Posts Tagged → serf
April 15th Tax Day vs April 19th Freedom Day
Today is April 15th, AKA “Tax Day,” because income tax reports are due to be submitted to the IRS by close-of-business today. Or at least American taxpayers are required to submit a somewhat detailed extension request today, because America’s tax laws and regulations are incredibly arcane and complicated. Everyone deserves the same opportunity to file the most law-abiding self-benefiting income tax report they can do.
(This is why I use a certified public accountant. There is no possible way in a zillion years that I would ever be able to fully understand or properly apply the tax laws and regulations to the income I have earned over the year. Yes, I have a very understanding CPA, someone who works with me, who goes over line items. The cost is worth it to me, given the potential consequences for making even small mistakes.)
April 15th symbolizes the government’s Sheriff of Nottingham coming to take away our money and our things, by threat of force. Nothing says “You are a serf and a powerless peasant” like having to bow and scrape before the mighty tax collector. It is worth noting that Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has submitted legislation that will remove all armed law enforcement roles and duties that the IRS has somehow accreted over the years, and sell off the agency’s weapons and ammunition. Isn’t it strange that the IRS of all agencies has amassed a huge armory and stockpile of ammunition?
Contrast today, April 15th Oppressive Government Compliance Tax Day, with the upcoming April 19th, which I am hereby naming Freedom Day. It is strange that we rarely ever hear about April 19th as a holiday or even a day of note, even though our great American freedom started exactly 250 years ago on April 19th…
On April 19th, an armed dispute erupted between American colonists and the British Army, in the towns of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, outside of Boston. What came to be known as “The shot heard ’round the world” was fired April 19th, 1775, on the Lexington town green. It is unknown who exactly fired this first shot, Minute Man or British regular, but what ensued was the beginning of the American experiment in democratic rule: Government of, by and for The People, and nor by king or powerful army.
What is most noteworthy about the April 19th fatal confrontation beween the colonists’ militia men and the British “regulars” is that the individual American citizens were almost as well armed as the Redcoats. Each militia member carried a long gun, an edged weapon like a long hunting knife or a short sword or a hatchet, and plenty of lead and black powder ammunition for a prolonged fight. British military personnel were armed with the latest and best of all weapons, but the quality of the Patriots’ armaments were often not too far behind.
This model of the 1775 Minute Man militia member has stood the test of time, as a great many Americans today are also well armed and well provisioned with ammunition. This model of an armed free citizen, capable of standing up to an oppressive and lawless government, was later enshrined in the 1787-1789 Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees that all Americans can own and openly carry firearms at all times.
To me, what a strange and wonderful juxtaposition this week represents: Oppressive Tax Day backed by government force, vs. Freedom Day, the day that individual Americans collectively stood up for all oppressed individuals around the world. I think the takeaway message of this week is this: Pay your taxes, but keep your family well armed and always prepared, and always coordinate with those who share your freedom-loving views.
Some evocative images of April 19th 1775 and the resulting Bunker Hill battle by artist Don Troiani:
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the Minute Man patriots at the Lexington Green, April 19th 1775
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the Patriot militia at the Concord Bridge on April 19th, 1775
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the American patriots at the Battle of Bunker Hill
“The Elites Have Revolted and Are In a State of World War Against Us”
Today we host Tom Shepstone as a guest here. His essay below is a well written aggregation of some of the different things I myself have written here over the years, and also things which other much better known commenters than either Tom or I have said and written. If I recall right, it was radio show host Mark Levin who first pointed out that the elites are in full revolt against the people. What Tom has done is pull a bunch of these related threads together for a coherent appeal to moderate American voters: If you like your civilization, and you want to keep your civilization, you must vote for the one person who will protect your civilization.
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The Elites Have Revolted and Are In a State of World War Against Us
By Thomas J. Shepstone
Every day there’s further evidence global elites are at war with the people. Western Civilization has periodically been the exception to the rule that the people ordinarily live as serfs in totalitarianism nations dominated by the elites. Those times when the people have actually had a role in governing themselves have been relatively few, in fact, over the centuries. The signing of the Magna Carta by King John giving up some of his rights to lesser nobles was such a moment. The American Revolution was another. Sooner or later, though, the elites claw back their power as the people are conned into giving them a bit of it back only to see the inch given turn into miles and miles.
This process of decay has reached to the very core of Western Civilization at our present point. Free speech is evaporating like a dragster taking off for the hay bales at the end of the strip. Rumble has been banned in France and X chased out of Brazil. The developer and CEO of Telegram has been arrested for not cooperating with government. The UK is jailing people for Facebook posts challenging the government narrative and has threatened to extradite Elon Musk for allowing the same thing. The Biden-Harris administration bullied Twitter into downplaying the significance of the Hunter Biden hard drive during a political campaign.
The mainstream media has allied itself with totally corrupt CIA and FBI agencies. Politicians lie with abandon and tell ever bigger lies with straight faces. The heads of other Federal agencies such as Homeland Security and the Department of Justice make flat out false assertions with no embarrassment whatsoever. The Attorney General [Merrick Garland] refuses to pursue perpetrators of violence against pro-life centers but is willing to put grandmothers in jail for praying outside abortion mills. The main bodies of both political parties have joined forces as a uni-party focused on special privileges for themselves as they bankrupt the country. The President and a Vice-Presidential nominee both appear to be all but Chinese Communist Party agents.
The rot simply cannot be denied. Oh, it’s always been there. Woodrow Wilson was a vicious racist who reduced free speech to whispers and even Lincoln arbitrarily took away many basic rights but those were war-time situations and temporary. There was also corruption with the Teapot Dome scandal, Alger Hiss and so many other cases, but it’s never been as deep and widespread as today. France’s Macron refuses to leave office despite being massively defeated in the recent election. The UK’s new leader replaced one never elected and the new one is more aligned with the World Economic Forum than his own country.
The elites are in full revolt — world war, if you will — against us. They are stealing elections now but hope to end them soon. They are pushing self-appointed world government on every front with phony campaigns against ‘malinformation’ (their invented word for accurate information opposed to the government narrative), proposals for digital currencies, 15-minute cities, health care dictatorships and so much more. It’s all in the name of control, control and more control and it’s mushrooming like crazy.
What can we do about it, short of another dangerous and counterproductive French Revolution like the one two centuries ago that ended up consuming the advocates of revolution? Well, the first thing it seems to me, despite my gloomy observations above, is not to despair. There are reasons to hope after all. It is clear, for example, there is worldwide revulsion of the elites who are currently running our institutions not only of government, but everything else that matters as well. There is also a realignment of some nature taking place.
The new divisions are ever less of a left vs. right nature and more a matter of the elite establishment vs. versus anti-establishment commoners, insane folks who wish to destroy the family vs. normal people who recognize it as the building block for any civilization, and wannabe masters of the universe vs. freedom lovers. Each of these divisions is important because they clarify what the problem is and what must be remedied, which can only happen if we talk to each other and abide our differences. Reforming or abandoning corrupt institutions so as to realign on principles are the only ways that can happen.
That’s how I see what’s happening in the political realm these days. The RFK, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard endorsements of Trump are indicative of what I’m talking about. I strongly disagree with both on certain matters, especially on abortion and, in Kennedy’s case also on climate and energy matters. Yet, look what’s happened. Bobby, Jr. unforgivably helped killed fracking in New York. He once stated, too, that he wanted to jail ‘climate deniers.”
But, in recent speeches and interviews, Kennedy has attacked the billionaire green grifter class sucking up all our money on wasteful green boondoggles. How can we possibly disagree? He also went after Anthony Fauci in a way no else was capable of doing. And, he has defended free speech like a lion. He came to Trump because he had no other principled choice, and so it must be with us. We need to unite with one-time enemies where we can and destroy the old divisions on the way to restoring Western Civilization.
Notwithstanding all this, elections, while mattering greatly, won’t save us by themselves. No one individual can do it and events always intervene, making it extraordinarily difficult in the situation we face, which is a world war of entrenched special interests against those of us who would ask questions. Yet, individuals of principle do make a difference, so it falls on all of us to live by our principles. Chief among them are life, liberty and truth-telling, all of which rest on a foundation of free speech and the elite troops arrayed against are making simultaneous major assaults on this principle on every front.
Free speech is the prerequisite of any truly functioning democratic republic, despite the disingenuous wails of the left suggesting that democracy is threatened by it. They want to separate good speech from bad, but don’t tell us they plan to be the arbiters of what is good and bad. And, what they mean by democracy is anything but the vote of the people. No, what they mean by democracy is no more than the institutions they now control, whether they be government agencies or electoral bodies. They aim to kill true democracy, as in “the will of the people,” to save their captured form of it.
Their so-named democracy lives by lies and, therefore, can tolerate no truth telling. The only way they know to stop others from speaking truth to power is smother it by throwing a wet blanket over all speech on the excuse that some of it’s bad. Free speech, though, has no such distinctions. It is mixture of good and bad and it’s only by comparing the two that free people get to make up their minds. The antidote to bad speech in the eyes of the beholders is always more speech. Even if ends in both sides calling each other liars, those observing the debate get to decide where the truth really lies. That is true democracy. All speech must be protected or there is no speech for any of us.
We will not turn back the elite troops attacking us without free speech. If we do not insist upon it, we are doomed. We will be forced to live in city colonies and give up our right to travel. We’ll be forced to subsidize the lives of elites by paying for unreliable and pricey energy systems that make no sense but fatten the wallets of grifters. We’ll lose the right to farm, to possess our own homes, to vote and to live in a nation of our own making. We will revert to a feudal society.
Let’s all remember this when we vote. Let’s vote like our very lives depend upon it, because they do, but more than that we all owe it to ourselves and each other to speak up and challenge each other. That means getting on social media, becoming activists and talking with others, especially with whom we disagree. There can be no running away from argument.
That doesn’t mean making everything political or acting hostile. No, it simply means engaging others in a civil way. We must cross the divides and ask questions…lots of questions so those aligned against us might understand us better and vice versa with a view toward identifying areas of agreement. We will not win the war against the elites without making friends of some of our enemies. And, we will not wrestle the beast we have created to the ground alone.
#Elites #FreeSpeech #WesternCiviization #Democracy