family are kept in the shadows to maintain the country behind the scenes. The princes, and kings are put to the forefront to show the people that the royal family is there for the people. The identity of my former daughter was to be kept in the shadows until she took the throne, then she would make a few public appearances. But, she was to be kept hidden.

Kali: Unfortunately, despite my best efforts she was a rebellious, and foolish child. Often escaping the castle for long times, I did this myself from time to time. But, I did not expect her to be found, and indoctrinated by, Adam Taurus's fringe element of radicals within the, White Fang. Nor, that that traitors scums influence was so strong that she would happily lead her father to his death...

Jaune: What?! She betrayed her own father!

Jaune was furious, familial bonds were held as sacred among, Valians. The mark of a kinslayers was carved upon the bodies of kinslayers before they were hanged, and their bodies left to rot. They were given no gravestone, and to the greater world it was as if they never ecisted.

Jaune: Damnable kinslayer! She help murder her own father, and allow a tyrant to usurp the throne! I curse her to a thousand hells where she will find no peace!

Kali: Oh-ho-ho~? I see it is true what they say, about, Valians, and their opinions on kinslayers. If you must thank anyone for ridding the world of my wretched daughter, then you should thank, Sienna Khan. The Captain of the Royal Guard, Anubus Iwiw informed me that she was slain by her hands, and her body was burned to ash.

Jaune: Sienna killed her? When did she... Wait... there was a girl that, Sienna saw that she screamed traitor at. She never told me why she was a traitor, she just made sure her body was burned when she was killed... What was her name...

Jaune remembered the day, Sienna killed the traitor. Sienna was brutal; Sienna whipped her with her chain whip cutting grooves of blood across her body. The traitor disarmed her with her sword, and viciously stabbed her, aiming to kill, Sienna. But, Sienna simply shrugged of the wound, and tackled her to the ground.

Sienna's hands wrapped her hands around the traitors neck, she squeezed hard as she chocked her out. The traitor clawed at her arms, and face, but Sienna would not relent. As blood dripped down her face from the claw marks, she muttered the words, 'This if your your father, Blake!' Just before, Jaune heard a wicked snap as her neck was broken.

It was a brutal sight to behold, but as, Jaune, pried Sienna's hands from around her neck, she cried. She cried her heart out as the fort, fell, and burned toi the ground. Taking the traitors body along with it.

Jaune: Blake... That was her name, Blake. Sienna didn't tell me who she was. Just that her name was, Blake, and she was the traitor amongst traitors...

Kali: Blake... Blake Belladonna... That was her name... As I said, she was my daughter. Our familial bounds were severed however when she lead her father to the slaughter. All because she did not learn of her peoples history.

Jaune: What did she not learn?

Kali: Experience: The cruel experience of the brutality of war.

Jaune: The Faunas Wars...

Kali: Yes... The youth of this age did not experience the true horrors the, Faunas Wars wrought upon the faunas. They see whatever slights the humans of the modern day give to them, to be just as cruel, and brutal as they were before the, Faunas Wars. Their elders told them things were far worse, so they should just accept whatever slights the humans give them. But, youth is often the age of rebellion in young children.

Kali: The, White Fang was once the military arm of the faunas. But, more, and more radical youth joined the, White Fang, and... Well... you know what happened.

Jaune: I know all too well... I spent the better part of two years cleaning up their messes. The radicals overthrew, Sienna Khan, and expelled those that remained loyal to, Sienna. They then killed the former king, Ghira Belladonna, and Adam Taurus usurped the throne. Arresting anyone who rose up against, Adam's tyranny. Then they started selling them as slaves... All for the, 'Glory of the Faunas...'

Kali: For the glory of the faunas...

Jaune: If I may ask... How did you survive your, Grace.

Kali: Oh? Well, the last kind act my daughter gave me was sparing my life. The excuse she gave to, Adam Taurus was that I was still needed to run the country. So I was to be spared so I could continue to rule the country from the shadows. At least until, Blake could take my place.

Kali: Though, Adam's claws were too entrenched into the dealings of the country that I could scarcely do anything to curb his influence. The most I could do was allow certain tidbits of information to be leaked: Supply deposits, money trains, weapon piles, simple things like that.

Jaune: So you were the informant. I offer my thanks your, Majesty. Your information proved to be quite valuable in our attempt to defeat, Adam's forces.

Kali: It was all I could offer you. At least, all I could offer you at the time.

Jaune: What do you mean by that...?

Kali: I wish to make you an offer, Lord Arcadia.

Jaune: And, what is it that offer your, Grace?

Jaune could hear the happy lint to her voice. She was scheming something, the question now was, what?

Kali: The kingdom has lost it's king, and it's heir to the throne. It is in shambles, and it is hanging on by a thread. I am capable of repairing this kingdom from the shadows. But, I need a new, King by my side, and a new heir to assume the throne, and I would like you to provide me, and the kingdom with both.

Jaune: Wait... You want me to marry you, and become king?! And, to sire an heir with you?!

Kali: In indeed I do~!

Jaune had not expected this sudden turn of development. He had expected that the, Queen would give him something akin to, lands, titles, money, that is why he tried to ask for something simple, such as a house. But, to be offered the throne was not what he ever expected.

Kali: You may think you are not worthy of the crown, but you have been acting like a king without the crown for a long time; You freed my the people, united them under a single banner, and fought for the freedom of all the faunas from, Adam's tyrannic rule. Thus are the duties of a, Faunas King. There are few who would no doubt oppose the notion of a human becoming the crown king of the faunas. But, if it's you I doubt many will object... too much. So tell me... Jaune do you accept my offer; Will you marry me, sire an heir, and rule the country along side me?

Jaune swallowed as his head went spinning as he tired to comprehend this offer. Jaune stared at veil as his struggled to come up with an answer. His thought's were soon interrupted as he heared a melody of an amused laugh from behind the curtain.

Kali: Relax, take your time to think about my offer. But, do remember...

The curtain was pulled away as a beauty unknown to his senses appeared before him. The raw, godly elegance of the, Queen of the Faunas, Kali Asrid Belladonna.

Kali: Don't keep a lady waiting too long now, Jaune~!

Jaune: (Gulp...)

Jaune: I-I'll make sure to do that, your Grace...

Jaune cursed the old man under his breath, he was right: The hard work was truly about to begin.

[politicalprof]

The Declaration of Independence

As I do every year, I am posting the entire text of the Declaration of Independence. It is flawed, inconsistently applied, and fascinating. It may be even more relevant this year than most. If you haven't ever read the whole thing, you should. It's worth the time:

----------------

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

[fromchaostocosmos]

I found this gem of article. It has got to be some of the most disgusting Holocaust Inversion I've seen to date and I've seen a lot. It is an antisemitic hellhole. Because I have no interest in giving any form revenue via clicks I've decided to put the whole article here:

When the Holocaust returned it came denouncing Anti-Semitism and wearing a star of David

By Caitlin Johnstone

When the Holocaust returned it came denouncing anti-semitism and wearing a Star of David. It was never going to look how we were expecting. It wasn’t going to show up in its old familiar costume with the bent cross and the tiny mustache, blaming all the problems on the Jews. It had to look different. If it didn’t look different, we never would have let it in the door.

And that’s still what’s throwing a lot of people off: it looks different. It doesn’t look like what all all the World War II movies and Holocaust novels conditioned us to watch out for. In fact, it looks so different that the victims in the last story have the same religion as the antagonists in the new one.

That old aphorism “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” is true because people don’t tend to make the exact same mistake in the same way twice, but the conditioning which led them to make the first mistake will often lead them to make a second similar one. We’ve all been made far too familiar with the Nazi extermination program to ever consent to Jews being rounded up and loaded onto trains again, but we also didn’t purge from our civilisation all the murderousness, hatred and tyranny which made it possible. That’s why this new Holocaust has been allowed to happen.

We’ve all been conditioned to watch out for the next Hitler, but there’s never going to be another Hitler. We’ve been so focused on looking out for the Hitler who never comes that many of us missed when we started singing verses that rhyme with the ones we were hearing in Germany eight decades ago.

People assume what’s happening in Gaza can’t be an actual genocide, because the news media keep assuring everyone that’s not what we’re looking at, and so do the politicians in both parties.

“This can’t possibly be what it looks like,” people say. “If it was, we would have heard about it in the news.”

The villains in this new story don’t look like the villains in the old story, and, if you are a properly indoctrinated westerner, they might not look like villains at all. They might just look like Jews defending themselves from terrorists and western governments rightly defending their dear ally — which is exactly what they should do if they want to prevent another Holocaust!

But it’s that very misperception which is making today’s Holocaust possible. This mass atrocity is being tolerated by huge parts of the population exactly because we see it as intolerable for large numbers of Jews to be killed by those who hate them, not understanding that the people who were killed on October 7 were killed not because of their religion, but because they were part of a settler-colonialist project which is premised on the perpetual abuse of a preexisting indigenous population.

People defend Israel’s actions on the grounds that Israel has reasons for doing things the way it’s doing them. They have to bomb Gaza — they suffered an unprovoked attack from a bunch of evil terrorists. They have to bomb all the hospitals and schools and mosques — that’s where Hamas are hiding. They have to bomb areas that are packed full of children — Hamas are using those children as human shields.

But those who commit mass atrocities always justify their actions. They always have reasons for doing them. They always frame it as a necessary act of self-preservation.

That was always what the next Holocaust was going to look like. It was never going to feature new bad guys who cackle and twist their mustaches saying “Haha, we are evil! Let’s kill a bunch of people because we are evil!” They were always going to frame themselves as the heroes and victims, and the other side as the villains and victimisers. They were always going to offer a bunch of reasons why what they’re doing is actually good and righteous, even though it looks evil on its face.

If we are to prevent genocidal atrocities, we need to be able to recognise what’s happening in real time, and we can’t do that if we’re expecting them to show up in familiar and instantly recognisable packaging. We need to be able to see through the manipulations and justifications in the here and now so we can stop it in its tracks instead of waiting for history to judge it in our rearview mirror after it’s already happened.

This is important to recognise when it comes to saving Gaza, and it’s important to recognise when it comes to preventing the Holocausts of the future as well. They will never look identical to the Holocausts of the past. Their form will be unprecedented, and they will have different justifications for their orchestration. But they will rhyme. And we need to be able to pick up on that as it happens.

Republished from Caitlin Johnstone from Caitlin’s Newsletter, October 23, 2023

[simply-ivanka]

Declaration of Independence

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Signed By:

Georgia

Button Gwinnett

Lyman Hall

George Walton

North Carolina

William Hooper

Joseph Hewes

John Penn

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge

Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts

John Hancock

Maryland

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Franklin

John Morton

George Clymer

James Smith

George Taylor

James Wilson

George Ross

Delaware

Caesar Rodney

George Read

Thomas McKean

New York

William Floyd

Philip Livingston

Francis Lewis

Lewis Morris

New Jersey

Richard Stockton

John Witherspoon

Francis Hopkinson

John Hart

Abraham Clark

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett

William Whipple

Massachusetts

Samuel Adams

John Adams

Robert Treat Paine

Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins

William Ellery

Connecticut

Roger Sherman

Samuel Huntington

William Williams

Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire

Matthew Thornton

[darkmaga-returns]

MCNBC host Rachel Maddow has called on the U.S. military and American citizens to join forces and launch a coup d’état against the incoming Trump administration to prevent Trump from serving a second term.

Following Trump’s victory, Maddow urged citizens, U.S. military leaders and celebrities to break the law and do everything in their power to resist “authoritarian” Donald Trump.

Infowars.com reports: Speaking to Democrats feeling dismayed at the outcome of this week’s election, Maddow said, “History doesn’t end. Time doesn’t stop. Now we have the benefit of knowing how this has gone in every other country that has been through a democracy to authoritarian transition. And sadly, there are a lot of them. We have the benefit of seeing what’s happened in those other countries, though, and what we know is that the more ground the authoritarian takes, the harder it is to ever get that ground back.”

“And so the first order of business is to stop them from taking any uncontested ground right from the outset. When it comes to what our system of government is and what our democracy is, right, we know from other countries experiences that quickly– I mean now in the next few weeks if not the next few days –they are going to start pushing to see how far the country is going to let them go, without pushback, without protest.”

Next, the mainstream media anchor tried to mobilize Harris supporters, saying, “They’re counting on all those tens of millions of Americans to be despondent, to feel powerless, to check out, which, of course, would mean letting them do what they want, letting them run the table. What they really don’t want is for the half the country that voted against them– the half the country that wants to keep our democracy –what they really don’t want is for those tens of millions of Americans to wake up tomorrow feeling scrappy as hell.”

“Now we can work full time on being freaking pirates. On being a thorn in the side to anyone who now intends to try to turn this country into some pin pot tyranny. What they want, least of all, is to realize that half the country went to bed sad tonight, but then woke up tomorrow fired up with a new sense of purpose, knowing that, apparently, this is what we are on this earth to do with American citizens in this generation,” she added.

Maddow claimed protest “has to be done now” and “has to happen in sort of every aspect, every corner of our society.”

“The U.S. military needs to give the American people binding assurances that they will not deploy U.S. military force against the civilian population in this country. They can give those assurances, and now they should,” she stated.

“The free press needs to give the people of this country assurances that they will not become state TV,” the Democrat newswoman continued.

[eugenedebs1920]

The situation we find ourselves in is on account of 2 things! Democrats kind hearted, trusting nature, and Republicans lust for relevancy, power and their spinelessness.

Trump should be either, in prison/Guantanamo bay, or on trial heading towards one of those locations.

The corruption is infuriating! I’m no law scholar or a constitutional lawyer, just some dumb plumber, but the fourteenth amendment section 3 CLEARLY states:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President or Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military under the United States or under any State, who having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature,or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemy thereof.

It’s not hard to comprehend what they were articulating. It’s not hard to understand their meaning in some textualism nonsense! Simple! If you, as an American holding federal office, rebelled against or staged a coup, albeit failed or otherwise, violated the oath you took, to protect and defend, the Constitution of the United States, you are disqualified from holding any federal position again! Simple!

To say this Supreme Court isn’t partisan. To say they aren’t corrupt, can only be attested to being deaf blind and dumb, or pure partisan hackery! Shame on them! Shame on Mitch McConnell, and frankly shame on garbage MAGA! It is clear the simple minded loyalty far outweighs the Constitution to them. It is easy to see the sycophancy holds more reverence to them than their nation. The lack of foresightedness to the consequences of their allegiance to one man, one party, one view of the United States has potential to result in its downfall. For when the structures of government are burdened to the ground, in their ashes lie the remnants of democracy, with our republic wafting away like smoke from the rubble.

What will be built upon the heap of a once free and prosperous nation, will be the unqualified craftsmanship of the terrorist responsible for its demise. Raised on the flimsy ground of oligarchs and plutocrats, a foundation reinforce with the same seditionists who oversaw the demolition. With its structure made, not for the people, but for those who seek its exploitation. A decor of fascism and oppression hanging on the walls of tyranny, portraits resembling an illusion of what once was. Above head the autocratic shingles drip the rewards to its inhabitants poured down from the servitude of the constituency. This flimsy construct of a building erected for the benefit of the few, by the many, will find its supports fail time and time again, only worsening the conditions upon those whose labor constructed it.

The whole purpose of the tripartite system, the whole reasoning behind checks and balances, the entire point of the three branches of government was to prevent consolidation of power, not to enhance it! With a minority rule this has been achieved.

In their gullibility Democrats, liberals stood by assuming the structures of our Constitution would hold. Actively watching this demolition take place. Hardly putting forth a struggle against it. Their morality prohibiting the defense of democracy in some self righteous weakness against tactics of corruption not on the same grounds of that in which this code of conduct would give good grace. When one comes to dismantle the very structure of your republic you do not stand as a nail but as an iron beam. Not all can be trusted, not all have a standard of ethical conduct upon which they stand. You cannot win a boxing match when your opponent shows up with a machete.

It is the trust from the left that allowed these attacks on our Constitution to occur as much as it was demonsterous betrayal of it from the right.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

On this day in 1787, thirty-nine brave men signed the proposed U.S. Constitution, recognizing all who are born in the United States or by naturalization, have become citizens

+

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 17, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 18, 2024

In 1761, 55-year-old Benjamin Franklin attended the coronation of King George III and later wrote that he expected the young monarch’s reign would “be happy and truly glorious.” Fifteen years later, in 1776, he helped to draft and then signed the Declaration of Independence. An 81-year-old man in 1787, he urged his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to rally behind the new plan of government they had written. 

“I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them,” he said, “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”

The framers of the new constitution hoped it would fix the problems of the first attempt to create a new nation. During the Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress had hammered out a plan for a confederation of states, but with fears of government tyranny still uppermost in lawmakers’ minds, they centered power in the states rather than in a national government. 

The result—the Articles of Confederation—was a “firm league of friendship” among the 13 new states, overseen by a congress of men chosen by the state legislatures and in which each state had one vote. The new pact gave the federal government few duties and even fewer ways to meet them. Indicating their inclinations, in the first substantive paragraph the authors of the agreement said: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” 

Within a decade, the states were refusing to contribute money to the new government and were starting to contemplate their own trade agreements with other countries. An economic recession in 1786 threatened farmers in western Massachusetts with the loss of their farms when the state government in the eastern part of the state refused relief; in turn, when farmers led by Revolutionary War captain Daniel Shays marched on Boston, propertied men were so terrified their own property would be seized that they raised their own army for protection. 

The new system clearly could not protect property of either the poor or the rich and thus faced the threat of landless mobs. The nation seemed on the verge of tearing itself apart, and the new Americans were all too aware that both England and Spain were standing by, waiting to make the most of the opportunities such chaos would create.

And so, in 1786, leaders called for a reworking of the new government centered not on the states, but on the people of the nation represented by a national government. The document began, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union….” 

The Constitution established a representative democracy, a republic, in which three branches of government would balance each other to prevent the rise of a tyrant. Congress would write all “necessary and proper” laws, levy taxes, borrow money, pay the nation’s debts, establish a postal service, establish courts, declare war, support an army and navy, organize and call forth “the militia to execute the Laws of the Union” and “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” 

The president would execute the laws, but if Congress overstepped, the president could veto proposed legislation. In turn, Congress could override a presidential veto. Congress could declare war, but the president was the commander in chief of the army and had the power to make treaties with foreign powers. It was all quite an elegant system of paths and tripwires, really.

A judicial branch would settle disputes between inhabitants of the different states and guarantee every defendant a right to a jury trial.

In this system, the new national government was uppermost. The Constitution provided that “[t]he Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States,” and promised that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion….”

Finally, it declared: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

“I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such,” Franklin said after a weary four months spent hashing it out, “because I think a general Government necessary for us,” and, he said, it “astonishes me…to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our…States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats.” 

“On the whole,” he said to his colleagues, “I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility—and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”

On September 17, 1787, they did. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[nicklloydnow]

“THE BORGIAS AND THE MAFIA

In 1455, the Holy See was occupied by Alfonso de Borja, a descendant of this eighth knight, under the name Callixtus III. Having gained the trust of King Alfonso Il of Naples, he came to power at the age of seventy-seven, while suffering from stomach cancer. His pain made him suspicious. He believed only in the loyalty of his Spanish family. Through the legacy of inheritance, his fortune fell into the hands of Rodrigo Borgia, who used it to fund his own ascension to the papal throne. Thus was born the first Mafia clan in history.

The Borgias possessed an absolute thirst for power. Europe had, by then, lost all hope in the goodness of God: the plague known as the Black Death had made miserably clear just how precarious human life can be, and with the bitterness of an orphan deprived of its supreme father, the populace consoled itself by indulging in carnal pleasures. It was in this context that Rodrigo Borgia, now Pope Alexander VI, began trafficking in a very powerful drug: papal bulls, which granted the forgiveness of sins . . . Every citizen could murder, steal, gamble, engage in prostitution or incest or unbridled gluttony, and all without fear: because in exchange for a handful of ducats, the Church offered absolution and the assurance that God would welcome the sinner into heaven.

The Borgias' passion for life, for dominance over all mankind, their disdain of any divine retribution, this absolute lack of morality, offset by their staggering appreciation of fine art, utterly captivated me. Knowing that the respectable Church of today once had a Spanish adventurer at its roots, a clever thief who was surrounded by his bought-and-sold lovers and by his children, each embodying a spiritual summit as well as an abyss - Cesare, strength and tyranny; Lucrezia, beauty and lust; Giovanni, intelligence and vanity; Gioffre, purity and stupidity - reminded me of the lotus plant, whose bright flowers spring from filthy swamps . . . And so I yielded to the temptation to write a comics script: in the form of a vast historical fresco on the creation, growth, and death of this provocative family, so similar to some of the people currently governing our planet.

(…)

In place of the Black Death, we have cancer and AIDS, along with pollution of our air, our water, and our planet. Instead of cities at war, we are witness to entire countries fighting. Christianity and Islam remain in conflict even today. The discovery of the Americas has now become interplanetary exploration. We're experiencing the artistic revolution of the Renaissance through personal computers and the Internet. The papal bulls of yore are today's commercial "benedictions" from the United States. Just as the ducat was the key to paradise during the Renaissance years, our only God is the almighty dollar: whether its value goes up or down and the gates of heaven open or close . . . Just as Machiavelli, in his book The Prince, recommended aggressive invasions to achieve Italian unity, in this day and age a powerful nation (that shall remain nameless) ruthlessly attacks any country, claiming to obstruct "Evil" but spurred on, in fact, by its thirst for oil . . . Today, the Borgias have been replaced by oil mafias, pharmaceutical industry multinationals, drug cartels, and greedy bankers.

And yet, the corruption that flourished during the Renaissance could not prevent the emergence of a Leonardo da Vinci, a Raphael, a Botticelli, a Michelangelo, a Dante, a Machiavelli even, as well as so many others who opened up new vistas to human awareness. This is what brings us great hope: the possibility that the decadence of the world today is just the pain of a chrysalis becoming a butterfly, and that from the last vast crisis into which we plummet a new humanity will arise, one that will look upon us with the same tender compassion we feel for the monkeys.

—Alejandro Jodorowsky

August 2011”

[eretzyisrael]

ny Nils A. Haug

[I]t clearly looks as if the Biden administration just wants to please its terrorist-sponsoring adversaries, Iran and Qatar, by allowing their prized client, Hamas, to win the war.

Regrettably, Iran does not seem to be guided by the same humanitarian, ethical, or "natural law principles" embraced by Israel and the West.

A jihadist in Iran's premier militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)... probably sees the job of the IRGC as driving the US out of the Middle East so that Iran can continue to "Export the Revolution" without interference.

It is with good reason that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complains that the US is withholding, or "slow-walking," military supplies. In Ukraine, for instance, badly needed arms are always "being delivered" but somehow never manage to arrive until long after they might actually have helped.

Although Israel's leaders are well aware of the immense danger presented by Iran, the US and other Western allies evidently cannot be relied upon to prevent Iran from completing its nuclear weapons program. The US appears to like talking, and talking about talking, diplomacy backed up by talking, verbal "understandings" so long as they have no teeth, then paying what looks like bribe money for adversaries not to "make waves," presumably at least not before the America's upcoming November election.

The Biden administration, it seems, would rather deal with threatening situations via... worthless promises from Iran, Russia, China, the Taliban, the Palestinians or whoever else will offer appeasements.

The critical point is that Israel is fighting to safeguard not just its own nation, but the West and the Free World as well. The battle at the moment seems between preserving freedom or having it extinguished by the forces of barbarism, autocracies and theocrats, but most of all by the passivity of the West.... Silky, stealth aggressors include Qatar -- the consigliere of all Islamic terror groups -- which uses money and its media network Al-Jazeera, not military aggression, as its means of persuasion.

Sadly, the Biden administration appears to view Israel not as a sovereign nation but a US satrapy. It is hardly a secret that the US has been trying to oust Israel's elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and replace him presumably with a subordinate. That US puppet would supposedly be delighted to have a terrorist Palestinian state next door administered by the terrorist godfather, Qatar, and be delighted to see Iran have as many nuclear weapons as it likes.

If Obama ostensibly conceived of this arrangement [the 2015 "nuclear deal"] to "balance the influence" of Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, the plan has failed colossally. Saudi Arabia, for all its faults, has not tried to enlarge its territory....

At present, both the Biden administration in the US and opposition in Israel to its current government seem to be trying to muscle Netanyahu out. US Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat who happens to be Jewish, declared in mid-March that Netanyahu had "lost his way" and called for "new elections" -- not in the Senator's own country, the US, but in that of a sovereign ally, Israel. Would he have called for "new elections" in England, Germany, Italy or France? Biden, unsurprisingly, quickly "embraced Schumer's speech."

Many, including some who might be looking longingly at Netanyahu's job, have advocated that "Hamas cannot be defeated." Meanwhile, Netanyahu has been doing exactly that.

The US and others have tried to claim that before defeating an adversary, one must know what will happen after the fighting stops, and that destroying Hamas's military capability will just create another whole generation of Gazans who hate Israelis and Jews. Before defeating Hitler, however, no one had suggested that it was important to know what would happen "after the fighting stopped"; the same holds true for Imperial Japan....at present, both Germany and Japan are solid allies of the US and the West. There are probably still Nazis in Germany, but they no longer have the "means, capability or opportunity" to disrupt Europe.

The US appears to be doing the bidding of its terrorist-supporting collaborators, Iran and Qatar, and their supporters -- potential voters in America's heartland -- and those who want Hamas to survive to "attack, time and again, until Israel is annihilated."

All that is required is to make sure that Israel has the ammunition and weapons it needs to fight on our behalf, to make sure they are delivered immediately, and then get out of the way.

[moltengoldveins]

molten i have minimal marvel knowledge (only watched like 10 of the movies) but if you have the patience to explain how you think techno and steve roger's friendship would develop/work, i would LOVE to hear about it

( i would ask more about the DC side but unfortunately i know a grand total of Nothing about dc )

OK SO (sorry I took so long to respond I was moving) LET ME TELL YOU THIS HOT NONSENSE. (Fair warning, this is a VERY long post)

SO. First off, I’m gonna quickly establish the Techno im working with since I think you already know who that is (/lh 😉) and then I’ll Explain Steven Grant Rogers.

So, the Techno im working with is fundamentally a lawful neutral character. He believes in freedom, in the moral obligation of someone who is capable of preventing evil to work to the fullest extent possible to prevent said evil. He believes that tyranny dictatorship is wrong and that there should be as little government as possible, and said government should be as democratic and free as possible. He jokes about anarchy, but his actions don’t quite line up with direct anarchy so I’m pretty sure it’s mostly for the bit, but he’s very anti-establishment. Techno is not, however, necessarily concerned with what is Good, so much as what is True. Violence does not necessarily equal evil, and he doesn’t seem to have much of a category for civilians when it comes to controlling the damage war causes, though he does quite firmly distinguish between “people who are my enemies” and “people who aren’t involved.” He is motivated by Justice, not mercy. This doesn’t mean he isn’t merciful: it means he doesn’t believe that he is obligated to be merciful. It means that any act of his mercy is, according to him, an exception to the rule, a kindness the people around him don’t deserve and should not take advantage of. He is unflinchingly loyal and viciously protective, as well as shockingly paranoid and proactive in preparing for any eventuality. He’s also a traumatized veteran and a victim of long-term institutionalized racism and speciesism on account of the Piglin thing, a fact that actually ISNT a headcanon! That’s not even made up! He CANONICALLY was concerned that people treated him like an animal and a weapon as opposed to a person and reacted to conflict and confrontation with the assumption that human characters were more likely to treat him poorly than nonhuman ones, like Ranboo or Philza. (I’ve got a whole other essay in there I won’t get into) ANYWAY

If that’s Techno, Steve Rogers is what you do if you take the same solid gold core and raise him poor and catholic in New York in the 1930s. Steve is religious, but it’s unclear if he’s practicing. His faith is an important core to his worldview and the choices he makes, but he’s not preachy. He’s lawful good at first, but I think his character pretty quickly looses that fundamental foundation of “I am righteous, because I know what is right, and I am doing it.” after he loses Bucky, his kinda maybe love interestchildhood friend and gets yeeted popcicle-style into the modern day. He’s loyal as a dog, stubborn to a fault, and, like Techno, completely and utterly incapable of allowing injustice or ‘wrongness’ to exist in the same space as himself. Before the serum he threw himself into fights with enough regularity that Bucky apparently would just… walk around Brooklyn in the vague area he knew Rogers should be and check alleyways for either a brawl or an unconscious Steve. He also believes in freedom, and in the moral obligation of someone who is capable of preventing evil to work to the fullest extent possible to prevent said evil. However, Steve is Captain America. He’s not an idiot: he’s portrayed as incredibly progressive for every era he’s in, but he fundamentally believes that the US is a good system, or at least the best system possible. He believes in the ideal of the American dream and said dream’s ability to inspire people to do good, even if he doesn’t believe in the reality of that dream. He’s also blatantly unwilling to take orders and follow commands unless he knows the reasoning behind the decisions and has been fully convinced that his actions won’t be furthering evil without his knowledge, and considering his history with Nazis and with SHEILD (the government agency that founded the avengers) being a front for the same Nazi organization that got him and Bucky killed originally? It’s totally understandable for him to be VERY wary of his superiors. He’s a good leader, but he’s quick to make moral judgements of other people’s characters and will stick to them until he’s been beaten over the head with how wrong he is, which is really just a subset of his “you find what is True and Right and then you stick to it to the end and you Make the rest of the world move instead of you” mentality, which is a very helpful mentality for a paragon hero! …. Until they don’t have all the information, or that stubbornness is used against them, or they meet someone who has a quality they think is repulsive or immortal. 

So all this being said…. Holy crap I wanna put these two in a box and shake them around like a stim toy. 

They’re both paragons, by the firm definition of the word, but in completely different ways. They’re both loyal, vicious, guard-dog coded characters, but Techno chewed through his leash and chose his own path (Philza) centuries ago, while Steve was just beaten and dumped in the river by masters he thought were kind, and is now snapping at any human who resembles them. Steve still wants structure above and around him, he still wants to work For a government, as long as it’s a trustworthy one. He’s just not sure how or where to find one, or if he’ll ever be able to trust one again. Techno is absolutely uninterested in that. They’re feral in different ways, and they’ve got very similar opinions about government except for Steve’s uncertainty as to how far exactly he thinks he should go and when, and Techno’s blatant non-regard for things like collateral damage.

They’re both the strongest non-augmented melee fighters of their respective worlds and they’ve both got a signature weapon that, despite actively being a Weapon, is meant to symbolically represent peace and protection. They both have rebirth imagery and close semi-platonic relationships with right-hand-men who are snipers/long distance fighters. They’ve both got a history with being made to perform, Steve with his propaganda and Techno with either his Chat or, in some headcanons, his time as an Emperor or a gladiator. 

They’ve both got (I’m taking some liberties with like, crossover X-men comics and Steve’s hatred of Nazis here) problems with people treating other people as non-human, but Techno is living it, while Steve is working from a place of privilege.

Techno, on the other hand, would not necessarily have the same experience as Steve when it comes to his early life: Steve is still, fundamentally, a small, disabled, asthmatic kid from Brooklyn, and the disconnect between Him and The Body is at absolute best a struggle he works his way through after the first few Avengers films and at worst something that haunts him for the rest of his life. 

Steve might feel his body is not his own but he has no experience with his MIND not being his own. He’s frighteningly intelligent. Techno is smart, but the Voices are another huge difference between them I think I’d find fascinating to explore. 

Steve is not the brains of the Avengers, but he is the mind. He is their compass, their engine, the one making judgements on and off field for the team, but he’s not alone: in good avengers media (Avengers Assemble) he’s working alongside Tony, and he has the whole team at his back. Techno and Phil are alone. They are entirely self-reliant and have been for aeons. There is absolutely no reason for them to understand or comprehend how the Avengers work as a team without some significant work to bridge that gap. Philza is a whole other can of worms: the hardcore worlds might be a form of long-term enforced or self-isolation, the hardcore life system might be shared by both Phil and Techno or be just Phil, they might assume the team can die more than once and be shocked to learn everyone on earth has only one life, they’re so old they carry scars from things they can’t remember anymore and traumas the Avengers are not equipped to handle. 

Literally everything about this dynamic is fascinating to me. How would Steve and Techno fight together? What parts of their political ideals would clash and why? Would they help own another grow or make one another worse? Are we getting post-Bucky-returns Steve, where the Avengers is splintered and Steve is truly disillusioned? Or will Emduo be present for the events of Winter Solider? If they are, how would they influence those events? Techno would take one look at Steve’s reaction to Hydra and know Exactly how much they needed to be wiped from the face of the planet, but how would that go? Would he bring Steve with him? Would he clean house without Steve even realizing and come back like “.ey yo I polished ur government for u. Hope you like it, it’s freshly de-Hydrad. Also half ur entire chain of command is dead they were evil my bad.” Would Philza have enough influence and wisdom to pull Tony away from the idea of Ultron? How would either of these characters interact with Peter Parker (Tommy but… a spider?) or Nightcrawler (That is an Enderman Hybrid. Why is there a normal enderman hybrid in this universe?) or Venom (ah, you fool. I’ve already got someone living in my brain rent-free, bold of you to assume you will survive this mistake). Literally everything about this is amazing and there are ONLY TWO FICS ON AO3. Infuriating. Literally the worst. 

[mariacallous]

“How much evil we must do in order to do good,” the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in 1946. “This, I think, is a very succinct statement of the human situation.” Niebuhr was writing after one global war had forced the victors to do great evil to prevent the incalculably greater evil of a world ruled by its most aggressive regimes. He was witnessing the onset of another global conflict in which the United States would periodically transgress its own values in order to defend them. But the fundamental question Niebuhr raised—how liberal states can reconcile worthy ends with the unsavory means needed to attain them—is timeless. It is among the most vexing dilemmas facing the United States today.

U.S. President Joe Biden took office pledging to wage a fateful contest between democracy and autocracy. After Russia invaded Ukraine, he summoned like-minded nations to a struggle “between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.” Biden’s team has indeed made big moves in its contest with China and Russia, strengthening solidarity among advanced democracies that want to protect freedom by keeping powerful tyrannies in check. But even before the war between Hamas and Israel presented its own thicket of problems, an administration that has emphasized the ideological nature of great-power rivalry was finding itself ensnared by a morally ambiguous world.

In Asia, Biden has bent over backward to woo a backsliding India, a communist Vietnam, and other not so liberal states. In Europe, wartime exigencies have muted concerns about creeping authoritarianism on NATO’s eastern and southern fronts. In the Middle East, Biden has concluded that Arab dictators are not pariahs but vital partners. Defending a threatened order involves reviving the free-world community. It also, apparently, entails buttressing an arc of imperfect democracies and outright autocracies across much of the globe.

Biden’s conflicted strategy reflects the realities of contemporary coalition building: when it comes to countering China and Russia, democratic alliances go only so far. Biden’s approach also reflects a deeper, more enduring tension. American interests are inextricably tied to American values: the United States typically enters into great-power competition because it fears mighty autocracies will otherwise make the world unsafe for democracy. But an age of conflict invariably becomes, to some degree, an age of amorality because the only way to protect a world fit for freedom is to court impure partners and engage in impure acts.

Expect more of this. If the stakes of today’s rivalries are as high as Biden claims, Washington will engage in some breathtakingly cynical behavior to keep its foes contained. Yet an ethos of pure expediency is fraught with dangers, from domestic disillusion to the loss of the moral asymmetry that has long amplified U.S. influence in global affairs. Strategy, for a liberal superpower, is the art of balancing power without subverting democratic purpose. The United States is about to rediscover just how hard that can be.

A DIRTY GAME

Biden has consistently been right about one thing: clashes between great powers are clashes of ideas and interests alike. In the seventeenth century, the Thirty Years’ War was fueled by doctrinal differences no less than by the struggle for European primacy. In the late eighteenth century, the politics of revolutionary France upheaved the geopolitics of the entire continent. World War II was a collision of rival political traditions—democracy and totalitarianism—as well as rival alliances. “This was no accidental war,” German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop declared in 1940, “but a question of the determination of one system to destroy the other.” When great powers fight, they do so not just over land and glory. They fight over which ideas, which values, will chart humanity’s course.

In this sense, U.S. competition with China and Russia is the latest round in a long struggle over whether the world will be shaped by liberal democracies or their autocratic enemies. In World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, autocracies in Eurasia sought global primacy by achieving preeminence within that central landmass. Three times, the United States intervened, not just to ensure its security but also to preserve a balance of power that permitted the survival and expansion of liberalism—to “make the world safe for democracy,” in U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s words. President Franklin Roosevelt made a similar point in 1939, saying, “There comes a time in the affairs of men when they must prepare to defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments, and their very civilization are founded.” Yet as Roosevelt understood, balancing power is a dirty game.

Western democracies prevailed in World War II only by helping an awful tyrant, Joseph Stalin, crush an even more awful foe, Adolf Hitler. They used tactics, such as fire-bombing and atomic-bombing enemy cities, that would have been abhorrent in less desperate times. The United States then waged the Cold War out of conviction, as President Harry Truman declared, that it was a conflict “between alternative ways of life”; the closest U.S. allies were fellow democracies that made up the Western world. Yet holding the line in a high-stakes struggle also involved some deeply questionable, even undemocratic, acts.

In a Third World convulsed by instability, the United States employed right-wing tyrants as proxies; it suppressed communist influence through coups, covert and overt interventions, and counterinsurgencies with staggering death tolls. To deter aggression along a global perimeter, the Pentagon relied on the threat of using nuclear weapons so destructive that their actual employment could serve no constructive end. To close the ring around the Soviet Union, Washington eventually partnered with another homicidal communist, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong. And to ease the politics of containment, U.S. officials sometimes exaggerated the Soviet threat or simply deceived the American people about policies carried out in their name.

Strategy involves setting priorities, and U.S. officials believed that lesser evils were needed to avoid greater ones, such as communism running riot in vital regions or democracies failing to find their strength and purpose before it was too late. The eventual payoff from the U.S. victory in the Cold War—a world safer from autocratic predation, and safer for human freedom, than ever before—suggests that they were, on balance, correct. Along the way, the fact that Washington was pursuing such a worthy objective, against such an unworthy opponent, provided a certain comfort with the conflict’s ethical ambiguities. As NSC-68, the influential strategy document Truman approved in 1950, put it (quoting Alexander Hamilton), “The means to be employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief.” When the West was facing a totalitarian enemy determined to remake humanity in its image, some pretty ugly means could, apparently, be justified.

That comfort wasn’t infinite, however, and the Cold War saw fierce fights over whether the United States was getting its priorities right. In the 1950s, hawks took Washington to task for not doing enough to roll back communism in Eastern Europe, with the Republican Party platform of 1952 deriding containment as “negative, futile, and immoral.” In the 1960s and 1970s, an avalanche of amorality—a bloody and misbegotten war in Vietnam, support for a coterie of nasty dictators, revelations of CIA assassination plots—convinced many liberal critics that the United States was betraying the values it claimed to defend. Meanwhile, the pursuit of détente with the Soviet Union, a strategy that deemphasized ideological confrontation in search of diplomatic stability, led some conservatives to allege that Washington was abandoning the moral high ground. Throughout the 1970s and after, these debates whipsawed U.S. policy. Even in this most Manichean of contests, relating strategy to morality was a continual challenge.

In fact, Cold War misdeeds gave rise to a complex of legal and administrative constraints—from prohibitions on political assassination to requirements to notify congressional committees about covert action—that mostly remain in place today. Since the Cold War, these restrictions have been complemented by curbs on aid to coup makers who topple elected governments and to military units that engage in gross violations of human rights. Americans clearly regretted some measures they had used to win the Cold War. The question is whether they can do without them as global rivalry heats up again.

IDEAS MATTER

Threats from autocratic enemies heighten ideological impulses in U.S. policy by underscoring the clash of ideas that often drives global tensions. Since taking office, Biden has defined the threat from U.S. rivals, particularly China, in starkly ideological terms.

The world has reached an “inflection point,” Biden has repeatedly declared. In March 2021, he suggested that future historians would be studying “the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy.” At root, Biden has argued, U.S.-Chinese competition is a test of which model can better meet the demands of the modern era. And if China becomes the world’s preeminent power, U.S. officials fear, it will entrench autocracy in friendly countries while coercing democratic governments in hostile ones. Just witness how Beijing has used economic leverage to punish criticism of its policies by democratic societies from Australia to Norway. In making the system safe for illiberalism, a dominant China would make it unsafe for liberalism in places near and far.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reinforced Biden’s thesis. It offered a case study in autocratic aggression and atrocity and a warning that a world led by illiberal states would be lethally violent, not least for vulnerable democracies nearby. Coming weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin had sealed a “no limits” strategic partnership, the Ukraine invasion also raised the specter of a coordinated autocratic assault on the liberal international order. Ukraine, Biden explained, was the central front in a “larger fight for . . . essential democratic principles.” So the United States would rally the free world against “democracy’s mortal foes.”

The shock of the Ukraine war, combined with the steadying hand of U.S. leadership, produced an expanded transatlantic union of democracies. Sweden and Finland sought membership in NATO; the West supported Ukraine and inflicted heavy costs on Russia. The Biden administration also sought to confine China by weaving a web of democratic ties around the country. It has upgraded bilateral alliances with the likes of Japan and Australia. It has improved the Quad (the security and diplomatic dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan) and established AUKUS (a military partnership with Australia and the United Kingdom). And it has repurposed existing multilateral bodies, such as the G-7, to meet the peril from Beijing. There are even whispers of a “three plus one” coalition—Australia, Japan, the United States, plus Taiwan—that would cooperate to defend that frontline democracy from Chinese assault.

These ties transcend regional boundaries. Ukraine is getting aid from Asian democracies, such as South Korea, that understand that their security will suffer if the liberal order is fractured. Democracies from multiple continents have come together to confront China’s economic coercion, counter its military buildup, and constrict its access to high-end semiconductors. The principal problem for the United States is a loose alliance of revisionist powers pushing outward from the core of Eurasia. Biden’s answer is a cohering global coalition of democracies, pushing back from around the margins.

Today, those advanced democracies are more unified than at any time in decades. In this respect, Biden has aligned the essential goal of U.S. strategy, defending an imperiled liberal order, with the methods and partners used to pursue it. Yet across Eurasia’s three key regions, the messier realities of rivalry are raising Niebuhr’s question anew.

CONTROVERSIAL FRIENDS

Consider the situation in Europe. NATO is mostly an alliance of democracies. But holding that pact together during the Ukraine war has required Biden to downplay the illiberal tendencies of a Polish government that—until its electoral defeat in October—was systematically eroding checks and balances. Securing its northern flank, by welcoming Finland and Sweden, has involved diplomatic horse-trading with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, in addition to frequently undercutting U.S. interests, has been steering his country toward autocratic rule.

In Asia, the administration spent much of 2021 and 2022 carefully preserving U.S. ties to the Philippines, at the time led by Rodrigo Duterte, a man whose drug war had killed thousands. Biden has assiduously courted India as a bulwark against China, even though the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has curbed speech, harassed opposition leaders, fanned religious grievances, and allegedly killed dissidents abroad. And after visiting New Delhi in September 2023, Biden traveled to Hanoi to sign a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Vietnam’s one-party regime. Once again, the United States is using some communists to contain others.

Then there is the Middle East, where Biden’s “free world” coalition is quite the motley crew. In 2020, Biden threatened to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. By 2023, his administration—panicked by Chinese inroads and rising gas prices—was trying to make that country Washington’s newest treaty ally instead. That initiative, moreover, was part of a concept, inherited from the Trump administration, in which regional stability would rest on rapprochement between Arab autocracies and an Israeli government with its own illiberal tendencies, while Palestinian aspirations were mostly pushed to the side. Not surprisingly, then, human rights and political freedoms receded in relations with countries from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates. Biden also did little to halt the strangulation of democracy in Tunisia—just as he had decided, effectively, to abandon Afghanistan’s endangered democracy in 2021.

Indeed, if 2022 was a year of soaring rhetoric, 2023 was a year of awkward accommodation. References to the “battle between democracy and autocracy” became scarcer in Biden’s speeches, as the administration made big plays that defied that description of the world. Key human rights–related positions at the White House and the State Department sat vacant. The administration rolled back sanctions on Venezuela—an initiative described publicly as a bid to secure freer and fairer elections, but one that was mostly an effort to get an oppressive regime to stop exporting refugees and start exporting more oil. And when a junta toppled the elected government of Niger, U.S. officials waited for more than two months to call the coup a coup, for fear of triggering the cutoff of U.S. aid and thereby pushing the new regime into Moscow’s arms. Such compromises have always been part of foreign policy. But today, they testify to key dynamics U.S. officials must confront.

THE DECISIVE DECADE

First is the cruel math of Eurasian geopolitics. Advanced democracies possess a preponderance of power globally, but in every critical region, holding the frontline requires a more eclectic ensemble.

Poland has had its domestic problems; it is also the logistical linchpin of the coalition backing Ukraine. Turkey is politically illiberal and, often, unhelpful; nonetheless, it holds the intersection of two continents and two seas. In South and Southeast Asia, the primary barrier to Chinese hegemony is a line of less-than-ideal partners running from India to Indonesia. In the Middle East, a picky superpower will be a lonely superpower. Democratic solidarity is great, but geography is stubborn. Across Eurasia, Washington needs illiberal friends to confine its illiberal foes.

The ideological battlefield has also shifted in adverse ways. During the Cold War, anticommunism served as ideological glue between a democratic superpower and its autocratic allies, because the latter knew they were finished if the Soviet Union ever triumphed. Now, however, U.S. enemies feature a form of autocracy less existentially threatening to other nondemocracies: strongmen in the Persian Gulf, or in Hungary and Turkey, arguably have more in common with Xi and Putin than they do with Biden. The gap between “good” and “bad” authoritarians is narrower than it once was—which makes the United States work harder, and pay more, to keep illiberal partners imperfectly onside.

Desperate times also call for morally dexterous measures. When Washington faced no serious strategic challengers after the Cold War, it paid a smaller penalty for foregrounding its values. As the margin of safety shrinks, the tradeoffs between power and principle grow. Right now, war—or the threat of it—menaces East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Biden says the 2020s will be the “decisive decade” for the world. As Winston Churchill quipped in 1941, “If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.” When threats are dire, democracies will do what it takes to rally coalitions and keep the enemy from breaking through. Thus, a central irony of Washington’s approach to competition is that the same challenges that activate its ideological energy make it harder to keep U.S. diplomacy pure.

So far, the moral compromises of U.S. policy today are modest compared with those of World War II or the Cold War, in part because the constraints on unsavory methods are stronger than they were when Hitler and Stalin stalked the earth. But rules and norms can change as a country’s circumstances do. So Biden and his successors may soon face a daunting reality: high-stakes rivalries carry countries, and leaders, to places they never sought to go.

When the Cold War started, few officials imagined that Washington would conduct covert interventions from Afghanistan to Angola. Just three years ago, hardly anyone predicted that the United States would soon fight a proxy war meant to bleed Putin’s army to death in Ukraine. As the present competitions intensify, the tactics used to wage them could become more extreme.

Washington could find itself covertly trying to tip the balance in elections in some crucial swing state if the alternative is seeing that country shift hard toward Moscow or Beijing. It could use coercion to keep Latin America’s military facilities and other critical infrastructure out of Chinese hands. And if the United States is already ambivalent about acknowledging coups in out-of-the-way countries, perhaps it would excuse far greater atrocities committed by a more important partner in a more important place.

Those who doubt that Washington will resort to dirty tricks have short memories and limited imaginations. If today’s competitions will truly shape the fate of humanity, why wouldn’t a vigilant superpower do almost anything to come out on top?

DON’T LOSE YOURSELF

There’s no reason to be unduly embarrassed about this. A country that lacks the self-confidence to defend its interests will lack the power to achieve any great purpose in global affairs. Put differently, the damage the United States does to its values by engaging dubious allies, and engaging in dubious behavior, is surely less than the damage that would be done if a hyperaggressive Russia or neototalitarian China spread its influence across Eurasia and beyond. As during the Cold War, the United States can eventually repay the moral debts it incurs in a lengthy struggle—if it successfully sustains a system in which democracy thrives because its fiercest enemies are suppressed.

It would be dangerous to adopt a pure end-justifies-the-means mentality, however, because there is always a point at which foul means corrupt fair ends. Even short of that, serial amorality will prove politically corrosive: a country whose population has rallied to defend its values as well as its interests will not forever support a strategy that seems to cast those values aside. And ultimately, the greatest flaw of such a strategy is that it forfeits a potent U.S. advantage.

During World War II, as the historian Richard Overy has argued, the Allied cause was widely seen to be more just and humane than the Axis cause, which is one reason the former alliance attracted so many more countries than the latter. In the Cold War, the sense that the United States stood, however imperfectly, for fundamental rights and liberties the Kremlin suppressed helped Washington appeal to other democratic societies—and even to dissidents within the Soviet bloc. The tactics of great-power competition must not obscure the central issue of that competition. If the world comes to see today’s rivalries as slugfests devoid of larger moral meaning, the United States will lose the asymmetry of legitimacy that has served it well.

This is not some hypothetical dilemma. Since October 2023, Biden has rightly framed the Israel-Hamas war as a struggle between a flawed democracy and a tyrannical enemy seeking its destruction. There is strong justification, moral and strategic, for backing a U.S. ally against a vicious proxy of a U.S. enemy, Iran. Moreover, there is no serious ethical comparison between a terrorist group that rapes, tortures, kidnaps, and kills civilians and a country that mostly tries, within the limits war imposes, to protect them.

Yet rightly or wrongly, large swaths of the global South view the war as a testament to American double standards: opposing occupation and appropriation of foreign territory by Russia but not by Israel, valuing the lives and liberties of some victims more than those of others. Russian and Chinese propagandists are amplifying these messages to drive a wedge between Washington and the developing world. This is why the Biden administration has tried, and sometimes struggled, to balance support for Israel with efforts to mitigate the harm the conflict brings—and why the war may presage renewed U.S. focus on the peace process with the Palestinians, as unpromising as that currently seems. The lesson here is that the merits of an issue may be disputed, but for a superpower that wears its values on its sleeve, the costs of perceivedhypocrisy are very real.

RULES FOR RIVALRY

Succeeding in this round of rivalry will thus require calibrating the moral compromises inherent in foreign policy by finding an ethos that is sufficiently ruthless and realistic at the same time. Although there is no precise formula for this—the appropriateness of any action depends on its context—some guiding principles can help.

First, morality is a compass, not a straitjacket. For political sustainability and strategic self-interest, American statecraft should point toward a world consistent with its values. But the United States cannot paralyze itself by trying to fully embody those values in every tactical decision. Nor—even at a moment when its own democracy faces internal threats—should it insist on purifying itself at home before exerting constructive influence abroad. If it does so, the system will be shaped by regimes that are more ruthless—and less shackled by their own imperfections.

The United States should also avoid the fallacy of the false alternative. It must evaluate choices, and partners, against the plausible possibilities, not against the utopian ideal. The realistic alternative to maintaining ties to a military regime in Africa may be watching as murderous Russian mercenaries fill the void. The realistic alternative to engaging Modi’s India may be seeing South Asia fall further under the shadow of a China that assiduously exports illiberalism. Similarly, proximity to a Saudi regime that carves up its critics is deeply uncomfortable. But the realistic alternative to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is probably a regime that remains quite repressive—and is far less committed to empowering women, curbing religious zealots, and otherwise making the country a more open, tolerant place. In a world of lousy options, the crucial question is often: Lousy compared with what?

Another guiding principle: good things don’t all come at once. Cold War policymakers sometimes justified coup making and support for repressive regimes on grounds that preventing Third World countries from going communist then preserved the possibility that they might go democratic later. That logic was suspiciously convenient—and, in many cases, correct. Countries in Latin America and other developing regions did eventually experience political openings as they reached higher levels of development, and democratic values radiated outward from the West.

Today, unseemly bargains can sometimes lead to better outcomes. By not breaking the U.S.-Philippine alliance during Duterte’s drug war, Washington sustained the relationship until a more cooperative, less draconian government emerged. By staying close to a Polish government with some worrying tendencies, the United States bought time until, late last year, that country’s voters elected a coalition promising to strengthen its democratic institutions. The same argument could be made for staying engaged with other democracies where autocratic tendencies are pronounced but electoral mechanisms remain intact—Hungary, India, and Turkey, to name a few. More broadly, liberalism is most likely to flourish in a system led by a democracy. So simply forestalling the ascent of powerful autocracies may eventually help democratic values spread into once inhospitable places.

Similarly, the United States should remember that taking the broad view is as vital as taking the long view. Support for democracy and human rights is not an all-or-nothing proposition. As Biden’s statecraft has shown, transactional deals with dictators can complement a strategy that stresses democratic cooperation at its core. Honoring American values, moreover, is more than a matter of hectoring repressive regimes. A foreign policy that raises international living standards through trade, addresses global problems such as food insecurity, and holds the line against great-power war serves the cause of human dignity very well. A strategy that emphasizes such efforts may actually be more appealing to countries, including developing democracies from Brazil to Indonesia, that resist democracy-versus-autocracy framing because they don’t want any part of a Manichean fight.

Of course, these principles can seem like a recipe for rationalization—a way of excusing the grossest behavior by claiming it serves a greater cause. Another important principle, then, revives Hamilton’s dictum that the means must be proportioned to the mischief. The greater the compromise, the greater the payoff it provides—or the damage it avoids—must be.

By this standard, the case for cooperation with an India or a Poland is clear-cut. These countries are troubled but mostly admirable democracies that play critical roles in raging competitions. Until the world contains only liberal democracies, Washington can hardly avoid seeking blemished friends.

The United States should, however, be more cautious about courting countries that regularly engage in the very practices it deems most corrosive to the liberal order: systematic torture or murder of their people, coercion of their neighbors, or export of repression across borders, to name a few. A Saudi Arabia, for instance, that periodically engages in some of these practices is a troublesome partner. A Saudi Arabia that flagrantly and consistently commits such acts risks destroying the moral and diplomatic basis of its relationship with the United States. American officials should be more hesitant still to distort or destabilize the politics of other countries, especially other democracies, for strategic gain. If Washington is going to get back into the coup business in Latin America or Southeast Asia, the bad outcomes to be prevented must be truly severe—a major, potentially lasting shift in a key regional balance of power, perhaps—to justify policies so manifestly in tension with the causes the United States claims to defend.

Mitigating the harm to those causes means heeding a further principle: marginal improvement matters. Washington will not convince leaders in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, or Vietnam to commit political suicide by abandoning their domestic model. But leverage works both ways in these relationships. Countries on the firing line need a superpower patron just as much as it needs them. U.S. officials can use that leverage to discourage extraterritorial repression, seek the release of political prisoners, make elections a bit freer and fairer, or otherwise obtain modest but meaningful changes. Doing so may be the price of keeping these relationships intact, by convincing proponents of human rights and democracy in Congress that the White House has not forgotten such issues altogether.

This relates to an additional principle: the United States must be scrupulously honest with itself. American officials need to recognize that illiberal allies will be selective or unreliable allies because their domestic models put them at odds with important norms of the liberal order—and because they tend to generate resentment that may eventually cause an explosion. In the same vein, the problem with laws that mandate aid cutoffs to coup plotters is that they encourage self-deception. In cases in which Washington fears the strategic fallout from a break in relations, U.S. officials are motivated to pretend that a coup has not occurred. The better approach, in line with reforms approved by Congress in December 2022, is a framework that allows presidents to waive such cutoffs on national security grounds—but forces them to acknowledge and justify that choice. The work of making moral tradeoffs in foreign policy begins with admitting those tradeoffs exist.

Some of these principles are in tension with others, which means their application in specific cases must always be a matter of judgment. But the issue of reconciling opposites relates to a final principle: soaring idealism and brutal realism can coexist. During the 1970s, moral debates ruptured the Cold War consensus. During the 1980s, U.S. President Ronald Reagan adequately repaired—but never fully restored—that consensus by combining flexibility of tactics with clarity of purpose.

Reagan supported awful dictators, murderous militaries, and thuggish “freedom fighters” in the Third World, sometimes through ploys—such as the Iran-contra scandal—that were dodgy or simply illegal. Yet he also backed democratic movements from Chile to South Korea; he paired rhetorical condemnations of the Kremlin with ringing affirmations of Western ideals. The takeaway is that rough measures may be more tolerable if they are part of a larger package that emphasizes, in word and deed, the values that must anchor the United States’ approach to the world. Some will see this as heightening the hypocrisy. In reality, it is the best way to preserve the balance—political, moral, and strategic—that a democratic superpower requires.

[max1461]

A Libertarian is like prototypically a guy who claims to hate bureaucracy but is also like autistically obsessed with arcane procedural rules and believes he can wield them like magic spells to make the government leave him alone and also he believes that adherence to just procedure is so much more important than just outcomes that if e.g. there's a supreme court ruling from 1812 that he thinks was wrong and gave the federal government too much power and now the federal government wants to use that power to prevent florida from grinding small children into mush they're basically doing a tyranny and should be overthrown. A Marxist-Leninist is prototypically a guy who claims to want workers to control the means of production but also loves nothing more than a good committee and thinks that if the politburo picks a guy to run a committee who picks a guy to run a committee who picks the guy from the factory to promote to the committee that picks the guy that runs the factory that's probably good enough.

Some fundamental affinity here.

[eraserdude6226]

Today is July 4th in the US - our celebration day of declaring our Independence from England in 1776.

For those of you that have never read (or maybe need to read it again), here it is - read it again and again and again if you need to and see if it applies to our current standard!!

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

In Congress, July 4, 1776

THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION

of the THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.--That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operations till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.

JOHN HANCOCK.

New Hampshire,

Josiah Bartlett,

Wm. Whipple,

Matthew Thornton;

Massachusetts Bay,

Saml. Adams,

John Adams,

Robt. Treat Pain,

Elbridge Gerry;

Rhode Island, etc.,

Step. Hopkins

William Ellery;

Delaware,

Caesar Rodney,

Geo. Read,

Tho. M'Kean;

Connecticut,

Roger Sherman,

Saml. Huntington,

Wm. Williams,

Oliver Wolcott;

Maryland,

Samuel Chase,

Wm. Paca,

Thos. Stone,

Charles Carroll,of Carrolton;

New York,

Wm. Floyd,

Phil Livingston,

Frans. Lewis,

Lewis Morris;

Virginia,

George Wythe,

Richard Henry Lee,

Thos. Jefferson,

Benja. Harrison,

Thos. Nelson, jr.,

Francis Lighfoot Lee,

Carter Braxton;

New Jersey,

Richd. Stockton,

Jno. Witherspoon,

Fras. Hopkinson,

John Hart,

Abra. Clark;

North Carolina,

Wm. Hooper,

Joseph Hewes,

John Penn;

Pennsylvania,

Robt. Morris,

Benjamin Rush,

Benja. Franklin,

John Morton,

Geo. Clymer,

Jas. Smith,

Geo. Taylor,

James Wilson,

Geo. Ross;

South Carolina,

Edward Rutledge,

Thos. Heyward, junr.,

Thomas Lynch, junr.,

Arthur Middleton;

Georgia,

Button Gwinnett,

Lyman Hall,

Geo. Walton.

[haggishlyhagging]

Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power, and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents, predispositions, and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate structurelessness—and that is not the nature of a human group.

This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an "objective" news story, "value-free" social science, or a "free" economy. A "laissez faire" group is about as realistic as a "laissez faire" society; the idea becomes a smoke screen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones. Similarly "laissez faire" philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices, and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so. Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power, and within the women's movement is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is curtailed to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.

-Joreen, ‘The Tyranny of Structurelessness’ in Radical Feminism, Koedt et al (eds.)

[andiv3r]

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Georgia

Button Gwinnett

Lyman Hall

George Walton

North Carolina

William Hooper

Joseph Hewes

John Penn

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge

Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts

John Hancock

Maryland

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Franklin

John Morton

George Clymer

James Smith

George Taylor

James Wilson

George Ross

Delaware

Caesar Rodney

George Read

Thomas McKean

New York

William Floyd

Philip Livingston

Francis Lewis

Lewis Morris

New Jersey

Richard Stockton

John Witherspoon

Francis Hopkinson

John Hart

Abraham Clark

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett

William Whipple

Massachusetts

Samuel Adams

John Adams

Robert Treat Paine

Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins

William Ellery

Connecticut

Roger Sherman

Samuel Huntington

William Williams

Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire

Matthew Thornton

Ookaya