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| Rest in the Vine: "An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport, at their request, on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence" by John Quincy Adams |
“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.”-- George Washington's Address to the troops before the Battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776
"It is the oldest struggle of human kind, as old as man himself. This is a simple struggle between those of us who believe that man has the dignity and sacred right and the ability to choose and shape his own destiny and those who do not so believe. This irreconcilable conflict is between those who believe in the sanctity of individual freedom and those who believe in the supremacy of the state. ...Make no mistake about it, this is an evil force. Don’t be deceived because you are not hearing the sound of gunfire, because even so you are fighting for your lives. And you’re fighting against the best organized and the most capable enemy of freedom and of right and decency that has ever been abroad in the world."--'Your America to Be Free', 1957, by Ronald Reagan, an Actual non-Installed President of the United States
"The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false."--Historian Paul Johnson
“And so many of the blessings and advantages we have, so many of the reasons why our civilization, our culture, has flourished aren’t understood; they’re not appreciated. And if you don’t have any appreciation of what people went through to get, to achieve, to build what you are benefiting from, then these things don’t mean very much to you. You just think, well, that’s the way it is. That’s our birthright. That just happened. But it didn’t just happen. And at what price? What grief? What disappointment? What suffering went on? I mean this. I think that to be ignorant or indifferent to history isn’t just to be uneducated or stupid. It’s to be rude, ungrateful. And ingratitude is an ugly failing in human beings.”--Historian David McCollough
"If buttercups buzz'd after the bee
If boats were on land, churches on sea
If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows
And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse
If the mamas sold their babies
To the Gypsies for half a crown
If summer were spring
And the other way 'round
Then all the world would be upside down!"
--"The World Turned Upside Down", played by the British when George Washington defeated the World's Only Superpower at Yorktown in 1781
| "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."--King George III, upon hearing from painter Benjamin West that the victorious General Washington was voluntarily relinquishing power. |
"England since the conquest hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones: yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honourable one. A French bastard landing with an armed Banditti and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It certainly hath no divinity in it. However it is needless to spend much time in exposing the folly of hereditary right; if there are any so weak as to believe it, let them promiscuously worship the Ass and the Lion, and welcome. I shall neither copy their humility, nor disturb their devotion."--Thomas Paine
If we didn't fire our muskets
'Til we looked 'em in the eye
We held our fire
'Til we see'd their faces well
Then we opened up our squirrel guns
And really gave 'em, well
We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin'
There wasn't as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they begin to runnin'
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
Yeah, they ran through the briars
And they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes
Where a rabbit couldn't go
They ran so fast
That the hounds couldn't catch 'em
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
We fired our cannon 'til the barrel melted down
So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round
We filled his head with cannon balls, and powdered his behind
And when we touched the powder off the gator lost his mind"
Constant Peg:
"The ‘No Kings’ name chosen for the disparate DS/billionaire financed ‘resistance’ groups is highly instructive. The Democrats obviously expected Trump to defy the increasingly ridiculous TRO’s, but he didn’t fall into the trap they’d set, leaving them with a PR problem. Sitting in the various warehouses were hundreds of thousands of pre-printed ‘spontaneously created’ pieces of protest literature and websites all designed around the name they’d assumed would resonate with the public, ‘No Kings’.
In 1832 an unnamed artist had drawn a cartoon of Andrew Jackson, trampling the Constitution, titled ‘King Andrew the First’, in support of the opposition who accused the President of being an abuser of Presidential powers and acting like a monarch, sound familiar. Trouble was, the President in 2025 had accepted each judgement and obeyed the TRO’s, seeking instead to have them challenged and overturned. So, being good lefties they followed their master’s instructions and went ahead with the campaign with a slogan that jarred, not resonated, and their fellow travellers in the Democrat/media complex lamely tried to repurpose the slogan to suggest Trump’s legal deployment of NG troops and ICE’s very existence meant he was acting like a monarch.
Game set and match to Trump who, along with his army of memesters , have mercilessly mocked this obvious contradiction and made sure the campaign has made little impact beyond the normal suspects." .......
Even on a simple marketing level, “No Kings!” is stupid, insipid, even.
New Coke and Trans Budweiser had a better run.
Besides, we've already had several actual No Kings-moments, including 1776, 1812 and again in 2020, when 2 million patriots went to DC to peacefully petition Congress for redress of grievances, and were promptly set upon by a wicked Evil Empire which attacked and framed them for daring to question their Theft of the Republic.
The same saggy and dwindling cult of CIA/Globo-Homo minions who dutifully bleat out "No Kings!" despise the very Founders who ensured it for us. Oh--hi, Barry.
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Some Actual No Kings-moments:
'World Turned Upside Down' - British Surrender to Americans at Yorktown on This Day
"...Lord Charles Cornwallis made the mistake of encamping his Redcoats on the Yorktown peninsula near the coast of southern Virginia. The British General perceived little threat from Gen. Marquis de Lafayette’s smaller Continental Army contingent that had trailed him across the state.However, the Frenchman fighting for the Americans saw Cornwallis’ strategic error of pinning himself inland with a body of water to his rear and sought to capitalize on it.
Lafayette ordered his men, now augmented with local militia, to guard the exits from Yorktown, and he quickly dispatched word to Washington, encamped near New York City. He wrote that if the general could reinforce him quickly, they might be able to capture all of Cornwallis’s Army.
As it happened, Washington had also received word through French General Rochambeau, also in the New York area, that 24 ships and 3,000 soldiers from his country under the leadership of Admiral Comte de Grasse were heading north from the West Indies and due to arrive in Virginia in September.
Washington saw everything coming together and wasted no time. The Continentals and Rochambeau’s French forces marched through New Jersey to Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. And from there, they embarked on ships to transit to the Yorktown Peninsula.
For almost seven long and arduous years, Washington’s greatest victory had been staying in the fight. He had known only two victories in seven major engagements with the enemy.
With the help of the French, the American leader believed he could land a crippling, perhaps war-ending blow.
The prospects of victory on land increased greatly, with word that de Grasse’s fleet defeated the British Navy at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay on Sept. 5. The British had been trying to reinforce Cornwallis’s forces.
Washington’s army arrived at Yorktown in late September, and, for the Americans and the French, it was time to lay siege. Washington ordered trenches to be dug around the perimeter of Yorktown.
The Allied cannonade against Cornwallis’ position began in early October, and the Redcoats quickly sought refuge outside the town, close to the York River.
American and French batteries kept pounding the British positions for eight days straight, at which point Washington ordered the capture of reinforced positions closer to Cornwallis.
On Oct. 17, a lone Redcoat bearing a white flag appeared atop a British parapet. “Cease fire,” echoed up and down the Allied lines. Washington and his men rejoiced. The 13-day siege ended, and the triumph was for the Continentals and the French.
A British band reputedly played the tune “The World’s Turned Upside Down” during the surrender at Yorktown on Oct. 19.
Following the signing of the peace treaty in 1783, Washington wrote in a farewell letter to the Continental Army, “The disadvantageous circumstances on our part, under which the war was undertaken, can never be forgotten.”
“The singular interpositions of Providence in our feeble condition were such, as could scarcely escape the attention of the most unobserving; while the unparalleled perseverance of the armies of the United States, through almost every possible suffering and discouragement for the space of eight long years, was little short of a standing Miracle,” he contended.
Washington concluded by saying to the troops that he would be praying to the “God of Armies” for them.
He wrote, “May ample justice be done them here; and may the choicest of Heaven’s favors both here and hereafter attend those, who under the divine auspices have secured innumerable blessings for others.”
(Portions of this article first appeared in the book “We Hold These Truths” about the influence of the Declaration of Independence in American history by Randall DeSoto.) .......
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Rest in the Vine: Teddy Roosevelt's America...and Ours
"I wish that our people as a whole, and especially those among us who occupy high legislative or administrative positions, would study the history of our nation, not merely for the purpose of national self gratification, but with the desire to learn the lessons that history teaches. Let the men who talk lightly about its being unnecessary for us now to have an army and navy adequate for the work of this nation in the world remember that such utterances are not merely foolish, for in their effects they may at any time be fraught with disaster and disgrace to the nation's honor as well as disadvantage to its interest. Let them take to heart some of the lessons which should be learned by the study of the War of I8I2.
As a people we are too apt to remember only that some of our ships did well in that war. We had a few ship--a very few ships--and they did so well as to show the utter folly of not having enough of them. Thanks to our folly as a nation, thanks to the folly that found expression in the views of those at the seat of government, not a ship of any importance had been built within a dozen years before the war began, and the Navy was so small that, when once the war was on, our opponents were able to establish a close blockade throughout the length of our coast, so that not a ship could go from one port to another, and all traffic had to go by land. Our parsimony in not preparing an adequate navy (which would have prevented the war) cost in the end literally thousands of dollars for every one dollar we thus foolishly saved. After two years of that war an utterly inconsiderable British force of about four thousand men was landed here in the bay, defeated with ease a larger body of raw troops put against it, and took Washington.
I am sorry to say that those of our countrymen who now speak of the deed usually confine themselves to denouncing the British for having burned certain buildings in Washington. They had better spare their breath. The sin of the invaders in burning the buildings is trivial compared with the sin of our own people in failing to make ready an adequate force to defeat the attempt. This nation was guilty of such shortsightedness, of such folly, of such lack of preparation that it was forced supinely to submit to the insult and was impotent to avenge it; and it was only the good fortune of having in Andrew Jackson a great natural soldier that prevented a repetition of the disaster at New Orleans. Let us remember our own shortcomings, and see to it that the men in public life to-day are not permitted to bring about a state of things by which we should in effect invite a repetition of such a humiliation.
We can afford as a people to differ on the ordinary party questions; but if we are both farsighted and patriotic we can not afford to differ on the all-important question of keeping the national defenses as they should be kept; of not alone keeping up, but of going on with building up of the United States Navy, and of keeping our small Army at least at its present size and making it the most efficient for its size that there is on the globe.
Remember, you here who are listening to me, that to applaud patriotic sentiments and to turn out to do honor to the dead heroes who by land or by sea won honor for our flag is only worth while if we are prepared to show that our energies do not exhaust themselves in words; if we are prepared to show that we intend to take to heart the lessons of the past and make things ready so that if ever, which heaven forbid, the need should arise, our fighting men on sea and ashore shall be able to rise to the standard established by their predecessors in our services of the past.
Those of you who are in public life have a moral right to be here at this celebration today only if you are prepared to do your part in building up the Navy of the present; for otherwise you have no right to claim lot or part in the glory and honor and renown of the Navy's past.
...Remember that no courage can ever atone for lack of that preparedness which makes the courage valuable; and yet if the courage is there, if the dauntless heart is there, its presence will sometimes make up for other shortcomings; while if with it are combined the other military qualities the fortunate owner becomes literally invincible."--President Theodore Roosevelt, Farewell to John Paul Jones at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, April 24, 1906
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| Aboard the USS Connecticut, 1909 |
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From our Archives: Created Equal: The Perfect Metaphor (longer version here)
Our era’s Perfect Metaphor recently occurred in Homer, Alaska.
You probably know the story.
The Huepers, like two million other majority voters, went to Washington, D.C. to ask our Corrupt Political Class why they were stealing Our Right to Choose Our Own Public Servants in Honest Elections.
In response, the Corrupt Political Class promptly staged their pre-planned Reichstag Riot, installed their Putsch Puppet and designated the majority of American voters as “domestic terrorists”. You know–the Way the Framers Intended(tm).
Because Mrs. Hueper bore a superficial resemblance to a woman they suspected of taking Nanzi Pelosi’s laptop, the Feds kicked in their door, ransacked their properties, cuffed and coerced them. It wasn’t a case of mistaken identity–they knew it wasn’t her. They just wanted to bully and intimidate Americans. They finally left–but not before seizing the couples’ copy of the Declaration of Independence.
Which is weird, because they already have the original in the National Archives. Not that they’re doing anything with it.
There were no secret blueprints or seditious plots scribbled in the margins of the Huebers’ copy. No, the defining words of our nation’s founding document themselves are now considered seditious to the Occupation Government and the new One-Party State they are building.
Even dull-witted Quantico graduates marching as #Fake MAGA on weekends realize the Founders and Framers of America are their enemies. All of these American statesmen are subversive to this Alzheimer's Regime’s grip on illegitimate power. Their very lives stand as a rebuke to the Uni-Party Syndicate and their Constitutional Crime Wave.
Person of Interest Jefferson has come in for a hard time recently. His statues are under threat by the Democrat Paramilitary mobs, ostensibly because he owned slaves. But I think it’s because the mobs wish to own slaves themselves. Namely, us.
“All men are created equal,” Jefferson wrote. That phrase stands in the way of these new would-be Slave Owners. Nor can you steal elections from equals. Clearly, like pledging lives, fortunes and sacred honor, the man’s writings are a threat.
As are all the Founders’ writings. There is no good place to stop the suspicion, suppression and censorship once you’ve declared yourself against the Declaration.
The Revolution has come full circle; the Ruling Junta now views the Founding Fathers exactly like King George did.
Just like Pedo the Pedaler being literally unable to stop himself around children or Reichstag Nanzi elbowing children out of her way for a photo-op, the seizure of the Huepers’ Declaration by a rogue FBI, this was yet another Perfect Metaphor for Our Time.
The Huepers’ real crime? They believed it. They still believe in the Declaration which our Garbage Political Class has abandoned in favor of their own power in a One-Party Police State.
The Concertina Government will maintain the Jefferson Memorial. It will conduct guided tours of Monticello. It will preserve the original Declaration of Independence in a special climate-controlled glass case, designed to keep it forever pristine.
It will do everything–but honor it.
Which, in the final analysis, is the only thing that really matters.
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"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." --2 Corinthians 3:17 |
John 8:36
"So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed!”
Yes, Lord Jesus!
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