DO AMERICANS “WORSHIP” GOVERNMENT?
by Michael Gaddy, ©2017
(Mar. 6, 2017) — The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.” Elbert Hubbard, who also stated that prison “Was an example of a socialist’s paradise, where equality prevails, everything is supplied and competition is eliminated.”
In 1999, I debated a well-lettered member of European academia on the intent and purpose of our Second Amendment in Sacramento, California. At the end of our exchange, this lady stated the following: “I don’t care how many facts you present, you are never going to change my mind.” While I would like to blame this sort of well-embraced repudiation of facts, or the origin of the lady who said it, her form of acquired ignorance is far too prevalent in this country to do so.
While there are reams and reams of factual evidence which intellectually destroys the premise that our Second War for Independence was fought primarily over the issue of slavery, the great majority of Americans who take their daily dose of socialist propaganda from the deep-state-owned mainstream media refuse to accept those facts with a passion that resembles worship of some form of deity.
Probably more overlooked than the primary issue for this war would be the atrocities that have been visited on various peoples by those socialists who prevailed in 1865 and those who followed their examples.
First, although almost everyone has heard of the prison camp at Andersonville, Georgia where horrid conditions such as a lack of food, medicines, and shelter led to the deaths of 13,000, primarily from scurvy, diarrhea, and dysentery, all which could have been prevented with adequate supplies of foods and medicines which the Union Army command had refused to provide as well as a refusal for prisoner exchanges which would have freed many of those who died at Andersonville, very few have ever heard of Camp Douglas, where over 6,000 Confederate prisoners died, many from the same afflictions as the Union prisoners in Andersonville. The primary difference being while the commanders of Andersonville had no blankets, food or medicines to dispense, those same items were in good supply at Camp Douglas but were intentionally withheld by the authorities there. In addition, any Black Confederate soldier who was brought to Camp Douglas was summarily executed. The only monument to these men who died at Camp Douglas was erected by Confederate Veterans. Documentation of the above can be found in the books To Die in Chicago by George Levy and the well-done documentary film Eighty Acres of Hell which can be found here.
Then there was the Elmira, New York prison which was referred to by those who survived as “Hellmira.” Here, also, clothing, medical supplies, and other necessities were intentionally withheld from the Confederate prisoners. This camp saw a 25% death rate.
Most likely, very few have ever heard of the “Devil’s Punchbowl” in Natchez, Mississippi. Here the victims of Union Army cruelty and negligence fell not on Confederate soldiers but on blacks who had been “liberated” by the Union Army. According to blackmainstreet.net:
“20,000 freed slaves died after being forced into post-slavery concentration camps… As the slaves made their way to freedom, the town of Natchez went from a population of 10,000 to 120,000 people almost overnight. In order to deal with the population influx of recently freed slaves, a concentration camp was established to essentially eradicate the slaves. The men were recaptured by the Union troops and forced back into hard labor. The women and children were locked behind the concrete walls of the camp and left to die from starvation. Many also died from the smallpox disease. In total, over 20,000 freed slaves were killed in one year, inside of this American concentration camp. A researcher studying the existence of the concentration camps said, “The union army did not allow them to remove the bodies from the camp. They just gave ’em shovels and said bury ’em where they drop.” Many of those blacks forced into labor by the Union Army begged their captors to be allowed to return to the plantations from which they had recently fled, according to Don Estes, historical researcher and former director of the Natchez City Cemetery.
Ah, the beneficent Union Army, which fought a war to free the black man, saw fit to place them in concentration camps and work or starve them to death.
Ironic, is it not, that Major Wirtz, commander at Andersonville Prison, was tried and executed after the war, but the commanders of the Confederate prison camps in the North or the Union commanders who placed freed blacks in concentration camps saw no punishment for their heinous acts but in at least one instance (Camp Douglas) they were promoted. After the war, a Union soldier and captive at Andersonville, James Madison Page, wrote a book in defense of Major Wirtz. This can be found in the book, “The True Story of Andersonville Prison: A Defense of Major Henry Wirtz.”
If one were to do a study of personal integrity, one could always start with Major Wirtz, for he was offered a reprieve from his death sentence if he would implicate Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis in the deaths of the men at Andersonville. He refused and went to his death on the gallows. (source: The treatment of prisoners during the War Between the States by Rev. William Jones)
Of course none of the above takes into consideration the death and destruction that was visited on the American Indians by the self-same Union Army both during and after the war against the South. Nor does it take into accord the atrocities that were visited on the surrendered German soldiers at Rhine Meadows by the Union Army of 1861-65’s descendants in 1945. Ironically, these crimes were perpetrated on the innocent by soldiers who were just “following orders,” a crime for which several Nazis were hanged.
So, the next time you feel the warmth of American Exceptionalism overtaking your mind, please take the time to study the facts concerning the atrocities of forces who represent the government you have chosen to worship. That is if your institutionalized, perpetual ignorance will allow you to do so.
“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” ~ George Orwell
Americans very often refuse to see themselves as others see them, especially those they have harmed. Therein lies the reason so many are comfortable believing the lies of their government supported revisionist historians and media whores.
IN RIGHTFUL REBEL LIBERTY