Anthony Gregory has a good piece on Veterans/Armistice Day.
At the end of the Korean War, President Eisenhower signed a bill in 1954 that changed the name of the national holiday to Veteran’s Day. Perhaps it made no sense any more to honor an Armistice that had been overshadowed by World War II and the beginnings of the Cold War. Whereas after World War I, the United States brought its armed forces home, the war against Communism guaranteed that the United States would henceforth have little interest in armistice, in truce, in peace.
I think Gregory is spot on. The switch from Armistice Day to Veterans Day is very telling regarding post-WWII American foreign policy. While individual surviving soldiers retire and become veterans, the wars themsleves have become indefinite. The Cold War has thawed but still lingers. The War on Terror is just as indefinite. The Potomac Empire will accept no armistice until every soul on this planet lives either under its direct jurisdiction or under that of a client state.
Eric Peters provides a fantastic libertarian analysis of the American male’s ridiculous, life-devouring obsession with football.
“The average man has virtually no real control over his life in modern America. He must Submit and Obey at every turn, from the moment he awakes to the moment he lays his head down on the pillow at night. (…)
He must stew in silent, impotent fury as a cop half his age lectures him about “buckling up for safety” in front of his kids. Or as he submits to having his wife and kids get fondled by useless-eater (and probably pedophilic) blue-shirted poltroons at the airport. He must put up with being told what to do – and even worse, what not to do – by smarmy little busybodies, stretchpants-wearing fraus. From the PTA to the DMV to the HOA, he is hectored and hemmed in at every turn.
He probably can’t even paint his own damn house without first begging permission from the local Gertrud Schlotz-Klink… and if he doesn’t beg permission first, the old bag will just make a call. A lien or some other encumbrance will be put on his place. Or, the thug scrum will come. So, he surrenders. HeSubmits… and Obeys. He Does What He is Told. And along the way, he becomes something less than a man. At some gut level, he knows it, too. He feels emasculated – because he has been emasculated.
And the rage boils within him, silently, helplessly… .
But, release awaits. He can click on the TeeVee and feel – temporarily – empowered. He can bask in the reflected glory of “his” team. He imagines himself to be a part of the spectacle – a member of the community of men once more. If “we” win, he feels proud and strong. He will literally puff out his chest and strut. He feels as though something has been accomplished. By him personally.
Because a team of paid entertainers won a game – a child’s contest. (…)
Instead of discussing the things that matter and which actually affect his life, he talks about… “the game.” Endlessly. So do other ex-men. He – and they – know virtually nothing about the events of the day – much less of history, or of what the patterns of history suggest as regards the likely events of tomorrow.”
Robert Murphy, in making his case against voting, eloquently expresses a point that Tom Woods often stresses:
Before you watch Spielberg’s hagiography, be sure to read Thomas DiLorenzo’s piece on the vicious racism of Abraham Lincoln.“No, we must realize the sickening truth that the “great debate” in our major media outlets is a sham. Here Noam Chomsky’s famous observation is quite apropos: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.”
This is why our “serious” candidates—not kooks like that wacky Ron Paul—debate things like, “Should we pull our troops out of Afghanistan at a definite date in 2014, or should we give no timetable whatsoever? Regarding Iran, should we say we will use conventional bombers and our flying killer robots only, or are nuclear weapons also on the table? Of course we are going to have the federal government telling insurance companies they must cover pre-existing medical conditions, but how exactly are we going to say it? Of course we are going to have a central bank monopolizing the money and controlling banking, but in what quarter should it begin raising interest rates?” And so on.”
As president, Lincoln toiled endlessly with plans to “colonize” (i.e., deport) all of the black people out of America. This is what Bennett calls Lincoln’s “White Dream,” and more recent research of the very best caliber supports him. I refer to the book Colonization after Emancipation by Phillip Magness of American University and Sebastian Page of Oxford University that, using records from the American and British national archives, proves that until his dying day Lincoln was negotiating with Great Britain and other foreign governments to deport all of the soon-to-be-freed slaves out of the U.S.Imagine the humanitarian nightmare that would have resulted from the forced migration of every black man, woman, and child. It would have been a transatlantic Trail of Tears.
