Sunday, October 30, 2022

Don't Call Me A Right-Winger


I have nothing in common with these two jerks

Previously: Politics and Religion Revisited                                                 

In the introduction to a post I wrote back in April, I noted my agreement with the many faithful latter-day saints who were troubled by the First Presidency's official statement urging Church members to submit to the government's mandate regarding Covid "vaccinations."  

Someone over at the Mormon Stories Podcast Group on Facebook commented on my position, saying that he didn't know who I was, but decided he needed to read no further since clearly the author of the piece (me) was just another ignorant right-winger.

I thought that was an odd thing for him to call me, because it had been the right-wingers in government who were trying to get me to comply with their unconstitutional mandates. My refusing to blindly go along with their dangerous demands doesn't make me a right-winger; it makes me the opposite of a right-winger, since historically right-wingers were always powerful members of the ruling class who tried to force others to bend to their will. It was always the right-wingers pretending to care about the little guy who were the ones trying to punish those who disagree with them.

The right-wingers today, of course, are those who claim to be liberals, but whose actions and motives are opposite of what classical liberalism always stood for. Today's right-wing ideologues are people like Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Nadler, Fauci, and Gates; all of them controlling, power-mad elites just chomping at the bit to rule over the rest of us while demanding we don't give them any push-back. 

If you are confused by what I just said, it's probably because you've always believed "right-winger" was synonymous with "conservative." If so, you deserve to correct your thinking.

In the political realm, right-wing regimes have always stood in direct opposition to traditional conservative and classical liberal values. It was always right-wingers in positions of power who saw the common folk as their enemy to be crushed against the rocks. As recently as the middle of the 20th century, when you heard the term "right-winger," it was tyrants like Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini who immediately came to mind.  Americans who thought of themselves as conservatives would have never thought of themselves as having anything in common with Nazis and Fascists.  

If your political views align with America's founders and the constitutional protections they bequeathed to us, you should vigorously object to being called a right-winger because right-wing actions and policies are completely antithetical to what you believe in. Right-wingers have historically been dictators who stood for censorship, oppression, and the enslavement of the individual.  Such suit-wearing demons never had anything at all in common with conservatives.

So What Is The Difference Between Left And Right?                                                        First, a digression: in a previous essay in this space, I quoted author Jeffrey Tucker on what it used to mean to be a liberal. That definition was widely understood by everyone in this country for over a hundred and fifty years. Back then, everyone knew what it meant to be liberal, and that meaning was 180 degrees opposite of what that term has come to mean today: 

"To be liberal was to favor free enterprise and property rights, oppose slavery, reject old-world caste systems, loathe war, be generally disposed toward free trade and cosmopolitanism, favor the social advance of women, favor technological progress — and to possess a grave skepticism toward government management of anything." (Jeffrey Tucker, Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Status Quo.)

Check your concordances to see how often "liberal" was used in scripture to convey a desirable quality. Or pull up Noah Webster's original 1828 dictionary. As you can see, the classical definition of "liberal"(i.e. the longstanding use of the term as it was always understood from the beginning) bears no resemblance at all to those members of the ruling elite who call themselves "liberals" today. Instead, the qualities of classical liberalism are now observable in those who hold conservative values.

Traditionally, most Americans, no matter what political party they aligned themselves with, considered themselves to have a liberal worldview, which is why liberals and conservatives were found in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Believe it or not, a person could hold liberal views in some areas and still be conservative in others, and vice-versa. In fact, we all should be both liberals and conservatives, otherwise we will not be in balance. For instance, you might embrace traditional, "conservative" values in your personal life while at the same time having a liberal outlook in your dealings with others. You might act to determine your own path in life while allowing others the free agency regarding how they will live theirs. In other words, Americans are supposed to believe in the Golden Rule. Unlike how things have unfolded today, political differences back then were usually not so important that they got in the way of your ability to love your neighbor.  

So if freedom-loving people were traditionally defined as liberals (and later, conservatives), what do we call powerful autocrats and authoritarians who would impose their will on others while censoring those who resist their rule?  Those are the right-wingers; often very wealthy, but never satisfied with the amount of power they have. They're always desperate for more power then more again.

These are the sociopaths who say to those beneath them, "do what I say or else!"  To put a Mormon spin on it, Joseph Smith was a classical liberal, while Brigham Young was a right-winger. King Benjamin was a classical liberal, King Noah was a right-winger.  Benjamin refused to tax his people or boss them around; Noah taxed his people heavily and would set you on fire if you dared to criticize him. 

Make no mistake: as politicians go, it is not just modern Democrats who have rejected the qualities of classical liberalism. Many Republican officeholders such as George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest of that wicked cabal of Neocons who plunged this country into two senseless wars twenty years ago were clearly right-wingers as well, as we can all see in retrospect.

This proves the danger that comes from regular people aligning themselves with a political party when they should be aligning themselves with correct principles. Because for so long conservatives identified as Republicans, they simply assumed Republican politicians were conservatives just like they were, never suspecting that those in leadership positions were in reality the right-wing devils they turned out to be.

American conservatives, who in 2003 might have resisted the senseless calls for war if those calls had been proposed by a Democratic president, willingly championed the killing of innocents in foreign lands when those calls came from a president who was a Republican, and all because that fellow Republican told them it was right and proper and patriotic to do so.  In retrospect, we can see how much better it would have been had we looked to scripture for our counsel instead of trusting in the arm of flesh. Utah Mormons are finally realizing that their own Republican senator Mitt Romney is a dangerous right-winger. Ten years ago I warned my readers that Romney was a wolf in sheep's clothing whose ideology is antithetical to the gospel of Christ. Boy, did I call it, or what?

A right-winger can be identified by his or her desire to censor dissent in order to hold onto power at all costs. Again, I direct your attention to the recognized right-wing regimes of monsters like Hitler and Mussolini. If you have nothing in common with those dictators, you should stop allowing others to lump you in with them. 

Where Did The Term 'Right-Winger' Originate?
Near the beginning of the French revolution (this was in 1789, before the criminally violent Reign of Terror began), the newly formed French National Assembly met to hammer out a constitution. The purpose was to come to some kind of agreement on how much power the king would be permitted to retain and how much authority would be left in the hands of the people through their representatives.

Almost immediately the delegates on each side staked out their own territories in the assembly hall, with the anti-royalist revolutionaries choosing seats to the left of the presiding officer while members of the aristocratic class seated themselves on the right. Needless to say, the aristocrats had more to gain by seeing to it that the king remained fully in power, so the right-wingers advocated for the monarchy while the lower classes sitting to the left advocated for the king to have less power.

As you can guess, it wasn't easy for these disparate groups to come to an amicable agreement on how France should be governed, and four years later the the whole enterprise had gone straight down the toilet (that's a French word meaning everything went to shit).

It didn't take long before the easily duped commoners were enticed by a devil named Robespierre, who got his followers to round up all members of the nobility and put them to the guillotine.  Unfortunately, this reign of terror didn't stop with just eliminating the snooty powdered wig set; pretty much everyone who suggested the guillotine might be too extreme a punishment for simply disagreeing with the mob ended up with their heads in a basket as well. 

Thus, by the time the French revolution was over, 17,000 French men, women, and children who made the mistake of feeling it might be better if everyone just calmed down a bit and and talked this thing out found themselves canceled by the woke mob. Quite permanently.

So in the end the revolutionaries had become the ones ruling with fear and force and violence, which is to say they themselves became the spitting image of the right-wing ruling class bullies they were trying to rid France of.  The chaos finally ended when somebody else with enough power to crush that revolution came to power, a self-indulgent little twerp named Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon, himself a wealthy and well-connected right-winger, crushed the right-wingers who had crushed the right-wingers that came before them. Which is how this always works.

What About The Lefties?                                                                                                     You may have noticed I haven't said very much about left-wingers so far. That's because it's a useless distinction. Since right-wingers in high places have traditionally operated as a cabal of wealthy and powerful people intent on ruling over those they deem to be lesser beings, it would do well to recognize that throughout history virtually every so-called left-wing "revolution of the masses" has been funded and controlled by a wealthy right-wing cabal in order to finance the very chaos that they then heroically step in to crush. That is what has come to be known as Hegelian Dialectics: you operate behind the scenes to create an uprising so violent that the people demand something be done to end the chaos, then you step in with your handpicked lackeys to rescue the nation from the disaster you yourself created, which always results in a more oppressive police state "for the safety of the citizens."  Every seemingly "spontaneous uprising of the oppressed" -whether it be the French Revolution, the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, or the George Floyd Riots- has been encouraged and co-opted by powerful individuals who used these incidents as a means of consolidating greater power to themselves.

In other words, every left-wing revolution in modern times was actually orchestrated and financed by powerful people on the right, people who bore no relation to traditional conservatives or classical liberals; people who believe it is their inherent right to rule over everybody else. 

One reason the French Revolution remains a perfect case study is that it has proven to be a microcosm for all the violent revolutions that came after.  For instance, it was long claimed by some that the French Revolution was stage-managed behind the scenes by wealthy people who wanted the power of the throne for themselves, and who figured out a way to engineer the coup by getting the downtrodden masses to do their dirty work for them.  The revolutionaries would dethrone the monarch, leaving a power gap which the secret elites would then fill with some charismatic "leader" under their own control.

For some time, Western historians tended to ignore the evidence presented by researchers such as the
Abbot Augustin Barruel (a French priest who they ignored even though he was present during the revolution) and Nesta Helen Webster (an English scholar they simply dismissed as a kook). These two, and others like them, provided documented proof that Robespierre was actually a front man for the semi-secret Jacobin Club, a group of wealthy upper crusties who were the real architects of the conspiracy to take over the government of France. Mrs. Webster even provided evidence that the Bavarian Illuminati had been backing the Jacobins, which indicated a bigger conspiracy behind the conspiracy. These "conspiracy theories" were dismissed by most Western intellectuals, who felt it was all too incredible to pay any mind to.

But then came Dr. James H. Billington, a Rhodes scholar who taught at Harvard and Princeton before serving 28 years as the Librarian of Congress. Billington had all the proper bona fides, and was highly esteemed by his peers. So when he published his massive tome on the French Revolution, the truth -that the revolution was not a spontaneous uprising by the lower classes but had actually been engineered by upper class elites acting in secret- could no longer be ignored by the stuffy intelligentsia. 

Dr. Billington's 677 page thesis, published in 1980 under the title
Fire In The Minds Of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, didn't stop at the French Revolution. Billington showed how the same pattern later resulted in the communist revolutions of Marx and Engels. Indeed, American Professor Antony Sutton had for years been compiling documents showing how Joseph Stalin could not have come to power in Russia had he not been secretly financed by American bankersthe same bankers who bankrolled Hitler's massive war machine. 

How Conservatives Were Tricked Into Believing They Belong On The Right                                                           The problem with adopting political labels -or worse, imposing such labels on others- is that meanings are fluid and often little understood. For example, while today the word "radical" has a negative connotation, that wasn't always so.  As constitutional

scholar Gordon Wood has shown, America's founders were proudly radical in the true meaning of the word. The word "radical" means "root" (as does the word "radish," a vegetable that is pretty much nothing but a root). In contrast to the monarchies that had ruled all of Europe for centuries, the founders were attempting to return to the roots of proper government, such as had existed with the ancient Israelites.  The law of Moses prized the individual's right to self-determination, which stood in contrast to the monarchies that had ruled all of Europe for centuries since.

One of the things the Founders were aware of was that the Israelites recognized God as their judge, their lawgiver, and their king (Isaiah 33:22). So for more than three centuries the Israelites did very well without an earthly king ruling over them. That was what made them a peculiar people: unlike all the nations around them, the Israelites had no king.

But ask any kid in Junior High if he wants to be seen as peculiar and you'll understand the level of maturity held by the Israelites some three centuries after Moses. The Israelites didn't want to be peculiar, they wanted to fit in like everybody else.  So about 360 years after escaping the tyranny of the pharaoh in Egypt, all the elders of Israel went before the prophet Samuel and told him they wanted to have a king like all the other nations. Samuel was perturbed and took this to the Lord, who told Samuel the people could have their king if that's what they wanted, but from then on things were really gonna suck. It's all there in 1st Samuel 8: 4-20.  The elders said they didn't care, they wanted a king anyway, "that we may be like all the nations."

So that's what they got. All governmental control of the the people -authority that had previously been entrusted to God alone- was now in the hands of one man, Saul, the nation of Israel's first earthly king. So now Saul was the whole megillah: judge, lawgiver, the king all rolled into one.  As all of history has shown us, no man who has ever held such unchecked power has ever exercised it justly. Israel suffered under their kings, as did every European nation since, all the way up until 1776, when the god-fearing American colonists decided to go back to their Godly roots.

Now, the Founders realized that if they were to simulate a godly government where the power was held by the legislature, the judicial, and the executive, they were going to have to split those powers up between three separate groups because, as John Adams observed, men were not angels and could not be trusted to rule justly as God always does. 

The constitution those men hammered out for us is not perfect, and it never was going to be perfect because, as John Adams again reminds us, “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. So in spite of the fact that the judicial, legislative, and executive branches of government were created to provide checks and balances between themselves, the government is still not going to police itself. All three branches have to be carefully watched by a moral and religious people to keep them all in check.

How The Right-Wingers Slipped In And Took Us Over                                                     Regardless of whether Americans have voted for Democratic or Republican candidates, we have been gradually losing control of our own government for some time, with the slide accelerating since the end of World War II, just after the United States had triumphed over the right-wing governments of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.  And that is largely because we unwittingly allowed two brothers who both happened to be overt Nazi sympathizers to be in control of America's National Security, one as the United States Secretary of State, the other as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The photo you see at the top left-hand corner of this page is a picture of those two villains. "Ironic" doesn't begin to describe the story you're about to read: almost immediately after America defeated the Nazis in World War II, we put two Nazi sympathizers entirely in charge of America's national security. You read that right: entirely in charge of America's friggin' national security!

As documented by David Talbot, author of The Devil's Chessboard, throughout the 1930s John Foster Dulles "harbored sympathy for the devil himself, Adolph Hitler." A business partner of Foster (both Dulles brothers were heavily invested in German businesses) is quoted as saying John Foster Dulles believed "that Germany's position is morally superior to that of the allies." This is the man who eventually rose to power in the Eisenhower administration.

We could talk all day about the stupidity of American politicians putting John Foster Dulles in charge of United States foreign policy, but I want to focus mainly on his brother, Allen Dulles, who was quick to see the advantages of colluding with Nazis both before and after the war. As Talbot writes,

"Like his brother, Allen Dulles was slow to grasp the malevolence of Hitler's regime. Dulles met face-to-face with Hitler in the Fuhrer's Berlin office in March 1933. He was ostensibly on a fact-finding mission to Europe for President Roosevelt, but Dulles was particularly interested in determining what Hitler's rise meant for his law firm's corporate clients in Germany and the United States. As Dulles subsequently informed his brother Foster, he did not find Hitler particularly alarming. And he was 'rather impressed' with Joseph Goebbels, remarking on the Nazi Propaganda chief's "sincerity and frankness.'" 
By the late 1930s Allen Dulles came to dismiss Nazi leaders as "Those mad people in control in Germany," but he continued to do business with the Nazi financial and industrial network.'" -David Talbot, The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Establishment, Part I, Section 1.

Due largely to his business connections in Germany, after the war Allen Dulles snagged a plum government assignment to help with mop-up operations in that defeated nation. The irony is that the Dulles brothers had more in common with Germany than with their own country. Foster Dulles in particular was suspected of collaborating with the enemy. Lucky for both of them, Allen Dulles was uniquely placed to destroy any incriminating evidence so that no investigation could get traction against the Dulles brothers.  As Stephen Edward Browne informs us, 

"Shredding of Nazi documents was a favorite tactic of Allen Dulles and his associates who stayed behind to run the occupation of postwar Germany.  Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg said that if Franklin Roosevelt had survived the war the Dulles brothers would have faced prosecution for war crimes.  He also said that both Dulles brothers were guilty of treason, but FDR died and no one else had the will to challenge them. Allen Dulles was a cold man who had little or no empathy for others.  Firms like Farben, Krupp, and Siemens got labor from the concentration camps.  Himmler cut himself and the SS in by charging the companies for the labor.  Dulles knew of the ongoing genocide in the death camps in Germany during WWII but did nothing to alert the U. S. Government. He went along with the official U.S. State Department policy of looking the other way.  After the war, the WWII wartime alliance with Russia was dead and Russia and communism was the new enemy.  Many of the Nuremburg defendants were released early due to quiet intervention by Allen Dulles, who worked with Nazis like spymaster Renhard Gehlen to help in the cold war against the Russians.  Once he became director, Allen Dulles turned the CIA from an intelligence gathering organization into an action machine that overthrew foreign governments." -Stephen Edward Browne, The Deep State Rides Again: How the Washington Establishment Continues to Try to Overturn the Will of the Voters. 
So, not only were the Dulles brothers not persecuted for war crimes, Allen Dulles managed to quietly sneak more than 1,600 former Nazi spies, scientists, engineers, and who-knows-whats into the United States and got them citizenship papers under the top secret Operation Paperclip, so that now these former Nazis could be hired to work for the CIA. Many of these newly minted U.S. citizens had been extremely devoted to Nazism, and some had been high ranking Nazi party leaders. Do you think these guys left their totalitarian ideology at the door when they went to work for the United States government? Of course they didn't. They continued to believe that the role of government is to control the people.  Like Dulles, they saw the CIA as a means of bringing the world under America's control through clandestine means, so those who arrived with a Third Reich mentality didn't have to make many adjustments to their worldview.  Never mind that before the war America was a constitutional republic. The CIA would work toward transforming America into an empire to be feared. As documented in Christopher Simpson's stunningly revelatory book Blowback: The First Full Account of America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Disastrous Effect on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy, this clandestine operation has proven to be destructive in ways that most Americans are still not aware of.   

Perhaps Allen Dulles' greatest success was the top secret Operation Mockingbird, wherein the CIA began a program to infiltrate all the major newspapers, TV, and radio outlets in America. They took control of the journalism schools with the result that now, several generations of journalism graduates later, the takeover of the mainstream media is complete. This was shocking news when it was first revealed by the Church Committee in 1976, but virtually no one has any doubts about it today. Operation Mockingbird still remains in play. Even as far back as the 1950s, 

"outlays for global propaganda climbed to a full third of the CIA's covert operations budget. Some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts. The cost of disinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year by 1978, a budget larger than the combined expenditures of Reuters, UPI and the AP news syndicates. -Alex Constantine, Mockingbird: The Subversion of the Free Press by the CIA. 

Now Get Ready For The Punchline:  

Both Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA were not wacky Left-wing Marxist members of the Democratic party like the CIA is filled with today. They were both registered Republicans. 

Does that mean those guys were conservatives? Hell no! Not by a long shot. They were no more traditional conservatives than were George Bush and Dick Cheney. And there wasn't anything liberal about either of them, either.  They were just straight up right-wing power hungry globalists wanting to reshape the world in their own image. And it's because of those guys that Republicans remain branded right-wingers to this day.

The simple reality is that Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commanding General of America's Armed Forces during World War II happened to be a Republican, and Eisenhower was elected president about the time the Dulles Brothers' political stars were on the rise. Party membership was malleable in those days; one needn't take a hard ideological position one way or the other in order to claim membership as a Republican or a Democrat. It was more a question of how and where you were raised. It's quite likely the Dulles brothers came from a long family line of Republicans, so when they attained voting age they naturally gravitated to the Republican party too. That didn't make them conservatives. It just made them opportunists.

Many East Coast Elites aligned themselves with the Republicans. You know the type: Harvard and Yale hoity-toity high society my-ancestors-came-over-on-the-Mayflower characters (think Thurston Howell the Third). Seven or Eight decades ago these establishment types landed on the Republican side, if only because that was the party a lot of these big money upper-crusties were brought up in. It all had more to do with family tradition than with rock-hard moral principles.

Conversely (and this is also just a general rule), fifty to eighty years ago Democrat voters tended to hail from the working class. This is why it's useless to categorize anyone from back then as Republican/Conservative or Democrat/Liberal. John F. Kennedy was by all accounts an upper-class Eastern blueblood, yet he was a Democrat. And when he ran for the Senate he ran as a conservative Democrat. Something like that is so foreign to modern political discourse that most folks today wouldn't be able to wrap their heads around it.

And as I pointed out in a previous post, the most conservative member of the Senate from 1975 to 1985 was Lawrence P. McDonald, a lifelong Democrat. Just compare his voting record to any Republican senator at the time. You'll see that this Democrat was a hardcore conservative.

Up until 1980, the overwhelming majority of rural southerners voted Democrat for no other reason than that was the way their mama, papa, granny, and grandpappy had always voted as far back as they could remember. Party affiliation was like a religion to a lot of American families. If you were a Baptist you always attended the Baptist church and if you were a democrat you always voted for democrats. Every single time.  For generations of Americans this tradition was sacrosanct.

Then suddenly, following the inflationary disasters brought on by the reckless spending under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, a massive wave of southerners switched from voting Democrat to voting  Republican, which helped sweep conservative Republican Ronald Reagan into the White House. This was a massive shift from members of a culture that had always blindly voted on straight party lines. But with their very livelihoods threatened, they had finally been shaken from their slumber into realizing that not all politicians had their best interests at heart. 

Meanwhile, it meant nothing at all for a Bond villain like Allen Dulles to identify as a Republican. He was neither a traditional conservative nor a classical liberal. He was just a hard-edged right-winger, every bit as dedicated to grasping for power as are the democratic politicians trying desperately to hold onto their positions today. The way Dulles got outed as a right-winger is this: liberal Democrats back in the 50s and 60s, (who were already beginning to drift away from the classical liberalism of the founders, but still astute enough to recognize skullduggery when they saw it) exposed the unconstitutional duplicity that Foster and Allen Dulles were engaging in. On the other hand, Republican voters by and large didn't notice because voters often are not in the habit of keeping a sharp eye on those they vote for; it's just human nature to trust your side to always be in the right.

But when the Democrats realized the intelligence agencies had gone rogue, and that they seemed to be emulating the right-wing regimes of the Nazis and Fascists, they sounded the alarm and declared that the Republicans running the national security state were acting a lot like those right-wing Nazis we Americans had just got finished defeating.

In time, calling a Republican a right-winger simply became a handy form of shorthand, an easy way to describe Republicans in general. And since the party of Republicans was the party most conservatives identified with, all conservatives began to be labeled right-wingers by their Democratic opponents. What I find surprising is the number of conservatives who readily embrace that label today.  If you are a conservative and you refer to yourself as being a right-winger, I would encourage you to stop that nonsense right this very instant.  And don't let anybody saddle you with that appellation against your will. Them there is fightin' words, Missy.

And further, don't let party membership be the thing that defines you politically. What should define you politically is whether you favor oppression or whether you favor liberty; whether you wish to have the right to rule yourself or have powerful people in high places ruling over you.  

By any measure, John F. Kennedy would never be elected president today on the Democratic ticket; he would be considered way too conservative. The right-wing, deep state Democratic party of today would destroy him before he ever got to the primaries. And don't forget: it was Kennedy who vowed to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces because he could see they were were hijacking our Republic.

 Here's Stephen Edward Browne once again:

"Long before John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election to become president, the Dulles brothers, for the two terms of the Eisenhower administration, had formulated and implemented the foreign policy of the United States. They decided what needed to be done, they persuaded Eisenhower to approve whatever operation it was, and they then implemented that policy.  Sometimes Eisenhower gave the approval willingly and at other times they had to work on him for a while, but in the end, he almost always went along.  John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State and Allen Dulles was the Director of the CIA. By the time Kennedy arrived in the White House Allen Dulles was used to formulating and implementing the foreign policy of the United States. 
"Here we can see the beginning of what we now refer to as the Deep State.  These men were unelected bureaucrats with too much power who thought they knew better than the duly elected leaders and were arrogant enough to defy the will of those leaders.  Here are the denizens of the Deep State attempting to implement their policy in defiance of trivial aspects of life like the constitution and the will of the people or their elected leaders. (The Deep State Rides Again, ibid pg 106-107) 
Right-wingers in office, regardless of what you have been told, have never had anything remotely in common with conservatism.  Rather, they consist of the more powerful and entrenched politicians from both parties.  But more insidiously, right-wingers are most recognizable as members of Washington's permanent bureaucracy, those who have never been voted into office by the people and therefore cannot be voted out. Right-wingers are quite literally the entrenched Deep State.

"Having the government bureaucracy try to take over power from the existing leadership is not a new concept.  This has been going on since the beginning of civilization.  The Deep State in the U.S. consists of the crooked politicians, the FBI, the Justice Department, the intelligence community, the mainstream media, and a few others.  With a few relatively minor differences, the current crop of bad actors from these same institutions are still at it.  Now the U.S. intelligence community has grown to include over a dozen major intelligence agencies in addition to the CIA.  And the Deep State is still trying to overturn the will of the voters.  They still, a few generations later, have no intention of allowing democracy to work. They don't believe in our representative republic or our Constitution." (-Browne, The Deep State, ibid.) 

Before George Washington retired from government service (and it really was considered a "service" back then) his most important warning to posterity was that we should not meddle in the affairs of other nations. That was the wise counsel of our Lord when he told us His people were not to go up against any nation unless He Himself commanded us to. The dangers of meddling with others was also the forgotten message in the Book of Mormon. We are to let others run their own affairs. We are to remain neutral. 

Yet Allen Dulles lived by a completely different motto. He declared that "neutrality has increasingly become obsolete...it is an immoral and shortsighted conception."

The Dulles brothers introduced policies into our government that continue unquestioned to this day.  It's impossible to know how many millions have suffered and died because of the policies the Dulles brothers introduced to the world. They, and everyone who continues to believe as they did, are the immoral ones of this world. 

So Where Do We Go From Here?
Allen Dulles is long gone, as are the Nazis he recruited to help run the national security state. But long before any of them retired, others just like them were recruited to take their places, until today, with very few exceptions, a virtual army of politicians and bureaucrats with Nazi mindsets and Fascist points of view continue to replicate in government. Don't let them fool you; yesterday's fascists have become the socialists and communists of today.  There never was a dime's worth of difference between the nazis and the communists; they were all totalitarians.  The far right and the far left were vying for control and now it looks like the far right and the far left have settled in and taken off the mask.

Today the right-wingers have all moved over to the Democratic party. The Deep State has become solidly Democratic and they own the politicians who are the face of that party.  But this modern brand of "liberalism" is  just the phony disguise they wear to try to convince us all they are the party of compassion.  These swamp dwellers apparently thought that by cheating their way through the last election they would remain in power indefinitely, so they made the grave mistake of no longer hiding their intention to rule us completely. When they rant and rave of about "democracy" being in danger, what they are really saying is they're afraid their autocracy is in danger of being overturned. 

Today it is the Democrats in office who barely hide their lust for power. Nearly every ostensible "right-wing" bureaucrat now boasts that they are democrats, that they are liberals, that they care only about the downtrodden and forgotten.  Don't you believe them. They have taken total control of the government -at least they think they have. That's why the battle often seems so difficult; so long as the right-wing Nazi Fascists in government have control of the avenues of information and near control of both parties, they will continue to have the upper hand. They will continue to try to get the voters way down here below Mount Olympus, both liberals and conservatives, to fight among ourselves so we don't wake up and realize that evil people in high places have taken control of our government and want to rule over us on their terms.  

But all that may be changing. I'm optimistic that we may be on the verge of something resembling a national repentance. A massive populist uprising seems to be taking hold; where the people are coming to realize that the entire left/right political paradigm has been a scam to keep us fighting each other when we should be fighting the political machine. This populist awakening is occurring not just in America, but all over the world.  Other nations have already flipped the switch by voting out those who would rule them through force. Can we accomplish something similar? Will we be able to peacefully turn this thing around and gently send these Deep State buzzards back into the bowels of hell where they belong?

There's an election coming up. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.                                                            

Related Post: What This Country Needs Is A Lot More Liberals

                                                                            *****

UPDATE Tuesday November 1st, 2022:

A bombshell report released yesterday by   The Intercept has provided proof for what we have suspected all along: When it came to censorship, Twitter and Facebook have been taking their marching orders from the Deep State, particularly the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, with the FBI often used as their enforcement arm. The receipts were inadvertently left behind at Twitter when its top executives were fired. Read this important piece of investigative journalism here.

Addendum

In case you were wondering: If the Americans who fought the revolutionary war were the radicals, who were the conservatives? Well, those were the Tories, the ones who opposed the revolution and wanted America to remain under the rule of King George. These conservatives didn't call themselves Tories, of course, as that was considered a slur. They saw themselves as Loyalists, because they were loyal to the king. And they saw the revolutionary war not as a war for independence, but a civil war between the themselves and the radicals. The loyalists were the original American "conservatives."

It's been estimated that 15-25% percent of the people living in America in those days held these conservative views and they hated the radical liberals who fought against their king. But since they were outnumbered by the radicals, most of them learned to keep their opinions to themselves. After the war most of them moved up to Canada around the area now known as Ontario, where they could remain under the benevolent protection of their precious King.

It should be noted that the key characteristic of a conservative in those days was that conservatives were opposed to change -pretty much any change. Conservatives wanted things to stay the way they had always been, and since the colonial conservatives had always been governed by a king, they wanted to continue to be governed by a king. Scottish philosopher David Hume (who died in 1776 so he missed out on all the excitement) was probably the most prominent name in the nascent Conservative movement, but he was not highly thought of by many liberals at the time. (So what else is new? liberals and conservatives seem to have been at odds since the beginning, even though yesterday's liberals are today's conservatives!) John Stuart Mill, also a philosopher but a classical liberal as well, said of Hume, 
“regard for truth formed no part of his character.”

Ain't that the way it's always been? Liberals and conservatives wasting energy maligning each other instead of uniting to fight against the powers that be, whether those powers be intolerant kings or intolerant politicians.

Notes & Asides & Additional Links                                                     If you found this essay of interest you'll want to be sure and check out Book of Mormon Perspectives, beginning with the author's first essay, Gadiantons and the State  After that I recommend you keep going, as this author will take you deep, deep down the rabbit hole. The author is extremely prolific, so much so that I can't keep up. The most recent post I've read over there is titled Demons in Alien's Clothing and it is compelling! Everything on that platform will provide you food for thought for more than a week.

I bought my copy of Dr. Billington's Fire in the Minds of Men back in 1982, long before the internet. It was quite fascinating, but it's a massive tome that took me quite a while to get through. Now I see that some guy has hosted a presentation in at least three parts of an hour or so each, so if you're the kind of person who prefers audio to text, you might want to take a look at it. I haven't watch it yet myself, but he seems to be reading large chunks (or maybe all) of the book and giving his analysis as he goes. Here's where you'll find Part One. 

Or, if you're short on time, here's the four minute review.

There's a plethora of recently published books on the Deep State, so if the topic intrigues you (and I hope it does) just do a search of the words "Deep State" and take your pick. I own the one referenced above as well as one by Peter Dale Scott, one of the last of the breed of great journalists.  Both are well documented and heavily footnoted. Oh yeah I also own one volume of the three volume set by Jeremy Stone but I haven't read it yet so I can't tell you what I think. Check it out for yourself by downloading a Kindle sample. 

Some months ago I presented a concise discussion on the Bavarian Illuminati in a post I titled Let's Talk About Conspiracies!

I couldn't link to the comment at Facebook's Mormon Stories Podcast Group from the guy I who called me a right-winger because I have been banned by that platform and I can't get back in to look for it.  Would you like to see the piece that got me banned? Here it is.

I have written several screeds against the recent wars the Deep State has led this country into, but I don't really have a favorite. (I wish everybody would read every one of them.) The first post I ever wrote on this blog was called Toby Keith and the Destruction of the Nephites, but another one I think may be chock full of information the two-parter titled When Mormons Take The Lord's Name in Vain. 

Thanks for stopping by! Please leave a comment if you're so inclined. The number of comments have dried up in recent months and I'm not sure why. I guess everyone's too busy watching Youtube videos to comment on blogs anymore.  At least that's what I've been doing with a lot of my time.




28 comments:

Connie Waterman said...

Rock my love,

I have once again learned so much from your blog post, that I am feeling a little speechless! No wonder so many Democrat's have left that party. I really loved watching a lot of the video's from the #Walkaway movement. They made a lot of sense to me and after reading your post, I feel that I would have most likely been a classical Liberal too. You are very well read and I admire your knowledge!

Personally, I have lost what little hope I had in politics and politicians. So much corruption and way too many lies! It has become nearly impossible to even know who to trust anymore. I would never want to take away anyone's hope -especially yours! We must awaken and arise from these worldly systems. We must escape Babylon soon. For me, I really desire to only trust in the Lord and not in the arm of flesh. I love you very much.

Sus said...

You wrote: "Since right-wingers in high places have traditionally operated as a cabal of wealthy and powerful people intent on ruling over those they deem to be lesser beings, it would do well to recognize that throughout history virtually every so-called left-wing "revolution of the masses" has been funded and controlled by a wealthy right-wing cabal in order to finance the very chaos that they then heroically step in to crush. That is what has come to be known as Hegelian Dialectics: you operate behind the scenes to create an uprising so violent that the people demand something be done to end the chaos, then you step in with your handpicked lackeys to rescue the nation from the disaster you yourself created, which always results in a more oppressive police state "for the safety of the citizens."

I believe that describes "the Donald" perfectly! If he'd been allowed to go to the Capitol on January 6th I think he'd have been thrilled to declare martial law and do exactly what you've stated.

Also, I think the reason you don't get many comments is because people can't believe how far off the deep end you've gone. (I nearly didn't comment for that reason.) You used to have posts that made me think; now I just have to shake my head, roll my eyes, and wonder how you allowed yourself to be taken in by it all.

I'm neither Republican or Democrat; nor right or left wing. I vote my conscience after researching the candidates and issues. I believe in doing my best to help others and preserve rights and liberty for all.

I sincerely wish you Godspeed in escaping Babylon and finding somewhere you'll be happier.

Alan Rock Waterman said...

Sus, I'm very much looking forward to you telling the rest of us how you came to believe that, if Donald Trump had been "allowed to go to the Capitol on January 6th" "he'd have been thrilled to declare martial law..."

In the first place, since when is the president of the United States NOT allowed to go to the capitol? But let's leave that silly assertion aside for the moment. Can you provide an example of anything Trump has ever said that would suggest he might harbor such a ridiculous ambition? Do you even have any idea under what circumstances a president might be justified in declaring martial law? Do you even know what martial law is? What it entails? Believe me, if simply "declaring" martial law were such a simple thing to do, other recent presidents -George Bush II, to pick just one obvious example- would have already done so. Goodness knows the folks behind Joe Biden were itching to do so when half of America refused to bow down to the god of the vaccination. Perhaps you are unaware that Abraham Lincoln tried, and he even had congressional approval (which requirement Trump was not likely to get). Naturally Lincoln's declaration was slapped down by the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional.

I, too, am neither Republican nor Democrat, and like you I vote my conscience after researching the candidates. I would never follow the party line and I'm glad to hear you believe in doing your best to help others and "preserve rights and liberty for all."

But I do find it curious when someone who boasts about "researching the candidates" and working to "preserve rights" does so immediately following a declaration proving that he has no knowledge of the positions the former president held against the kind of tyranny martial law would represent, or what he believes about preserving liberty. It does not appear to me that you are even aware of what Trump said when he spoke to his supporters at the capitol or, for that matter, at any other event where he declared his repeated opposition to those who WOULD attempt to deprive Americans of their rights and freedoms. If you are so keen on "researching the candidates," why haven't you done any research on that one?

Anyway, I do so look forward to seeing the evidence you will be presenting to support your argument. I'm sure everyone on this thread will find it very informative.

On the other hand, it occurs to me that you might just be pranking me, since no one could read the essay I just wrote warning about the Washington Establishment and be unaware of Donald Trump's efforts to expose those villains.

So well done, my friend. You got me good that time.

Alpinealan said...

Rock,

I respectfully disagree that the Dulles brothers were the initial bogeymen who created the "deep state".

As Denver points out in his essay "Constitutional Apostasy", it got its beginnings with the advent of the Seventeenth Amendment--ratified during Woodrow Wilson's "Progressive Era" in 1913. The Senate provided a powerful check on the Federal Government in that State Legislatures determined who was in the Senate...and those legislatures were jealous that their state power not be taken over by DC bureaucracies.

Woodrow Wilson followed this coup with his exceptionally stupid--nee evil--entry of the US into WWI. A massive bureaucracy was created from scratch just to provide armaments, form a massive military, and administer the numerous programs associated with war. Not to mention the Justice Department prosecuting and imprisoning hundreds of thousands of war protesters...a fairly egregious violation of the First Amendment.

From there, it was a short hop to creating the FBI with the very deep state bogeyman J. Edgar Hoover...in addition to the very "progressive" government expansions under Roosevelt's "New Deal" that sought to regulate just about everything in American life at that time. Roosevelt was certainly on par with the dictatorships of his day...but was smart enough not to declare war until war was thrust upon him. So, of course, he wouldn't be considered on-par with the Stalins, Hitlers and Mussolinis of his time.

Regardless, Washington became a boom town first with Wilson and his wartime bureaucracy...and was expanded tremendously still by Roosevelt and his "New Deal". To say the Dulles brothers created the "deep state" in my opinion is fairly short-sighted.

Telavian said...

I can't believe how terribly hopeless it has become. It feels like fighting tanks with a few toy cars.

I would imagine Noah's time was very similar. The institutions of men were so prevalent and dominant that it wasn't possible to go against them without God's help. I think this is why there is going to be a divine reset of the human population again.

Alpinealan said...

Regarding your reply to Sus above, I recall that General Flynn...who had been railroaded by the "deep state" by Pence and Comey in the first days of Trump's administration...theorized that Trump could declare martial law because of the myriad election irregularities. Trump obviously could have tried such a foolish tactic...but there is no evidence he gave it any serious thought. Otherwise, Liz Cheney would be screaming about it from the rooftops.

He obviously would not have had to be in the Capitol to declare martial law. That notion is ridiculous.

Plus...it is obvious the "deep state" would do anything and everything in its power to force Trump out of office. The Dossier...the Mueller farce...two preposterous impeachments...etc.. As the flyboys say, you know you are over the target when the flack gets thick.

Alan Rock Waterman said...

Alpinealan,
I absolutely AGREE with you that it really started with Woodrow Wilson. In fact, I made something akin to that argument in my piece titled "What This Country Needs is a Lot More Liberals." Perhaps I should been more precise and named the Dulles brothers as the face of the modern Deep State -which they would be had they not so deliberately remained in the shadows. Few Americans day would recognize their faces or their names.

Regarding the FBI, that dangerous bureaucracy shouldn't even exist, at least not in its current incarnation. J. Edgar Hoover did a magnificent job of propagandizing me and my entire generation (not to mention my parent's generation as well) into believing the FBI was as American as mom, the flag, and apple pie. In reality the Bureau isn't even constitutional in its present form, but who is going to challenge it now? It has grown too powerful and currently acts as the enforcement arm of the Deep State. It was never intended to be involved in law enforcement; it was supposed to be merely an investigatory agency. Agents were required to have degrees in either law or accounting, because that's all they were supposed to be qualified to do: investigate federal crimes -those few (and rare) types of crimes that didn't fit under the jurisdiction of a particular state.

For years, Hoover relentlessly pushed congress to approve a bill that would allow agents to carry guns, which were unnecessary for almost all agents in the normal course of their duties. We now know that Hoover expanded his agency so that he could get dirt on every single president of either party so those politicians would bow to his will. In effect, he was a blackmailer. And he refused to retire.

So although I oppose defunding local police departments, I would have no problem seeing the budget for the Federal Bureau of Investigation seriously reduced. Perhaps it would be useful to have a national crime lab for local jurisdictions to tap into, but except for other federal uses that may be ruled necessary, law ENFORCEMENT should go back to being left to the jurisdictions where those crimes are committed.

I also agree with you regarding the deranged animosity the Deep State has toward Trump, but once one realizes the threat they face when being exposed, it's understandable why they would go to any length to destroy him. Just as the CIA reacted violently when John F. Kennedy threatened to shatter that agency into a thousand pieces, so have they reacted to Donald Trump's threat to "drain the swamp."

My piece "What This Country Needs is a Lot More Liberals" can be found here:

http://puremormonism.blogspot.com/2020/10/what-this-country-needs-is-lot-more.html

Alan Rock Waterman said...

Telavian,
I agree with you. I don't think most people today have any idea of the depths of depravity the governments had descended to at the time of Noah. If, as I believe, the people found themselves in a society where there was no free agency (and accepted such a condition of perpetual slavery) where else was there to go than to start over. Without any freedom at all, mankind would have absolutely no hope of progressing in this life.

Telavian said...

This is pure speculation and is totally unrelated to the article.
However, I think Noah and the people of his time were quite likely far more technologically advanced than we think. Even today if we had a cataclysmic global flood then virtually all of civilization would be covered in mud 100's of feet deep. It would appear as if the planet was uninhabited.

PNW_DPer said...

The current deep state did not start with Woodrow Wilson, but with the Assassination of the President. Not JFK, but McKinley. That act transferred control of the Presidency from the nativist Anti-British Robber Barons to the Pro-British Rhodes-Milner influenced Robber Barons.

jjkrambule said...

As usual, I have learned much from your post and I thank you! As I watch what is happening in our country and in the world, the scriptures become more alive to me as I see that good is called evil and evil, good. With the elections coming next week, it is so important we know where we stand and follow what the Lord would have us do. There isn't a name on that ballot that isn't prayed over to know His will. And isn't that what we are taught to do in the scriptures...pray over all things?

I rarely will watch a Youtube video, but I am always searching for your newest post. Thank you for teaching me once again!

Unknown said...

Rock,

I was with you until the penultimate paragraph. I don't see any sort of indication that people are voting out those who would rule them by force. In the US, for example, I can guarantee that every single election of importance will be won by a member of the Establishment party (War party, or whatever you want to call it).

As always, thank you for the post. "I was with you" - means that everything you wrote was great. :)

As for the declining comments... you don't post much any more. I've wondered if maybe your best work is behind you? I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean that for a while there, you were really on fire. You hit so many great topics. You nailed the low hanging fruit. Now, you can flatten the wrinkles on the edges, but you're mostly done. And, it was a great work. Any LDS Church member who gives your work serious consideration will be influenced - in a positive way.

Alan Rock Waterman said...

Telavian,
I've recently been introduced to the idea that the antediluvian world may very well have been highly advanced technologically. There certainly is plenty of evidence for those who know where to look. That would mean a very different interpretation of "as is was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the son of man." (Matthew 24:37). We are approaching a time when transhumanism is highly promoted, which, if widely instituted, would destroy humanity's free agency.

I don't think the people at the time of Noah dressed anything like the primitive way they did in the days of Abraham anymore than we do today.

There are loads of books and videos presenting evidence that the flood wiped out a civilization AT LEAST as advanced than we are today. God had to wipe the slate clean at that time, otherwise the billions yet to be born would have no chance to progress. If and when that time approaches again, the Lord will wipe the slate clean in a different manner. Rather than destroy all humanity, he will come in his glory and destroy only the truly wicked, which I take to mean those who would attempt to control others on a massive scale.

Definitely food for thought, grounds for further research.

Alan Rock Waterman said...

PNW_DPer,
I can't argue with your assertion that the Deep State started with the transfer of power to the Anglo-American establishment. I think it can also be argued that it started with Abraham Lincoln's power grab. At any rate, there's no disputing that the Deep State is firmly entrenched. That's why I have often argued that politics cannot save us, only defer the inevitable downward slide. It WILL require the Lord to come down and put things right again.

Alan Rock Waterman said...

JJKrambule,
I woouldn't write off Youtube entirely. In my opinion, Youtube has become a treasure trove of valuable information on what is happening to this country, but of course truth and wisdom will not be found in following the Legacy media. And also you have to learn to ignore the phony "factcheckers" who try to propagandize against what is valuable. I share some of the most informative Youtube videos on my Facebook page if you'd like to see what I feel is important and praiseworthy. Thank you for your kind words!

Alan Rock Waterman said...

Unknown,
I agree with you that most of my best work is behind me. I say "MOST" but not all. I think I've already made the case that the LDS church as presently constituted is not guided by God through actual prophets, seers, and revelators. I believe God's curse is on that wicked institution.

That being said, I will have more to say in the future. Right now I am concentrating on the obvious signs that we are teetering on the cusp of the end times. I have received criticism from some quarters for drifting off into the political sphere, but I think it is clear that you can't separate our religion from the evidence that powerful forces are attempting to Crush the work of the Restoration. So I'm inclined to address the events that are right before our eyes.

I would normally be inclined to agree with you that every single election of importance has always been won by the Establishment parties. But I still see reasons for hope. Although the Democratic party has sunk deeper into the abyss, there are signs that many up-and-coming candidates running as Republicans (as with many already elected, such as John Kennedy, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Green, and others ) are working in direct opposition to with the Republican Establishment, but are dedicated to shaking it up and opposing the business-as-usual direction the Republican party has maintained for far too long.

That's why at the end of my piece I said I guess we'll have to wait and see. I am not one to assume that just because "our people won" that our troubles will be over. What I see as good news is that the uprising is coming from the people this time, not the politicians. If they remain steadfast and keep a firm eye on what those they elected are up to, we MAY possibly buy some time. But make no mistake, even if the Lord stays his hand for a little season, we are all still going to suffer, because the policies recently put in place by the demons in power will not instantly be reversed. It's too late for that.

I stand by the prediction I made a few months ago that millions will starve, and America will become embroiled in a third world war.

Sadly, many Republican politicians remain convinced Ukraine (a totalitarian society led by a brutal dictator) must continue to be supported by American taxpayers, and the proxy war the U.S. is now leading against Russia (whose people are now much more religious than Americans are) will inevitably lead us into a direct conflict with a nation that is morally stronger than we are.

So I don't disagree with you; what I see in the awakening masses both in America and all over the world, is a small glimmer of hope. That's why I wrote that what appears to be happening in America appears resemble something of a national repentance. The people are finally recognizing that by putting their hopes in government they have been following a false god.

Karen said...

Regarding the comment made by Sus:

Dear Sus,

I'm neither a Republican or Democrat either---my loyalty is with God and the Constitution He inspired and claimed authorship of. Your comment smacks of complete ignorance and shows you have succumbed to the very Deep State indoctrination that has overtaken just about all sources of news, information sites, private corporations, educational institutions and political parties . Your statement on Trump was a dead giveaway---that was a piece of propaganda you got put in your head by the very varmints Rock was trying to expose you to. My conscience runs so deep on these matters I could never, in clear conscience vote for or believe the pack of lies and agenda they are promoting (and the Democrats are basically 100% in lock step with the entire agenda. I removed my name from the Republican Party over 15 years ago for a lesser lack of integrity I found to exist there (i.e. Bush/Cheney Deep State control). There are a few (very few) good Republicans left trying to fight the valiant fight to defend the Constitution. I am usually more disappointed than pleased in what I see once in office----but at this point in history---I can't find one democrat I could support with a clear conscience as everything their party advances is right off the checklist of Lucifer.

Frankly, I enjoy the writings of Rock and find them refreshingly honest, a source of much needed truth and a place to test the prevailing assumptions and narratives promoted by the mainstream media against some basic common sense. Would to God that more people read and thought like Rock Waterman! You do yourself a disservice to not take his writings more to heart.

I never comment on Rock's blog because I just don't feel I have anything to add and don't want to spend the time composing something. I'm certain there are many people just like me. If his words of truth have indeed caused him to have fewer readers/commenters---then perhaps that is a good sign. Speaking the truth rarely makes one popular!

PNW_DPer said...

Well, I have come to believe that Lincoln's war was in part, a defensive reaction of the nativist deep state against the Anglophile deep state, with the nativists successfully pushing back against the British Empire and its deep state and allies in America for a season. After all, Joeseph Smith's prophecy said the South would call upon the British and French empires for assistance, which they provided to a limited extent.

That they did not more forcefully intervene on the side of the South was because of the open threat of the Russian Empire in support of the North. My opinion is it was the Tsar that saved the Union, by making his Naval Fleet available to support the North and thus forcing the other European empires to back off and finally let the North win due to better population and industrial resources.

As I mentioned, it only worked "for a season", as the British deep state conspired to overcome the nativists through other means, culminating in success in inspiring the US to expand its empire with the Spanish-American war and then assassinating the wartime President to bring their own Anglophile man into power, the first Roosevelt.

Alan Rock Waterman said...

Karen,
Alas, when I saw Sus's comment I just sighed and realized he's just another American who succumbed to the propaganda. Yes, there are things about Trump that are less than perfect, but the nonsense that he is some kind of Nazi dictator is almost laughable. We are seeing right now the result of a president exercising totalitarian control (well, his handlers actually, but he seems entirely in lockstep with their desires).

Thank you for the kind words you had for my writings here.

Alan Rock Waterman said...

PNW_Dper,
I always appreciate your input. For the record, I subscribe to the school of thought that the "Union" was not worth saving at the expense of 620,000 lives; it would have been better if the Northern states had allowed the South to depart in peace. As I'm sure you know, abolishing slavery was not Lincoln's impetus, loss of all those precious taxes from cotton imports was. Slavery was failing anyway and the Southern states would have likely returned to the union within twenty years without having to be violently conquered.

One day I hope to write about what a scoundrel Abe Lincoln actually was. The court historians have certainly performed a whitewash that the truth can barely peek through. Anyway, I don't wish for this thread to devolve into an argument about the civil war, but I will note that constitutional scholar Brian McClanahan recently covered one of history's great falsehoods in a recent Youtube podcast titled "Did Lincoln "Save Democracy?'" :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13nRa1A-R74

Rhone said...

Completely agree, Rock. Lincoln was America's first tyrant. I highly recommend Kendall Anderson's book "War: A Book of Mormon Perspective". Trump wasn't great, but we've had far worse (present president included).

Alan Rock Waterman said...

I second your recommendation of "War: A Book of Mormon Perspective" Rhone. Since he wrote that Book, Kendal has become one of my closest friends.

Readers can get a free pdf copy of the book at the Book of Mormon Perspectives blog. That blog itself is a marvelous work and a wonder, as more and more readers are discovering. Here is the url: www.bomperspectives.com

Look to the right side of the page for a link to the book.

Morgan Deane said...

Andersons book is pretty weak as I describe here: https://mormonwar.blogspot.com/2015/07/book-review-war-book-of-mormon.html

Rock is even weaker he probably won't let me post it, and if he does he'll just try to slime me instead of engaging any arguments.

Rhone said...

Read your blog post. An underwhelming rebuttal to be honest.

Maurice Leblanc said...

The https://anonymousbishop.com site is offline after posting about Nelson being a member of skull and bones. Is he OK?

Alan Rock Waterman said...

Thanks for the heads up, Maurice. I'll check into it.

Alan Rock Waterman said...

Rhone, I thought you were talking about MY post when you said it was "an underwhelming rebuttal" but then I figured out you were talking to Morgan Deane. Whew!

Alan Rock Waterman said...

Maurice, I have not yet reached Anonymous Bishop by phone, but it appears he is building a new platform:

http://anonymousbishop.com/