Independence Day 2017 finds Americans celebrating freedoms they no longer have.
Maybe it was the proposal at work you knew was wrong, but didn’t fight. Maybe it was the argument on principle you knew you had to have, but avoided to keep an unsatisfactory peace. Maybe it was the jerk who berated and humiliated a store clerk who wasn’t at fault, and you didn’t challenge him. Battles that were never fought—surrender and capitulation without resistance. A handful, the scrupulously honest with themselves, identify the ensuing inner darkness, that collapsing sensation, as self-betrayal, breeching personal standards of right and wrong.
Independence Day is a historical commemorative, nothing more. You don’t celebrate the day a seed is planted; you celebrate the harvest. Independence has been surrendered without resistance. The nation’s founders planted a seed, but seeds must be tended, nurtured, and protected. Having failed to do so, America has reaped a bitter harvest.
Independence carries an obligation to act, to provide, to think for one’s self, and it requires its own defense. Americans couldn’t be burdened. Asking only what their country could do for them, they accepted the state’s promises, propaganda, provender, and protection—from mostly spurious threats—without reckoning the price. The promises were illusory, not the price. The pall dimming the fireworks is the confusion, anxiety, and antagonisms of a nation that’s badly lost its way.
Taxes, it’s been said, are the price of civilization. For a brief, shining historical moment, Americans freed themselves from the state’s exaction of their income. Tragically, they faltered, allowing themselves to be deceived, accepting the state’s forcible extraction of their labor, time, and production and never questioning how the coercion that is its bedrock could possibly be “civilized.” Sold, as the state’s depredations always are, as a limited measure, 100 years later the state recognizes no limits on its power to tax, reserving special persecution for those who question it too volubly.
At the same time, America handed control of the nation’s money (and subsequently its debt), to a bankers’ cartel. Supposedly an elasticized and discretionary “money” would prevent financial panics, bank runs, and economic contractions. The new money was worth less every year than the year before, and it wouldn’t prevent contractions more severe than the ones that preceded its introduction. Only the cranks, immediately quarantined by the force of “respectable” opinion, questioned the new money. Only “dangerous” fringe elements insisted on their right to their own production, exchangeable for honest money, its value free from bureaucratic and political whim.
Predictably, the new money inflated a bubble that popped. Faced with adversity, the so-called greatest generation opted for the crank solutions of a socialistic demagogue and his band of charlatans. They turned the ensuing downturn into the most severe contraction in the nation’s history. By acclamation the people surrendered their economy, more of their incomes, and their right to own gold—real money—to the government, accepted the future bondage of increased debt, and enshrined the “right” of the politically favored to live off the labor of the productive unfavored. Henceforth, the latter would have a duty to support the former. The megalomaniac who peddled this abnegation of America’s freedom—and consequently its greatness—was reelected three times.
By the time President Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex, it was too late. That he waited until his farewell address to issue his warning speaks volumes. The complex had been in control since World War II and would never willingly relinquish the commanding height on which atomic bombs and the world’s most productive economy has placed it.
Confederated and unchallenged global empire was the seductive goal; “leader of the free world” was how it was sold to the American people. They bought it, never questioning the complex’s machinations and skullduggery in Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, and other remote backwaters. Alliances with corrupt and repressive regimes, propaganda, rigged elections, US-sponsored rebellions and coups, war, terrorism, and assassinations were necessary countermeasures to Soviet evil. Whatever the US did, the USSR—since it’s acquisition of nuclear weapons an existential threat—was worse, always worse.
Vindicating the few who said command economies couldn’t work, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Existential threats always make it easier to amass power and money, and curtail liberty. One was conjured—Islamic extremism. How a rough band of guerrillas in Afghanistan’s caves posed the same threat as one of the largest empires in history, with the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal, was a question most Americans would not ask. Just keep us safe, they bleated.
Wars based on concocted intelligence, the Patriot Act and other eviscerations of the Bill of Rights, a huge and intrusive new cabinet department—Homeland Security—the militarization of local police, and the vast expansions of the military and intelligence agencies’ power and funding went through with nary a bleat. There were few bleats a decade later when whistleblowers revealed an America under a degree of surveillance that would make Big Brother green. Deflated footballs stirred more controversy.
Independence Day 2017 finds Americans celebrating freedoms they no longer have, freedoms they and those greatest generations that preceded them surrendered on a golden platter. The Philippine’s House of Representatives recently passed a bill: singing the national anthem at public gatherings “shall be mandatory and must be done with fervour.” What an insight into the minds of those who would rule us, Filipino, American, or whatever. You’re not just to submit; you’re to worship your submission and those to whom you submit. It conjoins Orwell, Islam (which means submission), and all those pain-is-pleasure perversions.
They’re not just claiming your life and your freedom, they’re claiming your soul. That’s what they were after all along. The Faust legend is wrong. Surrendering one’s soul, for both individuals and a nation, is a long series of capitulations, not some shadowy one-time bargain. Which prompts the question: can souls that have all too willingly been surrendered ever be redeemed?
DECLARE YOUR INDEPENDENCE!
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 
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Such a great article. Those of us who have dropped the illusions need to be validated. Thank you, Robert Gore.
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You are welcome.
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I fail to see solutions and I noticed you offered none. I know it’s unlikely that either of us will live long enough to see how this plays out in the future, but I can’t predict it will be anything good. Such a waste of an opportunity. By the way, I just bought one of your books on Amazon. I might as well enjoy a distraction from the frustration.
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I got the same comment about a lack of solutions on The Burning Platform and I said: “Let this sucker collapse and be physically, emotionally, and philosophically prepared to pick up the pieces.” Thanks for buying a book. I hope you enjoy it and let me know what you think of it. Which one did you buy?
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“The Golden Pinnacle”. There were several that appealed to me, but only one at a time!
I posted your article on my FB page and got several shares and responses. There are others who believe as I do that the republic is dead and that we ignored Ben Franklin’s advice to “keep it if you can”.
I am interested in an Article V convention as an option. I doubt very much that 38 states could agree on the time of day, but at this point, I don’t see we have much to lose. The status quo is certainly a loser.
For the time being, I will continue like you – attempt to educate people who are willing to listen – which isn’t many. They prefer to hang onto an illusion that elections matter and that those we elect care about the country. And of course, I will continue to educate myself. It’s impossible to understand all that has happened, why it occurred and who made it happen. My curiosity increases with age.
I’m delighted I found your website and will stay tuned. I subscribed as well, and look forward to reading more.
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
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Thanks for taking the time to comment, and for your comments.
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The answer is to 1. open the US Mint to the unlimited coinage of gold and silver on personal account and 2. to abolish legal tender laws. The dollar has never been sound money but it is what the deep state has forced us to use since the inception of the Fed in 1914.
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Reblogged this on The way I see things … and commented:
Independence Day 2017 finds Americans celebrating freedoms they no longer have, freedoms they and those greatest generations that preceded them surrendered on a golden platter. The Philippine’s House of Representatives recently passed a bill: singing the national anthem at public gatherings “shall be mandatory and must be done with fervour.” What an insight into the minds of those who would rule us, Filipino, American, or whatever. You’re not just to submit; you’re to worship your submission and those to whom you submit. It conjoins Orwell, Islam (which means submission), and all those pain-is-pleasure perversions.
They’re not just claiming your life and your freedom, they’re claiming your soul. That’s what they were after all along. The Faust legend is wrong. Surrendering one’s soul, for both individuals and a nation, is a long series of capitulations, not some shadowy one-time bargain. Which prompts the question: can souls that have all too willingly been surrendered ever be redeemed?
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Reblogged this on Starvin Larry.
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Independence Day is a historical commemorative, nothing more. You don’t celebrate the day a seed is planted; you celebrate the harvest.
Yes we give thanks, Thanksgiving.
A few years back, during the beginning of my awakening we were watching a fourth of july parade, watching the floats etc. There were several mini flags stuck in the ground to my left, also a group of VFW older men scolding the fact that some of these flags were now lying on the ground. About this time a float goes by with jr. high and high school girls on it.
How do you think these “men” reacted to these girls while standing in front of all their little flags of pride?
And yes i know i am also a vet. i too am not perfect. Yet something is wrong.
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Unfortunately, the economy may not burn far enough down to get the job done.
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The Fed will keep it propped up as long as it serves them. Hard to correctly predict the future, but we all know things are off the rails now and something will eventually give. Keep your powder dry.
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I wish this weren’t true. It’s hopefully not too late for reform. After all, things have moved on the right direction in reducing racism and sexism. Maybe limited gov’t and limited opportunity for the majority to vote themselves money will come later. I am an optimist, but I cannot deny the facts in this article.
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right, powder dry and blades sharp. 🙂 Tommy Hawke
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My heart hurts because I know you are right. Yesterday was not a day of good cheer and celebration for me. Only sadness remains once the blinders have been removed and the glaring light of truth is unavoidable.
Will we go without a fight into the dustbins of history, later to be written out of having ever been here by the “winners”?
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Where there is life there is hope…and fight.
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“The Faust legend is wrong. Surrendering one’s soul, for both individuals and a nation, is a long series of capitulations, not some shadowy one-time bargain. Which prompts the question: can souls that have all too willingly been surrendered ever be redeemed?”
There is life, therefore there is hope. The enemy seems to be less patient than we are, therefore they do reveal themselves. The enemy seeks to destroy all souls, not just their own.
June J comments that only sadness remains after the blinders have been removed. we should be grateful our blinders have been removed, and we can still warn others.
Those who know and have willingly sold their souls? i do not see redemption for those unless they Truly repent while they can.
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Robert,
As always great article, and meeting you in Marfa was a true joy and Pax’s and my pleasure.
You have truly nailed it here, we have been fooled.
Taxes are not the price of civilized society.
Taxation is Theft, it is another person, organization or group taking claim to the basic building blocks of you.
Your life, liberty, and property is yours and yours only.
Period.
Life = Future
Liberty = Now
Property = The sum total of your past
To think that it is moral and ethical for another to take claim to any of it is an admission you are a slave to another.
Slavery is economic skim, and has been the norm for 6000 years of recorded history when governments are instituted among men,
People hate to hear it, but they must.
I guess when they get to 100 percent they will nearly be happy, but I severely doubt it.
As you know, I have taken to making small steps where I can, within my circle of control only, we can change family, community and church.
I’ll not quit, but I understand the big changes are beyond little me, I do my little radio show as therapy, so I don’t feel that I have given up.
But the days get longer every time they raise my property taxes or my sales taxes for less and less services.
I’m not looking for any tea to be thrown off the boat anytime soon, but I will use my soapbox as you do, to make and effect what change I can.
Thank You Robert.
Pax says Hi.
sean
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I say hello to you and Pax. What a great dog! When do you want me on your radio show? I’d love to do it.
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