Frederick Douglass on Decoration Day, 1871

The Monument of the Unknown Loyal Dead Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1871,

"Friends and Fellow Citizens:"

"Tarry here for a moment. My words shall be few and simple. The solemn rites of this hour and place call for no lengthened speech. There is, in the very air of this resting-ground of the unknown dead a silent, subtle and all-pervading eloquence, far more touching, impressive, and thrilling than living lips have ever uttered. Into the measureless depths of every loyal soul it is now whispering lessons of all that is precious, priceless, holiest, and most enduring in human existence."

"Dark and sad will be the hour to this nation when it forgets to pay grateful homage to its greatest benefactors. The offering we bring to-day is due alike to the patriot soldiers dead and their noble comrades who still live; for, whether living or dead, whether in time or eternity, the loyal soldiers who imperiled all for country and freedom are one and inseparable.

"Those unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously gathered here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and beautiful flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave spirits, reached, in their glorious career that last highest point of nobleness beyond which human power cannot go. They died for their country."

"No loftier tribute can be paid to the most illustrious of all the benefactors of mankind than we pay to these unrecognized soldiers when we write above their graves this shining epitaph."

"When the dark and vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious, preferring to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the Southern heart and stirred all the malign elements of discord, when our great Republic, the hope of freedom and self-government throughout the world, had reached the point of supreme peril, when the Union of these states was torn and rent asunder at the center, and the armies of a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad blades and bloody hands to destroy the very foundations of American society, the unknown braves who flung themselves into the yawning chasm, where cannon roared and bullets whistled, fought and fell. They died for their country."

"We are sometimes asked, in the name of patriotism, to forget the merits of this fearful struggle, and to remember with equal admiration those who struck at the nation's life and those who struck to save it, those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty and justice."

"I am no minister of malice. I would not strike the fallen. I would not repel the repentant; but may my "right hand forget her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth," if I forget the difference between the parties to hat terrible, protracted, and bloody conflict."

"If we ought to forget a war which has filled our land with widows and orphans; which has made stumps of men of the very flower of our youth; which has sent them on the journey of life armless, legless, maimed and mutilated; which has piled up a debt heavier than a mountain of gold, swept uncounted thousands of men into bloody graves and planted agony at a million hearthstones -- I say, if this war is to be forgotten, I ask, in the name of all things sacred, what shall men remember?"

"The essence and significance of our devotions here to-day are not to be found in the fact that the men whose remains fill these graves were brave in battle. If we met simply to show our sense of bravery, we should find enough on both sides to kindle admiration. In the raging storm of fire and blood, in the fierce torrent of shot and shell, of sword and bayonet, whether on foot or on horse, unflinching courage marked the rebel not less than the loyal soldier."

"But we are not here to applaud manly courage, save as it has been displayed in a noble cause. We must never forget that victory to the rebellion meant death to the republic. We must never forget that the loyal soldiers who rest beneath this sod flung themselves between the nation and the nation's destroyers. If today we have a country not boiling in an agony of blood, like France, if now we have a united country, no longer cursed by the hell-black system of human bondage, if the American name is no longer a by-word and a hissing to a mocking earth, if the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army who rest in these honored graves all around us."

(h/t Dead Confederates blog)

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Crypto-Fascist Keith Preston's Longtime Love Affair With Vermont's Own Bigoted Secessionists

Normally, rather than reprise past posts I merely link to them for the reader's benefit, should they so choose to learn more. However, recently a racial separatist who tries unsuccessfully to mask his toxic fascist tendencies has turned his attention to this blog. So, to provide more understanding of his depraved political agenda, I've reposted immediately below two posts from December, 2012

There'll be an afterword.

Keith Preston: A Tribute from A Secessionist Bigot for the Late Thomas H. Naylor
Friday, December 12, 2012

This one comes from Keith Preston, an anarcho, pan-secessionist, anti-immigrant, racial "realist" (Read: racist), anti-Semitic, segregation affirming homophobe who, naturally, has a few issues with women as well.

Preston has a history of supporting extremists like Naylor. Preston was a contributor to the white nationalist conference held by the National Policy Institute (NPI) in 2011. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NPI is an active white nationalist group based in Georgia; there's more from the SPLC here. Here's NPI's website (and don't forget to wash when you're done). A project of the NPI on the web called Alternative Right which calls itself Euro-Centric (and we're not talking about currency) identifies Preston as a part of their editorial collective of white guys here.

He's been described as a "fascist in anarchist clothing," but I liken his style, both personal and in writing, as more like the Comic Book Guy, if the Comic Book Guy wore a swastika armband around the comic bookstore.

The website One People's Project has more on Preston's racist ties with such low-lifes as The Political Cesspool's James Edwards and American Renaissance's Jared Taylor here, here and here.

At his website, Attack The System, Preston wrote:

"It is with great regret that I must inform our readers of the passing of Thomas H. Naylor, founder of the Second Vermont Republic. I received word earlier this evening that Tom passed away last night after a sudden stroke at the age of 76."

"Fortunately, I was able to interview Tom for my podcast on Voice of Reason earlier this year..."

"Tom was the author of thirteen books, including three on secession, and one of his books, Downsizing the USA, was crucial in the development of my own political outlook. It was largely due to Tom’s influence that I came to realize that decentralized micronations achieved through pan-secession are the most viable alternative to the Leviathan mega-states that plague us today. I cannot recommend Tom’s voluminous body of writings of these issue(sic) highly enough..."

Yes, "Tom" was an inspiration to a racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and plainly misogynistic dirtbag.

Figures.

Here's an obscure, little known fact: Preston is the Secessionist Outreach Officer for Sebastian Ernst Ronin's (see post immediately below for more on Ronin) white supremacist Renaissance Party of North America, according to this post at Preston's website:

Mr. Ronin is the Chairman of the Renaissance Party of  North America (RPN), for which I am the Secessionist Outreach officer.  This is a brand new party, having been formed only in December of 2009, and it is the only political party in North America that I would even consider becoming involved with at present.  The party’s mission statement and philosophical outlook is light years ahead of any of its competitors, as it combines syndicalist/distributist economics, radical decentralization, “archeofuturism” and other ENR-inspired ideas, anti-globalism, peak oil theory, anti-Cultural Marxism, anti-political correctness, anti-imperialism, a Spenglerian view of history, pan-secessionism, race-realism, a strident yet reasonable environmentalism, a social conservatism that is measured and libertarian, neo-paganism within a wider spirit of religious toleration, and criticism of mass immigration in the name of civilizational survival and self-preservation.  In other words, all of the best and most far-sighted contemporary ideas are being pulled together into a unified and syncretic whole.

Not many people know that; fewer still care about these assholes.  These Naylor mourners are typical of his scumbag followers.

Readers of this blog may also recall that I'd posted about how Naylor had conspired with a Canadian fascist, Sebastian Ernst Ronin, to establish a white, racist homeland in northern New England and the Canadian Maritime provinces. As noted above by Keith Preston himself, Preston was a part of this failed conspiracy but by which he cemented his reputation as a white separatist, anti-Semite and all around scumbag. Here's that post:

Before His Death Thomas H. Naylor Collaborated in a Proposal to Create a White Homeland in Vermont
Thursday, December 20, 2012

Thomas H. Naylor, founder of the unsuccessful attempt to secede from the Union called the Second Vermont Republic, had a long history of cozying up to racists, Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, secessionists and white separatists.

What is not so well known was his involvement with a Canadian racist and anti-Semite, Sebastian Ernst Ronin, and of their plan to make Vermont part of a "White Homeland." Ronin, much as Naylor was on the American and Vermont political scene, is an extremist nobody on the Canadian political landscape.

I'd first noted Naylor's ties to the "New Acadia" or "Novacadia" proposal that a new confederation be formed from upper New York state, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and the Canadian Maritime provinces after an appearance he'd made in June, 2007 on FOX TV's Bill O'Reilly dreck here.

Naylor then began to conspire with Ronin, who was well known even then as a Canadian racist, in April of 2008 to create this new confederation of New England states and Canadian provinces, according to Ronin. Naylor wrote about these discussions concerning the new confederation here, and even urged that Vermonters contact this Canadian racist pig.

Hell, they'd even made a map of the White (10), Native (3), Hispanic and Black (New Ebony? Really?) Homelands.

They never (particularly in Naylor's case) got around to making clear how the relocations might have been accom- plished, but given Ronin's fondness for WWII Nazis and Naylor's hatred for the State of Israel, I'm sure that there was some sort of operational "final solution" that they had in mind.

In his tribute to Naylor this week, Ronin referred once again to their plans for a White Homeland in Vermont that can be found here. Ronin wrote (and it was never declaimed by Naylor):

"Novacadia:captures the three Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, and the three New England states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, and part of northern New York; Second Vermont Republic in place and Novacadia Independence Party pending; this is new nation #4 that defies an international boundary; White Homeland Six"

Ronin's piece makes explicit that they'd brook no dissent from the blacks, the browns, the natives and the Jewy types.

"The designations of Native, Negro and Mestizo homelands does not mean that we have to make either the RVI or RPN friendly to Native, Negro or Hispanic input, although some may be inevitable as per federal legislation (witness the example of the British National Party); it simply means that we retain our political position to speak on behalf of Whites and negotiate on their behalf, but within a political context that recognizes all other continental ethnic/racial players, except for Zionist Jews and non-Jews."

What wasn't clear is how they'd deal with the fags, although subsequent to the enactment of the Civil Unions law in Vermont, Naylor had said that'd still be up for re-discussion in his SVReich.

One of Naylor's toadys, Rob Williams, recently described Naylor to the press as being "irascible." If Williams were being honest, he'd have described Thomas Naylor as a lying, hateful, insane prick. Clearly, from what we know of Naylor's expulsions of the insufficiently obsequient secesher drones and his condemnations of the vast majority of Vermonters (99%+) failure bow to his every dictum, Naylor would have become, like similarly deranged autocrats, more than a tyrant in Vermont, Novacadia or whatever other fictional principality/republic that he sought to create out of nothing.

Despite their professed regrets regarding his passing at his memorial service today in Charlotte, VT, no one in their right mind will possibly miss the crap that he's done in the furtherance of his secesher, racist, anti-Semitic vision for Vermont. Real Vermonters will have no trouble putting Naylor out of their thoughts - forever.

And much like Thomas Naylor and Rob Williams, Preston's antipathy to the civil rights organization who's brought so much financial pain to Preston's butt buddies in the neo-Nazi movement and the Klan, the Southern Poverty Law Center:

"In other words, the SPLC and others of their ilk are our mortal enemies, and should be given no recognition whatsoever. To recognize them, to attempt to rebut or accommodate them, is to grant them legitimacy. We should treat them as we would treat an enemy army during wartime."
Source

Normally, one would try to kill the "enemy army during wartime," but I don't want or need to put words into Preston's pudgy mouth. He does himself in.

Absent from Naylor, Ronin or Preston's scheme to create a white homeland is any pretense for an electoral process. Idiots though they all are, none were so deluded to believe that the public would support such a hate based scheme. I have little doubt that Preston's supporters will find the jewel in this shitpile of an idea. Fortunately, the reality based public will see it for what it is - a hate based political entity with no chance of coming to fruition, ever.

You can read much more of a self-produced compendium by Preston, a rotund, crypto-fascist, segregationist, anti-Semitic, homophobic scumbag if the ever was one, whose ongoing love affair with the Vermont seceshers touchstones, tropes and obsessions is here

UPDATE 5/23/14 5:45 PM: Keith Preston was interviewed today on the Thomas Woods Show. Thomas Woods is a founder of the League of the South and sympathizer for the poor, poor Southron slavers who were so, so oppressed by 19th century anti-abolishionists. Yuck!

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A Secessionist Neo-Nazi Calls Rob Williams Hate Site a Place of "Friends and Fellow Secessionists"

While doing some research connected to the topic in the previous post, "Secession Alliances and Cross Pollination," I came across one of the connections that shows how close those ties can be in the minds of seceshers.

The website operated by a League of the South member with past ties to the largely defunct neo-Nazi group called the National Alliance (a group that has "produced assassins, bombers and bank robbers, among other things"; membership #C0127), Michael Cushman's Southern Nationalist Network, has a post by Cushman from a little over a year and a half ago where he writes,

"Our friends and fellow secessionists in Vermont have posted an excellent poem with which many Southern nationalists will surely identify. Below is one part that stands out as being particularly relevant in this age when US hegemony stretches far and wide and crushes all that is unique beneath its bland boot of universalism..." Source

Right. Unique like neo-Nazism. What follows in Cushman's post is an excerpt from a now dead link to the now out of commission secesher publication once published by - wait for it - Rob Williams. (For any newcomers to this blog, you can learn more about 9/11 Truther Williams' anti-Semitism and his cavalier attitude towards the racism of his secesher allies here and here.). The poem is such dreck that I can't bring myself post any of it, not even the excerpt, by a Kentucky secesher named Wendell Berry. Williams is so taken by Berry's lyric flotsam that it found its way into Wiiliams' anthology rehash of things once published in his bygone rag. What Williams didn't include was some of the racist writers and bloggers that have contributed to his hate site and wood stove paper kindling supply (that I missed so much this winter), like UVM's white supremacist prof, Robert S. Griffin[1] [2], frothing anti-Semites like Thomas H. Naylor, Dennis "Hit List" Morrisseau, Carol "Jew Loather" Moore, or anti-race mixing contributor to Dennis Steele's utterly failed secesher gubernatorial candidacy, James Duncan. [1] [2]Williams' book has an Amazon Best Sellers rank of #770,243 - heh.

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Public Banksters - Part XII

This should probably be subtitled as the Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire edition.

Nearly a month ago the Executive Director of the California based Public Banking Institute and unregistered lobbyist for a small group calling itself Vermonters for a New Economy, Gwen Hallsmith, appeared on the little watched GRITtv's Laura Flanders show. (NB: Even public banking supporters describe Gwen's work as "Lobbying for Public Banking") Flanders is a self described journalist whose interviewing style is to repeat back a program guest's talking points in the form of a question. If you have 17:20 minutes to waste of your life, you can watch the entire interview here.

At the 1:10 mark in the Flanders Show vid Hallsmith says about the non-binding public banking article the she and her little group managed to get onto a handful of Town Meeting warrants,

"It was great to hear all the returns coming in from around the state, 'cause towns all over the state voted for it. It wasn't just a little cluster here or there."

Holy whooper, Gwen! That's precisely what the results showed. Perhaps a "smattering" of towns would have been more accurate. Most of the less than a score of towns (out of more than 200) are clustered in north central Vermont, and in most of those they were only one or two towns in an entire county; no county (that's five or more than a third of Vermont's counties) along the entire New York State border had a town that considered the public banking article. Two towns each in the two southeastern counties considered the public banking article and not all of them supported it.

At the 14:27 mark of the vid Hallsmith delivers another of her misrepresentations that has been soundly refuted by Vermont Treasurer Beth Pearce,

"(W)e discovered in our (so-called) study is that existing state lending agencies already have plenty of unrestricted assets that could be used to capitalize the state bank. They have more than what would be required for a state bank. There's no additional bonding or capitalization needed."

Of course, Flanders let this stinker go by without a challenge or mention of the fact that it has been repeatedly refuted by state officials. Treasurer Pearce clearly states in her report to the Senate Committee on Government Operations of February 5, 2014 that,

"Capitalization would be expensive." Source

Also joining Treasurer Pearce in refuting the claims that were then being made by the public banksters in an October 23, 2013 VTDigger piece,

"VHFA (Vermont Housing Finance Agency) director Sarah Carpenter is not convinced about the merits of public banking.

“I’m a little perplexed about how that group thinks they’re going to get the capital,” Carpenter said. “Most of the money comes in as taxes and goes out as paying bills. So I’m not sure how they would have access to long-term capital, which is critical to most lending activities. Source

The so-called "study" that Hallsmith referred to was something pulled straight out of the ass of secessionist political oligarch and rocket scientist, Gary Flomenhoft, who a few years back engineered a seditious plot to supplant the Vermont Supreme Court and judge the work of Vermont's executive and legislative branches using a self-appointed "council" of secesher hacks. One of the hacks, Gaelan Brown, went so far as to suggest capital punishment for errant legislators. Hallsmith herself has had long ties to the moribund Vermont secesher movement. She was a featured speaker at the secesher's 2012 Statehouse Stunt that dazzled tens of Vermonters on a warm, late summer day. (You can read my reports on the 2012 Statehouse Stunt here, here, here, here and here.

At the 8:55 mark of the Flanders Show vid, Hallsmith laid the groundwork for what can only be described as a baldfaced lie when she says,

"I think this year we'll be able to claim some level of victory because it starts to look like the 10% that we talked about, transferring from the Treasurer's account into direct economic lending in Vermont will go through.

They've moved that into a new bill called S. 220 which I believe passed (Ed's Note: No, it hadn't and wouldn't for at least another four weeks, and then in quite a different form than Hallsmith described.) The banking license, however, which of course is part of the tool kit that we (need) to make all of this work is not going to pass this year. But we'll keep working on this next year because I think as the state gets more and more used to this idea of being a bank, they'll start to see the logic and they'll start to see the benefits of it.

Ironically, S. 220 is a bill first proposed by Assistant Minority Leader Sen. Kevin Mullin (Rutland - R), State Chairman of the shadowy ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council as "an act relating to furthering economic development."

What S. 220, passed in the waning hours of this year's legislative session this past weekend, does is formalize through legislation the existing investment in local businesses plan of the Vermont Treasurer's office and provide for discretionary funding for the Governor's office, not unlike many other states programs designed to entice business investment, for both Vermont and elsewhere, far below the 10% boasted about by Hallsmith a month ago. The Vermont state government's capitalistic plan in support of local investment will continue as it has for more than a year and is being expanded to entice out-of-state investment in a way never conceived of by the public banksters. More on S. 220 from VTDigger here.

Vermont public bankster's unregistered lobbyists like Hallsmith and Flomenhoft would be well advised to stop trying to bullshit their way to their goal. This from Seven Days,

"We're very dependent on (lobbyists) for facts. Whereas, in a larger legislature, you'd turn to your staff," says Rep. Chris Pearson (P-Burlington).

But, he cautions, "A lobbyist doesn't get too many chances to get it wrong. If somebody's not trustworthy, you're not going to go back to them."
Seven Days, pg. 33, April 30, 2014

NOTE: An example of the undemocratic nature of Vermont's tiny group of public bank proponents can be found in this hubristic post,

"Erik Esselstyn and Peg Elmer, who were responsible for the Town Meeting votes in East Montpelier and Royalton, made the trip to the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday to represent all the people who voted to tell the legislators to support the legislation for a public bank in Vermont."

I'm not sure how Esselstyn or Elmer can take credit for the votes in some of the smallest communities in Vermont of other Vermonters unless they're making some sort of admission to vote tampering or manipulation or some other kind of voter fraud but I took the time to check both East Montpelier's and Royalton's Town Meeting warrants and neither warrant had the voters consider a question regarding who would represent them before a Senate committee, other than, of course, their own elected representatives in the Senate. Esselstyn's and Elmer's "representation" was of the self-appointed, narcissistic sort.

This isn't the first occasion when Hallsmith's honesty in her presentations has been questioned. When she was fired from her gig as Montpelier's Planning and Community Development Director last fall, published reports mentioned charges of dishonesty:

From Vermont Today: "In his four-page letter to Hallsmith, dated Nov. 6, outlining his reasons for placing her on leave, (Montpelier City Manager Bill) Fraser accused Hallsmith of damaging relationships around City Hall and on the City Council and Planning Commission, unprofessional behavior and insubordination, inappropriate use of city resources, and dishonesty." Source

And

From Seven Days: "City Manager Bill Fraser wrote in a letter to Hallsmith at the time that her dismissal was the result of insubordination, dishonesty and poor relations with colleagues and elected officials." Source

And

From Vermont Public Radio: "“We have a city employee who was terminated by our city manager (Bill Fraser) for a long list of causes relating from inappropriate use of city resources, dishonesty and a few other things,” (Montpelier Mayor John) Hollar says. “It’s matter of public record and if anybody wants to investigate that they can.” Source

It's gotten so that when I read or hear a new misrepresentation of fact from Hallsmith that I'm reminded of the John Lovitz character on SNL, Tommy Flanagan, the Pathological Liar and find myself expecting to hear Hallsmith at the conclusion of her typically dissembling verbal perambulations exclaim, "Yeahhh! That's the ticket!"

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