Stiff Right Jab: The True America - Forever Independent

Steve Montgomery & Steve Farrell
Monday, Nov. 12, 2001

We reflect in reverent awe that out of the devastating rubble of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the woodlands of Pennsylvania - came - wonder of all wonders - a wave of patriotism, a revival of selfless sacrifice, a return to the faith of our fathers. Flags have been waving, donations have been flowing, prayers have been ascending.

We feel sure yesterday's dreadful downing of an American Airliner in Queens, New York will inspire more of the same. America will grieve, but America will grow stronger.

Or will we? A counterforce is out there, working overtime to reverse the upside of the attacks on Sept. 11. Their voice persists in a half-doomsaying, half-"progressive"-like mantra which purports that as far as solutions to terrorism go, 'independence forever, need not apply!' Yes, there message is a hopeless, 'we can't do it alone!'

Their "progressive" solution to their doomsday view of America's strength? Forge global alliances with the likes of Russia, China, and the UN; compromise, unionize, even subsidize the very sponsors of the very terrorists who killed our fellow Americans. Their message is outrageous. But their message is being heard. President Bush, the US Congress, and all the rest of us should turn a deaf ear to them, lest this marvelous wave of patriotism for America is unwitting converted to loyalty for a new world order and a brave new world.

What can we do to stop this madness? One solution is to reread our history, and armed with the truth stand up to the 'we can't do it alone' crowd with, an 'oh yes we can,' retort. We have done it before, and we can do it again.

One bit of proof. At a distant period (1776) when our situation was far more precarious then it is today - a time when our numbers were small (3 million), our finances minimal (bankruptcies and poverty were rampant), and the threats to our liberties were far greater - disease, Indian terrorism, and the most powerful nation on earth were at war with us. Yet, with all those negatives going against us, and actually much much more, America was unconquerable, and America refused to budge, no not one inch regarding our principles, our liberties, and our independence. Death and poverty were prices we were willing to pay to be free from a Mother Country which no longer shared our values.

The voice which tell us this is Lord Chatham's before the British House of Commons, a citizen of England, and a statesmen of great stature. His inspired task? To defend the American colonists as champions of liberty which Britain could never defeat, for America, though a rag tag army of "rebels" was united in justice, truth, intelligence, and wisdom as no other people since the world began. America was born, no destined, for Independence, and to be a light on a hill.

Yes, from a foreigner, in the hour of our weakness, let us learn about our greatness. From George Bancroft's, History of the United States we read:

Chatham, after inveighing against the dilatoriness of the communication, moved to address the king for immediate orders to remove the forces from the town of Boston as soon as possible.

My lords! he continued, the way must be immediately opened for reconciliation; an hour now lost may produce years of calamity. This measure of recalling the troops from Boston is preparatory to the restoration of your peace and the establishment of your prosperity.

Resistance to your acts was necessary as it was just; and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or enslave your fellow-subjects in America, who feel that tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part of the legislature, so he described the king, or by the bodies who compose it, is equally intolerable to British subjects.

The means of enforcing this thraldom are as weak in practice as they are unjust in principle. General Gage and the troops under his command are penned up, pining in inglorious inactivity. They are an army of impotence; and, to make the folly equal to the disgrace, they are an army of irritation. But this tameness, however contemptible, cannot be censured; for the first drop of blood shed in civil and unnatural war will make a wound that years, perhaps ages, may not heal. Their force would be most disproportionately exerted against a brave, generous, and united people with arms in their hands and courage in their hearts: three millions of people, the genuine descendants of a valiant and pious ancestry, driven to those deserts by the narrow maxims of a superstitious tyranny. And is the spirit of persecution never to be appeased? Are the brave sons of those brave forefathers to inherit their sufferings, as they have inherited their virtues? They have been condemned unheard. The indiscriminate hand of vengeance has lumped together innocent and guilty; with all the formalities of hostility, has blocked up the town of Boston, and reduced to beggary and famine thirty thousand inhabitants.

But his majesty is advised that the union in America cannot last! I pronounce it a union, solid, permanent, and effectual. Its real stamina are the cultivators of the land; in their simplicity of life is found the integrity and courage of freedom. These true sons of the earth are invincible. What though you march from town to town and from province to province! How shall you be able to secure the obedience of the country you leave behind you in your progress to grasp the dominion of eighteen hundred miles of continent?

The spirit which now resists your taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship-money in England; the same which, by the bill of rights, vindicated the English constitution; the same which established the essential maxim of your liberties, that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent. This glorious spirit of whiggism animates three millions in America, aided by every whig in England, to the amount, I hope, of double the American numbers. Ireland they have to a man.

Let this distinction then remain forever ascertained: taxation is theirs, commercial regulation is ours. They say you have no right to tax them without their consent; they say truly. I recognize to the Americans their supreme, unalienable right in their property, a right which they are justified in the defence of to the last extremity. To maintain this principle is the great common cause of the whigs on the other side of the Atlantic, and on this. Tis liberty to liberty engaged; the alliance of God and nature, immutable and eternal.

To such united force, what force shall be opposed? A few regiments in America, and seventeen or eighteen thousand men at home! The idea is too ridiculous to take up a moment of your lordships' time. Unless the fatal acts are done away, the hour of danger must arrive in all its horrors, and then these boastful ministers, spite of all their confidence, shall be forced to abandon principles which they avow, but cannot defend; measures which they presume to attempt, but cannot hope to effectuate.

It is not repealing a piece of parchment that can restore America to our bosom: you must repeal her fears and her resentments, and you may then hope for her love and gratitude. United as they are, you cannot force them to your unworthy terms of submission.

When your lordships look at the papers transmitted us from America, when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must avow that in all my reading -- and I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master-states of the world -- for solidity of reason, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion under a complication of difficult circumstances, no body of men can stand in preference to the general congress at Philadelphia. The histories of Greece and Rome give us nothing equal to it, and all attempts to impose servitude upon such a mighty continental nation must be vain. We shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when we must. These violent acts must be repealed; you will repeal them; I stake my reputation on it, that you will in the end repeal them. Avoid, then, this humiliating necessity. With a dignity becoming your exalted situation, make the first advances to concord, peace, and happiness, for that is your true dignity. Concession comes with better grace from superior power, and establishes solid confidence on the foundations of affection and gratitude. Be the first to spare; throw down the weapons in your hand.

Every motive of justice and policy, of dignity and of prudence, urges you to allay the ferment in America by a removal of your troops from Boston, by a repeal of your acts of parliament, and by demonstrating amicable dispositions and every hazard impend, foreign war hanging over you by a thread, France and Spain watching your conduct, and waiting for the maturity of your errors.

If the ministers persevere in thus misadvising and misleading the king, I will not say that the king is betrayed, but I will pronounce that the kingdom is undone; I will not say that they can alienate the affections of his subjects from his crown, but I will affirm that, the American jewel out of it, they will make the crown not worth his wearing.

Lord Chatham spoke, in a sense as a prophet, a defender of the truth who was given to fully understood America's role in the world, a role many of his empire building contemporaries were too ill focused to notice, a role that surpasses all other national causes for as long as governments have been on the face of the earth.

Independence then, and Independence forever, under God is what America's destiny was then an now, and no one could take that away from us, no not the greatest empire on earth. That is why we are both encouraged and dismayed regarding the American reaction since Sept. 11. The average citizen has had the true spirit of America rekindled in their hearts, a rekindling that could lead to a renaissance of all the values which made America great, and true, and free. While the elites have sought to tear down or misdirect this marvelous wave of patriotism and convert it into multilateral relationships which compromise every good principle, every sensible insight our forefathers stood for. They seek to thwart our Independence, and in a large sense, they are at this moment in possession of the upper hand, for too many are listening. We can only hope that the true spirit of America will prevail, and the elites will be exported on the next fast boat to China. Thanks to WTO status for Red China, perhaps there will be a boat waiting.

Contact Steve & Steve at StiffRightJab@aol.com

Bibliography

George Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol.4, Pg.101 -102