IT’S OVER! This Vaccine Lawsuit Changes EVERYTHING (Video - 21')

  Russell Brand in his usual style! 

  Still, this is indeed a landmark as the Corona Vaccines are now officially questioned and their relationship with sudden cardiac arrest is confirmed. 

  So in the end statistics were reliable? There was in fact a correlation between vaccine and heart attacks and it was meaningful? Now causation will have to be proved but at least the questions are being asked. (And scientists, not politicians will have to answer!)

  Now about the lock-downs, the masks... (See, that the problem with questions: The more you ask, the more answers you get!)

 

Economist Fact-Checks Zeihan's China Collapse Story (Video - 25')

  This is a very interesting video about China but more importantly about how we thing and arrive to conclusions. 

  I sometimes listen to Peter Zeihan who looks carefully at the data and analyses deep trends such as population and resources which few other economists do, and usually arrives to surprising conclusions which somehow are always aligned with what his neo-cons sponsors expect.  

 So how is it possible to be knowledgeable, highly intelligent... and wrong?

 I remember listening to one of his presentations about Russia a couple of years ago, just after the start of the Ukraine war where he predicted that Russia would fail and the post-SSSR republic was going to explode sooner than later, offering the opportunity to Western powers to feed off the carcass. The Neo-cons must have been salivating on these conclusions ever since but must now be wondering about the timing! 

 So here's a great deconstruction of his arguments about China. 

 I also believe that China will soon face major obstacles and may well follow the path of Japan to relative economic decline. But a complete implosion of the country? Some people around K street are probably dreaming about it but the reality is more prosaic. The infrastructure exists. The buildings may be empty but they too are here to stay. Likewise the Chinese population is graying but it is also more educated than in Western countries. Here are the details.

 

"Israel is LOSING this war and Netanyahu is done" - Fmr. U.S. Marine Scott Ritter | Redacted News (Video - 21')

  The criminal behavior of the Netanyahu Government is sealing the fate of Israel, not that of the Palestinians. 

  They are focusing the attention of the World by their deliberate application of antique style massacres to a civilian population which as Scott Ritter explains is creating a global revulsion of the Zionist movement.

  They are opposed to a much weaker enemy which is fighting their army to a standstill and will eventually win by just not losing the war and surviving longer than the rest of the World will let the Israelis fight.

  But more ominously, they are exposing the hypocrisy and weakness of the West.  

  Hopefully, the Jews will understand that letting extremists loose is not helping their cause and represents a bigger risk for the existence of Israel that a few Hamas fighters. 

  The Israelis fell into a Hamas trap due to their hatred and disdain of the Palestinians. What is their plan, now? Destroy Hamas, then Hezbollah, then Syria, Iran, Turkiye, Pakistan (and its nuclear weapons) Indonesia... They would have to erase 1.5 billion people from the face of the Earth. This is not going to happen, even with the help of the US. The sooner they understand this and start negotiating, the brighter their future will be.    

  Pushing the Palestinians out of Gaza into the Sinai Peninsula as Netanyahu would like to do is not possible. Israel already has the World against itself for killing 10,000+ people. Let's give it another month but it is unlikely that Netanyahu will still be there by the end of the year unless of course he manages to ignite a World War... 

 

The Globalist Vision: "15 Minute" Prison Cities And The End Of Private Property

  While your attention is being focused by war in the East and war in the South, the Globalists are advancing their agenda. A human crime hiding a social crime! 

  Some people believe that the elites are sold out to the dark side. I am not so sure but you can certainly ask the question. 

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

As a general rule I find that whenever the public scrutinizes any particular agenda being promoted by governments and globalists their first response is to act indignant, much like a narcissist would do when they are up to no good and they get caught.

“How dare you” question their intentions and suggest they might be nefarious.

How dare you suggest they are anything other than loving and benevolent.

Our “leaders” have only ever wanted the best for us, right?

They only want our lives to become safer, more comfortable and more convenient – This is what truly motivates your average elitist, right?

Obviously history tells us a far different story, and it boggles my mind when anyone tries to argue that things are different today compared to 100 years ago, 300 years ago, or 1000 years ago. There is nothing new under the sun. There will always be tyrants attempting to gain more and more power and those tyrants will always lie to the public, claiming they are good people with our best interests at heart.

When that doesn’t work and the citizenry remains skeptical, the tyrants go on the attack, accusing the public of “conspiracy theory.” This is meant to mock and shame free thinkers into silence – You don’t want to stand out, right? Why risk being ostracized from society? Why risk becoming a meme?

This tactic is rooted in the notion that the corporate media and government officials represent the mainstream, and therefore they represent the majority, and the majority represents reality.  None of this is true or relevant, of course. Only facts matter. Sophistry is meaningless. Opinions are meaningless. The truth should be the goal, and if it’s not someone’s goal then they must be a purveyor of lies and should not be taken seriously. There are only two paths to take, there is no in-between.

I will admit there is some value to the “conspiracy theory” accusation because whenever the establishment uses it, it’s a sure sign that you are too close to the target and they are getting nervous. They could simply try to outline any evidence they might have to prove that your position is wrong, but they don’t really do that. Instead of debating your arguments and evidence, they try to undermine you as a valid critic and inoculate the public against your ideas before people ever get a chance to hear them. This is the behavior of villains, not benevolent and caring leaders.

I mention this dynamic because there is one agenda above all others that is aggressively defended by the establishment media, and anyone who remotely questions it is automatically persecuted as a “conspiracy nut” or “denier.” I am of course talking about the climate change agenda.

I have thoroughly debunked the idea of man-made climate change in previous articles and I won’t be spending time on that here.

Instead, I want to examine the end goal of climate change policies – The ultimate solution, which is NOT to save the planet, but to dominate the populace.

The names used for the climate change “reset” vary, but it is often referred to by globalists and the UN as Agenda 2030 or Sustainable Development Goals.  These programs wear a facade of environmentalism but they are ALL rooted in economics.  That is to say, all climate change efforts exist to destroy industry and trade and establish a government/corporate partnership to dominate production.  Climate change is a Trojan Horse to introduce authoritarianism.

I believe one of the most important aspects of Agenda 2030 for globalists is something called the “15 Minute City”; a project which involves hundreds of city mayors from across the US, Europe and Asia working closely with groups like the World Economic Forum. Any mention of this idea in a negative light and the media erupts with anger as well as mockery as if it’s not a real issue worthy of debate.

The establishment paints an interesting picture of 15 Minute Cities – A Utopian future in which everything you need is only a short walk away and private transportation is superfluous (or banned). You might even live in mega-complex, much like a giant mall where you also work. You could spend months within one square mile of space, never having to leave for anything.

It’s no mistake that this idea was pushed hard during the pandemic lockdowns. The public was awash in fear propaganda over a virus with a 99.8% survival rate and that fear made the unthinkable idea of staying at home all the time suddenly thinkable. Media pundits continue to call the connection between covid lockdowns and climate lockdowns a conspiracy theory, but the idea is openly admitted in UN and WEF white papers.

Some people argue that most cities are already “15 Minute Cities” with necessities all within walking distance of their homes. These folks don’t understand what a 15 Minute City really is. As numerous establishment descriptions of the project note, it’s not just about convenience or close access, it’s about changing every aspect of our current philosophy of living. It’s not about gaining amenities, it’s about making an array of sacrifices in order to appease the gods of carbon emissions.

The 15 Minute City is more like a recipe, containing every single ingredient of the climate change and covid lockdown agendas in a single comprehensive Orwellian vision. It includes removing motor vehicles, removing private transportation and roads, smart city and AI monitoring of each person’s electricity usage, monitoring of product consumption and “carbon footprint”, biometric surveillance within a compact and stacked urban landscape, the cashless society concept, equity and inclusion cultism, population control, etc.

It is the culmination, the end game; a massive prison with no bars. A place where you are conditioned to grow accustomed to artificial limitations on privacy, no civil liberties, no private property, and no work options or mobility. You are tied to the land and the land is owned by the state (or corporation). If you want a historic comparison, the closest I can find is the feudal system of Medieval Europe.

Within these cities you are a labor mechanism, nothing more. You will never be allowed to own your own property and thus own your own labor. Everything you have is given to you by the state and can be taken away by the state if you defy them. You might be able to leave the village or community you are tied to for a time, but this will change with increasing restrictions on the public’s movement according to the dictates of climate ideology.

As long as you are productive and submissive you will be give the things you need to survive, but never to thrive. In the case of a technocratic feudal system you would not have any guarantees that the state would need your services. At least in feudal Europe a peasant was seen as valuable resource because of limited population.  In a world where many people are considered “population excess”, you could easily be replaced and booted out of the city to starve and die.

In 2016 the World Economic Forum published a document titled ‘Welcome To 2030. I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy, And Life Has Never Been Better.’ The article was meant to promote a concept called the “sharing economy” which was first publicly fielded to the press at Davos.  The article describes a “hypothetical” future in which a communistic system has ended all private property in the name of saving the planet from climate change. The benefits? Well, like all communistic systems, the big lie is that you will get to work less and most things will be free. This is how collectivist ideals have been sold to the populace for generations and it NEVER works the way the establishment claims.

The WEF has been promoting the sharing economy for years, but when it went mainstream and was widely criticized as dystopian, the media once again flipped the “conspiracy theory” switch and attacked anyone exposing the implications.

Multiple platforms published the article in 2016 but many have since taken it down (Forbes appears to have erased their published copy, for example). They are pretending as if the agenda never existed, probably because the article contains some revealing admissions, including a hint at the 15 Minute City concept. From the article:

“My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.

Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me”

In other words, the globalists imagine a future were the malcontent free thinkers and people replaced by AI are outcasts, scratching and scraping out a meaningless existence in the wastelands of the old world. To stay in the bosom of the new world you will be required to give up all freedom, even freedom of thought. Keep in mind, this article is supposed to be a “positive” promotion of the shared economy and 15 Minute-related cities. Yet, this excerpt sounds more like a threat.

It’s important to understand that these compact cities will not be designed for your comfort.  They will not be designed so that you can have all the amenities you have today closer to your fingertips while also providing “sustainability.” That’s how the globalists try to sell it, but that’s not what it will be. Rather, these cities will be designed to better CONTROL you, so that you can be forced to make the sacrifices they say are necessary for sustainability to be possible.

They are erroneously billed as “decentralized communities,” but they are the exact opposite – They are utterly centralized, like a hamster cage where you are the pet.  The core philosophy behind them is dependency.  If you live in a place which is specifically constructed to eliminate your ability to provide for yourself, then you are a slave.  Though, to be sure, even slavery can be made to look noble if people are convinced that their chains are necessary for the good of the planet.

Douglas Macgregor: "US Diplomats Are Idiots! Israel Will Fail Miserably" (Video - 25')

  Probably the best high level analysis available right now.

  If what Douglas Macgregor says is right, that Netanyahu controls the "Hill" and is trying to leverage the US military to once an for all settle scores with surrounding Arab nations, then clearly we're heading strait into troubled waters.

 

No MORE Cash in Europe! The Digital Wallet is almost here | Redacted with Clayton Morris (Video - 15')

  The beginning of the end for privacy!

  Will people revolt? Some say they will. Most won't.

 

China And India Challenge EU Over New Carbon Tax

  How dare China and India interfere with the death wish of Europe?

Authored by Metal Miner via OilPrice.com,

• The EU's carbon tax is criticized by China and India, who believe it acts as a new trade barrier and doesn't account for varying developmental phases.

• China's steel association and India's commerce minister have both spoken out against the tax, with India suggesting it may implement a domestic equivalent to fund green energy transitions.

• Both countries are taking steps to mitigate the potential impacts of the EU tax, including improved emissions reporting in China and a possible challenge to the WTO by India.

Both India and China continue to denigrate the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), or “carbon tax” as it has come to be known, proposed by the European Union. Meanwhile, the EU claims the new scheme is integral to its plan to achieve zero emissions across six earmarked industries.

The new tax regime recently moved into what some experts dub the “transition phase.” Starting on October 1, importers of commodities, including steel, into the EU need to report the carbon emissions of those products. Beginning in 2026, those importers will also be subject to fees. The EU aims to impose the new tax on countries with significant carbon emissions. And while the carbon tax’s stated aim is to put EU producers on an even keel with their counterparts elsewhere, it will also add to the cost of steel, aluminum, and other goods. 

China’s View On the New Tax Remains Unchanged

China has been speaking out against the EU’s carbon tax for some time now. However, several days ago, the country’s state-backed steel association went so far as to dub the tax “a new trade barrier.” Meanwhile, news agency Reuters reported that the China Iron And Steel Association (CISA) wanted more talks with the EU on the issue.

According to the representative body, the new tax fails to take into account the different phases of development in different countries. It went on to say that the levy was against the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. Indeed, some analysts predict that the carbon tax could raise the cost of steel products costs by anywhere from 4 to 6 %, if not more. This would be sufficient enough to render Chinese exports nonviable. 

India Also Disapproves of the Carbon Tax

Like its neighbor, India also disapproves of the new EU tax, claiming that it would hurt its exports. Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal recently stated that the tax was “ill-conceived,” adding that the EU would realize this in the coming days and have to drop the idea entirely. Already, there have been meetings between the various trade bodies, manufacturers, and the government regarding the tax. As with China, India also pointed out how the CBAM fails to allot different values for different stages of production occurring in separate countries.

The Indian minister also stated that the government would find a solution, most likely a domestic tax equivalent to the European tax. They could then use this new revenue for the green energy transition. He pointed out that this solution would indirectly help Indian companies who export bring down their carbon footprint as they move on to cleaner energy production. Eventually, there would be no need for a CBAM.

While India may be mulling a domestic tax to get around the problem, China continues to hint at imposing similar trade protection measures to safeguard the interests of its own domestic producers. Either way, the new regime will likely usher in a new period of uncertainty, friction, and risks across the sector. 

India and China Alternating Between Proactive and Reactive Measures

Both countries hope that the EU will re-visit the tax and possibly do away with it entirely. At the very least, they hope the organization will carefully reconsider the costs and operational challenges for downstream consumers due to the change in the import structure. At one point, India even threatened to move the World Trade Organization over the carbon tax. 

That said, China’s environment ministry recently directed its large industrial polluters to step up on their emissions reporting. According to Bloomberg, this was to prepare the industry for the carbon tax. To remain compliant, producers across seven sectors, including steel and aluminum, that release over 26,000 tons of CO2 annually have to verify their 2022 data by December this year. 

Conversely, India continues to question the logic of pricing carbon at the same level in India as in Europe. However, the government remains hopeful that if they can tax locally and put that revenue toward the green energy transition, they can negate any noncompetitive edge in Indian exports to Europe.

Interview of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky (the full truth about Corona Virus) - video 1h

 What really happened in 2020 with Corona virus?

 The full understanding of this artificial crisis should be a scandal.

 Interview of Prof Michel Chossudovsky

 Listen carefully. This is important for the future of our society and it has nothing to do with the virus.

 In 2020 the lie became the truth and since we have lived in an upside down world.

Von Greyerz: The Cycle Of Evil

  Difficult to present better our predicament than in the article below.

  I believe that we will be at war sometimes in 2024. it is now unavoidable. 

  The catalyst is unknowable. Who will be our Archduke? Where will be our Sudetenland? Nobody knows. But conversely it is extremely predictable that they will emerge on schedule at the right or rather wrong time. It is unavoidable.  

 The debt in the US and Europe is about to explode, the dollar to implode and the real estate bubble in China to go pop. Soon enough war will look like a good, or rather less bad option to a lot of people. 

 Let's hope we still have some time before the cataclysm although the paroxysm of the crisis is now within sight. It is now that a brighter light-bulb in the White House would come handy!   

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

We are on the inevitable road to perdition for the world economy & financial system, ending in a potential global conflict of uncontrollable proportions. 

Evil begets evil as The Cycle of Evil hits countries at the end of an uncontrollable debt expansion.

The pattern throughout history has always been the same – countries and empires, without fail, become victims of their own success -failure, whether it was the Mongols, Ottomans or the British.

As real growth ceases, a country starts to finance expansion with debt until it cannot even afford the interest on the debt, never mind the capital which it has no intention to repay.

At some point, the people, fearing a war or terrorist attack will approve of the leader’s fear mongering by supporting unlimited debt issuance. This is now happening in the US with regard to Ukraine and Israel.

Neither the US nor Europe is taking a single step to remedy the situation. Both are now in the Cycle of Evil of more deficits, more debt, higher interest costs, leading to more deficits, more debt higher interest costs, leading to ……………..

The Cycle of Evil is also accompanied by decadence and moral decline where leaders invent problems that are not real such as climate change, ESG (environmental, social and governance), forced vaccines and incarcerations, 25 new genders and other woke issues etc. 

Few Americans understand that the next stage of the Cycle of Evil is about to hit them. 

And even fewer Europeans have a clue that they will be dragged down into the same debt collapse quagmire.

The next stage will involve many banks failing, more than the FDIC or government can afford to save without destroying both the Currency and the Bond Market, 

A collapsing currency and sovereign debt paper that no investor wants to touch with a bargepole is hardly the right climate for massive debt issuance. 

Most sovereign investors have already realised that they don’t want US debt at any interest rate. 

So that means even higher interest rates, more debt issuance as the Cycle of Evil eventually turns to a “Final Collapse” as von Mises described: 

THE CYCLE OF EVIL CONTAINS MORE CATACLYSMIC COMPONENTS THAN ANY SIMILAR CYCLE IN HISTORY.

Let us summarise where the world is:

GLOBAL CONFLICT

We have two wars both capable of leading to a major global conflict plus high risk of terrorism and jihads in the West. Just as with most global/world wars, there is no attempt at finding peace solutions. 

To make things worse, there is not a single Statesman in the West capable of taking a lead in solving the conflicts. 

DEBT COLLAPSE 

We have a global debt burden of $330 trillion plus derivatives totalling $1.5-3 quadrillion with debt growing exponentially, especially in the US.  This will very soon develop into a debt crisis and collapse of a heavily leveraged Western world plus Japan and China and also emerging markets.

CIVIL UNREST and CIVIL WAR

The downturn and eventual collapse in the global economy will lead to poverty, famine and misery for a great number of people in the West and Emerging Markets. 

UKRAINE WAR

This war started as a local conflict but with a US backed putsch in 2014, throwing out the democratically elected Russian friendly leader, this was the beginning of a war between Russia and the US and not a local war. 

The Minsk agreement brokered by Germany and France was supposed to settle the matter but as Merkel recently admitted, the intent was never to create peace but to give enough time for Ukraine to arm with the help of the US. 

The US forced Europe to take sides, in spite of Europe’s (especially Germany’s) dependence on Russian energy.

We can blame Russia for invading or we can blame the US for provoking Russia. 

Rather than to go into all the arguments who is right and who is wrong, best to accept that we now have a global conflict stemming from the Ukraine situation. The US has a reluctant Europe on its side – a Europe which is militarily and economically weak. Russia has China, Iran, North Korea and a few others, most probably a militarily superior group. 

A bankrupt USA just sends more money and weapons but has zero intent to send peacekeepers. 

Thus there is no end in sight but the independent reporting tells us that Ukraine is unlikely to have a chance against the superior Russian war machine.

In the meantime an estimated 500,000 troops in total have died plus many more wounded and civilian casualties. 

And still no peace attempt.

If the warring country’s leaders led from the front, which has been common in history, they would probably be less inclined to sacrifice more lives including their own.

ISRAEL – PALESTINE WAR

This region has had ongoing conflicts throughout history.  It was insoluble before 1948 and has become even more complex since 1948 when Israel was created. 

Again, we have major powers involved with primarily the US and Europe supporting Israel and Iran, Turkey and major parts of the Arab-Muslim world supporting Palestine and also Russia. 

The US is sending two aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean to assist Israel. But as a military expert pointed out, these are in modern warfare just two floating bathtubs which can be taken out easily by two missiles from for example Iran.  

In this conflict there are also many casualties on both sides plus a massive number of Palestinians being homeless with little food or even medical help. 

What makes this conflict even more serious is the major support in the West for the plight of the Palestinians. Massive protests in many countries can easily escalate to serious clashes or even civil war. 

In addition, we can be certain that the massive migration from Muslim countries to the West will also contain many militant cells which could easily create havoc in the US and in many European countries.

Both Europe and the US basically has an open border policy for any migrant who wants to enter. But neither continent has the ability to properly take care of the migrants. This will risk both continents to be destabilised with both migrants and the native population not accepting the other side.

CHINA – TAIWAN

It is unlikely that China will abandon its claim that Taiwan rightfully belongs to them. 

The US is already busy with two wars, assisting with an array of military equipment plus $100s of billions of financial aid. A third conflict with major US military involvement would be extremely unwelcome to the US government. 

But that is exactly the right time to strike from China’s point of view. 

China knows of course that seizing Taiwan, is likely to involve major US sanctions leading to reduced or no US imports from China leading to a major fall or collapse of global trade. It is doubtful that Europe or the rest of the world would comply with these sanctions.

It would also lead to freezing of China’s assets in the US of $1.7 trillion, including treasuries of $850 billion offset by US direct investments in China.

But if China seizes Taiwan, they would control 60% of the world’s semiconductor production and more importantly 90% of advanced semiconductors. This would be a very serious blow to US strategic industries including military equipment.

THE CYCLE OF EVIL HOLDS ALL COMPONENTS TO CREATE HELL ON EARTH 

It is intellectually fascinating but humanly depressing to watch how all the pieces fall into place for a global conflict of a magnitude greater than WW1 or WW2.

It is frightening to see how one component after the next falls into place in the Cycle of Evil.

Nobody realised that the shooting of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary Franz Ferdinand in 1914 would be the catalyst for WW1. 

Nor did anyone understand that Germany’s invasion of Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia  in 1938-9 and of Poland on September 1, 1939 would lead to WW2.

The two major conflicts in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine today with Taiwan looming combined with no attempt of peacemaking plus a likely collapse of the global financial system and world economy is more than enough to create devastation for the world for the next decade or more. 

Let us sincerely hope that all these events in the Cycle of Evil will not develop into global havoc.But even if that were to be avoided,  it is absolutely certain that global risk today is higher than at any time since the 1930s.

The Meltdown Of The Old Order Foretells A New Crisis

  Here's a very interesting question: How do you heal a society after a traumatic experience such as war? In a nutshell, you forgive people and move on. It is of course difficult to do but essential if you do not want to get into a vicious cycle of punishment and reprisals.

 The examples below concern the US after the Civil war and today but it applies similarly to Israel and Ukraine where in both case accumulated hatred prevents a solution to be found. If people must be punished for their deeds then why should they compromise in the first place? And sure enough they won't. War until the last man standing. Are we really unable to learn as a society?

Authored by Josiah Lippincott via American Greatness,

This week, the left-wing organization Swords into Plowshares began the process of melting down the statue of Robert E. Lee that stood in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The images from the ordeal contain deep spiritual significance. A profound sense of foreboding washed over my heart when I saw the bronze face of the Southern hero, glowing red hot moments before annihilation.

What the Leftists did to the statue of Lee is a vision of what they want to do to the rest of the country. The destruction of a nation’s symbols, the elimination of the reminders of its past, is a key part of the process of the destruction of a nation and its people.  

The Left is correct: symbols have power. The destruction of a symbol, too, is an act of power. The statue of Lee that stood outside the University of Virginia and became a cultural war flashpoint during the Unite the Right rally in 2017 was not simply a Southern icon. 

The Leftists denouncing America’s Confederate monuments as legacies of racism and slavery are perpetuating a vicious lie. In reality, these statues are symbols of national reunification and of the forgiveness that comes with peace. The Confederate monuments were part of the American mythology that sprang out of the Civil War. That struggle had been, in the account of the post-war generations, a bloody tragedy from which the nation emerged, reunited and refined with new purpose. 

The Southern cause might have been unjust but the Southern soldier was still courageous. He was, after all, still an American, still a Christian, still a warrior.   

In the figure of Robert E. Lee, the South found the epitome of its strength and a noble symbol of dignity in the face of profound tragedy. The statue of Lee at Charlottesville was dedicated in 1924. Edwin A. Alderman, the President of the University of Virginia, gave the dedication address. That speech is not available online, but an earlier address by Alderman, entitled “The National Spirit” that he gave in 1911 on the occasion of George Washington’s birthday to the Washington Association of New Jersey, is public. There Alderman articulates the post-war consensus, North and South, regarding the memory of the war.  

The speech is worth reading in full, but I will dwell only on a few of the most relevant passages. Alderman begins by honoring the three great Americans he sees as symbols of the nation’s greatness: George Washington, Robert E. Lee, and Abraham Lincoln. He argues that these three men give the same “distinction” to America as Pericles and Leonidas gave to Greece. He explains that “one day” the “whole people, north and south and east and west” will see them as, “superlatively great men, great moral fires burning on the level plain of our existence, giving light and warmth to our national conscience and to our national ideals.”

Alderman honors Washington as an “incarnation of the very genius of integrity,” Lincoln as the “soul of democracy,” and Lee as the epitome of “duty and unselfish love and stainlessness of life.” 

Alderman, a Southerner, reforges the sectional heroes of North and South as heroes of the whole, now re-united, nation. Lee is not, in Alderman’s account, a traitor and racist who needed to be punished but a hero of the nation and a patriot. Alderman can praise Lee as a national hero because, for him, the war was over. The South had been reintegrated into the Union. Part of that national reunification required the intentional assimilation of the South’s symbols into the nation’s collective consciousness. A new and cohesive national mythology was needed to justify and explain the nation’s reborn unity.  

Alderman explicitly connects his monumental history of Lee to this national reunification and peace:

“…in this hour of reunion, reconciliation, of absolute forgetfulness of old strife, we can all see how, in those five quiet years at Lexington, [Lee] symbolized and marked out the future for every Southern man as it has come to pass and bade us live in liberal and lofty fashion, with hearts unspoiled by hate and eyes clear to see the needs of a new and mightier day in a new and mightier land.”

Alderman connects peace and the honor given to Lee as part of the “absolute forgetfulness of old strife.” This is a crucial point: peace requires forgetting. A war can only truly end with amnesty. The word “amnesty” shares a root, in the Greek, with “amnesia” or forgetting. To have peace and forgiveness we must literally provide an “amnesty” or a “forgetting” to our enemies. The same linguistic phenomenon in found in Latin. The Latin word meaning “to pardon”—ignoscere—literally means “to not know.”

War unleashes titanic human passions. Left to itself, every war by nature is a total war of annihilation.

Every act of violence within a war is itself the source of new recriminations and new violence. Without a peace treaty and the forgetting that comes with it, every war would go on forever or until one side completely annihilated the other.  

A peace treaty bounds the terror and horror of war. The amnesty that comes with it, however, cannot bring true justice. In ordinary human life, every murderer must face judgment. Not so in a war bracketed by a peace treaty. To have peace, the victor chooses not to hunt down every enemy soldier and bring him to justice for killing the victor’s own troops.  

If the victor were to choose the path of supposedly perfect justice then the peace treaty would be meaningless: the war and violence would continue until every last enemy soldier had been killed or punished. There is little incentive for the enemy to surrender in a total war; therefore, the conflict cannot end before extermination. 

In order for there to be peace without annihilation, human beings must abandon a commitment to perfect justice. They must accept the tragic dimension to life. In this world we cannot have complete satisfaction. Whether we like it or not, we are beings bounded by mortality and by our own fundamental neediness.  

The political utopian, however, refuses to accept reality. He cannot reconcile himself to the tragic dimension of life. A perfect world is possible if only we can rid ourselves of the manifestations of True Evil that hold back the springing forth of True Righteousness and Goodness.  

Liberalism and communism, the twin revolutionary Leftist ideologies of the 20th century, are examples of this kind of political utopianism.

The destruction of the Lee monument reveals these movements’ insane moralism.  

For the Leftist, communist and liberal alike, the symbols of our national reconciliation after the Civil War must be destroyed and our national reconciliation must be undone because the grounds of that peace were racist. The conclusion of the Civil War was not perfectly just. The South was still a bastion of intolerance and hatred. The Leftist condemns the North, too, for its willingness to reunite with vicious white supremacist demons. 

The Civil War is not a tragedy in the liberal account but a morality play about the Oppressed fighting back against the Oppressors. The conflict is rich in theological significance for the liberal. In July of 2021, Nikuyah Walker, the first Black female mayor of Charlottesville argued that, “Taking down [the Lee] statue is one small step closer to the goal of helping Charlottesville, Virginia, and America, grapple with the sin of being willing to destroy Black people for economic gain.” 

Liberals today are not relativists—far from it! They are in fact moral extremists willing to impose their beliefs by violence and cultural genocide if necessary. In their view, America is a land that has not yet grappled with its “sin” of racism. The revolutionary Left is here to bring about that moral reckoning. 

There is no promise of forgiveness or mercy for the liberal, either. Reconstruction was not enough for the South just as de-Nazification was not enough for Germany. It can never be enough. The only way to deal with racists, Nazis, and deplorables, in the end, is to wipe them out. 

This is why the Left, every time it comes into power in a country—be it the Soviets in Russia, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or the Red Guard in China—sets out on a campaign of exterminationist violence. In the Leftist mind, dedication to true justice requires the willingness to annihilate its enemies. In the communist account of the world, as in the liberal, there is an enemy (the capitalist/racist colonizer) who oppresses the downtrodden (the proletariat/non-Whites).  

The solution to the problem is always the same: get rid of the oppressor. 

By destroying the symbols of our national reconciliation the Left is symbolizing its willingness to restart the Civil War; it is throwing out the older peace and rejecting the forgetting that made it possible. I predict that, unless some great act of human prudence or fortune intervenes, the Left will perpetrate in the 21st century acts of violence and repression in America on the same scale as it carried them out in Europe and Asia in the 20th.   

These last few years have already witnessed an attempt to turn the whole planet into an open-air prison camp in the name of medical science and “health.” That was not the end of the ideological insanity in our time but the beginning. The 21st century planetary Leftist consensus will find new outlets for its life-hating resentment. We can be sure of that. As our leaders become more delusional and ideological we can expect their appetite for violence and punishment to increase.  

The forces of barbarism and a return to the crushing tyranny of the lowest common denominator of human life are growing in power. We cannot ignore this reality. The time may soon be coming when the defenders of the West must beat their plowshares back into swords.  

We may pray that it will not come to this, but the revolutionaries have already ripped up the old foundations of peace and promise a new birth of war. The darkened eyes of the bronze hero stare at us from across the void, symbolizing the closing of the old order and foretelling a new crisis.  

Do not look away.