The End Of The Yankee Imperium

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At the very beginning of the 19th century, the New England states were increasingly at odds with the Southern states. One cause of the discontent was the sense that the slave states had too much power over the Federal government. Another was the decline in trade with Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The Embargo Act of 1807 and the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 sharply reduced trade with Britain and France. There was also the rivalry between the North and South, which dated to the founding the colonies.

Discontent with the War of 1812 brought things to a head. The Federalist Party in New England had been agitating for changes in the Constitution, like eliminating the three-fifths compromise. New England newspapers openly discussed secession. The Hartford Convention was a series of meetings among representatives from the New England states to discuss their grievances. The whole project collapsed with the wave of patriotism that resulted from Jackson’s victory over the British at the Battle of New Orleans.

This episode in American history has largely been forgotten, mostly because the North won the Civil War fifty years later. The winners write the history books and this bit of history has never fit the narrative. It’s also why the  Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina has been erased from the history books. Northern conservatives have made John Locke and the Scottish Enlightenment their base. The fact that Locke and Shaftesbury hoped to impose feudalism on the American South is inconvenient.

The point here is that Americans have been raised up on a history of the nation written by Yankeedom. The North won the Civil War so they became the dominant region both legally and economically. Through the 20th century, the North also came to dominate the nation culturally, writing the history books and defining the national narrative. That’s how we get nonsense about the Puritans seeking religious freedom and carving a nation out of the wilderness. Jamestown has been all but erased from the nation’s memory.

The dominance of the North over the rest of the country probably would have petered out in the 20th century, but world events changed the direction of America. Teddy Roosevelt badgered Woodrow Wilson into breaking with American tradition, with regards to getting involved in European affairs. The Yankee desire to dominate North America became a quest to dominate the world. Once the US chose to get into the Great War, the old traditional American conservatism was killed off forever. The Yankee Empire was born.

The aftermath of the Great War, the Depression, World War II and then the Cold War prevented any change in America’s domestic arrangements. These were great unifying events; in that they justified the suppression of anything challenging the established cultural order. The upheavals of the 60’s and 70’s were based in New England, the Upper Midwest and Northern California for a reason. American Conservatism was born at Yale and run out of Connecticut for the same reason. That where the ruling class lived.

All empires end eventually. Often it is from exhaustion, the cost of maintaining the empire having long ago exceeded the benefits. Other times the culture that built the empire runs its course. The empire remains as a brittle outer husk that eventually shatters. Other times, it is a slow, ad hoc retreat back to something resembling normalcy. The Soviet Empire is a good example of this. It’s not been an organized retreat, but it has been a fairly bloodless one. Russia is now back to something close to its historic norm.

America was never built to a be great crusading empire. Even after generations of cultural cleansing, Alabama is still a vastly different place than Vermont. Regionalism is still the defining feature of America. Having one region dominate the others was the fear of the Founders, which is why they struggled to craft a government after independence from the British. The solution was a small federal government that handled a narrow set of things, like war and trade, that could only be done by a central government.

America’s ruling class, especially over the last few decades, have gone to great lengths to explain why providence has ordained America as the world’s peace keeper. The usual suspects have twisted this into a foreign policy of keeping the world safe for the Jewish diaspora. The truth is, the American Empire was always built on serendipity. The total destruction of Europe and the technological backwardness of East Asia left a huge vacuum. The atom bomb locked in the gains of the victors, by locking out all challengers.

The world that birthed the American Empire is long gone. China is now taking up her historic role as the hegemonic power of Asia. Europe is fully recovered, in the material sense, from the 20th century. It is time for Europe to recover culturally and that can only happen when the Yankee Empire recedes. Whether or not the European people have the will to defend themselves from the barbarian hordes to their south, that’s not something that can be decided for them. Europe must live or die on its own.

Domestically, it is long past time for a return to normalcy. The Cold War has been over for 25 years. The rest of the country is economically and demographically in better shape than Yankeedom. The oldest and most sclerotic states in the nation are located in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. The election of Trump and the resulting chaos in Washington strongly suggest the rest of the nation is ready to step outside the shadow of Yankeedom. CalExit and similar rumblings from Progressives are another sign of change.

The fact is, America was never a singular nation. It was a hodgepodge of nations, thrown together with degrees of overlap. The regions of the country share a language and share some history, but they are significant different too. America, maybe even all of North America, is better run as a federation, like a continent sized version of Switzerland. The areas where there can be no agreement are delegated to the regions. The areas where the interests are shared are delegated to a federal state.

That can only come with the end of the Yankee Imperium.

72 thoughts on “The End Of The Yankee Imperium”

  1. The House cucks also worked not only as the loyal opposition but as social hammers on the white blue collar and middle-class.

    When companies started off-shoring, greasy blowhards like Limbaugh, Cavuto, Prager, Levin, Medved would happily chime in it was good for America and made our workers more competitive.

    When workers were put into a race to the bottom by being forced to accept ever lower wages and benefits because of open borders and globalization, they’d spew some excuse and have some shills phone in saying they don’t know what hard work is. Basically STFU you proles.

    When communities were being wrecked by off-shoring, they’d say it’s just the price of progress(yes the high church of progress, how 18th century).

    These TV versions were even worse. But that’s all we had until the internet came along and gradually supplanted them. Up until then we may have well been living in the Soviet Union as far as news went. We were basically lied to and kept in the dark on just about everything.

  2. Maybe the courts and congress should start taking the 10th amendment seriously and return to Constitutional Federalism. Never happen because they won’t voluntarily give up power. They can’t even cut spending.

  3. here is a good book to read: The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War by Dr Tenzer….premise: the one-drop rule meant that by 1860 or so there were a lot of slaves in the south who were nearly white…they looked white…and the abolitionists started spreading photos of these near-white slaves all over the north and telling northerners that the slaveowners wanted to enslave whites…and it was an easy sell…

    you see, one of the bits of american history that has been shoved down the memory hole is that the first slaves on american soil were white…the indentured servants were for the most part slaves…the part of about indentureships was mainly a sham…many of them were stripped naked and sold at auction, and were then worked to death…

    so, it was easy to get the northerners riled up about white slaves because back then they still had knowledge about the indentured servants that in many respects really were white slaves…

    so the white northerners sympathized with the blacks…in fact a snatch of poetry by james russell lowell was being sung to music at taverns all over the north at that time, and it went like this:

    “why, it’s as easy as figgers
    easy as one and one makes two
    A fella that’ll make a black slave of n*ggers
    will make a white slave of you!”

    …and indeed some of the slaveowners did want to make slaves of whites…a newspaper in richmond VA, a slaveowner-friendly newspaper, ran this opinion headline during that time period: “Capital Shall Own Labor!”…and the gist of the article was that slaves could and should be white as well…

    • Wow;
      I had no idea. If true, this aspect is *entirely* consistent with what we know about HBD, then understood current and historical slavery (IOW, mass White slavery was completely historically feasible and was then ongoing in Muslim lands) and the trend in Planter Class thought leading up to the US Civil War. Where the Southern founders had often been ambivalent about slavery, their grandsons had largely hardened into fanatics. Some of that hardening was, no doubt, in reaction to being ‘otherized’ by Yankee abolitionists who dominated the NE media of the time but had no great political strength before the Mexican War of 1846.

      Only after that war and its political results did the abolitionists began to gain traction in the North. This aspect would explain abolitionists sudden success starting in the 1850’s. Before that they were regarded as cranks and religious fanatics. The thesis is that they were able to make the slavery issue personal to the White working class of the North. And it could now stick, thanks to Planter Class overreaching with the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act (not to mention the Dred Scott Decision). It wasn’t just Uncle Tom’s Cabin anymore. Potentially, nobody was safe from The Slave Power (or so it could be made to seem at the time).

      Suddenly, all three of Thucydides’ causes of war (Fear, Honor & Interest) were now in full operation on both sides. In previous generations the fear aspect had been largely lacking for the North.

      So, historical dialectic in action: Hagel wasn’t always wrong.

  5. I don’t even think the yankees are that big a percentage of the northeast anymore. The white population in New England is mostly some combination of Irish, Italian, Portuguese, or French Canadian.

  6. “New England newspapers openly discussed secession. The Hartford Convention was a series of meetings among representatives from the New England states to discuss their grievances. ”

    I always found that bit of historical information pretty interesting though I think that part of the reason that it gets swept under the rug is that its usually linked in history textbooks with the War of 1812, a war that nobody ever seems interested in talking much about.

    “Jamestown has been all but erased from the nation’s memory.”

    Thats not true; it still gets mentioned in the assorted history textbooks, its just that now its all about Pocahontas.

    “The usual suspect have twisted this into a foreign policy of keeping the world safe for the Jewish diaspora.”

    There isn’t much of a Jewish diaspora; there are communities in a few countries but the Jewish world is mainly North America and Israel. So the issue of twisting foreign policy boils down to dealing with Israel. And I kind of wonder, if lets say Israel were in Antarctica or Mars or wherever, does anyone think our foreign policy in the Middle East would be that much different? Instead of talk about the only democracy in the Middle East, we’d probably hear about the faithful guardians of the Holy Land, the Hashemite Monarchy of Palestine. (Hell, we’re actually involved in Jordan right now without any counterfactuals.) We’d be tangled in the Middle East regardless except without neoconservatives, we’d probably frame it in a much different manner. They came up with the whole democracy crusade pole to hand our hats on but without them we’d have found a different reason.

    “The rest of the country is economically and demographically in better shape than Yankeedom. The oldest and most sclerotic states in the nation are located in the Northeast and Upper Midwest.”

    Yeah but Yankees are still colonizing the rest of the country. Remember when Colorado was a perfectly red state? Nevada too? Remember the last election in Virginia? Some of this is a result of external immigration but internal immigration isn’t something to ignore either. How many transplants from the northeast do you think it will take before Texas shifts a bit more from red to purple than it is today?

    I’m skeptical that we are near the end of the Yankee Imperium as you put it. I don’t deny we are in the middle of a transition but for all the talk, Yankees still control all the levers. You made the point yourself in this post that even the history that we frame our view of the world from is mainly Yankee history. We’re in the middle now of one of those periodic burst of madness that hits the country; when it peters out, there will probably still be Yankees in charge and what they will be running will still be an empire.

  8. Mr. Z., I’m getting more than a little OD’d on your thing with the Jooos (not least your ep 12 podcast and today’s calumny that somehow the neocons have jiggered American foreign policy primarily to serve the “Jewish diaspora”. OK, yes no denying that the deracinated, generally non-observant, secularized Jewish liberal community in the USA has somehow conflated progressive/socialist ideology with traditional “Jewish values” —maybe via the Tikkun Olam shtick— and have been wreaking great damage to American culture for way too long. But if Heartiste is right, “among married Jews, an astounding 58.8% majority of married Jewish men voted for Trump!”. I’m one and I sure did, and amongst my closest circle of Jewish friends and colleagues, most of us are strongly on the right; remain fully on-board with the President; and take vast delight in seeing lefty heads exploding spectacularly. So can you kindly back off because it’s increasingly irksome to the considerable Jewish intellectual component now on the right to hear this crapola endlessly from our de facto allies.

  9. Thought the type looked a little more “bold”. Miss my assigned Avatar. Had a surprising passing resemblance.

    After touring the battlefields down South, especially passing the mass graves in Gettysburg gave me a lot of empathy for the south.

    It’s amazing all the white men that have perished in these wars. Think how much better off we would be now to have them here.

  11. Forget the long gone Civil-to-Cold-War Yankee Imperium. The important question right now is ‘imperium’ or ‘no imperium’ as a national strategy. I can’t be the only one thinking for the last 25 years or so that it was beyond stupid for us to be ‘world cop’ without ever getting paid for it, at least beyond the Cloud precincts (and maybe that’s all that really mattered – to them).

    If the choice is ‘no imperium’ then we need vastly better peripheral (boarder) security at all levels, an exclusionary immigration policy plus the ability to launch the occasional punitive expedition to remind 3rd world pest-holes to keep their disputes to themselves.

    If the choice is ‘imperium’, then we need a greatly improved, world-wide revenue gathering apparatus plus the ability to crush or embargo polities who are not worth the trouble to police or who demand to have it both ways. I.e. they feel entitled to enjoy the politico-economic fruits of world order but also feel entitled not to pay anything towards its upkeep (looking at you, Asia, China and EU).

    Right now everybody but us (it seems) is having it both ways. This will end, one way or another. It ought to end via our choice.

  12. Yankee Imperium held sway for only a short while, post-WWII. Today’s U.S. empire, the one dominated by technology, originated in California, with the tech industry and the WWII and post-WW aviation and aerospace industry. The atomic bomb was born in the desert southwest. Computers and the interwebs? California and Microsoft in WA. Money and media remain, as always, in New York. Washington, DC is still just a swamp. Nothing good comes out of a swamp, save, perhaps, methane, if you can capture it.

    What’s more, New York is not New England and as the capital of New England, Boston does not count for much, except the education of liberals.

    • Evelyn Waugh- 1870: Old Money, shippers of Boston and Philly, vs New Money, Allentown and New York, miners and ranchers railroading in from points west

  13. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtAGzm9e_liY7ko1PBhzTHA

    I dunno. Take this guy, for instance. Deep in the heart of rural upstate New York, hours away from NYC. Is he a – Yankee, as you put it? He drives a full size pickup truck. He hunts deer. He listens to country music and – he likes Krispy Kreme donuts. Aside from his northern accent, you could drop him in rural GA or AL and he’d fit right in. My sense of how things are organized culturally in this country is that the rural areas have much more in common with each other these days and that they have less and less in common with the urban areas. And that the urban areas have more and more in common with each other.

    However you slice it though, there are deep divisions amongst the populace that seem to only be getting wider. It won’t end well, or it will end in some sort of messy reorganization. What that form takes, not going to guess.

    • That’s very much in line with my thoughts. There are many Army of N. Virginia battle flags flying in this Yankee rural area. They may mean a lot things to the folks around here, but my wife’s prog friends definitely take it to mean “secular city liberal go home.” They are probably right.

      • There is a huge difference between Yankee’s and Damn Yankees, the later of which are a blight upon mankind. People who can’t resist meddling or trying to heal a world that doesn’t need healing out to be treated out to be treated as Hostis humani genris just like pirates or plague rats.

        Rednecks and Country Folk , Yankee, Westerner or Southron all over this country have much in common and so can share a nation though not necessarily a state.

        The Damn Yankee’s, the Tech elite and the rest need to go away.

        Problem is though, modernity doesn’t support an economy where someone can go to work in one place or heck one locality for long enough to build a family much less a real community

        This suggests to me something will have to give on economies of scale at some point after the foreigners and the chronic meddlers are dealt with

  14. That whole 3/5 person thing has always struck me as lunacy. If slaves can’t vote, then while should they be counted for determining the size of electoral districts in which they have no vote?

    Regardless of where one stands on the North/South rivalry, it’s easy to see why it would be galling to Northerners that Southern states got more representatives in the House on the basis of owning slaves who were by definition excluded from the body politic.

    • Your comment confuses notions of representation with notions of who exercises the franchise. These two notions are still separate in our political system. Children are counted for the purpose of determining the size of electoral districts, yet they do not hold the franchise. Ditto for felons, non-resident aliens, and even illegal aliens.

      At the time of the founding the franchise was restricted in most states to property holding men of adult age, but all residents were counted for the purpose of determining Congressional districts. The Southern States correctly assessed that they would be politically irrelevant in Congress if the slave population was excluded from Congressional district calculations. Hence the 3/5 compromise.

      • Specious horse shit. Chattel slaves are not comparable to children. Adult slaves are either humans capable of participation in the political process or they aren’t. If they aren’t, then the people who own them don’t get count them as part of their representation. By your logic, farmers should get to count their cows in the census too.

        “The Southern States correctly assessed that they would be politically irrelevant in Congress if the slave population was excluded from Congressional district calculations.”

        More horse shit. In the first place, who in 1787 would have foreseen the consequences of later immigration patters? In any event, you don’t get to rig the system for you own benefit through illegitimate means just because that’s more convenient for you.

        Look, I’m not getting into some stupid argument about the political rights or wrongs that attended the existence of slavery as an institution two and a half centuries ago. But actually defending today the ridiculous idea of including slaves in the census because they are comparable to felons is idiotic. And as for property qualifications, a poor white guy could theoretically become wealthier. A black slave could not stop being black.

        Don’t be such a pussy. If you want to argue that black slaves didn’t deserve the vote because they were inferior, say so in so many words. And then own up to the consequences of your argument. Don’t try to weasel your way out with specious analogies.

        • Women were also counted in the census, which was used to determine political representation. But women could not vote…as children or as adults. A freed black had a better chance of eventually obtain the franchise. And some did.

        • Applause. Loud and thunderous applause.

          Now, if we could look into the money powers behind the feudal protectorate, the owners who brought the slaves in, made the chattel liens (as integral to Southern banks as mortgage loans are to us), collected the excess profits, pushed to breed labor rather than pay for it, and form filibuster slave states south while burning Ohio farms north, well that’s more forgotten history!

          Cough *Judah Benjamin* cough

    • The funny thing is it worked and it would have kept on working if not for some Southern hot-heads and Northern lunatics. Alternatively, one could argue that the Civil War proves that violence is always the answer, as pretty much every problem is solved with violence, in one fashioned or another. The Civil War solved the slave problem.

    • Most people couldn’t vote back then, since there were property owner requirements or the equivalent…

      • Not after the 1830’s. The franchise was thrown open to all adult white males during the Jackson administration.

    • Thanks very, very much! That piece was the best brief summary of the subject I’ve ever read. Oswald Spengler had his moments in his vast tome, but this gentleman is concise and imho therefore more useful. It leaves “fourth turning” theory–which I consider “pop” historical theorizing– in the dust. And it was written 41 years ago! This should be required reading at any college or university worthy of the name.

  16. I can’t agree with the Zman on this. First, and foremost, he makes a glaring historical and logical error. He asserts “the New England states were increasingly at odds with the the Southern states. One cause of the discontent was the sense that the slave states had too much power over the Federal government …” He then claims “The Federalist Party in New England had been agitating for changes in the Constitution, like eliminating the three-fifths compromise.”

    No. From the beginning, the three fifths compromise was a disaster for the Southern states. It meant its population would consistently be undercounted thereby reducing Southern representation in the House of Representatives. The number of Representatives a state had was based on population. During the Constitutional Convention the Northern States that had few slaves did not want slaves to be counted at all in determining representation in the House. The Southern States wanted slaves to be counted as whole persons. The compromise was the “three-fifths compromise”, i.e. for purposes of determining representation in the House, slaves would be counted as three-fifths. Free blacks were counted as whole persons.
    The Federalist New England states would not want to eliminate the three-fifths rule because the Southern states would then gain representation in the House and the New England states, the small states with small populations, would lose power, relative to the larger, and now more populous, Southern states.
    Facts is facts.

    • I don’t know what the history is, but just on the basis of logic, eliminating the three-fifths compromise includes two alternatives. (1) Count slaves as whole persons. (2) Do not count slaves at all.

    • The 3/5 Compromise was not just about representation- it was also about taxation. If the Compromise had been repealed the South would have paid more in taxes.

  17. I would love for us to become an American version of Switzerland … as long as one of the states is allowed to be run by a Catholic monarchy.

  18. So basically return to our constitutional roots?
    This country needs to be carved up but it won’t be without external events forcing it to happen. An uprising of the will of some people won’t be enough.

    When the US truly starts getting it’s ass handed to it, then maybe the withdrawal of military outposts everywhere. That would be a good thing.

  19. Yeah, it was New England that was calling for war with Mexico in 1846, New England that sent filibustering expeditions to Nicaragua and demanded the annexation of Cuba. “The Great Yankee Empire”, Jesus.

    One of the great things about pretending that New England Puritans are responsible for every left wing evil imaginable is that they can never argue back- they have been so demographically overwhelmed that they no longer exist as a group and haven’t for decades.

    • People often argue that the world would have avoided a lot of bloodshed if Hitler had died in the trenches. In reality, the world would be a much better place if the Indians had genocided the Puritans.

    • Derek;
      I think you are correct about the Mexican War of 1846. Contemporary Yankee accounts blamed ‘The Slave Power’ for seeking new lands, e.g. Texas, so as to create new slave states so as to maintain the South’s control over the Fed Govt. (via the Senate). While under the control of The E. U. de Mexico, which had outlawed de jury slavery (while practicing de facto slavery for the Indios on the Haciendas) Texas, etc. could not be slave states. After that war they became slave states. For a concise example of this view, see US Grant’s autobiography.

      That many of the pre-Civil War Yankees were self-righteous jerks seeking their own politico-economic advantages doesn’t make the Souther Planter Class into selfless servants of the true Constitution. They were *also* self-righteous jerks seeking their own (incompatible) politico-economic advantages. That’s why the Civil War was seen as a tragedy by many of the contemporary participants.

      • In point of fact, John C. Calhoun was bitterly opposed to war with Mexico. He realized that such a war would play directly into the hands of Yankee propagandists and make future compromise impossible. But the Yankee had already invited in four million Irish immigrants, which was tilting the political balance. In 1848, Yankeedom brought in millions more of the German 48ers, sealing the doom of the South. Today, the Yankees are trying the same tactic using third world immigrants to overwhelm the dissident whites. Will it work again?

        • Epi;
          So if Grant’s people and Calhoun’s people were both against the Mexican war of 1846, how did it happen_?

          You do recognize that 1848 is later than 1846, right_? So whatever happened that year was possibly a *result* of what happened two years before, right_?

          It is beyond strange that ‘Yankees’ are now being teed up as the all powerful, invisible, malevolent authors of all the troubles of the current age. Whatever happened to (((them)))_?

          • Try reading a good history book some time. Calhoun was blindsided by Polk’s declaration of war. And devastated.

    • They did a number on Hawaii as well, and the original missionary families are still a force to be reckoned with. “They came to do good and did well!”

  20. I agree with all of this. I believe the Founding Fathers intended a federation such as the one described here. The articles of confederation was the first attempt to create such. Early 20th century progressivism (what you call yankeedom) is a big part of the problem. I am gratified to see that you point out the truth about Teddy Roosevelt. Far from being our best president, he’s actually one of the worst. That we are taught how wonderful he was in our schools makes clear the domination of the Yankee Imperium over our schools. Thankfully, it is in retreat.

  22. You know history has been thoroughly rewritten by the victors when the victors themselves don’t even appear in the history books. Few modern Americans have even heard of the Grand Army of the Republic, but the popular perception of the Civil War, right down to the present day, simply IS GAR history. They spent the Gilded Age sending patriotism inspectors — yes, really — to local schools etc., making sure the textbooks were “correct.” Memorial Day, aka “Decoration Day,” is a GAR holiday. These guys swung every presidential election after 1884 and helped start the Spanish-American War. Their pensions were the largest federal budget item behind the debt… and nobody has ever heard of them. Nice trick, eh?

      • That’s just it – for the GAR, at least, there’s nothing outside of academic studies (let me know if you want ’em)…. and yet they were HUGE (seriously — the “soldier vote” swung every single election in the later 19th century. Their women’s auxiliary was later, but larger and possibly even more culturally influential. You’d think feminist historians (which is to say, all working historians) would be all over this, what with the girl power and all…. and yet, nothing. Now *that’s* how you rewrite history, comrades.

    • The GAR sort of sealed its own grave. At the start of the First World War, they threw a fit, prohibiting the old Civil War corps badges from being used as insignia for the new Army corps. (Maybe the first example of Yankees standing on “muh principles.”) Therefore, they excluded the Civil War corps and divisions from any and all unit lineages, making it inevitable that they would fade from public consciousness (GIs would not learn the Civil War lineages when they learned their unit lineages). They also refused to admit any vets from later wars to their sacred ranks, ensuring their extinction.

      Doesn’t that mentality kind of remind you of what is going on now? A lot of things change. MO never does.

      • The bit about not admitting veterans from subsequent wars had a precedent in the Society of the Cincinnati that was made up of revolutionary war veterans. It came under a lot of criticism from antifederalists and democratic-republicans as a vehicle for Federalist politics, so they voluntarily limited membership to vets and excluded sons and subsequent vets. This made it a guaranteed die off, just like the GAR.

    • Decoration Day, began in May, 1865, When Confederate widows and other concerned women went onto the battlefields of Manassas, looking to bury and produce some dignified cemeteries for the thousands who remained unburied for years there, both northern and southern. To their surprise and gladness, they encountered women from the North there, with the same thing in mind. Soon Decoration Day became a National Holiday out of this caring behavior, the GAR only picking it up long after the ladies had established it, and the grisly encounters with unburied remains largely over. I would say there was more than enough PTSD to go around, and combat vets have no love for old battlefields littered with unburied remains. Ask me how I know. Decoration Day( the decoration of the graves of the dead) was begun and established by Confederate women, not the GAR. We are largely indebted to these unnamed women, for their contribution towards a civilization marked by its civility. It became Memorial Day due to the Yankee lust for putting their spin on everything.I am, by all accounts, a Southerner in my beliefs. It also means I understand the War between the States is over, and the need for fighting about it superceded, by our current predicament. The ladies of both sides in that war give us good example on how to carry on, without the violence and acrimony.

      • Technically true, but beside the point. “Confederate Memorial Day” was on different days, different places, and would’ve been another small part of the Lost Cause mythology had the GAR not appropriated it and ran with it. By the Gilded Age, the GAR was staging massive parades etc. all over the country. Railroad companies were handing out discount fares for people to go see the vets at the Old Soldiers’ Homes (which they did in *millions*; they were major tourist attractions throughout the period). Decoration Day was a GAR show, dedicated to promoting “correct” Civil War history.

  23. There hard to find in new england but the cranky yankees are great people , historically self sufficient and hardy as the day is long.

    As a yankee farmer says, when you have chickens you eat chicken and eggs.

    Also silent cal was the last great president.

    • Same with southerners. So much invasion from yankeedom and intermarriage with yankees that you really have to get out in the weeds to find a southern lady or gentleman.

  24. The hordes are coming here too, courtesy of the same people who want to keep “the world safe for the Jewish diaspora.” Who would be the same ones who sent money to the USSR for their revolution. The end of American hegemony would be a blessing for those who don’t think Jewish interests and American interest always walk in lock step.

    • I believe you’ve misread Mr. Z, although that sentence was indeed ambiguous. As I read it, the “usual suspects” are the people to whom you seem to look for historical enlightenment, people who have given you a false understanding of Imperial motives. If I’m wrong, and Mr. Z in fact holds the opinion that you attribute to him, I’d appreciate his confirmation of this, and his disambiguation of the sentence in question.

  25. Instead of football we watched a bunch of stuff including election night 2016. The looks on the MSM and establishment people said it all. That night the narrative began to unravel.

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