The 20% victory is something called defeat

Some of the interesting things I have noticed is in the area of warfare, campaigns and, of course, the misnaming of strategy and tactics by many.

In 1979 the War against the United States opened in Iran with a direct attack upon Sovereign Soil of the Nation. That went without response.

So did the two Beirut Embassy bombings and the Beirut Marine Barracks bombing. In less than five years the US had suffered four attacks upon its soil, its diplomatic corps, and its military. The response was zero.

While the Chinese Water Torture of opening up the southern borders and no longer keeping out illegals has been the long term destruction of the interior of the Nation, these attacks have been the erosion of its exterior sovereignty as well. Following the erosion of support for the United States after the Vietnam war because the Nation let an Ally to hang out in the winds of Communism and see those winds scour its neighbors, the movement from a Superpower that understood what it was about to mere Large Power that has difficulties even understanding what it means to be a Nation have been evident. The United States may have some repsect remaining for its economic might, but the rest of what the Nation once stood for is palpably gone.

Those things were *not* lost because the United States wanted an 'empire' or was 'ignorant of cultural differences' or was seen as a 'giant oppressing the poor'. Quite the contrary, when those things were upheld and put forth as the reasons the Nation DID things,tyrants may have naysayed, but they were, after all, tyrants. They knew that they were in the cross-hairs of Freedom.

Without standing for those things that make the American People a *good* People, the respect for the Nation has diminished. This is not the Nation of World War II or World War I. This is no longer the Nation that upholds Freedom and Liberty even when it was difficult to tell *where* that exactly *was* at many times in our History. Today we have a small but vocal minority that argues *for* letting Totalitarian States prosper, that argues *for* letting those that we have helped out from under Tyranny to slip back into maw of that beast and that argues *for* the willful destruction of the very civilized infrastructure that allows modern life to continue.

In large part this is driven by pure anti-Americanism.

There is also, however, the movement to combine the irresolution at home over having Citizenship as a meaningful standard for Nationhood and the drive to remove America from supporting Liberty and Freedom, even though it has a cost in blood to do so. The 19th century view of liberalism and the Rights of Man did win out in the West, but not elsewhere. The majority of the global population has only seen meager benefit due to this victory, even when their material circumstances have improved, greatly. Liberty wins through when there is a basis for democracy and decisions by individuals to be reflected at the National scale and when their internal differences are respected. That is the old liberalism.

Much of the modern Conservative movement has embraced that, but has lost its grasp that it is Liberty and Freedom *first* which empower the utility of goods and advancement. This strange idea of 'Free Trade Freeing the Globe' has not had that as a short or long-term consequence for the decades it is has been espoused and pushed. That formula, in point of fact, is one that is entirely modern in its cast as it was *not* the necessary antecedent for the birth of the United States. The Mercantile Trade system and centralization of limited heavy industry in the British Isles removed the ability of the Colonies to *have* Free Trade. Still, as Crown Citizens, the imposition of taxation without representation was seen as an abrogation of the rights of those Citizens. It is not 'Free Trade' that the Citizens wanted, but a VOICE in the affairs of trade as a Colony.

Liberty *before* trade.

Doing the reverse is a Capitalist system icon for trade expansion via market expansion. Free Trade is the means to open markets to goods... not promote Liberty and Freedom. The guns, goods and buildings of the Crown Colonies in America were *not* stamped out by machine, not made by great lumber mills, nor created by Big Business: it was hand-made in small shops and businesses and by dedicated individuals. It was worth fighting *for* the right to have a say as Citizens of the Crown when the Government abrogated the rights of the people in removing their say in trade, taxation and governance.

The foundations of a Nation built upon the Rights of Man were a necessary precedent to gaining Liberty and Freedom. That understanding did not require modern telecommunications, mass production, factories, or any of the things that are mere *goods* to be used in living. It did require an ability to ensure people were informed, that the necessary underpinnings of liberty and freedom were transmitted and disseminated and that the Citizenry understood its role in BEING the actual Nation. That is what is *missing* in modern America: the understanding that the Citizens hold the Nation in Common between them all.

That lack of understanding has come from an outgrowth of the Socialist ideals of a Global Proletariat. Global Socialism was taken up as the way to remove the Nation State as the means for the People to identify who and what they were. Of course that was to be a long way off in the distant future of Capitalism... when industry was *everywhere* and the actual basis for society was that of the industrial working class. Because that, of course, was the basis of industrial society. Until it wasn't.

In this strange world Socialism got stuck in one Nation so that those practitioners, while still mouthing the words of International Socialism had to deal with Nations, Nationalism and the identification of Peoples with Nations. It didn't help that Russia was a non-industrial society, either. So adaptation took place and in Italy and Germany Socialism got combined with Nationalism while Russia still looked toward International Socialism or Communism. The ideal of everyone *working together* and losing their identity in the 'greater cause' was still present in both, just towards different ends. And with all the problems of Capitalism and the end of the old Imperial Colonial system, surely this was the foreordained end of Capitalism that Marx had foreseen. Until it wasn't that, either.

A funny thing happened to make one lose identity in the 'greater cause': the Rights of Man as an Individual got shunted aside and removed from the Socialist ideal. Meanwhile, back on the Capitalist Nationalist side of things, the concept of combating Communism by supporting every tinpot dictator that was *against* Communism was put forth. The Left decried this, but never reconciled their OWN support of tyrannical Communism with the ideals they used to denigrate the Right's support of dictators against Communism.

Suddenly there were NO supporters for the Universal Rights of Man that actually adhered to them and espoused them in a non-economic way.

So sorry!

Today the Left has pretty much removed any of those ideals and replaced them with blatant anti-Americanism.

The Right has *also* removed them in favor of the mantra of 'Free Trade Freeing People'.... to do *what* exactly they have never put forth.

So those left that actually raise their hands in *support* of the Universality of the Rights of the Individual *and* to have Nations that are different from each other are left out in the cold. These folks are neither Right nor Left today. They do not fall on the 'political spectrum' of binary irreconcilable sides that have no fractions in their counting nor basis in the old identity of the Individual being the basis for society and Nations.

The Left does not support that. They mouth the words, but immediately turn AGAINST bias based on National outlook. So, which is it? The Rights of the Individual to come together and form Nations so there is commonality or not? If you support that Right, then having a bias FOR your National viewpoint is valid. If you don't support that, then you have no basis in saying that you support *any* Rights of Man as Individuals.

The Right does not support that, either. The mouth the words of Nationalism, but they immediately put forth that it is ONLY with 'Free Trade'. Even though the United States and other Free People have gotten Freedom and Liberty WITHOUT 'Free Trade'. How much of a factor did 'Free Trade' play in the Polish National self-conception of themselves as a devout People who are Free? Since the 10th century, mind you... for that is how long the Polish People have SEEN themselves as Free People. Before *any* notion of 'Free Trade' and Capitalism were around and, indeed, Capitalism would have been a strange idea in that era. Freedom and Capitalism can go together, but they are not a wedded couple. You can have Freedom without Capitalism as the United States has demonstrated. And you can have Capitalism without Freedom, as China has demonstrated and any number of those tinpot dictators that got support during the era of 'Realism' in Foreign Policy.

Can we have some of that old 19th century clarity, please?

Support of the Universal Rights of Man as an Individual and *not* as an economic unit?

Hello?

You know that concept? Individuals responsible for their actions and not 'blaming society' or 'blaming their upbringing'?

No?

Because that IS Freedom and Liberty.

Personal decision and responsibility First and above ALL ELSE. And you cannot divorce the responsibility of the Individual *to* their society and being held accountable for their actions to that greater whole that they have identified as having meaning and validity for themselves. That is the investment of self in that self-identification of that thing that holds People together: Nations.

Without that accountability you do not retain Freedom and soon Liberty is lost, too, as society collapses. The free-for-all view of Libertarianism is a form of Anarchism: Society is put *after* the Individual and the Individual need not uphold Society to have their Rights.

And if you do not uphold the Society one finds that the basis *for* their Rights as part of a Social Compact disappears.

Ring any bells?

That is *not* 'Social Conservatism', which puts a religious basis to the underpinning of Society. This is far more basic than *that*. This is the right of Individuals to come together and form a common identity and create a social order for themselves and *then* to create governance amongst themselves so that they may retain that identity.

No?

Don't believe in that?

Ok, lets try someone else's words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Now there is one thick writer for you! Do we see 'Free Trade' there? How about 'society is to blame' or 'society is the underpinning of rights'? Or don't those words mean that Individuals come together to make society and governments? You know, to create a society that ensures that Rights are not usurped?

When asked what the difference is between a Jeffersonian and a Jacksonian is, I usually come up with a variation on the following:

Jeffersonians espouse the Universal Rights of Man.

Jacksonians mean them.

That is why, as an Individual, I do, indeed, support my Nation and my People. That is why when the Nation goes to War it fights to *victory* and then helping up those who we have fought so that they can then learn to take care of themselves in a fashion that allows them to determine *who* they are and *what* they are about.

After WWII Germany had to make the transition back *to* democracy, and had only a weak understanding of it. Imperial Japan needed to have the entire thing taught from the ground up and took a decade to do.

The Philippines took almost nine decades, but a couple of World Wars interrupted things, and the Cold War didn't help much because of the damned 'Realists'.

Long fight, huh?

The Declaration of Independence was, indeed, a call to arms.

Against Despotism. Against Tyranny.

It is formed without respect to economic system as it is amenable to *any* system so long as that system is held accountable to society.

That is what it means when these Rights are conceived of as 'Universal'.

The call to arms was in 1776 and everyone acknowledged it would be a *long war*.

Against Despotism.

Against Tyranny.

And for the Universal Rights of Man as Individuals to create their own societies and Nations.

One does not fight to uplift a People from Despotic Rule and then decide it isn't worth the cost and throw them back to Despotism.

That IS Anti-American.

You fight until the last Free Man on Earth dies in this struggle as stopping at anything less than the Universal is defeat.

It continues to this day in far off lands that have never had a single drop of Liberty or Freedom ever grace their deserts.

I am sorry for those in America that can no longer commit to this struggle because they have started to fit themselves for the shackles of Tyranny once more. They no longer believe in the Universality of the Rights of Man as Individuals. They have surrendered and no longer adhere to Liberty or Freedom for All. Just for themselves.

These people who do this are not to be hated.

They are to be pitied as already enslaved to their hatred of Freedom, their hatred of Society, their hatred of Nation.

They may speak of Liberty and Freedom, but cannot commit to the cost in blood and lives to gain it and sustain it.

Because they are enslaved to hatred.

Jeffersonians espouse the Universality of the Rights of Man.

Jacksonians MEAN THEM.

With avengance.

And the fight from 1776 still continues on.

“Americans are not a perfect people, but we are called to a perfect mission.” - Andrew Jackson