The Way of Men, Gods and Runes

Strength, Courage, Mastery and Honor are the four “tactical virtues” that I used to define primal masculinity in The Way of Men. In a band-level society or “gang,” these are the virtues that men would look for and value in other men, because men who are strong, courageous, competent and loyal make better cooperative hunters, fighters and protectors. I talk more about defining masculinity in this video, but for an in-depth explanation of my “gang” theory of masculinity and the tactical virtues, read The Way of Men.Like many of my readers, I’m drawn to Germanic Paganism and Runes. It occurred to me that each of the tactical virtues could probably be assigned a corresponding rune.For those who aren’t familiar, the runes come from a series of alphabets that were scratched into rocks, wood and metals by various Germanic peoples. But each rune is also associated with an abstract concept or “mystery” and also sometimes a natural form — like ice, hail or a yew tree. As such, they become a simple shorthand for a bigger, more complex idea.This was my first formulation:Strength     -     ᚢ (uruz)Courage     -     ᛏ (tiwaz or Týr)Mastery     -     ᚱ (raido)Honor        -     ᛟ (othala)Uruz is associated with aurochs, the now-extinct ancestor of modern domestic cattle. According to the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem,“The aurochs is proud and has great horns;it is a very savage beast and fights with its horns;a great ranger of the moors, it is a creature of mettle.”Aurochs were very large, with bulls reaching a shoulder height of almost 6 feet, and weighing almost a ton. Uruz works as a symbol of raw strength. I like it for any kind of strongman or powerlifting or other “beast of burden” training, and I have it scratched into my lifting belt. “Strong like bull.”Raido means “ride” or “journey” and it is associated with becoming and, according to Edred Thorsson’s Runelore, “rightly ordered action.” In Collin Cleary’s essay, “Philosophical Notes on the Runes” in Summoning The Gods, he identifies Uruz as the “Will to Form” and links it directly with Raido, “Dynamic Order.” I’ve been personally associating Raido with technical ability and the ability to apply concepts in motion for a while.This arrangement makes sense, but it occurred to me that the tactical virtues align perfectly to the gods themselves. The gods can be seen as aspects not only of elemental man and nature, but also as aspects of manliness as an idea.Strength    -    Thor ᚦCourage    -    Tyr ᛏMastery    -    Odin ᚨHonor is Othalaᛟ – not a god, but a runic concept that in this application encloses and represents the sum of the others.The Mannaz rune symbolizes man, so, in a formula:Man, or (Mannaz) ᛗ = ᚦ + ᛏ + ᚨ + ᛟThere is also an optional addition to the concepts that describe masculinity which corresponds directly to the qualities of the god Freyr.Below are my brief rationales for linking the virtues to gods and runes. As we really don’t know exactly how our ancestors might have used the runes or conceptualized them — and even then, which ancestors? in what place? in what period? — I can only speculate and make my own associations based on what information is available. The purpose here is to take something old and breathe new life into it, and make it useful to men who are alive today. 

Thor – Strength

Thor, god of thunder and lighting, is known for his strength and muscularity. He wields a heavy hammer, Mjölnir, and when he wears his belt, megingjörð, his already great strength is doubled.In Gylfaginning,  Thor is said to be, “the strongest of all gods and men.” When tricked by illusion into thinking he was fighting a sleeping giant, he split valleys into mountains with his hammer, and through further deception was tricked into drinking so much of the sea that it ebbed, and lifting part of the serpent that circles the world into the sky.The rune ᚦ is called Thurs or Thurisaz. ᚦurs means “giant” in Old Norse, and it is the work of Thor to use his strength to battle giants and split their skulls.It’s often occurred to me that “might” could be a better word than “strength” for the tactical virtue, because it seems to covers a wider range of physical capability and power — though the words are often used interchangeably. Might includes speed, athleticism and dexterity — all aspects of strength. 

Týr – Courage

Týr is best known for the courageous sacrifice of his hand to the wolf Fenrir, the monstrous offspring of Loki and a giantess. To trick the wolf into allowing itself to be bound, Týr  agreed to place his hand in the wolf’s mouth as a guarantee of good faith from the gods. When Fenrir could not break free and realized he had been tricked, the wolf bit off Týr’s hand. He is often referred to as the “one-handed” god, as in the Icelandic Rune Poem.“Tyr is a one-handed god,and leavings of the wolfand prince of temples.”The Romans identified the Germanic worship of Týr with their own worship of Mars, the Roman god of war. Týr has long been associated with courage, martial valor, victory and doing what must be done to maintain a right order of things.A man who will take no risks or make no sacrifices for the group when risks are necessary can’t be counted on, and his aversion to risk could actually make the group more vulnerable as a whole. He won’t hunt the aurochs or fight the enemy. 

Odin – Mastery

Odin hung himself for nine days and nights, until the forms of the runes revealed themselves to him. He ripped out his own eye for the opportunity to drink from Mímir’s well and gain knowledge of the past, present and future. Odin has many names and aspects, but in his essay, “What is Odinism?,” in TYR: Myth, Culture, Tradition.Volume 4, Collin Cleary argues that “Odin’s key feature is his ceaseless quest for knowledge.”“Closely connected with this is his striving for power. But these are so tightly linked that they are almost corollaries of each other. Greater knowledge — increased insight into the nature of the universe and its secrets — brings with it an increase in the ability to manipulate and to control all manner of things. So that, as the saying goes, knowledge is power.”Odin wants to know, understand and master the world. Mastery is the tactical virtue that critics of the tactical virtues always seem to skip over.Engineers and programmers and researchers and philosophers always seem to want masculinity to be about being an engineer or a programmer or a researcher or a philosopher. If they don’t see themselves as being strong or courageous, they tend to discount the importance of those virtues and re-stack the deck so that their own virtues are the most important ones.Understanding, judgement, wisdom, knowledge and technical proficiency are essential virtues in any survival group — because otherwise you have a bunch of strong, clumsy guys who don’t know anything taking risks for the sake of taking risks. Mastery is technology, and technology is a kind of magic to those who don’t understand it. Martial arts require mastery. Tool and weapon making and operation require mastery. Strategy and tactics require mastery.Knowledge is power, but without the courage or the ability to use that power — apply it — knowledge is just information. Knowledge is only useful when it is used, though having no immediate use for knowledge does not make that knowledge useless.Mastery alone can’t define masculinity, and while Odin is the Allfather, he’s not the only god, because human life is also a physical endeavor. We are our bodies, and our bodies must survive to make the seeking of knowledge possible. To think otherwise is a conceit of the spoiled. Violence is Golden, and that conceit depends on the outsourcing of strength and courage and the protection of the perimeter to “someone else.” 

Othala – Honor

Honor, as I defined it in The Way of Men, is about loyalty to a group. You behave a certain way, make sacrifices and do things you wouldn’t normally do because you care what the other men in your group think of you. If you act like you don’t care what anyone thinks of you, you are more attached to a group than part of it. You’re a wild card. Your honor is your reputation among your peers and your commitment to them. Honor is about the “us” — those who are “within the perimeter.”In Runelore, Edred Thorsson refers to Othala as “the sacred enclosure” and writes that, “in it is embodied the central concept of Midhgardhr and of the whole idea of ‘in-sidedness’ and ‘out-sidedness’ so prominent in Germanic (and Indo-European) thought.”Because masculinity is both a physical reality and a way of being, a man who does not care about masculinity or being regarded as masculine cannot be masculine. Now, many men will bluster and tell you they don’t care what anyone thinks of them, but they will draw lines in the sand quickly if you start asking them to dress or behave like women in public. They still chafe at being called weak or cowardly. They still care about being seen as masculine by others, but in many cases those “others” may be absent or abstract. Men who barely have any friends at all still care about “others” seeing them emasculated.In a globalized world with billions of humans, choosing who you are loyal to and which men you agree to be judged by is especially important, because you can’t please everyone. There are feminist men who have inverted masculine virtues to the extent that if you show that you value strength, courage, mastery and honor, they will (hypocritically) call you a coward for clinging to “old ideas” about masculinity.Your honor is your reputation as a man among men, but because there are so many men with so many ideas about masculinity, to stay sane you have to decide which group or kind of men. Define your boundaries and close the circle, or leave yourself open to judgment by a thousand codes and billions of eyes.The sowilo or sig rune ϟ has also been associated with honor and victory, as well as the sun. Depending on how the rune is formed, two facing sig runes can be joined to create an othala rune. 

Freyr (Ingwaz)

It is likely that the majority of the warriors who fought and died in wars probably did not have children. A lot of them probably died virgins. Many young men have joined dangerous expeditions, war bands, pirate ships, armies and so forth with the hope of one day being able to afford a wife or children or even a regular whore. A man can demonstrate all of the tactical virtues and be regarded as an exceptional man among men, but remain a bachelor or without children. Two Odin-like adventurers, soldiers, researchers and writers — Lawrence of Arabia and Richard Francis Burton — both died without children, and they would be regarded as having been good at being men by almost anyone. I’m sure you’ve encountered fathers who appear to be extremely weak, passive, cowardly or effeminate. Masculinity can exist without fatherhood, and frequently does, and extremely effeminate men can become fathers, so fatherhood cannot define the phenomenon of masculinity as a way of being.Still, fatherhood follows naturally from manhood, and without children, no band, gang or tribe can survive more than a generation unless it continually recruits from outside. Most men who survived long enough eventually fathered children by a wife, mistress, slave or concubine. Fatherhood is an aspect of masculinity and a role that most men eventually take on in some form. It’s not essential to masculinity, but it’s still important and relevant.The god Freyr is associated with fertility, the harvest, wealth, peace and prosperity. And just as fatherhood is separate from but linked to masculinity, Freyr is separate from but linked to the other gods, who are known as the Aesir. Freyr is one of the Vanir, a distinct tribe of gods who fought with the Aesir until a truce was called and Freyr, his sister Freya, and their father Njörðr – a god of seafaring and wealth – went to live with the Aesir. Odin is, of course, “The Allfather,” and could be associated with fatherhood as well, but Odin as a concept is more concerned with big ideas than with home life and the everyday reality of fatherhood. Originally posted at Jack Donovan's personal site.

Origins of the First World War, part IV

The source of this blackout is the Rockefeller Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations. While the original intent of the blackout was to cover up the true history of the Second World War, a concomitant result was that the First World War was covered up as well.

The Committee on Studies of the Council on Foreign Relations is concerned that the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I should not be repeated and believes that the American public deserves a clear and competent statement of our basic aims and activities during the Second World War. What is contemplated is not a nationalistic treatment, but rather a history, with the issues and problems presented by an American historian for an American public.”¹

What the Rockefellers call “journalistic debunking” most call truth telling, and whoever thinks that the history written under the CFR-Rockefeller cabal is not nationalistic and hagiographic needs to have their head examined. The fact that the list of "respectable historians" to be utilized in this revisionist cabal excludes both Charles Beard (the most respected US historian of the first half of the twentieth century and American Historical Association member) and Charles Tansill, shows these men for what they are: charlatans. Why would two of the most qualified historians in the US not be consulted on so august an endeavor? Only if the intent was to deceive and obfuscate. Such an end was seen by Charles Beard who wrote in the Saturday Evening Post:

“The Rockefeller Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations…intend to prevent, if they can, a repetition of what they call in the vernacular “the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I.” Translated into precise English, this means that the Foundation and the Council do not want journalists or any other persons to examine too closely and criticize too freely the official propaganda and official statements relative to “our basic aims and activities” during World War II. In short, they hope that, among other things, the policies and measures of Franklin D. Roosevelt will escape in the coming years the critical analysis, evaluation and exposition that befell the policies and measures of Woodrow Wilson and the Entente Allies after World War I.”²

Sadly Beard was right: not only has Roosevelt escaped the net of truth, but Wilson’s lies were placed back in as well.I have endeavored to cite and reference men of the highest echelons of power and reputation: economists, men of letters, statesmen, generals, etc. to show that many thoughtful men have given careful thought to the origins of the First World War and that if anybody should bear the sole weight of war guilt it should be France, with Russia as a close second. Yet the hacks and quacks who teach history jealously guard the true secrets of the war and through a complex system of filtering and disinformation spread, known as peer review, this cabal of silence is maintained at the expense of both posterity and, more importantly, the truth.  Check out Todd Lewis’ blog at http://praiseoffolly.wordpress.com/ 

1^ The Rockefeller Foundation Annual Report 1946, 188-89.

2^ Charles Beard, former president of the American Historical Association Who's to Write the History of the War?, Saturday Evening Post, p. 172. October 4, 1947.)

Understanding the Hierarchy of Groups within the Cultural Marxist Schema

If there is one thing that defines the thought of the cultural Marxist “Social Justice Warrior” (SJW) crowd, it is the division of people in our country into groups based on race, gender, religion (provided the religion in question is not a traditional Western faith) and sexual proclivities. The radical Left just loves doing this, for a number of reasons. Dividing people into groups allows for easier identification of who is a cultural “enemy” and who is an “ally.” It facilitates the ability of the SJWs to play group against group in their struggle to obtain political power. It also permits them to punish groups which exist outside or fall out of the cultural Marxists' favor. As a result, “diversity” can be encouraged and monoculturalism and traditional gender norms – things necessary to the perpetuation of our culture as a successful enterprise, but which the SJWs hate - can be dismissed.Yet, the careful observer should note that not all groups within this division of camps are equal – and I don't just mean that straight, white Christian males are the objects of the cultural Marxist two-minute hate. Even within the constellation of SJW “preferred groups,” there is a very definite hierarchy that seems to shake out. I believe this is important, for reasons I will explore below. But first, I'd like to delve into this SJW pecking order in greater detail. To do so, let's look at the major “groups” that the cultural Marxists divide our nation into: straight white males, non-feminist white females, Asians, blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals (by which I am collectively referring to gay males and transsexuals), feminist females, and non-black Muslims.The hierarchy of preference, I believe, travels upward in the order just given. What the relative positions between two groups in the hierarchy means is that the more favored group will be able to assert itself, from a political correctness standpoint, over and against a less favored group and will be able to shield itself from criticism by lower-ranking groups whenever there is a conflict between the goals and desires of the two. For purposes of the analysis to follow, I will define the term “political correctness conflict” (or PCC) as any situation in which the dynamics of the conflict involve adjudication, either legal, corporate, or social, by an authority that can reasonably be expected to resolve the dispute on the basis of 'social justice' values derived from group membership, rather than the individual merit of the respective arguments or cases. The authority in such cases may be a liberal judge, a college professor or administrator, a member of a company's HR team, journalists responsible for reporting the news, or some other PC enforcer.Straight White MalesThis group, comprising the vast majority of the male half of the professional, middle, and working classes, is the “workhorse” of American society. It is also the most overtaxed and underappreciated. This is because straight white males embody everything that the SJWs hate about American society – respect for law and order, traditional ideas about masculinity and femininity, support for the military, bourgeois views about the value of work and the right of the individual to keep the produce of their own labor, and so forth. Rather than explore in depth what most readers will already know, I'll just simply observe that there is no situation in which a straight white male will ever win in a political correctness conflict with any other group (all are ranked higher), and leave it at that.Non-Feminist White FemalesThough not as despised by SJWs as straight white males, this group nevertheless ranks extremely low in the hierarchy because they are often the wives or girlfriends of straight white males, and often embody the same general set of values and cultural predispositions as their men.Nevertheless, we can observe that non-feminist white females occupy a slightly higher niche than do straight white males because wherever there is a conflict in a PCC setting, the female will almost always win. This can be seen, for instance, in the overwhelming number of times in which often unfit non-feminist white female mothers will nevertheless win custody of children and will win disputes over alimony and child support in divorce situations – family and divorce courts are notorious for being overrun by cultural Marxists on the bench. Likewise, in domestic dispute situations (even those not involving violence) that see intervention from the state, the straight white male will almost always be the one who has to find another place to stay for the night, even if he was not the aggressor.AsiansAsians are the first genuine minorities on this list, and they find a very low place in the social justice hierarchy. Certainly, in a PCC, Asians will prevail against nearly all whites of either gender. As a “colonized class” in postmodern social justice theory, Asians have suffered at the hands of Europhallocentricity, and therefore deserve recompense from those below them on the ladder.But, Asians also have a disconcerting tendency to succeed in capitalistic systems, and also annoy those further up the ladder by out-competing other minority groups. As a result, Asians are viewed comparatively poorly by SJWs, and have even found themselves being legally harmed by reverse affirmative action programs in many universities where they are “overrepresented.” Further, even in direct conflicts between Asians and other minorities, such as when Korean storekeepers had to protect their shops with armed force during the Rodney King riots of 1992, the non-Asian minorities will basically get away with doing what they want to Asians, no consequences accruing to their actions.BlacksMany readers, perhaps, are surprised to see blacks ranking so low in this list. After all, we see all kinds of preferential laws, affirmative action, and other benefits that accrue to black Americans with a seeming view towards preferring them above others. But keep in mind that most reading this are likely to be either straight white males or non-feminist white females, and therefore rank below blacks and will lose PCCs against them, and have probably experienced this firsthand.Yet, when you observe conflicts between blacks and other groups in the hierarchy, blacks almost never win. For over two decades, black Americans have been complaining about gentrification, in which high-income urban white people, stereotypically gays or feminists, buy up low-cost property in economically depressed black neighborhoods and improve the properties. In the process, the property values (and therefore also the taxes and cost of living) go up, which ends up pricing low-income blacks out of their own neighborhoods. Black leaders have complained about this for years – yet, the complaints have never really gotten any traction at all within SJW circles. This is because blacks rank below both gays and feminist females in the hierarchy.Likewise, take the recent moves towards the amnesty of millions of Hispanic illegal aliens. For the black American community which already suffers from rampant unemployment and wage depression, amnesty will be a crushing blow. Yet, the Left doesn't seem to really care. That's because it, in fact, doesn't. Hispanics rank higher than blacks, so Hispanics get what they want, even at the expense of blacks. This has also been seen over the past couple of decades in which Hispanics have slowly but surely been driving black Americans out of their traditional neighborhoods in many cities, especially Los Angeles and other Southwestern municipalities, complaints about which have also fallen on deaf ears.Why is this? Probably a lot has to do with the fact that blacks are considered by the Left to be “in the pocket.” Blacks “belong” to the Left – they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, they turn out in large numbers to support whatever cause du jour the Left trumps up. As a result, they seem to be taken for granted. After all, the thinking goes, where else are they going to turn?HispanicsAs seen above, Hispanics rank higher on the social justice ladder. In a sense, they have to. As a relatively new group to the hierarchical dynamic, the SJWs are still trying to secure them in their corner, since they could prove a fertile source of new votes and street manpower in years to come. Hence, despite their unfortunate tendencies to follow traditional Western religion and exhibiting macho cultural traits, the SJWs have to give in to Hispanics to get what they want from them in return.Yet, this only goes so far. When Hispanics are in a PCC conflict with those above them, they will lose. For example, remember the “10 Hour New York City Catcall Video” from a while back? Newly-minted feminist icon Shoshana Roberts was videoed walking around New York City, and received around 100 “catcalls” (stretching the term for many of them), all of them from black and Hispanic males. There were a few sporadic efforts to argue that her video was racist for singling out blacks and Hispanics to look bad on tape. However, these were systematically squashed by the SJWs, for whom the only acceptable narrative was the feminist one of “the problem of street harassment.” Hence, feminist female beats Hispanic in this game of paper-rock-scissors.Homosexuals and Feminist FemalesWith these two groups, we reach the mainstay of the SJW movement, the intellectual cadre (if you can abide the devaluation of that term) of cultural Marxism. These two groups receive most of the attention from the world of professional activism and the culturally Marxist specialty news organs like Mother Jones, the almost-defunct New Republic, Huffington Post, Slate, Salon, and the rest of the SJW media apparatus.Nevertheless, there is some gradation of rank between these two which puts homosexuals firmly, though surprisingly, a rung below feminist females. Though these two groups generally tend to support each others' policies and cultural goals, there are occasions where PCCs will arise between them. Typically, these revolve around two points of conflict: the radical feminist assertion that gays are “anti-female” and masculinist, and the feminist complaint that transsexuals (by which is meant the male-to-female kind) are usurping the right to call themselves women, a right that they don't really deserve. In both such cases, the organs of SJW thought will generally side with the feminist females over the homosexuals and transsexuals. However, the fact that the gradation in rank between these two is less stark than with other groups in the hierarchy is shown in that homosexuals will not generally suffer any major repercussions as a result of the accusations. Feminist females win the debates, but don't necessarily get to punish homosexual males for their perceived transgressions.Non-Black MuslimsNow we come to the apex of the social justice hierarchy – non-black Muslims. I specify “non-black” because for whatever reason, black Muslims don't generally get to benefit from the “Muslim” portion of their identity, and get ranked according to the “black” portion instead. This may be because the phenomenon of Muslim blacks is old enough that this subgroup is subsumed with the rest of the black community into the “they need us more than we need them” category. Or it may be that black Muslims, in the sense of Black Muslims (the cult) are threatening enough to urban white social justice warriors that the perceived hierarchy benefits to being Muslim are outweighed by the need for white liberals to keep them in their place, so to speak.Nevertheless, non-black Muslims, who are typically from the Middle East (unless they are from Somalia, in which case they will be blacks will a special exemption), find themselves currently at the top of the heap. They have the advantages of combining traits of being non-white (and hence, minorities in the SJW morality scheme), of adhering to a non-Western religion, and of being traditionally oppressed by colonialism and American imperialism. As such, they are the perfect storm of social justice themes. Muslims routinely win PCCs with even female feminists and gays.Don't think so? Then why is it that feminists will cast pro-lifers, who oppose the brutal dismemberment of babies, as evil and wicked haters who just want to enslave women, yet these same feminists are curiously silent when it comes to women being forced to wear trash bags and girls being forced to receive painful clitoridectomies, all to satisfy Muslim male superstitions. Likewise, SJWs will fall all over themselves fawning on Muslims, even though gays can be stoned to death in Muslim countries, simply for being gay. Actual, literal slavery of millions of blacks by Muslims in Africa is still going on to this day, yet the SJW camp studiously avoids talking about it. Obviously, Muslims are winning these political correctness conflicts.What about Other Groups?Naturally, there are many other groups that have not been included in this analysis, because they are relatively small, or because not much is typically heard about them. Native Americans, the disabled, Jews, and so forth. Of course, all will rank higher than straight white males in any PCC situation. My gut feeling is that Native Americans would rank somewhere about where blacks do, again because they've been around for a while and thus are in the bag for the SJWs. Those with disabilities typically will rank very low, often because the disabilities are work or military-service related, and thus smell of the bourgeois taint (observe how much sound and fury about the problems with the VA have arisen from conservative circles, and yet how little is actually being done to remedy it). As for Jews, they also tend to rank lower even than blacks, especially given the unpopularity of Israel among cultural Marxists; this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that many Jews still tend to be liberal, and use their influence to advance left-wing causes. However, we should note that the dynamic is still in effect – witness the current purge of a large number of liberal Jews from the New Republic, which was recently purchased by gay Silicon Valley guru Chris Hughes, who wants to move the magazine in a more techno-homosexualist direction.Strategies for Exploiting this Hierarchy for Our Own EndsIt's all well and good to know about all of this, but what is the point? What does it really mean for us? I think there a couple of ways those of us on the traditional Right can use these to our advantage.First, the existence of this hierarchy necessarily implies that there is potential for fractures and fault lines between the various constituencies of the social justice coalition. When there are PCCs between them, one group will be the winner and one will be the loser. A wise political actor will observe these fractures and seek to exploit the ill will generated in the losing group. An even more forward-thinking actor might seek to engineer situations in which conflicts will arise between “members in good standing” in the social justice coalition, and use these to force open fractures that might otherwise not have existed. Nothing works better for our side than to see the other side divided and using its force against itself.Second, and related to the first, is that we should work to systematically fish away chunks of the lower half of the social justice ladder – the straight white males, the non-feminist white females, the Asians, and the blacks, by using the strategy above to play them against those groups higher up the food chain. Remind them of the disadvantages they suffer, bring back to their minds how they are taken for granted and mistreated by the others.To an extent, this is already working. Recent polls suggest that nearly three-quarters of the white working class (one of the largest groups out there even despite all the immigration and deindustrialization we have seen) have turned away from the Democrat Party. The traditional Right needs to tap this and firm up our support among this important bloc of voters who are, really, the backbone of this country anyway. Asians can be reminded of how they are being disadvantaged in terms of scholarships and educational opportunities so as to make room for non-Asian minorities. Blacks need to be widely and deeply engaged about the tremendous damage that amnesty and illegal immigration are doing to their communities and lives.Ultimately, it's not enough to simply know what the weaknesses of our enemies are. We also have to be willing to actively seek out to exploit those weaknesses and cause as much damage to the cultural Marxist program as we possibly can.

Origins of the First World War, part III

As to the nature of this second nefarious alliance we will turn to next, but suffice it so say Britain recklessly provoked an unnecessary conflict with a nation that was acting in a perfectly rational way i.e., expanding its global markets and seeking to produce a navy able to protect its merchant marine.The French motivation for war was simple revanchism or revenge over their defeat in 1870 and restoration of Alsace-Lorraine. John Maynard Keynes explains it thus:

So far as possible, therefore, it was the policy of France to set the clock back and to undo what, since 1870, the progress of Germany had accomplished. By loss of territory and other measures her population was to be curtailed; but chiefly the economic system, upon which she depended for her new strength, the vast fabric of iron, coal, and transport must be destroyed. If France could seize, even in part, what Germany was compelled to drop, the inequality of strength between the two rivals for European hegemony might be remedied for many generations.¹

The effectively unknown work of George Frost Kennan, The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia and the Coming of the First World War, is the most thorough work on the Franco-Russian alliance in the English speaking world. His account of a vengeful France and expansionist Russia colluding to plot a World War is a very dark read.The essentials are this: (1) in 1890 the Kaiser did not want war with any of his neighbors, (2) certain Generals and Politicians in France wanted war to regain Alsace-Lorraine, (3) Russia wanted to settle old scores with Austria and Turkey, but needed Germany out of the picture first and (4) both sides sought the complete dismemberment of the German nation.As to the alleged bellicosity of the Kaiser, Mr. Kennan has this to say:

Such expressions of peaceful intent were all right in their way, and they were probably quite sincere on the part of the Kaiser, who, while he liked to boast about Germany’s military strength, did not actually wish to see it employed in a highly destructive war between great powers. But (as Caprivi should have known, for Schweinitz had repeatedly emphasized the point in his dispatches) these expressions failed completely to satisfy Giers' need for something more specific, in writing – something that would have committed not only Caprivi’s successors but, by implication, those of the Tsar and Giers as well, to the continuation of the recent relationship.”²

While one can charge the Kaiser of a grave diplomatic error and ignoring the wisdom of Bismark to court Russia to isolate France, he was not guilty of deliberately fomenting hostile feelings with Russia nor of wider European conflict at large.The two chief architects of this general European conflagration were the Frenchman Boisdeffre and the Russian Obruchev. In the July 1891 meetings between these two men on the possibility of an offensive alliance between France and Russia, a very revealing comment was made by both men.

And what, he (Obruchev) then asked would be the equivalent aims of the French?Boisdeffre’s answer was instantaneous: the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine.Obruchev was suspicious. “Would you not also,” he asked, “wish to extend your bourders to the Rhine and to break up Germany?” (One sense here the effects of Giers' warnings against Russia’s associating herself with any such far-reaching aims.)Boisdeffre, in response to this sally, was evasive. One would first have to know what success one had on the field of battle. “Let us begin by beating them; after that it will be easy.”³

We see clearly the intentions of France and Russia to form a coalition that, they hoped, would lead to the dismemberment of Germany. Such thoughts of dismemberment were also shared by Tsar Alexander III who said, after being confronted by Giers over the new alliance with France:

We must correct the mistakes of the past and destroy Germany at the first possible moment.” With Germany broken up, he agreed, Austria would not dare to move.Giers, gathering his courage in the face of this unexpected statement, put the question: “But what would we gain by helping the French destroy Germany?”"Why, what indeed?” replied the Tsar. “What we would gain would be that Germany, as such, would disappear. It would break up into a number of small, weak states, the way it used to be.”⁴

The aggressive intentions of this treaty were seen by the Russian diplomat Lamsdorf who wrote:

This commitment they are demanding of us would give the French a carte blanche for adventures and for the provocation of conflicts in which it would be hard to distinguish who had really started the affair; and then we are obliged to support them with an army of 800,000!” ⁵

From these secret communiques it is clear that French and Russian governments sought, without any legitimate recourse or prior precedent, the total annihilation of a fellow great power. While one can sympathize with France’s desire to reclaim Alsace-Lorraine, the fact that lunatics like Boisdeffre and later Poincaré would plan a World War of annihilation as a means to regain this land is insanity of the first degree.We see that only a lunatic could perceive Germany’s actions as aggressive and threatening, given the great press of foes at gathering around her, France and Russia were plotting a war of annihilation and eventually dragooned Britain into their skullduggery and yet all of this, and more has been kept hidden from the public.  Check out Todd Lewis’ blog at http://praiseoffolly.wordpress.com/ 

1^ John Maynard Keynes, The economic consequences of the peace (Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920), 36.

2^ George F. Kennan , The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia, and the Coming of the First World War, (Pantheon Books, 1984), 44.

3^ Ibid pg 95

4^ Ibid pg 153-54

5^ Ibid 153

Ashkenazi Jews Are Not White – Response to Haaretz Article

Editor's note: This article is a blog post republished from The Times of Israel. This is an important piece, straight from the horse's mouth, that illustrates Jewish identity as something separate from that of the European. By Hila Hershkoviz, December 5, 2014In response to Haaretz article “Jews, white privilege and the fight against racism in America” (by Benjy Cannon 4/12/14) I would like to say loud and clear: Ashkenazi Jews are not white.Every time I read about a Jew somewhere identifying as a white person, I cringe. As an Israeli Jew, who like most other Israeli Jews, is completely foreign to the concept of Jews being “white” I would like to address this article to my Jewish brothers and sisters in America.Ashkenazi Jews who identify as “white”, please understand the following:1. History and identity – As late as 1987 the US legally defined Jews as non-white. To the best of my knowledge, 50 years ago Jews had the same skin color as they do today. I deduce that white is not skin color, it is first and foremost an issue history and identity. The “white people world” is represented by its European (often colonial) history, it’s culture, heroes, it’s Kings, ethos, faith etc. – and Ashkenazi Jews are not part of that world. Their heroes are the Maccabees and not the Vikings or Joan of Arc, their Kings are David King of Israel and Hezekiah King of Judah (both archeologically confirmed historical figures) and not Kings Edward and George.Secondly, Jews are not a “religion”. While in the Western world identities fall under the categories of religion or race, Middle Eastern people have tribal identities that are based neither the former nor the latter. Jews, similar to Pashtuns (who also often have pale skin and yet would not identify as white people) and other Middle Eastern Tribes, are neither religion nor race but a tribe. Jewish identity since the days of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel had always been a tribal/national peoplehood. While tribal practices and customs (which is often incorrectly referred to as “Judaism”) and a strong biological link between many of the members are certainly present, Israelite identity was never based on either of these. Israelite identity has always been a tribal membership that goes by lineage (being born into the Tribes of Israel) or tribal acceptance (which is incorrectly translated as “conversion”). The identity Ashkenazi Jews have today is identical to that of King David whose great grandmother was a Moabite convert, but was nonetheless a Jew by virtue of being born into the Tribes of Israel by lineage.You are Jews not because of your “religion” (are you even religious?), but because you were born into a tribe/people called the Nation of Israel. You are not “white people” with a “Jewish religion”, you are Jews – members of a people who origniated in Judea, whether you adhere to the laws of the tribe or not.Thirdly, Ashkenazi Jews have been the victims of Europeans and Western imperialism for centuries precisely because they were not perceived as part of the “white people world”, beginning with the Roman colonialism of their nation state and ending with 6 million of them being killed precisely because they were non-whites.2. Culture – Whether it’s the Hebrew calendar, the tefillin they put on at their Bar Mitzvah identical to the ancient second Temple tefillin found in Qumran and across Israel or celebrating the Judean revolt for independence in our historic homeland on Hanukkah – Ashkenazi Jews have kept the entire indigenous culture, customs, traditions, books, and to a high extant language and of their ancestors – Judeans and other Israelites.3. Biology – Although biology is not the main part of the issue, Ashkenazi Jews are not genetically white either. An extensive number of genetic studies show they originated in the Middle East, that despite European admixture they are genetic brothers of other Jews, Palestinians, Druze and Lebanese Arabs and share a highly significant amount of ancestry with Sephardi Jews to whom they are genetically almost identical.Lastly, Ashkenazi Jews, whether the world likes it or not (and apparently it does not), are direct descendants of the Tribes of Israel, as we know from history, culture, science and a little something I like to call reality. Those who wish to deny it for political or theological reasons, should try forming an alliance with holocaust deniers because the two are no different.Jews are not white. People who try to argue otherwise are not only abrogating history and denying our people’s authentic identity, they are in fact (even if unintentionally) also practicing a form of Western imperialism, as nobody has the right to superimpose an artificial Western identity on a people with an ancient Middle Eastern-tribal identity. Nobody has the right to try and make Jews, or any other Middle Eastern people, feel they “need” to fit into the “neat” Western categories of religion and race. Nobody has the right to force Jews into identifying as white people when they are clearly not. As for Jews who identify as white without being forced to do so – please decolonize your identities and understand that the identity your claim to express is a falsification of who you really are. Hey, she said it. -Ed.

4GW Comes to Ferguson

Last week, Fourth Generation war paid a visit to Ferguson, Missouri. I am not speaking of the rioting, looting, and burning; elements in the black urban community have for decades used any incident as an excuse to riot. There is an element of 4GW in other blacks lining up with the looters and arsonists against law enforcement, even though it is their own neighborhoods, stores, and even churches that go up in flames. But what happened in Ferguson was much more powerful than that, in terms ofthe future toward which it points.This time, when the state failed to perform its duty of protecting persons and property, armed volunteers did so in its place.A story in the Sunday, November 30 New York Times, "On Rooftops of Ferguson, Volunteers--With Guns," has major significance for the arrival of 4GW in this country. The Times reported that

Under the auspices of a national group called the Oath Keepers, Mr. (Sam) Andrews accelerated plans to recruit and organize private security details for businesses in Ferguson, which are receiving the services free. The volunteers, who are sometimes described as a citizen militia--but do not describe themselves that way--have taken up armed positions on rooftops here on recent nights...On its website, Oath Keepers released a recruiting message to "all skilled veterans and patriots" and asked them to "grab your gear and start rolling toward Ferguson..."That some business owners accepted aid from a group regarded by some as an anti-government militia is a testament to the rawness of emotions here...

To use one of John Boyd's favorite phrases, that is very interesting. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first 21st century case in the U.S. of a militia stepping in to keep order when the state fails. It is what we see happening regularly in other parts of the world where the state has disintegrated, but I did not expect it quite so soon on our own soil.If we wish to halt the rise of militias here, we need to focus, not on the militias, but on the reason they arise: the failure of the state. As Hobbes reminds us, the state came to be for only one reason: to maintain order, i.e., safety of persons and property. When the state is no longer able  or willing to do that, other entities must take its place. The first requirement of any society is order, because without order life is nasty, brutish, and short.Just ask small business owners in Ferguson what happens without order. The Times quoted one of them, Mr. Davis Vo, owner of a Chinese restaurant, saying "When they're here (The Oath Keepers), there's definitely a weight lifted off of our shoulders. I'd be lying if I said otherwise."There is no question that last Monday, the state failed in Ferguson. The Times quoted the mayor of a local community that was damaged Monday night as saying, "The governor said himself, I think on TV, that the businesses will be protected by the National Guard during this situation. Unfortunately, that did not happen until Tuesday. But we were expecting it to happen on Monday."The more interesting question is why the state failed. The proximate cause is probably the Governor's reluctance to make a decision. But behind that, at the moral level of war, lies something more powerful, something that points to more failure by the state to maintain order.The Establishment's official narrative concerning so-called "black rage" is that it is an understandable response to racism, injustice, and oppression. In other words, morally, the looters and arsonists are in the right. If that is the case, how can the state, which is run by the Establishment, not be hesitant and reluctant in its response? At the moral level, the state has emasculated itself.That narrative is bunk from beginning to end. Cops' suspicion of blacks, especially young black males, is a direct function of their crime rate. The  black rate of violent crime, most committed by young black males, is twelve times the white rate. In Ferguson, the white cope was fighting for his life against a young black male who had assaulted him, trying to grab his gun. Had he succeeded, that white cop would now be dead and no one would have heard of Ferguson, Missouri. The murder of a white cop by an armed black is strictly local news.Blacks call for justice, but justice is based on facts. If blacks want to be treated by police the same as whites, they need to bring their crime rate down to that of whites. Until they do, treating them differently is a necessity.If the state is not to see more 4GW from non-blacks as they move to defend themselves from black violence, it needs to respond differently than it did in Ferguson. Once the grand jury had reported, the facts of the case were clear: the cop was in the right and the black who assaulted him had gotten what he asked for. That is justice. No manifestation of "black rage" should have been tolerated. Had I been Governor of Missouri, I would have ordered the National Guard to round up some Civil War cannon from town greens and museums, load them with grape and point them down Ferguson's main street. A whiff of grape is the traditional answer to rioters, and I suspect it still works. Looters and arsonists would have been shot on sight.Until the state is once again willing to do its job, the rest of us, like Mr. Vo, will welcome the Oath Keepers. And 4GW will have found a new home.

What the Resignation of Chuck Hagel Says About the Foreign Policy Debate in America

By now readers are likely aware that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is stepping down. He is officially resigning, but the word on the street is that President Obama asked him to leave. The administration’s spin is that he simply wasn’t up to the task, and that he never recovered from his bruising nomination battle. I am always reluctant to accept the self-serving spin that advances the narrative the administration wants forwarded. All these “anonymous sources close to the situation” appear to be falling over each other to get the president’s story out there.That said, it is a plausible story. Just because someone was in the military and won elective office, does not mean he will be a good administrator. Hagel’s nomination always struck me as more symbolic than anything. He was a Republican and perceived to be a non-hawk. He simultaneously sent a message of reaching across the aisle and a turn toward drawback that the president welcomed.Hagel’s defenders suggest that the move was less about competent management, and more about differences Hagel had with the president on strategy. Ironically, it is being suggested that Hagel actually favored a more robust policy than the president and his inner foreign policy circle on Syria and ISIS. This is backed up by the fact that some of Hagel’s current defenders are his former critics, such as uber-hawk Sen. John McCain. I suppose we will have to wait for the inevitable book to totally get Hagel’s side of the story.This whole sorry episode demonstrates the sad state of what passes for a foreign policy debate in this country. It also illustrates the unfortunate tendency of some non-interventionists, presumably in the pursuit of relevance, to invest hope where little hope is warranted. The incredibly hostile reaction to Hagel’s nomination and confirmation from neoconservatives and other hawks on the “right” caused a counter-reaction in some segments of the non-interventionist coalition that was unwise. Hagel’s non-interventionist defenders were right to view the reaction against the Hagel nomination as hysterical and were right to defend Hagel on those terms, but some appeared to project their own hopes and desires onto him beyond what his history suggested was appropriate. This was complicated by the fact that Hagel was heavily opposed by many supporters of Israel for alleged insufficient deference to that country, and I believe some non-interventionists became invested in winning this one just so the Israel partisans couldn't claim a scalp.To be clear, Hagel’s reputation for foreign policy restraint was not entirely unwarranted. Hagel voted in support of the original authorization to use force in Iraq. This was very unfortunate, but a lot of people who should have known better got swept up in the war hysteria of the moment, and voted as Hagel did.* But Hagel appeared to later recognize that our aggressive foreign policy was counter-productive, and became a harsh critic of “the surge.” His resistance to the surge and his general reluctance to embrace the standard interventionist apologia for the Iraq War rightly marked him as something other than a typical Republican hawk, but it did not mark him as a fellow non-interventionist. At best, Hagel is a realist, a designation some non-interventionists seem too eager to embrace and conflate with our own cause. This is a tendency I decried at the time of Hagel’s nomination, and still do.I’m not convinced that Hagel ever even warranted the realist label. I see him as simply a less bellicose internationalist, a Lawrence Eagleburger/James Baker type. He wants America to play a leading role around the globe, but unlike the neocons and other hawks, he does not always lead with military action and is more open to diplomacy and multilateral decision making. He sees knee-jerk militarism as bad for business and budgets and potentially harmful to America’s international reputation. This makes him an old school establishment Republican, not a realist. The guy was at one time the chairman of the Atlantic Group, for crying out loud, a point I made incessantly when he was being trumpeted by some non-interventionists as a bold change of pace.Realism is a tough concept to pin down. There is a real school of thought in international affairs called Realism, which is said to be informed by Hobbes and Machiavelli, which rejects supra-state actors and does seem to sync to some degree with non-interventionism, although many non-interventionists, especially libertarians, would be appalled at the suggestion that their belief system is informed by either of these thinkers. However, a thorough discussion of this subject would quickly exceed the scope of this article. (I hesitate to say this, but the Wikipedia article on the subject is pretty good, and I think it will calm the fears of some libertarians if they read it.)Unfortunately for the sake of clarity, this is not how I usually see the term realist or realism used today. Today it seems too often be a virtual synonym for moderate or centrist or, my favorite, “thoughtful.” It does not necessarily reject supra-state or international organizations. In fact, it is often portrayed as more likely to defer to international organizations such as the UN or international consensus. But unlike internationalist liberals, whether of the leftist or neo-”conservative” variety, it favors actions that are “realistic” and based on self-interest rather than ideological goals like spreading democracy or toppling dictators. It generally does not reject the US playing an outsized role on the world’s stage, although it would advise a more tempered view than believing the US to be an “indispensable nation” as neocon ideologues do. As you can see, a former chairman of the Atlantic Group who reportedly wants a stronger US response to Syria and ISIS is not a realist of either the technical or common use variety.So this brings us back to my initial contention that the Hagel affair illustrates well the toxic situation for non-interventionists that is the current foreign policy consensus masquerading as debate in America: neocons and other uber-hawks represent one end of the spectrum, and Hagel, as perceived in the fertile imaginations of his enemies, represents the outermost edge of acceptable dissent. This is why I believe it is harmful for non-interventionists to hitch their wagon to people like Hagel without being very careful to make the necessary distinctions. Doing so allows Hagel-style dissent to represent the opposition in the minds of the masses. We need not reject political pragmatism, but we must relentlessly make the necessary rhetorical distinctions. The fact that non-interventionists are virtually unrepresented in the foreign policy halls of power, is what makes our voices crying in the wilderness to challenge the current consensus so crucially important. We aren’t within, despite the wishful thinking of some, therefore we must shout from without.What to do about our woeful underrepresentation is of crucial importance, and will be the subject of a future essay. In the meantime, keep shouting. *As an aside, we should never forget the brave Republicans who resisted their party and their base, and cast a no vote. One, Ron Paul, has since risen to great prominence. Perhaps our cause should look at that remaining talent pool. I will write more about this in an upcoming column.

The Silence of the Goats

On Wednesday, November 25, the Cleveland Plain Dealer came perilously close to telling the truth about recent killings of young black males by police officers (as distinguished from killings by other young black males, which happen all the time). The PD began a front-page story with this paragraph:

A makeshift memorial for Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy shot to death by police, appeared Monday in Cudell Commons--50 yards from two permanent markers honoring officers killed by suspects in the neighborhood.

Both in Cleveland and in Ferguson, Missouri, police officers shot young black males because they thought, with good reason, that their lives were in danger.Unlike reporters and politicians, police have to live in the real world. In the real world, the black rate of violent crime is twelve times the white rate. Almost all that crime is committed by young black males. If a young black male points a gun at a cop, the cop must assume he is in a kill-or-be-killed situation, because usually he is.That was the case in Ferguson, where a 6'4", almost 300-pound young black males assaulted a police officer, trying to grab his gun. Had he succeeded in doing so, the dead white cop would already be forgotten.In Cleveland, a 12-year-old black male pointed a realistic looking BB gun at a white cop. Twelve-year-old black males using guns is not uncommon. Standing within 50 yards of memorials to dead cops, whose killers were almost certainly young black males, the white cop did what he had to do. The fault lies entirely with the young black male and those within the black community who tolerate 12-year-old males having real guns.These facts are not difficult to discover. But you will not find them in any news reports on Ferguson or Cleveland. The Plain Dealer did not have the courage to state them. To the best of my knowledge, not a single newspaper or news broadcast has done so. The most important fact of all, that all whites, cops, and civilians, have to deal with a black crime rate twelve times the white rate, is America's number one state secret.The reason, of course, is that cultural Marxism defines all blacks as victims. Even when they are at fault. Officially, they can never be at fault. If a young black male assaults a white cop, trying to grab his gun to use it to kill that cop, and the cop instead kills his asasailant, the cop is guilty and the young black male is innocent. That is cultural Marxism's verdict, and not a single Establishment goat has the guts to challenge it.Actually, one did. Shortly before he left office, New York City's mayor Bloomberg, when asked why New York cops stopped and searched young male blacks and Hispanics more often than whites, replied, "Because they commit most of the crimes." The New York Times reported his reply in the briefest, most tight-lipped manner possible, hoping no one would notice. Mayor Bloomberg had told a Forbidden Truth.It is ironic that the demonstrators protesting the shootings in Ferguson and Cleveland carry signs reading, "No Justice, No Peace." Justice requires truth. The truth in both cities is that the dead young black males forced the cops to kill them.The justice that is missing is justice for the cops--although the grand jury in Missouri, to its great credit, had the courage to render a just verdict--and for all the rest of us who are not young black males. That includes older blacks, who, like the rest of us, try to avoid young black males because of their violence. Most victims of black crime are also black. Justice for us means ending the threat we all face from young black males. That may require hanging in a public park on Saturday all young black males caught carrying guns in the previous week. If that's what it takes, so be it. The state's job is to preserve order, to ensure safety of persons and property for everyone, white, black, or green. If it refuses to do that job, it is no longer legitimate. Go read Hobbes.Meanwhile, while we wait for the state led by goats to do its duty, the rest of us are getting fed up with the whole black act.

Origins of the First World War, part II

As we can see from the production figures any claim that Germany was trying to challenge the Royal Navy is ludicrous. The question then arises: how did the arms race begin? As was hinted at above it was the result of a criminal triumvirate of Lord Balfour, Milliner, and First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Reginald McKenna.The root cause of England’s warrantless provocation of Germany is found in the private writings of the US diplomat Henry White and his conversation with Lord Balfour in 1907:

“Balfour (somewhat lightly): “We are probably fools to not find a reason for not declaring war on Germany before she builds too many ships and takes away our trade.”White: “You are a very high-minded man in private life. How can you possibly contemplate anything so politically immoral as provoking a war against a harmless nation which has as good a right to a navy as you have? If you wish to compete with German trade, work harder.”Balfour: “That would mean lowering our standard of living. Perhaps it would be simpler for us to have a war.”White: “I am shocked that you of all men should enunciate such principles.”Balfour (again lightly): “Is it a question of right or wrong? Maybe it is just a question of keeping our supremacy."

This view that England wanted to eliminate a trade rival was accepted by the renowned economist John Maynard Keynes:

“The politics of power are inevitable, and there is nothing very new to learn about this war or the end it was fought for; England had destroyed, as in each preceding century, a trade rival; a mighty chapter had been closed in the secular struggle between the glories of Germany and France.”

It should not be forgotten that after the end of the First World War, a massive trans-Atlantic revisionism took place in the US, UK, and France thoroughly debunking many of these myths, only for those same myths to re-entrench themselves in the post-World War II era. (*)The hysteria directed against Germany began in 1909 with the Great Naval Scare. When First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Reginald McKenna made ludicrous claims that Germany was intending to build eight dreadnoughts rather than the four stated in the April 1908 German Naval Law³, he spread hysteria throughout the British Isles. He claimed that Germany could build dreadnoughts faster than the British and would outstrip them in naval production at current rates. The heights of hysteria can be seen in the twin predictions made by McKenna and Lord Balfour in April 1912; the former claimed Germany had 17 dreadnoughts and the latter 21-25. The ridiculousness of these estimates can be seen by the fact that at the onset of the First World War in 1914 Germany had only 13 dreadnoughts⁴.The ‘evidence’ for these fantastic figures came from H.H. Mulliner. Mr. Mulliner was the managing director of Coventry Ordnance Works. Desiring more orders from the government he fabricated a series of hysterical predictions that Germany would rapidly outpace Britain in dreadnought production. Due to the slump in naval production, a result of the détentes with France and Russia, a new foe had to be manufactured to ensure government orders. The information of Germany’s feverish buildup came from one of H.H. Mulliner’s employees, a certain Mr. Carpmael. Mr. Carpmael claimed to have visited the Krupp Works and saw five to six large machines of varying degrees of competition and assumed that Germany was building or capable of building six dreadnoughts a year.⁵ While Mr. Carpmael’s intentions are unknown they were grist for Mr. Mulliner’s mill.Yet as these fabulous predications were being made the truth was well known by the First Lord of the Admiralty and the King. John ‘Jack’ Fisher wrote:

“I might say “The unswerving intention of 4 years has now culminated in two complete Fleets in Home Waters, each of which is incomparably superior to the whole German Fleet mobilized for war. Don’t take my word! Count them, see them for yourselves! You will see them next June. This can’t alter for years, even were we supinely passive in our building; but it won’t alter because we will have 8 dreadnoughts a year. So sleep quiet in your beds!””⁶

To King Edward he wrote:

“In March of this year, 1907, it is an absolute fact that Germany had not laid down a single “Dreadnought,” nor had she commenced building a single Battleship or Big Cruiser for eighteen months.”⁷

And

There is one more piece of information I have to give: Admiral Tirpitz, the German Minister of Marine has just stated, in a secret official document, that the English Navy is now four times stronger than the German Navy. Yes that is so, and we are going to keep the British Navy at that strength, with ten “Dreadnoughts” commenced last May. But we don’t want to parade all this to the world at large.”⁸

Bold is mine, but as we can see the British with cold and malicious intent lied about an irenic neighbor in order to build up the Royal Navy for war with Germany to remove a trade rival. Admiral von Tirpitz claims that the British led by “Jack” Fisher compared the projected size of the Germany Navy of 1920 with the then contemporary British Navy of 1908, this bait and switch being impossible for the British people to have known about.⁹The question then arises: why did Germany seek a blue water navy? In order to combat the growing strength of the Franco-Russian navies as the two nations were joined as allies. We see from JFC Fuller:

The crux of the naval question was that it had been the policy of successive British governments to concentrate popular attention on British and German expansion alone; they did not take into account the fact that Germany had other naval considerations than war against England. Her naval situation in a war against France and Russia was overlooked; yet it was the situation which was, and had been, the governing factor in her naval policy since 1900, when Admirals Tirpitz said: “We should be in a position to blockade the Russian fleet in the Baltic ports, and to prevent at the same time the entrance to that sea of the French fleet.”¹⁰

 Check out Todd Lewis' blog at http://praiseoffolly.wordpress.com/

1^ Alvin Nevins, Thirty Years of American Diplomacy (Harper & Brothers, 1^st edition 1930), 257-58.

2^ John Maynard Keynes, The economic consequences of the peace (Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920), 33.

3^ Francis Neilson, How Diplomats Make War (B. W. Huebsch, 1915), 135.

4^ Bertrand Russell, Prophesy and Dissent, (Academic Division of Unwin Hayman Ltd., 1988), 263.

5^ “Background to the Dreadnought Panic – enter Mr. Mulliner.”, accessed October 2, 2014 http://www.whyworldwar1.com/1906-9-mulliner-panic#_edn3

6^ Baron John Arbuthnot Fisher, Memories (Hodder and Stroughton),189-190.

7^ Ibid pg 14

8^ Ibid pg 16

9^ Admiral von Tirpitz, My Memoirs (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1919), 269.

10JFC Fuller, Military History of the Western World, Vol. 3: From the American Civil War to the End of World War II (Da Capo Press, 1956), 176-7

The View From Olympus: Vive le Roi!

I am not a gamer, and I will not use a computer, so video games usually do not come to my attention. But an article in the November 21 New York Times about a game called "Assassin's Creed Unity," a collection of nouns in search of a verb, did catch my eye. The reason it did so is that the game apparently offers a more balanced and realistic narrative of the French Revolution than that provided by the usual Whig interpretation of historyAccording to the Times, "Critics on the left say the game undercuts a cherished narrative of the French Revolution--the miserable masses rising up against an indulged nobility." Worse, it portrays King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette sympathetically and Robespierre as a monster.Hurrah! Some real history seems to have intruded on the left's myth of the "heroic" French Revolution. Almost everything in the official myth is wrong.The Revolution was not made by starving peasants but by prosperous members of the French bourgeoisie. What brought it about was not a tyrannical king but France's over-extension in the Great Power game, over-extension capped by France's intervention against England in the American Revolution. (Americans would do well to remember that they owe their independence to King Lois XVI.) France attained her objective of getting revenge on Britain for her defeat in the Seven Years' War, but at the cost of financial ruin. When paying the interest on the national debt required more than half the revenues of the state, the French government decided it had to levy new taxes. But France's "tyrant" could not do that. As in Britain, new taxes had to be approved by parliament, which in France was called the Estates General. So the Estates General were called into session, for the first time since the early 17th century. A chance for prudent, conservative reform, which France did need, was lost when the Third Estate, the equivalent of Britain's House of Commons, violated France's ancient constitution and seized power for itself.Both King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette were decent, well-intentioned people. The queen never told starving peasants to eat cake. On the contrary, she was known for her generosity. Had a starving peasant approached her and asked for help, she would probably have given him all her jewels. It was precisely the king's good intentions that made him an easy mark for the radicals in the Third Estate. Had he been a tyrant, he would have strangled the Revolution in its cradle.In contrast, Robespierre, along with most of the rest of the Jacobins, was a monster. They became terrorists, in a Terror directed against the rest of France. They were the first-born ideological fanatics, a type that, in the 20th century, would butcher millions of people, mostly their own.The history of the French Revolution remains important because that revolution is still underway. Ideologues of many stripes continue what the Jacobins launched, an endless war against normal, workable social institutions waged on behalf of unattainable abstracts such as democracy and, the worst of the lot, equality. If there is one thing people obviously are not, it is equal. We vary endlessly in our abilities and disabilities, and seldom can one person substitute successfully for another. But the answer of the ongoing revolution to facts is always the same: send that man to the gulag, or the concentration camp, or the guillotine!If what little remains of the West is to regain its footing, the revolution must end. Ideologues must make room for realists, and social institutions must once again grow naturally over time. If that is to happen, a historically accurate understanding of the French Revolution, one of the two catastrophes of Western culture in the modern period (the other was World War I), must displace the "starving peasants fighting for freedom" myth. That isn't what happened. If a video game can cut through the baloney and introduce people to some real history, that's a good thing.

The View From Olympus: Uncle Sam Orders the Usual

In America's ill-conceived war with ISIS, Uncle Sam has ordered the usual, i.e. airstrikes. They are having the usual effects, which is to say they are working to ISIS's net benefit.In an article titled "Airstrikes Blunt ISIS, But Draw Civilian Ire," the November 14 New York Times reported that random airstrikes not coupled to any ground campaign are succeeding at the physical level of war but failing at the mental and moral levels. The Times wrote that

American airstrikes on the Syrian city of Raqqa, the vaunted capital of the Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate, have scattered its fighters and disrupted the harsh system they had imposed, residents and visitors there say. But they see no gratitude toward the United States.Rather, they suggested in interviews, many people are angry at the Americans. Food and fuel prices in Raqqa have soared, power blackouts have prevailed, and order is now threatened by a vacuum of any authority.

The last point is the most significant in any 4GW situation. People's first requirement is order, because without order you don't have anything else. If  you do, anyone stronger than you can come and take it from you. And they will.Syrian Sunnis foolishly thought they could destroy the ordered state maintained by the Assad government without falling into disorder. They were wrong. Now, they are desperate for order. ISIS brings order, so despite its many unattractive features, they welcome it. Harsh order is preferable to an absence of order.The American bombing campaign, unsupported as it is by any credible force on the ground, only brings more disorder. That ramps up the locals' support for ISIS, as of course does the Goliath Effect. In Syria, we could couple our air campaign with the Assad government. I suspect that if you could hold a referendum in Syria on the question, "Do you want to restore the situation in Syria to what it was before the rebellion against the Assad government begain?", it would win overwhelmingly, including in Sunni regions. But Washington's ideological blinders have ruled that single realistic option out. In fact, it appears the Obama Administration is edging closer to expanding its air campaign to target Assad. Nothing could more safely ensure continuing disorder in Syria and the loss of any chance of restoring a Syrian state.The same issue of the New York Times reported that, in a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, one that showed the complete muddle that is the Administration's and the Pentagon's thinking about our new war, General Martin E. Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he might recommend sending U.S. combat troops back to Iraq. He was simply acknowledging the inevitable result of our current policy, a policy established by President Obama's idiotic promise to defeat and destroy" ISIS. More, if, or more likely when we do send in American combat troops, they will lose. As we have shown over and over again, our military does not know how to win Fourth Generation wars. In effect, the threat we utter against 4GW entities everywhere is, "If you piss us off enough, we will go to war against you and lose." That's some threat.All of this points to the single most important fact about the Washington defense and foreign policy establishments: they cannot learn. All they are capable of doing is the same thing over and over again. That same thing always ends the same way, in an American defeat. No country can sustain so disastrous a course indefinitely.

Origins of the First World War, part I

The dominant myth of the First World War is the myth of German war guilt. The allies, in a self-serving spirit in the 231,^st article of the Versailles Treaty, stated that:

The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.¹

Since that time countless court historians and self-seeking shills have repeated this pabulum. There are many aspects of this narrative that are in need of revision, but I will restrict myself to two points: (1) the naval arms race with Britain and (2) French Revanchism. In both cases I will show that it was not the Germans that escalated the conflict, but the French and British which rendered the war inevitable.A rather conventional account of the naval arms race between Britain and Germany can be seen in the Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare:

It is hard to see much purpose in the policies pursued by Germany over the next two decades. In 1894 the Kaiser read the work of the American prophet of naval power, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and immediately concluded that Germany’s rise to the status of a world power could only occur through creation of a grand fleet. The Kaiser’s enthusiasm was undoubtedly fueled by his love-hate relationship with his British cousins. Not until 1897 did he find an admiral, Alfred von Tirpitz, who possessed both the ambition and political acumen to carry out his dreams...He (Tirpitz) argued both that construction of a great fleet would force Britain to respect the Reich’s worldwide interests and that, because Britain and the Franco-Russian alliance held mutually hostile interests, Germany could create such a fleet without fear of British interference...Tirpitz’s greatest mistake lay in his failure to recognize that geography had given Britain an almost unassailable naval position: the British Isles lay astride Germany’s path to the Atlantic, and it would be an easy matter for the Royal Navy to block Germany in the English Channel and across the exits from the North Sea, whilst Britain’s position also shielded its own trade routes. But nothing deterred the Germans form their course...The continuing German naval build-up prompted Britain to form an entente with France in 1904 that resolved outstanding disagreements between the two countries. The Germans replied by causing a major diplomatic crisis over Morocco, intended to break up the growing Anglo-French friendship; instead, they only drove the two powers more closely together. … None of this caused the Germans to desist from an armaments program that endangered the Reich’s long-range strategic interests, but the increasing tense European situation did lead in 1912 to a change in emphasis.²

This nauseating self-congratulatory propaganda is par for the course when it comes to the history of the First World War. In reality, rather than an evil and or incompetent German cabal seeking to find a cause for war against Britain, it was an ugly British triumvirate of business, politics, and the navy. The whole naval arms race was a premeditated deception on the part of this triumvirate to do three things: (1) ensure British economic dominance, (2) increase naval funding, and (3) enrich well-connected businesses.Firstly, we must understand that after the Naval Defense Act of 1889, whereby the Royal Navy was pledged to have as many as or more battleships than the next two powers, and that the British were committed to a conflict with any rising naval power, no matter how irenic their intentions.Secondly, the sheer idiocy of claiming that German expenditures drove the arms race can be debunked by this graph:

Year	Great Britain	France	Russia	Germany
1909	£11, 076, 551	£4, 517, 766	£1, 758, 487	£10, 177, 062
1910	14, 755, 289	4, 977, 682	1, 424, 013	11, 392, 856
1911	15, 148, 171	5, 876, 659	3,215, 396	11, 701, 859
1912	16, 132, 558	7, 114, 876	6, 897, 580	11, 491, 187
1913	16, 883, 875	8, 093, 064	12, 082, 516	11, 010, 883
1914	18, 676, 08	11, 772, 862	11, 098, 613	10, 316, 264

³*JFC Fuller offers a fine commentary on these figures:

When the cost of Austrian and Italian new construction for 1914, respectively £4,051,976 and £3,237,000, is added, to the last on the above German figures, it will be seen that when war broke out the Triple Entente was spending on construction two and half times the amount spent by the Triple Alliance, and when France and Russia approximately two and a half times as much as Germany. How anyone could say that German naval expansion threatened England is difficult to understand; yet from 1909 on it was said again and again.⁴

The commentary provided by Francis Neilson, British Liberal MP provides more insight:

Now, no fair-minded Britisher can look at these figures and say that they prove in the slightest degree that Germany intended to smash Britain. The wildest notions of German naval expansion have been sedulously sown in this country for years.⁵

To be continued...  Check out Todd Lewis' blog at http://praiseoffolly.wordpress.com/

1^ Treaty of Versailles http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/versa/versa7.html

2^ Geoffrey Parker, Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 257-8.

3^ * this is a reproduction of a graph found in JFC Fuller, Military History of the Western World, Vol. 3: From the American Civil War to the End of World War II (Da Capo Press, 1956), 177.

4^ Ibid

5^ Francis Neilson, How Diplomats Make War (B. W. Huebsch, 1915), 146.

The View From Olympus: Does a Republican Congress Mean Another War?

With most other conservatives, I regard the Repulican victories and the new Republican Senate as generally good things. But there is one glaring exception. Most Republicans, and some Democrats, refuse to understand that another war--which will probably become another lost war--is the last thing this country needs.President Obama has already committed himself to going to Congress for approval of his new war with ISIS. That war is doomed to become another lost war, because the president has set an unattainanle objective, defeating and destroying ISIS. Congress's answer should be, "No." That is the answer most Americans want Congress to give. But the combination of Republican war hawks and Democrats who feel they must support a Democratic president probably mean Congress will approve the request. At least this defeat will be a small one.The big war that congressional Republicans must play a central role in either causing or preventing is a war with Iran. The Administration is working hard to make a deal with Iran, and it appears that effort has at least a 50% chance of success. But if a deal is struck, it must be approved by Congress, because only Congress can remove the sanctions on Iran. Obviously, if Congress refuses, the deal falls apart. If that happens, we are on the road toward war with Iran.Three forces are propelling congressional Republicans toward disaster on the question of a deal or a war with Iran. The first is pure partisanship: if Obama wants something, many Republicans think they must oppose it. Nothing else counts, not even the prospect of pouring billions of dollars and thousands of lives down another Mideast sinkhole, plus the consequences of a likely defeat. Second come the Republican war hawks, led by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who never met a war they did not like. Third will be the Israeli lobby, or more precisely the Likud lobby, which continues to follow a strategy devised largely by American neo-cons that calls for America to destroy every Middle Eastern state that Israel does not like. Likud is incapable of grasping a fact now in its own back yard, namely that any Middle Eastern state, including Iran, is less of a threat to Israel than the Fourth Generation entities that will probably replace it if it is destroyed. The Israeli lobby also has vast influence on Democrats, some of whom will crumble and vote to continue sanctions on Iran.Elements in the Pentagon, desperate to show they can still win a war, think they can defeat Iran. Their calculus is that a war with Iran will be largely or entirely a naval and air war, which we can in fact win. As usual, however, the Pentagon errs in thinking symetrically. Iran's obvious response to American air and sea attacks is to counterattack on the ground, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with the aim of seizing the U.S. Army personnel deployed in those places and using them as hostages. In Iraq, the Iranians will almost certainly have the help of Iraqi Shiite militias and possibly of the Iraqi government and army as well. Iran and the Taliban hate each other, but that does not exclude a short-term alliance of convenience while Iranian ground forces round up the remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Their only way out would probably be through Russia, a country Washington's idiotic foreign policy has thoroughly alienated. Putin might well blow the bridge.As remote as the danger of war with Russia appears, the Republicans in Congress are leading a charge in the wrong direction here as well. Russia is now preparing to act militarily to end the incessant shelling of eastern Ukrainian cities by the Ukrainian army and associated militias. When it does so, McCain and Graham will undoubtedly be on their feet, calling for a "tough" American response. The fact that Ukraine can do nothing for us while Russia could do a great deal means nothing in their (and the neo-libs) vision of the world as a B-grade western where America must always play the marshal. If our troops end up trapped in Afghanistan, the Republican hawks should be at the head of the list of those held responsible.Fortunately, there are Republican voices in Congress for a sane foreign policy, one aimed at keeping us out of war. Senator Rand Paul is the most prominent. I suspect he, and some others, know that rejecting a deal with Iran means war with Iran. So do some Democrats. Will they be enough? Right now, I don't think they have the votes.

Victoria Is Now For Sale!

If you have enjoyed reading Victoria and are dying to know what happens next, you can now purchase the ebook at Amazon.com! Click here to go to the product page or follow the link below.

Victoria: Chapter 35

In the fine fashion of Agatha Christie mysteries and the old Orient Express, I was traveling incognito. When George the Pullman porter asked my name, I gave it as Mr. McWhorter. I was dressed in the uniform of the New South – expensive suit worn over a shirt with open collar – and I trusted to a Panama hat pulled low and Italian sunglasses to make a sufficient disguise. So long as I didn’t slip into State o’ Maine speech, I figured I was safe enough.The train was fast but the Southerns' track was smooth, and I got a good night’s sleep as Mr. Pullman’s guest. George woke me at 7 o’clock on the 25th of March in time to shave and dress, and we arrived in Atlanta’s Peachtree Street station on the advertised at 8 AM.The only way to see a city is to walk it. I traveled light, with one shoulder bag, so I could do just that. Coming out of the station, I took a right on Peachtree Street toward downtown.Immediately I got a powerful sense of deja vu all over again. I’d been here before, in the Corps, in places like Lagos, Mombasa, and Maputo, and later in Washington, Baltimore, and other American cities. Atlanta reeked of disorder and decay.It wasn't just the garbage piled high on the street corners, uncollected, or the trash littering the potholed streets. It was the smell of fear. Even in the morning, when the worst elements were usually asleep, my nose wrinkled with it. All the windows and doors were barred, including upper stories. The better establishments had armed guards out front. The lesser made do with “Beware Of The Dog” signs. The few pedestrians scuttled furtively, like people in a kitchen full of cockroaches.I picked up the day’s Atlanta Constitution – now a double entendre, since Atlanta’s New South government had its own constitution – and dove into a diner to get some breakfast. The few other patrons looked up briefly without any expression as I sat down at the counter. The young black counter-man turned to take my order, and on his face was written “the attitude,” that cultivated stare of defiance and menace I hadn’t seen up north since CORN solved our black problem, and that had also vanished from Old South Richmond. He took my order for a three-egg omelet with ham and sausage without saying a word, then barked it to the cook at the grill.As I waited for my chow, I unfolded the paper to find an unpleasant reminder of the bad old days. Murder and mayhem, rapes and riots filled the front page. Even with the New South Congress in session in the city, the political news took second place to crime. That reflected reality. When order is lost, the important news is all local.My breakfast, when it came, was good. Atlanta was still Southern, in its way. I was through the sausage and starting on the ham when I heard pop, pop, pop, from somewhere out in front, mixed with the harsh staccato of an AK on full automatic. The waiter and cook dove behind the counter and the rest of the breakfasters ran toward the back. I grabbed the Walther .380 I carried in a shoulder holster, bent low, and made for the front door. I waited a few seconds – all quiet – then opened the door carefully a few inches, just enough to be able to look up and down the street.About 100 feet away, south toward the downtown, a police cruiser stood, its windows shot out and one door, toward the sidewalk, hanging open. I could see a cop stretched out beside it, on the sidewalk. His Glock was in his hand. He wasn’t moving.“Call 911,” I shouted back into the diner. “I think a cop’s been shot. I'm going to check it out.”From behind the counter, the counter-man replied, “Fuck the cops and fuck you too, motherfucker. I ain’t callin’ nobody.”Boy, you just lost your tip, I thought.I crouched and ran, keeping behind the parked cars, toward the cop. People in shops closer to the scene must have seen him, but nobody came to help. I figured whoever had done the drive-by was long gone, but you never know. I kept checking six, a useful lesson from Marine aviators, but in this case six stayed clear.As I got in closer, I saw a pool of blood around the officer’s head, not a good sign. Dropping down beside him, I checked for heartbeat and breath. He had both. He had a nasty gash on his right temple, but I quickly saw it wasn’t deep. He’d been winged and knocked unconscious, but unless there was something I couldn’t see, he’d live to collect his retirement.I pressed my handkerchief into the wound, held it in place with the cop’s cap, and leaned into his vehicle to see if the radio was still working. It was. I pressed talk and gave the signal every cop regards as sacred, and dreads: “Officer down, officer down!” The dispatcher came on immediately. Glancing at the street numbers,I gave him an address. I knew other cops and an ambulance would be there fast.Returning to the downed cop – a good-looking kid, white, Kearney according to his name badge – I held the bandage tightly to stop the blood flow. As I did so, I looked up the street to see one of the other patrons leaving the scene of my breakfast, carrying my bag. A white guy, too. I yelled, but he just ran the other way. Blood is thicker than baggage, I thought. No way could I leave the cop. Thanks, New South. I’ll get even, some day.Kearney started to come to. His mind was still where it had been when he fell, and he started to move. I held him down. “It's OK, kid. You're covered. Help’s on the way,” I told him. But he was going into shock.Even where everything else has fallen apart, cops still take care of each other. A cruiser smoked by in less than a minute, slammed on the brakes, and backed up on the sidewalk. Just one guy was in it – another dumb practice in the jungle. He saw the Walther in my right hand, reached toward his own weapon, then realized I was helping his buddy and cooled it. “Better get that out of sight,” he said to me as he ran up. “It’s illegal here for a private citizen to carry a weapon.”“Did the city council bother to tell that to the guys with the AK?” I asked.“Fucking politicians,” he replied as he moved quickly to check his buddy over. “I hate all of them.”He found no other wounds. As usual, the drive-by boys couldn’t shoot, they just sprayed.The new cop guided in a couple other cruisers, a motor and, somewhat later than I expected, an ambulance. The cops didn’t say anything to the EMT guys, seeing as they needed them, but their body language told me they weren’t happy.We saw Kearney lifted into the ambulance, and the motor and one cruiser gave it an escort to the nearest hospital. The remaining cops asked me a few questions, and I told them what I’d seen, which wasn’t much. “Are open attacks on police something regular down here?” I asked a sergeant.“Every day,” he replied. “In case you didn’t know it, you're in a war zone. And it’s gonna get worse, fast.”“You think so?” I replied as casually as I could. The best way to find out what’s going on in a place is from the cops. The problem is getting them to talk to you, if they don’t know you.“I know so,” he replied. “Look, we owe you one. You came to the aid of an officer who was down. I can tell you’re not from around here, because none of the SOBs in this lousy town will lift a finger to help a cop. I’m afraid Kearney bled all over that nice, expensive suit. Why don’t you ride with me down to the station and get cleaned up?”“Thanks,” I replied. “I'll enjoy being safe for a little while.”“You think so?” the cop, a Sergeant Randall, replied. “They’ve mortared our station twice in the last month.”

***

The police station was walled off for a full block around the actual building with Concertina wire, street barricades, and blockhouses in which I saw machine guns mounted. “Welcome to Fort Zinderneuf,” Randall said as we drove in. “Isn’t the New South gracious?”The word had spread that Randall was bringing in a citizen who’d helped a cop in trouble, so I was met with friendly smiles and strong handshakes from all the other cops. Nobody said anything about the Walther. Randall showed me to the shower room, where I cleaned up while another cop did some quick work on my jacket. “Cold water will take the blood out if you get it before it dries,” he told me. Somehow, it felt good being back among men who knew that sort of thing.After I’d scrubbed up and the suit coat was hung to dry – my shirt was a lost cause but a cop my size gave me one of his – Randall stuck his head back in. “Can I invite you upstairs for a cup of coffee? There are a few other folks here who’d like to thank you for what you did.”“Sure,” I answered. “But no thanks are needed. You guys are out there for us all the time. I’m happy to have a chance to return the favor. How’s Kearney?”“The hospital says there’s no damage beyond what you saw,” Randall replied. “A transfusion, some IVs, and a couple days in bed and he’ll be OK. Thanks for asking.”Upstairs was officer country, as I could see by the “I love me” pictures as we walked down the second floor hallway. Sergeant Randall led me into the office of the police captain who ran the station house. There, about a dozen cops were gathered.Again, it was smiles and handshakes all around, along with good southern coffee. The captain gave a little speech formally offering his gratitude and that of his men. At the end of it he said, “I've got a small present for you,” and handed me an official looking piece of paper. It was a permit to carry a sidearm. “You may find that useful, Captain Rumford.”I jumped. At least I did inside. I immediately hoped it hadn’t showed. I realized denial would just make me look foolish. “It's nice to be addressed by my real rank again,” I replied with what was intended to sound like nonchalance. “I think you have to be German to carry out this Field Marshal business. I feel like I’m playing in The Student Prince at Heidelberg.”The cops smiled, though in Dixie I doubt many got the reference. “Don't worry, sir, you’re safe with us,” the police captain replied. “You would have been even without your help to Kearney. We know what you all have done up north, and we only wish we could do the same down here.”I’d learned long ago that liberal cops are very, very rare. Cops see too much of life to believe in bullshit.“But now we do owe you for Kearney, too,” he continued. “So our question to you is, how can we help you do whatever you came here to do?”“I came here to find out what’s going on in the capital of the so-called New South,” I replied. “The best way you can help me is to tell me.”“You’ve already gotten a good taste of it,” one patrolman replied.“I have,” I answered. “But on my own, I can only see what’s on the surface. What I need to know is what’s going on that I can’t see. The situation here can’t endure. Human nature can’t tolerate disorder indefinitely. Which way is it going to turn, restoration of order, or chaos?”My question met with uneasy silence. The cops looked at each other, looked at me, then looked at each other again. They were pregnant with something. Could I get it to drop?Finally, the station chief said, “I'm going to give you an honest answer. We owe you that, and one thing more besides.”“For more than a year, we’ve been tracking a conspiracy here in Atlanta. We’ve told the mayor, the city council, even the New South government, but they won’t listen. They just call us ‘racists’ and tell us to go away.”“The conspiracy involves the gang leaders, some local politicians, some members of Congress, all black. To put it simply, they plan to take over the city, kill all the whites and Asians, and proclaim something they call 'The Commune.'”“When?” I asked.“We don't know that,” the police captain replied. “But the pieces all seem to be pretty much in place. My guess is the only reason they’re still waiting is that the Congress is importing more arms for them. The gangs are now formally part of the ‘New South Army,’ which should tell you what that army is worth.”“What are you going to do when it happens?”“Run,” one officer replied.The captain nodded. “We’ve all gotten our families out of this place long ago, into the Old South, the countryside. We’ve only stayed because we need the paychecks. We don’t owe the SOBs who run this town, white or black, the time of day. When the place blows, we hope it takes them with it. We’re getting out.”A picture was forming in my mind. The Commune. The Paris Commune in 1871. If Atlanta became the Paris Commune, the whole South would have to unite against it – and act, just as the French had to do then. From my standpoint, the sooner it happened, the better.“Are you willing to set this bomb off?” I asked.The cops looked startled. That was not a response they expected. “Why should we do that?” one cop asked.“Because it will finally force the True Confederate government in Richmond to act,” I replied. “As you’ve probably noticed, they aren’t the most decisive sorts. This would leave them no choice.”Again, the cops looked at each other. One spoke up, “Why not? We know it’s coming. If we set it off, we can be sure we’ll get out.”“How could we set it off?" the police captain asked.“Am I right that you’ve been recording this meeting?” I said.The officers looked a bit sheepish. “You're right,” the captain answered. “We record everything. We have for years. It’s the only way to cover our own asses. If the wrong people found out about this, we could always say we were just setting you up.”“Okay, here’s how you light the fuse,” I told them. “Make a dozen copies of the tape, get one to each of the chief conspirators, then get out of town. Once they know I’ve been here, and that I know their plan, they’ll set their coup in motion. They’ll have to, because they’ll think I’ll move to stop them. Delete the portions of the tape after my question, ‘What are you going to do?' so they won’t know what you're planning either.”I knew the cops would need to palaver on this one. I’d made their day somewhat more interesting than they had anticipated. I was asking them to play for high stakes, and to take risks, which cops don’t like. At the same time, I was giving them a chance to get back at politicians they hated and a citizenry that looked on them with indifference if not contempt. Which would win out, fear or rage? I gave them some time to think about it by asking directions to the head.When I returned from an extended head call, the cops had made their decision. “We’ll do it,” the captain announced. “We know what’s coming and we sure can’t stop it. Plus, we know your war record up north. If you think this is the right thing to do, we probably ought to listen to you. We’ll time it so they get the tapes day after tomorrow, March 27th. That will give us a day to get clear.”“And we still owe you something. We need to get you out of town, too. If the New South government or the conspirators nab you, you’ll have seen your last New England autumn.”“Can you get me to Savannah?” I asked.“Sure,” he replied. “We'll just dress you up in one of our uniforms and have you ride with one of our men. Nobody stops a cop car, and if they do, no one looks at a cop’s face. They just see the uniform.”So the bomb was armed. I spent the night in the station house. The next day, March 26, in the uniform of Atlanta’s finest, I left town in a plain brown wrapper, driven by a patrolman whose family was in Savannah, a secure bastion of the Old South. At the outskirts, I turned around in my seat for a last look at the Atlanta skyline. “Kind of makes you wish old Sherman could come back, doesn’t it?” the officer who was driving me asked.I thought about Kearney left bleeding on the sidewalk and my stolen travel bag. “Ayuh, it kinda does,” I replied.

***

The Atlanta cop drove me directly to the 3rd Texas Rangers’ base camp, where our uniforms and his ID got us through the gate. Still Southern security, I thought. He dropped me at the CP, where I quickly found Captain Armbruster and Sergeant Danielov. Armbruster wasn’t quite sure how to react to my latest avatar as an Atlanta cop. Dano just grinned. “Looks like you’ve been doing some spec ops on your own,” was his comment.“Ayuh, you could say that,” I replied in good Maine fashion.“You bring the rest of my trash down with you?”“Got it all,” Ron replied. “Though I’m afraid your uniform might need ironing.” He’d obviously gotten the word from Captain Ravenal.“We can take care of that, sir,” Captain Armbruster volunteered.Dano and I looked at each other and broke up laughing. No one up north ever thought of ironing a uniform. We seldom thought of washing them. We were wary of the Sukomlinov Effect: the side with the best uniforms always loses.“Don’t sweat it, Captain,” I replied. “I assume Southern regulations forbid a Field Marshal’s uniform to wrinkle itself.”The battalion commander, Col. McMoster, was out leading some training, but he would be back around dinner time. I suggested we meet in the mess, then retire to someplace quiet where we could talk. I told Armbruster we had some sensitive material to discuss, and left it up to him who should be there. Meanwhile, I could shower up and change into something more comforting.Dinner in the mess was steak, barbecued pork South Carolina style, or both. Dano and I both took both. It would be some time yet before we had our guts and our arterial deposits back up to normal.Col. Bill McMoster, CO of the 3rd Texas Rangers, joined us halfway through chow. He knew I had arrived, and I was glad to see he’d put training above hospitality. His utilities were muddy and he stank, which were also good signs. His conversation over dinner was direct, honest and self-critical.We gathered afterwards in his office, which was paneled with books, most of them military histories. Their condition suggested somebody had read them in the field. Cigars and bourbon quickly went around. It was funny to think back on the old U.S. military, with its “no smoking, no drinking” rules. If your armed services have become a girls’ school, you probably need rules like that.I shared with the assembled Texas officers and NCOs the story of my minor adventures in Atlanta. The point, as I saw it, was that all we had to do was wait. When Atlanta erupted and the blacks proclaimed The Commune, the Confederate government would have to act. “I guess I should probably head back to Richmond tomorrow,” I concluded. “They shouldn’t need any advice as to what to do, but from what I saw there, they might.”Colonel McMoster sipped his bourbon for a bit, then responded. “I'm afraid you still don’t understand the depth of the problem in Richmond,” he said. “You weren’t there during a crisis. I was. They didn’t act when New Orleans burned, and they won’t act when Atlanta goes up either. With the people they’ve got in charge, they can’t. All they know how to do is nothing, so nothing is what they will do.”“That leaves me with a question for you,” McMoster continued. “If the blacks proclaim this ‘Commune’ and Richmond doesn’t respond, what do we do then?”The Colonel’s question hit me in the face like a cold, dead flounder. I didn’t have an answer. I immediately realized I had just played the game of High Seas Fleet.Prior to World War I, Germany had built a powerful force of battleships, the High Seas Fleet. Britain’s Royal Navy was stronger, but the Germans were certain that, when war came, the British would steam up close to the German coast to blockade it. There, mines, submarines, and torpedo boats could whittle them down until the German battleships could engage them on equal terms. In May of 1914, Admiral Tirpitz asked the High Seas Fleet’s commander, “What will you do if they do not come?” He received no answer. When war erupted three months later, the British dreadnoughts stayed far away from Germany’s home waters, supporting a distant blockade, and the German High Seas Fleet proved useless.With my stomach in free-fall, I looked at Colonel McMoster and the other Confederate officers and gave the only answer I could. “I don't know,” I said.I could feel the room deflate. Here I was, their best and brightest hope, “the new Moltke,” caught with his pants down like some second lieutenant in his first tactical decision game. Nobody said anything, but I knew what they were thinking. They were right. I hadn’t thought the situation through to the end.The one advantage experience gave me over a second lieutenant was that in a moment like this, my mind didn’t freeze up. I asked myself the question, “If I were back up north and found myself in a fix like this, what would I do?” Immediately, I knew the answer.“Can you get me a secure communication link with our Governor Kraft, back up in Augusta, Maine?” I asked the Rangers.“Yes, sir,” their commo replied. “We have secure comm with the military attaché in our embassy there. He can patch you through.”“OK, set it up,” I said. I gave the commo the governor’s private number. “Gentlemen, I’m afraid my guilty secret is out. I’m not really a Field Marshal. But I know someone who is. God willing, he’ll have the answer I don’t.”It took about 20 minutes to put the call through. I took it privately in the XO’s office. After a fair amount of crackling and hissing in the phone line – Confederate Bell, I thought – I heard Bill Kraft’s welcome voice come on. “Is this the vaunted Southern Field Marshal on my phone?” he asked.“No, sir,” I replied. “This is one very junior captain calling to say he’s screwed the pooch and needs some help.”“Well, well, the prodigal returns,” Kraft chuckled. Luckily I’d caught him in a good mood. “Fear not, we shall kill the fatted calf. What can I do for you?”I explained the situation to the governor. “We have an embassy in Richmond, as you know,” he said. “Their estimation of the Confederate government tallies with that of your colonel there. I suspect he’s correct that when Atlanta erupts, they still won’t act.”“So what do I do then?” I asked.Kraft was silent for about thirty seconds. The way his mind worked – instantly or not at all – that was a long time. I was relieved when his voice came back up on the net. “Act for them,” he said. “Act in their name. Present them with a fait accompli, an action so bold they have to repudiate it or take credit for it. If it works, they’ll take the credit."“You have any thoughts on what that action might be?” I asked.“It has to resolve the situation in Atlanta,” Kraft replied.“How do I do that with one Ranger battalion?" I inquired. “They’ll go into Atlanta if I ask them to, and they’ll go down in a blaze of glory, but against a whole city, they’ll still go down.”“You’ve got to use them to generate other forces,” Bill said. “Exactly how to do that I can’t say from up here. You’re the one at the front, so you’ll have to answer that question for yourself.”I thanked the governor for his advice, which did help put the puzzle together. But the key piece was still missing.I hung up the phone and turned to go back into McMoster’s office, where the Rangers were still waiting for a brilliant solution. Sergeant Danielov was standing in the doorway. “I took the liberty of listening in on the phone in the S-3’s office,” he said. “I’ve got an idea that might do the trick.”“What is it?” I asked, hoping I’d been right that if I got myself into trouble, a sergeant would get me out of it.“Why don’t we ask the Rangers to steal us a nuke?”

Victoria: Chapter 34

As ordered, on March 5, 2034, I left for Richmond. I thought about who to take with me, and decided in the end I didn’t want anyone but our Spec Ops chief, Sergeant Danielov. A sergeant would help get me out of trouble, other officers might get me into it. Besides, if I screwed up, Ron wouldn’t tell anyone.I could have asked the Confederates to send a plane for me – due to the fuel shortage, we didn’t fly ours unless we had to – but I didn’t want to come hat in hand. So I decided to travel as everyone else did.From Augusta, I took the steam train to Portland. I had to admit I enjoyed bucketing along through the Maine countryside at a stirring 40 miles per hour, the smells of summer mingling with the wood smoke from the engine, the rail joints and the locomotive exhaust playing their leisurely, syncopated song. Old pleasures rediscovered are better than new, because you can muse on your grandparents and great-grandparents enjoying the same things.At Portland, we booked passage on a freighter sailing for Norfolk, Virginia. There weren’t enough people traveling to support passenger liners, but most freighters had space for half-a-dozen folks. Ours was a Maine vessel, sail with auxiliary diesel, the Silas Lapham out of Castine with a cargo of used cars, newsprint, and live lobsters. I noticed .50 cals mounted on either side of the quarterdeck. Pirates were operating out of Philadelphia.We left Portland harbor on the evening tide, picking up a strong breeze off the port quarter aft, the remains of a Nor'easter, as we headed south. Dano turned green and spent the night communing with the leeward rail. I enjoyed the sharp sea air and a cigar, then turned in. We’d be in Norfolk on the 29th.Like so many activities from the past, traveling by ship gave me time to think. The question I needed to think about was, what was I going to do? Our objective was to help the True Confederates. In our Germanic way of war, “help” didn’t mean fiddle and diddle at the margins. Help meant “win,” win decisively, completely, finally, in such a way that the victory could never be reversed. Icy cold and lightning fast, as somebody used to say.Did that mean keeping the peace or tilting the balance toward war? And what kind of war could our True Confederate allies wage? I'd known a few Marine generals from the old Southern aristocracy. They were fine, upright, honorable men, solid as old Stonewall himself on matters of morals and character. But they seemed to have the notion that it wasn’t quite gentlemanly to make a decision. And the people they chose for their staffs... John Randolph of Roanoke’s simile came to mind: like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight, they shined and they stank.War, as von Moltke said, is a matter of expedients. You need to know what result you want. That was clear enough in this case. But as to how I’d get there, that would have to depend on what I found, and who. In war, the power of personality is immense. You get a Napoleon, you conquer Europe. You get a Napoleon III, you end up in a chamber pot at Sedan. Sam Yancey even in his younger days had been a cautious, lawyer-like fellow, and few men get bold as they get old. But it isn’t only the people at the top who count. Sometimes it’s a guy at the bottom who takes the action that gains the decision.Such soliloquies, along with the volume of Horatio Hornblower I always took with me when I went to sea, made the few days pass agreeably. The Silas Lapham carried enough canvas that we bowled along at eight knots or better.Once Ron got his sea legs, we liberated some lobsters from the tank in the hold and dined in style each night on the quarterdeck. Good sergeant that he was, Dano had a couple bottles of Piesporter Spatlese, the companion God intended for lobster. As we drained the last on the evening of the 12th, I remembered the old Marine rule: don’t whistle while packing for deployment. Detached duty had long been good to captains.We awoke on the 13th to find ourselves back in the 21st century; a pilot boat was leading us through the minefields into Norfolk. The Confederate ambassador in Augusta had cabled our arrival, and a young CSA officer was on the dock to meet us and whisk us around customs and immigration. He introduced himself as Captain Charles Augustus Ravenal of the Palmetto Horse Guards.Captain Ravenal splendid in his high-collared gray uniform and mirror-shined cavalry boots with silver spurs. In the simple, forest green hunting jacket that was the uniform of the Northern Confederation, I looked like Grant opposite Lee. Captain Ravenal’s darkey driver bowed us into a Mercedes limo with the CSA crest on the doors and Confederate battle flags on the front fenders, and we were soon speeding up the Interstate toward Richmond. Dixie was indeed rich.Southerners are good at small talk. Mainiacs aren’t, but we listen carefully. As the captain went on, I got the sense he was uncomfortable about something. So in Maine fashion, I went right at him. “Something’s bothering you, Captain. If it’s that we smell like lobsters, well, most folks up north smell like fish, ‘cause it’s all we've got to eat. If it’s something else, why don't you tell us about it?”“I am truly sorry, sir, if I have in any way offended,” Captain Ravenal replied. "We are all deeply grateful for your time and trouble in coming here. But to be entirely honest, sir, there is a small matter that gives us some difficulty in our protocol.”Welcome to the South, I thought. Up our way, protocol meant seeing that the other guy was warm and had something to eat. “I am certain we can resolve the matter easily, Captain, if you’ll tell us what it is,” I replied.“Sir, we are all aware that you are Chief of the General Staff of the Northern Confederation,” Captain Ravenal answered. “You will be accorded every honor due to your position. Our difficulty, sir, is that formally your rank is that of captain. That required that you be met by someone of similar rank, which is why I am your escort. Again, I assure you no offense was intended.”“None taken, Captain,” I replied. “I rather like the rank.”“Thank you, sir. But you will be meeting with our generals and our President, Mr. Yancey. Normally, a captain would not be included in such circles, and there is some concern about seating arrangements, precedence, and the like. We do not wish to offend, as I have said.”“No problem, Captain. Sergeant Danielov and I are happy to stand in the back.”“Er, sergeant, sir? Would you expect the sergeant to accompany you, sir? I assumed he was your servant.”“Sergeant Danielov is head of Special Operations for the Northern Confederation. In effect, he’s a CINC. Besides, he might have something useful to say.”“Yes, sir. I’m afraid we have made arrangements for the sergeant to stay in our NCO quarters.”“Is the NCO mess good?” Dano asked.“The specialty is Tennessee barbecue,” Ravenal answered.“Then I'm not moving. Captain Rumford can go to the meetings. I'll just potter around on my own.”“I’m certain that will be agreeable with us,” Ravenal said, making a mistake of serious proportions.“Captain Rumford,” Ravenal continued, “if I may put forward an entirely unofficial proposal, for which I take full responsibility, would you possibly be willing to take on a higher rank while you are our guest here in the Confederacy? It would make our situation a great deal easier, in term of providing the hospitality which is our duty as officers and gentlemen. Please understand that I intend no disrespect to the rank you hold up North. It’s just that, well, things are different down here.”I remembered how my Senate staff friend back in Washington in the old days had always been given three-star rank when he spent time with the American military. He found it funny as hell, but without that, they didn’t know how to deal with him.“If that would make your situation easier, Captain Ravenal, I have no objection,” I said. “After all, we are allies, and I hope we will be friends. Anything I can do to assist, I am ready to do. What rank did you have in mind?”“Whatever you think suitable, sir, so long as it is of a general officer grade.”This was too delicious an opportunity to pass up. I could play a joke on the South and on Bill Kraft at the same time. “How about Field Marshal?” I suggested.The captain’s eyes popped. But he recovered quickly, and said, “I am certain that would be agreeable with our people, sir. In fact, there has been some discussion about introducing such a rank in our Army, and I know some of our officers would find such a precedent useful. Thank you, sir.”As I settled back into the leather upholstery of the Benz for the remainder of our drive, I suspected this might be a long war.

***

Now that I was formally an Exalted High Wingwang, Richmond was rich with hospitality. I was met by a 500-man honor guard, all in first Civil War uniforms, though much too well fed to be real Confederate soldiers. For quarters I was given my own mansion, right off Monument Avenue. The butler was even white. For a solid week I was toured about in the daytime and feted and admired at balls and cotillions in the evenings. Not a lick of work was done. It was just like Richmond in 1863.When I gently reminded Captain Ravenal, who I had asked to remain as my escort despite my promotion, that I had come south to do more than drink Bourbon and admire the fine figures of Southern ladies, he seemed surprised. “The town would be deeply disappointed if it did not get to meet such a distinguished visitor,” he explained. “President Yancey would be deluged with complaints from the fair sex. The brilliance of your campaigns up north has our newspapers calling you ‘the new Moltke,’ you know.”“That’s butter without much bread,” I replied. “I only know how to be silent in two languages. But I also know the South wants its guests to be happy. Would you do me the favor to convey the message that this guest would be happier if he could do some work?”Putting it that way seemed to do the trick. Three days later, on March 23rd, I was invited to a briefing on the situation in the South by the Commanding General of the Confederate States Army, General Loren Laclede. Following the brief and a formal luncheon, I would be received by President Yancey.The CSA headquarters wasn’t a building. It was three whole city blocks in downtown Richmond, mostly highrises, filled to overflowing with staff officers. To take me there, instead of the usual Mercedes, I was met at my door on the 25th by an elegant barouche with a cavalry escort. Another honor guard was waiting on arrival (I found out later there was a brigade-worth of ceremonial troops in and around Richmond). General Laclede received me in a gorgeous uniform, complete with that nice Latin American touch, a sash, amongst a vast entourage of other generals and colonels. Great material for a couple of mine clearing battalions, I thought.After coffee in his mahogany-paneled office, furnished with Second Empire antiques and decorated largely with pictures of himself, General Laclede escorted me to the briefing room. It was nothing less than a thousand-seat auditorium, and every seat was taken. On the stage, three huge screens were set up for the Power Point slides.Shit, it’s the Pentagon all over again, I said to myself. Just as the Confederacy had gotten the old American politicians, it had also built its military on the old American senior officer caste. I knew what was coming: a highly choreographed presentation of absolutely nothing.I was right. For three hours we sat in wonderfully comfortable chairs as one staff officer after the other delivered a scripted, meaningless patter. The maps did indicate which areas were held by the New South and which by the Old, but the newspapers had published the same maps long ago. Beyond that, we heard about the weather in each area, the roads, the telecommunications; the general locations of units; endless equipment rosters and readiness reports (most of which I knew were bullshit); and I can’t remember what else.The reason I can’t remember is that I offered the most appropriate comment on the whole affair. I went to sleep.It was rude, no doubt. But Southern gentlemen dealt with it with Southern manners. They pretended it hadn’t happened. When the lights finally came up again, Capt. Ravenal discreetly elbowed me awake. General Laclede then took to the stage himself, summed up by thanking his regiment of briefers for a splendid performance, and asked if I had any questions.“Just one, General,” I replied. “What are you going to do?”Das Wesentliche ist die Tat. I thought of quoting von Seekt, but realized that if any of these buffoons spoke a second language, it was Spanish, not German.“A most important question, Field Marshal Rumford,” Laclede replied. “It is one which we have under study. Fourteen Colonels in my G-3 section have been working on it for most of the summer. Those are all full colonels, I might add, not lieutenant colonels. We have more than fifty contractors and consultants supporting them. Confidentially – this is the first my own staff has heard of this, and I apologize for surprising them – President Yancey is thinking about appointing a Blue Ribbon Commission of retired senior officers to investigate the matter and give us the benefit of their recommendations. I can assure you, we are considering every possible aspect of the situation in the most thorough manner.”“When do you expect to make a decision?” I asked.“Well, sir, I am not certain I am prepared to put a time line on it. I would certainly need to consult further with my staff before attempting to do so,” Laclede replied. “After all, I’m just the coach,” he added, smiling benignly on his vast staff horde. They smiled back, with the grin of the apparatchik who know that nothing is likely to disturb his comfortable routine anytime soon.I realized further questions were pointless. It was the worst of the French way of war combined with the worst of the British: endless staff action and a commander who played umpire. I’d seen it all before, in the Marine Corps and, even more, whenever we did a CPX with the United States Army. Like the French Bourbons, the Confederates had forgotten nothing and they had learned nothing.We adjourned to a splendid lunch, including a concert by the CSA band and chorus. If these guys ever did win a war, they'd put on one fine victory parade. But in this case, someone else would have to win the war for them. I now understood why New Orleans had gone as it did. Nobody could decide anything.My session that afternoon with Confederate President Yancey confirmed my depression. He was a splendid old gentleman, earnest, decent, upright. Over and over, he impressed upon me his urgency to do the right thing. Unfortunately, in war the right thing is never clear, so he too would do nothing.

***

On the way out of the Confederate White House, I told Captain Ravenal to ask Sergeant Danielov to come see me that evening. Dano might have found out something useful. I certainly hadn’t.“You want to see your sergeant, sir?” Ravenal replied, clearly concerned that someone of Field Marshal rank would stoop so low. “Is it a matter I could take care of for you?”“Well, to be honest, Captain, I’m not quite satisfied with the way my uniform is being ironed,” I replied. “It takes a Northern man to know how to do it just right.”“I understand, sir,” Ravenal responded, reassured and comfortable again. “I’ll have your sergeant sent over right away.”I had requested from General Laclede the papers his staff was developing on possible courses of action, which arrived during the first solitary dinner I’d enjoyed since I came South. True to form, the Confederates had made sure my house had a first-rate cook, an old black mammy who could have stood in for Aunt Jemima and whose biscuits and cornbread would have made Escoffier swoon. After stuffing down a third piece of her ambrosial peach pie, I waddled upstairs, leaving her beaming. I’d put on a pound for each day I’d been in Dixie, and enjoyed every bite of it. I knew it would come off again as soon as I got back North, back to codfish cakes and boiled potatoes.I settled in my study, lit my cigar and took up the papers. The old U.S. Army stared out at me from every page. It was endless, badly-written, jargonized nothing. With the best of intentions, hoping to find a diamond among the dung, I plowed on. But drivel on top of the dinner was too much for me. I last heard the great old grandfather clock, once the property of General Longstreet, chime eight. My brain swam lazily, back to The Basic School, to happy days playing in the mud and nights of beer and bullshit . . .Someone was trying to get me up. Crap, it’s o’dark thirty and I want to sleep. Tell the SPC to go play with himself. I’m too full for a company run. I’ll puke up all that wonderful chow, and it never tastes as good the second time around.I was awake. Someone was rapping at my second floor window. The clock said 9:15. If it was Poe’s raven, I’d eaten my last piece of peach pie. It wasn’t. It was Danielov, and he had somebody with him.I threw up the sash and screen, and they scrambled in. “Glad to see you got my message, Dano” I said. “But this place does have a front door. Or were you just testing our security?”“It's Southern security,” Ron replied. “Sentries in perfect uniforms walking a regular beat. Let’s just say we didn’t have a problem getting in. I came this way because I wanted you to meet someone. This is Captain Walt Armbruster, 3rd Texas Rangers.”“Happy to meet you, Captain,” I replied, “and happier still to dispense with the usual Southern formalities.”“I’m more than happy to meet you, sir,” he replied. “We’ve been down on our knees praying you’d come.”“Who’s ‘we’?” I asked.“The real soldiers, sir,” he replied.“Are there any in the Confederacy?”“Yes, sir, there are,” he answered, meeting my eyes. “Despite what you’ve seen here in Richmond.”“It was to discuss what I’ve seen here in Richmond that I asked Sergeant Danielov to meet me tonight,” I said. “I find myself in a somewhat awkward position, since what I have to say may appear poor return for lavish hospitality. Captain, would you excuse us if we go in the other room to talk privately?”Dano answered before the captain could. “No need, sir. I know what you’ve found here, and I know it through Captain Armbruster. You’ve found the worst of the old U.S. military: bloated staffs, meaningless briefings, commanders who can’t make decisions, process without content.”“All covered in syrup,” Captain Armbruster added. “That’s the Southern touch.”“That about sums it up,” I replied. “Make no mistake, Captain, the Northern Confederation is with the True Confederate party all the way when it comes to the important things, to morals and culture and religion. But I was sent down here to help win a war. At the moment, I have some difficulty seeing how I’m going to accomplish that, since your leaders seem unable to make up their minds about anything important, like what to do.”“Sir, our leaders don’t have any minds to make up,” the captain replied.Having been a captain in the American military, I knew what I was dealing with in Captain Armbruster. He was a warrior himself, but he was more than that. He was a warrior who realized that most of his superiors were not warriors. I didn’t figure that out until right at the end of my brief and lusterless Marine Corps career. This guy was ahead of where I had been.“Captain, I think I understand where you’re coming from. Earlier, you used the pronoun ‘we.’ Are there any more like you?”“Yes, sir,” he replied. “There’s a lot of us among the junior officers. We never belonged to the old U.S. Army, so we never learned how to be feather merchants. We joined up with the Confederate States Army for the same reason our ancestors did: to fight. We’re eager to get at these “New South” traitors to our Cause. But what can we do? Some of us have even thought about a coup, sir, but we don’t want to turn the Confederacy into some Latin American banana republic. Frankly, we’re stumped.”“Are you in touch with each other?”“Yes, sir. We’ve got our own network. We can get the word out, if you’ve got a word for us.”“Do you have a base?”“Yes, sir, a couple, wherever we have a commanding officer who thinks like we do. My unit is on one of our bases. We’re in Savannah, right where the old 3rd Ranger Battalion of the U.S. Army used to be stationed. We’re all Texas boys, and our colonel, Colonel McMoster, is on the right side.”“How do you know that?” I asked sharply. Trust demanded deeds, not just words.“During the burning of New Orleans, Colonel McMoster came to Richmond with a plan for our battalion to jump on the city and take it in a coup de main. He couldn’t get an answer from Richmond, so he decided we’d do it anyway. We were commandeering civilian aircraft at the Savannah airport when the word came over CNN that we were too late. The city was already gone.”“Why wasn’t he relieved for disobedience?”“His wife is distantly related to President Yancey’s wife. This is the South, sir,” the captain replied.Nepotism has its random virtues, I thought. “All right, Captain, I trust you and I’ll have to trust your colonel as well. I’m going to head down to Atlanta myself and see what’s going on there. Once I’ve done that, I’ll come see you and your CO over in Savannah. You get there first and tell Colonel McMoster that I don’t plan to go home until I’ve done something. What, I don’t know yet, but whatever it is it’s not going to happen here in Richmond.”“Nothing ever happens here in Richmond,” Captain Armbruster replied. “I’ll head back tonight. Sir, I speak for our colonel when I say I hope you will regard the 3rd Texas Rangers as under your command.”“Thank you, Captain,” I replied. “What’s the old Texas Ranger rule, ‘One riot, one Ranger?’ Maybe here we can say, ‘One civil war, one Ranger battalion.’” In any case, you can count on some action.”I turned to Danielov. “Dano, go with him. We’re going to need some aircraft. See if you can find a former Marine or two who has some.”“Aye aye, sir,” Ron replied.

***

The next morning, when Captain Ravenal came to pick me up for another visit to another useless headquarters, I told him I had a special favor to request.“President Yancey has personally directed that we assist you in every way, sir,” he replied. “If it can be done, we will do it.”“I want a Pullman berth on tonight’s train for Atlanta,” I said.The captain stiffened. “Sir, I cannot advise that. It would be extremely dangerous.”“That is my request, Captain. Will you meet it, or do I have to give you the slip, find the rail yards and hop a freight?”Captain Ravenal's face was a study as he wrestled with the greatest of military challenges, the need to make a fast decision in the face of unexpected events. Finally, he said, “Sir, President Yancey’s order was quite clear. Your ticket will be waiting at the station. I will of course have to inform my superiors of what I have done – tomorrow."Maybe Captain Ravenal had the makings of a real military officer after all.That night, at 8 PM, at Richmond’s Broad Street station I boarded the Southern Railway’s crack express for Atlanta, Birmingham, and Mobile, the John Wilkes Booth.

This Annoys Me

I keep seeing this stupid little infographic being passed around on social media and figured it was about time I addressed it. It made the rounds a few years ago, or possibly some variation on it, but the theme is the same: the Nordic socialist states are little slices of heaven and Americans are knuckle-dragging troglodytes. Allow me to pick it apart.

Here in the Nordic countries, universal access to free higher education is a no-brainer. That's because we know education is the ultimate investment in the future.

I'll just start by asking that if everyone has a bachelor's degree,  how does one differentiate himself from the rest of the applicant pool when applying for a job? Is a piece of paper from a state-run college (that any idiot can acquire just by showing up to a classroom for four years and handing in reports) really more valuable than actual learned and earned experience that comes in the form of an apprenticeship? The cult of education (since Science! has replaced God) has virtually eliminated an important Traditional relationship; that of the master and the apprentice.I will concede that an educated populace can certainly help grow a tech-based economy, which the Nords seem keen on doing. But why then is everyone encouraged to go to college for anything they choose? If education is the ultimate investment in the future (it's not), then why are they "investing" in philosophy and psychology majors?

In addition to not having any tuition fees, all students receive a monthly grant to help cover their living expenses.

Sounds great. Not only is everyone encouraged to get their state-issued credentials, the government will also foot the bill for your booze. I could run down the basic economics of how inflation and pricing structures work, but the Occupy turds that produced this picture are really only concerned with securing four years of zero responsibilities with no bill due at the end.

Of course, that does result in higher taxes.

You don't say? According to an April 2013 CNN Money article, the Nordic countries have among the highest income tax rates in the world. Denmark is at the very top, with its top rate coming in at a very commie 60.2%. And that top rate begins at incomes of only US$55,000, just barely higher than an average yearly income. So tell me, how is a young person ever really going to get established when the national government automatically takes roughly two-thirds off the top of his paycheck?

But free education reduces social inequality, and benefits both individuals and society in the long run.

Does it? It seems like it gives technocratic elites and fat-cat CEOs a pool of interchangeable drones who can push buttons and make gobs of money for giant corporations who will then show their appreciation for their Equal! workers by handing them the remainder of their paltry paycheck after the government stooges, who were paid off by those corporations in exchange for socialized education, take their cut.And why is inequality so bad? Nowhere in the world is any person, thing, or creature equal to any other. Some are better than others. Hierarchies form naturally. It'll really be okay. Let the cream rise to the top.

An educated population equals a strong, stable state, ready for the future. So the investment is well worth it. It's really simple as that.

Actually, this is pretty accurate. A population that has been fully indoctrinated by the state probably does leave the state pretty strong and stable.What they mean, though, is that being ready for the future is only possible  with college-level education. Perhaps that would be true if the only path to the future is one riddled with an endless stream of new electronics and technologies. Traditionalists know, though, that while some technologies can be useful, the future lies with the old ways. Farmers and craftsmen will find much more utility (not to mention joy and transcendence) in a world gone mad than HR representatives. Consider too, the challengers of the future: IT guys don't matter much when Islamic hordes and hyperinflation are your primary concerns.

If I may be so direct, just WTF are you Americans thinking? You make your own people go into often crippling debt, just to become educated, and just as they're trying to get started in life.

I'm not going to reactively defend the crypto-socialist American "system", but that's because it is basically no different from the blatantly socialist alternative that the poster presents. The U.S. system makes the individual pay through the nose for artificially-inflated college tuition and the Euro system makes him give up the majority of his paycheck for the rest of his life. Both have strangled the prosperity potential for the common young person. Both are ultimately the result of egalitarianism, too, because we deserve it!

You've unleashed 100s of expensive for-profit "schools" to prey upon your own citizens.

So? I don't know anyone that has ever gone to University of Phoenix, but I do know that no one thinks it's a real university. They only prey on people who shouldn't be pursuing college degrees anyway.

You spend more on your prisons than on your students.

That's pretty messed up. It's that same dumb-ass egalitarian ideology that gives us mortgage-sized student loans that makes that possible though. If we executed murderers, rapists, and pedophiles, and stopped worrying about how prisoners feel, then perhaps we'd cut down on all the state of the art exercise equipment, free college degrees, and cable TV we give them and save ourselves a few bucks. We're not all equal, I don't care about their feelings, and they don't deserve our compassion.

And among the top 15 countries by military expenditures, you're number 1...and spend as much as the other 14 combined.

Again, I won't defend American foreign policy, but it's pretty easy to point fingers when America also pays for Europe's defense, and has done so since 1945. Germany, France, and the U.K. are the only nations with what can be considered serious militaries, and even those would struggle if they were faced with a real crisis.

Meanwhile, your rich own most of your politicians, and fool many of your citizens into fighting to keep it that way.

Hate to break it to you, honey, but that's democracy. Do you honestly think your Nordic paradises are any less corrupt?

It's all a recipe for a lost generation at best, and a nation hurtling toward a decline and eventual unraveling at worst. So that's what I've been thinking...when is enough going to be enough for you Americans?

I don't disagree with anything here. The present system is broken beyond repair, but socialism designed for geographic areas the size of single U.S. states is not going to fix our problems. What got me the most, though, is that line at the end, "...you Americans," so smug and condescending. I have no love for the American government, but that played-out hippie-era hate-America garbage really annoys me.

The View From Olympus: Note to Europe--War Is Interested in You

Trotsky famously said, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." Europe's governing elites have no interest in war, but war of the most primal sort, religious war, is very much interested in the countries they misrule.The November 2 New York Times Magazine carried a long article by an American, Theo Patnos, who was captured by the Nusra Front in Syria. It should be required reading in every Interior Ministry in Europe, because it offers a realistic picture of the Islamic Fourth Generation forces that intend to bring their war to Europe. Patnos wrote,

I had stopped being surprised when Nusra Front commanders introduced their 8-year-old sons to me by saying, "He will be a suicide martyr someday, by the will of God." ... It would be a mistake to assume that only Syrians are educating their children in this manner. The Nusra Front higher-ups were inviting Westerners to the jihad in Syria not so much because they needed more foot soldiers--they didn't--but because they want to teach the Westerners to take the struggle into every neighborhood and subway station back home. They want these Westerners to train their 8-year-olds to do the same. Over time, they said, the jihadists would carve mini-Islamic emirates out of the Western countries, as the Islamic State had done in Syria and Iraq. There, Western Muslims would at last live with dignity, under a true Quranic dispensation.

Arab culture is a culture of bullshit, but even so, it would be a mistake for Europe to dismiss this as fantasy. It is unlikely Islamic 4GW forces will be able to create emirates on European soil. Before that happened the European publics would be ready to fight, even if their current leaders would not. But it is entirely likely Islam will attempt to create Islamic zones in European countries, and in the attempt they will bring war to Europe.It is, of course, already happening. Both England and France have Islamic no-go zones, where Englishmen and Frenchmen, including police, are in danger on their own soil. Muslims have reached out from these zones to carry out acts of war in other parts of Britain and France. What promises to change as a consequence of thousands of Islamics with Western citizenship going to fight in the Middle East, then returning to Europe, is the frequency of attacks on Christian and secular Europeans. These are likely to escalate to the point where European governments have to do something: expel immigrants who refuse to acculturate, turn their societies into full-lockdown national security states, or surrender and partition their countries on religious lines.The cultural Marxists will want to surrender, but, again, their publics will not. We see that in the rising vote totals in every election for genuinely conservative parties, parties that want to preserve European culture. Faced with the threat of real democracy, the cultural Marxists will be up a creek. What will they do? One answer is certain: they will try to get the courts to outlaw the genuinely conservative parties.Whatever twists and turns may occur, the whole mess still adds up to war. Amazingly, except to those who know how ideologues act, European governments are still stoking the intensity of that war by admitting more refugees. Padnos reported that

I listened to the fighters musing about their future. "Hey, Abu Petra," they asked me, "what is Sweden like?" If they were to present themselves as Syrian dissidents to the authorities, what would happen next? Was I familiar with the procedures in Sweden for seeking political asylum?

While the Sweden Democrats, the country's only real conservative party, did well in the recent elections there, all the other parties are in firm agreement that Sweden's door must remain wide open to refugees. Sweden has an excellent military, but of what use is it when the politicians hold open the door to invaders?So war, war where acts of terrorism are everyday events, is coming to Europe, or at least much of Europe. Britain, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain--all those places and more are on the road to war.They are not in the least interested in war, but war is interested in them. In this case, it does not take two to tango.

Victoria: Chapter 33

One of the rules of America’s second Civil War seemed to be that those who started off best, ended up worst. In that respect it was like the first Civil War. The South’s star had shone most brilliantly at the beginning at Bull Run on the peninsula with Lee and in the Shenandoah Valley with Jackson. After those brief shining moments, the industrial and financial sinews of the North put forth their strength and the South withered. Plus, the Union found two generals who could competently command armies, and the South had only one.When the union broke up a second time, the Confederacy resurrected itself smoothly, almost as if it had been there all along. The southern Senators and Congressmen again left Washington for Richmond. Old Senator Sam Yancey of Georgia was elected Mr. Davis’s successor and installed in the Confederate White House (on Monument Avenue, the trivializing statue of tennis player Arthur Ashe was replaced by a heroic cast of the black Confederate soldier). Southern officers and men of the former U.S. Army turned in their Yankee blue uniforms for Confederate gray.The Confederate economy took some shocks from the usual loss of markets and suppliers, but the South was big enough and prosperous enough to recover quickly. Beyond the low-level guerrilla war between blacks and Hispanics that had been going on in south Florida since the 1980s, there was little internal disorder. All in all, for most Southerners, not much seemed to change.In fact, it hadn’t, and that proved to be the Confederacy’s undoing. The southern wing of the old American Establishment held on to power. The politicians were the same people, the university presidents and newspaper editors and television commentators were the same types, and the leading businessmen played up to those in power, interested only in maintaining their status as members of the club.These people all belonged to the “New South.” A product of post-World War II Southern prosperity, the New South abjured the old Southern ways and culture. It embraced the rules of political correctness, found the Stars and Bars “offensive,” and lived the hedonist modern lifestyle. It favored Bauhaus architecture, not neoclassical columned porticoes. It listened to rock and rap, not Stephen Foster, and read Günter Grass, not Walker Percy, much less Sidney Lanier. It shuddered at the Southern Agrarians and sought its heroes among the carpet-baggers.The wealthy, ugly, overgrown crossroads of Atlanta, Southern only in its inefficiency and corruption, was the New South’s home and shrine. Charleston it regarded not as a wonder and an inspiration but as some sort of antediluvian theme park. The recovery of Southern independence and the restoration of the forms and symbols of the old Confederacy were, to the New South, not the triumph of The Cause but an unavoidable embarrassment, hopefully to be mitigated by time.Because the New South ruled the new Confederacy, the recovery of Southern independence did not bring with it any recovery of will. After a brief revival incident on proclamation of the Southern Republic, the old slide continued. Crime resumed its racial cast and upward trend, with the same old judges letting off the same old criminals. The schools – “attendance centers,” as they were already called in Mississippi by the 2000s – continued to turn out illiterates who had learned only that their own feelings were the most important thing in the universe. Television and other video entertainment (the South had plenty of electricity, thanks to coal and TVA) still sucked out brains like an ape sucking an egg. Ted Turner became Secretary of Education in Mr. Yancey’s second cabinet.But the New South was not the only South. Outside Atlanta and Miami and Charlotte, the Old South still lived. It hung on in the small towns and the hollows, on the farms and the shrimp boats, and in the real Southern cities: Charleston and Savannah, Montgomery and Natchez and Vicksburg. It resided among the country people – black as well as white – and the old folks and the Independent Baptists, and also among a genuine southern intelligentsia who did read Walker Percy and knew the Southern Agrarians and realized the whole civil rights business was just a second Reconstruction.Unlike the New South, the Old South had will. It didn’t have to recover it. It had never lost its will, the will to preserve and restore the old Cavalier Southern culture.It took about two years for the Old South to figure out that the New South despised it no less than the Yankees did. By 2030, the first rumblings of discontent could be heard. From country pulpits, Richmond was denounced in the same words earlier reserved for Washington. That year in Mississippi, an initiative put a referendum on the ballot to open each school day with a Christian prayer. When it passed by 78%, the Supreme Court in Richmond struck it down. A few months later, the Commanding General of the Confederate States Army asked the Senate Military Affairs Committee to end the recruitment of women as “incompatible with Southern chivalry.” The Committee responded by demanding the general’s dismissal. In the truck stops and the garden clubs, heads shook and tongues clucked.In most of the Old South, race relations were not a problem. Contrary to Northern propaganda, they had never been, for the simple reason that local blacks and whites got along. They lived largely separate social lives, but when they came together, they did so courteously, with understanding of the roles and responsibilities proper to each. That’s the way people work things out when they live side-by-side for centuries and are left alone by ideologues.The cities of the New South were a different story. There, a black underclass had formed by the late 20th century. Nurtured on phony resentments and imagined “injustices,” that underclass generated its own little Africa of crime, drugs, noise, and dirt. The government in Richmond proved as vulnerable to mau-mauing as its Washington progenitor, and with no will to contain it, black terror soon spread its bloody hand into an ever-widening circle of the white community.In the Old South, eyeholes were cut in sheets. But the courts and police remained mostly in New South hands, so the Klan stayed in the hollows, where it wasn’t needed. Alienation between people and government grew like kudzu in a wet July.By 2032, the guerrilla war in south Florida could no longer be mislabeled a crime problem. In Dade county, the body count from battles between blacks and Hispanics was upward of a hundred a week. Gangs and militias ran a network of feudal fiefdoms. If anyone, including grandmas pushing prams, ventured off their turf they were dead meat. Raiding parties of blacks were working steadily north, while Cuba threatened to send troops to protect the Hispanics.In March, 2032, the Confederate Congress finally ordered the army to take over Florida and restore order. Had the CSA been allowed to do what was necessary, the Confederacy’s disintegration might have been checked at that point.The Confederate Congress, being New South, had no stomach for anything of the sort. Instead, it laid a set of rules of engagement on the forces it sent to Florida that made them first impotent, then laughingstocks, and finally targets. All crew-served weapons were forbidden, and individual weapons could be used only to return fire, not initiate it. Fleeing felons could not be shot. “De facto local authorities” were to be respected and negotiated with, not rounded up and hanged – and the Army had to negotiate in Spanish if the locals demanded it. Habeas corpus remained in force. Black and Hispanic ombudsmen were to accompany the troops to investigate any charges of “racism” or “insensitivity,” with Confederate soldiers subject to courts-martial on either charge.It was the same old cultural Marxist crap as used to flow out of Washington, for the simple reason that the same people were sitting in Richmond who had sat in Washington. Just as when the Soviet Union fell apart in the 1990s, the nomenklatura simply transferred its allegiance to the new system, kept the same jobs, and got richer.By the Fall of 2032, the Confederate forces sent into south Florida had been pushed into enclaves by the effects of their own rules of engagement. As in intervention missions by the old U.S. Army, “force protection” had become the top-priority mission. A military that is most concerned with protecting itself can’t do anything else, so the local tribes and gangs became bolder than ever .Ominously, blacks and Hispanics began concluding local nonaggression pacts so they could cooperate in raiding into white areas up north. On October 2, a column of over three hundred vehicles and almost 5000 gang-bangers hit Tallahassee, sacked the city for three days and made it back to Dade with a train of loot that stretched for seven miles along the highway. The Confederate Army threw up a roadblock, but the raiders, wise to their enemy’s weaknesses, literally pushed their way through it without firing a shot. Not having been fired upon, the Southern soldiers couldn’t use their weapons.This pathetic display of impotence on the part of an army with a noble fighting heritage enraged the Old South. Rallies, marches, and torchlight parades were held in protest in all the Southern states, with hundreds of thousands of people turning out. When one came right down Monument Avenue in Richmond, old President Yancey joined it himself, telling the crowd he was “disheartened and dismayed by the disgrace to our ancestors and our flag.” In response, the Confederate Congress removed itself to Atlanta, where it passed a joint resolution “reaffirming the South’s commitment to a diverse, tolerant, and multi-cultural future.”

***

New Orleans had long been a strange Southern amalgam. Physically, it was one of the finest cities of the Old South, not just in its unique French Quarter, but also in the old Anglo section along St. Charles Avenue, the site of America's most beautiful homes and quaintest streetcar line.Its population was another matter. Run since the 1970s by the usual corrupt and inept black city government, the city had long been a hell-hole of violent crime and sexual perversion. The scenes in the French Quarter on a Friday or Saturday night would have given pause to a citizen of Sodom. A walking tour of the Garden District was dangerous even in daylight.The city depended on tourism, but the breakup of the union put an end to most of that. Under the Confederacy, there were some half-hearted efforts to sweep the French Quarter's dirt under the rug, but the lowest class grew steadily more worthless and more violent. From events in Florida, it drew the lesson that it could get away with anything. On the prematurely stifling evening of May 17, 2033, it erupted.At first, there was some organization, as much as gangs could manage. Columns headed out into the suburbs and surrounding countryside to loot and kidnap. But Louisiana wasn’t Florida, and the local refinery workers, shrimpers, and good old boys had long ago put together the Coon-ass Militia, as they called it. The black raiding columns were met not with roadblocks, but ambushes. The Coon-asses knew how to hunt, and the raiders who left New Orleans did not return.The state government in Baton Rouge was corrupt but white, and it swiftly mobilized the official State Militia and marched on New Orleans. Mississippi sent reinforcements, and from Richmond President Yancey ordered CSA units to assist – this time with heavy weapons. Within ten days, New Orleans was sealed and under siege.The blacks responded by letting loose the red cock. It wasn’t merely random mob action, which usually concentrates on liquor stores and leaves civic monuments alone. It was systematic self-destruction. The mayor of New Orleans, Mr. Tsombe “Big Daddy” Toussaint L'Overture Othello Jones, climbed up on a Mardi Gras float (a vast statue of Aunt Jemima pouring syrup into a pool where high yellow beauties wrestled with “White Planters”) and harangued the crowd in Jackson Square. “The white folk like things pretty. The white folk love this beautiful city. Well, I’m here to tell da white folk that this here city ain’t gonna be beautiful no more. Blow it up! Tear it down! Burn it to the ground! That’s the word we have for da white folk of Dixie – burn, baby, burn!”This, their final promise to their glorious city, the blacks accomplished. The cathedral on Jackson square was blown up by the New Orleans’s police SWAT team. The little cafe across from it by the river, famous for its beignets and cafe au lait, was bulldozed with city equipment, as were the gardens of the square itself. Bourbon Street was burned, along with Tulane University. Audubon Place, which 20th century writer George Will said contained “America’s noblest collection of stately homes,” was first burned by the city fire department, then razed. The stately, ancient Perley Thomas streetcars of the St. Charles Avenue line were stacked in a pile, doused with gasoline and set on fire. A mob then ripped up the tracks, heated the rails over bonfires and twisted them around trees, just as Sherman had done to southern railroads during the first Civil War. By the tenth of June, everything that had made New Orleans what it was lay in smoking ruins. Like Dresden in 1945, the city was no more than a bend in the river, covered in ash.The Confederate Army, state, and militia forces around the city were strong enough to have intervened, but they did not. The orders to do so never came. No one believed the blacks would really destroy one of the South’s most historic places, until they did it. When it happened, the authorities in Baton Rouge and in Richmond were too stunned to react.In Atlanta, the New South Congress did react. Blaming the death of New Orleans on “racism and intolerance that tried the patience of loyal African Americans beyond endurance,” they called for a series of “reforms to eliminate the symbols and substance of the South's racist heritage.” The first reform was to abolish both the Confederate national flag and the battle flag as the nation’s emblems. In their place, they raised over the Congress’s temporary quarters, the Atlanta Convention Center, a new flag that showed a rainbow on a U.N.-blue background. Beneath the rainbow was a black-and-white dove, behind and beneath which floated a sprinkling of silver stars, one for each Confederate state. The banner was immediately nicknamed “the Pooping Pigeon.”Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Alexandria, Baltimore, Birmingham, Little Rock, and other New South cities promptly raised the new flag. The Old South stuck with the old flag. Pointedly, the St. Andrew's Cross still flew over the Confederate White House in Richmond.

***

Often, a people will put up with unimaginable abuses on matters of real importance, but rebel when their sacred symbols are defiled. So it proved in the new Confederacy. The official replacement of the old Confederate flag with the Pooping Pigeon recalled the people of the Old South to their founding tradition: rebellion. On June 23, Coffee County, Alabama, announced its secession from the Confederacy, “in order to uphold and preserve the traditions of our Southern people and culture.” Interestingly, Coffee County was peopled almost wholly by blacks.As the news of Coffee County’s action spread, it set off a chain reaction. All over the South, towns and counties, cities and some whole states – Mississippi was first – seceded from the Confederacy. They still recognized Mr. Yancey as President, and called themselves True Confederates, but they would have no more of Atlanta, the Confederate Congress, and the New South.The New South responded in mirror-image fashion. New South cities (there was no New South countryside) withdrew their recognition from the executive branch in Richmond and from most of the state governments as well, pledging their loyalty to the Congress in Atlanta. That Congress elected a new President, a Dr. Louis Greenberg, formerly head of Duke University. True Confederates replied by electing a new Congress, which once again met in Richmond. This time, there were no holdovers from Washington.By the winter of 2033, two states existed on one territory. There was no geographic separation, beyond urban and rural. One city owed allegiance to one government, one to another. So far, there was no shooting, but it was obvious the situation was too unstable to endure. In the New South cities, militias were being organized (largely by combining black gangs) and weapons smuggled in. In Richmond, President Yancey was desperate for peace, but the Confederate Army was thinking about the war it knew was coming.

***

On March 4, 2034, Bill Kraft asked me to stop by his office.“John, I received a letter this morning via our embassy in Richmond from the Commanding General of the Confederate States Army. He is of course aware of the vote up here to provide military advice to people elsewhere in the former United States who share our beliefs. The True Confederates meet that standard, without a doubt. Are you ready to do some traveling?”“Have they formally asked for our assistance?” I asked.“They have,” Bill replied.“Well, it should be an interesting war,” I said. “When do you want me to leave?”“Tomorrow.”

Victoria: Chapter 32

Following the Dartmouth massacre, life became pretty quiet in the Northern Confederation. I had given up hoping the war was over. But gradually, as things stayed peaceful, I came to think life had again taken me by surprise. Maybe it was over, at least for us.It was hard to call it peace. In the 21st century, a nation lived on guard every moment or it didn’t live very long. Border control was as necessary as food or water or air. One moment’s inattention, one contaminated refugee or shipping container slipping through, could mean death for thousands through a genetic bomb.We still has some disaffected folks at home, Deep Greeners, cultural Marxists, animal rightsers and the like, but they kept a low profile. We’d made it clear what would happen to them if they didn’t. Besides, like everyone else, they were busy trying to eat, stay warm, and maybe make a little money.Our poverty continued to cleanse us of our sins, as the Dark Ages had cleansed Europe of the sins of the late Roman Empire. Consumerism, materialism, careerism, and the “me first” attitude of early 21st century America faded before the demands and rewards of real life. People began to see our “Shaker economy” as something good. Plain living strengthened old virtues and revived honest pleasures, like the smell of a fresh-mowed field of hay and a cow’s kiss on a frosty morn.Summer and winter, one thing grew stronger: Christian faith. We had some Jews, too, of course, and they were welcome. And each place still had its town atheist and village idiot. But our deep roots were Christian, and they were not touched by the frost. On the contrary, with the tares frozen, faith sprouted everywhere. Catholic or Protestant, high church or low, made no difference. We all knew what we shared was more important than what we differed about.This was real Christianity, too, not social gospel or social club Christianity. It was Christianity that changed the way people thought and lived. No longer was this world the most important. It was the place where people got ready for the world to come, through self-sacrifice, serving others, and obeying God’s laws because they loved God. Like our wise medieval ancestors, we were learning to put beatitudine before felicitas. Being saved was more important than being happy.It was clear we would never turn back to the vulgar carnival that was late 20th and early 21st century life. But being human, we did hope for a somewhat easier time of it, for hot water and frequent trains and the power to run machines that made things we could sell.Here, the Christian virtue of patience stood us well. The great project to dam the Bay of Fundy was moving forward. When it was complete, we knew we would have an abundance of white coal: electricity. With plentiful, cheap, clean energy, we could be prosperous despite our lack of most other resources, so long as we worked hard and maintained our morals. Switzerland isn't poor.When in the Spring of 2031 the former Canadian provinces east of Quebec asked to join the Northern Confederation, our people voted yes. The Brunswickers, Labradorans, PEIers, and Newfies shared our faith and morals, language and culture, and would be assets despite their current poverty. Our economies would be integrated by the electrical grid anyway, so we felt we might as well make it official.The reception of the former Canadians on July 4th, 2031 completed the Northern Confederation. We had reached what Mr. MacKinder would have called our “natural limits.” Unlike in the 19th century, those limits were now marked not by great rivers or towering ranges of mountains or uncrossable deserts, but by chaos.

***

To see how lucky we were in the N.C., all we had to do was peer over our southern border, into what had been Pennsylvania and New Jersey.Right after the remnant of the Washington government in Harrisburg fell into history’s dustbin, Pennsylvania’s future had looked bright. The sweep of our OMG through Pittsburg had left the white ethnic communities in control of that city. The state had resources: coal, oil, good farmland. It had a functioning government. It seemed to have fine prospects.Unfortunately, it also had Philadelphia. Already by the late 20th century, much of Philadelphia resembled some former colonial entrepot on the West African coast. The remnants of civilization, buildings, paved streets, electric wires, even that summa of urbanity the streetcar, still filled the view of the passer-by. But of civilized people there was small sign. Instead, mile upon square mile was crammed with jobless, skilless, feckless blacks. Beneath the human decay, every other kind of decay spread.Up the Delaware, there was more of the same. East of the water gap, and not far east, you were in the urban bush. Camden, Trenton, New Brunswick, Newark ran the line of the new Underground Railroad, moving drugs, guns, whores, and gang members up and down, back and forth in an endless journey to nowhere. Newark's fame as the Aframerican Florence had proven brief. Within a couple years, the corruption and incompetence of black leaders had brought it back to where it started.Hell was like that. By great effort, you could make a difference, for a little while. But then people got tired, and it all slid back into Hell.New Jersey never established itself after the union broke up. There was no effective government, and soon no government at all. Gangs, mafias, tribes provided the only order and security, if those terms had any meaning. Within a year of Pennsylvania’s independence, Philadelphia had de facto joined the Jersey tribal territories.Soon, the tribes started raiding. First it was just into the suburbs, for whatever they could steal. Then they started burning whatever they couldn't steal. Kidnapping became the leading sport once the goods were taken or trashed; you could get someone to pay for their kid or their grandma.Pennsylvania tried to stop it with the Guard, but around Philadelphia the Guard shattered on ethnic lines. Many blacks went over, with their equipment. Whites fled west into the countryside, but the raiding parties followed them. Pennsylvania's rural areas had been depopulating for generations, and the few people remaining were mostly old. They were easy pickings. By 2030, all the territory up to the laurel highlands was Indian country.At the beginning, Pittsburgh could have helped, but it had never given a shit about Philadelphia and wasn’t about to start. Then, the no-longer-working Pittsburgh white working class started coming apart. It had given birth to its own culturally black lower class, “whiggers,” its own children. The poisonous culture of drugs, sex, and degraded “entertainment” that overwhelmed the urban blacks proved no respecter of color lines. Soon, whigger gangs were turning Pittsburgh into another Philadelphia, and the country folk west of the Alleghenies were living in fear of white savages with painted faces and Mohawk haircuts. It turned out the dark mills where their grandfathers had labored were less Satanic than crystal meth and punk rock.On March 14, 2031, the last Pennsylvania governor packed up what was left of the state treasury and fled across the Maryland border into the Confederacy. A raiding party of Camden Orcs burned the state house the next day. Pennsylvania had become a geographic expression.What happened on our southern border was repeated in most of the other industrial states: Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, even Wisconsin and Indiana, though there the rural areas were strong enough to establish lines behind which they lived in comparative safety. They did it partly by fighting and partly by buying the barbarians off with regular shipments of food and house coal.A few folks in the N.C. argued we should intervene. But when they put the proposition on the ballot, 83% of the voters said “No.” Our people realized we could not export our success, not that way. We’d get drawn into the briar patch with the tar baby, and in the end would have nothing to show for it but a long butcher’s bill. The cultural base had to be strong enough locally to allow our old, Western culture to rebuild itself, and in these states it wasn’t. The rural areas had too few people, and in the cities, too many whites had gotten caught up in the cultural disintegration of early 21st century America to the point where they had lost the old ways.The only answer was depopulation, and that was happening. People died in the fighting, the massacres, the raids, and the sieges. They died of hunger and cold, especially in the cities in Midwestern winters. Mostly, they died of diseases, diseases created in labs as weapons of war. Lacking any but the most local political organization or security, they could not protect themselves from the new weapon of mass destruction , the genetically engineered epidemic. By 2038, the population of the industrial Midwest was one-tenth what it had been in 2000. The great cities lay deserted and in ruins. Happy the womb that was barren.

***

Behind our sealed borders, we survived. As things stood, we could hope for little more. Survival itself was tough enough in the New World Disorder of the 21st--formerly the 14th--century. We survived because we still believed in our old culture, and were ready to do whatever it took to keep it alive. In turn, it kept us alive. That was the ancient bargain, the bargain that had governed the West from its beginnings until the apostasy of the Enlightenment.Because we knew what we owed to our Christian culture, deep in our hearts we wished we could do more for it, more than keep it alive in our northern redoubt. We recognized the limitations on our power, and the primacy of our one absolute interest, staying alive – no Trotskyites, we. Still, as we smoked our pipes in our cold rooms, we dreamed.

***

On a frigid, early December day in 2032, St. Nicholas’ Day to be exact, Bill Kraft asked me to stop by his place in the evening. Bill wasn’t very social, even with Marines, and an evening invitation meant he had something on his mind. He needed to ruminate, and was inviting me to serve as his cud.I trudged across the snow, already crisp enough to walk on top of, about eight o'clock. Although Augusta was our capital, already by that hour it was shuttered, with most folks in bed. I saw only two sleighs out on the freshly-rolled streets. The pinholes of my candle lantern sent a wild display shooting along the silent surface of the snow. Shaker pleasures, I thought to myself, smiling. In the truck the white stuff would have just been something to get through.I found Bill as always, smoking his pipe and reading. He offered me such luxuries as a Maine governor now had at his disposal: a good fire and a bottle of Father Dimitri’s vodka well iced on the windowsill. Together they warmed me up.“Thank you for coming by to see me so late,” our Governor said. That touch of Spanish court etiquette was a sign Bill had carefully worked out what he was going to say and would proceed to unroll it like a Torah scroll. My function was to let my ears attend.“Like many of us, I am distressed by what is happening to those who believe as we do in the wreckage of what was our country,” he began. “I would like to do something to help them, and by that I don’t mean sending potato peelings and tracts.” That last was accompanied by a sharp look. I knew what Bill was thinking: the time-honored Anglican response to the needs of others.“My model in matters of state is Prince Bismarck,” Bill went on. “He knew when to make war, and more unusually, he knew when not to make it. I have no intention of dragging the Confederation into more war for the benefit of peoples elsewhere, even those who believe as we do. It wouldn’t benefit them in any case, and I know how our citizens voted when that proposition was made to them. I voted against it myself. Still, I think there may be another way.""What we did here, in the creation of our island of sanity amidst the chaos, we did with few resources, no fancy weaponry, not even any real soldiers beyond John Ross’s Marines. We succeeded because we had some people who understood war. They knew the history and the theory of war. They had educated their minds to think militarily. They understood von Seekt's rule, das Wesentliche ist die Tat: in war, only actions count. They could put thought and action together.”“What if, very quietly, we offered that same ability to our friends elsewhere in the old United States?”“Waal, that’s a thought,” I replied in non-committal Maine fashion. “When you say, ‘very quietly,’ do you mean without letting folks up here know we’re doing it?”“No,” Bill replied. “We’re not about to go back to the ‘Imperial Government’ games Washington used to play. The people of the N.C. would vote on this proposition as on any other. By quietly, I mean in ways that don’t get our armed forces into shooting matches.”“Hmm,” I responded. “That might be easier said than done.”“History shows a way, I think,” Bill suggested. “Remember Liman von Sanders?”General Liman von Sanders, I knew, had headed the German military advisory mission in Turkey during World War I. He turned the creaky Ottoman armies into far more effective opponents than the Allies had expected. One whole British army was compelled to surrender to them outside Baghdad, the first time that had happened since Yorktown. And there was Gallipoli.“A military advisory group, you mean?” I asked in turn.“Precisely,” Bill answered. “It could help our friends at small risk or cost to ourselves, and would keep us accurately informed about the wars now raging on our continent.”The latter point was important. Our own security demanded that we be up to the minute on what was going on elsewhere, because it could quickly arrive on our doorstep. At present, our information was spotty at best, because we didn’t have our own people on the scene.“Well, I think that might have some merit,” I said after chewing on the idea and my cigar for a while. “Obviously, the group would be small, and so long as things are quiet I could spare a few general staff officers. It would be a good education for them. Have you given any thought to who ought to head it up?”“Yourself, of course.”“Me?”“As you said, it would be a good education.”Ouch. There was the patented Kraft suppository. I shot Bill a resentful glance, but I couldn’t fairly reply. Even though I was Chief of the General Staff, he was better educated in the art of war and we both knew it. So I stood up, clicked my heels (as much as they’d click in heavy wool socks, having left my wet boots on the landing), and replied, “Zum Befehl, Herr Generalfeldmarschall!” Bill got the sarcasm.“Now don’t be snotty,” he shot back. “If you’ve done as you should in developing your subordinates, they’ll carry on for you quite nicely in peacetime. If something happens here, we should be able to get you back quick enough. Remember, there are wars going on all over the place, some none too distant from our own frontiers. Would the Chief of the General Staff rather spend his time in bed?”That got my Marine back up. “I'll march to the sound of any guns I hear, humping a full pack, and still get there a damn sight before you do,” I replied.“Good, then it’s settled, as far as we can settle it. The rest is up to the people of the Northern Confederation,” Bill said. Over and out.Slowly, I realized I’d been had once more. Oh well, I thought, the places I’d be going were mostly warmer than Maine, and maybe they offered something besides potatoes and codfish to eat. Still, a small voice told me I’d added one more layer to the legend of the “dumb Marine.”The proposition was put to the people on January 15, 2034, in this form: “Shall the Northern Confederation, within the limits of its resources and without engaging its armed forces, offer military advice to those people in the former United States who are fighting for traditional Western, Christian civilization?” It passed, though narrowly: it got just 53% of the vote. But my door had been opened.The world I was to find beyond was stranger than any beheld by Alice.