This is the second (and final) part of the “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” series which I started writing yesterday.
Part 1 can be found here: Give me Liberty, or give me Death! – Part 1
Introduction:
A quick recap: In Part 1 we saw that Trump, while not a typical politician, is nonetheless turning on Bitcoin in order to protect that which he holds most dear: his horde of fiat money-based wealth. We saw that governments around the world have turned to age-old propaganda strategies to grab and hold onto power – the very same strategies developed and used by Joseph Goebbels to bring the Nazis to power in 1930s Germany, and to keep them there once in office.
We saw that Liberty – our very right to make our own choices such as “I want to use Bitcoin instead of USD” – is under threat. Today I want to elaborate a little on that threat and on how propaganda is being used to turn the population against its own liberties.
As with yesterday, I will not just be using my own words today. Once again I will stand on the shoulders of giants and borrow their words in the form of a series of quotes.
You are being lied to. We all are. America is a great example of this, so I will keep this post American in flavour (or should that be “flavor”? 😄), because the USA is an example which most of us can relate to.
As I have said before, it is disturbing to see that the US is STILL playing the “Russia = Communist = Enemy” card, a good three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The USSR is long gone and Russia has been a democracy for decades; yet the old “Evil Communist Ruskies” narrative – which is ingrained deep into the psyche of the American populus – is still the go-to rhetoric used by politicians over and over again. What did Goebbels teach us in Part 1?
“THE ESSENCE OF PROPAGANDA CONSISTS IN WINNING PEOPLE OVER TO AN IDEA SO SINCERELY, SO VITALLY, THAT IN THE END THEY SUCCUMB TO IT UTTERLY AND CAN NEVER ESCAPE FROM IT.”
“…THE RANK AND FILE ARE USUALLY MUCH MORE PRIMITIVE THAN WE IMAGINE. PROPAGANDA MUST THEREFORE ALWAYS BE ESSENTIALLY SIMPLE AND REPETITIOUS.”
“THIS IS THE SECRET OF PROPAGANDA: THOSE WHO ARE TO BE PERSUADED BY IT SHOULD BE COMPLETELY IMMERSED IN THE IDEAS OF THE PROPAGANDA, WITHOUT EVER NOTICING THAT THEY ARE BEING IMMERSED IN IT.”
“THE ENGLISH FOLLOW THE PRINCIPLE THAT WHEN ONE LIES, IT SHOULD BE A BIG LIE, AND ONE SHOULD STICK TO IT.”
“IF YOU TELL A LIE LONG ENOUGH, IT BECOMES THE TRUTH.”
This is how the people of the USA continue to be led, or “misled”, if you prefer.
Because there will always be those intelligent enough to question the politicians and their mass media (their tool of manipulation), a defence mechanism has to be put in place. You can’t expect the politicians themselves to run around putting out fires, that sounds too much like hard work, and it could be dangerous if they miss a fire and it grows too big.
No, what they have done is to build a self-defence system into their propaganda; a clever system which is a diabolical as it is ingenious.
As much as the modern Politically Correct Liberals hate to hear this, as nations we tend to differ greatly from one another. We have various physical and mental traits which define us and differentiate us from each other. One of the traits which I admire the most in Americans is their patriotism. The average American is a patriot at heart – someone who loves their country and will readily defend it against attack or ridicule. Perversely, it is this good-intentioned patriotism that the government has re-purposed to serve their evil agenda. By portraying their own interests as “patriotic”, the politicians seek to squash any criticism of them as a ruling class. Therefore, anybody who shouts out against the rulers gets shot down by the crowd, because such a person is obviously “unpatriotic” or “anti-American” – the politicians don’t even have to lift a finger.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Those speaking against the ruling class are those who can see through the lies, they are those who seek to make America better and who seek to preserve the liberty of the common man!
For this reason, today I will be focusing on patriotism and what is REALLY means – NOT what the politicians say it means!
Quotes:
That was a slightly lengthy, but necessary introduction. I hope that you are now in the right frame of mind to read these quotes which I have sourced for you. Let’s now take a look at patriotism, liberty, politics and a few related topics, as seen through the eyes of those who are well qualified to speak on these topics:
350z33 at en.wikipedia [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Let us begin with a stark reminder that we can’t just rest on our laurels and expect freedom to continue as a way of life:
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
~Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson remains my favourite US president of all time: a true visionary and a true patriot.
Many years later, Reagan echoed Jefferson’s words:
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
~Ronald Reagan
It is clear that if you wish to live free, you must be prepared to continually fight for your freedom, for there will be a continuous stream of tyrants who would like to take it away and enslave you. The next two men quoted knew all too well what I’m talking about:
There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.
~Nelson Mandela
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.
~Malcolm X
Lincoln was another one of the great American Presidents. Like Jefferson (and Bit Brain) he was a visionary who could see the path of the future long before it actually happened:
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
~Abraham Lincoln
The government does not seek to protect your liberty through its laws, it seeks to limit and restrain you. Just look at Bitcoin and crypto regulations in the US! Do those regulations really help you as a crypto investor, or do they hinder you? Is your government for you, or against you? Is it infringing on your liberties?
Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
~Woodrow Wilson
I speak out against representative democracies all the time, for they are “democracies” only in name. Since the majority of people have no actual say in the running of their countries, most modern democracies have decayed into socialism in democratic clothing. They preach “democracy” yet display socialism. Look at the quote below, then decide which you think America is today: Democratic or Socialist.
Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
~Alexis de Tocqueville
Once again, Jefferson hits the nail right on the head:
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
~Thomas Jefferson
CLEARLY something is VERY wrong with our modern “democracies”! For starters: they are no longer democratic!
You have no say in government. They do not listen to you! Voting is a voting designed to placate you through the illusion that you have a say. Try to change a law. Try to ignore a rule. See how much say you really have! Politicians dominate your life and make you live according to their rules! Is that how America was supposed to be?
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
~Abraham Lincoln
George Orwell criticised government hypocrisy when he spoke about the same topic in “Animal Farm”. In his book, the pigs (a parody of the ruling class) stated the following:
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
~George Orwell
So do I have a point, or am I just some trouble-stirring, anti-American, unpatriotic communist? Let’s look at a few more quotes to find out:
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.
~Mark Twain
You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.
~Malcolm X
Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.
~James Bryce
Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.
~George Washington
Who are the real patriots when government is corrupt: those speaking against them, or the brainwashed masses who have good intentions which have been horribly manipulated? He probably didn’t intend to, but modern day politician Joe Biden gave us the answer:
Fighting corruption is not just good governance. It’s self-defense. It’s patriotism.
~Joe Biden
But let’s steer away from modern politicians, they’re all far too much a part of the broken system. Let’s get back to the good old guys and the non-politicians:
I do this real moron thing, and it’s called thinking. And apparently I’m not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions.
~George Carlin
Remember, these are not internet bloggers, these words come from an American President!
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.
~Theodore Roosevelt
Perhaps James Baldwin gave the best description of what patriotism really is:
I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.
~James Baldwin
… and Arthur Schopenhauer gave the best description of what it is not:
Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
~Arthur Schopenhauer
Indeed, I think that some of the more famous thinkers of their time misunderstood the issue of patriotism and how politicians manipulate it. They grew so bitter because of this that they sadly turned against patriotism altogether. They thought that the misguided masses were the patriots, missing the truth that the real patriots were not the masses supporting government, but rather the intelligent few opposing it:
You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
~George Bernard Shaw
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
~Samuel Johnson
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
~Oscar Wilde
It’s very sad to see the level of frustration that those men were driven to.
So as not to end of a negative note, let’s look at two more quotes of those who properly understood patriotism:
The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.
~Julian Barnes
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
~Edward Abbey
Conclusion
I hope that I have sufficiently illustrated the difference between patriotism and “patriotism”. I hope I have shown the difference between being against your government and being against your country. I hope I have shown that to best serve your country, you need to oppose those who seek to oppress you. I hope that I have shown that governments seek to remove your liberties and control you.
It is up to us: (you, me and all the other common folk) to stand up for what is right. Nobody is going to fight this fight for us! Government is Definitely not going to fight For us – they are the main problem!
It would be nice if we had a modern visionary to guide us: somebody who understands Liberty, Patriotism, Politics, Money and even Crypto; luckily for you, you have just such a mentor – you’re reading his blog right now. Mr Mentor tells you this with the utmost certainty: through cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology we can render governments obsolete. We can remove their power and the money supply which enables them. They can’t stop us unless we let them.
The time has come to fight. The time has come to fight for what is right, to fight for our rights!
Through crypto we can let liberty prevail – not governments.
I will be fighting this fight either until we are victorious, or until I draw my final breath. I hope to see you there fighting beside me.
Yours in crypto
Bit Brain
Attribution: Featured Image (Statue of Liberty) by Ana Paula Nardini from Pexels
"The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first"
~ Mark Twain
"Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful"
~ Bit Brain
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