Tag: Early American History

Spirit Of The Declaration–Part 1

AS we begin the countdown to the 250th anniversary of the DoI and the founding of this nation I feel that too many people have little knowledge of the document other than the vague stuff they are taught in school.

There was more that went into this document other than Jefferson spending a couple of days in solitude writing the document….

So please let me help those that want to know as much as possible about the founding of this country and the thoughts behind them….

The members of the Continental Congress knew that their Declaration left much unsaid and unfinished. They had heavily edited Jefferson’s draft, though they refrained from adding new sections. In what Jefferson bemoaned as “mutilations” but were really judicious edits, Congress cut about a quarter of the text before adopting the document on the morning of July 4, 1776. In truth, the Declaration was not seen as the epochal event later generations attributed to it. To the delegates in Philadelphia, that step had been taken two days earlier, on July 2, when Congress voted to separate from Great Britain, King George III, and Parliament. Moreover, the Declaration was important insofar as it paved the way for two more important moves: forming foreign alliances, primarily France and Spain, and forming some kind of confederated government to guide relations among the now sovereign States. No public readings, fireworks, or celebrations occurred on July 4, though they would break out in coming days as America’s new citizens listened to the Declaration read on hastily printed broadsheets sent around the country.

By design, the Declaration avoided any discussion, or even suggestion, of the type of government the colonies should establish. Formally, that was the responsibility of Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman’s committee to draft articles of confederation, which ultimately created a uniquely weak central government. The more fundamental questions of governance were to be left to the new States, eight of which would draft and adopt constitutions in 1776 alone. Indeed, for many delegates, the business of writing state constitutions was far more important than Congress’s declaration. Even Thomas Jefferson would rather have been back in Williamsburg working on a constitution for Virginia, a draft of which he had already composed earlier in the year, and parts of which he now re-purposed for the declaration.

https://reason.com/volokh/2026/05/05/the-spirit-of-the-declaration-part-1/

The more history you learn the more care you will take in the votes you put in….there is so much more to our country than the mindless dribble of the MAGA twats…

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A Few “Founding” Myths

As with all history there myths that get passed around so much that soon become a fact….but in reality they are still a myth no matter how many times they are uttered.

As a political Historian I feel it necessary to corr4eect a bunch of the myths that we have lived with for generations.

10 myths that we all know and have heard…..

  • The Declaration of Independence wasn’t signed on July 4, 1776. Though the Declaration was adopted by Congress on July 4, the document wasn’t signed by most of the delegates until August 2.
  • Thomas Jefferson didn’t sign the Constitution. Though Jefferson signed the Declaration of Independence, he missed the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia because he was serving as the United States’ envoy in Paris at the time.
  • Neither did John Adams. Like Jefferson, Adams was away from the United States at the time it was signed. He was in London serving as the United States minister to Great Britain.
  • The Founding Fathers didn’t originally want the turkey as the United States’ national symbol. The debate over the Great Seal began in 1776 and lasted six years, involving ideas about religious and mythical scenes. The turkey was not a close contender.
  • The Liberty Bell probably didn’t ring after the Declaration of Independence was signed. Historians say it’s unlikely the bell rung because the steeple that housed the bill was rotted at the time. It’s also unlikely it cracked that day.
  • There weren’t originally 13 colonies. Until 1776, Delaware was legally considered a lower county of the colony of Pennsylvania. It left to become an independent state in 1776.
  • There’s no proof Betsy Ross created the the first American flag. According to National Geographic, the only evidence Ross played any part in designing or sewing the American flag that made its debut in 1777 is testimony from her family. Likewise, there’s no proof Ross didn’t create the flag, and several reasons she may have done so.
  • Neither the Constitution nor the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper. They were both written on parchment, though some early drafts of the documents could have been written on the widely-used hemp.
  • Most of the Founders who signed the Declaration of Independence didn’t sign the Constitution. Only six signed both: George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, George Read,James Wilson and Roger Sherman.
  • The Constitution doesn’t say “All Men Are Created Equal.” That language is contained within the Declaration of Independence; the original Constitution included provisions such as the Three-Fifths Clause, which counted each enslaved person as three-fifths of a person to determine representation in Congress.

That will do for now….

Class Dismissed

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Why The 2nd?–Revisited

I was bored today…..so I thought I would toss a grenade and see where the damage would be…..

With all the shootings lately I expected to see some sort of revival of the 2nd Amendment debate…..so far I have been disappointed….I guess it is up to me to get the engines firing….

Many years ago while the nation was in the middle of one of our famous gun rights debates I wrote a post that was the highlights of a longer article I wrote explain why I felt the 2nd was put into the BoR.

As history buff I am always interested in the opinions on defining moments in our history….

I re-post my original for readers to get a feel of my thinking…..

Why The 2nd?

I recently came across another article that looked deeper into the 2nd than the mindless twaddle that people try to use in the debate these days….

One mass shooting after another, one accidental child death after another tears through this country on an almost daily basis. Once again, lawmakers hide behind “thoughts and prayers,” while clinging to an amendment that has been twisted beyond recognition. But to understand why the Second Amendment exists at all, we must strip away the myths and confront a brutal truth: it was not written to safeguard freedom, but to preserve slavery.

The militias it enshrined were never about defending homes from tyrants abroad but about keeping human beings in chains at home. Until America reckons with this history, we will remain shackled to its bloody legacy.

So, let’s clear a few things up.

The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says “state” instead of “country” (the framers knew the difference—see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave-patrol militias in the Southern states, an action necessary to get Virginia’s vote to ratify the Constitution.

It had nothing to do with making sure mass murderers could shoot up public venues and schools. Founders, including Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison, were totally clear on that, and we all should be too.

In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South, they were called “slave patrols” and were regulated by the states.

In Georgia, for example, a generation before the American Revolution, laws were passed in 1755 and 1757 that required all plantation owners or their male white employees to be members of the Georgia Militia, and for those armed militia members to make monthly inspections of the quarters of all slaves in the state. The law defined which counties had which armed militias and required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who may be planning uprisings.

https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-second-amendment-was-created-to-put-down-slave-revolts/

Please let your thoughts be known.

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Remember The US Constitution?

That may seem like a silly question to some….but I think it is a valid one.

True many Americans know the term but how many know the document?

I would post a link about here but why no one would use it?

You realize the the Bill of Rights was not part of the original writing of the Constitution, right?

Nope it was not it was an add-on thanks to the work of the anti-Federalists….the BoR was put in to protect one group from the other….but was it a unanimous decision to do so?

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the U.S. Constitution?

For many people, the answer probably involves one of the famous individual liberties that are spelled out in the Bill of Rights, such as freedom of speech, due process, or the right to keep and bear arms. When a person argues that something is unconstitutional, what that person often means is that it violates one or more of the provisions contained in the Bill of Rights.

Yet the Constitution did not originally include the Bill of Rights when it was ratified in 1788. Why not?

The answer is that some of the framers of the original Constitution feared that if certain rights were enumerated in the text, all of the other, unenumerated rights would be left wide open for government abuse.

“It would not only be useless, but dangerous, to enumerate a number of rights which are not intended to be given up,” declared future Supreme Court Justice James Iredell at the North Carolina Ratification Convention in 1788. That is “because it would be implying, in the strongest manner, that every right not included in the exception might be impaired by the government without usurpation.” What is more, Iredell declared, “it would be impossible to enumerate every one. Let anyone make what collection or enumeration of rights he pleases, I will immediately mention twenty or thirty more rights not contained in it.”

That was the position taken by those who came to be known as the Federalists. They thought that adding a bill of rights to the Constitution was a bad idea not because they were against individual rights, but because they despaired of what might happen to any rights that were not specifically written out.

But the Constitution’s Anti-Federalist critics were not persuaded by such concerns. “The want of a Bill of Rights to accompany this proposed system,” declared the Anti-Federalist pamphleteer who went by the pseudonym “John DeWitt,” “is a solid objection to it.” In his view, “to express those rights” which the government may not infringe was a necessary and proper safeguard against “the intrusion into society of that doctrine of tacit implication which has been the favorite theme of every tyrant from the origin of all governments to the present day.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/14/was-the-bill-of-rights-a-bad-idea-some-founding-fathers-thought-so/

There is so much about our early history that most do not know and schools do very little to change all the misconceptions.

Some say that we as a nation are heading for a constitutional crisis….I disagree we are already ass deep in one….and I am not alone….

There is a lot of talk these days about the desire to be king….that has been going on for longer than you may think….

At no time in our history has there been so illustrious a gathering as the corps of delegates who came together in the State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia late in the spring of 1787 to frame a constitution for the United States of America. After Thomas Jefferson, the country’s envoy in Paris, ran his eyes over the roster, he wrote his counterpart in London, John Adams, “It really is an assembly of demigods.

Yet, distinguished though they were, the delegates had only the foggiest notion of how an executive branch should be constructed. Not one of them anticipated the institution of the presidency as it emerged at the end of the summer.

One frightful goblin haunted their deliberations. The study of history — ancient to modern — instructed them that republics were always short-lived, and they feared that America might quickly adopt kingship.

https://www.americanheritage.com/shall-we-have-king

And it only took 250 years….

So that leaves it up to me and my fellow political historians to correct all the misconceptions….we just hope someone is listening.

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No Fatties Allowed!

Time for another of the old professor’s look into our history.

Recently the Sec of War had a pep rally with every commend general and admiral to point a new way for the military….just a few of the highlights from his presentation….

Ethos: “The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” he said. Specifically, “no more climate change worship, no more division, distraction, or gender delusions.”

Non-toxic: He also promised to push back harder against complaints of “toxic” leadership within the military. “We’re undertaking a full review of the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing, to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second-guessing.”

Fitness: “Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops,” he said. “Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon. … Whether you’re an Airborne Ranger or a chairborne ranger, a brand new private or a four star general, you need to meet the height and weight standards.” He said all members of the military, at every rank, will now have to pass a fitness test twice a year.

Facial hair: “No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression,” Hegseth said. “We don’t have a military full of Nordic pagans.”

Basically he was saying no fatties, hairless soldiers and mindless drones.

But being a historian I checked back to the early days of the Continental Army and their fearless leader, George Washington…..

Ten new directives, he said, would strip away what he called “woke garbage” and restore what he termed a “warrior ethos.”

The phrase “warrior ethos” – a mix of combativeness, toughness and dominance – has become central to Hegseth’s political identity. In his 2024 book “The War on Warriors,” he insisted that the inclusion of women in combat roles had drained that ethos, leaving the U.S. military less lethal.

In his address, Hegseth outlined what he sees as the qualities and virtues the American soldier – and especially senior officers – should embody.

On physical fitness and appearance, he was blunt: “It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world.”

He then turned from body shape to grooming: “No more beardos,” Hegseth declared. “The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.”

As a historian of George Washington, I can say that the commander in chief of the Continental Army, the nation’s first military leader, would have agreed with some of Secretary Hegseth’s directives – but only some.

Washington’s overall vision of a military leader could not be further from Hegseth’s vision of the tough warrior.

For starters, Washington would have found the concern with “fat generals” irrelevant. Some of the most capable officers in the Continental Army were famously overweight.

His trusted chief of artillery, Gen. Henry Knox, weighed around 280 pounds. The French officer Marquis de Chastellux described Knox as “a man of thirty-five, very fat, but very active, and of a gay and amiable character.”

https://theconversation.com/where-george-washington-would-disagree-with-pete-hegseth-about-fitness-for-command-and-what-makes-a-warrior-266530

This whole exercise was useless and a waste of time…..but like everything in the Donny admin there must be controls within all systems especially the military for he may need them in the near future.

This exercise would have been just effective in an email but the two clowns had to have their day on the stage.

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“lego ergo scribo”

Independence Day–2025

I hope everyone has an enjoyable and safe holiday….Happy Fourth of July!

Today we celebrate the document that proclaimed the colonies independence from mother England….but since this was the start of our Revolutionary War I want cover a hero that gets little recognition for his service…. Gilbert du Motier, better known as the Marquis de Lafayette.

When I was teaching a political history class at a local college my class of 12 had only one young lady that knew anything about the Marquis.,….I had one genus that thought he was a famous pirate.

The Marquis de La Fayette distinguished himself with his military deeds during the American War of Independence (1775-1783), earning the nickname “Hero of two worlds”. His experience in the United States stoked his love of liberty, and upon returning to France he took part in the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. He was commander of the National Guard during the Revolution, when his sympathies were split between the monarchy and the revolutionaries. He was eventually forced to flee the country.

He explained his attraction to the American cause in a letter to his wife: “The welfare of America is intimately connected with the happiness of all mankind; she will become the respectable and safe asylum of virtue, integrity, tolerance, equality, and a peaceful liberty.”

Receiving his commission as major general in the Continental Army in 1777, Lafayette first saw action in September of that year at the Battle of Brandywine where he was shot in the leg and recovered from his wound at the Moravian settlement in Bethlehem, Pa. His heroism in the battle encouraged Washington to give the young Frenchman command of a division, and Lafayette stayed with his troops at Valley Forge. After a visit to France in 1779, he returned to America in 1780 with assurances of thousands of French troops who would join the war, and helped Franco-American forces win the surrender of a large British army at Yorktown, Va., in 1781, the last major battle of the war.

Lafayette was injured in the Battle of Brandywine, but his tactical cunning and fearlessness in battle helped to save the Revolution on many occasions. In 1779, Lafayette returned to France and helped to win formal French support for the American cause. Lafayette came to Williamsburg during preparations for the Virginia Campaign of 1781. At Yorktown, Lafayette helped corner Britain’s Lord Cornwallis, whose surrender after several days of siege was a fatal blow that ensured the American victory.

After the American Revolution, Lafayette returned to France, where his popularity soared as he navigated between angry subjects and the monarchy. Lafayette drafted France’s celebrated Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen, and advocated for religious toleration and the end of slavery. When most of Europe declared war against France in 1792, Lafayette commanded a French army in the north. But he was taken prisoner by the Austrians and remained with them for nearly five years. Lafayette and his wife, Adrienne de Noailles, had four children, including a son named Georges Washington. The general died in 1834.

More on the life and times of the Marquis….https://theconversation.com/lafayette-helped-americans-turn-the-tide-in-their-fight-for-independence-and-50-years-later-he-helped-forge-the-growing-nations-sense-of-identity-249455

A hero in two worlds…the US and France.  He deserves much more recognition than he gets in our history classes.

The world needs more people like the Marquis….if we had them this would be a better world.

“The highest reward that can be bestowed on a revolutionary veteran is to welcome him with a sight of the blessings which have issued from our struggle for independence, freedom and equal rights.”

Class dismissed

+++This will be my only offering for today….I will be grilling for family and a few friends, a tradition of mine on this day….the menu will consist of ribs and burgers, grilled corn and squash and ice cold watermelon to top off the meal.+++

If you are out and about celebrating the fourth then please take care and as always….Be Well and Be Safe….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Immigration: Friends And Foes

Everybody on the Right is absolutely bubbly with the actions taken by Donny and his move against immigrants.

There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason for his deportations other than the misuse of the ‘Enemy Aliens Act’ from our early history.

That Act has been batted around liberally by the Far Right and even some of the dolts in the media….but I do not believe the ‘Act’ says what they think it says.

President Donald Trump claims that the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 grants him the power to deport certain Venezuelan-born aliens without due process, based on the mere allegation of membership in a criminal street gang.

But the text of the Alien Enemies Act does not allow the president to do anything of the sort. “Whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government,” the act states, the president may direct the “removal” of “all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized.”

The crimes of the alleged members of the street gang Tren de Aragua do not meet this legal standard. There is no “declared war” between the United States and Venezuela, and there is no “invasion or predatory incursion” of the U.S. by “any foreign nation or government.” The gang is not a foreign state, and the gang’s alleged crimes, heinous as they may be, do not qualify as acts of war by a foreign state. Trump’s frequent talk about a rhetorical “invasion” of the U.S. by undocumented immigrants utterly fails to satisfy the law’s requirements.

The fatal defects of Trump’s position are further illuminated when you compare his stance with James Madison’s “Report of 1800,” which critiqued the Alien and Sedition Acts. (The Alien Enemies Act was one of the three laws that comprised the Alien and Sedition Acts.)

As Madison explained, there are two categories of “offences for which aliens within the jurisdiction” of the United States “are punishable.” The first category involves “offences committed by the nation of which they make a part, and in whose offences they are involved.” In this case, “the offending nation can no otherwise be punished than by war.” In other words, the aliens are citizens of an offending nation that has committed an act of war against the United States. The aliens who fall within this category are “alien enemies.”

https://reason.com/2025/05/26/dont-use-the-alien-enemies-act-on-alien-friends/

Of course under normal circumstances this would be a Constitutional issue….but when the legal system is being choked by nothing more than political hacks anything can be made possible.

Was Hamilton Right?

Alexander Hamilton described the judiciary as “beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power.” He reasoned that the court only has the power of judgment. Its authority relies not on coercive ability, but rather on the trust of both the other branches of government and the public in its integrity as an impartial arbiter of the law.

I think he was mistaken…..maybe in his day it may have held true but today it is not for the rulings of SCOTUS seem to indicate that it is one of the power centers of the government.

Class Dismissed!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Our Early Tariff Wars

+++Note–this is going to be another short days for posting for I return to the doctor for blood letting, scans and consultation….in the last week I have been stuck so many times I am starting to feel like a pin cushion.  I will be checking when I can on IST using my phone so please bear with me for I may miss something.  Thanx for your time and understanding+++

You guys know me I do like to inject history into the conversation whenever I can….and what better subject for that injection than tariff wars?

Tariffs are nothing new, nothing Donny came up with on his own….nope they have been with us since the very beginning of this nation….

President Donald J. Trump claims that “tariffs are going to make our country rich.” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer counters that “Trump’s tariffs are going to raise prices on American families by as much as $1,200 a year.” Debate rages on amid American tariff measures and other nations’ counter-measures. This debate over who wins and who loses from tariffs is not new. It’s not even particularly populist. As it turns out, arguing about tariffs has a long American pedigree, dating back to the administration of the first president, George Washington.

There are three important lessons we can learn from this early American tariff debate. The first and most important lesson is that each system proposed in the 1790s, like all centralized systems of industrial policy and tariffs, allowed government to choose winners and losers. Second, at a time when some form of mercantilism was still the default position for nearly all Americans, there was still vigorous debate. And third, tariffs are fundamentally a moral issue.

Americans would like to believe that the most contentious moral and political issue in the United States before the Civil War was slavery. Sadly, it was not. Until 1857, slavery often took a backseat to questions that we tend to overlook today, things like the national bank, transportation infrastructure, and immigration. The most contentious issue in early America, however, was the tariff, especially a protective tariff designed not to raise revenue but to discourage foreign trade altogether.

Why did tariffs arouse such strong opinions? To answer this question, we need to look at the major tariff debates in the early American republic. The first such debate, between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans during the 1790s, set many of the terms for the later debates occasioned by Henry Clay’s “American System” during the populist Age of Jackson, as well as the high tariffs implemented by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

What the tariff fight of the 1790s reveals is not the clash of free market liberalism vs. dirigisme—indeed, no one in the late 1700s promoted total free trade—but rather the clash of two different industrial policies, each of which wanted to grant the US Government coercive power over the marketplace.

Lessons from Early America’s Tariff Wars

You see nothing new.

In case you, my reader, would like to learn more about the early tariff wars then this may help.

A Brief History of Tariffs in the United States and the Dangers of their Use Today

Now hopefully you will have a better grasp on just what a tariff war is about and make a rational decision if they are good or bad.

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More Tariff Stuff

It is no secret that I believe these Little Donny tariffs are doing very little to enrich the people of this country and everything to help out his wealthy boot-lickers.

What are these tariffs really all about?

Now, the toughest tariffs by far are on China, and they’re paired with relatively much lower (but still significant) tariffs on the rest of the world while the administration seeks trade deals with various countries in hopes of forming a trade coalition against China.

Trump’s advisers hope that this policy will achieve several things at once: bring manufacturing (and manufacturing jobs) back to the US, address national security concerns about dependence on China, boost US exports, raise revenue to help address the US national debt — and maybe even pave the way toward a restructuring of the global currency system.

If all that sounds fanciful, that’s because it’s extremely fanciful.

Many of those hoped-for benefits are quite implausible and extremely difficult to achieve. Tariffs, meanwhile, bring extremely significant costs and downsides that could very easily wreck his team’s hopes of trying to achieve those lofty aims.

Furthermore, even Trump’s revised tariff policy isn’t at all well-tailored to achieve those aims — it’s still beating up allies we’d need against China, and targeting goods and industries it would make little sense to produce in the US. And his erratic implementation gets in the way even more by ruining businesses’ attempts to plan.

In practice, the only thing Trump is really doing is economic damage – by making things more expensive, chilling investment in the US, reducing confidence in the US’s stability, and casting a pall of uncertainty over everything.

https://www.vox.com/politics/408722/trump-tariffs-bessent-manufacturing-china

So how’s it going collecting these tariffs?

Customs and Border Protection has announced the amount of money it’s taking in under President Trump’s tariffs, and the figures do not agree with the president’s repeated declaration that the US is collecting $2 billion per day. That figure was said to include revenue tied to the tariffs Trump calls reciprocal. But the agency said in a statement this week to CNBC that “since April 5, CBP has collected over $500 million under the new reciprocal tariffs, contributing to more than $21 billion in total tariff revenue from 15 presidential trade actions implemented since Jan 20, 2025.”

And in discussing a system snag that kept freight on the water already from facing the higher tariffs, a situation that lasted 10 hours, the agency said, “Even during the brief glitch, CBP’s average $250 million/day revenue stream remained uninterrupted.” The Treasury Department released data this week reflecting its daily statement of total deposits— “Customs and Certain Excise Taxes”—at $305 million, per CNBC. US Customs collects all tariffs at point of entry.

Money is being collected but that means prices will shoot up…..glad we are collected the cash but at what cost to you and me?

I still not convince the need for these shots at the new trade war that is being fired by Little Donny and his Merry Band of thugs.

Does anyone else see the danger these tariffs impose?

Did you know that tariffs sparked a revolution…..the American Revolution….

The basic economy of the times was this: The Colonies were there to export raw goods to Britain. In the case of Virginia, that was primarily tobacco. British merchants then exported luxury goods to the Colonies that the Colonies couldn’t, or didn’t, produce on their own. The British felt that this was a fine arrangement and that they were helping the Virginia economy, in particular, when they banned British farmers from growing tobacco (not that Britain had a great climate for the leaf).

The Colonists, particularly those in Virginia and Massachusetts, didn’t see it that way. The reason that “debtors” makes its way into the title of Holton’s book is telling. He wasn’t talking about Dickensian debtors living in squalor; he was talking about the Virginia gentry, which found itself constantly in debt to British merchants. Those gentlemen farmers were almost totally dependent on the price of their tobacco exports — which varied wildly — but had to keep up appearances by continuing to import British goods (or so they thought; appearances were very important to them, Holton writes). Various British laws also restricted what the Colonies could produce and how they could sell it. At various times, the British banned the Colonies from making their own iron; Colonists could only sell woolen clothing within their own colony — they couldn’t export it. For anything they did export, such as that precious tobacco, it had to be done on British ships.

That meant Virginia planters couldn’t sell tobacco on the European market, they could only sell it through British middlemen, and those middlemen were the ones who profited most. That merchant class in London was growing in political power at home, so parliament was inclined to listen to what the merchant class wanted, while those Virginia farmers across the ocean had no vote at all. The British felt they were being “indulgent” with their North American Colonies when Parliament repealed the hated Stamp Act. The Fairfax County lawyer-planter George Mason was one who didn’t see it that way at all: “Is the indulgence of Great Britain manifested by prohibiting her colonies from exporting to foreign countries such commodities as she does not want and from importing such as she does not produce of manufacture …?” He was complaining about the restriction on trade; the addition of import duties on what Colonists felt they had to import made matters worse. In modern parlance, the Colonists wanted free trade for their agriculture-based economies.

How tariffs helped spark the American Revolution

Are these modern day tariffs bringing this nation to the cusp of a new American Revolution?

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“lego ergo scribo”

The “Alien Enemies Act”

+++Since I was asleep at the wheel and posted today’s post yesterday (that is what happens when you suffer from sleep deprivation) I thought I would inject on of my favorite subjects into the debate…..history.+++

As you guys know I like to throw some history into my posts with the hope it will help educate and open some closed minds.  (Good luck with that chuq)

Little Donny is using a law from 1798 in his rush to round up all those brown people that he sees as ‘enemies’….

This law when signed had very little to with justice and more about vengeance.

The Alien Enemies Act, established in 1798, was designed to give the president of the United States more power over foreign nationals on American soil during times of war. This month, Donald Trump invoked the law in an executive order targeting the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which the White House says is conducting “irregular warfare” against the U.S. The administration subsequently deported more than 200 men—who may or may not have ties to the gang—to a Salvadoran prison before a judge temporarily blocked the removals. (The administration is appealing the ban, but the men remain in El Salvador while their legal status is challenged.)

The White House claims implementing the law is necessary to ensure public safety, while others argue the longstanding statute should not be used since the U.S. is not in a declared war with Venezuela. In a memorandum blocking the removals, federal judge James E. Boasberg acknowledged that the executive’s use of the Alien Enemies Act raises “thorny legal issues” that “loom on the horizon,” calling Trump’s use of the law “unprecedented.”

Here’s what to know about the law and how it’s been used against non-citizens throughout American history.

The Alien Enemies Act was one of four 1798 laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts—a set of controversial statutes that emerged during a tenuous moment in the fledgling nation’s history.

In the wake of the Revolutionary War, the U.S. attempted to claim neutrality on the world stage. Yet it still faced a military threat from GreatBritain, which was seizing American ships to use in its ongoing war with France. In 1794, the U.S. signed a treaty with Britain to stop the seizures and improve Anglo-American relations, but the treaty strained the American alliance with revolutionary France.

Back at home, American lawmakers were split on which nation to support. Members of the emerging Democratic-Republican party, led by Thomas Jefferson, wanted the U.S. to ally with France, while Federalists, led by John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, thought the U.S. should align itself with Great Britain. Meanwhile, French privateers began seizing American merchant vessels in retaliation. An attempt to resolve the dispute through diplomatic means backfired when French diplomats demanded bribes.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/alien-enemies-act-history

As these laws from 1798 make their way back into public discourse, it is essential to know how they were both used and misused in the past. People have historically been targeted based on their sex and national heritage under these laws, laws that were weaponized against the American people in the name of national security. While the American founders offer us many pieces of wisdom and inspiration in political decision-making and compromise, it is incumbent upon us not to repeat their mistakes.

But sadly Trump is not thinking sanely and he is repeating the same attacks on people’s rights but that is what he has in mind the whole time…limiting our civil rights to the parts he agrees with and destroying that which he does not appreciate.

That all comes up because of the arrest and deportation of Khalil for his beliefs….(WTF?)

Facing a deadline from an immigration judge to turn over evidence for its attempted deportation of Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, the federal government has instead submitted a brief memo, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, citing the Trump administration’s authority to expel noncitizens whose presence in the country damages U.S. foreign policy interests.

The two-page memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press, does not allege any criminal conduct by Khalil, a legal permanent U.S. resident and graduate student who served as spokesperson for campus activists last year during large demonstrations against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the war in Gaza.

Rather, Rubio wrote Khalil could be expelled for his beliefs.

He said that while Khalil’s activities were “otherwise lawful,” letting him remain in the country would undermine “U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States.”

https://apnews.com/article/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-university-trump-c60738368171289ae43177660def8d34

Then there is the sedition thing and one’s words…very Stasi-like….turning fellow workers into stool pigeons…

US State Department employees are being encouraged to snitch on their “anti-Christian colleagues”.

An internal email sent out by Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, details how the department will collect evidence of anti-Christian bias by its own employees via anonymous tip-off forms.

The initiative is part of an effort to root out anti-Christian bias announced by Donald Trump in February.

Department employees are encouraged to report each other via an anonymous form, and instructed that their accounts should be as “detailed as possible” and include “names, dates and locations” of where the incidents took place.

Officials told Politico they were alarmed by the move, claiming it could create a culture of fear as staff turned on each other.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/04/11/snitch-on-anti-christian-co-workers-says-trump/

This is such bullshit!  It is all so damn disgusting!

I am sick of these sanctimonious bastards that try to equate the hatred of a religion with justifiable criticism of the barbaric attacks of Israel.

Personally I do not give a shit what they believe or pray to….that means absolutely nothing to me.

I despise the bastards in the Israeli government as much as I hate Little Donny and his gang of thugs.

Do I need to be more clear?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”