Patrick Henry

Via Ryan

A good quote for the paleo bloggers here like -----:

"For Bradford, Patrick Henry was the age's greatest prophet of political decentralization. An opponent of ratification, Henry strongly advised his fellow Southerners not to make a political alliance with gnostic New Englanders. Patrick Henry was the true spokesman of the American Revolution, the electrifying orator who energized the resistance to the Stamp Act and other regressions by King George III.

Henry viewed the Revolutionary War as a matter of self-defense  and self-preservation; simply the right of the colonies to have self-government. As Russell Kirk noted, the war did not represent a 'revolution made' but one prevented. The real revolutionary was King George III and his attempts to deny the colonies liberties they had long enjoyed under English law. Henry, however, feared the Federalists' constitution would upend the gains of the war. Their document would lead to the 'divinization of the state' with 'men living for government" and government itself 'existing for the sake of ideology alone.'

A 'remote, arbitrary, potentially unfriendly' government might take hold. Patrick Henry's America, Bradford observed, did not 'exist to pursue certain military, economic, moral or philosophical objectives.' Rather, it was comprised of people 'living privately in communities, within the ambit of family and friends; living under the eye of God out of the memory of their kind.' While Dickinson recoiled at the 'horror of a government forever performing experiments,' Henry held the same feelings for a 'totally poltiicized world.'"

—Joseph Scotchie, Revolt from the Heartland: The Struggle for an Authentic Conservatism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Pubs., 2002), 3

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 "This entity we call government consumed 43% of all economic activity within the United States of America as of 2009. The labor market participation rate is less than 60%, and the state's relationship to the economy is increasingly parasitic. Its economic and political reports, news and forecasts are suspect, and the truth value always severely lacking, as it engages in propaganda. In every meaningful sense it's a government analogous to that described in the Declaration of Independence, which has "sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."
 
Today the law is used as a weapon against dissidents who face selective persecution / prosecution for holding to the wrong ideas, or dissenting against the status quo. The tax man is a common weapon against targeted individuals. As the Roman historian Tacitus declared, "The more corrupt the state the more numerous the laws." Statistically the odds of violating any number of arbitrary rules / regulations remains a reality as Harvey Silvergate manifest in Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (Encounter Books, 2011).

 The biggest rhetorical defenders Constitution of the U.S. in American legislatures are typically among the greatest enemies of a Constitution of limited authority and power as crafted by the framers and understood by the ratifiers circa 1787-1790. Making government 'sanctified' and preserving the myth that we live in continuity to the Founders' government is the ideological means of forging the chains of tyranny over Americans. We live in the wake of what Aristotle would characterize as 'a revolution within forms' where we have the shell of a constitutional republic, but the practical substance of autocracy and elite rule."