The dark side of Abraham Lincoln

But the Lincoln on the penny, the mythic Lincoln, did not exist. Instead a very real man, a political absolutist with enormous human weaknesses, for a time held the destiny of the nation in his oversized palm. So why do we dislike this Lincoln so much? There are many reasons, and here, just for starters, are three good ones

Reposted from the Abbeyville Review

By way of prologue, let me say that all of us like the Lincoln whose face appears on the penny. He is the Lincoln of myth: kindly, hum­ble, a man of sorrows who believes in malice toward none and char­ity toward all, who simply wants to preserve the Union so that we can all live together as one people.

The Lincoln on the penny, had he lived, would have spared the South the ravages of Reconstruction and ushered in the Era of Good Feeling in 1865. The fact that this mythic Lincoln was killed is surely the ultimate tragedy in a tragic era. Indeed the most that any Southerner could say in behalf of the slayer of that Lincoln was what Sheldon Vanauken reported hearing from an old-fashioned Virginian: “Young Booth, sir, acting out of the best of motives, made a tragic blunder.”

But the Lincoln on the penny, the mythic Lincoln, did not exist. Instead a very real man, a political absolutist with enormous human weaknesses, for a time held the destiny of the nation in his oversized palm. So why do we dislike this Lincoln so much? There are many reasons, and here, just for starters, are three good ones:

I. Lincoln was the inventor of a new concept of “Union,” one that im­plied a strong centralized government and an “imperial presiden­cy.” a Union that now dominates virtually every important aspect of our corporate life as Americans.

This Union did not come about accidentally. Lincoln created it out of his own imagination and then invented a rhetoric to justify it, a grammar that has been used ever since that time. You must realize that before the War Between the States, virtually all Americans be­lieved that the nation was a loosely connected alliance of political states, each with a sovereign will of its own and a right to resist the power of central government, which, since the beginning of the Re­public, was regarded as the ultimate enemy.

“Keep it small, keep it diversified” was the view of federal author­ity held by the Founding Fathers; but Lincoln believed—and said in the Gettysburg Address—that the Founding Fathers were wrong, that they had imperfectly conceived the nation at the outset and that he, Abraham Lincoln, had a responsibility to refound it, to bring about a “new birth.” What he meant by this “new birth” was the emergence of a strong, centralized government which had the will and the power to impose a certain conformity on its membership.

If you want to know where the idea of Big Government came from in this country, it came from Lincoln.

In addition to a strong central government, the Founding Fathers also feared a chief executive who exercised absolute power. The tyrant was the ultimate villain in an increasingly diversified political order, and we must remember that, as a matter of strategy, the Dec­laration of Independence denounced the sins of George III rather than those of his duly elected Parliament despite the fact that the poor king was considerably less responsible than the people’s repre­sentatives. Indeed, it was only later, in 1861, that Abraham Lincoln finally became the imperial ruler that Thomas Jefferson denounced in the body of the Declaration.

It is also important to recall that the Constitution in Article I in­vests Congress with the authority “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence…”; “To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Capture on Land and Water”; “To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years”; “To provide and maintain a Navy”; “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”; “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for govern­ing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the Unit­ed States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;” etc.

All these responsibilities are conveyed to Congress in Section 8, with a catch-all clause enabling legislators to pass laws implement­ing “the foregoing Powers.” Then in Section 9, certain prohibitions are outlined which clearly qualify the powers of Congress. These in­clude a prohibition against the suspension of habeas corpus, except in “Cases of Rebellion or Invasion” and against withdrawal of funds from the Treasury except “in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” These qualifications, included in that portion of the Consti­tution dealing with Congress, are careful limitations imposed on the most powerful of the three branches by a cautious band of Framers. In effect they told Congress not only what they and only they could do, but they also said what they (and by implication everyone else) could not do. The caution which they here exercised becomes down­right fastidiousness when they get to Article II, which specifies the duties of the President. He is, to be sure, defined as “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, and of the Militia of the several States,” but only after Congress has called them up, as permitted in Article 1. After this quasi-military role, the President has precious little left to his disposal. He can require reports from members of the Executive Branch, he can grant pardons, he can make treaties which are valid only if two-thirds of the Senate agree, and he can make various ap­pointments, again with the “Advice and Consent of the Senate.”

And that’s really about it. One reading of the Constitution reveals the degree to which the Framers wished to restrict the powers of the presidency to a ceremonial minimum. Yet Abraham Lincoln, in his attempts to refound the Republic, completely transformed the nature of his office, appropriating to it not only powers specifically and ex­clusively granted to Congress but also some powers forbidden to any branch of the federal government.

First, he called up state militias on his own authority, despite the fact that no one had fired a shot or indeed intended to. To cloak these actions, he warned of an impending invasion that the South had no intention of launching and summarily began the War, despite the fact that Congress had no immediate intention of exercising its exclusive authority in this area. Lincoln also authorized recruitment of troops and the expenditure of millions of dollars—all power specifically delegated to Congress. In order to take such action with impunity he had to silence those voices who spoke in favor of the Constitution; so he suspended the right of habeas corpus and impris­oned hordes of his political enemies—according to several authori­ties almost 40,000 people. These political prisoners were not charged. They were not tried. They were simply incarcerated and held incommunicado. In some instances their closest family mem­bers did not know if they were alive or dead until the end of the War.

Among these, incidentally, were a number of newspaper editors, particularly those from such states as Kentucky and Maryland, where Southern sentiment ran high. In addition to the imprisonment of these outspoken critics, their presses were wrecked and their places of business destroyed. All in all, over 300 newspapers and journals were shut down by executive order. In an age when casual criticism of the press by the White House is often regarded as a threat to the First Amendment, it is odd that Lincoln still receives such ritual respect. No president in history held freedom of speech or freedom of the press in greater contempt.

In addition to these more obvious violations of Constitutional rights and prohibitions, Lincoln also created a state (West Virginia), imported foreign mercenaries to fight against people he still insisted were Americans, confiscated private property without due process, printed paper money, and even dispersed assembled legislatures like some American Cromwell. In all these things he acted as no other president of the United States had ever acted before or has acted since.

II. Lincoln’s skillful use of egalitarian rhetoric has given Northern and New South historians the argument that the War Between the States was fought solely over the question of slavery rather than over a number of interrelated issues, none of which in itself could have led to Secession and War.

In a sense the thing that contemporary Southerners most resent about Lincoln is the use that has been made of him by recent histori­ans who want to find in the Antebellum South and the tragic events of the War a moral exemplum for the religion of equality. To be honest, Lincoln himself did not go nearly so far, though in his debates with Douglas and in the Emancipation Proclamation he clearly took the high moral ground in an effort to win pragmatic political advantage.

Lincoln himself was not an Abolitionist nor was he particularly sympathetic with black freedmen. He came from a state whose racist laws discouraged blacks from crossing its borders. If Illinois was op­posed to the spread of slavery it was because the state’s citizens were opposed to the spread of blacks. This much is a matter of public record. In addition Abraham Lincoln probably objected to the pe­culiar institution on philosophical grounds, as had Thomas Jefferson. On the other hand, both Jefferson and Lincoln were white suprema­cists of sorts, and the latter told ex-slaves in his last year as Presi­dent that there was no place in America for free blacks, that repatriation in Africa was the only solution to the dilemma which emancipation would soon pose for both races.

Also, the Emancipation Proclamation was not, as most contempo­rary Americans now believe, a document which abolished slavery with the stroke of a pen. It did not, as a matter of policy, abolish slav­ery at all in those places under Lincoln’s rule—whether in the five Union states which still permitted the institution or in Southern terri­tory held by Union forces. It abolished slavery only in Confederate territory, and the Proclamation, by its own terms, did not go into ef­fect if the Southern states chose to return to the fold before the effec­tive date.

Of course Lincoln knew that the seceding states would not re­spond to such a proposal; but by issuing the Proclamation after the Battle of Sharpsburg he was able to send a message to Southern slaves who might be willing to rise against households without males to defend them. Then, too, Lincoln was able thereafter to say that the North was fighting to abolish slavery, a goal he had specifically dis­avowed well into the first year of the War.

Now, of course, historians of a certain stripe are able to say that this was the true cause of the North from the beginning, forgetting the myriad considerations that preoccupied nineteenth-century Americans, including tariffs, the rise of a rapacious industrial econo­my, and the political principles of the day, which included a devotion to state more than nation and a fierce commitment to the ideal of self-determination.

Too many modern commentators want to ignore everything in this case but the moral imperative of the Abolitionist, content for this one time in history to say that principles were more important than eco­nomics. Thus are Southerners forever branded as oppressors, while Union slaves are swept under the convenient rug of historical oblivion.

Because Lincoln was a formidable rhetorician (the greatest of his age) and because it is a twentieth-century failing that we believe the past is inferior to the present, the statute of limitations will never run out on our “crimes.” Fifty years after Massachusetts abolished slav­ery it was shaking an accusatory finger at Mississippi and Alabama. Fifty years after slavery had been abolished in these Southern states, Mississippians and Alabamians were still being called to account by the high caste Brahmins of Boston. And now that 120 years have passed, it is the politically prosperous grandsons of Irish immigrants who make the charges, descendants of the same brutal people who murdered literally hundreds of blacks in the draft riots of 1863.

It is Abraham Lincoln who invented this rhetoric; and we must ei­ther expose it for what it is or else continue to suffer the kind of abuse that manifests itself not only in anti-Southern cliches and stereotypes, but also in political exploitation and in such discriminatory legislation as the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 and gratuitous renewal in 1984. Those laws are bad not so much because of their severe provisions but because they assume that the integrated South deserves punitive treatment while the still-segregated North does not. And for that kind of moral abuse we can thank Abraham Lincoln.

III. Lincoln was responsible for the War Between the States, a con­flict in which more than 600,000 Americans were killed for no good purpose.

The truth of this statement should be obvious to a contemporary society preoccupied with the idea of peaceful coexistence and ob­sessed with a word like “negotiation.” The current President of the United States is routinely criticized for taking no steps during his first term to meet with his counterpart in the Soviet Union. We are told that military confrontation is wicked, that disputes between con­flicting political states should be solved through diplomatic means, that Concession is the child of Wisdom.

In 1861 Jefferson Davis made it quite clear in his resignation from the Senate and again in his inaugural address that all the Confederate States wanted was to be allowed to leave in peace. He stated this point explicitly and after so doing he took no action that would have indicated otherwise to the Union or to its president. No troops were called up. No extraordinary military appropriations requested. No belligerent rhetoric from Davis’ office or from his Cabinet. The South feared invasion, but never threatened it—not even implicitly.

Why, then, did Lincoln call for 75,000 troops “to defend the Union”? Why did he begin immediate preparations for war? Why did he insist on dispatching troops to Fort Sumter when a majority of his Cabinet advised against such a rash move and when he knew that South Carolina and the Confederacy believed the fortress to be legal­ly and Constitutionally theirs?

While Lincoln’s dispatch of troops left South Carolinians no choice but to defend their soil against an invader, Lincoln had a number of options open to him other than military action. For exam­ple, he might first have brought the whole matter of secession before the Supreme Court, seeking some legal right to Fort Sumter and in­deed to the entire Confederacy. But then there is good reason to be­lieve the Court would have ruled that Southerners had every legal justification to leave the Union. Then war would have been illegal and Lincoln’s incipient dream of a “refounding” would have gone a’glimmering.

A second choice would have been to refrain from ordering troops to relieve Fort Sumter and instead to have dispatched a diplomatic team to Montgomery, or better yet, gone himself for a “summit” with Davis. Given Lincoln’s prowess in debate, his love of discourse, his persistent appeals to “reason,” such a course of action would have seemed not only prudent but in keeping with the new president’s character—decidedly Lincolnian.

Yet apparently such an idea never occurred to the man who had been so eager as a young man to engage in amateur forensics and still later to meet Stephen Douglas in public debate. Historians can give credible reasons why Lincoln did not take his case to the High Court, but their voices trail off in weak apology when they take up the question of diplomatic negotiations. It all boils down to the supposition that, for his own reasons, Abraham Lincoln felt the situation was beyond the hope of dialogue—though no one can say exactly why he believed such a proposition.

Lincoln’s third choice—-the most likely of all—was simply to do nothing, to wait until the South made some overt move and then to react accordingly. For the sake of more than 600,000 killed on the field of battle, one wishes that he had been just a little more circum­spect, a little less sure of his own ability to read the minds of his op­ponents. Wait a month and see. Then another month. Then another. Surely the South would not have marched against the Union. Few believe that Davis would take such a drastic step. And all those young men would have grown old and wise—perhaps so wise that they would have found a way to reconcile their differences and to re­establish a Union they were born under. But, as I’ve already said, Lincoln did not approve of that Union. He wanted to found a new one. And the only way to accomplish such an end was to risk war.

Perhaps it never occurred to him that 600,000 men would die. Perhaps he was certain that the conflict would be brief and benign, a skirmish or two on the outskirts of Washington, over in the twinkling of an eye, with a few Union dead, a few Confederate dead, and everyone embracing after the show. But if that is what he believed, such an opinion constituted an inordinate pride in his own pre­science, one that we can only forgive by a supreme act of charity (provided, of course, that our forgiveness is solicited).

I will only add that despite his often quoted rhetoric of reconcilia­tion, he instituted a policy of total war—the first in our history—and saw to it that his troops burned homes, destroyed crops, and confis­cated property—all to make certain that civilians suffered the cruelest deprivations. He also refused to send needed medical supplies to the South, even when that refusal meant depriving Union soldiers of medicines needed to recover from their wounds. And finally, in the last year of the War, when Davis sent emissaries to negotiate a peace on Lincoln’s own terms, he ordered them out of Washington that the War might continue and the Republicans win re-election. As a result, 100,000 more troops were killed, North and South.

Because of Lincoln’s policies the cemeteries of the nation were sown with 600,000 premature bodies, long turned to dust now, but in their time just as open to the promise of life as any young draft dodger of the 1960s. That they fought one another, willing to risk all for their countries, is something that Lincoln counted on. Indeed you might say he staked his political future on their sacred honor, and in so doing impressed his face forever on the American penny.

Sober, reflective, a little sad as you hold him in your upturned palm, he looks perpetually rightward, gazing out of the round perimeter of his copper world at an extra dimension of existence—a visionary even now. And he is as ubiquitous as the common house­fly. If you toss him in a fountain or down a well he turns up in your pocket again, after the filling station attendant has added on the fed­eral tax and taken your twenty-dollar bill.

He can purchase nothing now, because his own grandiose dreams of Union have finally rendered him impotent. Once five of him would buy a candy bar or a coke. Now it would take a couple of squads. Tomorrow a regiment. Yet in a way he is indispensable to us as a reminder that in the ruthless expansion of government our lives are diminished with each new acquisition of power, with each digit of inflation, however small; and that such a diminution is infinite; that today, 120 years after his death, there is no conceivable end to the enormity of government and the consequent paucity of our indi­vidual lives.

And this is why we don’t like Abraham Lincoln.



Hope renewed

The temple might seem to be a religious institution, while the walls are a secular one. But God led Nehemiah to work on the walls, no less than he led Ezra to work on the temple. Both the sacred and the secular were necessary to fulfill God’s plan to restore the nation of Israel.

Nehemiah 2:16-18
Neh 2:16 And the rulers knew not whither I went, or what I did; neither had I as yet told it to the Jews, nor to the priests, nor to the nobles, nor to the rulers, nor to the rest that did the work.

Neh 2:17 Then said I unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.

Neh 2:18 Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me; as also the king’s words that he had spoken unto me. And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work.

The connection between the temple and the wall is significant for the theology of work.

The temple might seem to be a religious institution, while the walls are a secular one. But God led Nehemiah to work on the walls, no less than he led Ezra to work on the temple. Both the sacred and the secular were necessary to fulfill God’s plan to restore the nation of Israel.

If the walls were unfinished, the temple was unfinished too. The work was of a single piece. The reason for this is easy to understand.

Without a wall, no city in the ancient Near East was safe from bandits, gangs and wild animals, even though the empire might be at peace.

The more economically and culturally developed a city was, the greater the value of things in the city, and the greater the need for the wall. The temple, with its rich decorations, would have been particularly at risk.

Practically speaking, no wall means no city, and no city means no temple.

Conversely, the city and its wall depend on the temple as the source of God’s provision for law, government, security and prosperity. Even on strictly military terms, the temple and the wall are mutually dependent.

Preserve, protect and defend

Perhaps someone should send Rep Swalwell a Cliff Notes version of the US Constitution so that he would understand the oath of office he took to “preserve, protect and defend” it.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) is pledging a gun control vote next week by exclaiming that the “right to be safe” trumps the right to bear arms.

He argues that the “right to be safe” supersedes “any other rights” possessed by Americans:

It’s Friday, so call me crazy, but I can’t wait for next week. On Wednesday, our @HouseJudiciary Committee will have the first hearing on gun violence in 8 years. A new Congress is putting your right to be safe over any other rights. #EnoughIsEnough#HR8

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) February 1, 2019

While the right to bear arms is easy to find in the Bill of Rights, as is the right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from government intrusion on private property, etc., the “right to be safe” is elusive. In fact, no such right is declared in the Bill of Rights. Rather, Americans keep themselves safe via the exercise of the whole of their rights, including the right to keep and bear arms for defense of self and of liberty.

Perhaps someone should send Rep Swalwell a Cliff Notes version of the US Constitution so that he would understand the oath of office he took to “preserve, protect and defend” it.



Of Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania- a dystopian world

technology has enhanced the power of the Weak geometrically while PC has castrated the Strong.

I have said before that I am unsure whether America will have another civil war, even though many of her people are—foolishly, to anyone who has seen one— spoiling for one.

The factors are myriad, but king of them all is geographical emulsification and the lack of clear battle lines. I’ve been trying, for ages, to think of how that might change. Now, I realize, it won’t.

What’s happened in France and is happening in Britain has made me realize that the conflict is fundamentally between normal people who are getting pissed on, and people who sympathize with—and often someday hope to become—the unelected or unremovable power brokers who are pissing on them.

I know of no true historical model for a civil war in a country that looks and acts demographically like America does now.

But—as Angela Merkel learned, and as I suspect France will soon discover—history is wall-papered, end to end, with examples of leaders uninterested in the well-being of their people who eventually faced deposition of one form or another.

I pray that somehow, the leaders of America allow the peaceful and existing processes that could allow that to happen to advance unabated. It will take surviving a bitter old guard and defanging a particularly idiotic new guard of Democrats. It will take acknowledging earnestly that whole departments of our government, just like our press, have largely fallen into the hands of people who hate the nation and its people, and re-evaluating our goals on who to elect and what to do in elected office from that perspective.

But we must rise, face the day, and try. It is later than you think—and getting later. Because, I maintain, part of America’s ability not to become the bloody quagmire that France did during its revolution was down to the people it was revolting against being on the other side of an ocean.

I think we are— all Western nations, and we, no exception— more at more risk than I had initially thought of our own French revolution, and that’s a thing we decidedly do not need, and a place we decidedly do not wish to go. The name might survive—but I fear that nothing else of value in our country would.

Some people have been yakking it up about civil war for some time. They espouse the “Rambo attitude” of bring it on. This is a problem for many intelligent reasons, but the biggest one is probably this;  technology has enhanced the power of the Weak geometrically while PC has castrated the Strong. At a cost of less than $100,000 someone, (MS-13 perhaps or a religiouly based fanatical group), could paralyze this country to the point that nothing moved and people would start going hungry. And nobody would know who the enemy was.

“be careful what you wish for, lest it come true” -Edgar Alan Poe



For US Folks-Some info on Social Security

Social Security Cards up until the 1980s expressly stated the number and card were not to be used for identification purposes.
Since nearly everyone in the United States now has a number, it became convenient to use it anyway and the NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION message was removed.

HISTORY LESSON ON YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY CARD
YOU MIGHT WANNA READ THIS !!!!
Just in case some of you young whippersnappers (& some older ones) didn’t know this. It’s easy to check out, if you don’t believe it. Be sure and show it to your family and friends. They need a little history lesson on what’s what and it doesn’t matter whether you are Democrat or Republican. Facts are Facts.
Social Security Cards up until the 1980s expressly stated the number and card were not to be used for identification purposes.
Since nearly everyone in the United States now has a number, it became convenient to use it anyway and the NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION message was removed.
Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. His promises are in italics, with updates in bold.
1.) That participation in the Program would be Completely voluntary [No longer voluntary],
2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual Incomes into the Program [Now 7.65% on the first $90,000, and 15% on the first $90,000 if you’re self-employed],
3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year [No longer tax deductible],
4.) That the money the participants put into the independent ‘Trust Fund’ rather than into the general operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program [Under Johnson the money was moved to the General Fund and Spent], and
5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income [Starting with Clinton & Gore up to 85% of your Social Security can be Taxed].
Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month — and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to ‘put away’ — you may be interested in the following:
Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent ‘Trust Fund’ and put it into the general fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and Senate.
Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?
A: The Democratic Party.
Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?
A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the ‘tie-breaking’ deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the US
AND MY FAVORITE:
Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?
A: That’s right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!
Now, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!
And the worst part about it is uninformed citizens believe it! If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe changes will evolve. Maybe not, though. Some Democrats are awfully sure of what isn’t so — but it’s worth a try. How many people can YOU send this to?
Actions speak louder than bumper stickers.



Feel-Good Laws are Getting Us Killed..and it’s our fault.

It is uncomfortable to look at evil. We’ve all felt that. We were so afraid of bad feelings that we passed laws to make us feel better. We can blame our politicians for passing feel-good laws, but the people we elected were doing what we told them to do. We made a mistake and we got people killed. It would feel horrible to sit and let this happen again.

Safety-free Zone

Reblogged from Slow Facts

We are responsible for our actions. No one questions my responsibility if I’m negligent and hit you with my car. Are we also responsible for how someone feels? Does it injure you if I fly the US flag? How about if I own a gun or carry that gun in a place you find uncomfortable? We can pass laws that makes us feel better, but what should we do when these comfort-laws hurt people? Whose feelings take priority? It may seem unfair, but let me resort to facts for a minute.

Politicians do anything to win votes. They will pass any law that sounds good and makes us feel better. Politicians lie to us and say they’ve made things better even when they made things worse. That lead to a number of laws we see today.

We’re frightened by the thought of a murderer coming to our church, so politicians passed laws saying guns aren’t allowed at church. We’re horrified that a murderer would come to our child’s school. Politicians passed laws saying law-abiding people can’t bring guns to school. We don’t want people to get drunk when they are carrying a gun, so politicians passed laws that disarm law abiding people when they go to a bar. Those laws let us feel better, but did those laws make us safer? You know the answer. You’ve seen the answer, and you remember how it feels.

Isaiah 5:20Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

We passed a law so we could feel safe when we pray. In theory, our feel-good law stopped a criminal from bringing a gun into a church or a synagogue. In practice, murderers are not stopped by plastic signs. In practice, the law disarmed the flock and the shepherds.  We saw the horrible results last year at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. We saw the result this year at a synagogue in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. We got what we asked for, but not what we wanted.

In theory, our feel-good laws will stop a criminal from bringing a gun into a bar. In practice, our laws disarmed the designated driver. We also disarmed the designated defender. In practice, the gun-free-zone at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, California disarmed a half-dozen law enforcement officers who were at the bar when it was it was attacked. That law certainly didn’t work the way we wanted. Our laws made things worse rather than making them better. That feels awful. The solution isn’t to put up bigger plastic signs. The solution is to let people protect themselves.

Sandy Hook, Connecticut


In theory, we’ve protected our schools with a school resource officer and a plastic sign that says no-guns-allowed. That fails too often. Murderers go to our school to kill our children. Our defense has to be where ever our children are. It feels uncomfortable for us to think of someone attacking our children, but ignoring the problem feels worse. The good news is that lots of teachers want to protect “their kids.” I know because I’ve met them. I’ve listened to them.

“Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.”
Edward Abbey

It is uncomfortable to look at evil. We’ve all felt that. We were so afraid of bad feelings that we passed laws to make us feel better. We can blame our politicians for passing feel-good laws, but the people we elected were doing what we told them to do. We made a mistake and we got people killed. It would feel horrible to sit and let this happen again.

Fortunately, we have the power to fix it. Here is a link to call your elected representatives. Tell them how you feel about disarming the victims in gun-free-zones. You’ll feel better after you call.




All mushrooms aren’t fungi

So, the facts show that unless you are unlucky enough to be at “ground zero” it is highly probable that you can and would survive a nuclear attack if you had proper knowledge and took proper precautions beforehand. It is important to realize that YOU are your own first-responder.

Nuclear cloud

Sweden has 65,000 shelters, which would provide space for up to 7 million people, but that leaves an estimated 3 million inhabitants without protection.

At least one European country takes the risk of a nuclear war even more seriously: Switzerland may have fewer people than Sweden, but it has built about four times as many nuclear shelters —easily enough for the country’s entire population and then some.

As for US, we have bunkers too, they just aren’t for you and me. There are a number of very well to do companies that have a waiting list stretching around the block because they cannot build bunkers and nuclear fallout shelter for those in US that can afford it fast and big enough(google it) It isn’t a marginal fringe industry.

The United States of America contains many classified bunkers, particularly in relation to continuity of government (COG).In the event of a terrorist attack, nuclear strike, or other catastrophic occurrence, US government leaders congregate in top secret facilities, all of which are strong enough to withstand severe blasts and provide survival necessities for extended periods of time. These exclusive fortified shelters are some of America’s best-kept secrets and strongest lines of protection.

An all-out nuclear war between Russia and the United States, ( or, for that matter between any two or more members of the “nuclear club”), would be the worst catastrophe in history,a tragedy so huge it is difficult to comprehend. Even so, it would be far from the end of human life on earth. The dangers from nuclear weapons have been distorted and exaggerated, for varied reasons. These exaggerations have become demoralizing myths, believed by millions of Americans.

Those who hold exaggerated beliefs about the dangers from nuclear weapons must first be convinced that nuclear war would not inevitably be the end of them and everything worthwhile. Only after they have begun to question the truth of these myths do they become interested, under normal peacetime conditions, in acquiring nuclear war survival skills. Therefore, before giving detailed instructions for making and using survival equipment, I will examine the most harmful of the myths about nuclear war dangers, along with some of the grim facts.

 Myth: Fallout radiation from a nuclear war would poison the air and all parts of the environment. It would kill everyone. (This is the demoralizing message of On the Beach and many similar pseudo scientific books and articles.)

° Facts: When a nuclear weapon explodes near enough to the ground for its fireball to touch the ground, it forms a crater.


An all-out nuclear war between Russia and the United States would be the worst catastrophe in history, a tragedy so huge it is difficult to comprehend. Even so, it would be far from the end of human life on earth. The dangers from nuclear weapons have been distorted and exaggerated, for varied reasons. These exaggerations have become demoralizing myths, believed by millions of Americans.

I have found that many people at first see no sense in talking aboutdetails of survival skills. Those who hold exaggerated beliefs about the dangers from nuclear weapons must first be convinced that nuclear war would not inevitably be the end of them and everything worthwhile. Only after they have begun to question the truth of these myths do they become interested, under normal peacetime conditions, in acquiring nuclear war survival skills.Therefore, before giving detailed instructions for making and using survival equipment, I will examine the most harmful of the myths about nuclear war dangers, along with some of the grim facts.

° Myth: Fallout radiation from a nuclear war would poison the air and all parts of the environment. It would kill everyone. (This is the demoralizing message of On the Beach and many similar pseudo-scientific books and articles.)

° Facts:When a nuclear weapon explodes near enough to the ground for its fireball to touch the ground, it forms a crater.

Many thousands of tons of earth from the crater of a large explosion are pulverized into trillions of particles. These particles are contaminated by radioactive atoms produced by the nuclear explosion.Thousands of tons of the particles are carried up into a mushroom-shaped cloud,miles above the earth. These radioactive particles then fall out of the mushroom cloud, or out of the dispersing cloud of particles blown by the winds thus becoming fallout.

Each contaminated particle continuously gives off invisible radiation, much like a tiny X-ray machine while in the mushroom cloud, while descending, and after having fallen to earth. The descending radioactive particles are carried by the winds like the sand and dust particles of a miles-thick sandstorm cloud except that they usually are blown at lower speeds and in many areas the particles are so far apart that no cloud is seen.The largest, heaviest fallout particles reach the ground first, in locations close to the explosion. Many smaller particles are carried by the winds for tens to thousands of miles before falling to earth. At any one place where fallout from a single explosion is being deposited on the ground in concentrations high enough to require the use of shelters, deposition will be completed within a few hours.

The smallest fallout particles those tiny enough to be inhaled into a person’s lungs are invisible to the naked eye. These tiny particles would fall so slowly from the four-mile or greater heights to which they would be injected by currently deployed Soviet warheads that most would remain airborne for weeks to years before reaching the ground. By that time their extremely wide dispersal and radioactive decay would make them much less dangerous. Only where such tiny particles are promptly brought to earth by rain- outs or snow-outs in scattered “hot spots,” and later dried and blown about by the winds, would these invisible particles constitute along-term and relatively minor post-attack danger.

The air in properly designed fallout shelters, even those without air filters, is free of radioactive particles and safe to breathe except in a few’ rare environments.

At a typical location where a given amount of fallout from an explosion is deposited later than 1 hour after the explosion, the highest dose rate and the total dose received at that location are less than at a location where the same amount of fallout is deposited 1 hour after the explosion. The longer fallout particles have been airborne before reaching the ground, the less dangerous is their radiation.

Within two weeks after an attack the occupants of most shelters could safely stop using them, or could work outside the shelters for an increasing number of hours each day. Exceptions would be in areas of extremely heavy fallout such as might occur downwind from important targets attacked with many weapons, especially missile sites and very large cities.

Myth: Fallout radiation penetrates everything; there is no escaping its deadly effects.

Facts: Some gamma radiation from fallout will penetrate the shielding materials of even an excellent shelter and reach its occupants. However, the radiation dose that the occupants of an excellent shelter would receive while inside this shelter can be reduced to a dose smaller than the average American receives during his lifetime from X rays and other radiation exposures normal in America today. The design features of such a shelter include the use of a sufficient thickness of earth or other heavy shielding material. Gamma rays are like X rays, but more penetrating. The following illustration shows how rapidly gamma rays are reduced in number (but not in their ability to penetrate) by layers of packed earth. Each of the layers shown is one halving-thickness of packed earth- about 3.6 inches.  A halving- thickness is the thickness of a material which reduces by half the dose of radiation that passes through it.

The actual paths of gamma rays passing through shielding materials are much more complicated, due to scattering, etc.,but when averaged out, the effectiveness of a halving-thickness of any material is approximately as shown.The denser a substance, the better it serves for shielding material. Thus, a halving-thickness of concrete is only about 2.4 inches.

Myth: A heavy nuclear attack would set practically everything on fire, causing “firestorms” in cities that would exhaust the oxygen in the air. All shelter occupants would be killed by the intense heat.

 Facts: On a clear day, thermal pulses (heat radiation that travels at the speed of light) from an air burst can set fire to easily ignitable materials (such as window curtains,upholstery, dry newspaper, and dry grass) over about as large an area as is damaged by the blast. It can cause second-degree skin burns to exposed people who are as far as ten miles from a one-megaton (1  MT) explosion. (A 1-MTnuclear explosion is one that produces the same amount of energy as does one million tons of TNT.) If the weather is very clear and dry, the area of fire danger could be considerably larger. On a cloudy or smoggy day, however,particles in the air would absorb and scatter much of the heat radiation, and the area endangered by heat radiation from the fireball would be less than the area of severe blast damage.

Myth: In the worst-hit parts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki where all buildings were demolished, everyone was killed by blast,radiation, or fire.

 Facts: In Nagasaki,some people survived uninjured who were far inside tunnel shelters built for conventional air raids and located as close as one-third mile from ground zero(the point directly below the explosion). This was true even though these long,large shelters lacked blast doors and were deep inside the zone within which all buildings were destroyed. (People far inside long, large, open shelters are better protected than are those inside small, open shelters.)

Myth: Because some modern H-bombs are over 1000times as powerful as the A-bomb that destroyed most of Hiroshima, these H-bombs are 1000 times as deadly and destructive.

Facts: A nuclear weapon 1000 times as powerful as the one that blasted Hiroshima, if exploded under comparable conditions,produces equally serious blast damage to wood-frame houses over an area up to about 130 times as large, not 1000 times as large.

Myth: A Russian nuclear attack on the United States would completely destroy all American cities.

Facts: As long as Soviet leaders are rational they will continue to give first priority to knocking out our weapons and other military assets that can damage Russia and kill Russians. To explode enough nuclear weapons of any size to completely destroy American cities would be an irrational waste of warheads. The Soviets can make much better use of most of the warheads that would be required to completely destroy American cities; the majority of those warheads probably already are targeted to knock out our retaliatory missiles by being surface burst or near-surface burst on their hardened silos, located far from most cities and densely populated areas.

Unfortunately, many militarily significant targets – including naval vessels in port and port facilities, bombers and fighters on the ground,air base and airport facilities that can be used by bombers, Army installations, and key defense factories – are in or close to American cities.In the event of an all-out Soviet attack, most of these ‘”soft”targets would be destroyed by air bursts. Air bursting a given weapon subjects about twice as large an area to blast effects severe enough to destroy”soft” targets as does surface bursting the same weapon. Fortunately for Americans living outside blast and fire areas, air bursts produce only very tiny particles. Most of these extremely small radioactive particles remain airborne for so long that their radioactive decay and wide dispersal before reaching the ground make them much less life- endangering than the promptly deposited larger fallout particles from surface and near-surface bursts.However, if you are a survival minded American you should prepare to survive heavy fallout wherever you are. Unpredictable winds may bring fallout from unexpected directions. Or your area may be in a “hot spot” of life-endangering fallout caused by a rain-out or snow-out of both small and tiny particles from distant explosions. Or the enemy may use surface or near-surface bursts in your part of the country to crater long runways or otherwise disrupt U.S. retaliatory actions by producing heavy local fallout.

Today few if any of Russia’s largest intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are armed with a 20-megaton warhead. A huge Russian ICBM, theSS-18, typically carries 10 warheads each having a yield of 500 kilotons, each programmed to hit a separate target.

Myth: So much food and water will be poisoned by fallout that people will starve and die even in fallout areas where there is enough food and water.

Facts: If the fallout particles do not become mixed with the parts of food that are eaten, no harm is done. Food and water in dust-tight containers are not contaminated by fallout radiation. Peeling fruitsand vegetables removes essentially all fallout, as does removing the uppermost several inches of stored grain onto which fallout particles have fallen. Water from many sources — such as deep wells and covered reservoirs, tanks, and containers — would not be contaminated. Even water containing dissolved radioactive elements and compounds can be made safe for drinking by simply filtering it through earth, as described later in this blog series.

 Myth: Most of the unborn children and grandchildren of people who have been exposed to radiation from nuclear explosions will be genetically damaged will be malformed, delayed victims of nuclear war.

 Facts: The authoritative study by the National Academy of Sciences, A Thirty Year Study of the Survivors qf Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was published in 1977. It concludes that the incidence of abnormalities is no higher among children later conceived by parents who were exposed to radiation during the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki than is the incidence of abnormalities among Japanese children born to unexposed parents.

This is not to say that there would be no genetic damage, nor that some fetuses subjected to large radiation doses would not be damaged. But the overwhelming evidence does show that the exaggerated fears of radiation damage to future generations are not supported by scientific findings.

So, the facts show that unless you are unlucky enough to be at “ground zero” it is highly probable that you can and would survive a nuclear attack if you had proper knowledge and took proper precautions beforehand. It is important to realize that YOU are your own first-responder.

In the next few days I will be blogging the information you need, (assuming that we don’t experience Armageddon in the meantime). On the off-chance that you don’t wish to wait, I can recommend downloading the FEMA NuclearExplosion Information Sheet

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