Allison Bricker

THE REGION, INDIANA – Although not an “official” Federal nor state holiday in my home in Indiana; let us disregard such governmental formalities and please join me in celebrating “Lafayette Day”.

For the uninitiated or perhaps anyone not an American history nerd, Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette was a French military officer born on September 6th, 1757. Upon hearing of the American War for Independence against Britain he wrote:

“When I first learned of that quarrel, my heart was enlisted and I thought only of joining the colors.”

Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette
Memoirs
1779

Shortly after his arrival in America, the Continental Congress commissioned upon him the rank of Major General. During his time on the battlefield against the British, he displayed bravery, cunning, and an unshakable loyalty to the American cause. He went on to win major battles at both Gloucester and Monmouth. In addition to his tactical skill on the battlefield, Lafayette successfully lobbied Louis the XVI for additional French troops and for full support of the French Naval fleet in the form of five additional frigates.

Upon his return to America, he successfully trapped British General Cornwallis between his troops and the York River, thanks to the timely arrival of the French Naval fleet. Lafayette and General Washington knowing that General Cornwallis and his men were low on supplies due to the naval blockade launched what would become known as “The Siege at Yorktown”. The siege succeeded, resulting in the surrender of the British by General Cornwallis to General Washington; effectively ending the American War for Independence.

Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette’s wife, Adrienne gave birth the to the couple’s only son, Georges Washington de La Fayette, who they named in honor of George Washington.

After the successful siege at Yorktown, Lafayette returned to France where he went on to work with Thomas Jefferson to normalize trade relations and debt reconciliation. He then returned to America in 1782 where he and his heirs were awarded honorary natural-born citizenship in several states and the nation as a whole upon ratification of the U.S. Constitution. During his time spent in America after the War for Independence, he visited all of the several states except for Georgia. During his travels around the newly independent nation, he gave impassioned speeches on the inherent natural liberties of mankind and pushed vehemently for the abolition of slavery.

Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette passed away on the 20th of May 1834 at the age of 77.

Source(s): The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson by: William Howard Adams • “The Marquis de La Fayette in the American revolution: With some Account of the Attitude of France Toward the War for Independence” – Volume 1, By Charlemagne Tower published: J.B. Lippincott Company (1895)

Allison Bricker

Does the current loss of liberties at the hands of an ever-growing /corrupt government compare to the long train of abuses endured by the Founding Generation? Managing Editor of “Republic Magazine”, Mr. Gary Franchi, tasked me with investigating this very question for the magazines current special issue entitled “The Second American Revolution”.

The following is an excerpt from my feature article, entitled “Alter or Abolish?” as it appears in the current fifteenth issue, now available in both hard copy and digital format.

…dedicating the bulk of the Declaration to the actions of the King and not the King’s character or personality, Mr. Jefferson’s eloquent and well-reasoned intellect succeeded in guarding against the American cause falling victim to accusations of being based upon “light or transient Causes”.

Several historians note, this concentration on substance succeeded in not only unifying large numbers of previously ambivalent colonists, but also helped rally French sentiment towards the cause for independence. The Declaration of Independence was well received in France by both the general population and aristocracy as the culmination of Enlightenment philosophy as well as a counter to well known British tyranny.

…a similar review of our contemporary political climate and ever-encroaching government contrasted against the tyranny endured by the founding generation can serve a proper barometer as to the level of our oppression and to the illegitimate government revocation of our inherent liberties.

Original text: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance”.

• The Central Authority continues to construct and expand a litany of bureaucracies that perpetually dispatch agents to interfere and plague the people with unending decrees and regulations. Simultaneously, the Central Authority plunders the fruits of the People’s labor in order to service odiously created debt, imposed by and to the sole benefit of, a small cartel of private bankers.

Original text: “He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers”

• The Office of the Executive through its plain and seemingly Purposeful lack of Enforcement of current Laws of Naturalization, has sought to excite Jealousy and Hatred amongst the People thereby leading to the kneejerk reactionary Scapegoating of Peoples of Hispanic ethnicity.

Read the full article and issue – SUBSCRIBE to REPUBLIC   MAGAZINE

Allison Bricker

It is both amazing and troubling to me that in the relatively short span of seventy-eight years, a important piece of American history can be almost wholly wiped from the minds of the populous. Perhaps it is no coincidence that as America took its first giant lurch towards becoming a socialist democracy with the then largest government intrusion to date in 1931, that the intrinsic ideals of inherent liberty and federalism, ergo Columbia would be legislatively and culturally  removed from the public consciousness.

Columbia began solely as the poetic name ascribed to the United States of America following the Latin neologic tradition of combining a surname, i.e. Columbus and -ia commonly meaning “land of “. In time, Columbia began to be used by the Founding Generation as an allegorical embodiment of the principles of the American Revolution after a native African female slave, named Phillis Wheatley, wrote a poetic tribute to George Washington, on October 26th, 1775.¹

By the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia, Columbia had become the national personification of the newly birthed American Republic.

For George Washington’s inauguration in 1789, Phillip Phile composed and Joseph Hopkins wrote a piece originally entitled “The President’s March”. This song which was later called “Hail Columbia” was our de facto national anthem until 1931 when it was replaced by an act of Congress, with the “Star Spangled Banner”. A modified version of the song is still in use and is played to announce the arrival of the Vice-President.

For One Hundred and Forty-two years, her allegorical representation appeared everywhere, from money to pamphlets, to monuments to national expositions, to political cartoons; Columbia and what she represented was an ingrained part of the American psyche. The Founding Generation was so dedicated to securing the principles of the Revolution and federalism, that they named the land surrounding the national capitol, the Territory of Columbia in her honor and as a reflection of these ideals. Moreover, the chief architect and Founding Fathers involved with the planning and design of the new capitol also believed that the citizens who lived and worked within the Territory should be so dedicated to upholding these ideals and service to the Republic, that they prohibited residents from voting for their own self interest, and thus purposefully withheld a voice in Congress.

Columbia has gone by many names, from the Statue of the Republic, during the 1898  Columbian Exposition in Chicago, to the Statue of Freedom, which sits atop the Capitol building and faces directly towards the Washington Monument.

Yet once the nation fell into the Great Depression thanks to the money manipulators from the FEDERAL RESERVE and the incompetent government meddling into the economy started by President Hoover and expanded by President Roosevelt, Columbia and her pull yourself up by your bootstraps, live free and independent mantra was pushed aside. Superseding her place, is the scraggly unscrupulous looking figure named “Uncle Sam”; who reminds us to pay our taxes to the King and urges our men and women to enlist in order to be sent off to die in pursuit of Neo-America’s Imperial foreign policy.

It is my wish that one day, the sunshine of Liberty and the ideals embodied within Columbia, may wash back over the shores of our beloved Republic.

Source(s): ¹The New England Historical and Genealogical Register By Henry Fritz-Gilbert Waters, New England Historic Genealogical Society, page 310

Allison Bricker

When I was little I recall my first exposure to our Founding Fathers some where around the 2nd grade just before Thanksgiving of that year. We covered a very basic watered down version of the “1st Thanksgiving” and “Revolutionary War”. The memory that sticks out most in my mind is that our nation, America, was the first place where the individual was to be the standard bearer of liberty and not controlled by kings or a state-church. That in order to protect us from the designs and ambitions of future kings, the Founders wrote two documents, The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This “Cliffnotes” version of our country coupled with heavy doses of ABC’s Saturday morning Schoolhouse Rock instilled in me a deep infatuation and love affair with the noble ideal that was to be the American Republic.

Granted in second grade my comprehension of all of this was severely limited, thus proven by me thinking Thomas Jefferson was an African-American and then wondering why it took so long for baseball to let a black man play in the major leagues??? My ignorant bliss would not last, time passed and as one dug beneath the surface, Lady Liberty had more than her fair share of bruises. From the slaughtering of Native Americans, to the utter hypocrisy of slavery in a nation where all men were supposedly equal, to women’s suffrage, etc. Despite all of this, the enthusiasm in how my teacher told the stories must have been contagious. Her eyes would get big as she excitedly explained the “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” and President Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware River.

Nevertheless, little by little as I dug through the cobwebs of our history it became apparent, that those Kings our Constitution was intended to protect us against, never gave up their fight to reassert their so called aristocratic “divine right”. That even while America has attempted to right the wholly unjust policy of slavery, that we as women are now considered “equal”, the pull-peddling Aristocrats who sought out power, repeatedly picked at the parchment, the ideals, the philosophy of individual liberty, until it was a mere shadow of a document, left only in memoriam, no longer applicable in a “post 9/11 world”.

They set up “opposing methods” to an aristocratic philosophy and called them “political parties”. The philosophy is socialism under the guise of freedom . The “Democrats” believe in social engineering and wholly indebting individuals to the state in the form of social welfare programs.

Republicans set out to prove their methodology via conquest and military occupation. Now let it be known their labels have switched and have been interchanged several times, from federalists, to progressives, to liberals, to conservatives. However the end to their pandering has always remained the same, centralized control of their “subjects”.

Somewhere along the line, they rediscovered the best way to gain more power, a method as old as humanity itself; divide and conquer. These “politicians”, from the Latin (poli) meaning “many” and (tics) meaning “Blood sucking creatures”, began an appeal to an individual’s core sense of fairness. The politicians promised to right whatever problem was most pressing to them as a demographic, in exchange of course, for a vote for the pull-peddler. No matter the cause, from retirement, education, to saving the trees, to homelessness, to healthcare, the politician promised a centralized cure to their ailment. Yet the politician was not done, they imbued the particular demographic of the moment with the notion that this group cause was superior to any and all other causes, and thus demanded, as well as justified the legal use of force, i.e. government coercion, i.e. the trampling of others rights in order to achieve its end. Slowly the country’s philosophy began to change from “live and let live”, whence unless an individual suffered from harm to themselves or property, to a nation that believed they are “entitled to trample” for the benefit of the group, dissenting opinion be damned. This my fellow readers is the root to collectivism, the division of individual Americans into neat little “people groups”.

One need not look too hard in order to find how the pull peddlers craft a strategy and coral these “people groups” into election campaign pawns to be used and cast aside. No just look at the groups up for grabs this most recent cycle. Democrats hoped to embolden the LGBT community, anti-war activists, and Hispanics with promises of the “Big Rock candy Mountain” while Republicans returned to the well for evangelical Christians, Hispanics, and business men, with “both” using the same old scare tactics of gays and terrorists. Politicians promised “change” spoken with cryptic vaguery, national security from an invisible boogeyman, “free” healthcare from a financially bankrupt Treasury Department, civil unions to create separate but equal distinctions, war to protect us from war, and an end to war, yet more saber rattling to a new enemy “Iran”, energy independence via a 19th century technology, all in the ruthless support of their continued power. We the sheeple have been sold a bill of goods by the Washington D.C. Snake oil Salesmen. How much longer shall we suffer this incremental despotism?

Allison Bricker

As our Republic continues to swerve recklessly away from its Constitutional founding, the opportunity for us to salvage what so many have died for, slides further away from our grasp. Just as Winter has begun to set in across the nation, our Liberties seem to have fallen away like leaves lost into the breeze. Whether it be legalized torture or the Department of Homeland Security suspending the Constitution along the border, the country I fell in love with as a child, looks less and less like the land of the free.

Many amongst us are pinning their hopes of a better tomorrow on yet another politician who promises “change” from the status-quo and business as usual in Washington. However, within hours of the election, his “transition” website, laid out his and his enforcer’s vision of mandatory unpaid servitude for the youth of our nation. Shortly thereafter upon echoing criticism ringing across the blogosphere, they whitewashed the website and scurried their indentured labor force back under the rug. The Obama transition team decided to replace the compulsory service text with toned down verbiage so as not to cause a scandal prior to his formal coronation.

In this Winter of our discontent, there are a few sparks which seek to reignite our lost sense of self. It has for a long time now been my opinion that the planets must have aligned to have allowed such an assembly of thinkers such a Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and the rest of the founding generation to have known to each other in order to be able to hammer out Independence and beat back tyranny. Perhaps, we may be so fortunate yet again, to recapture that spirit of ‘76 with a new gathering of minds dedicated to reason and human liberty. One such intellect where parallels can be drawn is Naomi Wolf. Her latest works, “The End of America” and “Give Me Liberty” are written with such a dedication and sound resolve towards the virtues of freedom that the pages in her books seem to echo the spirit and tenacity of Thomas Paine.

In support of the ideas presented in, “The End of America”, and to help spread the word virally in the internet age, Ms. Wolf has released an online video where she covers the ten steps taken time and again, by all would-be tyrants in a closing society. The movie is available free for online viewing and is a must see for those in tune with our current state of affairs. Her content and tone is so well reasoned and articulated, even those who refuse to acknowledge the danger, must at least pause to question, what our Republic will resemble in two, five, or ten years from now.

The video can be viewed here, and please if you find her presentation to be a powerful arguement as to why we need to restore, preserve and defend our American Republic, please consider passing it along via DiGG, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, etcetrera.