Tag Archives: American History

Remember The Pilgrims

Earlier: A Mayflower Descendant Remembers Her Ancestors And The Faith Of Her (And America’s) Fathers

Four hundred years ago, in late December 1620, the Pilgrims who had sailed from England on the Mayflower finally came ashore at what would become Plymouth Plantation. They began building houses and a fort, painfully slowly because of the deep snow and frozen ground. While still on board, they had signed the Mayflower Compact (which has inspired VDARE.com’s 1620 Society).  You’d think such an auspicious anniversary would occasion many celebrations and re-enactments. Not so. 

Of course, it’s partly because of COVID-19 policies.  But even that shouldn’t prevent more media and political celebration, with COVID-19 accomodations. 

One must also suspect the influence of the  relentless Leftist attack on the America’s forbears and its English heritage explains the omission. By forcing us to forget the Pilgrims and their dangerous ocean voyage to settle a new land, Cultural Marxists intend to force us to forget the Historic American Nation. The Pilgrim saga and the story of Plymouth Rock must be retrofitted because of what it was: the establishment of an English Christian colony that was a foundation of the current United States of America. 

The Cultural Marxists portray it as the beginning of a racial genocide, as the reliably Leftist Associated Press just did [400 years on, Mayflower’s legacy includes pride, prejudice, by David Goldman and Alanna Durkin Richer, October 23, 2020]. And on the other, it must be transmogrified into something it wasn’t: the arrival of “refugees” and “illegal immigrants.”

(Right, the cover of the New Yorker from Thanksgiving, 2011.)

How about radical Latino activists?  Consider that 24 years ago, for instance,  Agustin Cebada, of the Brown Berets of Aztlan, offered this boiling bile:

“Go back to the Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims!” he shouted. “Get out! We are the future. You’re old and tired. Go on. We have beaten you; leave like beaten rats.”

[Mexico’s “Reconquista” — We Have Been Warned,American Renaissance, June 1998].

Listen below, and go here for more:

But perhaps that was thought to be too explicit. Some on the Left have settled on rewriting the story of the Pilgrims: They were not settlers, but instead “refugees” and “illegal immigrants,” as I wrote when describing the effort to Hispanicize Thanksgiving.

Of course this is wrong, given that a country must already exist for the refugees or illegal immigrants go to. But recasting the narrative that way enlists the Pilgrims as partners in The Great Replacement being orchestrated by today’s refugees and illegal aliens.

How, the argument goes, can we deport illegal immigrants today? The Pilgrims were illegal too! And they were refugees from religious oppression! How dare we deny Islamic refugees a play in this Melting Pot—this Nation of Immigrants!

Of course, the Pilgrims were neither. They were settlers looking for a place to establish their own sectarian polity, where they got to make the rules.

The Pilgrims  didn’t call themselves Pilgrims, but “Saints”. They were also referred to as “Brownists,” after Separatist Robert Browne (who later returned to the Anglican Church). The term “Pilgrims” only came into use in 1800 [What’s the Difference Between Puritans and Pilgrims? by Dave Roose, History.com, July 31, 2019].

A Calvinist sect, the Pilgrims were Separatists who had separated from the Church of England because they did not believe it could be purified according to their beliefs.  They wanted to create their own society, governed by their own religious principles, and so, while still  wanting to remain English culturally, they  left their country for Leiden in The Netherlands during the reign of James I.

They began arriving in 1607, the year Jamestown was founded in the New World. Some were textile workers; others taught English to Dutchmen. (Teaching English in a foreign country, by the way, is still a stereotypical Anglo expatriate thing. I taught English in Mexico for years.)

Though the Pilgrims freely practiced their religion in Holland, they left because England’s King James was prodding the Dutch government to crack down on them. And, significantly, they were concerned that their children were assimilating to their host country; i.e. becoming Dutch. They were English, and wanted to remain English.

When the chance came to colonize a new world, they took it. They would still be on English territory, yet they would also be autonomous. Their only financial obligation: repaying the joint stock company that sponsored the colony. In that exchange, beaver pelts were coin of the realm.

Having returned to England to embark on the adventure, the settlers were supposed to sail on two ships, the Speedwell and the Mayflower. The passengers, including some who hadn’t lived in Leiden, packed onto the Mayflower after they determined the Speedwell was leaking and unseaworthy.

It left Plymouth, on the south coast of Devon, on September 16. To today’s Americans with modern comforts, the prospect of crossing the Atlantic on a wooden ship, with all its dangers and discomforts and no GPS or iPhones, would be impossibly daunting. Not so for the Pilgrims. It was a chance for a new life, free from the smothering edicts of the Anglican Church.

They sighted Cape Cod on November 19. The Mayflower attempted to sail south toward the Hudson River, but strong currents and unexpected shoals, and nearly being shipwrecked  convinced the crew to turn back.  They  dropped anchor in Provincetown Harbor at the northern end of the hook-shaped Cape Cod,  on November 21.  This is where they drafted and signed the famous Mayflower Compact.

For the next month, groups of Pilgrims and crew scouted the area in a smaller sailing vessel called  a shallop,  seeking a suitable settlement location.  They eventually decided upon “New Plymouth”, which had been previously named by none other than John Smith, former leader of the Jamestown colony, who had explored that coast (and named it New England) in 1614.  

On December 16, the The Mayflower dropped anchor in New Plymouth Harbor and after 3 days, a specific  settlement site abandoned by the Patuxet Indians was chosen. 

The first formal landing party disembarked on December 21 (O.S. December 11) and two days later, construction began.  This is celebrated in Plymouth on December 22 as “Forefathers’ Day“.

But throughout the winter, most of the Pilgrims remained on the Mayflower, with the bulk of the passengers not disembarking until March 31, 1621.

They Mayflower and crew didn’t leave until April 15. 

The Plymouth Colony  lasted just 72 years. It was absorbed by the Province of Massachusetts Bay, dominated by the later-settled but larger Massachusetts Bay Colony of Puritans.

Nevertheless, Plymouth is the most famous of the English colonies which eventually became the United States of America, partly because of the First Thanksgiving in the Fall of 1621.

Today, it’s estimated that  35 million people are descendants of  51 Plymouth Rock colonists.

The General Society of Mayflower Descendants has 30,000 members and worldwide chapters. Some descendants claim several colonists as ancestors. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin descended from six.

I present below a partial list of Americans who wouldn’t be here if William Bradford and his stout band hadn’t sailed for Plymouth Rock, from the following six sources:

 

PRESIDENTS

John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, James A. Garfield, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush

Note on Coolidge: In a 1920 tricentennial speech, Coolidge, then governor of Massachusetts and vice president-elect, said he was not a Mayflower descendant. Instead, he said, his ancestors were Massachusetts Bay Puritans [Learn From Pilgrims, Coolidge Admonishes, The New York Herald, November 23, 1920]. However, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants claims Coolidge descended from Plymouth colonists and the website Mayflower Faces documents it.  So Coolidge descended from both groups of Massachusetts colonists.

OTHER POLITICAL PERSONAGES

Frances Perkins, Nelson Rockefeller, Dan Quayle , Howard Dean, U.S. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, and Barbara Bush (née Pierce), Jeb Bush and George P. Bush

MILITARY LEADERS

Generals George McClellan and Leonard Wood.

ACTORS

Humphrey Bogart, Orson Welles, Marilyn Monroe, Katharine Hepburn, Joanne Woodward, Clint Eastwood, Dick Van Dyke, Christopher Reeve, Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Meryl Streep, Richard Gere , John Lithgow, Jodie Foster, Christopher Lloyd, Sigourney Weaver, Matt Damon, James Spader, and the Baldwin Brothers: Alec Baldwin , Daniel Baldwin, William Baldwin and Stephen Baldwin .

LITERARY FIGURES

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, Noah Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Phillips Brooks clergyman (wrote O Little Town of Bethlehem), Ambrose Bierce, Ernest Hemingway, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and John Bartlett (Bartlett’s Quotations).

SINGERS

Bing Crosby, Pete Seeger, and Taylor Swift.

CEOs

George Eastman, founder Eastman Kodak, and Berkshire Hathaway tycoon Warren Buffet.

OTHER FAMOUS AMERICANS

Lavinia Warren (dwarf performer), Julia Child, Cokie Roberts, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., Grandma Moses , Amelia Earhart, Alan ShepardBenjamin Spock, Hugh Hefner, and “Mayflower Madam” Sydney Biddle Barrows.

NON-AMERICANS

British actor Benedict Cumberbatch and Canadian songstress Avril Lavigne. Marie-Chantal, Crown Princess of Greece is a Mayflower descendant on her American-born father’s side. Jan Masaryk, foreign minister of Czechoslovakia from 1940-1948, was a Mayflower descendant on his American mother’s side.

These are only a few Mayflower descendants.  Maybe you’re one too.  Although I’m not (the Wall family lived in colonial Virginia) I honor them as founders of our nation. 

What the Pilgrims accomplished and left for the world, a new nation and millions of descendants, was no mean feat. And so we must not allow the Pilgrims to be ignored, or worse, turned into villains, or redefined to fit today’s leftist narratives.

To its credit, the U.S. Postal Service has produced a beautiful stamp featuring the Mayflower to honor our Pilgrim heritage. Buy some, and use them proudly.

The Pilgrims must be honored for what they are: Founders of the Historic American Nation.

For more information, try these websites, in addition to those listed above:

American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. in 2008 after many years residing in Mexico. Allan’s wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.

Source

I’m Not Sorry & You Are Not Hurt

America may have a lot to correct, but by the looks of everyone else its not very much.

Let the godly ones exult in glory;
Let them sing for joy on their beds.
Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,
And a two-edged sword in their hand,
To execute vengeance on the nations
And punishment on the peoples,
To bind their kings with chains
And their nobles with fetters of iron,
To execute on them the judgment written;
This is an honor for all His godly ones.
Praise the Lord!

Psalms 149:5-9

Pattern of God’s Judgment: God Forgotten is National Suicide

I have been drawn to search for The Pattern of God’s Judgment. Is God consistent? Is God predictable in His judgment? These questions are in the forefront of my mind as I see America disintegrate at “break neck” speed.

In today’s study I was particularly interested in Deut 8:20. That verse points to the consistency of God’s judgment across all nations.

“Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so you shall perish; because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord your God.

This raises a number of questions in my mind.

  • How did God make the nations before them perish?
  • What hand did He have in their demise?
  • What insights would be gained by tracing their rise and fall?

The following homily is taken from The Pulpit Commentary by R. M. Edgar. The bulk of the passage in Deuteronomy relates to remembering God, but notice Edgar’s third point below where he labels God forgotten as the prelude of national decay.

  • Could it be said that all nations need something bigger than themselves to believe in to sustain themselves?

I pray that once again in my country it would be the one true God.

God Forgotten Amid Second Causes

Deuteronomy 8:7-20

7 “For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills; 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; 9 a land where you will eat food without scarcity, in which you will not lack anything; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 “When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.

11 “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; 12 otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, 13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 15 “He led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water; He brought water for you out of the rock of flint. 16 “In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end. 17 “Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ 18 “But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. 19 “It shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you today that you will surely perish. 20 “Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so you shall perish; because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord your God.

The support of the wilderness was manifestly miraculous. They could not doubt their dependence there upon God. They might murmur even amid daily miracle, but they could not doubt it. It would be different in Canaan, and it is in view of this Moses warns them. There they would get sustenance in ordinary ways; and they might say that their own power, and not God’s blessing, made them wealthy.

I. There is a very great tendency to forget God amid the order of nature.

It is supposed God has nothing to do, because we get our supplies through steady “second causes.” But God claims recognition when he blesses us through ordinary channels as well as when he blesses us through extraordinary. The natural order is either due to God or arranged itself. We have not credulity sufficient for the latter hypothesis, and must accept the former.

II. When God asks us to be fellow-workers with Him, it is not to be engrossed with our work and to ignore His.

In the wilderness God fed them out of his own hand, so to speak. But in Canaan he directed them to work for their daily bread. They were raised from being “spoon-fed” to be “fellow-workers.” The temptation in Canaan was to think that their own hand and power had produced the wealth. It is the same still. From being fellow-workers with God, men, by mere forgetfulness, pass into the delusion of being sole workers. Life is workable, they think, without God. Atheism is the principle underlying such a life.

III. This unholy independence of spirit is the sure prelude of national decay.

It is not national “self-reliance” which serves a state, but national reliance upon God in the use of the means He has appointed. Nations that think they can get on alone are left at length to do so, and God-deserted they perish. The Canaanites were illustrating this in their own case. They should be a warning to Israel. Living without God in the world, depending on themselves, they were about to be removed violently from their ancestral scats. It was so afterwards with Israel. They were as a nation effaced from the land where they had been placed in probation. The captivity of the ten tribes was terrible, and so was that of Judah and Benjamin. It is this which nations must still guard against.
God will not be ignored. If nations attempt it, they only efface themselves. Dying dynasties and scattered nations proclaim the existence and retribution of God.

IV. How needful, then, to recognize God’s hand in all things!

The procession of nature – all that is beautiful in second causes, has come from him. The “First Cause” may surely be allowed to work through “second causes” without forfeiting His right to recognition and thanksgiving. Our times are largely atheistic, because our little knowledge of second causes affords such fussy occupation to us, that we have not taste or time to see the First Cause behind all and using all for His glory. – R.M. Edgar

Source

Figure 1: www.preceptaustin.org

DSA Convention or Trigger Fest Convention?

Although this was funny in a sad way (I love Anthony Logan’s presentation of it here) I did imagine our halls of Congress filled with Representatives and Senators trying to get through a meeting like this. It may do the country a lot of good. Maybe I want to vote for a Party like this. We’ll see.

On a more serious note, I’m thinking God gave America 300 years to try out our government and now that it has come to this maybe I need to pray about running for president on the platform of not banning guns from people but banning people from government.

Has Western Civ Already Fallen?

Has Western Civ already fallen?
Are we just waiting to hear the sound of it after hitting the floor?

I believe the day is coming where we update this document among others.

“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the AUTHOR.”

A Dark Day for the American Experiment

A lot of interesting pictures in this 10 min video.

This really is a dark day for the American Experiment.
The death of any man is sad, but the death of a nation is as well.
As for me, I will march on. The two most important dates on my calendar are my date of death and my day of judgment. By God’s grace I am ready.

St. Paul, a long time ago encouraged some Christians expecting the woes of the Great Tribulation that Jesus had just taught about 20 years earlier.

(I added some emphasis.)
“Now as to the times and the epochs, brethren, you have no need of anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. While THEY [nonChristians] are saying, “Peace and safety!” [Are they saying that today? If not, then we are not there yet.] then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape.

BUT YOU, BRETHREN, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief; [Is he saying no surprises for the alert and sober Christian? Is he saying that if the day (time) confuses you, then it is not that time?]
for you are all sons of light and sons of day.
We are not of night nor of darkness;
so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night.
But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not destined US for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with Him.
Therefore ENCOURAGE one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing.” 1 Thess 5

The Monetary Cost of War

15 Years After the Iraq Invasion, What Are the Costs?

By Stephanie Savell
March 21, 2018

This March marked the 15th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2003, President George W. Bush and his advisers based their case for war on the idea that Saddam Hussein, then dictator of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction — weapons that have never been found. Nevertheless, all these years later, Bush’s “Global War on Terror” continues — in Iraq and in many other countries.

It’s a good time to reflect on what this war — the longest in U.S. history — has cost Americans and others around the world.

First, the economic costs: According to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the war on terror has cost Americans a staggering $5.6 trillion since 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.

$5.6 trillion. This figure includes not just the Pentagon’s war fund, but also future obligations such as social services for an ever-growing number of post-9/11 veterans.

It’s hard for most of us to even begin to grasp such an enormous number.

It means Americans spend $32 million per hour, according to a counter by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Put another way: Since 2001, every American taxpayer has spent almost $24,000 on the wars — equal to the average down payment on a house, a new Honda Accord, or a year at a public university.

iraq-war-exit-strategy

Khalil Bendib / OtherWords.org

As stupefying as those numbers are, the budgetary costs pale in comparison with the human toll.

As of 2015, when the Costs of War project made its latest tallies, up to 165,000 Iraqi civilians had died as a direct consequence of U.S. war, plus around 8,000 U.S. soldiers and military contractors in Iraq.

Those numbers have only continued to rise. Up to 6,000 civilians were killed by U.S.-led strikes in Iraq and Syria in 2017 –– more civilians than in any previous year, according to the watchdog group AirWars.

In addition to those direct deaths, at least four times as many people in Iraq have died from the side effects of war, such as malnutrition, environmental degradation, and deteriorated infrastructure.

Since the 2003 invasion, for instance, Iraqi health care has plummeted — with hospitals and clinics bombed, supplies of medicine and electricity jeopardized, and thousands of physicians and healthcare workers fleeing the country.

Meanwhile, the war continues to spread, no longer limited to Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria, as many Americans think. Indeed, the U.S. military is escalating a shadowy network of anti-terror operations all across the world — in at least 76 nations, or 40 percent of countries on the planet.

Last October, news about four Green Berets killed by an Islamic State affiliate in the West African nation of Niger gave Americans a glimpse of just how broad this network is. And along with it comes all the devastating consequences of militarism for the people of these countries.

We must ask: Are these astounding costs worth it? Is the U.S. accomplishing anything close to its goal of diminishing the global terrorist threat?

The answer is, resoundingly, no.

U.S. activity in Iraq and the Middle East has only spurred greater political upheaval and unrest. The U.S.-led coalition is seen not as a liberating force, but as an aggressor. This has fomented insurgent recruitment, and there are now more terrorist groups in the Middle East than ever before.

Until a broad swath of the American public gets engaged to call for an end to the war on terror, these mushrooming costs — economic, human, social, and political — will just continue to grow.

Source: https://otherwords.org/15-years-after-the-iraq-invasion-what-are-the-costs/