*Written by Rob Rimes.

I’ve lost count of all the debates that we’ve had thus far but thank god we only have another half dozen or so, unless of course they decide to work more into the schedule somewhere. This one was thrown by Fox News and held in South Carolina as their primary is less than a week away. Fox News gave us Bret Baier and Juan Williams with Kelly Evans and Gerald Seib from the Wall Street Journal as moderators for this round. I should mention that answers in this debate have been expanded to ninety seconds, as the GOP field is now narrowed down to five. Yes, five.

The reason being, is that Jon Huntmsman dropped out of the race earlier in the day. Huntsman, who was great on foreign policy, jumped ship and announced his endorsement for golden boy Mitt Romney. What’s disappointing about that is Huntsman was incredibly critical of Romney even less than a week prior. Huntsman went as far as to call Romney “unelectable” but now he is supporting him as he sees him as the best chance at beating Barack Obama. Huntsman lost a lot of credibility with me due to his blooming Romney love. Maybe it’s a Mormon thing or maybe it’s because they are both actually cousins, which has been ignored by the media mind you. Whatever the reason, Huntsman is out and he’s now on the Romney train like so many other so-called “conservatives” that aren’t able to see their own progressive ways. At least Huntsman can go back to his regular job of walking around on eight legs and scaring the shit out of Australians.

Newt Gingrich gets the first question and he is asked about his ads that attack Mitt Romney’s business record and if he thinks they are justified. Newtie Bootie says that it is important to look at and analyze job creation. He then quickly gets in a Ronald Reagan name drop and follows it up with a second Ronald Reagan name drop when he said that he and Clinton came up with a Reagan-like program for job creation in the 90′s. Newt points to the fact that Mitt raised taxes in Massachusetts and was actually ranked 47th out of 50 states in the realm of job creation. He stole that talking point from Jon Huntsman. Gingrich adds that if Romney promotes his business skills as part of his campaign then he, as a rival candidate, has the right to question it. He is then asked what he thinks about the Wall Street Journal criticizing him and saying that he is “embarrassing himself” with his attack ads against Mitt Romney. Gingrich responds by saying that he isn’t intimidated by the media just because he is asking questions about candidates.

In an effort to respond, Mitt Romney says that he has real experience in job creation due to his time in the private sector. Mitt says that he learned a lot from working in the private sector, as opposed to the other candidates who have spent much of their time in the public sector. He talks about how four of the companies he helped establish have gone on to create hundreds-of-thousands of jobs. Mitt adds that his record is public and available to anyone that wants to analyze his job creation skills. He claims that he has continually demonstrated a record of success. Romney points out that the unemployment rate in Massachusetts when he left was 4.7 percent. He also throws in that he balanced the state budget every year.

Rick Perry, in an effort to make this debate all about Mitt, is asked about his comments where he referred to Mitt Romney as a “vulture capitalist”. Perry is also asked what he would put in place to curb vulture capitalism. Perry says that his record proves that he is a real capitalist. Really? Tweaking the law and protecting a company that you own a stake in from getting in trouble for distributing porn illegally is the actions of a real capitalist? You mean taking money from Merck and then attempting to force young girls to be vaccinated with Merck products is also the action of a real capitalist? Looks like Perry is a fucking vulture too from where I sit. He then goes on to bitch like a liberal about how Bain destroyed jobs. He then tells us that his record and income tax has been public for years and uses that to call out Mitt and then asks him to release his income tax information so that the public can see how he really made his money. Perry then rambles about killing Dodd-Frank and talks about how regulations are strangling America. He adds that he will get rid of some of the financial regulators. He didn’t say “all of them”.

Responding to Perry, as this is the Romney variety hour, Mitt blames the Chinese and their cheating ways for closing down the steel mills Rick Perry was blaming Mitt for closing. Romney says that he agrees with Perry about regulations but never really defends himself in a proper fashion other than pointing his finger at China. Romney, on the regulations issue, claims that he will end all Obama era regulations. I guess the regulations from the Bush era, the Clinton era and all other eras aren’t important.

So just when you think that’s over, Gerald Seib asks Romney a question! Fucking hell! Romney answers the question, which was abut his experience at Bain. He says that they often times consolidated plants and factories and if they closed one down, the workers were free to move to the new plant or factory. He points out though that many workers didn’t move as the new jobs didn’t come with union support.

Ron Paul is asked about his “scathing” attack ads and whether or not such ads should be abandoned. Well, considering he’s running them, I doubt he’ll feel that they should be abandoned, duh! Paul responds by saying that he is exposing voting records and in that case, his “attacks” are proper. He goes on to say that he couldn’t fit everything he wanted to in his anti-Santorum ad as there wasn’t enough time to get it all in. He then goes on to list all the dumb crap that Santorum voted for.

Thin skinned piss boy Rick Santorum says that Paul is quoting Soros-like leftist groups which discredits his facts because leftist groups attack conservatives. Santorum basically says that being attacked by leftist groups is a badge of honor and he’s proud of the distinction. What a stupid fucktard! It doesn’t matter what the source is, the fact is the facts are FACTS! You can’t just ignore your own voting record and try to spin it to the public as leftist propaganda! Santorum who voted for No Child Left Behind says that he would veto it now. Of course he would, he’s pandering to South Carolinians. He then defends his vote against “right to work” as he says that Pennsylvania wasn’t a “right to work” state. Santorum who is outraged over the attacks on himself is then put on the spot by Juan Williams who asks if Santorum’s own attack ads should be pulled. The crowd boos Juan because they are idiot assholes and Santorum goes on to says that his attacks are “positive”. He then gets all bitchy with Mitt about his attack ads while citing the fact that it is Martin Luther King Day to make some dimwitted point. Why do people support this whiney juvenile brat?

Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum get in a spat about whether or not people who have committed violent crimes should be allowed to vote. I get bored to tears listening to them bicker as basically each candidate is trying to steal time from the other in order to make their lame ass points. While I’d like there to be some blood in these things, pink ass bitch blood isn’t as cool to see as the reddish bad ass real American blood. I was really just staring in awe waiting for these two Tinas to breakout with some limp-wristed slap fighting. And just when you think it’s over, Rick Perry jumps in the battle over who has the filthiest tampon.

Time monopolizer Mitt Romney is asked about Jon Huntsman’s recent criticism even though he came out and endorsed him. He is also asked how he can convince the voter that he won’t change his views in the future as he has a career as a flip-flopper. Mittens rambles on and on about how he was a pro-life governor contrary to popular belief and that he has always opposed gay marriage. However he adds that he is for equal rights for everyone including gays. Okay, so how is denying them marriage equal? Damn these Orwellian characters! Romney ends his soulless rant by saying that everything he has ever done and will do is about “strengthening America.”

In an effort to make himself relevant again, Rick Perry said that Texas was under assault by the federal government and then added that South Carolina was at war with Obama. The cheap pop attempt works and the crowd goes crazy. Too bad Perry is crazier than the crowd, he’s still deader than shit in this race. Perry talks about how the federal government is taking states to task on voter ID laws and immigration. He then says that Obama is at war with organized religion. Damn, Perry likes throwing the word “war” around. I’m starting to think he either doesn’t know what it means or it is just the answer to everything. “Obama is at war with peanuts! Send troops to the peanut farm! Obama is at war with puppies! Secure the entrance to PetLand!” Perry finishes by saying that Obama is out of control yet he fails to realize that he is foaming at the mouth and tweaking like an infant after two double espressos.

Santorum is asked if he would extend benefits for unemployment. Ricky Boy says that we need a reasonable time table for people to find a job but points out that 99 weeks is just too much. He goes on to say that this should be handled by the states and not the federal government. He calls for a job training program to be a part of unemployment benefits. Okay broski, how much will that shit cost? I’d imagine such a program would be expensive and even if we shortened the time one could collect benefits, the cost of this program could make all that moot. Truthfully, with the government being as wasteful as it is, this may cost us a shitload more than our current dilemma of 99 weeks. Also, when the hell has government done anything well? They certainly can’t offer a jobs program that will benefit anyone.

Gingrich jumps in the mix and agrees with Santorum that there should be a job training program. Okay idiots, what jobs are they training for and what happens when someone is six weeks into a program and decides that whatever they are training for is stupid and they want to get training in something else? Are people allowed to drop out and start over elsewhere and if so, how many times could they do this? Maybe once they start in something they are forced to finish it in order to get their benefits. Realistically, all this will do is waste more money as they will obviously stay in the program, collect the benefits and rack up more debt due to the cost of training them. What happens when they get out of the program? Well, I doubt they’d look for a job in the field they trained in if they grew to dislike it. Essentially this is a lose-lose for everyone but these statist shitcocks are blind to that reality. Newt Gingrich closes his statements on job programs by saying, “I’ll help you if you think helping yourself is good.” I shouldn’t even have to spell out what is wrong with that statement and I’m not going to.

Mitt Romney gives us another soulless rant. In this one he bitches about Obama’s business practices and use of crony capitalism. Romney says that the system of laws we have now work and that we don’t need government regulation. Is he living under a goddamned rock? The system of laws we have now IS government regulation. He adds that we need to open up markets and stop bailing people out. Right, he really wants to have free trade after all the smack he’s talked about China.

The idiot from Wall Street Journal Mr. Seib asks Ron Paul to explain his stance on cutting defense and more importantly on how his military plans would not cost South Carolinians jobs. Really? Is this a real question? Is this the best guy they could find to sit on the moderators’ panel? Ron Paul says that the moderator is confused about his position. He adds that he wants to cut military spending not defense and once again finds himself having to explain to the establishment conservatives for the umpteenth time over the course of these debates what the difference is between the two. Ron Paul says that cutting back on bases overseas would actually affect other countries not the United States. In fact, the U.S. would benefit greatly by bringing our troops home. Paul adds that the idea that this would make us weaker is “absolutely wrong”. Ron Paul is right on this because our presence is spread too thin throughout the world. He then points out that he raises more than twice as much money from the active duty military than all the other candidates combined! Slam dunk bitch! Watching this exchange is like watching Dr. Paul educate ADD-afflicted kindergartners in a college poli-sci class. Ron Paul finishes by quoting Eisenhower who warned about the “military industrial complex”. Paul slam dunks again when says, “We’re supposed to be conservative and that means spend less money!”

All the candidates are asked what the tax rate would be under them. Rick Perry says he will shoot for a 20 percent flat tax rate. Rick Santorum gives a weird answer because he’s probably never thought about this. Romney says that he would get us down to 25 percent but that is still too much. Newt calls for a 15 percent flat tax. Ron Paul then says that he would try to get us down to zero percent! He points to the fact that we didn’t have income tax before 1913 (well, excluding the Civil War era). His proposal is a reflection of how much he wishes to cut spending but the morons in the room can’t put two and two together and probably just think that Ron Paul’s still that crazy kook at the end of the bar. Paul also says that inflation is a tax and if he stopped inflation, we would be freed up from its hidden taxation.

Mitt Romney is asked if he will release his tax records soon. He gargles something about McCain and Bush and says that he hasn’t planned on releasing them. He says that he isn’t opposed to doing it however. He is then asked about his ties to Mexico and the crowd boos at the question. He is asked that if he has close ties to Mexico, why doesn’t he work towards helping Latinos and does he feel like his actions are alienating the Latino voters. Mitt says that Latinos, like all people, are interested in America because it is an “opportunity nation”. Mitt adds that he must communicate to all people that America can be better. He says that illegal immigrants shouldn’t be showed favoritism over those who have been waiting in line legally to enter this country. He then throws in that he would veto the DREAM Act.

Santorum starts pushing some mumbo jumbo about how if people get married before having children it’ll keep them out of poverty. He then blames Obama for everything and bitches about how public schools can’t promote marriage anymore. Santorum says that Obama is “..deliberately sabotaging young girls.” And Ron Paul is the crazy kook?

The moderators then ask Dr. Paul about racial disparities in drug related arrests and convictions. Paul says that it is very clear that racial disparity exists in both those convicted of drug charges and those sentenced to the death penalty. Paul points out that murderers often times get out of jail before drug offenders. He says that the drug war is bringing violence to our border and that it is the real border security issue of today.

Newt Gingrich is criticized about recent comments he made about blacks needing to ask for jobs instead of food stamps. He’s asked if he sees this sort of rhetoric as insulting to blacks, if not all people. Of course Gingrich says it isn’t insulting. He tells some weak story about how his daughter was a janitor at thirteen and how she loved making money and therefore black people should like it too. Juan Williams presses Newt further but gets booed by the South Carolinians in the crowd. What the fuck? Between this and the Romney-Mexico issue, these people are coming off as backwoods bigoted rednecks and people wonder why Republicans have that sort of stereotype! Newt adds that Obama has put more people on food stamps than any other president. While this may be true, it was the Bush administration that really got that ball rolling for Obama. In the end, Newt Gingrich doesn’t explain how his ideas help blacks, he just brushes it off and doesn’t bother dispelling the concerns brought up by the only minority on the stage or on the panel as a chorus of boos continue to be directed at that minority.

Ron Paul is then asked about comments he never made that he supposedly didn’t want to track down Osama bin Laden. Dr. Paul informs the moderators that he never said such a thing and that he voted for the military to apprehend the Al-Qaeda leader. Paul says his frustration was in how the situation was handled as we had the guy cornered before and didn’t go after him, instead we fucked around for a decade and then finally nabbed him almost ten years after 9/11. Paul adds that he wanted a properly executed mission but the whole situation was handled awfully. He then says that we need to respect other nations’ sovereignty and we need to follow proper procedures and not dig bigger holes for ourselves. Bret Baier takes a jab at Ron Paul and says that his stance on taking down terrorists is “to the left of Obama”. Ron Paul points out that we went in and got Saddam Hussein quickly. He then questions why acting quickly, capturing the enemy and detaining them to ask them questions is a bad thing yet waiting a decade and then flat out killing them is perceived as great.

Gingrich is asked if he would go into Pakistan to kill terrorists without getting permission from Pakistan first, even if doing so would end our relationship with Pakistan. Newt doesn’t answer the question, he just immediately attacks Ron Paul and says that Dr. Paul’s stance on foreign policy is “irrational”. Gingrich continues to ignore the question and goes on to just talk shit about Pakistan for continually reaping the benefits of foreign aid but not helping us militarily. Yep, because giving foreign aid apparently isn’t an act of kindness it is a transaction where we buy the countries we “aid”. Gingrich then channels Andrew Jackson and says, “Andrew Jackson had a clear cut idea about Americas enemies…KILL THEM!” This soundbite was met with thunderous applause because just like the establishment dickheads on stage, the majority of the South Carolinians in that building would rather murder someone who doesn’t like us than attempt to work towards a peaceful resolution.

Ron Paul then responds to Newt by saying that if other countries did to us what we do to them, we wouldn’t be cool with it. He then goes on to use the “golden rule” example and the rude crowd starts booing Ron Paul loudly! These people are sick! They are very vocally supporting murder and want to hear nothing of peace. This is the Republican stereotype that will continue to keep sane people away from their party. Paul doesn’t falter like other candidates however. He powers through his points, despite the evil jeers of the scumbags booing. Those of us that don’t condone unjustified cold-blooded murder and imperialism cheer from our living rooms because the oldest man in the room stood strong against the vehement hatred and hunger of hundreds of establishment zombies who only call a man crazy because they don’t have the brain power to understand him. I think it was Dave Chappelle who once said that people use the word “crazy” to describe things that they don’t understand. At this point, it doesn’t matter how many times Dr. Paul tries to educate the idiots, eventually you’ve got to just accept the fact that some people are ignorant and move on. Hopefully Dr. Paul learned this lesson but kudos to him for not faltering before these assholes. Another lesson learned, South Carolinians are rude as fuck.

So immediately after the sane man made his statements, Mitt Romney essentially went on a rant that we’ve got to “Kill! Kill! Kill!” and he actually said, “A bullet in the head is the right course of action.” Yep, this also got thunderous applause from the pro-murder sect of the Republican Party. Romney then went on to say that he would build a military so strong that no one would test the United States and thus, it would keep us out of war. He does realize that we go to war with everyone else first, not the other way around, right? I know.. I know, I’m giving this haircut too much credit.

Rick Santorum gets in ”Kill! Kill! Kill!” mode as well and starts bashing Obama for being what he deems as pro-Assad because we put an embassy in Syria. Yeah dude, why reach out and try to build a relationship when you can just shove bombs down their throats?! Santorum spins it into Obama being anti-Israel as Syria is in bed with Iran. Of course the racist “bomb the world” crowd cheers and cheers.

Perry has to get some ”Kill! Kill! Kill!” action too! He says that he wants to send a powerful message to Iran, Syria and Turkey. He takes a little bitch shot at Ron Paul because he’s a pandering redneck dickweed. He then goes on to defend the Marines that pissed on the dead Taliban soldiers which gets the asshole crowd on their feet. I get this feeling in my gut that the Sith have finally come out of hiding. Perry rambles on and on about decapitated soldiers in an attempt to excuse the heinous acts of our Marines. He then tries to explain that Obama is to blame as his bad policies affected the military. Huh? What? Is this dude drinking all the left over vaccinations he couldn’t force into young girls’ arms?

Here’s the kicker of the night however. Mitt Romney was asked about NDAA and he actually says that he would have signed it into law as Obama has! Romney gets a chorus of boos from the asshole crowd but this time I agree with them. Mitt demands more time so he can explain himself; time is granted and then he just rambles incoherently about it and about expanding military power. Okay, so unless you have been in the dark for months, Mitt Romney is for a Nazi-like law that allows the military to arrest and detain American citizens without due process! This guy is leading in the polls people!

Oh wait! Rick Santorum is also on board and he even tries to dispel concerns about the law proving that he is completely ignorant on the subject and incompetent as a decision maker. What does that tell you when a guy who has been a Washington insider, as long as Rick Santorum has, can’t understand a law that he is reading. Then again, the prick never even probably thumbed through the evil bill.

They quickly move over to Ron Paul and change the subject. Paul, who has been a big critic of the NDAA bill, requests time to talk about the issue. Paul is given the opportunity by the moderators. He talks about how the bill is tyrannical and how it destroys the 4th Amendment and our constitutional rights. He says that Americans being held indefinitely without habeas corpus is a horrible thing.

On sacred cow entitlements, Romney says that he would adopt the Paul Ryan Plan in regards to dealing with the Medicare problem. He goes on to say that he would provide “..higher benefits for lower income people and lower benefits for higher income people.” Yep, he’s not a progressive shitbag. Newt calls for the Chilean model on Social Security and adds that Social Security under his plan would be voluntary.

Rick Santorum is asked if his jobs plan is crony capitalism as it seems to pick winners and losers. Ricky Boy says that he would cut corporate taxes for everybody, so it’s fair. He then rants and raves about foreign competition. When the hell did our leaders turn into such pussies, so afraid of foreign competition? Man the fuck up and compete bitch! He then goes on to whine about regulations. Wait, isn’t he responsible for a lot of those? Baier signals that his time is up and Santorum snaps at Baier like the little Yorkshire lapdog bitch that he is. No one wants to hear your boring rant dipshit! Not even Fox News who has been the only force pimping you out! Santorum’s tantrum then turns over to Newt and they bicker back and forth and I zone out and go to the kitchen for a granola bar.

Juan Williams questions Mitt Romney’s consistency and asks him how he is pro-gun rights when he was the first governor to ever sign an assault weapons ban. Mitt tells Juan that he worked with both pro-gun and anti-gun groups on the legislation and they all agreed on it. He even mentions that he took a picture with the leaders of both groups when the bill was signed. He then talks about hunting elk and pheasants. Wow, you’re a tough cookie Mittens!

Santorum is asked about his anti-gun history and he goes on to say that all his votes were supported by the NRA. He said that they supported him signing certain laws because if they didn’t something worse might come down the pipeline. Oh c’mon! What a crock of shit! So you eat a small piece of poop today because you fear that if you don’t there might be a big piece of poop tomorrow?! No dude, you stand by your convictions and you kick both piles of poop and call it a day. Santorum is such a weak pushover hoe. He lets fear dictate his life, whether that’s fear of hypothetical future legislation or fear of a God he doesn’t even understand. Rick Santorum is of the old establishment mentality that you have to take away some rights in order to protect other rights. This guy is beyond stupid.

This discussion about guns carries over to Ron Paul who says that gun laws should be left to the state. Santorum then has to make it known that Ron Paul tried to do away with the 2nd Amendment! Really? God, doesn’t the Bible talk ill of liars? There goes Ricky Boy disappointing Jesus again! Ron Paul says that he would repeal anything that would ban guns. He then points out that Rick Santorum is just nibbling away at the Constitution for his own means.

Newt Gingrich goes on to defend himself from being accused of supporting China’s “one child policy”. He says that he never, in any way, supported that policy. He and Mitt then get into a pointless quarrel over Super PACs. Mitt days that he would get rid of Super PACs as they are corrupt and wrong. Rick Perry then closes out the debate talking about troops on the border and “aviation assets”. In his funny Texan accent he promises to “..lock the border down within a year after taking my hand off of that Bible.”

This debate was hard to watch. The audience was absolutely awful and even though I talked some shit about South Carolina, I hope that their attitudes and behavior doesn’t reflect that of the rest of the state. I guess we’ll find out as the next debate is also in South Carolina. If the crowd at that one is just as ridiculous, it’ll deter me from ever wanting to set foot in that state again!

In the end, Ron Paul did well, even with the whole world seemingly against him. It wasn’t his best performance but it was solid enough. I believe that Romney walked away weak, especially after his NDAA comments. Plus he just pandered and filibustered most of the debate. Newt did really well despite the Fox News and Wall Street Journal moderators trying to “gotcha” him to death and hang him out to dry. Rick Santorum is going to end up sucking gay dicks in Hell so I don’t care about him. Perry is probably going to drop the fuck out because again, he’s deader than shit in this race.

I tried to keep this one short and sweet but these idiots just give you so much material to rip apart and bash.

Grading Scale:
Grade B-: Newt Gingrich
Grade B-: Ron Paul
Grade D: Rick Perry
Grade D-: Mitt Romney
Grade F: Rick Santorum

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Lately, talk show hosts, politicians and know-it-all politificionados have been in an uproar over the political rhetoric that is used against one another. These pimps of political correctness and sensitivity are boo-hoo-hooing over the fact that anything that can somehow be related to combat, guns or war simply has no place in political rhetoric. What these tear-soaked turd munchers fail to realize is that we’re a pretty toned down society compared to where we once were. That doesn’t matter to them though because they don’t really study history, they just blow unjustified and inaccurate claims out of their tired lame rosy asses. They are calling for an “era of civility” just like in the days of yesteryear. It’s time to man up and face reality kiddies!

Introduction:

The Giffords shooting brought all of this out into the forefront. Every libtard maroon from the Beltway to Dagobah was in a bitch and rant session about how evil Sarah Palin was for having crosshairs on her website, even though liberal campaign king Bob Beckel admitted to inventing the crosshairs imagery for “targeting” districts back in the 1990′s. Of course the liberal websites that used that symbolism are not under fire because it is the conservative side of the line that is evil. Never mind that the fucking kid was a psycho shitbag that didn’t even have a real political ideology that made a lick of sense. But the conservatives are to blame because liberals are perfect. I’m a libertarian by the way, but libsnots lump us in with the conservatives because they don’t pay attention to anything other than making unicorns with their own poop.

Anyway, my rhetoric here is salty, I hope I’m not “shooting” myself in the foot already. I wouldn’t want to prematurely go to “war” with anyone who may have me in their “sights” before I can fully “hit” my point with the accuracy of a “sharpshooter”. I don’t want to get involved in a “crossfire” debate or anything over my rhetoric. I’m trying to tone it down here without “taking shots” at anyone specific, as I don’t want that to be interpreted into my calling for violence against a specific “target”. I think I’m failing at this already. Maybe I should “reload” and start over. Shit, I can’t get away from it!

Point is, this talk of how people should talk is fucking retarded. I’m not talking Leo DiCaprio in ‘Gilbert Grape’ retarded, I’m talking all out completely redonkulous people that listen to Black Eyed Peas retarded! Get the fuck over it homies and move on! Stop pointing the finger at everyone other than the dude that did the evil deed. Jared Loughner is responsible for the shooting not Sarah fucking Palin and Glenn assclown Beck! Muthafuckas is always looking for someone to blame besides the one who is to blame.

Now apart from my four paragraph rant, I want to show these libsicles why we are much more civilized than previous eras in this country. We aren’t on a path towards destruction in regards to our language, symbolism and expression. If anything, we’ve come a hell of a long fucking way than where we were in the days of our Founding Fathers. You think those cats were civil? Well then you must be smoking angeldust and rubbing heroin on your gums. Let me tell you about a crazy muthafucka named Aaron Burr, who was one of our many Founding Fathers.

CONTINUED at Original Post.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

1. Introduction:

So, just like with the last GOP primary debate of the 2012 presidential election cycle, I figured I would share my thoughts, my rants and my ravings about the latest debate last night. I am a bit fired up over a situation regarding how Ron Paul was treated after the election but I will write a separate article about that immediately following this one. On a side note, Bill O’Reilly wants you to go to his website because he promises the “best election coverage”. Bullshit! Fuck Bill O’Reilly! TheSwash.com is the greatest site for election coverage and pure unadulterated truth! That fucking hack doesn’t even know what Keynesian economics is! No really, he doesn’t (see for yourself here).

As far as the debate itself goes, this was by far the best one yet, minus the exclusion of Gary Johnson once again! Anyway, Fox News puts on a much better show than CNN and last night was no different. After being subjected to John King’s weird noises and horrible pop culture laced questions last round, this debate was refreshing. The best part of all was that the candidates FINALLY stopped playing nice and started taking some serious jabs at each other. The three biggest battles of the night were Bachmann v. Pawlenty, Paul v. Santorum and Gingrich v. Fox News (his employer).

In any event, the debate was much better than watching the alternative last night. All my friends were more interested in the first NFL preseason games than watching the GOP contenders fight for the top spot in a war against our current president and a culture of corruption that has given us an economy comprised of a bipolar stock market and a downgraded credit rating. But yeah, in America that shit isn’t important because a bunch of whiney overpaid prima donnas in tights and pads were playing a game that doesn’t even count for the fucking record books. People wonder why we are so fucked.

So fuck all that and let me break down the debate itself because that is what is truly important here.

2. Hour 1:

The debate immediately starts off with a question for Fox News’ second front-runner Michelle Bachmann. Her answer is typical as she is fishing for cheap pops from the crowd to start the night. Her short answer was laced with colorful regurgitated rhetoric like, “Let’s make Barack Obama a one term president!” Yay! Sorry lady, I like some of what you say but overly used catchphrases are only effective in sitcoms and comic books. Now I am not beating up on Bachmann here, she held her own for sure and did really well, especially against the attacks of Tim “Vanilla Beans” Pawlenty. I’ll get into the big battles of the night deeper into this article.

Fox News then immediately went to their handpicked primary front-runner Mitt Romney. Not only did Fox show that they were focused on pimping out Bachmann and Romney but they gave Mittens three fucking questions in a row! Three! Um.. homies, there are eight people on that stage. You should probably stop sucking Mitt’s balls out of the gate and give some time to the other candidates.

One thing I’ve noticed during this game of favoritism is that Romney and Bachmann are both placed at the very center of the stage. I’m not lobbying to be the new host of ‘Conspiracy Theory’ but I do find that a little odd with the way things have gone thus far in the debate. Moving on.

Fox News finally gets with it and moves around to ask some other candidates some questions. After the first round of uneventful answers and introductions the two guys in the lead where I sit are Ron Paul and Herman Cain. I just like what they had to say to start the night because they say things that fucking resonate. While I came to this assessment I also realized that Newt Gingrich still looks like Chucky, Rick Santorum looks like a racquetball player from a Speed Stick commercial, Jon Huntsman looks like a dapper Barney Fife and Tim Pawlenty likes to offer free services like cooking and cutting grass.

Speaking of which, T.Paw asked the audience in the arena and at home, “Where are all of Obama’s plans to fix stuff?” He said that there was nothing on his website and that the current POTUS isn’t offering any real solutions. He says that if anyone can tell him where Obama’s solutions are that he’ll either cook them dinner or cut their grass. M’kay dude, they’re in Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto”. Question answered! Now get working on some Chilean sea bass because I’m hungry.

The next big thing to happen was the moderator trying to stir the pot between T.Paw and Bachmann. T.Paw was asked about a negative statement he made about Bachmann but he immediately dodged the bullet, playing it safe as he always does, and flipped the script to bash Obama. There were a few cheap pops but the crowd wasn’t really pleased with the spineless swerve. Bachmann responded by running down T.Paw’s track record as governor and essentially slapped him around like a two dollar hoe. This created a mini shit storm between the two where T.Paw finally started taking shots and Bachmann just swatted him like a little fly again and again. Many pundits after the debate felt that this was bad for Bachmann, as she seemed to be stooping to a lower level, but I loved her fire and cojones. She ain’t taking no lip from some Vanilla Bean shitcock.

I do have to point out the lowest blow of the Bachmann-Pawlenty exchange though. It was definitely when T.Paw put the blame of the failed Democrat-led Congress on Bachmann’s shoulders. He essentially painted the picture that the debt crisis, Obamacare and everything else Skeletor Pelosi’s House did was somehow Bachmann’s sin to bear. Needless to say, everyone in the arena and at home saw through that bullshit. What little respect I had for Pawlenty was gone after that. The gloves were definitely off at this point and as hard as some of that rhetoric was to swallow, this sparked a change in attitude for the debate that brought out some of the candidates true colors. As far as Bachmann and Pawlenty go, I never knew Canadians could turn up the heat so much.

Chris Wallace, one of the Fox News moderators then turns the attention to Newt Gingrich and really sets off the former Speaker of the House. Wallace essentially asks Newt how he can swim when he lost the major players on his campaign staff, that his campaign has amassed a million dollars in debt and that the public perceives his campaign as a “mess”. Newt tells Wallace to stop with the “gotcha questions” and then gives him a serious earful that leaves the Fox News Sunday host nervously trying to defend his question. I’ve never seen Chris Wallace bow down like that, he’s usually able to get in there with the best of them. Newt wasn’t having any of it and for as much shit as I have talked about Newt for years, I had no choice but to respect him after the exchange with Wallace. Newt also laid the smackdown on Bret Baier and anyone else that asked him other “gotcha questions”. Newt showed that he has leadership qualities and that he wasn’t going to backtrack like a little bitch ala Pawlenty. Newt Gingrich put a smile on my face for the first time last night. Gingrich’s best line to the “gotcha” serving moderators was:

I’d love to see the rest of tonight’s debate asking us about what we would do to lead an America whose president has failed to lead, instead of playing Mickey Mouse games!

Chris Wallace then moves on to Jon Huntsman and keeps up the “gotcha questions”. He mentions that Huntsman was Obama’s Ambassador to China, that he claimed Obama’s stimulus package wasn’t big enough, that as governor he supported cap & trade and that he supports civil unions between same sex couples. Wallace then asks Huntsman if he is running for president under the wrong party banner. Huntsman doesn’t have a real answer, he just talks about his service to his country and how proud he is being the only person who perceives himself as awesome. His self-love fest is met with dead silence and absolutely no applause.

Shortly after that, Huntsman is asked about illegal immigration and goes on a rant about securing the border. Yeah dude, I want to build a spaceship out of pistachio ice cream. Nothing wrong with being a dreamer homie. All I will say about Huntsman is that he is the dumbest superhero ever! Ketchup manipulation is a lame power!

Herman Cain is then asked about questionable statements he has made in the past. His response to that is a mystery to me. Not to knock the guy, I was just distracted by how smooth and col he was. He’s twice as raw as Big Daddy Kane and as eloquent as the world’s greatest poet laureates. Cain has a way with words that most of the other candidates don’t. Essentially, Herman Cain made the silly media’s questions look like they were being asked by Dum Dums: my favorite flavor is coconut pineapple.

We then go through a rather boring phase where Ron Paul is nowhere to be seen. I am assuming he’s in the bathroom. Mitt Romney then talks about punishing businesses that hire illegals. That leads to everyone then randomly talking about moats and alligators. Lastly, Newt Gingrich proposes that we throw a bunch of Homeland Security people on the Mexican border.

Ooh.. Ron Paul is back in the mix on the illegal immigration issue and he makes some solid points. One point is that he doesn’t believe that the burden of being the immigration police shouldn’t be on the shoulders of businessmen. He then mentions that if a church feeds and helps illegals, we don’t blame the church but if a business owner does, we blame the businessman. Dr. Paul hits the nail on the head as far as I’m concerned. He then flips the script on the establishment Republicans on the stage and the panel when he asks why we are more concerned with controlling borders overseas and not our own. This leads to Ron Paul pleading to the American people that it is time to bring our troops home.

After bouncing around between candidates a bit, round two of the Bachmann-Pawlenty bout kicks off. When Bachmann is confronted about questionable decisions and votes in her past, she explains that she has learned from those mistakes and that moving forward, she is sticking to her platform. While every candidate preaches this, Bachmann seems incredibly sincere and even though I am a huge skeptic when it comes to political rhetoric, for some reason I do believe her. Pawlenty jabs and jabs but comes out of this round looking like a fucking toolshed. Michele Bachmann has the ability to bring out T.Paw’s inner weasel.

During the second round of the Bachmann-Pawlenty main event, Santorum starts whining that no one is paying attention to him. He is quickly blown off and ignored again. He uses that free time to post an ad for his exercise bike on Craigslist.

The subject of the new unconstitutional Super Congress is brought up. Newt Gingrich hates the idea, as do I. Being a former Speaker of the House, there are very few people that could understand the lunacy of this idea as much as Mr. Gingrich. He goes into a great explanation of how idiotic and asinine the idea is. Newt is winning some points, as far as I see it. He’s doing pretty damn good for a guy that lost most of his posse a few months back.

T.Paw then gets back in the fray and is asked about his “Obomneycare” comment from months back that he originally caved on when in front of Romney the last debate. T.Paw then tries to take it to Mitt, feeling the testosterone from the Bachmann battle but Vanilla Bean is just too nice. It’s like he’s afraid he’ll lose a friend if he says too much. Is that a leadership quality?

This naturally flows into asking Romney about health care and his Romneycare plan versus the Obamacare plan. Of course Mittens tells us that they were different and avoids really having to break it down. He claims that he will repeal Obamacare and that it really comes down to states rights via the 10th Amendment. Romney goes on a 10th Amendment rant which is great because the 10th Amendment is fucking dope! However, hypocrisy is on the horizon as later on in the night, Romney flip-flops on the ultimate awesomeness of the 10th Amendment.

Ron Paul steps in and educates the establishment dicks on health care and it’s relation to corporatism and how that is the root of the real problem. It’s not like they are even paying attention or getting it. I mean he’s fucking nuts, right? Free market solutions to health care are just crazy. Oh wait.. the crowd roars with cheers and thunderous applause.

Rick Santorum opens his mouth and shit literally falls out. No, for real! He doesn’t “get” the Constitution and starts getting all religious and shit. This is why he won’t even come close to winning this election. He disses Ron Paul’s stance as he tries to justify his unconstitutional ideals by referencing America’s biggest tyrant of a POTUS Abraham Lincoln. Then, acting quickly, like the mainstream midgets they are, Fox News cuts to a commercial break leaving Ron Paul without the opportunity to respond to Santorum’s call for “moral enterprise”.

3. Hour 2:

We come back from commercial break and hey! Where’s Michele Bachmann? Oh, there she is strolling back on stage late. Women are never punctual! I hope this isn’t a sign of how she will run things as president. My inside source informed me that she was tearing up a dope ass crescent roll! No worries Bachmann, I can’t walk by one without having to throw down on it either.

So immediately Bret Baier decides to waste time by asking every single candidate how they feel about a potential candidate that isn’t even there, Rick Perry. Why even ask that? Well, Rick Perry is Fox News’ dream candidate, even more so than Romney. They’ve been pimping him out for months now and there isn’t a single day that goes by where someone at Fox News doesn’t give us a Rick Perry update. Fuck that douche! Ron Paul and Herman Cain ain’t worried ’bout no Rick Perry and Huntsman took a nice jab at him.

Now they name drop Sarah Palin to waste time getting the candidates take on another hypothetical. Michele Bachmann gets goofily excited and talks about how they are best friends and trade My Little Pony accessories. Newt Gingrich reminds us of another hypothetical in Rudy Giuliani. He then talks up Perry. C’mon Newtie Bootie, you were doing well thus far!

For the next segment the moderators take us into the War on Terror and foreign threats to the United States. T.Paw tries to get some cheap pops spewing the same tired rhetoric. I almost sensed that he was going to drop the word “evildoers” but lucky for us he held it back. Romney proved that he has no idea how the War on Terror works or what is really going on. He says that the people want freedom. M’kay, if that’s the case let’s get the fuck out of there and let them be free! Oh, but the Taliban will waltz right in eight seconds later. Whether that’s true or not, does that justify anymore dead soldiers? Well, most of you voting for most of these candidates seem to think so.

Newt Gingrich gets irritated with yet another “gotcha question”. He then says some stuff but I got up to get a glass of bourbon and a quesadilla. He sounded like he was bringing the fire again, which I like. Homeboy is not going to roll over and die like everyone thought he would.

As I sit back down with my 100 proof beverage and my cheesy Mexican treat, Huntsman is taking about how a cyberattack is an act of war. Shit man, hackers going ape shit means we have to blow some people up? Shit’s gonna get messy! I’m sure they are referring to Iran and China and shit but LulzSec and Anonymous are blowin’ up right now!

Now we get to some good shit, as Chris Wallace tries his “gotcha” tactics with Ron Paul in bringing up that he stated that Iran has the right to build nuclear weapons to defend themselves in a world where so many other countries have their own nukes. Ron Paul mentions that even the CIA has come out and said that there isn’t any real evidence that Iran is working on building nukes. He then uses the Cold War as an example while informing us that he served in the Air Force during the height of the Soviet threat. In regards to this he says:

We were standing up against the Soviets. They had like 30,000 nuclear weapons with intercontinental missiles. Just think of the agitation and the worry about a country that might get a nuclear weapon some day. And just think of how many nuclear weapons surround Iran. The Chinese are there. The Indians are there. The Pakistanis are there. The Israelis are there. The United States is there. All these countries … why wouldn’t it be natural if they might want a weapon? Internationally, they might be given more respect. Why should we write people off? In the Fifties, we at least talked to them. At least our leaders and Reagan talked to the Soviets. What’s so terribly bad about this? And countries you put sanctions on you are more likely to fight them. I say a  policy of peace is free trade, stay out of their internal business, don’t get involved in these wars and just bring our troops home.

The crowd pops like a motherfucker! Of course this was probably over the heads of most people on that stage and the moderators. In fact, Chris Wallace had to question Ron Paul on what he had just heard because in his mind, Dr. Paul must be crazy and he needed clarification. Ron Paul continued with:

Why would it be so strange if the Soviets and Chinese have nuclear weapons? We tolerated the Soviets, we didn’t attack them and they were a much greater danger. They were the greatest danger to us in our whole history. But you don’t go to war against them.

Rick Santorum is apparently offended by Paul’s statements because Santorum is a whiney hoe. He then interrupts a question for Herman Cain to respond to Ron Paul. Of course he flat out lies and claims that the Iranians have killed more Americans than the Iraqis and Afghanis in both Iraq and Afghanistan. As a part of his bullshit lie, he states that we’ve been at war with Iran since 1979. Um.. no we haven’t. So Ron Paul has to quickly remind this fucktard weasel that our history with Iran goes all the way back to 1953 when we intervened and assisted a coup in Iran which eventually backfired and created the problems we have today. Santorum is a fucking moron and even with his blatant lies, he couldn’t trump the master of foreign policy, who is also the biggest anti-war voice on stage. And why does Santorum call them Erranians? Learn how to talk you simple fuck.

Michele Bachmann who is the Tea Party darling and libertarian leaning shows her true colors when she perpetuates the War on Terror hysteria that the Republicans always use. Just when you think she’s going to cross the Rubicon over to the shores of reality, she puts her foot in her mouth. Too bad for her.

All these candidates except for Paul subscribe to the theory that if we are carrying the big stick, no one else can. If you can’t see how that is the opposite of freedom and liberty than I can’t help you.

Wallace then refers to a comment made by Santorum where he said that Eric Holder must be “smoking mushrooms”. Okay dude, you really are a simple fuck Santorum! You don’t smoke fucking mushrooms! Man, I should just chill out and go drink a big glass of marijuana.

Now the moderator from the Examiner keeps saying “mooslims”. They’re not fucking cows, they’re people dummy! Then he presses Herman Cain on how he always has something to say about other religions, like Mormonism and Islam. He diplomatically explains that he wants to understand how Mormonism fits with Christianity. With Islam he states that he is against Sharia Law as the Constitution is the law of the land and we can’t strip it away in an effort to be sensitive or politically correct. Kudos sir, kudos.

Michele Bachmann then finds herself to be the victim of the strangest question of the night when the Examiner moderator asks her if she would be “submissive” to her husband. After thirty seconds of boos from the crowd and awkward silence from Bachmann she states that she respects and loves her husband. This moment was fucking weird but it gave Bachmann a window to mention her 127 kids.

Now remember when I warned you that 10th Amendment champ Mitt Romney was going to fly the hypocrisy flag earlier in this article? Well, that flag was flying high when the subject of gay marriage came up. We see through you ass clown! Now you think that this issue should be decided at the federal level? Really? Here goes another establishment dickbag trying to justify the stripping of OUR constitutional rights so he can force us to live within the rules of HIS religious faith. Typical. Fucking. Republican.

Huntsman then lets us know that he supports civil unions between gays and lesbians. He then immediately tries to trump Bachmann when he mentions his huge legion of children. After that, Ron Paul pimps out the 10th Amendment like Romney should’ve and he then warns about the actions people like Romney would like to implement. That being the action of forcing everyone to comply with their belief system and their “morals”.

Of course bitch ass whiner Santorum is disgusted and tries to drown us in more of his deluded self-righteous holier-than-thou bullshit. He brags about how he came to Iowa and got rid of three justices who supported gay marriage. Rick Santorum saved the state from man-on-man buttsex. Guys like Santorum are usually the first to sign up for amateur night at the drag show. He hates gays because he hates the part of himself that he can’t show the world. Santorum is a walking fucking tragedy. He should also put down Racquetball Weekly and read some Murray Rothbard.

Pawlenty then gets the abortion question and he states that he would punish abortion doctors but not patients seeking abortions. Yeah man, that makes perfect fucking sense. T.Paw is referred to as “the most pro-life candidate”. I think they fucked up reading their notes and they meant to say “the most pro-lame candidate”. Vanilla Bean is nowhere near as whacked as Santorum but he’s drowning in this race very quickly.

Pawlenty’s lameness is then followed by more lameness when Romney and Huntsman just give us empty insincere filler for several minutes. Off screen, Santorum is having trouble changing his tampon while he’s covered in tears.

Bachmann then gets a chance to express why she voted against the Boehner bill to raise the debt limit. Ron Paul and Herman Cain obviously get where she’s coming from as she explains why raising the debt ceiling is madness. She cites the downgraded credit rating by Standard & Poor’s as proof that she made the right decision. Cain admits that he was also against it.

Next up, Newt declares his love for having a central bank. What the fuck dude?! You were doing so goddamned well and you really just fucked up in my book. Where the hell is Andrew Jackson’s ghost to cook this turkey?! Oh wait! Ron Paul serves up some heat and educates Gingrich on why the Federal Reserve needs to be destroyed. We all know that Newt ain’t listening though.

Oh fuck! Santorum is still there? He’s against the gold standard and then takes more cheap shots at Ron Paul. Santorum is feasting on sour bitch grapes. Man the fuck up and stop being a little bitch dude! This guy looks like absolute shit at this point. People pulling for Santorum in this election need to check their ass. He’s against the gold standard?! Really?!

The debate concludes with a short exchange about education where Huntsman and Cain say that they are against No Child Left Behind. After that we are subjected to the generic closing comments we always get. Luckily we weren’t bombarded with URLs this time. Maybe they held back because Pawlenty and Santorum’s campaign managers thought it would be a waste of money to renew the domains for another year.

4. Conclusion:

This was the best debate so far in the 2012 presidential election cycle. Some people shined, a few sunk. Sure I am biased towards Ron Paul but he was under fire a lot and he continually brought it hard against all comers and made all of his points clearly. Bachmann did really well in my opinion. Gingrich didn’t make me a believer but he did win a lot of points overall. Herman Cain was good but he needs to turn it up a few notches. However, I was pleased that he wasn’t repeating his catchphrases over and over or counting down his solution talking points numerically. Because of that, Cain’s performance was an improvement over the last debate. The other four candidates can suck a dick, especially that jackass fucksack Santorum.

So without further ado, as this article’s title asks, “Who won the debate?” I do have to give you an answer. Well, after watching this damn thing three times and after taking a fuckload of notes, I gave each candidate a letter grade. Here they are from best to worst:

Grading Scale:
Grade A: Ron Paul
Grade B+: Michele Bachmann
Grade B: Newt Gingrich
Grade B-: Herman Cain
Grade C: Mitt Romney
Grade D+: John Hunstsman
Grade D:Tim Pawlenty
Grade F: Rick Santorum
Grade I: Gary Johnson

Jul 6, 2011 – The Judge provides historical perspective on crimes committed by Presidents past and present.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

*This article is broken into five parts with each being released a few days apart. This is due to the size of the article. PART I can be found here.

3. Stage Two – Woodrow Wilson and the Rise of Wilsonian Tyranny:

“You are not here merely to prepare to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.” – Woodrow Wilson

After Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson is probably the worst president in history. Although FDR is pretty close. What makes Wilson so bad? Well, he was instrumental in creating the Federal Reserve and the Federal Trade Commission. He also kick-started the income tax system that we have today. Additionally, Wilson intervened in the first World War, which had absolutely nothing to do with the United States. His actions in that war created the snowball effect that eventually became World War II. Sure, Hitler was a sick and twisted fucksack but there is a huge chance that he would’ve never gained power in Germany if it weren’t for the heinous actions of Woodrow Wilson. Shit, the fact that Wilson could have inadvertently caused the Holocaust probably makes him worse than Lincoln.

Wilson’s first order of business was the creation of the Federal Reserve. Contrary to popular belief, the Federal Reserve is not a government entity. The Fed is a private central bank that has the power to print money. Instead of having currency with actual value, Woodrow Wilson birthed a non-governmental establishment that has the power to control, regulate and print paper money! This was a way for the government to control and meddle with the flow of currency. Instead of letting the free market and free trade dictate the cost of goods and the value of money, Wilson thought it best to have supreme control over the monetary system. Many historians, the world over, credit the Federal Reserve and it’s meddling with the American economy as being a major catalyst for the Great Depression as well as our nation’s current economic peril, inflation and the devaluation of the dollar. John Maynard Keynes didn’t see it this way and the progressives of Wilson’s era all the way up to today, still trust in Keynesian economic theory.

Looking past the issue of the Federal Reserve, which is a monstrous issue, I want to put some emphasis on Wilson’s lesser-known progressive follies. The next thing on the docket is the Underwood Tariff Act, also known as the Revenue Act of 1913. What this act did was it lowered basic tariff rates from 40% down to 25%. That may seem positive but tariffs in general are just bad economic policy. Read some Mises, Rothbard, Hayek or Friedman if you don’t believe me.

Apart from the reduction of tariffs, the Underwood Tariff Act created something much worse. In order to off set the loss of revenue from the decreased tariffs, the federal income tax was reinstated. What was once created to pay for the Civil War, was brought back fifty years later to help create a pot of money for the growing progressive agenda. The income tax was previously deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1894 but that obstacle was overcome by the creation of the 16th Amendment, which made a federal income tax constitutional. Wilson used the Underwood Tariff Act as a tool to justify the creation of the federal income tax, which was now within the government’s power to legally implement.

The next piece of shitty progressive legislation to look at is the Clayton Antitrust Act. In a nutshell, an antitrust law is a law that attempts to prohibit monopolies from forming while trying to eliminate unfair business practices. Just like everything pimped by progressives, it sounds like a good idea based off of good intentions but it is counterproductive to what it is trying to accomplish and it essentially creates that in which it is trying to regulate or destroy. It helps the federal government pick winners and losers and thus, kills true capitalism only to replace it with a crony clone wearing the same title.

The Clayton Antitrust Act was created to double up on the control of rogue capitalists that started with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. These acts created a style of legislation that is still be used today. For whatever reason, lefties on the Hill can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that these practices hurt the economy. Maybe I am being unfair here, as the righties have adopted these practices as well. Because of that, we’re all fucked.

Anyway, the Clayton Antitrust Act was setup to restrict mergers between companies as well as controlling price competition. To restrict mergers is incredibly foolish and borderline chaotic. This punishes the end consumer because the product or service he would receive, may not be as good because of these restrictions. See, two companies merge when they feel that by combining their efforts they will improve their ability to create superior results with whatever good or service they offer. When companies see a greater value in merging, it is the end consumer that really reaps the benefits of that extra value. Often times, mergers happen because the company that is committing the “hostile takeover” of its competitor believes that the smaller company could be more efficient if better run. They believe that they can run it better and if they can, this benefits everyone involved. Well, except for maybe the shitty employees. Should we reward them with jobs in the new company for running the old company into the ground? Often times these “hostile takeovers” are an alternative to bankruptcy.

Like a typical progressive “Trustbuster”, Wilson didn’t just stop with the Clayton Antitrust Act. He also created the Federal Trade Commission or FTC. Today, the FTC is the “National Nanny”. For decades it has overseen and meddled with our economy. Now it is defining the rules and regulations of the Internet. The only truly free thing left in the world is being tyrannized by this archaic progressive institution that has done nothing apart from stifling the free market.

The next piece of legislation to come across Woodrow Wilson’s desk was the Smith-Lever Act of 1914. This act created subsidies for agricultural education and research. Is that a waste of tax dollars? I’ll let you decide.

Following that was another pro-agricultural law, the Federal Farm Loan Act. This established a system that would provide an increase in credit to rural, family farmers. This was achieved by the creation of a federal farm loan board, as well as twelve regional farm loan banks. Essentially, cooperative farm loan associations were able to get long-term loans at very low interest rates (under subsidized terms of course). This was to help smaller farmers “survive” against the harsh competition of larger farmers (or better farmers, depending upon your reality). Farmers were able to borrow up to 50% of the value of their land and 20% of the value of any improvements. This evolved into today’s monstrous Farm Credit System, which received a $4 billion bailout in 1987 that  created a new arm for the beast, the Farm Credit System Financial Assistance Corp.

Wilson then attacked child labor with the Keating-Owen Act of 1916. I know that the vast majority of the lefties and righties are all for child labor laws but in reality, they have very negative consequences. Luckily, at the time, the Supreme Court recognized this and deemed the Keating-Owen Act unconstitutional. Because of the child labor laws that did eventually pass, it is technically illegal for you to give a minor $20 for fixing your computer. However, the government decided that we had to save the children from a Charles Dickens nightmare. Never mind that many of the children of the 19th and early 20th centuries worked to help provide for their poor families. As time progressed, parents made more money and they were able to send their kids to school. The free market was working towards destroying child labor before the progressives created laws to completely eliminate it in all its forms.

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson was faced with a serious dilemma from the railroad unions. The railroad brotherhoods threatened to shut down the railroads. Wilson attempted to get the angry unions and the “evil exploitive” management to work together to find a solution to the labor issues. No compromise was made, so our progressive hero created the Adamson Act which forced railroad management to limit the work day to 8 hours and to pay overtime if the maximum hours were exceeded. Because of this, a strike was avoided but the railroad companies now had a gun to their head. There was no negotiation. The federal government, led by Woodrow Wilson, forced management to comply with these demands.

Wilson initially tried to keep us out of the first World War. However, his know-it-all meddling progressive attitude couldn’t be tamed. Because of that, he tried to mediate the conflict, just like he tried to do but failed with railroad unions and railroad management. The result here was no different and Mr. Fix-it had egg on his face again. That snotty yolk must have left a bad taste in his mouth because Wilson showed that he wasn’t really an objective party when it came to the War. In fact, he demanded the Germans quit their bullshit. As far as the British went, he slapped them on the hand and they called his bluff, continuing to do what they were doing because they knew Wilson didn’t really mean it.

With his first term coming to a close, Woodrow Wilson ran for reelection with the slogan “He kept us out of war.” Funny, because it wasn’t long before his anti-war message was replaced with a pro-war attitude. Kind of reminds me of what Barack Obama is doing now. Damn progressives.

After narrowly winning reelection against Republican Charles Evans Hughes, it wasn’t long before Woodrow Wilson brought us into a war that we had no business whatsoever being in. He built a massive military through conscription. What that means is that young men were forced to fight because Woodrow Wilson said so. The war was bloody and hard-fought. At one point, the life expectancy of a soldier on the front lines was 21 days! These men, just like the soldiers during Vietnam, were practically being shipped overseas with a death sentence. All it took was a gun to the head to force a gun in the palm.

Lives weren’t the only cost of war; the war was incredibly expensive monetarily and this strained the economic stability of America. So, not only were Americans now paying income tax, now those taxes were being raised to fund our idiotic involvement in the war. The progressive-led government also insisted that people eat less, this way more food could be sent to soldiers. The government also tried pimping out war bonds and manufactured a mass amount of pro-war propaganda that pretty much told people that they were traitors and assholes if they didn’t support the war effort. Apparently, you weren’t a patriot unless you were a drone to your progressive masters and their ever-growing collectivist society.

Apart from the war, Wilson had us involved in other foreign affairs. He proposed that U.S. vessels traveling through the Panama Canal would be exempt from paying tolls. This angered the British as well as many others.

Wilson also wanted to avoid trampling on Latin America, as he believed Teddy Roosevelt had done, so he apologized to Columbia for the United States’ role in the Panama Revolution during Teddy’s reign. That must’ve been an inspirational moment for Obama, the Great Apologizer.

Woody then meddled with Latin America, trying to “teach” the Latin American countries on how to “elect good men.” Wilson had troops stationed in Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba and Panama.

Wilson’s soldiers in Nicaragua forced the country to pass the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty after they selected the nation’s president. Haiti was forced to choose the presidential candidate that Wilson hand-picked. They were also forced to adopt a constitution that Wilson wrote! Wilson had our troops go into the Dominican Republic after their president resigned. The American military aligned themselves with wealthy landowners and fought brutally against any resistance they encountered. Wilson’s foreign policy with our closest neighbors was abhorrent!

After World War I, Woodrow Wilson made his famous “Fourteen Points” speech that introduced the world to the idea of a “League of Nations”, his anti-American globalist dream and the precursor to the United Nations. The League of Nations was officially created with the Treaty of Versailles. That treaty also gave birth to the “Stab-in-the-back Legend” that the Nazis latched onto and spread like wildfire, as they rose to power in a Germany crumbled by war. There are many other factors associated with Wilson and his involvement in WWI that inadvertently helped the Nazi cause but that is an article for another day.

After all of this awesome foreign intervention, the Norwegian Nobel Committee showed that they were pranksters of the world when they gave the Nobel Peace Prize to Woodrow Wilson. Funny, that is another parallel to Obama. Maybe I should write an article about all their similarities.

Following the Treaty of Versailles and the formation of the League of Nations, Woodrow Wilson’s presidency was winding down. As soldiers were coming home, they were faced with harsh times due to the effects of Wilsonian policy. There was poor planning, very little money and next to no benefits for the four million soldiers who returned to the States. The economy was in serious trouble and the Wilsonian Era nearly caused a depression in 1920 (I wrote about it and how the problem was resolved in “The Forgotten Depression of 1920“).

Wilson’s wartime progressive politics caused the farmland prices bubble to burst, which left many farmers bankrupt or drowning in serious debt. His meddling with the unions and their bosses caused strikes in the coal, steel and meatpacking industries. Class warfare was at an all-time high as race riots broke out in dozens of cities throughout the U.S., most notably Chicago and Omaha. This was the legacy Woodrow Wilson left behind. Well, in reality. The left has deified him with the other ex-POTUSes in this article and for whatever reason, he is heralded as one of the greatest American leaders of all-time. That’s fucking hogwash!

Woodrow Wilson was shit. I don’t think that it can be any fucking clearer. He took the progressive ball and ran with it, completely disregarding what worked in this country, trading it in for a nation wrapped in chains. Wilson did have some second thoughts on his policies however, but it was too little too late.

He had this to say about the creation of the Federal Reserve, after he realized his mistake:

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. 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 duress of a small group of dominant men.”

If only he had listened to Andrew Jackson.

4. Stage Three – Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal:

“The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt

This article is continued in PART III

*Taken from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Written by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

We have heard the objection a thousand times: Why, before we had a Federal Reserve System the American economy endured a regular series of financial panics. Abolishing the Fed is an unthinkable, absurd suggestion, for without the wise custodianship of our central bankers we would be thrown back into a horrific financial maelstrom, deliverance from which should have made us grateful, not uppity.

The argument is superficially plausible, to be sure, but it is wrong in every particular. We heard it quite a bit in the financial press several months ago when it was learned that Congressman Ron Paul, a well-known opponent of the Fed, would chair the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy. Fed apologists were beside themselves — a man who rejects the cartoon version of the history of the Fed will hold such an influential position? He must be made into an object of derision and ridicule.

My favorite example comes from columnist Joseph N. DiStefano, whose article on the subject is so defiantly at odds with the historical record, so ludicrously at variance with easily verified facts, that I thought for pedagogical purposes we ought to make an example of him.

DiStefano spends most of his article on the current crisis, but, having written quite a bit about that already, I prefer to spend most of mine on the cartoonish version of American monetary and banking history that seems to inform every outraged pro-Fed reply to Fed critics, this one being no exception. They read like fourth-grade book reports. Except DiStefano didn’t even read the book.

The premise is familiar enough: Why, without a central bank or its lesser cousin, a national bank, we had nothing but boom, bust, and sorrow — but since the creation of the Federal Reserve System, it’s been nothing but sunshine and lollipops. It really is that simple. People who believe in a free market in banking, as opposed to these cartel arrangements, are evidently so uninformed or so blinded by ideology that they have never heard or internalized this one-sentence encapsulation of 19th- and 20th-century monetary history.

The 19th-century boom-bust cycles DiStefano mentions in drive-by fashion are consistently attributable to artificial credit expansion, a practice government either connived at or actually participated in, through the various privileges it granted to the banking industry.

First, let’s consider DiStefano’s 19th century. We are to believe that national banks were indispensable sources of stability, while their absence yielded terrible business cycles. How does DiStefano account for the Panic of 1819, which contemporaries attributed to the inflationary and then rapidly contractionary policies of the Second Bank of the United States, the great stabilizer? That’s easy — he leaves it out. (He likewise leaves out the Great Depression from his discussion of the 20th century, an episode one might think would count against the Fed, and which was likewise set in motion by central-bank inflation; Benjamin Strong, who headed the New York Fed, told other central bankers in 1927 that he planned to “give a coup de whiskey to the stock market.”) The standard account is Murray Rothbard’s The Panic of 1819: Reactions and Policies (Columbia University Press, 1962).

DiStefano does mention the Panic of 1837, and for that episode we are urged to blame President Andrew Jackson for having dissolved the Second Bank of the United States. DiStefano does not deign to reveal what the causal mechanism might have been. The strong implication, based on the rest of his article, is that we need institutions with monopoly privileges to oversee our money, and if they should ever be forced to close because the stupid rubes don’t understand how indispensable they are, the economy will crash. That’s not much of an explanation, but it’s all DiStefano chooses to share with us.

Funny, the economy hadn’t crashed when the First Bank of the United States was shut down more than two decades earlier. When the charter of the original Bank of the United States expired in 1811, and the institution set about calling in its loans and closing its doors, the DiStefanos of the world made wild predictions of bankruptcy and economic collapse. Nothing of the sort occurred. A contemporary noted in 1816,

Many persons viewed a dissolution of the late Bank of the United States as a national calamity; it was asserted that a general bankruptcy must follow that event. The fact was otherwise: every branch of industry continued uninterrupted — no failures in the mercantile community were attributable to that occurrence.

DiStefano fails to mention any causal link between the closing of the Second Bank and the Panic of 1837, so I’ll provide him with one. The most common argument is this: without a national bank to discipline the state banks, the state banks that received the federal deposits after the closure of the Second Bank went on an inflationary binge that culminated in the Panic of 1837 and another downturn in 1839. This standard diagnosis is partly Austrian, surprisingly, in that it blames artificial credit expansion for giving rise to unsustainable booms that end in busts. But the alleged solution to this problem, according to modern commentators, is a robust central bank with implicit regulatory powers over smaller institutions.

Senator William Wells, a hard-money Federalist from Delaware, had been unconvinced from the start that the best way to encourage sound practices among smaller unsound banks was to establish a giant unsound bank. “This bill,” he said in 1816,

came out of the hands of the administration ostensibly for the purpose of curtailing the over-issue of Bank paper: and yet it came prepared to inflict on us the same evil, being itself nothing more than a simple paper making machine; and constituting, in this respect, a scheme of policy about as wise, in point of precaution, as the contrivance of one of Rabelais’s heroes, who hid himself in the water for fear of the rain. The disease, it is said, is the Banking fever of the States; and this is to be cured by giving them the Banking fever of the United States.

Another hard-money US senator, New York’s Samuel Tilden, likewise wondered,

How could a large bank, constituted on essentially the same principles, be expected to regulate beneficially the lesser banks? Has enlarged power been found to be less liable to abuse than limited power? Has concentrated power been found less liable to abuse than distributed power?

A much better solution recommended by hard-money advocates at the time is what became known as the “Independent Treasury,” in which the federal deposits, instead of being distributed to privileged state banks and used as the basis for additional rounds of credit creation there, were retained by the Treasury and kept out of the banking system entirely. Hard-money supporters believed that the federal government was propping up (and lending artificial legitimacy to) an unsound system of fractional-reserve state banks by (1) distributing the federal deposits to them, (2) accepting their paper money in payment of taxes and (3) paying it back out again. As William Gouge put it,

If the operations of Government could be completelyseparated from those of the Banks, the system would be shorn of half its evils. If Government would neither deposit the public funds in the Banks, nor borrow money from the Banks; and if it would in no case either receive Bank notes or pay away Bank notes, the Banks would become mere commercial institutions, and their credit and their power be brought nearer to a level with those of private merchants.

DiStefano is convinced that the movement against the Bank was led by antimarket, antiproperty populists. “Last time we had a central bank,” he writes, “its advocates were conservative, hard-money businessmen, and its opponents were subprime borrowers and lenders who convinced President Jackson the bank was holding back the nation.” That is as wrong as wrong can be, as we’ll see in a moment. DiStefano proceeds from this error to the false conclusion that supporters of the market economy then as now should be supporters of the central bank.

To be sure, opponents of the Second Bank of the United States were no monolith, and even today the central bank is criticized both by those who condemn its money creation as well as by those who criticize its alleged stinginess. On balance, though, the fight against the Second Bank was a free-market, hard-money campaign against a government-privileged paper-money producer. “The attack on the Bank,” concluded Professor Jeff Hummel in his review of the literature, “was a fully rational and highly enlightened step toward the achievement of a laissez-faire metallic monetary system.”

We have already cited hard-money senators against the Bank. But for DiStefano to claim that the movement against the Second Bank was a movement of propertyless boobs who didn’t understand banking, he would also have to be unaware of the most important monetary theorist of the entire period, William Gouge (mentioned above). Gouge was a champion of hard money who opposed the Bank; he considered these two positions logically coordinate, indeed inseparable.

“Why should ingenuity exert itself in devising new modifications of paper Banking?” he asked. “The economy which prefers fictitious money to real, is, at best, like that which prefers a leaky ship to a sound one.” He assured Americans that “the sun would shine, the streams would flow, and the earth would yield her increase, if the Bank of the United States was not in existence.” The conservativeBankers’ Magazine, upon Gouge’s death, said that his hard-money book A Short History of Paper Money and Banking was “a very able and clear exposition of the principles of banking and of the mistakes made by our American banking institutions.”

DiStefano might also look into the work of William Leggett, the influential Jacksonian editorial writer in New York who memorably called for “separation of bank and state.”Economist Larry White, who compiled many of Leggett’s most important writings, calls him “the intellectual leader of the laissez-faire wing of Jacksonian democracy.” He denounced the Bank for its repeated expansions and contractions, and for the economic turmoil that such manipulation left in its wake.

The Panic of 1819 was likewise due to such behavior on the part of the Bank, said Leggett, with a repeat performance in the mid-1820s. “For the two or three years preceding the extensive and heavy calamities of 1819, the United States Bank, instead of regulating the currency, poured out its issues at such a lavish rate that trade and speculation were excited in a preternatural manner.” Leggett continues,

But not to dwell upon events the recollection of which time may have begun to efface from many minds, let us but cast a glance at the manner in which the United States Bankregulated the currency in 1830, when, in the short period of a twelve-month it extended its accommodations from forty to seventy millions of dollars. This enormous expansion, entirely uncalled for by any peculiar circumstance in the business condition of the country, was followed by the invariable consequences of an inflation of the currency. Goods and stocks rose, speculation was excited, a great number of extensive enterprises were undertaken, canals were laid out, rail-roads projected, and the whole business of the country was stimulated into unnatural and unsalutary activity.

But maybe the 19th century shows we need an institution capable of monetary “stimulus” to restore the economy to health following a crash. If so, the evidence isn’t obvious. President James Buchanan engaged in no vain effort to reflate the economy in the wake of the stock-market crisis and bank run that constituted the relatively mild, six-month Panic of 1857 — which DiStefano, who is in a bit over his head when it comes to 19th-century economic history, calls a “howling depression.” (That relatively mild downturn, incidentally, is attributable to the system of inflationary paper money, not the “gold standard”; as Buchanan said in his first annual message, “It is apparent that our existing misfortunes have proceeded solely from our extravagant and vicious system of paper currency and bank credits.”)

Fashionable modern advice did not exist in Buchanan’s day, and it showed. The economy recovered within six months, even though the money supply fell, interest rates rose, government spending was not increased, and businesses and banks were not bailed out. But Buchanan cautioned Americans that “the periodical revulsions which have existed in our past history must continue to return at intervals so long as our present unbounded system of bank credits shall prevail.”

Buchanan envisioned a federal bankruptcy law for banks that, instead of giving legal sanction to their suspension of specie payments (that is, their failure to honor their depositors’ demands for withdrawal), would in fact shut them down if they failed to make good on their promises. “The instinct of self-preservation might produce a wholesome restraint upon their banking business if they knew in advance that a suspension of specie payments would inevitably produce their civil death.”

DiStefano makes specific mention of the 1870s, which once again reveals the superficiality of his knowledge. Unknown to DiStefano, the modern consensus holds that there was no “Long Depression” of the 1870s after all. Even the New York Times, which admits nothing, admits this:

Recent detailed reconstructions of nineteenth-century data by economic historians show that there was no 1870s depression: aside from a short recession in 1873, in fact, the decade saw possibly the fastest sustained growth in American history. Employment grew strongly, faster than the rate of immigration; consumption of food and other goods rose across the board. On a per capita basis, almost all output measures were up spectacularly. By the end of the decade, people were better housed, better clothed and lived on bigger farms. Department stores were popping up even in medium-sized cities. America was transforming into the world’s first mass consumer society.

Perhaps DiStefano may concede in a candid moment that he unthinkingly accepted a caricature of the 19th century, but he’ll still have his strong feeling that at least the Fed did away with financial panics. Not quite. Andrew Jalil of the University of California, Berkeley, concluded in a 2009 study that “contrary to the conventional wisdom, there is no evidence of a decline in the frequency of panics during the first fifteen years of the existence of the Federal Reserve.” Elmus Wicker, inBanking Panics of the Gilded Age (2000), observes that

there were no more than three major banking panics between 1873 and 1907 [inclusive], and two incipient banking panics in 1884 and 1890. Twelve years elapsed between the panic of 1861 and the panic of 1873, twenty years between the panics of 1873 and 1893, and fourteen years between 1893 and 1907: three banking panics in half a century! And in only one of the three, 1893, did the number of bank suspensions match those of the Great Depression.

By contrast, there were five separate bank panics in the first three years of the Great Depression alone. (For these sources, see Selgin, Lastrapes, and White, “Has the Fed Been a Failure?”)

Even during the pre-Fed panics, from the Civil War to 1907, the bank failure rate was small, as were the losses depositors suffered. Depositor losses amounted to only 0.1 percent of GDP during thePanic of 1893, which was the worst of them all with respect to bank failures and depositor losses. By contrast, in just the past 30 years of the central-bank era, the world has seen 20 banking crises that led to depositor losses in excess of 10 percent of GDP. Half of those saw losses in excess of 20 percent of GDP.

Moreover, the post–Civil War panics in the United States were due in large part to the unit-banking regulations in many states that forbade branch banking of any sort. Confined to a single office, each bank was necessarily fragile and undiversified. Canada experienced none of these panics even though it did not establish a central bank, DiStefano’s trusted panacea, until 1934.

With regard to fluctuations both past and present, DiStefano implicitly gives us the classic pro-Fed position: business cycles occur spontaneously, and the Fed fixes them. We might call this the Fed as Innocent Bystander/Good Samaritan (IB/GS). DiStefano does not consider — not even to refute it, like an honest opponent — the Austrian argument that the Fed’s manipulation of money and interest rates is what gives rise to the cycle in the first place. The Fed’s palliative measures, in turn, amount to more of what caused the original problem. This was one of the points of my book Meltdown, the New York Timesbest seller that the New York Times pretended did not exist, which gave a free-market overview of the economic crisis as a counter to widespread DiStefanism.

(My reply is already longer than I’d prefer, so for the Austrian theory of the business cycle I refer readers to my Austrian resource page, and for the “TARP was a great idea” argument to economistRobert P. Murphy [PhD, New York University] and David Stockman.)

What would we do in such situations without the Fed? Under a more sound monetary system we would have far less violent fluctuations in the first place. And unsound firms would go bankrupt, as a former CEO of AIG later admitted would have been the best course of action after all. The world would not come to an end. If the market is freely allowed to reprice assets, which was the phenomenon we were terrified into not wanting to occur, that doesn’t change the amount of physical stuff in existence. The assets themselves may be redistributed to new owners in bankruptcy proceedings, but the world has just as much stuff as it did before. Ownership titles are transferred, and a leaner outfit with more competent leadership moves the economy forward. An important lesson is learned for the future. Or we could be satisfied with DiStefano’s solution, which is to keep Wall Street just as it is, without this salutary purge of leadership and capital, and without the corresponding change in entrepreneurial character that might yield a less debt-based and more equity-based business model and hence more stability in the future.

But the key problem with the DiStefano analysis is that it is no analysis at all. It takes the crisis as an irreducible given, and then launches into the IB/GS routine. The Austrian School argues that manipulation of interest rates causes discoordination across the structure of production, that this disfigured structure is unsustainable, and that the inevitable result is the bust. DiStefano gives us no reason to believe otherwise, or even to have confidence that he understands or even knows about the argument, an argument that won F.A. Hayek the Nobel Prize in 1974.

All these issues are covered in greater detail in the Fed chapter of my new book Rollback, which confronts the standard claims not just for the Fed but also for all the major areas of life we are told could not be managed without institutionalized coercion.

As with the Fed, so with these other things: critics of the status quo are reflexively condemned as cranks, and alternatives to the status quo are dismissed as unthinkable. But they are only unthinkable because we have allowed fashionable opinion to keep us from thinking them. We have been forced into a box that confines our choices to various forms of statism. The movement to end the Fed is an astonishing and most welcome first step toward clawing our way out.

*Written by Tho Bishop.

Hamilton’s Tragedy:

Last week’s blog on Thomas DiLorenzo’s Hamilton’s Curse reminded me of the objections I had with his book. None of these objections deal with DiLorenzo’s critique of Hamiltonian economic policy; in fact DiLorezno’s book was my first exposure to the Ludwig von Mises Institute and DiLorenzo’s brilliant explanation of the consequences of Hamiltonianism was so effective that it completely changed my perspective of American history and stressed to me the importance of sound economic understanding. This is typically one of the first books I recommend to people interested in learning more about the credibility of revisionist history.

My complaint with DiLorenzo’s work deals mainly in his portrayal of Alexander Hamilton – the man. Those otherwise unfamiliar with General Hamilton would leave DiLorenzo’s work with the impression that Hamilton was a manipulative schemer who laughed maniacally in his dungeon as he carefully orchestrated the eventual enslavement of America. In fact DiLorenzo couldn’t even bring himself to give Hamilton credit for his abolitionist views. As biographer Ron Chernow points out, Hamilton was a proud and active member of the abolitionist New York Manumission Society and that as a legal adviser, “helped defend free blacks when slave masters from out of state brandished bills of sale and tried to snatch them off the New York streets.” Though his work as an abolitionist does not absolve the faults of Hamiltonianism, I fail to see the benefit of unfair criticisms. It seems to me that DiLorenzo’s goal in Hamilton’s Curse went beyond pointing out the fallacies of Hamilton’s policy objectives and instead sought to trarnish his legacy in general. I contend that DiLorenzo overreaches.

Hamilton the Man:

What attracted me to DiLorenzo’s book was actually the brilliance of Hamilton’s life. I admired Hamilton and wanted a different viewpoint. The story of Alexander Hamilton is a uniquely American one: the bastard son of a disgraced Scot of noble blood, Hamilton came to this country due to the charity of the inhabitants of his Caribbean island who recognized young Alex’s natural talent. Entering New York’s King’s College on the back of the charity of others, Hamilton would grasp the opportunity and never look back. As a collegiate, Hamilton wrote letters in defense of American independence that were so eloquently written that many prominent New Yorkers thought they stemmed from the pen of John Jay. When shots were fired in Lexington and Concord, Hamilton took arms in the defense of colonial liberty. In short time young Hamilton caught the eye of General George Washington, and at age 22 he would become the campe-de-aide for Washington and entrusted him with the most sensitive of missions. Hamilton would finally be allowed to lead his own battalion during the decisive Battle of Yorktown where he characteristically rose to the opportunity.

After the Revolutionary War, Hamilton became an extremely successful New York attorney after choosing self-instruction rather than the more typical route of apprenticeship. Demonstrating his belief in the necessity of protecting the rights of all Americans, the veteran Hamilton made a mark defending the rights and property of loyalist-New Yorkers. Washington’s colonel became a devoted nationalist during his military service and was recognized for his devotion to his adopted country. It was inevitable that Hamilton would work his way into early-American politics and worked closely with James Madison to call for the Constitutional Convention.

In Philadelphia, Hamilton unveiled his vision for American government: a President serving for life on good behavior, Senators serving for life on good behavior, and an Assembly elected every three years. In Hamilton’s vision, the President would have absolute veto, the Supreme Court would have immediate jurisdiction of all lawsuits and the Federal government would appoint the State governors. As Hamilton expected his proposal went nowhere, but Hamilton would fight for the ratification for the product created at the Convention, most notably as chief writer of the Federalist Papers. In spite of his preference for centralized power, Hamilton will be forever known as the founder of the ironically named Federalist Party.

It was as Treasury Secretary that Hamilton would leave his most disastrous mark in American history. Inspired by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Chief Finance Minister of the “Sun King” Louis XIV, Hamilton encouraged an economic policy consisting of a central bank, government subsidization of industry and protectionist tariffs. Though Hamilton himself can be praised for his being above corruption while at the Treasury, his actions directly led to privileged men “in the know” to enrich themselves from his policy. In describing Hamiltonian economic policy, I will defer to DiLorenzo who writes:

Hamilton was an American mercantilist, and he and his party (and its political heirs, the Whigs and Republicans) advocated special-interest policies that would primarily benefit politically connected merchants, manufactures, speculators, and bankers at the expense of the rest of the public.

Though Hamilton himself did not serve (nor get along with) Federalist President John Adams, Hamilton was a favorite amongst Adams cabinet – much to Adams disgust. Hamilton’s Federalist Party would lose the White House to Thomas Jefferson in the election of 1800 and the philosophy of the Federal government followed; Hamiltonian nationalism replaced by Jeffersonian liberalism. The American public reacted well to the change: Virginian Jeffersonians controlled the White House for the next 24 years, 1816-1824 became known as the “Era of Good Feelings” and Jefferson’s Republican Party became the sole political party in the country until the controversial election of 1824 (an election where the Jefferson-backed William Crawford received more electoral votes than future-Whig leader Henry Clay and likely would have won the Presidency if not for a debilitating stroke.)

The defeated Hamilton would spend his final years focusing on religion and attacking the Jefferson Administration, mainly through the creation of the newspaper known today as the New York Post. Hamilton was famously killed in a duel with the Vice President of the United States at the same site his firstborn son, Philip, dueled to the death three years earlier.

DiLorenzo’s Hamilton:

Hamilton’s impressive narrative inspired me. If Hamilton could begin to change his world by the time he turned 22, so would I. After reading DiLorenzo’s book, however, I was forced to take another look at my new hero. As I took to studying economics, DiLorenzo’s critique of Hamiltonian policy held up – his characterization of Hamilton doesn’t.

DiLorenzo’s Hamilton is a devoted enemy of liberty who fancied himself something of an American Napoleon. DiLorenzo often relies upon the opinion of Thomas Jefferson and his allies in painting Hamilton’s character. For example, in pointing to Hamilton’s lengthy defense of a national bank, DiLorenzo writes: “He authored another long-winded report on the supposed constitutionality of the bank, a report that Jefferson believed was, like the others, intentionally confusing.” Obviously using the opinion of Hamilton’s greatest rival to decipher Hamilton’s intention is questionable scholarship. DiLorenzo again points to a Jeffersonian perception of Hamilton as he point outs, “historian John C. Miller noted that Jefferson’s party had ‘suspicions that the army had been strengthened in 1798 not to fight Frenchmen but to suppress opposition to Federalist policies.”

Four times in his book DiLorenzo quotes Hamilton’s description of the Constitution as a “frail and worthless document”, the implication that the author of the Federalist Papers had little use for the document and that he merely played the role of advocate so he could boost his own political power. Did DiLorenzo catch a slip-up from the duplicitous Hamilton? Let’s look at the quote, found in a letter to Gouverneur Morris, in context:

Mine is an odd destiny. Perhaps no man in the U States has sacrificed or done more for the present Constitution than myself. And contrary to all my anticipations of its fate, as you know from the very beginning, I am still labouring to prop the frail and worthless fabric. Yet I have the murmur of its friends no less than the curses of its foes for my rewards. What can I do better than withdraw from the scene? Every day proves to me more and more that this American world was not made for me.

This letter was written during the darkest days of Hamilton’s life following the death of his son and after Jefferson’s success had relegated Hamilton into a political outcast. Does this sound like an enemy of the Constitution? Or does it sound like a defeated man tired of constantly being painted as its enemy? The recipient of his letter would later state at Hamilton’s funeral that, “His speculative opinions were treated as deliberate designs and yet you all know how strenuous, how unremitting, were his efforts to establish and preserve the Constitution.

Hamilton’s Curse:

Though Hamilton was a product of the island of Nevis, he was perhaps the loudest voice advocating America to resemble European powers. Though I disagree with DiLorenzo’s view of Hamilton, I cannot deny the reality that Alexander Hamilton was a nationalist mercantilist. How did Revolutionary America create such a leader? I point to Hamilton’s upbringing and intellectual development. Where DiLorenzo sees a manipulative power hungry politician, I see a well-meaning patriot who dedicated himself to creating the best country possible for his fellow Americas. Where DiLorenzo sees intentional malice, I see the tragedy of a guy who simply got it wrong.

Lets start with Hamilton’s upbringing.  As Ron Chernoff notes: “Island life contained enough bloodcurdling scenes to darken Hamilton’s vision for life, instilling an ineradicable pessimism about human nature that infused all his writing.” Even as a boy, Hamilton’s writings are tainted with this darkness. Noted young Hamilton, “And let me tell you, in this selfish, rapacious world, a little discretion is, at worst, only a venial sin.”  His worldview led Hamilton to always be attracted to the philosophy of David Hume.

Where most Founding Fathers held a very romantic view of the American Revolution, Hamilton recognized the horrors of the mobs that helped sparked it, often resorting to barbarous measuring such as tarring and feathering and riding the rail. Hamilton’s loyalist college president, Dr. Myles Cooper, was a target of one of these mobs when collegiate Hamilton bravely stood before them and spoke. He admonished the mob, telling them their actions “disgrace and injure the glorious cause of liberty.

Occurrences such as this made Hamilton fear the chaos of anarchy and he viewed that government needed to be strong enough to calm the passions of men. In the Federalist Papers Hamilton would later write: “In a nation of philosophers a reverence for the laws would be sufficiently inculcated by the voice of an enlightened reason. But a nation of philosopher is as little to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wish for by Plato. And in every other nation, the most rational government will not find it a superfluous advantage to have the prejudices of the community on its side.”

This view of mankind explains the fundamental difference in philosophy between Hamilton and Jefferson. Jefferson viewed government as an institution that threatened the rights of man; Hamilton viewed it as a means to ensure a peaceful and prosperous society – as long as it accurately represents the interest of its subjects.

But did this necessarily force Hamilton to be a nationalist? The elder Hamilton certainly was, which explains his rejection of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. I think it is interesting, however, to look at Hamilton’s collegiate writings. In his first great success, The Farmer Refuted, Hamilton sounded rather Jeffersonian when he wrote, “The nations of Turkey, Russia, France, Spain, and all other despotic kingdoms in the world, have an inherent right, whenever they please, to shake off the yoke of servitude (though sanctioned by the immemorial usage of their ancestors), and to model their government upon the principles of civil liberty.” Throughout the article Hamilton frequently speaks of the sanctity of human rights. “I am inviolably attached to the essential rights of mankind and the true interests of society. I consider civil liberty, in a genuine, unadulterated sense, as the greatest of terrestrial blessings. I am convinced that the whole human race is entitled to it, and that it can be wrested from no part of them without the blackest and most aggravated guilt.”

What do I attribute to this reversal of philosophy? Hamilton’s military service.  A liberal government is best suited for peace, not war and the difficulties General Washington had in securing appropriate funds from the Continental government is well documented. Hamilton had a first hand view of these difficulties. The nature of military service to lead great American minds to nationalism over liberalism is further validated by an American President DiLorenzo speaks favorable of: Andrew Jackson. Though Jackson, as Murray Rothbard noted, held sound economic philosophy, he combined it with a nationalist governmental philosophy. When South Carolina threatened to secede over the issue of tariffs, Jackson threatened to invade the state.

DiLorenzo implies that Hamilton’s monarchist visions are incompatible with Jefferson’s liberalism. When I first encountered Hamilton’s vision for government, I too found myself a bit turned off. It was an article from Mises Daily that forced me to reconsider its merits. Hamilton understood the danger of democracy, fearing that such a system would produce demagogues who, as Chernoff writes, “fed off poplar confusion while proclaiming popular rights.”

Of course it is Hamilton’s economic policy that draws the majority of DiLorenzo’s scorn and for very good reason. In order to understand how a man of Hamilton’s talent could produce such a terrible economic program, we must recognize that he did not benefit from the experiences, nor the writings, of Ludwig von Mises or the rest of the Austrian School. In fact the economic science as a whole was still new with Richard Cantillon’s Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en Général written just 25 years before Hamilton’s birth and the Wealth of Nations 20 years after. Furthermore the British Empire, who had the most powerful economy in the world and whose success Hamilton aspired to replicate, was founded on mercantilism that contradicted Smith’s vision. Hamilton educated himself with voracious reading; unfortunately, as Murray Rothbard points out, “The mercantilists, dominant in economic thought for the preceding century or two, were special pleaders whose tidbits of analysis were pressed into the service of political ends, either in subsidizing particular interests or in building up the power of the state.” Hamilton gobbled down these works, fueling his mercantilist visions.

Conclusion:

It is easy to demonize those we disagree with – especially for classical liberals, like myself, whose philosophical foundation forces us to view the advocates of large and energetic government as enemies to our natural rights. Though Hamilton’s economic philosophy cannot be defended, and though I recognize the consequences of it and his intellectual heirs as the source of great injustice in today’s world, we must constrain ourselves to attacking ideas – not the character of those behind them. Not only do I reject DiLorenzo’s portrayal of Hamilton, but I also believe it undermines the greatest lesson we can learn from it. Alexander Hamilton represents the ideal government bureaucrat: a brilliant man beyond corruption who dedicated his life to serving his country. And even he was wrong. If Alexander Hamilton couldn’t successfully micromanage our economy, how can we place such faith in any leader?

*Written by Rob Rimes.

William Henry Harrison is a president that most people don’t even know about because he was only the POTUS for 32 days. He was the 9th president, wedged between Martin Van Buren and John Tyler, his vice pres. He was the oldest president ever until Ronald Reagan came along and stole his thunder. However, as popular and fondly remembered as that “actor” president was, he could never hold a candle to the awesomeness and manliness of William Henry Harrison a.k.a. Double-U Double-H a.k.a. Double Double a.k.a. Dub-Dub a.k.a. Dubz.

Dubz was born on February 9th, 1773 in Charles City County, Virginia to Benjamin Harrison V and Elizabeth Bassett. He had six siblings but he was the youngest. Dubz was the last president to be born as a British subject. His family was heavily involved in politics. His father was a delegate to the Continental Congress that signed the Declaration of Independence which led to freeing our asses. His father was also the governor of Virginia during the Revolutionary War. His older brother, Carter Bassett Harrison not only has the coolest fucking name ever but also held it down serving as a congressman for Virginia in the United States House of Representatives. All of this set the stage for what would be an amazing life. Dubz had massive shoes to fill but he knew that he would surpass the greatness of his family members and one day hold the highest fucking office in the free world!

At 14, Dubz attended Presbyterian Hampden-Sydney College. Over three years he mastered French and Latin however due to his father’s religious preferences, he was pulled out of that school and sent to an academy in Southampton County. While at the school he joined up with an antislavery movement spearheaded by Quakers and Methodists; this angered his proslavery father.

His pissy daddy pulled him out of that school and put him under the care of Robert Morris, a Pennsylvania senator. During this time, Dubz attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied medicine under Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Founding Father who not only helped the founding of America but also founded Dickinson College. Not to long after this, Dubz’s dad died and he was stuck with no one to fund his education. He was left in the guardianship of Robert Morris.

Not particularly enjoying the study of medicine, 18 year-old Dubz joined the Army after some persuasion by his father’s friend Henry Lee, the governor of Virginia at the time. Dubz was immediately sent to Cincinnati where the Northwest Indian War was taking place.

When he arrived, he was put under the command of General “Mad Anthony” Wayne a.k.a. Mad Ant. Dubz quickly took to Mad Ant and followed him into the pits of Hell battling against the violent tribes. Mad Ant had come in as a replacement for General Arthur St. Claire who led a disastrous defeat against the savages. Mad Ant, swearing to defeat the Indians and claim Ohio, took a liking to Dubz and promoted him to lieutenant. Dubz stayed close to Mad Ant and watched him lead the Army against their crafty and deadly enemy. It was under Mad Ant that Dubz learned how to lead men into battle successfully. Dubz mastered the art of leadership with his own men and had the respect of his enemy as well.

During this time, there was a major battle that changed Dubz’s life. Somehow the tribes had called upon a great ancient power. This power mystically created exploding pillars of fire on the battle field. Being struck by one of these pillars, Dubz didn’t not immediately die like the rest of his men. In fact, the pillar energized him. His entire body was engulfed in flames but he felt no pain. Instinctually, he started blasting fire from his hands, which caused his targets to explode into ash! The Indians surrounding Dubz dropped their weapons and ran like little bitches, only one Indian remained on the battlefield. Dubz, not feeling threatened by the sole Indian, approached him.

The Indian, dressed like a wise old healer, introduced himself as Old Chuck. He put down his staff and extended a hand towards Dubz, which Dubz shook albeit cautiously. Old Chuck told Dubz that he was the reincarnation of the Pueblo sun god, Bitsis Lizin. He said that he was destined for greatness and that the pillars of fire transformed him into what he was destined to be: a great leader of all men. He also told him that his power would be seen by all native peoples of America but their reactions could range from acceptance and worship to hostility and denial. He warned that many tribes would see a white man posing as the sun god and that they would see it as blasphemy and the work of white demons.

Shortly after this, the tribes fell to the U.S. Army at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. Following the war, Dubz became a signatory of the Treaty of Greenville. That treaty won and opened up the majority of Ohio to be settled by the rapidly growing American population. During this time his mother died and he inherited his family’s estate which sat on thousands of acres. Due to his busy schedule and new job as a sun deity, Dubz sold the estate to one of his brothers. Following the Northwest Indian War and his mother’s death, Dubz met and married Anna Symmes, the daughter of a prominent judge. Together they would go on to have 10 children.

After resigning from the Army in 1797, Dubz decided to run for public office. In 1799 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives after being inspired to fight against the rising cost of land across the frontier. Having been a real solid leader at war and having founded a successful horse-breeding enterprise, Dubz was able to throw down in Congress with the best of them. As a congressman, Dubz created the Harrison Land Act, which made it easier for new settlers to buy land in the Northwest Territory.

Due to his awesomeness as a congressman, President John Adams appointed Dubz as Governor of the Indiana Territory, without even telling him about it. At that time the Indiana Territory included the future states of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and the eastern half of Minnesota. Dubz accepted the position after he had assurance from the Jeffersonians that they wouldn’t step on his toes or replace him if they beat Adams in the presidential election of 1800. Trusting the Jeffersonians would come to bite Dubz in the ass.

Dubz moved to Vincennes, which was the capital of the territory and built a large plantation style home that he named Grouseland for the many birds that inhabited the area. Grouseland was the political center of the territory but had many secrets. Many underground chambers and areas were built where Dubz could take quiet refuge and study all the information he was trying to collect on the subject of Native American folklore. Dubz spent a lot of time underneath Grouseland trying to truly understand what he was.

Dubz used his influence as the reincarnation of Bitsis Lizin to expand the territory as the success of it played a big role in the success of his personal finances. Dubz also wanted to provide more land to all the settlers who were expanding west from the original colonies. In short time, he was able to obtain a lot of Native American land. His negotiating skills with the Indians prompted President Thomas Jefferson to grant Dubz the power to negotiate and work out treaties with the Native Americans. Through this new power, Dubz acquired 60,00,000 acres of Indian land and developed thirteen new treaties!

Switching from his antislavery stance earlier in life, Dubz became proslavery when he realized that a territory that permitted slavery would be more appealing to new settlers and thus, fatten his wallet. Dubz ran into problems when the Abolitionist Party came into power and combated him on the issue. Thomas Jefferson then stepped in, with help from antislavery advocate James Lemen, and defeated Dubz’s attempt to bring slavery to the territory. Ultimately, the Jeffersonian contingent brought about the demise of Dubz’s tenure as governor.

Shortly after this, a resistance movement against expansion started growing on the frontier. Many Indians were pissed at the white man’s tendency to multiply and build stuff that wasn’t made out of sticks, twine and pelts. This movement was led by Shawnee brothers Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa. The latter was known as “The Prophet” and he predicted that if the native tribes attacked the white settlers that they would be protected by the Great Spirit. Not fearing Dubz and his power as the sun god Bitsis Lizin, the Prophet and his brother Tecumseh decided that the coalition of indian nations must move swiftly. This started the conflict that is known as Tecumseh’s War.

The Prophet told his people to abandoned the ways of the white man that they had learned over the years. The Indians gave up their guns, their whiskey and settler-styled clothing. Tecumseh then led an army of 400 Indians to Grouseland where they confronted Dubz. Tecumseh declared that the Fort Wayne Treaty was illegitimate and that the tribes would not honor it. Dubz rejected Tecumseh’s claim: infuriating the Indian leader. Tecumseh called for war and his warriors drew their weapons. Dubz’s men pulled their pistols and the Indians backed down claiming that they would get help from the British.

In 1811, Dubz was authorized by Secretary of War William Eustis to march against Tecumseh as a show of force. Dubz and 1,000 men marched into Shawnee territory to confront Tecumseh and persuade him to make peace. Dubz’s army was attacked by surprise however.

Dubz became incredibly angry as the ambush made him look foolish in front of his men. His body immediately became engulfed in flames and he incinerated the countryside and every hostile with it. The Indians were no match for the second coming of Bitsis Lizin and the 1,000 man army! Tecumseh was defeated but he would live on to confront Dubz one more time.

During the War of 1812, President James Madison gave Dubz control of the Army in the Old Northwest, as the Indians were still a major threat even with the main enemy of the war being the British. Where Andrew Jackson was the bad ass fighting in New Orleans and the southern portion of America, Dubz was the bad ass fighting in the northern parts.

Dubz was beaten back by the British and their Indian allies as he was greatly outnumbered and his Army was made of mostly fresh recruits. It wasn’t until 1813, when reinforcements arrived that Dubz was able to take it to the Brits and Indians hard. Dubz wiped the British out on a path of destruction throughout the territory! He reclaimed Indiana and Ohio and also reclaimed the City of Detroit after incinerating the British and the Native Americans at their tiniest molecular level.

Marching into Canada, Dubz was once again faced with having to battle the vengeful Tecumseh and his army of natives and British. This battle was dubbed the Battle of Thames and it was a decisive victory for America during the War of 1812. In fact, it destroyed the coalition of tribal forces, crushed the British and was the last day that Tecumseh walked the Earth. According to history, the battle waged on and was hard fought but realistically, Dubz channeled the sun god powers that churned in his core and torched the opposition. Tecumseh, defiant till the end, never stood a chance against the solar powered tribal deity.

After the Battle of Thames, Dubz resigned after a bitter falling out with Secretary of War John Armstrong. Congress investigated the incidents around Dubz’s resignation and came to the realization that he was severely mistreated by Armstrong. They gave Dubz a gold medal for his service and declared him a hero as the Battle of Thames was the biggest victory of the war, following Andrew Jackson’s medieval smackdown known as the Battle of New Orleans.

After his military service, Dubz ran for president a few times and finally won in the Election of 1840. He was sworn in on March 4th, 1841 and didn’t have time to really do a damn thing, apart from giving the longest inaugural address in American history, as he died on April 4th, 1841: only serving a month in office!

Dubz died of a cold which was ironic as he was the sun god. Many believe that it was caused by a curse surrounding the angry ghost of Tecumseh. That is just a theory however as it was never able to be proven. Maybe the fire just burnt out, who knows? What is known however is that even though Dubz couldn’t truly bring his warrior spirit to the highest office in the land, he did live a life full of swashbuckling bad assery! William Henry Harrison was literally a god amongst men that crushed every challenge that he ever faced. Well, except for the common cold.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Lately, talk show hosts, politicians and know-it-all politificionados have been in an uproar over the political rhetoric that is used against one another. These pimps of political correctness and sensitivity are boo-hoo-hooing over the fact that anything that can somehow be related to combat, guns or war simply has no place in political rhetoric. What these tear-soaked turd munchers fail to realize is that we’re a pretty toned down society compared to where we once were. That doesn’t matter to them though because they don’t really study history, they just blow unjustified and inaccurate claims out of their tired lame rosy asses. They are calling for an “era of civility” just like in the days of yesteryear. It’s time to man up and face reality kiddies!

Introduction:

The Giffords shooting brought all of this out into the forefront. Every libtard maroon from the Beltway to Dagobah was in a bitch and rant session about how evil Sarah Palin was for having crosshairs on her website, even though liberal campaign king Bob Beckel admitted to inventing the crosshairs imagery for “targeting” districts back in the 1990′s. Of course the liberal websites that used that symbolism are not under fire because it is the conservative side of the line that is evil. Never mind that the fucking kid was a psycho shitbag that didn’t even have a real political ideology that made a lick of sense. But the conservatives are to blame because liberals are perfect. I’m a libertarian by the way, but libsnots lump us in with the conservatives because they don’t pay attention to anything other than making unicorns with their own poop.

Anyway, my rhetoric here is salty, I hope I’m not “shooting” myself in the foot already. I wouldn’t want to prematurely go to “war” with anyone who may have me in their “sights” before I can fully “hit” my point with the accuracy of a “sharpshooter”. I don’t want to get involved in a “crossfire” debate or anything over my rhetoric. I’m trying to tone it down here without “taking shots” at anyone specific, as I don’t want that to be interpreted into my calling for violence against a specific “target”. I think I’m failing at this already. Maybe I should “reload” and start over. Shit, I can’t get away from it!

Point is, this talk of how people should talk is fucking retarded. I’m not talking Leo DiCaprio in ‘Gilbert Grape’ retarded, I’m talking all out completely redonkulous people that listen to Black Eyed Peas retarded! Get the fuck over it homies and move on! Stop pointing the finger at everyone other than the dude that did the evil deed. Jared Loughner is responsible for the shooting not Sarah fucking Palin and Glenn assclown Beck! Muthafuckas is always looking for someone to blame besides the one who is to blame.

Now apart from my four paragraph rant, I want to show these libsicles why we are much more civilized than previous eras in this country. We aren’t on a path towards destruction in regards to our language, symbolism and expression. If anything, we’ve come a hell of a long fucking way than where we were in the days of our Founding Fathers. You think those cats were civil? Well then you must be smoking angeldust and rubbing heroin on your gums. Let me tell you about a crazy muthafucka named Aaron Burr, who was one of our many Founding Fathers.

The Burr-Hamilton Duel:

Aaron Burr was insane. He was also the vice president under Thomas Jefferson back in the day. It is assumed by the political left of today that everything was cool, calm and kosher back in those times. Violent rhetoric couldn’t even be conceived in the era of our Founding Fathers. They were men of class, prestige and respect. Their debates and discussions were cordial affairs. Well, the people who are under that assumption must have never heard of the Burr-Hamilton Duel.

In 1804, while Aaron Burr was acting Vice President and Alexander Hamilton, another prominent Founding Father, was Secretary of the Treasury, the two got into a heated debate which led to a violent and life threatening duel. The duel had been born out of years of bitterness between the two and finally came to a head: leaving Alexander Hamilton mortally wounded. In this case, the “Bad” took out the “Good” while the “Ugly” relished in the unnecessary bloodshed.

Aaron Burr didn’t get away with this though, as he was indicted for murder in both New York and New Jersey. The cases were thrown out however but his actions were career suicide. With Hamilton’s blood on his hands, Burr left politics and went into a self-imposed exile until he died over 30 years later.

Now imagine if this happened today? Imagine if John Boehner and Barack Obama pulled out their pistols and shot it out in front of the Capitol Building! Then again, D.C. is full of pacifist pussies and guns aren’t allowed. The point is, this would never happen. We are much more civilized today, despite the left’s claims that we are on the verge of violence. Fuck the boogeyman! Anyway, if you are just brushing off the Burr-Hamilton Duel as an isolated incident, you are dead fucking wrong.

Alexander Hamilton was pretty badass and not really a bitch, even if you perceive him to be after just reading about his defeat at the hands of Aaron Burr. In fact, Hamilton was in over ten duels prior to the one that took his life in 1804. Hamilton had politically fueled duels with William Gordon, Aedanus Burke, James Nicholson, James Monroe (the 5th President) as well as multiple duels with John Francis Mercer. Hamilton even had a handicapped 2-on-1 duel with Ebenezer Purdy and 4th Vice President George Clinton (not the dude from Parliament Funkadelic).

Andrew Jackson and His Pistol:

The 7th POTUS Andrew Jackson was a master of the duel. Hell, he had several and was nearly destroyed in a few. His first highly-publicized duel was against Waightsill Avery, who had insulted him in the courtroom. The two were rival lawyers during a case in North Carolina back in 1788. When they met, the two both shot and missed. They agreed to shake hands and found mutual respect with one another. On that day, tragedy was avoided.

Fifteen years later, Jackson got into it with Tennessee governor John Sevier. Sevier attempted to block Jackson’s attempt at becoming a general in the Tennessee militia. How did Jackson deal with this bullshit bitch tactic? Well, he didn’t draw his gun. Instead, he went public with proof that Sevier had been forging land warrants. Sevier bumrushed the court and drew his cutlass: challenging Jackson to the death. Jackson, acknowledging that the time and place was inappropriate, named Virginia as the location for their eventual duel. Sevier agreed.

The two met before that however in the western Tennessee Indian country. Jackson, brandishing a pistol, confronted John Sevier. The two exchanged violent words, threats and shared a plethora of colorful expletives. Both men calmed down and holstered their weapons. However, Jackson being the pot-stirring swashbuckler that he was, continued to rib Sevier. John Sevier went ape shit and drew his cutlass: ready to cut a piece off of Action Jackson.

Jackson, wasting no time, drew his pistol, as it was quicker and more efficient than a sword. Sevier hightailed it and hid behind a tree. Sevier’s son James then pulled his weapon on Jackson, causing Jackson’s companion Dr. Thomas Vandyke to pull his weapon on James. The four men were heated but were locked in a stalemate. In the end, all men put away their weapons and went their separate ways, promising to meet at a later date. In this case, the duel never happened.

Jackson’s next feud was with Charles Dickinson (not the pussy foot writer). Dickinson and his friend Thomas Swann, both lawyers, accused Jackson of cheating them after a wager at a horse race. Swann confronted Jackson in a tavern in Nashville and was completely embarrassed after Jackson beat him senseless with a cane.

Dickinson, outraged over what happened to his friend, challenged Jackson to a duel that would take place in Kentucky. Dickinson fired first, and was shocked to see Jackson barely flinch when hit. Jackson fired back, striking Dickinson in the abdomen. Dickinson collapsed and died the next day. Jackson went on to be President of the United States with Dickinson’s bullet lodged in his chest, right near his heart!

Politicians facing Jackson throughout his career cited his dueling past as a factor in deeming him unfit to hold office. Jackson’s bad ass reputation preceded him and created a magnificent aura that still shines centuries later. Jackson gave birth to the term BAMF. For those ignorant to what BAMF means, it means Bad Ass Mother Fucker.

The Violent Thwacking of Senator Charles Sumner:

Jackson wasn’t the only politician to cane the shit out of someone. South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks busted some serious ass when he splintered his cane upside Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner’s head.

You see, Sumner gave a speech three days prior where he took some stiff shots at Brooks’ relative Senator Andrew Butler. Butler was not around to hear the remarks and therefore couldn’t defend himself and properly counter Sumner’s vicious verbal attack. Sumner compared Butler to Don Quixote for embracing slavery. He also made fun of Butler’s physical handicap.

Outraged, Preston Brooks intended to have a duel with Charles Sumner. After talking it over with Congressman Laurence M. Keitt, Brooks decided against it as a duel was for gentlemen of equal social standing and he perceived Sumner to be beneath him. He considered Sumner to be at the level of a mad drunkard due to his use of coarse rhetoric during his attack on Butler.

Brooks then confronted Sumner on the Senate floor and said, “Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.” As Sumner attempted to get to his feet, Brooks went gangsta on his ass and beat him hard with his thick gutta-percha walking cane! Sumner was trapped under a heavy desk that was bolted to the floor and Brooks continued to beat him like an ignorant hoe. The violent strikes eventually broke the desk into pieces. Sumner got up and tried to get away but was blinded by blood in his eyes. Brooks kept on attacking and Sumner collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. This didn’t stop Brooks! He continued to beat the comatose Sumner until his cane shattered! Once the cane broke, Brooks calmly left the Senate chamber.

Several other senators attempted to stop the beating and save Sumner but they were held back by Congressman Keitt who was brandishing a pistol while yelling, “Let them be!” Keitt’s involvement ended his career. He was censured for his actions.

Sumner couldn’t serve his district for three years as it took him that long to recover from the attack. Once returning to duty though, he became known as one of the most radical Republicans during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.

As for Brooks, his home state South Carolina sent him dozens of brand new canes inscribed with the words “Good job.” The Richmond Enquirer published these words after the attack:

We consider the act good in conception, better in execution, and best of all in consequences. These vulgar abolitionists in the Senate must be lashed into submission.

Imagine if that happened between Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell today. It wouldn’t. Yet the mainstream media wants you to think we’re entering the most violent era in political history. It’s all balderdash!

Other Violent Political Conflicts in the Pre-Civil War Era:

The many duels of Hamilton and Jackson as well as the infamous thwacking were not the only times that violence through rhetoric appeared in American political history. So I am going to run through some other incidents as well.

In 1788, officials tried to jail Anti-Federalists protestors who were parading around with effigies of America’s top Federalists. Close by, 8 men died in what was described as, “a battle between advocates and opponents of the Constitution.” Following this the heated rhetoric escalated and added fuel to the fire of already existing animosities between the two groups. While tempers flared and both sides called for civil war, they were able to prevent any further bloodshed.

In 1790, George Washington, the father of our country, used what some would deem as violent rhetoric when in his first annual address to Congress he stated, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” Imagine if Bush II: The Secret of the Ooze had said those very words. Well he kind of did in his own weird fashion with a few Bushisms sprinkled in and the liberal media went ape-fucking-shit!

In 1811, stemming from the American Revolution there was a Haitian uprising in the Louisiana Territory, particularly in New Orleans. Haitian relations with the French in Louisiana created a wide rift between the two parties and a very bloody revolt was born; it was called the German Coast Uprising. The influence of American culture and the nation’s newfound independence led the slaves to take up arms against their French oppressors. Armed with just garden tools, more than 80 of the slaves were killed while only 2 French solders met their demise.

In 1816, Parson Weems, most famously known for writing the apocryphal George Washington legend about the cherry tree, published a pamphlet: “The Devil in Petticoats, Or God’s Revenge Against Husband Killing”. Being an author of political folklore and alternate history, Wemms’ violent work was quite a departure from the norm. The pamphlet’s violent rhetoric started as soon as it opened. The first lines read:

Oh mercy! What! Old Edgefield again! Another murder in Old Edgefield!…Well, the Lord have mercy upon Old Edgefield! For sure it must be Pandemonium itself, a very district of Devils!

That certainly was a departure from his works about George Washington, Ben Franklin, General Francis Marion and William Penn. In his violent horror story about Old Edgefield, a woman takes an axe to her husband’s head. Imagine if Ann Coulter wrote that. Actually, never mind, that could make me want to read her books now.

In 1829, William Lloyd Garrison delivered a speech called the Address to Colonized Society. In it he was very vocal against slavery in America. In that lengthy speech he uttered these infamous lines:

I am ashamed of my country. I am sick of our unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty and equality; of our hypocritical cant about the inalienable [sic] rights of man. I could not for my right hand, stand up before European assembly, and exult that I am an American citizen, and denounce the usurpations of a kingly government as wicked and unjust; or, should I make the attempt, the recollection of my country’s barbarity and despotism would blister my lips, and cover my cheeks with burning blushes of shame.

It’s that part about “burning blushes of shame” that inspired John Brown to act. Brown took the fire in Garrison’s speech and turned it into a literal fire. When he met Frederick Douglas in 1847, Brown reached a major turning point in his life. With the friendship he gained from Douglas and the inspiration he found in Garrison’s speech, Brown went to Kansas with his five sons to defend the anti-slavery town of Lawrence. This incident was known as the Pottawatomie Massacre due to the death of five settlers. Brown then fought against slavery in Missouri for over a year and then went east to build an anti-slavery army.

On October 16th, 1859, John Brown declared war against the United States of America! Brown and his anti-slavery army raided a Federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. During the raid he was easily defeated by the U.S. Army and Robert E. Lee. John Brown was later hung for treason.

As we approach the Civil War era, I’m not even going to get into specifics. I mean, if you don’t know about all the violent rhetoric and bloodshed that took place between the North and South, then you my friend are an uneducated and buffoonish dipshit.

Other Violent Political Conflicts in the Post-Civil War Era:

The Civil War wasn’t the end of violent political rhetoric in America. In the late 1800′s, western expansion apexed with mass violence against Native Americans. The cause of this violent purge against the American Indians was due to the rhetoric of the time which preached nationalism, expansion and superiority over all others. America’s imperialistic actions were born out of the political rhetoric of the day. With military leaders and the public pushing for expansion, this may have been the biggest act of violence committed in America.

In 1883, the violent racial rhetoric of the Democratic Party, whose slogan was “This is a white man’s government!”, caused violence in Danville, Virginia and surrounding areas. The Democrats “drew the white line” and due to the combination of racial rhetoric and racial violence, they were able to regain control of the Virginia state legislature from the Republicans.

In 1886, a rally in support of striking workers became violent in Chicago. This incident was called the Haymarket Massacre. During the demonstration, an unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at police officers which created mass chaos. The bomb blast as well as the police firing on the crowd took the lives of many civilians. 8 police officers also died, mostly due to friendly fire. The cause of the event is still debated today but one cannot turn away from the fact that the divide between the two conflicting parties was full of immense anger and distrust. The deeply polarized views of both sides of the conflict, the working class and the business owners, were the catalyst of this controversial event. 8 anarchists were arrested and tried for murder after the event.

In 1919, violence once again was born from rhetoric in Cleveland, Ohio. One person was killed, 40 were injured and 125 were arrested at a “Red May Day” demonstration. Communists, socialists, Bolsheviks and anarchists united in what was a violent blemish on Cleveland’s history. The demonstration was against A. Mitchell Palmer who was the United States Attorney General. Palmer, at that time, had been leading a sweep against aliens that forced the deportation of what he called the “undesirables”. I’m sure their violent bullshit helped their case.

In 1946, violent racial rhetoric was the cause of the deaths of George and Mae Murray Dorsey as well as Roger and Dorothy Malcom in Monroe, Georgia. The racially charged Jim Crow South was incredibly rife with racial hatred, especially in its politics. That year the gubernatorial race, which saw Democratic candidate Eugene Talmadge get elected for the 4th time (although he died before assuming office again), stirred up racial controversy at unprecedented levels. Talmadge’s “racist rhetoric” and ”fiery oratory”, as described by Georgia State Rep. Tyrone Brooks, was on display in Monroe, Georgia, as he stopped there on his campaign tour, shortly before the murders and just after a fight where a black sharecropper had stabbed and injured a white farmer. His “fiery” rhetoric added to an already tense situation.

In the 1960′s, violent rhetoric was running rampant, probably more so than in any other decade in American history. The assassination of Malcolm X was fueled by heated racial rhetoric after Malcolm himself left the Nation of Islam after becoming disenchanted and uncomfortable with their racially charged message. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination was also caused by violent racial rhetoric. President John F. Kennedy, whose assassination has become clouded with endless conspiracy theories, was also killed due to the supposed rhetoric that affected Lee Harvey Oswald (if you believe the official reports, which I don’t by the way). Senator Robert F. Kennedy was also assassinated in the 1960′s. His death was at the hands of Sirhan Sirhan, who had written journals explaining that he had to murder RFK because of his support of Israel. Sirhan Sirhan, being a Palestinian may or may not have been inspired by the political rhetoric of the time but even to this day, many people still believe that Israel belongs to the Palestinians and heated debates quickly turn into violence over the subject.

Conclusion:

The point is, I could go on and on with endless examples. History is full of violent incidents that were inspired by the political rhetoric of their day. It’s easy to look at the circumstances around an incident and to quickly point the finger of blame at some x-factor that may have contributed or not. However, in doing this you are just absolving the person who committed the crime from the crime. This makes you a fucking moron and an asshole. Blaming the rhetoric is absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt insane and fucking ludicrous! That’s like blaming Ice-T for inspiring a serial cop killer. Oh wait.. bad example, you fucknuts did blame Ice-T for that very thing. Well then it’s like blaming Marilyn Manson for Columbine. Fuck me, I forgot that you did that too! Damn, the mainstream media is always looking to blame someone other than the criminal. Man, do we live in a sad ass country or what?

So with the vast majority of you mainstream media morons calling for a return to “civility”, I have to ask what exactly you mean by “return”. You want to champion in a new era of civility like the supposed days of old where political rhetoric wasn’t so heated that our society was free of violence and psychos. News flash dumbsacks, a time like that has never fucking existed! We’ve been a nation of polarized ideals and heated rhetoric ever since we kicked the British the fuck out! Actually, I’m sure we were this way even before then. Shit, the House of Burgesses got mad heated back in the day!

It’s time to stop trying to be politically correct pussies and come back to reality. Reality isn’t fucking civil. The great thing about this country is we can debate, we can argue and we can shout out our philosophy. I wouldn’t want it any other way. We’ve got to stop acting like little bitches who think that we should tone it down because some psycho shitbag will go on a rampage. Truth is, no matter what happens and what is said, psycho shitbags will eventually go on rampages. They are psycho shitbags, not responsible and reasonable people! I guess common sense is in short supply these days. Man up motherfuckers and stop sippin’ that bitch juice.