Published monthly, the J.O. Shelby Camp in Harrison produces a newsletter entitled “The Iron Brigade”. This month’s edition includes several upcoming events and interesting historical quotes from various notables throughout American history:
IRON BRIGADE
June 2010
A publication by Gen J.O. Shelby Camp #1414
Attention: our annual J.O. Shelby Bean Feed will be June 26th at the home of Compatriot Richard Dix. His lovely wife Loraine has opened up her home so come on out and have a great time . Bring you lawn chair and banjo or guitar for a fun meal and lots of fellowship. Southern Style. You are asked to bring a covered dish, salad, or chips . The Camp will provide the meat. Located at 1510 Capps Road (Hwy 392). Beans and Cornbread how much better does it get than that?
Welcome to JO Shelby Camp # 1414 of Harrison, Arkansas.
- On the service of his gr-gr-grandfather Sgt. Francis M. Baker of the 8th Arkansas Infantry we welcome Charles Baker.
- On the service of his gr-gr-grandfather Pvt. Nathan B. Dickerson of 26th Arkansas Infantry we welcome Clint Smith.
- A belated welcome to my brother Will Burr on the service of our gr-gr-Uncle Pvt. John J. Ramsey 64th North Carolina Infantry.
Congratulations and Three Cheers of you and your ancestors.
1. Your help is needed. We have committed to hosting the Division Convention next April 1&2, 2011 If you are willing to help with registration, honor guard, or any of the committees let me know there is work for everyone who is interested know..
2. The Ghost Walk is coming up in October. It will be upon us before you know if. If you are willing to do a part, collect money, act as a tour guide, or just help out where needed please let me know. Every job is important and fun so do not be bashful.
This was sent in by Compatriot Jeff Middleton. Ignorance ran amuck.
*Tyranny of Tolerance
*Is the U.S. Flag Offensive?
May 11, 2010
The two students were minding their own business—just sitting at a table on a school break, chatting with their friends. And then the vice principal of the school walked up to the boys—and ordered them to remove their American flag bandanas. Their T-shirts also featured the Stars and Stripes. The boys were told to turn them inside out, so the flags wouldn’t show.
The boys—who often wore these kind of clothes—refused, and were sent to the principal’s office. There, they were told their T-shirts were “incendiary,” and would provoke fights. Why? Because it was Cinco de Mayo. Mexican-American students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California might be offended. Take the shirts off, the boys were told—or face suspension.
Instead, the boys went home. But they, and their parents, are furious. As one of the students—Daniel Galli—put it, “I did nothing wrong…I’m an American and I’m proud to be an American.”
As for the school’s Mexican-American students—they think their flag-wearing classmates ought to apologize. One of them, Annicia Nunez, told a reporter why: “It is a Mexican Heritage Day. We don’t deserve to get disrespected like that.”
Disrespected? By students wearing the flag of their country? It’s hard to know where to start. First of all, if Ms. Nunez is an American citizen, the American flag is *her* flag, too. Why would she be offended by the sight of it? Second, where did Ms. Nunez get the idea that she had a right not to be offended by someone else’s exercise of free speech—speech that is protected by the Constitution? America was built on the belief that everyone has the right to freedom of speech.
Given that, it’s understandable that what we say, write, or have emblazoned on our clothing may sometimes offend our neighbors. But we accept that bargain because we believe in tolerance—that is, putting up with people whose opinions we don’t like, and treating them with respect.
Sadly, this view of tolerance has been turned on its head in recent years. So-called cultural arbiters—the media, academics, political leaders—now prescribe which ideas and opinions are in bounds and which things are out of bounds. And then, they enforce their decisions. This is akin to the soft
despotism Toqueville warned about—the tyranny of tolerance where the cultural elites seek to eliminate free expression.
I’m happy to report that outraged citizens all across America have called the Live Oak school district to complain about the way the flag-wearing students were treated. They’re demanding the principal be fired, and urging the boys to file a lawsuit. It appears that Americans have just about had enough of being told what to think and what to say—and that’s a healthy sign.
I have an additional suggestion: Both the offended students and the folks who run Live Oak High School ought to be required to take a civics class. And the first lesson ought to be memorizing a quotation ironically attributed to someone who persecuted Christianity, Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Including on your T-shirt.
This was sent in by Compatriot Jim Evans of the Hot Springs Camp and is really a great find you will enjoy it a lot especially if your ancestor fought in Franklin or you are a Pat Cleburne fan.
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/franklin/maps/franklin-animated-map/
This is an actual recording of the Rebel Yell. It is impressive and scarey.
http://www.ideastations.org/radio/archive.html
Sent in by Compatriot Danny Honnoll of Jonesboro:
Do States Have a Right of Secession?
by Walter Williams (April 19, 2002)
Do states have a right of secession? That question was settled through the costly War of 1861. In his recently published book, “The Real Lincoln,” Thomas DiLorenzo marshals abundant unambiguous evidence that virtually every political leader of the time and earlier believed that states had a right of secession.
Let’s look at a few quotations. Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address said, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.” Fifteen years later, after the New England Federalists attempted to secede, Jefferson said, “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation … to a continuance in the union …. I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.’” At Virginia’s ratification convention, the delegates said, “The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.” In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, cleared up what “the people” meant, saying the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, “not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong.
In a word, states were sovereign; the federal government was a creation, an agent, a servant of the states.
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Maryland Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel said, “Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty.” The northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace.
Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South’s right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.” Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content.” The New York Times (March 21, 1861): “There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.” DiLorenzo cites other editorials expressing identical sentiments.
Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech, “It is poetry not logic; beauty, not sense.” Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives “to the cause of self-determination — government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.” Mencken says: “It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.”
In Federalist Paper 45, Madison guaranteed: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” The South seceded because of Washington’s encroachment on that vision. Today, it’s worse. Turn Madison’s vision on its head, and you have today’s America.
DiLorenzo does a yeoman’s job in documenting Lincoln’s ruthlessness and hypocrisy, and how historians have covered it up. The Framers had a deathly fear of federal government abuse. They saw state sovereignty as a protection. That’s why they gave us the Ninth and 10th Amendments. They saw secession as the ultimate protection against Washington tyranny.
Editor’s Comment: Secession is not protection against establishing a government to prevent the abolishment of slavery. The key issue in the right to secession is not separating oneself from a government that prevents the “self-determination” of “peoples,” but separating oneself from a government that fails in its purpose: the protection of individual rights.
Thomas Jefferson:
“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.”
Subject: How Long Does the US Have?
It is important for everyone to understand the importance of this document for the reaper knocks on our door.
This is the most interesting thing I’ve read in a long time. The sad thing about it, you can see it coming. I have always heard about this democracy countdown. It is interesting to see it in print. God help us, not that we deserve it.
How Long Do We Have?
About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. >From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. ‘The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage
Worthy Quotes from the founders of our nation:
Benjamin Franklin: When the people find they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote
John Adams: Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
Thomas Jefferson: The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
If you do not understand the difference between a republic and a democracy, Google it, or click here:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/AmericanIdeal/aspects/demrep.html
Bit of Humor from Gen.Robert Toombs
Shortly after the war Toombs met Thad Stevens in Augusta, Georgia. “Well, Mr. Toombs,” said Stevens, “how do you rebels feel after being licked by the Yankees?”
“We feel just as Lazareus did,” was the reply.
“How is that?” asked Stevens.
“Lazarus was licked by the dogs, wasn’t he?” said Toombs.
“My opinion of the Yankees,” Toombs once remarked, “is apostolic, ‘Alexander the Coppersmith did me much evil. The Lord rewarded him according to his works.’”
Standing near by was an officer of the Federal Army, who overheard the remark.
“But, general,” said he, “you must admit that we whipped you nevertheless.”
“No, sir,” replied General Toombs, “we just wore ourselves out whipping you.”
This is your newsletter please help by sending interesting articles for publication. The JO Shelby Camp won the David 0. Dodd Award this year for best newsletter and website. I am sure the website by Compatriot Gordon Hale is the reason we won. Help us make it the best for next year by contributing.
