Forgotten History - The Price Of Our Short Memories

My things to blog about and favorite essays lists have grown out of control over the last several weeks (150+ new entries just over the weekend past).  In reviewing my lists I made a couple of observations... 1)  despite the wide range of topics, there is a common thread tying them together - government encroachment upon our liberties; and 2)  decades, or more, of history that demonstrates an incremental erosion of our liberties - and that those erosions are by design.  In fact, we have been warned repeatedly that this was planned and that it was underway.

Our short memories seem to cause us to view each "new" news item as only that which is happening today.  Any effort by an astute journalist to wrap up current news with history, and draw conclusions contrary to the governments talking points, results in the conspiracy theory claim by those in the mainstream, or from among the herd.

So, just how much history does it take to lose the theory qualifier?  I don't know... how many times can you accommodate, may I have bite please, before your plate is empty?


Ignored Warnings

I consider Wilson our first contemporary president because much of what we "enjoy" today commenced on his watch - our finance and banking systems, our system of taxation, and the establishment's lust for war.  While he lamented the evils that ail us still today - many of those evils happened by his hand.  If he was not the first great criminal to hold the office, he certainly laid the way for great criminals to follow.

Consider these snippets from Wilson's 1913 book The New Freedom

From Section I - The Old Order Changeth

There is one great basic fact which underlies all the questions that are discussed on the political platform at the present moment. That singular fact is that nothing is done in this country as it was done twenty years ago. ...  We have come upon a very different age from any that preceded us. We have come upon an age when we do not do business in the way in which we used to do business,—when we do not carry on any of the operations of manufacture, sale, transportation, or communication as men used to carry them on. There is a sense in which in our day the individual has been submerged. In most parts of our country men work, not for themselves, not as partners in the old way in which they used to work, but generally as employees,—in a higher or lower grade,—of great corporations. There was a time when corporations played a very minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations.
...
You know what happens when you are the servant of a corporation. You have in no instance access to the men who are really determining the policy of the corporation. If the corporation is doing the things that it ought not to do, you really have no voice in the matter and must obey the orders, and you have oftentimes with deep mortification to co-operate in the doing of things which you know are against the public interest. Your individuality is swallowed up in the individuality and purpose of a great organization. |
...
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

From Section VIII - Monopoly, or Opportunity?

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom. This is the greatest question of all, and to this statesmen must address themselves with an earnest determination to serve the long future and the true liberties of men.

From Section IX - Benevolence or Justice?

We are at the parting of the ways. We have, not one or two or three, but many, established and formidable monopolies in the United States. We have, not one or two, but many, fields of endeavor into which it is difficult, if not impossible, for the independent man to enter. We have restricted credit, we have restricted opportunity, we have controlled development, and we have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world — no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.

Warnings about the Federal Reserve Bank (and central banks in general)

If you want to remain slaves of the bankers and pay for the costs of your own slavery, let them continue to create money and control the nation’s credit. –Sir Josiah Stamp

We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are U.S. government institutions. They are private credit monopolies; domestic swindlers, rich and predatory money lenders which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers. The Federal Reserve banks are the agents of the foreign central banks. The truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States by the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board. –Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, addressed the House on June 10, 1932

What is needed here is a return to the Constitution of the United States. We need to have a complete divorce of Bank and State. The old struggle that was fought out here in Jackson’s day must be fought over again… The Federal Reserve Act should be repealed and the Federal Reserve Banks, having violated their charters, should be liquidated immediately. Faithless Government officers who have violated their oaths of office should be impeached and brought to trial. Unless this is done by us, I predict that the American people, outraged, robbed, pillaged, insulted, and betrayed as they are in their own land, will rise in their wrath and send a President here who will sweep the money changers out of the temple. -Louis McFadden US Congressman 1932

This [Federal Reserve Act] establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President Wilson signs this bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized….the worst legislative crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill. –Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. , 1913  

The financial system has been turned over to the Federal Reserve Board. That Board administers the finance system by authority of a purely profiteering group. The system is Private, conducted for the sole purpose of obtaining the greatest possible profits from the use of other people’s money” –Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., 1923

Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve system have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States. –Barry Goldwater, R-AZ

Warnings about secret societies, militarism, corporatism and the quest for global government

The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining super capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control… Do I mean conspiracy? Yes, I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent. –Congressman Larry P. McDonald, 1976, killed in the Korean Airlines 747 that was shot down by the Soviets


For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. –David Rockefeller

Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society...



Dwight D. Eisenhower, former US President...



John F. Kennedy, Eisenhower's successor...



The most recent of the above remarks are from 36 years ago - and our history is full of such warnings going back another 200+ years.  Would you say that any of these observations and warnings were alarmist?  Have not all the warnings proven true - perhaps even worse than projected?  When, then, will the herd stampede?

"Men think in herds, go mad in herds, but recover their senses one by one." -- Charles Mackay