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Sunday, October 6, 2024 - 08:58 AM

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

First Published in 1994

INDEPENDENT CONSERVATIVE VOICE OF
UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

Author Arthur Thompson

“A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public.” - Mark Twain

“But ‘tis strange, and often times, to win us our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray us in deepest consequence.”

William Shakespeare, “Macbeth”, Act 1, Scene 3 (First performed in 1606).

(Or, in modern English, the agents of evil often tell us part of the truth in order to lead us to our destruction.  They earn our trust by telling us the truth about “little” things, but then they betray us when it will damage us the most.)

This is a long review, but it’s a long book!  Stay with me.

Modern history, particularly the true history of the early years of our American constitutional republic, is replete with examples of political scalawags and devious despisers of the constitutional system our Founding Generation bequeathed to us, who attacked that very system and did lasting damage, often assuring their followers, and the gullible among the American people, that what they proposed to do—or had already done--was beneficial—or would be--to the liberty and security of the nation. (Aaron Burr stands out in my mind as one of these ‘devious despisers’, and he wasn’t alone by a long shot).  What the book I’m about to review so starkly reveals is that it is nothing short of a miracle from our Heavenly Father that the United States survived the 19th century with its system of Constitutional Republicanism, or Federalism, even partially intact.  Unfortunately, during the last half of that 19th century and into the first half of the 20th century, the system of Federalism as envisioned by our Founders and adopted by them and by our first 13 states, did NOT survive intact the onslaughts of the supporters of globalism and collectivism—i.e. the governmental system we use today is NOT the original governmental system set up by those Founders.

My wife and I recently finished reading one of the most eye-opening, and thoroughly disturbing, books we’ve ever read.  Its title is: To the Victor Go the Myths & Monuments:  The History of the First 100 years of the War Against God and the Constitution, 1776-1876.  It was written by Arthur Thompson, and published by American Opinion Foundation of Appleton, Wisconsin in 2016.  Its 492 pages contain shocking information that we had never read previously.  At the end of this article I’ll tell you how you can buy a copy, because if you want to know basically how our country came to the conditions it finds itself in today, you’ll have to go into the past to discover both the shadowy and the famous people of our history who brought us to the present.

In this article I’ll quote from Mr. Thompson’s extensive research presented in his book, from a video interview of Mr. Thompson by a reviewer,  Chris Gomez, and from a review of this book done by American Opinion Publishers, written by James Thornton.  Some of what follows will be my own words and thoughts, while much will be from the above sources, and I’ll be freely (and I do mean ‘freely’) quoting from them.  True history can be quite complex, and I’ll warn you from the start, and as Mr. Thompson also warns, that some of what he has written won’t be well received by many Americans, even those who consider themselves to be American patriots—in the traditional and historic understanding of that description—because it flies in the face of so many long held, but probably erroneous, beliefs.  This will become quite evident as the reader discovers the truth regarding some of the “villains and heroes” of our shared history.  It’s also a dose of reality concerning who have been and are the enemies of our Constitutional freedoms.  As Mr. Thompson warns his readers in A Message From the Author, “What you will read will be quite different than what was taught us in our schools.  Some of it will make you mad at the author, but read on…Do not reject or embrace it all.  Use the information to supplement what you already know and apply it to your overall opinion of the person rather than simply think at any juncture in the narrative whether the person was good or bad.”

In Chris Gomez’s video interview, the author, Arthur Thompson, made the following statements:

  • You will learn history that you never knew existed, and which contradicts what you learned in school”;
  • “For the first 130 to 140 years of our nation’s existence, the word ‘communism’ was widely used (throughout American society), and many Americans were actively involved in various communist conspiracies to remake the U.S. into a communist nation, that in turn would be used to invade and control the world”;
  • “The historical record revealed in this book was purposely hidden, concealed by conspirators to obfuscate their true goals”;
  • These Marxist/communist conspirators did not succeed (yet) because of the layers of strength of the American people and the Christian base of our people that they could not change”.

Some readers may conclude that statements such as these label the author to be a “kook”, or a “conspiracy theorist” because they conflict with what one has chosen to believe, OR has been led to believe.  But To the Victor Go the Myths & Monuments is so much more than mere “conspiracy theory” or the unproved ramblings of a person with an agenda.  This book is a detailed, thoroughly researched (over 45 years), and extensively footnoted overview of America’s first 100 years as a nation, but is much more than that.  We all should realize that “history” books as we have known them all our lives do not always contain the true story of the past, nor even the entire story.  There can be many reasons for this, caused by an author’s bias, his personal agenda, or, as is often the case, because he is serving someone else’s “agenda”.  As Mr. Thompson suggests, “any ‘history’ in which facts are deliberately ignored or in which the author CREATES his own ‘facts’, distorts the true picture of past events.  Such distortions, built up over time, can have deadly effects on a people and on nations.  As George Orwell put it many years ago: ‘The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history’”.  Being a reformed communist, Orwell knew well the machinations and deviousness of the collectivist enemies of freedom.

We all should realize that the goal of modern “education” is not to teach a person how to think, but what to think!  And this goes far beyond the nonsense of ‘political correctness’ that is so prevalent among our population.  Mr. Thompson cogently emphasizes that “one of the most dangerous of (the) ‘what to think’ (mantras) is the idea that there are NO CONSPIRACIES IN POLITICS.  The history of man is composed of conspiracies to gain power; remember, men make things happen!  This is no longer taught in the vast majority of public and private schools today (but) it was taught at the beginning of our country.  In fact, what is taught (today) is that a belief in conspiracies is shallow thinking, and perhaps even paranoia.  In 1776, it was taught as fact!”

Always remember the definition of conspiracy:  Two or more people plan in SECRET to bring about some evil purpose.   “To the Victor Go the Myths and Monuments” goes into detail how, during our country’s first 100 years of existence, a small group of intellectuals in New England and New York changed the conscience of America from a Judeo-Christian outlook to a Rational-based conscience by utilizing societal issues that have always been concerns for Christians, such as slavery, drunkenness, immorality, etc. and slowly but subtly propelling our nation toward war and empire building.

I can’t cover the entire contents of a 492 page book in this article, so I’ll try to concentrate on just two important periods examined in Mr. Thompson’s work:  The decades right after the U.S. became independent and the decades leading up to our misnamed “Civil War”.  In the several decades that followed our independence from Great Britain, Mr. Thompson documents how “conspirators and radicals wished to propel our country in the direction followed by the revolutionary regime in France (following the 1789 revolution in France) with its bloody extermination of opponents and potential opponents, and its highly centralized government.  The American War for Independence produced a country that in many respects was the opposite of what would be produced by the French Revolution.  It became a struggle between two opposing forces, good and evil, manifested in their governments, and as a result a struggle over the New World (territory) and people that the new and old world governments would govern.” James Thornton said it well:  “Our American Revolution did not aim at the destruction of the social system of colonial America.  It aimed…at guaranteeing that Americans (who at that time were overwhelmingly English) would enjoy all of the rights of other Englishmen…. The French Revolution, by way of contrast, aimed at the systematic dismantling of traditional France, the destruction of its social system, and the extirpation of religion.”

Most serious students of the history of the period called ‘the Bloody French Revolution”, which began in 1789, know that it was the product of the plottings and the conspiracies of a group of evil people who called themselves The Order of the Illuminati, who formed in Bavaria on May 1, 1776, who opposed Christianity and Christian government and planned to replace them with a godless despotism.  Following the French Revolution, many of these Illuminist conspirators and those they controlled, most of whom were agents of the revolutionary government of France, came to the newly born Constitutional Republic of the U.S. and worked hard to bring about similar objectives in that new republic, using all manner of inflammatory rhetoric to try to incite rebellion and chaos in our original thirteen states, even being looked upon favorably by some of our original Founders, notably Thomas Jefferson.  In 1794, an historical event known as The Whiskey Rebellion was reliably proved to have been incited by one or more newly formed “Jacobin Clubs” in western Pennsylvania—formed by those very agents of the French revolutionary government who had relocated to our newly founded nation.

Mr. Thompson quotes (p. 62) from “The New York Senate Report of 1920—‘Revolutionary Radicalism—(which documented the inroads of American communism) regarding the source of this anti-U.S. government agitation ca. 1791-1794:  “As an illustration of the effect of European movements upon the U.S., we…make reference to the influence which the Jacobin Clubs of the French Revolution had upon the malcontents in the U.S. in the later part of the 18th century.  The Whiskey Rebellion of Western Pennsylvania was the outgrowth of agitation carried on by so-called democratic societies acting under the guise of protectors of civil liberties, which received their inspiration from the French revolutionary societies.”  The U.S. Senate replied to a speech by President George Washington, and on November 19, 1794 reported that his speech--“Also referred to secret societies  fomenting insurrection.  According to President Washington, the Whiskey Rebellion was the ‘first ripe fruit’ of the democratic societies when the Jacobins used the issue of the imposition of a tax on distilling whiskey”  (p. 63).  Remember, those words came from the U.S. Senate in November of 1794!

It is apparent to students of true history that even in the earliest years of our fledgling republic, as President George Washington himself believed, the agents of revolutionary French Jacobin (Illuminati) Clubs, who called themselves ‘democratic societies”, with help from revolutionary France, would begin the process of trying to destroy the young U.S. by revolution.  These budding ‘insurrectionists’, agitating the populace against paying any kind of ‘whiskey distilling tax’ (a federal law legally passed by Congress to help pay the costs of the American Revolution), created their own armed militias and punished any citizen or government agent who tried to comply with the disliked tax law.  These militias, or “regulars” as they called themselves, were quite brutal and terrorized the entire area of western Pennsylvania and parts of nearby states.  Eventually President Washington authorized the raising of a strong military force and managed to put down the ‘rebellion’ with little violence.  But “the die was cast”, and agitation against our limited government, constitutional republic would continue to grow over the course of the ensuing 19th century.

James Thornton continues: “Placing limits on governmental power, the Constitution was…detested by the radicals.  Through secret societies controlled by or heavily influenced by French agents, it was hoped that a mass insurrection could be fomented.  As in revolutionary France, an explosion of mob violence could bring radicals to power”. Or so they hoped. As President Washington tried to quell the fervor of the French radicals who had moved to our young Republic in the late 18th century, Thomas Jefferson, no friend of President Washington, appeared to be very sympathetic to them, and even castigated those who tried to warn of pro-French radicalism as being “deranged”.  Sounds similar to today, when so many Americans have been programmed to deny that political conspiracies exist, and that those who try to warn about them are “deranged conspiracy theorists”.

Art Thompson reminds his readers that “the activities of revolutionary France and its supporters in the newly independent America were much the SAME as the activities of the USSR and its supporters in America in the 20th century---to subvert and overthrow the legitimate government of the U.S. and to replace it with a revolutionary dictatorship.  The conspirators failed then, but they didn’t give up.”  All Americans need to realize that during the first half of the 19th century our nation was almost ripped apart—almost self-destroyed over the issue of human chattel slavery (and sadly, WAS ripped apart starting in late 1860).  It was a truly evil institution that was seized upon by the enemies of our Constitutional Republic, and they immediately began using the tried and true tactic of ‘divide and conquer’ against Americans of all regions and all races.  Mr. Thompson reminds those of us alive today:  “The English abolished slavery peacefully in 1833 and provided 20 million English Pounds plus an apprenticeship for ex-slaves—a great deal cheaper than waging war.  And they did not have to kill two-thirds of a million (military men on both sides) and untold numbers of civilians to accomplish the end of slavery, as the Conspiracy (detailed in this book) did in America.”  Is Art Thompson suggesting that this conspiracy of communist/socialist/collectivist plotters DELIBERATELY fomented our inaccurately misnamed “Civil War”?  YES, THAT IS WHAT HE PROVED in “To the Victors Go the Myths and Monuments”!  Read his wisdom, and you can come to NO OTHER CONCLUSION!  And if you are an American who believes that our “Uncivil” War was started to end slavery, you’ll be delivered of your incorrect belief after reading this book.  “Ending slavery” was the FARTHEST thing from the minds of Lincoln and his fellow plotters as they prepared to plunge America into a communist/collectivist-inspired war that would claim the lives of almost  three quarters of a million military and civilian citizens, who became “collateral damage” in the conspiracy’s long war against the U.S. Constitution!

Northern extremists, many of whom were socialists or COMMUNISTS in their political philosophies, not only opposed private ownership of slaves but were also against the ownership of all property.  These radicals, living mostly but not exclusively in the North, over many decades in the first half of the 19th century, made untold numbers of “incendiary” speeches and published hordes of scurrilous diatribes against the Southern states and people. We all need to know that in 1859, the infamous TERRORIST AND COMMUNIST, John Brown, launched a raid on the military armory at Harpers Ferry, now in West Virginia (I’ve been there), hoping to arm an army of slaves after inciting a South-wide slave insurrection.  Did you get the fact that John Brown was a COMMUNIST?  He was. (He was identified as a COMMUNIST by his own son’s testimony). On p.291 of his book, Art Thompson wrote:  “The entire adult life of John Brown was involvement in conspiracy, including the conspiracy that had worked for years to destroy the social order of the country and replace it with Illuminist ideas…. Brown was the first political terrorist of his kind…. Brown…was backed by those who wanted a change in government for their own purposes.  He was their instrument to wage terrorist activity to react the people INTO ACCEPTING WAR AND THE CHANGES WROUGHT BY THAT WAR.” (P.292).   Thankfully, Brown was captured, tried, convicted of treason against the State of Virginia, and hanged.  ALL of his co-conspirators and those who financed his evil should also have suffered the same fate!

To Northern abolitionists, and the conspirators who incited them, Brown became a martyr and his death inflamed (and divided) the American people even further, which is what they sought.  War was called for (collectivists/communists love wars because they engender ever-bigger and more powerful government).  Naturally, visions of more or future slave insurrections caused nightmares in the South, thereby creating growing resentment, and even hatred, of the North.   In the North, the purposely-induced rabid anti-slavery sentiments  propagandized that all Southerners were evil and their entire society needed to be obliterated.  Quite naturally, Art Thompson concludes that to the people of the South, the entire North was not only against them, but desired their total annihilation.

We all should know, but most of us don’t know, that only a very small percentage of Southern people prior to The War For Southern Independence owned slaves in any number, from one to hundreds.  While the large plantation owners depended on slavery for survival, many if not most Southerners detested that “peculiar institution”.  While the Confederate States did claim that “maintaining slavery” was one of their reasons for seceding from the Union, it was not the paramount issue to most of their populations.  As James Thornton accurately recounts:  (Southerners) were fiercely independent and resented being pushed around by outsiders.  So it was that firebrands on both sides, often with connections to Conspiracy-directed organizations or unknowingly manipulated by such organizations, fanned the flames of war.  Many abolitionists argued FOR the disunion of the South from the other states before the war, yet once the war was under way, they became fanatical unionists, screaming for (Southern) blood.”  Can you spell H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E?  Can you spell C-O-N-S-P-I-R-A-C-Y? 

Tragically, with the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 (who was NOT the already established Republican Party’s first choice for president), the fuse of the evil folly of war was ignited, the cry for “States’ Rights” was heard over most of the South, secession was approved, and The Confederate States of America was LEGALLY established as an INDEPENDENT COUNTRY.  But the long-range odds were against the Confederacy, we all know now.  By 1865 the Confederacy was devastated, physically, emotionally, financially, and spiritually—its once strong social system was mostly ravaged, destroyed, and changed, just as the conspirators who instigated the war had planned, and the once dominant principle of STATE SOVEREIGNTY codified for all Americans by their Founders in our now-ravaged Constitution was, for all intents, greatly weakened, and the process toward greater centralization of power AND CONTROL by the Federal government was now inevitable, which, of course, was the goal of those who CONSPIRED to change our system of Federalism—strong states and a relatively weak and limited federal government—into an American “Empire” of a dominant central government controlling vassal states (and whatever other parts of the western hemisphere they planned to invade and conquer—particularly Cuba), a process which began, as Art Thompson so brilliantly sets forth, when the ink of our original founding document was barely dry, and continues to this day.

Mr. Thompson reminds the readers of TO THE VICTOR GO THE MYTHS AND MONUMENTS that they might become “depressed with the dark side of American history.  We dwell on these facts simply because they have been lost from the record.  Remember during these times that there were also great men (and women) who gave us or preserved our heritage, and we need to remember and honor them.”  I can verify that, in some respects, readers of this one-of-a-kind book might get depressed when reading about the attacks against our Constitutional Republic and the successes that those despicable plotters have enjoyed over all those years.  You might get depressed when reading this one-of-a-kind tome, but it will also make you quite ANGRY that there have always been among us people who called themselves “Americans” but who despised what America originally stood for, and still do—who so hated our Constitution and its emphasis on LIMITED GOVERNMENT that they would stop at nothing, including a society-destroying war, to weaken or shred it into its virtual banishment from our governmental actions, a process which afflicts our nation today.  So GET ANGRY at those who would change and oppress us, and buy your copy of TO THE VICTOR GO THE MYTHS AND MONUMENTS (or 2 or 3), study it, and share the truth about this war against our Constitution with others.  Help shine the light of TRUTH on the enemies of our liberties who, like the cockroaches they are, will flee from that light!

ORDER FROM “THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY” jbs.org, or P.O. Box 8040, Appleton, Wisconsin, 54912, or call 1-800-342-6491.  Cost is $14.95 for one, $13.95 each for 2, plus shipping.

 

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A native of Cleveland, Ohio W. H. (Bill) Lamb was graduated from Cleveland State University (Ohio) in 1960, and relocated to South Carolina in 1964.  For many years he was an Industrial Engineer, Chief Industrial Engineer, and plant manager in the steel, electronics, and apparel industries in Ohio, South Carolina, and Alabama. 

An avid and long time writer concentrating on political and cultural issues of concern to America’s Christian Patriot community, he was published in the Lancaster, S.C. “News” during the mid-to-late 1960’s and in Greenville’s “The Times Examiner” since 1999.   The late Christian Patriot, Col. Bobby Dill, was his first editor for The Times Examiner, the publication he always refers to as “a great journal of truth”.

Married to Barbara for 65 years, he has two adult kids, five grandkids, and six great grandkids, plus a “feisty and opinionated” 80 lb. Pit Lab named Hayley, who runs the entire house.

A long time member, with Barbara, of the patriotic John Birch Society, he believes that it is the duty of ALL Christians to first, share the love of his Savior, Jesus, with others, and then to be dedicated patriots and do everything possible to both resist the evil of collectivism that is smothering Western Civilization and educate and motivate his fellow Americans in the preservation of our unique Constitutional Republic.