US “Liberalism” As Plutocracy, Inaugurated By Genocidal Slavemaster Jefferson, #3.

The word “liberal”, from “liber” (free) entered usage to oppose tradition in the Fourteenth Century… top thinker, physicist and Paris university rector Buridan refused to be anything else than “magister in artibus”, as a frustrated Pope bemoaned. 

“Liberalism” was a driving thought of the Enlightenment. Yet, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica: “In the United States, liberalism is associated with the welfare-state policies of the New Deal programme of the Democratic administration of Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whereas in Europe it is more commonly associated with a commitment to limited government and laissez-faire economic policies”. In the United States the ideas of individualism and laissez-faire economics previously associated with classical liberalism became the basis of libertarianism and components of American conservatism.

Unlike Europe and Latin America, the concept liberalism in North America refers to social liberalism. Governing parties, the Canadian Liberal Party, and the US Democratic Party, are considered “liberal” in the United States.

I claim that American “liberalism” has been mostly fake since LBJ. Actually Clinton repealed the financial reform of FDR, the Banking Act of 1933. I have written thousands of pages on the subject, from many historical perspectives, going back centuries. 

American style fake liberalism was founded by Jefferson, the “founding liberal”. Jefferson was a great US president: he doubled the territory of the USA. Lofty words covered up his evil power (Pluto-Kratia). Exalted thoughts from Jefferson are all over Washington: all men are created equal… but may as well be his slaves, he had 200… 200 slaves, and never freed them.

Supremely exploitative mentality, then, by this Founding Father, covered up by big words to the contrary. Jefferson got in trouble with the police in Paris for keeping slaves (slavery had been unlawful in France for eleven centuries, since 657 CE!) Is that the “liberalism” the world needs? Talking gloriously, implementing genocide? Is that the American way? 

Jefferson purchase: Louisiana. He pushed maximally for expansion in the Indian lands beyond the 13 colonies. Not only the Natives were not consulted, but Jefferson established the blueprint of the plot to exterminate the “Indians”.(see below).

This is why “liberalism” got to mean very different things on different sides of the Atlantic. Organizers of the “Democratic” party were plutocrats such as the Harrimans, heirs of a railroad monopoly, decorated by both Stalin, and Hitler… for formidable help (think Baku offshore oil). 

The US never did one thing while talking the opposite under Roosevelt… thus making World War Two, its holocausts, and the “American Century”. possible. This will be scrutinized someday.   

The banking crisis of the late 1980s was a forerunner of the one 20 years later. More than 800 “thrifts” (a type of bank) and related institutions failed, plus more than 1600 commercial banks. The US gov took control of these institutions while their value was roughly zero (as happens in nationalization). However, by retaining an interest in asset portfolios, the Resolution Trust Corporation was able to participate in the extremely strong returns being realized by portfolio investors. 

Obama, instead, gave to the rich. Obama agreed to the Bush approved, Goldman Sachs devised, plan of transferring assets to rich people. Between TARP, Quantitative Easing and “Twist”, more than 5,000 billion dollars were transferred to the wealthiest people in the USA… by “liberal” Obama, asking for nothing in return… just because he was told what to do by the invader of Iraq? Or because he wanted to become wealthy afterwards, by pleasing the wealthiest?

I know Obama personally, as a friend for several decades, and can testify to the fact he just did what he was told, indeed, and understood very little beyond that. So he was completely manipulated in a totally illiberal strategy.

With President-elect Obama’s full approval, the Fed started to buy 600 billion of mortgage backed securities in late November 2008. Quantitative Easing finished in 2014, with gifts of 4.5 trillion dollars to banks… without anything in return (differently from the RTC 20 years earlier!)

US “liberalism” has a fundamental problem: its founding giants, Jefferson and Jackson were fully intent on removing the “Indians”. The “Removal Act” was actually passed in 1831, under Jackson… But the genocidal program had not been implemented earlier, i part from fear that the Natives Americans would constitute an alliance with European powers (UK, France, Spain).

Here is this little known aspect of Jefferson:

In an 1803 private, secret letter to William Henry Harrison, Jefferson wrote:

To promote this disposition to exchange lands, which they have to spare and we want, for necessaries, which we have to spare and they want, we shall push our trading uses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them run in debt, because we observe that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands…. In this way our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians, and they will in time either incorporate with us as citizens of the United States, or remove beyond the Mississippi. The former is certainly the termination of their history most happy for themselves; but, in the whole course of this, it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi, as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation.^[13][14]

Jefferson believed that this debt strategy would “get rid of this pest, without giving offence or umbrage to the Indians”.^[15] He stated that Harrison was to keep the contents of the letter “sacred” and “kept within [Harrison’s] own breast, and especially how improper for the Indians to understand. For their interests and their tranquility, it is best they should see only the present age of their history.”

Roman emperors distributed life sustaining bread, US emperors distributed ruinous debts… the debt strategy is used to this day. Students with progressivist mentalities are encourage to undertake ruinous degrees of no market value in ruinous universities, saddling them for a life of servitude (the New York Times has dozens of recent articles on this, the one linked her is one of many!)

***

Forced Removal And Official Extermination Of Aborigines Inaugurated By Jefferson:

Jefferson believed for decades that “aboriginal inhabitants” should be exterminated or forcefully relocated and sent west.^[6] 

Jefferson’s first promotions of Indian Removal were between 1776 and 1779, when he recommended forcing the Cherokee and Shawnee tribes to be driven out of their ancestral homelands to lands west of the Mississippi River. Indian removal, said Jefferson, with consummate hypocrisy typical of exploitative mentality, was the only way to ensure the survival of Native American peoples. Jefferson’s first such act as president, was to make a deal with the state of Georgia that if Georgia were to release its legal claims to discovery in lands to the west, then the U.S. military would help forcefully expel the Cherokee people from Georgia. At the time, the Cherokee had a treaty with the United States government which guaranteed them the right to their lands, which was violated in Jefferson’s deal with Georgia.

As Jefferson put it in a letter to Alexander von Humboldt on December 6, 1813:

“You know, my friend, the benevolent plan we were pursuing here for the happiness of the aboriginal inhabitants in our vicinities. We spared nothing to keep them at peace with one another. To teach them agriculture and the rudiments of the most necessary arts, and to encourage industry by establishing among them separate property. In this way they would have been enabled to subsist and multiply on a moderate scale of landed possession. They would have mixed their blood with ours, and been amalgamated and identified with us within no distant period of time. On the commencement of our present war, we pressed on them the observance of peace and neutrality, but the interested and unprincipled policy of England has defeated all our labors for the salvation of these unfortunate people. They have seduced the greater part of the tribes within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach.^[17]

Jefferson told his Secretary of War, General Henry Dearborn (who was the primary government official responsible for Indian affairs): “if we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi.”^[18]

US liberalism double talk at its best… With a mentor like that, no doubt US progressivism could comfortably sink into unsuspected abysses. Jefferson did not just relocate and exterminate Indians. He taught how to make it look as if it were for their own good. Now we have had for generations plutocrats, who are typically monopolistic thieves, proclaiming themselves to be “lovers of man”, philanthropists… Some descending from the “most important” collaborators of the Nazis (Hitler dixit), became presidents (the two Bushes)….

Although all the preceding is in plain sight, US academia has been excellent at teaching how not to see it…. thus fulfilling its mission of molding sheep-like masses of uncurious gullible creatures. To feed on a prey, the predator need first to make it unconscious…

Patrice Ayme

Death By Police State: The Case Of Dean Potter

HUMANITY WOULD NOT BE WITHOUT LOVE FOR RISK TAKING

Some pragmatic and biased partisans of the police state will immediately interject that the famous climber Dean Potter died from hitting the ground as he flew his wingsuit too low in Yosemite. The Guardian, though, saw a bit further: “Did rules, not risk, cause Dean Potter’s Base jumping death?”

Potter Above The Alps. Some Day, We Will Fly Better Than That, Because We Tried

See also: The Last Flight of Dean Potter by my friend Dan Duane.

Humanity evolved because it learned to enjoy ever greater feats, by taking ever more risks thanks to, and inciting to inventing ever more sophisticated technology.

Therefore risk takers have to be respected: they are animated by the essence of what makes us humans.

That does not mean one should make a cult of them. And the cult around many a climber has irritated me over the years. Yes, when risk takers go too far, and misrepresent the risks they take to the youth, thus making a lot of victims, they have to be cut down to size. In that sense Dean Potter, and other like him, some of them personal friends, have irritated me. I think climbing is dangerous enough to not overdo it. Most of my friends died climbing.

Wingsuit flying is even more dangerous: around 5% of wingsuit fliers die, every year.  However, the philosophy of wingsuit flying holds together.

Indeed, I am a climber too, and I have free soloed (mostly by force, during mountaineering, because it was safer than the alternative). I have observed, during a long climbing career, that those who solo too much, or at too high a level, die. They don’t necessarily die climbing: they get so used to cheat death free soloing, that they take inconsiderate risks in other activities such as driving, or BASE jumping (indeed). So I view the hard line taken by Dr. Paul Preuss, a fanatical free soloist and with hundreds of first ascents as stupid and criminal. A free soloing Preuss died in 1913, at 27, after falling off a thousand feet. Preuss was a genius, but he went too far.

I use to climb a lot in U.S. National Parks, especially Yosemite. However, over times, those parks turned into training grounds for the police state. Once, long ago, after a hard climb in Rocky National Park, Colorado, our ropes got cut by rock fall on the descent. We had to spend the night at 13,000 feet, freezing, and finished the descent the next day. By the time we made it out to the trailhead, hours away, a ranger was there to arrest us for staying out without an overnight permit (we had only a permit to climb that particular mountain).

In Yosemite, entire casual, or cheap campsites were closed, while the Valley itself became a city, complete with judge and jail. Rangers go about with infrared detectors to arrest those who would be out in the woods at night. And so on.

There is little doubt that forcing parachutists to jump with low visibility, or worrying first about arrests, is a factor increasing the probability of dying.

Why then have the National Parks, and a lot of the wilderness, in the USA, be transformed into a police state? Well, precisely because, so doing, people are trained to live in a police state.

A particularly comic aspect of this happened when the government of the USA ran out of money, and closed all the National Parks.

I came for one of my mountain runs, starting at the end of a dirt road where there is never anybody. For this sort of long, solitary runs, I get dropped somewhere, and run to somewhere else, where I get picked up (it’s more challenging than climbing, these days).

But that period, the Parks were closed. And to make sure that the Parks would stay closed, the government had sent plenty of supplementary law enforcement (so the government spent more money, because it wanted to spend less money!). A runner had to run in the woods to escape the Rangers’ SUVs, and then play hide and seek with a horse patrol, which had been especially sent in pursuit. Those days I saw plenty of rangers in places where one never sees anyone (let alone rangers), on access dirt roads to various Parks. Many people, even families, with children, got actually chased down and arrested for daring to penetrate their National Parks, on their habitual dominical hikes.

What was taught by Big Police by this barely credible repression? That in the USA, the law is hard, but it is the law, and humanity is nothing, if it stands in the way of the law. So Dean Potter died, flying at dusk, and many in law enforcement in the USA rejoice, and so do their fellow travelers. Because it reminds all that people are nothing, and orders, everything. National Park do not teach nature first. They teach the police state, first. That is considered much more important, nowadays.

There has been recently some indignation about the methods of the police in the USA. Racist allegations were made. However, those familiar with the police in the USA know that racism is not the fundamental problem. Some of the officers indicted for violence were actually “colored” (to use an old American expression). Police, in the USA, is very well paid, and associates with the rich, and the order they gave rise to. But not just that.

The Romans used to say: ”The Law Is Hard, But It Is the Law!” The Americans say the same. Brutal application of “justice” and the law is what holds the USA together.

(Obama himself has perceived this, and just cracked down, deciding to forbid the police access to some military equipment.)

325 million citizens of the USA are taught to toe the line, and there is no better place to do so, in a semi-playful way, than in National Parks. And it’s getting worse, in parallel, and related to, the mercantilization of the Parks. That’s why I don’t go there anymore.

Increasing authoritarianism is multifaceted: this week, all my comments to the New York Times, but one, were censored. I cannot even imagine why. But the general trend is clear: if one has something really interesting to say, don’t try to say it on the New York Times: this is the propaganda piece of the pseudo-fair. (Most interesting commenters have disappeared  from there. However, The Guardian, and other British publications publish my comments. So does the… Wall Street Journal.)

Increasing authoritarianism is a slow suffocation of the human spirit. Resisting it, our essence. As Jefferson, third president of the USA pointed out, when a law is bad, it’s not just our right, but our duty, not to obey it.

Patrice Ayme

Jefferson: Bountiful Barbarity

Jefferson was an abominable human being. That helped make him an irreplaceable Founding Father, and great American president.

Obama got the bright idea to celebrate the Francophile, long time Paris resident, and Franco-inspired Jefferson with Hollande, to celebrate their love and partnership. I want to thank him for giving me the occasion of firing a broadside at another celebrity, mounted on a colossal amount of darkness.

Civilizations are defined by, and articulated around, master ideas, and the celebrities that incarnated them. Jefferson became one of the greatest American presidents, because he was so abominable. Let me explain.

Why The USA Really Got Rid Of The Brits: To Invade Indian Lands

Sorry to break the spell: the USA did not revolt just because of taxation without representation, but because of a frontier with limitations. (Details in past and future essays.)

The president of the USA showed the president of France the neo-classical palace where Jefferson, the third president of the USA, held his slaves. They both admired whatever they were supposed to admire. Ironical.

Jefferson turned into a great enemy of both France and people of African descent. Jefferson’s purchase of gigantic Louisiana (1803) was the result of his massive CIA-NSA like secret support of the black rebellion in Haiti, to weaken France. In spite of his fear that “the blacks are out to murder us”. But, for Jefferson, greed proved stronger than fear.

Jefferson was twice part of the crack diplomatic team in Paris coordinating crucial help from Louis XVI. The French police visited his residence and ordered him to pay his servants a living wage, and to free them, because slavery was unlawful in France. (Slavery had been unlawful for eleven centuries.) Jefferson is the nexus of the American Dark Side, the quintessential horror of winner take all exploitation.

When the time came to go home to fight the war, Jefferson’s slaves wanted to stay in Paris. However Jefferson promised them freedom. He lied. In his lifetime, Jefferson freed just two slaves.

Jefferson, one of the wealthiest plutocrats in Virginia, held more than 200 slaves. When Jefferson, an author of the Declaration of Independence wrote: “He has excited domestic insurrections among us,” he was actually condemning the English King for “inciting American Negroes to rise in arms against their masters.”

While governor of Virginia for years during the Revolution, Jefferson promoted military enlistment by offering white men “a healthy sound Negro…or £60 in gold or silver”. Hey boys, let’s boogie.

The cult of Jefferson is strong in Washington. Jefferson has his own memorial, much more interesting and beautiful than the massive, Nuremberg bunker like Lincoln Memorial. Inside engraved on the walls, soaring writings of Jefferson.

As president, Jefferson massacred Indians and stole their land. That was, of course, horrific. Only an abominable person could do such a thing. Jefferson was that abominable person. He had carefully trained by mistreating his slaves and raping children. (Sally Hemming, who he bedded when she was at most 14, was three quarter Caucasian.)

The Dark Side of Jefferson was strong. A friend of his, an idealistic Polish Count, who had fought in the American War of Independence, left Jefferson, in his will, a considerable amount of money, so that Jefferson could free his own slaves. Jefferson pocketed the money, and did not free his slaves.

Patriotic Americans, most of them more or less descendants of European immigrants to America (yes, even Michelle Obama) are supposed, implicitly, to be grateful to the child rapist, slave master, holocauster Jefferson. How do I know this? Well, that’s what the cult of Jefferson is all about. Or actually the cult of the USA, as the USA owes so much to Jefferson.

Let Jefferson speak in his own words:

… our settlements will gradually circumscribe and approach the Indians… it is essential to cultivate their love. As to their fear, we presume that our strength and their weakness is now so visible that they must see we have only to shut our hand to crush them, and that all our liberalities to them proceed from motives of pure humanity only. Should any tribe be foolhardy enough to take up the hatchet at any time, the seizing the whole country of that tribe, and driving them across the Mississippi , as the only condition of peace, would be an example to others, and a furtherance of our final consolidation….this strategy would “get rid of this pest, without giving offence or umbrage to the Indians”.

In cases where Native tribes resisted assimilation, Jefferson believed that they should be forcefully sent west. Jefferson in a letter to no less than Alexander von Humboldt, 1813:

“You know, my friend, the benevolent plan we were pursuing here for the happiness of the aboriginal inhabitants in our vicinities. … On the commencement of our present war, we pressed on them the observance of peace and neutrality, but the interested and unprincipled policy of England has defeated all our labors for the salvation of these unfortunate people. They have seduced the greater part of the tribes within our neighborhood, to take up the hatchet against us, and the cruel massacres they have committed on the women and children of our frontiers taken by surprise, will oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach.”

Jefferson ordered his Secretary of War, General Henry Dearborn (top government official responsible for Indian affairs): “…we will never lay [the hatchet against any tribe] down until that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi”

Obama did good to celebrate Jefferson with Hollande in their presidential field trip. Jefferson, ultimately, celebrated the Enlightenment. But the road to light led through darkness.

And what if France and Britain, instead of fighting with each other, had kept control of North America? Well, the place would have got more civilized, much earlier, and Prussian anti-semitic racial fascism, and thus the USSR, would never have arisen. The USA may not have become as strong. But then, there would have been no need…

Last, but not least. Jefferson implemented further what I call the “exploitative mentality“. That’s the mood attending, but not reserved, to foundation of the English North American colony (think of the “Virginia Company and her sisters, properties of bloodied plutocrats, the West Country Men). Some, in their naivety, will smart that this is the past. Not so.

The dominant economist system of thought claims markets ought to decide all.

That system is called “Austrian” (because of Hayek and company). That anachronistic name cover-ups its sinister nature. The exploitative mentality is how the USA was founded. “Markets” loved slavery & Indian holocausts, and thus implemented them. Markets sell everything, even civilization.

Patrice Aymé