Patriotic Federalist

I was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederate States of America (CSA) from April 1861 to April 1865. Pictured above is the statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on the city’s famous Monument Avenue.
The grand cobblestone street is also adorned with statues of generals J.E.B. Stuart and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and Confederate president Jefferson Davis. But Richmond isn’t a blip in antebellum history or a relic of “Lost Cause” mythology; hers is a rich, complex, and illustrious history from the earliest days. One we should know and study. Not shun or shame.

Under the guidance of Captain Christopher Newport, New World colonialists traveled to Richmond from Jamestown, living and settling among the Powhatan in the 1600s. It was the home of Pocahontas and one of America’s earliest successful white-European communities.
It was in Richmond’s St. John’s Church that Patrick Henry gave his “Give me liberty, or give me death!” speech. It was here, in the heart of the Old Dominion, that Thomas Jefferson passed his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Famous past residents include Chief Justice John Marshal, poet Edgar Allan Poe, and tennis great Arthur Ashe.
Virginia’s Capitol was designed by Jefferson, making Richmond home to the oldest legislature continuously operating in the Western Hemisphere. And it was in this very building that on April 23, 1862, Robert E. Lee stood when he accepted command of the military forces of his beloved Virginia during the “Civil War.”
Like so many native Richmonders and Southerners beyond the shores of the mighty James River, we call this bloody conflict that took the lives of an estimated 700,000 people anything but “civil.” In fact, the true definition of “civil war” is “a war between citizens of the same country.”
Yet, the South had already seceded before war broke out. By doing so, those states set up their own independent confederation – an alliance comprised of 11 strong sovereigns guided by the principles of a newly written Confederate Constitution.
This more-Jeffersonian coalition of subsidiarity also included amicable treaties with the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole Indians. The CSA was about bucking central authority, increasing autonomy, and letting each state chart out its own path.
That’s why Dixie chicks like me call the struggle the War for Southern Independence, hearkening back to its similarity of the American colonies’ secession from Britain. Some firebrands, of which the South proudly is in no short supply, even refer to it as the War of Northern Aggression.
Interestingly, Mr. Lincoln never recognized the CSA as a legitimate government. Thus, in his eyes, that would have made North and South part of the same country. So why then didn’t he get the approval of each of the governors and/or their state legislatures before sending in the U.S. military to quell “the rebellion”? That would’ve been the constitutional, legal, and moral thing to do.
Of course, because the war wasn’t about saving the Union or freeing the slaves or promoting the will of the people. It was about economics, resources, power, and revenge – always the real causes for all good protectionist wars, don’t ya know? It was an invasion of a foreign entity, not a civil war amongst fellow countrymen.
Surprisingly, during my time in Richmond’s public schools in the 1970s and 1980s, students were taught the unvarnished history of this pivotal period. Quite amazing considering the 100-plus-year Reconstruction revisionism that had been seeping its way into textbooks and curriculum a la Northern publishers and educrats.
Back then, I was encouraged to study the South, her people and their rightful places in the story of America (and the world) through the lens of history, not modernity and all of its misperceived perfections and moralisms. It’s called context, y’all.
In fact, I attended Douglas Southall Freeman High School, an institution named after the Pulitzer-Prize winning author, who won the honor in 1935 for his four-volume biography on Robert E. Lee. Our yearbook was called “The Historian” in Freeman’s honor.
Our team mascot was the Rebels, whose symbol was a gray-uniformed soldier holding a gun in one hand and a Confederate Battle Flag in the other. The marching band played “Dixie” at football games, as boosters donned Rebel Man pendants and fans waved the Battle Flag.
Today, the school remains DSF and its teams are still the Rebels, but gone are the pre-political-correctness images of a gun-toting Confederate hero. Screw history, even if you’re an institution named after a famous historian: all must bow down to the gods of progressivism and sacrifice nuance, objectivity, and truth on the altar of sensitivity to the uninformed, miseducated, and/or malicious. Just pay your penance and move on, say the useful idiots to we backwards-ass crackers.
Actually, the Cultural Marxists are smart enough to have initially taken aim on 1861-1865. They are a duplicitous bunch, and started small by challenging school mascots and Boy Scouts troop names. Get the low-hanging fruit before you tear the whole tree out by its roots, Jefferson, Washington, Madison and all. They were just a bunch of rich white slave-owners after all. Nothing to be learned here, people. Move along.
Having knocked down the first dominoes, progressives have become increasingly emboldened in their anti-Southern efforts. It may start with Ole Miss banning “Dixie;” Georgia changing its state flag’s 1956-2001 design to be without the Battle flag; the University of Texas removing its Jefferson Davis memorial statue; and South Carolina removing the flag from state grounds. (Have I ever expressed just how much I disdain turncoat Nikki Haley? Ugh.)
Next thing you know, Washington and Lee University has removed its flag display that adorns the Lee monument in Lee Chapel, under which the Confederate general is buried; Charlottesville city council has voted to remove a Lee statue and rename Lee Park; the Southern Baptist Convention has banned the flag (why don’t they just get rid of the word “Southern” while they’re at it?); the National Cathedral has removed flags from its stained-glass windows; and New Orleans is this very day in the throes of a violent cultural clash over removing four monuments, only one of which has actually come down.
Now, as a libertarian, I don’t even believe in public property, which is where these statues are/were erected, nor do I believe in tax-payer-funded schooling, like these ahistorical institutions of “higher learning.” (See, if everything was held in private, this nonsense wouldn’t even be an issue. When “everybody” owns a space, nobody really owns it, right? An argument for another day perhaps.) But a Richmond rebel girl’s gotta take a stand.
Interesting, too, that one of the rationalizations heard from leftist municipal leaders, anti-Southern zealots, and miseducated tyrants is that the monuments and flags must be moved to a museum, you know, put in their “proper place.” You racists can display your “symbols of hate” or whistle “Dixie” at home in private, away from the eyes, ears, and closed minds of totalitarians. Protect the public sphere, they say. It’s for the children. It’s for unity. Gag.
Man, what a carpet-bagger con. What the Cultural Marxists really desire is fully remaking the South in their own image – a progressive product void of all of its unique Southernness, a valuable resource forced to become a mirror image of their disillusioned puritanical paradise. Don’t be fooled by this social-justice scam.
Leftists, of course, possess all the post-modern tools needed to engage in this war of expunging Southern heritage and antiquity: the mainstream-media cabal, the white-guilt-ridden American church, the indoctrination centers of K-12, the university re-education camps, the entertainment biz, and statism – an institution that is always happy to do the bidding of totalitarians who want to force their ideas on the masses.
Because of the influence and power of these apparatchiks, they come, they see, and they eventually conquer, and then they ratchet it up. This is always the modus operandi of progressivism, so the cultural home-wreckers will never cease in their efforts to knock down the whole domino set … but that’s only if no one gives voice to the voiceless: the Southern tradition.
I, for one, will fight against this ongoing Reconstruction of the South. She is a cause worth fighting for. It’s time for all you good Southerners to reject this destruction of her important history and her symbols. Embrace your heritage of stubbornness, anti-authoritarianism, hard-working grit, and self-determination. It’s in your blood.
Be that rebel you were born to be. Be the real resistance. Be bully proof. And just as our Confederate ancestors did, defend your home. It’s time to push back against this cultural genocide of Dixie.

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/be-proud-youre-a-rebel/

NOT SEPARATION OF GOD FROM STATE

by Fr. Bill McCarthy, MSA
Our Founding Fathers
Our Founding Fathers set this great nation of ours upon the twin towers of religion and morality. Our first president, George Washington, said that anyone who would attack these twin towers could not possibly consider themselves to be a loyal American. Not only did they set us up as a nation under God, but a nation founded upon the Judaic-Christian principles summarized in the words, “The laws of nature and the laws of nature’s God,” words that we find in the Declaration of Independence.

Never Intended to Separate State from God or from Religion or from Prayer

The First Amendment never intended to separate Christian principles from government. yet today we so often heart the First Amendment couples with the phrase “separation of church and state.” The First Amendment simply states:

“Congress shall make no law respecting and establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Obviously, the words “separation,” “church,” or “state” are not found in the First Amendment; furthermore, that phrase appears in no founding document.

While most recognize the phrase “separation of church and state,” few know its source; but it is important to understand the origins of that phrase. What is the history of the First Amendment?

The process of drafting the First Amendment made the intent of the Founders abundantly clear; for before they approved the final wording, the First Amendment went through nearly a dozen different iterations and extensive discussions.

Those discussions—recorded in the Congressional Records from June 7 through September 25 of 1789—make clear their intent for the First Amendment. By it, the Founders were saying: “We do not want in America what we had in Great Britain: we don’t want one denomination running the nation. We will not all be Catholics, or Anglicans, or any other single denomination. We do want God’s principles, but we don’t want one denomination running the nation.”

This intent was well understood, as evidenced by court rulings after the First Amendment. For example, a 1799 court declared:

“By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed on the same equal footing.”
Again, note the emphasis: “We do want Christian principles—we do want God’s principles—but we don’t want one denomination to run the nation.”
In 1801, the Danbury Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, heard a rumor that the Congregationalist denomination was about to be made the national denomination. That rumor distressed the Danbury Baptists, as it should have. Consequently, the fired off a litter to President Thomas Jefferson voicing their concern. On January 1, 1802, Jefferson wrote the Danbury Baptists, assuring them that “the First Amendment has erected a wall of separation between church and state.”

His letter explained that they need not fear the establishment of a national denomination—and that while the wall of the First Amendment would protect the church from government control—there always would be open and free religious expression of all orthodox religious practices, for true religious expression of all orthodox religious practices, for true religious duties would never threaten the purpose of government. The government would interfere with a religious activity was a direct menace to the government or to the overall peace and good order of society. (Later Supreme Court identified potential “religious” activities in which the government might interfere: things like human sacrifice, bigamy or polygamy, the advocation of immorality or licentiousness, etc. If any of these activities were to occur in the name of “religion,” then the government would interfere, for these were activities which threaten public peace and safety; but with orthodox religious practices, the government would not interfere).

Today, all that is heard of Jefferson’s letter is the phrase, “a wall of separation between church and state,” without either the context, or the explanation given in the letter, or its application by earlier courts. The clear understanding of the First Amendment for a century-and-a-half was that it prohibited the establishment of a single national denomination. National policies and rulings in that century-and-a-half always reflected that interpretation.
For example, in 1853, a group petitioned Congress to separate Christian principles from government. They desired a so-called “separation of church and state” with chaplains being turned out of the congress, the military, etc. Their petition was referred to the House and the Senate Judiciary Committees, which investigated for almost a year to see if it would be possible to separate Christian principles from government.
Both the House and the Senate Judiciary Committees returned with their reports. The following are excerpts from the House report delivered on Mary 27, 1854 (the Senate report was very similar):
“Had the people [the Founding Fathers], during the Revolution, had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, but not any one sect [denomination]…. In this age, there is no substitute for Christianity…. That was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants.”
Two months later, the Judiciary Committee made this strong declaration:
“The great, vital, and conservative element in our system [the thing that holds our system together] is the believe of our people in the pure doctrines and divine truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
The Committees explained that they would not separate these principles, for it was these principles and activities which had made us so successful—they had been our foundation, our basis.
During the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, yet another group which challenged specific Christian principles in government arrived before the Supreme Court. Jefferson’s letter had remained unused for years, for as time had progressed after its use in 1802—and after no national denomination had been established—his letter had fallen into obscurity. But now—75 years later—in the case Reynolds v. United States, the plaintiffs resurrected Jefferson’s letter, hope to use it to their advantage.
In that case, the Court printed an lengthy segment of Jefferson’s letter and then used his letter on “separation of church and state” to again prove that it was permissible to maintain Christian values, principles, and practices in official policy. For the next 15 years during that legal controversy, the Supreme Court utilized Jefferson’s letter to ensure that Christian principles remained a part of government.
Following this controversy, Jefferson’s letter again fell into disuse. It then remained silent for the next 70 years until 1947, when, in Everson v. Board of Education, the Court, for the first time, did not cite Jefferson’s entire letter, but selected only eight words from it. The Court now announced:
“The First Amendment has erected ‘a wall of separation between church and state.’ That wall must be kept high and impregnable.”
This was a new philosophy for the Court. Why would the Court take Jefferson’s letter completely out of context and cite only eight of its words? Dr. William James, the Father of modern Psychology—and a strong opponent of religious principles in government and education—perhaps explained the Court’s new strategy when he stated:
“There is nothing so absurd but if you repeat it often enough people will believe it.”
This statement precisely describes the tact utilized by the Court in the years following its 1947 announcement. The Court began regularly to speak of a “separation of church and state,” broadly explaining that, “This is what the Founders wanted—separation of church and state. This is their great intent.” The Court failed to quote the Founders; it just generically asserted that this is what the Founders wanted.
The courts continued on this track so steadily that, in 1958, in a case called Baer v. Kolmorgen, one of the judges was tired of hearing the phrase and wrote a dissent warning that if the court did not stop talking about the “separation of church and state,” people were going to start thinking it was part of the Constitution. That warning was in 1958!
Nevertheless, the Court continued to talk about separation until June 25th, 1962, when, in the case Engle v. Vitale, the Court delivered the first ever ruling which completely separated Christian principles from education.
Secular Humanism
With that case, a whole new trend was established and secular humanism became the religion of America. In 1992 the Supreme Court stated the unthinkable. “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. In 1997, 40 prominent Catholic and Protestant scholars wrote a position paper entitled, “We Hold These Truths,” in which they stated, “This is the very antithesis of the ordered liberty affirmed by the Founders. Liberty in this debased sense is utterly disengaged from the concept of responsibility and community and is pitted against the ‘laws of nature and the laws of nature’s God. Such liberty degenerates into license and throws into question the very possibility of the rule of law itself.

The Federalist.com

May 25, 1787, Freshly spread dirt covered the cobblestone street in front of the Pennsylvania State House, protecting the men inside from the sound of passing carriages and carts. Guards stood at the entrances to ensure that the curious were kept at a distance. Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, the “financier” of the Revolution, opened the proceedings with a nomination–Gen. George Washington for the presidency of the Constitutional Convention. The vote was unanimous. With characteristic ceremonial modesty, the general expressed his embarrassment at his lack of qualifications to preside over such an august body and apologized for any errors into which he might fall in the course of its deliberations.

To many of those assembled, especially to the small, boyish-looking, 36-year-old delegate from Virginia, James Madison, the general’s mere presence boded well for the convention, for the illustrious Washington gave to the gathering an air of importance and legitimacy But his decision to attend the convention had been an agonizing one. The Father of the Country had almost remained at home. Continue reading

RULE #1 Base everything in Truth and on facts, but never expect the subverted to recognize them as such.

RULE #2 Stop propaganda and subversion in schools.  DEMAND course curriculum, principles taught, people held in esteem, etc.  If they resist, gather parents and go to the schools in person – make noise – do not comprise on this. You pay them! If propaganda and/or subversion is discovered, DEMAND it be removed.  Reversal of subversion and propaganda will take decades. This is the most critical battle, one that must be won.

RULE #3 Memorize the Bill of Rights, know the Constitution, and understand the intent of the Founding Fathers. Gain a full understanding of our Constitution & the Federalist papers, and DEMAND all elected and appointed officials adhere to them. Continue reading

(The Blaze) – Today, inside, they dedicated a new statue of another American giant, Fredrick Douglas – a man born into slavery, but who knew instinctively that he was not born a slave. No man is  To keep a man a slave you do much the same as the cruel circus masters did to the elephant around the turn of last century. Clamp heavy chains around their legs and stake them to the ground. Then beat and terrorize them. After a while you no longer even have to stake the chain; the elephant gives up and just the mere rattle of the chain convinces the elephant there is no hope, so they give up and do what ever it is the circus requires. Continue reading