Roots of Modern Degeneration

The beginning of this process is to be traced to the time when Western man broke the ties to Tradition, claiming for himself as an individual a vain and illusory freedom; when he became an atom in society, rejecting every higher symbol of authority and sovereignty in a system of hierarchies.

To go back to the origins means, plainly and simply, to reject everything that in any domain (whether social, political, or economic) is connected to the "immortal principles" of 1789, as a libertarian, individualistic, and egalitarian thought, and to oppose it with the hierarchical view, in the context of which alone the notion, value, and freedom of man as person are not reduced to mere words or excuses for a work of destruction and subversion.

-Julius Evola, from Men Amongst the Ruins

The Imperium

The foundation of every true State is the transcendence of its own principle, namely the principle of sovereignty, authority, and legitimacy.

Through the multifaceted variety of these forms we always find as a "constant" the notion of the State as the intrusion and the manifestation of a higher order, which is then actualized in a power.

Therefore, every true political unity appears as the embodiment of an idea and a power...

In previous eras, it was possible to speak of the sacred character of the principle of sovereignty and power, namely of the State.

For instance, the ancient Roman notion of imperium essentially belonged to the domain of the sacred.

This notion, in its specific meaning, even before expressing a system of territorial, supernational hegemony, designated the pure power of command, the almost mystical power and auctoritas inherent in THE ONE WHO HAD THE FUNCTION AND QUALITY OF LEADER: a leader in the religious and warrior order as well as in the order of the patrician family, the gens, and eminently, of the State, the res-public-a.

In the Roman world, which was intensely realistic, the notion of this power, which is simultaneously auctoritas, always retained its intrinsic character of A BRIGHT FORCE FROM ABOVE.

A power and authority that are not absolute, are not real authority or real power.

What will be paramount is the virile quality of him who, in the case of conflict between opposite needs, knows how to assert the right of given principles and a given law over that which belongs to the naturalistic and material realm, whether in his case or that of others.

The personality is realized and consolidated along the path of the special "asceticism" required by freedom understood in this way - namely by inner freedom and control over oneself as a physical individual; likewise the foundations of the hierarchical connections proper to that which can be rightly called "the natural right of heroic peoples" are not to be sought elsewhere.

1) The first of these foundations is that the measure of what one can demand from others is dictated by the measure of what one can demand from oneself.

2) The second foundation is the idea, previously upheld by Plato, that those who cannot be their own masters should find a master outside of themselves.

Superiority and power need to go hand in hand, as long as we remember that power is based on superiority and not vice-versa, and that superiority is connected with qualities that have always been thought by most people to constitute the true foundation of what others attempt to explain in terms of brutal "natural selection."

Ancient primitive man essentially obeyed not the strongest members of society, but those in whom he perceived a saturation of mana(sacred energy and life force) and who, for this reason, seemed to him best qualified to perform activities usually precluded to others.

An analogous situation occurs where certain men have been followed, obeyed, and venerated for displaying a high degree of endurance, responsibility, lucidity, and a dangerous, open, and heroic life that others could not; it was decisive here to be able to recognize a special right and a special dignity in a free way.

To depend on such leaders constituted not the subjugation, but rather the elevation of the person.

It is the inferior who needs the superior, and not the other way around.

Everything that has an emotional or irrational motivation has and will play a larger role in human conduct than that played by petty utility -

The higher and more genuine legitimization of a true political order, and thus of the State itself, lies in its anagogical function, namely, in arousing and nourishing the individual's disposition to act and think, to live, to struggle, and eventually sacrifice himself for something that goes beyond his mere individuality.

-Julius Evola, from Men Amongst the Ruins

The Prince - Introduction

Niccolo Machiavelli to the Magnificent Lorenzo de medici...

Those who wish to win favor with a prince customarily offer him those things which they hold most precious which they see him most delight in. Very often, therefore, we see princes presented with horses, weapons, cloth of gold, precious gems, or similar ornaments worthy of their greatness. Wishing, then to present myself to Your Highness. Though I judge this work unworthy to be presented to you, nevertheless, I am very confident that, because of your benevolence, you will accept it, considering that there can come no greater gift from me than the means to understand in a very short time all that which I, after many years, through many labors and dangers, have come to know and understand. I have not adorned this work with fine phrases, with swelling, pompous words, or with any of those blandishments or external ornaments with which many set forth and decorate their matter. For I have chosen either that nothing at all should bring it honor or that the variety of its material and the gravity of its subject matter alone should make it welcome. Nor do I wish it thought a presumption that a man of low and poor estate dare consider and set forth regulations for the rule of princes. For as those who draw landscapes set themselves on the plain to examine the character of hills and of high places and set themselves on the summits to examine the lowlands, so in order thoroughly to understand the nature of the populace one must be a prince, and in order thoroughly to understand the nature of a prince one must be of the people. Therefore, may Your Highness accept this little gift in the spirit with which I send it. If you will diligently read and consider it, you will detect in it one of my deepest desires, which is that you will come to that greatness which fortune and your own qualities promise you. And if from your great height Your Highness will sometimes cast a glance below to these lowly places, you will see how undeservedly I endure the heavy and relentless malice of fortune.

-Machiavelli

MindWar Doctrine 3

from "Psychological Operations: The Ethical Dimension" (1987)

...In contrast to Hobbes, John Locke suggested that social-contract nations could exist on a positively cooperative basis of mutual interest. It is important to note that Locke's prescription was based not on idealistic abstractions (such as ethics), but rather on attainable material objectives: "life, liberty, and estate." Like Hobbes, he sought to design a society reflecting "basic man" rather than one espousing unattainable ideals and expectations.

Locke's positively-cooperative assumptions and prescriptions for limited government based upon majority rule formed the philosophical basis for the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution, to include the latter's "Bill of Rights"[against the government]. Locke recommended a "reasonable Christianity," a faith which while satisfying personal religious desires, would play only a symbolic and ceremonial role in political decision-making.

The history of ethics does not cease with John Locke, but his ideas, as immortalized in the aforementioned documents, ordained the ethical atmosphere of the United States' political culture to the present day. This atmosphere may be summarized in 5 general maxims:

1) Government based on law is a positive institution, not something to be eliminated in an ideal society.

2) Good government is a construct of the people and is responsible to them (social contract theory), not to a higher religion, destiny, or ideology.

3) The will of the people is best ascertained through the opinion of the majority, which thus determines "political truth."

4) As society is based upon cooperative self-interest, so the attractions of such self-interest - for example, private property - must be preserved and enhanced as beneficial and indeed vital features of that society.

5) There is an intrinsic dignity in the individual human life which must be accepted and respected.

(5)

-----------

"You can get more with a gun and a polite request than with just a polite request." - Al Capone

"You can get more with a gun and a polite request than with just a gun." - Michael Aquino

(7)

-----------

Indeed, to question the assumptions underlying the Constitution would be viewed as a kind of quasi-religious heresy - as indeed it is from a philosophical point of view. The social-contract theorists held a vague, general disbelief that God, if he were presumed to exist, would disregard the operation of natural laws to take an interest in the behavior of individual human beings for better or worse. They therefore designed ideal governmental systems in which human reason was preeminent, with traditional (Judeo-Christian) divine influences being relegated to a ceremonial and symbolic role in actual decision-making(9).

...To be effective in his art, the PSYOP operative must venture beyond the Lockean universe, and he cannot allow his assessments of competitive universes to be distorted by Lockean faith-based values.

PSYOP is a means not only for communication with target audiences other than via bullets, but also for a kind of communication that they will understand and be at least somewhat more receptive to because it is couched in an idiom and articulated according to a logic meaningful to them(10).

Both National Socialism and Fascism are now episodes in history, but the principle which underlay their phenomenal power and impact - the organic state as the object of preservation and aggrandizement at the expense [and if necessary the sacrifice] of the individual citizens - remains very much a force in the contemporary international environment.

In the US, social and political truth is arrived at via the methods specified in the Constitution, all of which are based on some combination of direct or representative voting. Our national perception of truth is thus democratic - an approach which John Locke would consider eminently reasonable, but one which would affront Plato and Hegel. To them, truth was/is an absolute principle - not something to be determined by whim, much less by the masses.

Plato held that truth could be attained through the dialectic of human philosophical inquiry; Hegel insisted that only God could consciously employ such a dialectic, and that the most humanity could hope for was to sense its reflection through the dynamics of the state(14).

...Marxism - sometimes called dialectic materialism to distinguish it from the dialectic idealism of Hegel, is a theory of socialism that identifies class struggle as the fundamental force in history. Increasing concentration of industrial control in the capitalist class and the consequent intensification of class antagonisms and of misery among the workers will lead to a revolutionary seizure of power by the proletariat and the subsequent establishment of a classless, utopian society.

Marx, like Hegel, premised his ideas on a necessary, inevitable process of history. Thus communism would eventually come to pass, no matter what capitalism tries to do to stop it. The other side is that there is nothing a Marxist can do to speed it up.

To a serious Marxist, history is again moved by far greater forces than the wills of individuals who may chance to inhabit it at a given point in time. Marxist states view the advanced capitalist cultures as social bombs collectively approaching critical mass; their desire is accordingly to avoid being caught up in the desperate external adventurism, including apocalyptic warfare, which they expect deteriorating capitalist nations to employ in an effort to stave off their inevitable communist revolutions.

Communism incorporates two attitudes towards the truth. The "greater truth" - the materialist dialectic - is considered to be absolute, and adherence to it is once again supra-rational; an article of faith(15).

In the West we are accustomed to regard the United States as a religious society, and to condemn communism for its godlessness. On the other side of the fence, Soviet theorists disdain Western adherence to religion and take pride in the USSRs state atheism. But is this picture borne out in practice? Locke advocated a national structure in which supreme wisdom lay in the will of the citizenry and in which organized religion played only a symbolic and ceremonial role. In his words a "reasonable christianity." Our governments have since approached our national and international problems under the presumption that the free will of the human beings directly involved will order the course of events. This is vintage Enlightenment thinking, and to date the US has seen no reason to subordinate it to any "higher authority." In terms of its political decision-making processes, the United States behaves atheistically.

On the other hand, Soviet leaders do not consider themselves able to control or influence the passage of events as free agents. They make minor adjustments here and there, but the basic course of the future is above and beyond their control, locked in place according to the Marxist principle of historic determinism. Like the ancient Mesopotamians, they perceive themselves as the incidental tools of a "god" whose name just happens to be Dialectic Materialism instead of Baal or Marduk. In terms of its political decision-making processes, the Soviet Union behaves theistically.

Where ethics are concerned, therefore, the U.S. holds itself fully responsible for its own, while the Soviet Union holds that any and all "minor" ethical abuses are justified if in service of its "god." This is a very crucial point - and it explains why the U.S. goes through such persistent agonies of self-criticism while the Soviet Union shrugs off more horrendous excesses(16).

It is not the triumph of armed force that establishes the justice of a given conflict, but rather the political and ethical intent underlying that exchange, according to principles more profound than momentary national aggrandizement.

Within the armed forces it falls to the PsyOp professional to sensitize himself and his fellow servicemen to that intent, and to conscientiously measure all applications of his craft against it(19).

...an infatuation with propaganda for its own sake - a strategy of bludgeoning audiences with the "means" under the assumption that the ends can thus be twisted into whatever image of convenience the propagandist wishes - is characteristic of Marxist systems whose actual ideological ends are fixed by doctrine and thus not a subject for debate. In this very rigidity lies the critical weakness of contemporary communism.

There is a basis for political power other than wanton domination: the striving of the human soul towards dignity and decency for their own sake.

It is the flexible future offered by the Lockean model - the ends suited to the needs and desires of the individual in each culture, whatever the traditional nuances of that culture - that the US symbolizes at its greatest.

It is not an ideal towards which we have to struggle; it is inherent in the very concept of our national design. It will sell itself(20).

...truth is the best propaganda(21).

-Michael Aquino
http://www.xeper.org/maquino

MindWar Doctrine 2

MindWar is the art of seeing a conflict objectively and of manipulating all actors within it to a desired long-range symbiosis. Your successful handling of the situation would not have been judged simply by your blowing the enemy fleet to bits. According to MindWar, you should have taken steps to halt the incident in place and learn enough about the aliens to form an estimate of their civilization's probable future relationship with the Empire. Only then would you have been in a position to decide upon truce, a simple repulsion engagement, or - if necessary - thorough extermination (Aquino - The Dark Side, 157).

Mind War - The term is harsh and fear-inspiring, and so it should be: It is a term of attack and victory - not one of rationalization and coaxing and conciliation. The enemy may be offended by it; that is quite all right as long as he is defeated by it.

MINDWAR IS THE DELIBERATE AGGRESSIVE CONVINCING OF ALL PARTICIPANTS IN A WAR THAT WE WILL WIN THAT WAR.

It is deliberate in that it is a planned, systematic, and comprehensive effort involving all levels of activity from the strategic to the tactical. It is aggressive because opinions and attitudes must be actively changed from those antagonistic to us to those supportive of us if we are to achieve victory. We will not win if we content ourselves with countering opinions and attitudes instilled by enemy governments. We must reach the people before they resolve to support their armies before our combat troops ever see them on the battlefields.

Psychological warfare is the coordination and use of all means, including moral and physical, by which the end is attained - other than those of recognized military operations, but including the psychological exploitation of the result of those recognized military actions - which tend to destroy the will of the enemy to achieve victory and to damage his political or economic capacity to do so; which tend to deprive the enemy of the support, assistance, or sympathy of his allies and to acquire, maintain, or to increase the support, assistance, and sympathy of neutrals.

MINDWAR is the strategy to which tactical warfare must conform if it is to achieve maximum effectiveness. The MINDWAR scenario must be preeminent in the mind of the commander and must be the principal factor in his every field decision. Otherwise he sacrifices measures which actually contribute to winning the war to measures of immediate, tangible satisfaction(6).

Under existing United States law, PSYOP units may not target American citizens. That prohibition is based upon the presumption that "propaganda" is necessarily a lie or at least a misleading half-truth, and that the government has no right to lie to the people. The propaganda Ministry of Goebbels must not be a part of the American way of life.

...and so it must be axiomatic of MINDWAR that it always speaks the truth. Its power lies in its ability to focus recipients' attention on the truth of the future as well as that of the present. MINDWAR thus involves the stated promise of the truth that the United States has resolved to make real if it is not already so(7).

Unlike PSYOP, MINDWAR has nothing to do with deception or even with "selected" - and therefore misleading - truth. Rather, it states a whole truth that, if it does not now exist, will be forced into existence by the will of the United States. The examples of Kennedy's ultimatum to Khruschev during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Hitler's stance at Munich might be cited.

"The terror of the Roman name will be such that the world shall know that, once a Roman army has laid siege to a city, nothing will move it - not the rigors of winter nor the weariness of months and years - that it knows no end but victory and is ready, if a swift and sudden stroke will not serve, to preserve until that victory is achieved." - Livy

...The MINDWAR operative must know that he speaks the truth, and he must be personally committed to it. What he says is only a part of MINDWAR; the rest - and the test of its effectiveness - lies in the conviction he projects to his audience, in the rapport he establishes with it.

We have covered the statement of inevitable truth and the conviction behind that statement; these are qualities of the MINDWAR operative himself. The recipient of the statement will judge such messages not only by his conscious understanding of them, but also by the mental conditions under which he receives them(8).

At the root of any decision to institute MINDWAR in the US defense establishment is a very simple question: Do we wish to win the next war in which we choose to become involved, and do we wish to do so with minimum loss of human life, at minimum expense, and in the least amount of time? If the answer is yes, then MINDWAR is a necessity. If we wish to trade that kind of victory for more American lives, economic disaster, and negotiated stalemates, then MINDWAR is inappropriate, and if used superficially will actually contribute to our defeat.

In MINDWAR there is no substitute for Victory(10).

-Michael Aquino, excerpted from "From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory" (1980)
http://www.xeper.org/maquino

American Masonic Lens

Masonry is action, not inertness. It requires its Initiates to WORK, actively and earnestly, for the benefit of their brethren, their country, and mankind. It is the patron of the oppressed, as it is the comforter and consoler of the unfortunate and wretched. It seems to it a worthier honor to be the instrument of advancement and reform, than to enjoy all that rank and office and lofty titles can bestow. It is the advocate of the common people in those things which concern the best interests of mankind. It hates insolent power and impudent usurpation. It pities the poor, the sorrowing, the disconsolate; it endeavors to raise and improve the ignorant, the sunken, and the degraded.

Its fidelity to its mission will be accurately evidenced, by the extent of the efforts it employs, and the means it sets on foot, to improve the people at large and to better their condition; chiefest of which, within its reach, is to aid in the education of the children of the poor. An intelligent people, informed of its rights, will soon come to know its power, and cannot long be oppressed; but if there be not a sound and virtuous populace, the elaborate ornaments at the top of the pyramid of society will be a wretched compensation for the want of solidity at the base. It is never safe for a nation to repose on the lap of ignorance: and if there ever was a time when public tranquility was insured by the absence of knowledge, that season is past. Unthinking stupidity cannot sleep, without being appalled by phantoms and shaken by terrors. The improvement of the mass of the people is the grand security for popular liberty; in the neglect of which, the politeness, refinement, and knowledge accumulated in the higher orders and wealthier classes will some day perish like dry grass in the hot fire of popular fury.

It is not the mission of Masonry to engage in plots and conspiracies against the civil government. It is not the fanatical propagandist of any creed or theory; nor does it proclaim itself the enemy of kings. It is the apostle of liberty, equality, and fraternity; but it is no more the high-priest of republicanism than of constitutional monarchy. It contracts no entangling alliances with any sect of theorists, dreamers, or philosophers. It does not know those as its Initiates who assail the civil order and all lawful authority, at the same time that they propose to deprive the dying of the consolations of religion. It sits apart from all sects and creeds, in its own calm and simple dignity, the same under every government. It is still that which it was in the cradle of the human race, when no human foot had trodden the soil of Assyria and Egypt, and no colonies had crossed the Himalayas into Southern India, Media, or Etruria.

It gives no countenance to anarchy and licentiousness; and no illusion of glory, or extravagant emulation of the ancients inflames it whit an unnatural thirst for ideal and Utopian liberty. It teaches that in rectitude of life and sobriety of habits is the only sure guarantee for the continuance of political freedom; and it is chiefly the soldier of the sanctity of the laws and the rights of conscience.

It recognizes it as a truth, that necessity, as well as abstract right and ideal justice, must have its part in the making of laws, the administration of affairs, and the regulation of relations in society. It sees, indeed, that necessity rules in all the affairs of man. It knows that where any man, or any number or race of men, are so imbecile of intellect, so degraded, so incapable of self-control, so inferior in the scale of humanity, as to be unfit to be entrusted with the high prerogatives of citizenship, the great law of necessity, for the peace and safety of the community and country, requires them to remain under the control of those of larger intellect and superior wisdom. It trusts and believes that God will, in his own good time, work out his own great and wise purposes; and it is willing to wait, where it does not see its own way clear to some certain good.

It hopes and longs for the day when all the races of men, even the lowest, will be elevated, and become fitted for political freedom; when, like all other evils that afflict the earth, pauperism, and bondage or abject dependence, shall cease and disappear. But it does not preach revolution to those who are fond of kings, nor rebellion that can end only in disaster and defeat, or in substituting one tyrant for another, or a multitude of despots for one.

Wherever a people is fit to be free and to govern itself, and generously strives to be so, there go all its sympathies. It detests the tyrant, the lawless oppressor, the military usurper, and him who abuses a lawful power. It frowns upon cruelty, and a wanton disregard of the rights of humanity. It abhors the selfish employer, and exerts its influence to lighten the burdens which want and dependence imposed upon the workman, and to foster that humanity and kindness which man does to even the poorest and most unfortunate brother.

It can never be employed , in any country under Heaven, to teach a toleration for cruelty, to weaken moral hatred for guilt, or to deprave and brutalize the human mind. The dread of punishment will never make a Mason an accomplice in so corrupting his countrymen, and a teacher of depravity and barbarity. If anywhere, as has heretofore happened, a tyrant should send a satirist on his tyranny to be convicted and punished as a libeller, in a court of justice, a Mason, if a juror in such a case, though in sight of the scaffold streaming with the blood of the innocent, and within hearing of the clash of the bayonets meant to overawe the court, would rescue the intrepid satirist from the tyrant's fangs, and send his officers out from the court with defeat and disgrace.

Even if all law and liberty were trampled under the feet of Jacobinical demagogues or a military banditti, and great crimes were perpetrated with a high hand against all who were deservedly the objects of public veneration; if the people, overthrowing law, roared like a sea around the courts of justice, and demanded the blood of those who, during the temporary fit of insanity and drunken delirium, had chanced to become odious to it, for true words manfully spoken, or unpopular acts bravely done, the Masonic juror, unawed alike by the single or the many-headed tyrant, would consult the dictates of duty alone, and stand with a noble firmness between the human tigers and their coveted prey.

The Mason would much rather pass his life hidden in the recesses of the deepest obscurity, feeding his mind even with the visions and imaginations of good deeds and noble actions, than to be placed on the most splendid throne of the universe, tantalized with a denial of the practice of all which can make the greatest situation any other than the greatest curse. And if he has been enabled to lend the slightest step to any great and laudable designs; if he has had any share in any measure giving quiet to private property and to private conscience, making lighter the yoke of poverty and dependence, or relieving deserving men from oppression; if he has aided in securing to his country men that best possession, peace; if he has joined in reconciling the different sections of his own country to each other, and the people to the government of their own creating; and in teaching the citizen to look for his protection to the laws of his country, and for his comfort to the good-will of his countrymen; if he has thus taken his part with the best of men in the best of their actions , he may well shut the book, even if he might wish to read a page or two more. It is enough for his measure. He has not lived in vain.

Masonry teaches that all power is delegated for the good, and not for the injury of the People; and that, when it is perverted from the original purpose, the compact is broken, and the right ought to be resumed; that resistance to power usurped is not merely a duty which man owes to himself and to his neighbor, but a duty which he owes to his God, in asserting and maintaining the rank which He gave him in the creation...

Pike, Morals and Dogma, 152-156

The initiatic perspective on Satan

The true name of Satan, the Kabalists say, is that of Yahveh reversed; for Satan is not a black god, but the negation of God. The Devil is the personification of Atheism or Idolatry.

For the Initiates, this is not a Person, but a Force, created for good, but which may serve for evil. It is the instrument of Liberty or Free Will. They represent this Force, which presides over the physical generation, under the mythologic and horned form of the God Pan; thence came the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the Ancient Serpent, and the Light-bearer or Phosphor, of which the poets have made the false Lucifer of the legend.

Pike - Morals and Dogma, 102

Kwisatz Haderach 5

"The question is one of powers and how they may be used," Scytale said, moving closer to the Guildsman's tank. "We of the Tleilaxu believe that in all the universe there is only the insatiable appetite of matter, that energy is the only true solid. And energy learns. Hear me well, Princess: energy learns. This, we call power."

"You haven't convinced me we can defeat the Emperor," Irulan said.

"We haven't even convinced ourselves," Scytale said.

"Everywhere we turn," Irulan said, "his power confronts us. He's the kwisatz haderach, the one who can be many places at once. He's the Mahdi whose merest whim is absolute command to his Qizarate missionaries. He's the mentat whose computational mind surpasses the greatest ancient computers. He is Muad'dib whose orders to the Fremen legions depopulate planets. He possesses oracular vision which sees into the future. He has that gene pattern which we Bene Gesserits covet for -"

"We know his attributes," the Reverend Mother interrupted. "And we know the abomination, his sister Alia, possesses this gene pattern. But they're also humans, both of them. Thus, they have weaknesses."

"And where are those human weaknesses?" the Face Dancer asked. "Shall we search for them in the religious arm of his Jihad? Can the Emperor's Qizara be turned against him? What about the civil authority of the Great Houses? Can the Landsraad Congress do more than raise a verbal clamor?"

"I suggest the Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles," Edric said, turning in his tank. "CHOAM is business and business follows profits."

"Or perhaps the Emperor's mother," Scytale said. "The Lady Jessica, I understand, remains on Caladan, but is in frequent communication with her son."

"That traitorous bitch," Mohiam said, voice level. "Would I might disown my own hands which trained her."

"Our conspiracy requires a lever," Scytale said.

"We are more than conspirators," the Reverend Mother countered.

"Ah, yes," Scytale agreed. "We are energetic and we learn quickly. This makes us the one true hope, the certain salvation of humankind." He spoke in the speech mode for absolute conviction, which was perhaps the ultimate sneer coming, as it did, from a Tleilaxu.

Only the Reverend Mother appeared to understand the subtlety. "Why?" she asked, directing the question at Scytale.

Before the Face Dancer could answer, Edric cleared his throat, said: "Let us not bandy philosophical nonsense. Every question can be boiled down to the one: 'Why is there anything?' Every religious, business and governmental question has the single derivative: 'Who will exercise the power?' Alliances, combines, complexes, they all chase mirages unless they go for the power. All else is nonsense, as most thinking beings come to realize."

-Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah, 19-20

Pike on the Civil War

If his country should be robbed of her liberties, he should still not despair. The Protest of the Right against the Fact persists forever. The robbery of a people never becomes prescriptive. Reclamation of its rights is barred by no length of time. Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice can be Teutonic. A people may endure military usurpation, and subjugated States kneel to States, and wear the yoke, while under the stress of necessity; but when the necessity disapears, if the people is fit to be free, the submerged country will float to the surface and reappear, and Tyranny be adjudged by History to have murdered its victims(19).

A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for commercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable, and more than aught else demonstrates to what immeasurable depths of baseness men and nations can descend. Commercial greed values the lives of men no more than it values the lives of ants. the slave-trade is as acceptable to a people enthralled by that greed, as the trade in ivory or spices, if the profits are as large. It will by-and-by endeavour to compound with God and quiet its own conscience, by compelling those to whom it sold the slaves it bought or stole, to set them free, and slaughtering them by hecatombs if they refuse to obey the edicts of its philanthropy(70).

-Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, 1871

Glimpses of the Eternal Champion - Stormbringer 2

...Now the dark stuff was closer and had met with the Theocrat's fleet. Elric could just make out the sails of the first vessels, spread out one behind the other. Then, as they came even closer, he at last recognized the shapes emerging from the general blackness. They were great glinting shapses that dwarfed even the huge battlecraft of Jagreen Lern.

The Chaos Ships.

Elric recognised them, now, from his own knowledge of occult lore. They were the ships said normally to sail the deeps of the oceans, taking on drowned sailors as crews, captained by creatures that had never been human. It was a fleet from the deepest, gloomiest parts of the vast underwater domain which had since the beginning of time, been disputed territory - disputed between the Water Elementals under their king Straasha, and the Lords of Chaos, who claimed the sea-depths as their main territory on earth, by right. Legends said that at one time Chaos had ruled the sea and Law the land. This, perhaps, explained the fear of the sea that many human beings had to this day, and the pull the sea had for others.

But the fact was that, although the Elementals had succeeded in winning the shallower portions of the sea, the Chaos Lords had retained the deeper parts by means of this, their fleet of the dead. The ships themselves were not of earthly manufacture, neither were their captains originally from earth, but their crews had once been human, and were now indestructible in any ordinary sense.

As they approached, Elric was soon in no doubt that they were, indeed, those ships. The Sign of Chaos flashed on their sails, eight amber arrows radiating from a central hub - signifying the boast of Chaos that it contained all possibilities whereas Law was supposed, in time, to destroy possibility and result in eternal stagnation. The sign of Law was a single arrow point upwards, symbolising dynamic growth.

Elric knew that in reality Chaos was the harbinger of stagnation , for though it changed constantly, it never progressed. But, in his heart, he still felt a yearning for this state, for his past loyalties to the Lords of Chaos had suited him better to wild destruction than to stable progress. But now Chaos must make war on Chaos; Elric must turn against those he had once been loyal to, using weapons formed by chaotic forces to defeat those selfsame forces in these ironic times... -Michael Moorcock, Stormbringer, 104-5

The Breaking Mould

"O King," the atheling said, "how the time of man
Is like to a sparrow's flight from door to door
Of a hall where men sit feasting, and fire is warm.
From cold and darkness it comes. It is safe from weather
A moment only; then into the dim and outward
Winter it flies again. Does a man speak now
A word more certain than this? Does the tale of Christ
Speak a better word? Then I bid thee follow it."

The long-haired thanes were silent in hall, and Aedwin
Stroked at his beard. He took the priest's thin hand
Into both his great ones, hairy and scarred. He bowed
For the blessing of Christ his body, clashing with mail.
The Northumbrian shields upheld an alien captain.
The body of Christ was king in the circle of spears.
And lo, I was seized, marching from Baltic forests,
Or pressing beyond the Danube, the Rhine, or the Seine.
Salty with wash of the fjords, rimy with sea-spary,
I in my great boar-helmet was seized and won
By a lean priest whose eyes were kindling with dreams
Of the blessed Rood. I was gentled with Latin hymns,
Cleansed with holy water and crowned with thorns,
And told to remember a sin I had not known.
The hammer of Thor was fallen forever, and Odin
Looked upon Asgard sadly. Twilight came
With a mild Christian splendor of bells and incense.
The Goths unbuckled the sword. The sons of the Goths
Remembered the saints in stone with arches leaping
Heavenward like my soul from the desolate earth.

But now a hammer shines in the hand of Luther
Nailing the ninety-nine theses on a door
At Wittenberg where sparks fly up. Tyndale
Burns, and Scotland's burning. A voice cries,

I tell thee, Master Ridley, this day we light

A fire, O such a fire, shall burn and never

Shall be put out. Now merry England's burning,

And I, dancing with sinful friends on the village green,

Heard voices crying out of heaven, Fly!

Fly from the wrath to come! And as I slept

I dreamed a dream of Beulah Land for which

I fought on Naseby Field, and later sailed

To a land not Beulah Land. With my father's claymore

I still fled sin to the western mountains. There

The hunting-shirts were bowed at Watauga Old Fields,

And Samuel Doak, before King's Mountain, prayed

To the ancient god of battles. Are these not blessed,

The stern lips of mountain men who pray,

Firm in search for god so many a year?

And to me Evangelist came again in the blare

Of a cornet under a canvas tent, a borrowed

Piano tinkling a washed-out music, a sweating

Choir vaguely exalting the youthful blood

Of sinners --

Brother, are you a Christian? Are you

Washed in the Blood? Oh, Brother, sinful Brother,

Come while the choir sings Number Seventy-nine

And give me your hand. God bless you, Brother. God

Bless you, young man. Will there be any stars

Any stars in my crown when at evening...

When at evening, I, a man conceived in sin,

Walked, unthoughtful of sin, I saw overhead

Vega, against the murk of space, and Mars,

A reddish bulb swung closer to this globe

By a few million miles. And Ursa Major

Hurled west against the beating of my heart

Forever, I said, the sun will rise and dawn

Will break again forever. The moon will turn

Its dry face toward the clutching earth, and men

Will walk as I have walked and ask the same

Clean question of a God that never answers...

When at evening I, a man conceived in sin,

Walked, not professing sin, I felt a cloud

Darken the windows of my brain, and death

Looked coarsely in. I said, this mortal plasm

Living by process of all centuries

Not yet has died. The seed is old as man,

Remainder and sum of many bodies, soul

Of infinite souls, an indestructible life.

Then say not, death, I shall not clench this hand

To-morrow...to-morrow I shall not see this sky.

Say not to-morrow this bright urgency

Of looks and words must pass. Oh, come away, death!

I who have no ending cannot know

What it is to end. I who have had no beginning

Know life only. Beyond, by either way,

Is God, whose answer has not come to men

But in the rumors of men - a gypsy race

Who flaunt their pride in legends of old glory

Half-forgotten, repeated as a charm

For comfort's sake when wind blows cold and death

Stands at the road's edge, a shadow beckoning Stop.

But still men dare to speak for God and shape

Their fumbling answers into a mould to keep

The quick proud spirit against the outer dread

Of spaceless terrible things. God is the mould

So many times cast off, so many times

Clay on the wheel again. For if ever the soul

Moves in its changeful dreams, the mould must break.

It is my restless soul that stirs. It is

My soul that will not be contained in the dead

Plaster that other hands have made. It is cramped

And like a child within the womb it must

Begone from that which gave it life. It rends,

It cleaves its way, and there is agony.

But if I pass you by, O House of God,

It is not now in scorn. I would not sit

In the seat of the scornful or walk in the way of sinners.

But men are greater than the house they build

Even the House of God. And the prayers of men

Are mightier than the altars where they bow

Their wounded heads in one eternal wish.

I seek the joy of life. I seek the God

Who will not tame the manliness.

Three men am I. And one with pagan blood

Startles at dawn to find no sword at his side,

No hound to answer his horn, no charger ready,

No ashen spear by the wall, no throng of men

Bearded, shining with mail, in the smoky hall,

No noise of the feasting of gods in high Asgard.

And he says in his teeth: Now who has bewildered me

A thousand years with a doctrine of strange tongues?

Who clad me in strange garments? What smooth saws

Were whispered into my ear by Eastern voices?

What were the swarthy faces, what the drug

That sank me into slumber? I am not

Of the blood of Hebrews. Who gave me over to Hebrews?

After a thousand years I have not learned

The voice of the Hebrew God or the Hebrew way.

The second man of me is Puritan,

Who learned of a godly mother the Ten Commandments

And read the Good Book through at the age of twelve,

Chapter by chapter. The hymns of country choirs

Haunt my tongue. The words of stately men

Speaking from ghostly pulpits forbid me still

From shameful things. And youthful prayers arise

Unbidden to my lips in hours of dread.

Woman is sacred still, and wine is a mocker,

The words of God are written in the Book

Which I will keep beloved though earth may speak

A different language unto those who read her.

The third man was born to weigh the sun

And love the clean cool sureties of matter.

Whatever God is, this man does not guess.

He is content to know what all things do

Or can be made to do. How little is man,

He thinks, reckoning the life of stars, and yet

How easily things beneath the stars may serve

This little man's great will. No question shows

The cause behind a cause, for ever there are

Unmeasured causes still. He had rather walk

The observant friend of the world as it looks to be,

And move with it among all active things,

Using them all, or maybe used by them.

And if he die - why, many men have died!

And what is God? Well, what He is, He is =

Some Great Electron, not yet trapped ore seen,

But there or not, whatever our debates.

In elder days than these men saw the gods.

Red-bearded Thor in a goat-pulled chariot came

To Thialfi's hut. Men sat at meat with the god,

Tearing the goat-flesh, jesting over the mead

Till the rafters rang and the gold-haired maidens laughed.

And once on a misty dawn by a norther ford

A ferryman answered a stranger's call, received

Into his boat an old man, one-eyed, gray-cloaked.

The shore was touched. And then the charmed man saw

the gnarled figure straighten and tower. Fog

Swirled round the breast of Odin. The golden voice

Spoke farewell to a man who sat with oars

Poised in a breathless trance. And on that spot

He raised a cairn of stones and slew a horse,

Sprinkling the blood while solemn runes were chanted.

Evangelist, you who called to me on the curb

And waved an inviting hand toward the vacant seat

Beside you in the car, hear this my question:

How can three alien men be reconciled

In one warm mind that like the sparrow flies

In a great hall lit for feasts and the laughter of men,

And would be glad before it goes forever

Out of the opening door? Oh, give me a scroll

Written anew, for where I pass are lions

Walking chainless and devils that will not flee.

The mould breaks, and God must arise again.

And you, my known or unknown friend, believe

that my notion of God is less than my notion of you,

For somehow man encloses the only God

With whom I dare be intimate. I have heard

The brave laughter of men who were fated to die

And cannot think that God surpasses them

In finite beauty - and my world is finite.

And you, beloved, it is no April fire

That brings my lips to yours again. It is

No sudden springtime burning in the veins

That soon must slacken. This is the deepest flame

Ever given to man, the love of life

Summed up in you, for what we have learned of God

Is not yet more mysterious, is not

More powerful a life than this we share,

Companions, lovers, in one destiny.

-Donald Grady Davidson, The Breaking Mould,

from The Tall Men collection of poems, 1927

Glimpses of the Eternal Champion - Stormbringer 1

"You said there was more work for me and my sword, Sepiriz," Elric said. "What's its nature?"

"You have already learned that Jagreen Lern has summoned some of the Dukes of Hell to captain his men and keep his conquered lands under control?"

"Yes."

"You understand the import of this? Jagreen Lern has succeeded in making a sizeable breach in the Law-constructed barrier which once kept the creatures of Chaos from wholly ruling the planet. He is forever widening this breach as his power increases. This explains how he could summon such a mighty assembly of Hell's nobility where, in the past, it was hard to bring one to our plane. Arioch is among them..."

"Arioch!" Arioch had always been Elric's patron demon, the principal god worshipped by his ancestors. That matters had reached such a stage conveyed to him, deeper than anything else, the fact that he was now a total outcast, unprotected either by Law or Chaos.

"Your only close supernatural ally is your sword," Sepiriz said grimly, "And, perhaps, its brothers."

"Brothers? Brothers? What brothers? There is only the sister-sword Mournblade, which Dyvim Slorm has."

Do you remember that I told you how the twin swords were actually only an earthly manifestation of their supernatural selves?" Sepiriz said calmly.

"I do."

"Well, I can tell you now that Stormbringer's 'real' being is related to other supernatural forces on another plane. I know how to summon them, but these entities are also creatures of Chaos and therefore, as far as you're concerned, somewhat hard to control. They could well get out of hand - perhaps even turn against you. Stormbringer, as you have discovered in the past, is bound to you by ties even stronger than those which bind it to its brothers, who are lesser beings altogether, but its brothers outnumber it, and Stormbringer might not be able to protect you against them."

"Why have I never known this?" 

"You have known it, in a way. Do you remember times when you have called to the Dark Ones  and help has come?"

"Yes. You mean that this help has been supplied by Stormbringer's brethren?"

"Much of the time, yes. Already they are used to coming to your help. They are not what you and I would call intelligent, though sentient, and therefore not so strongly bound to Chaos as its reasoning servants. They can be controlled, to a degree by anyone who has power such as you have over one of their brothers. If you need their help, you will need to remember a rune which I shall tell you later."

"And what is my task?"

"To destroy the Dukes of Hell!"

"Destroy the--? Sepiriz, that's impossible! They are Lords of Chaos, one of the most powerful groups in the whole Realm of Chance. Seperiz, I could not do it!"

"True. But you control one of the mightiest weapons..."

-Michael Moorcock, Stormbringer, 75-76

The Lost Cause - Chapter 2

Although the American Union, as involving the Federal principle, contained in itself an element ultimately fatal to its form of government, it is not to be denied that by careful and attentive statesmanship a rupture might have been long postponed. We have already briefly seen that, at a most remarkable period in American history, it was proposed by the great political scholar of this times - John C. Calhoun - to modify the Federal principle of the Union and to introduce an ingenious check upon its tendencies to controversy - a measure that might long have extended the term  of the Union, and certainly would have realized a very beautiful idea of political association.

But we must notice here another cause of disunion that supervened upon that of Federal incoherence, and rapidly divided the country. It was that Sectional Animosity, far more imposing than any mere discord of States, inasmuch as it put in opposition, as it were, two distinct nation as on a geographical line, that by a single stroke divided the country, and thus summarily effected what smaller differences would have taken long to accomplish.

We have elsewhere briefly referred to the divisions of population between the Northern and Southern States, marked as they were by strong contrasts between the characters of the people of each. Had these divisions existed only in a  contracted space of country, they might have resulted in nothing more than the production of parties or the formation of classes. But extending as they did over the space of a continent, these divisions ceased to be political parties or classes of one community, and really existed in the condition of distinct communities or nations. A recent English writer has properly and acutely observed: "In order to master the difficulties of American politics, it will be very important to realize the fact that we have to consider, not the action of rival parties or opposing interests within the limits of one body politic, but practically that of two distinct communities or peoples, speaking indeed a common language, and united by a federal bond, but opposed in principles and interests, alienated in feeling, and jealous rivals in the pursuit of political power."

No one can read aright the history of America, unless in the light of a North and a South: two political aliens existing in a Union imperfectly defined as a confederation of States. If insensible or forgetful of this theory, he is at once involved in an otherwise inexplicable mass of facts and will in vain attempt an analysis of controversies, apparently the most various and confused.

The Sectional Animosity, which forms the most striking and persistent feature in the history of the American States, may be dated certainly as far back as 1787. In the Convention which formed the Constitution, Mr. Madison discovered beneath the controversy between the large and small States another clashing of interests. He declared that the States were divided into different interests by other circumstances as well as their difference of size; the most material of which resulted partly from climate, but principally from the effects of their having or not having slaves. "These two causes," he said, "concurred in forming the great division of interests in the United States;" and "if any defensive power were necessary it ought to be mutually given to these two sections." In the South Carolina Convention which ratified the Constitution, General Pinckney spoke of the difference between the inhabitants of the Northern and Southern States. He explained: "When I say Southern, I mean Maryland and the States southward of her. There, we may truly observe that nature has drawn as strong marks of distinction in the habits and manners of the people, as she has in her climates and productions."

There was thus early recognized in American history a political North and a political South; the division being coincident with the line that separated the slave-holding from the non-slave-holding States. Indeed, the existence of these two parties and the line on which it was founded was recognized in the very frame-work of the Constitution. That provision of this instrument which admitted slaves into the rule of representation (in the proportion of three-fifths), is significant of a conflict between North and South; and as a compact between the slave-holding and non-slaveholding interests, it may be taken as a compromise between sections, or even, in a broader and more philosophical view, as a treaty between two nations of opposite civilizations. For we shall see that the distinction of North and South, apparently founded on slavery and traced by lines of climate, really went deeper to the very elements of the civilization of each; and that the Union, instead of being the bond of diverse States, is rather to be described, at a certain period of its history, as the forced alliance and rough companionship of two very different peoples.

When General Sullivan complained to Washington that there was a party in New England opposed to his nomination as minister of war, because they considered he had "apostatized from the true New England faith, by sometimes voting with the Southern States," he declared thus early the true deigns of the North to get sectional control of the government.

The slavery question is not to be taken as an independent controversy in American politics. It was not a moral dispute. It was the mere incident of a sectional animosity, the causes of which lay far beyond the domain of morals. Slavery furnished a convenient line of battle between the disputants; it was the most prominent ground of distinction between the two sections; it was, therefore, naturally seized upon as a subject of controversy, became the dominant theatre of hostilities, and was at last so conspicuous and violent, that occasion was mistaken for cause, and what was merely an incident came to be regarded as the main subject of controversy.

The institution of slavery, as the most prominent cause of distinction between the civilizations or social autonomies of North and South, was naturally bound up in the Sectional Animosity. As that animosity progressed, the slavery question developed. This explains, indeed, what is most curious in the political history of slavery - namely that the early part of that history is scarcely more than an enumeration of dates and measures, which were taken as matters of course, and passed without dispute. The Fugitive Slave Lw of 1793 was passed without a division in the Senate, and by a vote of forty-eight to seven in the House. Louisiana and Florida, slave-holding territories, were organized without agitation. Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama were admitted into the Union without any question as to their domestic institutions. The action of Congress, with respect to the north-west territory, was based upon a pre-existing anti-slavery ordinance, and had no significance. There was nothing or but little in the early days of the Union, to betoken the wild and violent controversy on slavery, that was to sweep the country like a storm and strew it with scenes of horrour.

With the jealousy of Southern domination came the slavery agitation; proving clearly enough its subordination to the main question, and that what was asserted as a matter of conscience, and  attempted to be raised to the position of an independent controversy, was but part of or an attachment to an animosity that went far below the surface of local institutions. The Hartford Convention, in 1814, which originated in jealousy of the political power of the South, proposed to strike down the slave representation in Congress, and to have the representation conformed to the number of free persons in the Union. A few years later, the country was more distinctly arrayed into two sectional parties, struggling for supremacy with regard to the slavery question. The legislation on the admission of Missouri in 1820, by which the institution of slavery was bounded by a line of latitude, indicated the true nature of the slavery controversy, and simply revealed what had all along existed: a political North and a political South. It was here that we find the initial point of that war of sections which raged in America for forty years, and at last culminated in an appeal to arms. The Missouri legislation was the preliminary trace of disunion. "A geographical line," wrote Mr. Jefferson, "coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men will not be obliterated; and every new irritation will make it deeper and deeper."

The North naturally found or imagined in slavery the leading cause of the distinctive civilization of the South, its higher sentimentalism, and the superior refinements of scholarship and manners. It revenged itself on the cause, diverted its envy in an attack upon slavery, and defamed the institution as the relic of barbarism and the sum of all villainies. But whatever may have been the defamation of the institution of slavery, no man can write its history without recognizing contributions and naming prominent results beyond the domain of controversy. It bestowed on the world's commerce in a half-century a single product whose annual value was two hundred millions of dollars. It founded a system of industry by which labour and capital were identified in interest, and capital therefore protected labour. It exhibited the picture of a land crowned with abundance, where starvation was unknown, where order was preserved by an unpaid police; and where many fertile regions accessible only to the labour of the African were brought into usefulness, and blessed the world with their productions.

We shall not enter upon the discussion of the moral question of slavery. But we may suggest a doubt here whether that odious term "slavery," which has been so long imposed, by the exaggeration of Norther writers, upon the judgment and sympathies of the world, is properly applied to that system of servitude in the South which was really the mildest in the world; which did not rest on acts of debasement and disenfranchisement, but elevated the African, and was in the interest of human improvement; and which, by the law of the land, protected the negro in life and limb, and in many personal rights, and, by the practice of the system, bestowed upon him a sum of individual indulgences, which made him altogether the most striking type in the world of cheerfulness and contentment. But it is not necessary to prolong this consideration. It was significant only of a contest for political power, and afforded nothing more than a convenient ground of dispute between two parties, who represented not two moral theories, but hostile sections and opposite civilizations.

In the ante-revolutionary period, the difference between the populations of the Northern and Southern colonies had already been strongly developed. the early colonists did not bear with them from the mother-country to the shores of the New World any greater degree of congeniality than existed among them at home. They had come not only from different stocks of population, but from different feuds in religion and politics. There could be no congeniality between the Puritan exiles who established themselves upon the cold and rugged and cheerless soil of New England, and the Cavaliers who sought the brighter climate of the South, and drank in their baronial halls in Virginia confusion to roundheads and regicides.

In the early history of the Northern colonists we find no slight traces of the modern Yankee; although it remained for those subsequent influences which educated nations as well as individuals to complete that character, to add new vices to it, and to give it its full development. Bu the intolerance of the Puritan, the painful thrift of the Northern colonists, their external forms of piety, their jaundiced legislation, their convenient morals, their lack of the sentimentalism which makes up the half of modern civilization, and their unremitting hunt after selfish aggrandizement are traits of character which are yet visible in their descendants. On the other hand, the colonists of Virginia and the Carolinas were from the first distinguished for their polite manners, their fine sentiments, their attachment to a sort of feudal life, their landed gentry, their love of field-sports and dangerous adventure, and the prodigal and improvident aristocracy that dispensed its stores in constant rounds of hospitality and gaiety.

Slavery established in the South a peculiar and noble type of civilization. It was not without attendant vices; but the virtues which followed in its train were numerous and peculiar, and asserted the general good effect of the institution on the ideas and manners of the South. If habits of command sometimes degenerated into cruelty and insolence; yet, in the greater number of instances, they inculcated notions of chivalry, polished the manners and produced many noble and generous virtues. If the relief of a large class of whites from the demands of physical labour gave occasion in some instances for idle and dissolute lives, yet at the same time it afforded opportunity for extraordinary culture, elevated the standards of scholarship in the South, enlarged and emancipated social intercourse, and established schools of individual refinement. The South had an element in its society - a landed gentry - which the North envied, and for which its substitute was a coarse ostentatious aristocracy that smelt of the trade, and that, however it cleansed itself and aped the elegance of the South, and packed its houses with fine furniture, could never entirely subdue a sneaking sense of its inferiority. There is a singularly bitter hate which is inseparable from a sense of inferiority; and every close observer of northern society has discovered how there lurked in every form of hostility to the South the conviction that the Northern man, however disguised with ostentation, was coarse and inferiour in comparison the the aristocracy and chivalry of the South.

The civilization of the North was coarse and materialistic. That of the South was scant of shows, but highly refined and sentimental. the South was a vast agricultural country; waste lands, forest and swamps often gave to the eye a dreary picture; there were no thick and intricate nets of internal improvements to astonish and bewilder the traveller, no country picturesque with towns and villages to please his vision. Northern men ridiculed this apparent scantiness of the South, and took it as evidence of inferiority. But this was the coarse judgment of the surface of things. The agricultural pursuits of the South fixed its features; and however it might decline in the scale of gross prosperity, its people were trained in the highest civilization, were models of manners for the whole country, rivalled the sentimentalism of the oldest countries of Europe, established the only schools of honour in America, and presented a striking contrast in their well-balanced character to the conceit and giddiness of the Northern people. 

Foreigners have made a curious and unpleasant observation of a certain exaggeration of the American mind, an absurd conceit that was never done asserting the unapproachable excellence of its country in all things. The Washington affair was the paragon of governments; the demagogical institutions of America were the best under the sun; the slip-shod literature of the country, the smattered education of the people were the foci of the world's enlightenment; and, in short, Americans were the lords of creation. De Tocqueville observed: "the Americans are not very remote from believing themselves to belong to a distinct race of mankind."

But it is to be remarked that this boastful disposition of mind, this exaggerated conceit was peculiarly Yankee. It belonged to the garish civilization of the North. It was Daniel Webster who wrote, in a diplomatic paper, that America was "the only great republican power." It wasw Yankee orators who established the Fourth-of-July school of rhetoric, exalted the American eagle, and spoke of the Union as the last, best gift to man. This afflatus had but little place among the people of the South. Their civilization was a quiet one; and their characteristic as a people has always been that sober estimate of the value of men and things, which, as in England, appears to be the best evidence of a substantial civilization and a real enlightenment. Sensations, excitements on slight causes, fits of fickle admiration, manias in society and fashion, a regard for magnitude, display and exaggeration, all these indications of a superficial and restless civilization abounded in the North and were peculiar to its people. The sobriety of the South was in striking and were peculiar to its people. The sobriety of the South was in striking contrast to these exhibitions, and was interpreted by the vanity of the North as insensibility and ignorance, when it was, in fact, the mark of the superiour civilization.

This contrast between the Northern and Southern minds is vividly illustrated in the different ideas and styles of their worship of that great American idol - the Union. In the North  there never was any lack of rhetorical fervour for the Union; its praises were sounded in every mote of tumid literature, and it was familiarly entitled "the glorious." But the North worshipped the Union in a very low, commercial sense; it was a source of boundless profit; it was productive of tariffs and bounties; and it had been used for years as the means of sectional aggrandizement.

The South regarded the Union in a very different light. It estimated it at its real value, and although quiet and precise in its appreciation, and not given to transports, there is this remarkable assertion to be made; that the moral veneration of the Union was peculiarly a sentiment of the South and entirely foreign to the Northern mind. It could not be otherwise, looking to the different political schools of the two sections. In the North, the doctrine of State Rights was generally rejected for the prevalent notion that America was a single democracy. to the people of the North the Union was therefore a mere geographical name, a political designation which had no peculiar claims upon their affection. In the South the Union was differently regarded.  State Rights was the most marked peculiarity of the politics of the Southern people; and it was the doctrine that gave the Union its moral dignity, and was the only really possible source of sentimental attachment to it. The South bowed before neither an idol of gain, nor the shadow of a name. She worshipped that picture of the Union drawn by John C. Calhoun: a peculiar association in which sovereign States were held by high considerations of good faith; by the exchanges of equity and comity; by the noble attractions of social order; by the enthused sympathies of a common destiny of power, honour and renown. But, alas! this picture existed only in the imagination; the idea of Mr. Calhoun was never realized; and the South, torn from its moral and sentimental attachment to the Union, found that it had no other claims upon its affection.

To understand how the Union became a benefit to the North and resulted in the oppression of the South, it is only necessary to compare the two sections in the elements of prosperity, and to explore the sources of those elements as far as they can be traced within the domain of the Union.

-E.A. Pollard

The Lost Cause - Chapter 1

There is nothing of political philosophy more plainly taught in history than the limited value of the Federal principle. It had been experimented upon in various ages of the world - in the Amphictyonic Council, in the Achaean League, in the United Provinces of Holland, in Mexico, in Central America, in Columbia, and in the Argentine republic; in all these instances the form of government established upon it had become extinct, or had passed into the alternative of consolidation or anarchy and disintegration. Indeed, it is plain enough that such a form of government is the resource only of small and weak communities; that it is essentially temporary in its nature; and that it has never been adopted by States which had approached a mature condition, and had passed the period of pupillage. It is not to be denied that the Federal principle is valuable in peculiar circumstances and for temporary ends. But it is essentially not permanent; and all attempts to make it so, though marked for certain periods by fictitious prosperity and sudden evidences of material activity and progress, have ultimately resulted in intestine commotions and the extinction of the form of government. What, indeed, can be more natural than that the members of a confederation, after they have advanced in political life and become mature and powerful, should desire for themselves independence and free action, and be impatient of a system founded on their early and past necessities!

Coleridge, the acute English scholar and philosopher, once said that he looked upon the American States as "splendid masses to be used by and by in the composition of two or three great governments." For more than a generation past it was considered by a party in America, as well as by intelligent men in other parts of the world, that the American Union, as a confederation of States, had performed its mission, and that the country was called to the fulfillment of another political destiny.

And here it is especially to be remarked that those statesmen of the South, who for more than thirty years before the war of 1861 despaired of the continuation of the Unioin, were yet prompt to acknowledge its benefits in the past. There could be no dispute about the success of its early mission; and no intelligent man in America dared to refer to the Union without acknowledging the country's indebtedness to it in the past. It had peopled and fertilized a continent; it had enrished the world's commerce with a new trade; it had developed population, and it was steadily training to manhood the States which composed it, and fitting them for the responsibility of a new political life. The party that insisted at a certain period that the interests of the Southern States demanded a separate and independent government, simply held the doctrine that the country had outlived the necessities of the Union, and had become involved in the abuses of a system, admirable enough in its early conception, but diverted from its original objects and now existing only as the parent of intolerable rivalries, and the source of constant intestine commotions.

With reference to these abuses, it must be remarked here that although the Federal principle was the governing one of the American Union, yet such Union was not purely a confederation of States; it was mixed with parts of another system of government; and that the subordination of the Federal principle to these produced many additional causes of disruption, which plainly hurried the catastrophe of separation and war.

But before coming to the subject of these abuses, it will be necessary to determine the true nature and value of the Union. We must go back to an early period of American history; we must explore the sources of the great political parties in the country; and we must enumerate among the causes of disunion not only the inherent weakness of the Federal principle, but those many controversies which aided and expedited the result, and in which the true idea of the Union was violated, the government distorted to the ends of party, and faction put in the place of a statesmanship that sought long but in vain to check its vile ambition and avert the final result.

When the thirteen colonies in North America resolved to throw off the yoke of Great Britain, committees of correspondence were established in each colony. In May, 1774, after Lord Dunmore dissolved a patriotic Virginia House of Burgesses, eighty-nine of its members met at the Raleigh Tavern, in Williamsburg, and, among other acts, recommended that all the colonies should send deputies to a General Congress, to watch over the united interests of all, and deliberate upon and ascertain the measures best adapted to promote them.

On the 4th of July, 1776, the Congress published a Declaration of Independence. It declared that the colonies were "free and independent States," thus asserting their separate State sovereignty, and expressly negativing the idea of consolidation, held by New Hampshire, who on the 15th of June, 1776, voted that the Thirteen United Colonies ought to be declared "a free and independent State."

At this time the only common agent of the States was a Congress which really had no legislative power. Its action was generally wise, and therefore cheerfully acquiesced in and made efficient by the principals. But as the war continued, its pressure became heavier; men, money, and supplies were needed; and often the resolutions of Congress were either wholly neglected or positively repudiated by the States. It became apparent that the common agent must be clothed with actual power, and this could only be done by an express agreement between the States, whereby each should bind itself to observe certain rules, and obey certain regulations adopted to secure the common safety.

It was thus that the first Confederation of the American States - the articles of which were adopted by the several States in 1777 - originated in the necessities of the war waged by them against Great Britain for their independence. A common danger impelled them to a close alliance, and to the formation of a confederation, by the terms of which the colonies, styling themselves States, entered "severally into a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defence, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or attacks made upon them or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade or any other pretence whatever."

In order to guard against any misconstruction of their compact, the several States made explicit declaration, in a distinct article, that "each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and right which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled."

The objects and character of this confederation or union were thus distinctly defined. Under its terms the war of the Revolution was successfully waged, and resulted in the treaty of peace with Great Britain in 1783, by the terms of which the several States were, each by name, recognized to be independent.

As the Confederation originated in the necessities of the war against Great Britain, it was these necessities which determined its character and measured its powers. It was something more than a military alliance; for it was intended to unite the resources of the States, to make a common financial fund, and to "secure the public credit at home and abroad." Partial and imperfect as was the union it established, it accomplished a great historical work, and dated an important era; it supplied what scarcely anything else could have supplied - a political bond between colonies suddenly erected into sovereign States; it was the stepping stone to a firmer association of the States, and a more perfect union. In this sense are to be found its true offices and value. Lines of exasperated division had been drawn between the colonies; the sharp points of religious antagonism had kept them at a distance; the natural difficulties of intercourse and the legislative obstructions of trade had separated them; differences of government, contrast of manners, diversity of habits had contributed to the estrangement; and in these circumstances a bond of union, however slightly it held them, was important as the initial of their political association, and was educating them for the new and enlarged destiny dated with their independence.

We have implied that the Confederation was a bond of very partial and imperfect effect. It practically existed not more than two years; although its nominal term in history is eight years. It was debated for nearly five years. It was not consummated until 1781. It was full of glaring defects; it had no power to enforce the common will of the States; it had no jurisdiction of individuals; it had but a mixed and confused power over foreign relations, and the treaties it might make were dependent on commercial regulations of the different States. Having outlived the prime necessity that originated it during the war, its cohesive powers gradually gave way; it yielded to the impressions of new events; and it is remarkable that the association formed under it and entitled a "Perpetual Union" was practically terminated by the uninterrupted free will of the States which composed it.

A convention of delegates assembled from the different States at Philadelphia in May, 1787. It had been called by Congress "f0r the sole and express purpose of revising the Article of Confederation, and reporting to Congress and the several legislatures such alterations and provisions therein, as shall, when agreed to in Congress, and confirmed by the States, render the Federal Constitution adequate to the exigencies and the preservation of the Union." This was the Convention that erected the two famous political idols in America: the Constitution of 1789 and the Union formed under it, and entitled itself to the extravagant adulation of three generations as the wisest and best of men.

This adulation is simply absurd. The language in the call of the Convention was singularly confused. The men who composed it were common flesh and blood, very ignorant, very much embarrassed, many of them unlettered, and many educated just to that point where men are silly, visionary, dogmatic, and impracticable.

Hildreth, the American historian, has made a very just remark, which describes the cause of the unpopularity of his own compositions. He says: "In dealing with our revolutionary annals, a great difficulty had to be encountered in the mythic, heroic character above, beyond, often wholly apart from the truth of history, with which, in the popular idea, the fathers and founders of our American Republic have been invested. American literature having been mainly of the rhetorical cast, and the Revolution and the old times of the forefathers forming standing subjects for periodical eulogies, in which every new orator strives to outvie his predecessors, the true history of those times, in spite of ample records, illustrated by the labors of many diligent and conscientious inquirers, has yet been almost obliterated by declamations which confound all discrimination and just appreciation in one confused glare of patriotic eulogium."

The Constitution formed by this Convention , although singularly deficient - and so far from being esteemed by American demagogueism as "almost of Divine authority," actually one of the loosest political instruments in the world - contained one admirable and novel principle, which grew out of the combination of circumstances in the debate. One party in the Convention plausibly contended that its power was limited to a mere revision and amendment of the existing Articles of Confederation, and that it was authorized to add nothing to the Federal principle. Another party favored the annihilation of the State governments. A third party stood between these extremes, and recommended a "national" government in the sense f a supreme power with respect to certain objects common between the States and committed to it. But when on this third plan the question of representation arose, it was found that the large States insisted upon a preponderating influence in both houses of the National Legislature, while the small States insisted on an equality of representation in each house; and out of this conflict came the mixed representation of the people and the States, each in a different house of Congress; and on this basis of agreement was reared the Constitution of the United States of America.

The great novelty of this Constitution - the association of the principle of State sovereignty with a common government of delegated powers acting on individuals under specifications of authority, and thus, therefore, not merely a Federal league - is scarcely to be esteemed as an a priori discovery, and to be ascribed, as American vanity would have it, to the wisdom of our forefathers. The mixed representation of the people and the States originated, as we have seen, in a jealousy sprung in the Convention, and is better described as the fruit of an accident than the elaborate production of human wisdom. It was a compromise. It simply extricated the Convention from a dead-lock of votes between the large and the small States as to the rule of representation. But it was of immense importance as the initial and necessary measure of the combination of State sovereignty with the simple republic. There is reason to suppose that the framers of the Constitution did not fully comprehend the importance of the great political principle on which they had stumbled, with its long train of consequences, and that, as often happens to simple men, they had fallen upon a discovery, of the value of which they had but a dim apprehension.

The principle involved in the measure of the Convention referred to was more fully and perfectly developed in the Amendments, which were the fruit of the legislative wisdom of the States, not of that of the Convention, and were designed to give a full development and a proper accuracy to what was certainly ill-performed work in it. The following Amendments were embodied in the official declarations of at least six of the States, coupled with their ratification of the Constitution, and made by them the conditions precedent to such ratification:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

The Union, thus constituted, was not a consolidated nationality. It was not a simple republic, with an appendage of provinces. It was not, on the other hand, a mere league of States with no power to reach individuals. It was an association of sovereign States with a common authority qualified to reach individuals within the scope of the powers delegated to it by the States, and employed with subjects sufficient to give it for certain purposes the effect of an American and national identity.

At the separation from the British Empire, the people of America preferred the establishment of themselves into thirteen separate sovereignties, instead of incorporating themselves into one. To these they looked up for the security of their lives, liberties, and properties. The Federal government they formed to defend the whole against foreign nations in time of war, and to defend the lesser States against the ambition of the larger. They were afraid of granting power unnecessarily, lest they should defeat the original end of the Union; lest the powers should prove dangerous to the sovereignties of the particular States which the Union was meant to support, and expose the lesser to being swallowed up by the larger.

The articles of the first Confederation had provided that "the Union shall be perpetual." Notwithstanding this, as we have seen, another convention subsequently assembled which adopted the present Constitution of the United States. Article VII. provided that "the ratifications of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution, between the States ratifying the same." In effect, this Constitution was ratified at first by only a portion of the States composing the previous Union, each at different dates and in its sovereign capacity as a State, so that the second Union was created by States which "seceded" from the first Union, three of which, in their acts of ratification, expressly reserved the right to secede again. Virginia, in giving her assent to the Constitution said: "We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected, etc., etc., do, in the name and in behalf of the people of Viriginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." The State of New York said that "the pwoers of Government may be re-assumed by the people whenever it shall be necessary to their happiness." And the State of Rhode Island adopted the same language.

The reader of American history must guard his mind against the errour that the Union was, in any sense, a constitutional revolution, or a proclamation of a new civil polity. The civil institutions of the States were already perfect and satisfactory. The Union was nothing more than a convenience of the States, and had no mission apart from them. It had no value as an additional guaranty of personal liberty, nor yet for its prohibitions of invasion of individual rights. These had been declared with equal clearness and vigour five centuries before in the Great Charter at Runnymede, had been engrafted upon the Colonial Governments, and were the recognized muniments of American liberty.

The novelty and value of the Federal Constitution was the nice adjustment of the relations of the State and Federal Governments, by which they both became co-ordinate and essential parts of one harmonious system; the nice arrangement of the powers of the State and Federal Governments, by which was left to the States the exclusive guardianship of their domestic affairs, and of the interests of their citizens, and was granted to the Federal Government the exclusive control of their international and inter-State relations; the economy of the powers of the States with which the Federal G0vernment was endowed; the paucity of subjects and of powers, withdrawn from the States, and committed to the Federal Government. It was the recognition of the idea of Confederation - the appreciation of the value of local self-g0vernment. It was the recognition that the States were the creators and their powers were inherent, and that the Federal Government was the creature and its powers were delegated.

The two great political schools of America - that of Consolidation and that of State Rights - were founded on different estimates of the relations of the General Government to the States. All other controversies in the political history of the country were subordinate and incidental to this great division of parties. We see, at once, how it involved the question of negro-slavery in the South. The agitation of this question was a necessity of the Consolidation doctrine, which was mainly the Northern theory of the government; for duty being the correlative of power, the central government at Washington was responsible for the continuance or existence of slavery in proportion to its power over it. On the other hand, the State Rights party assented to the logical integrity of the proposition that if the government had been consolidated into one, slavery might have been abolished, or made universal throughout the whole; but they claimed that the States had retained their sovereignty, for the reason, among others, that they desired to avoid giving any pretext to the General Government for attempting to control their internal affairs; and they, therefore, contended that the Northern party could with no more reason assail the domestic institutions of the South than they could attack the similar institutions of Cuba and Brazil.

The difference between the State Rights and Consolidation schools may be briefly and sharply stated. The one regarded the Union as a compact between the States: the other regarded the Union as a national government set up above and over the States. The first adopted its doctrine from the very words of the Constitution; the seventh article for the ratification of the Constitution reading as follows:

"The ratification of the Conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this constitution BETWEEN the States so ratifying the same."

The great text of the State Rights school is to be found in the famous Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. These resolutions are properly to be taken as corollaries drawn from those carefully-worded clauses of the Constitution, which were designed to exclude the idea that the separate and independent sovereignty of each State was merged into one common government and nation. The Virginia resolutions were drawn up by Mr. Madison, and the Kentucky resolutions by Mr. Jefferson. The first Kentucky resolution was as follows:

"1st. Resolved, That the several States comprising the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government, but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government, for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded, as a State, and is an integral party; that this government created by this compact, was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion and not the Constitution the measure of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."

The most formidable conflict between these two schools of politics took place during the memorable tariff controversy of 1831-2, in which Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, the most remarkable antitypes of Northern and Southern statesmanship, joined in debate, explored the entire field of controversy, searched every feature and principle of the government, and left on record a complete and exhausting commentary on the whole political system of America.

Mr. Calhoun was logician enough to see that the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions invovled the right of Secession. But he was not disposed to insist upon such a remedy. He lived in a time when, outside of his own State, there was a strong sentimental attachment to the Untion; and he would have been a reckless politician, who would then have openly braved popular passion on this subject. Indeed Mr. Calhoun professed, and perhaps not insincerely, an ardent love for the Untion. In a speech to his constituents in South Carolina, he declared that he had "never breathed an opposite sentiment," and that he had reason to love the Union, when he reflected that nearly half his life had been passed in its service, and that whatever public reputation he had acquired was indissolubly connected with it.

It was the task of the great South Carolina politician to find some remedy for existing evils short of Kisxunion. He was unwilling, iether to violate his own affections of or the popular idolatry for the Union; and at the same time he was deeply sensible of the oppression it devolved upon the South. The question was, what expedient could be found to accommodate the overruling anxiety to perpetuate the Union, and the necessity of checking the steady advance of Northern aggression and sectional domination in it. Mr. Calhoun did succeed in accommodating these two considerations. He hit upon one of the most beautiful and ingenious theories in American politics to preserve and perfect the Union, and to introduce into it that principle of adaptability to circumstances, which is the first virtue of wise governments. He proposed that in cases of serious dispute between any State and the General Government, the matter should be referred to a convention of all the States for its final and conclusive determination. He thus proposed, instead of destroying the Union, to erect over it an august guardianship, and instead of bringing it to the tribunal of popular passion, to arraign it only before the assembled sovereign States which had created it.

Mr. Calhoun abundantly explained his doctrine. "Should," said he, "the General Government and a State come into conflict, we have a higher remedy: the power which called the General Government into existence, which gave it all of its authority, and can enlarge, contract, or abolish its powers at its pleasure, may be invoked. The States themselves may be appealed to, three-fourths of which, in fact, form a power, whose decrees are the Constitution itself, and whose voice can silence all discontent. The utmost extent then of the power is, that a State acting in its sovereign capacity, as one of the parties to the constitutional compact, may compel the government, created by that compact, to submit a question touching its infraction to the parties who created it." He insisted with plain reason that his doctrine, s far from being anarchical or revolutionary, was "the only solid foundation of our system and of the Union itself." His explanation of the true nature of the Union was a model of perspicuity, and an exposition of the profoundest statesmanship. In opposition to a certain vulgar and superficial opnion, that the State institutions of America were schools of provincialism, he held the doctrinre that they were in no sense hostile to the Union, or malignant in their character; that they interpreted the true glory of America; and that he was the wisest statesman who would constantly observe "the sacred distribution" of power between the General Government and the States, and bind up the rights of the States with the common welfare.

It is a curious instance of Northern misrepresntation in politics and of their cunning in fastening a false political nomenclature upon the South, that the ingenious doctrine of Mr. Calhoun, which was eminently conservative, and directly addressed to saving the Union, should have been entitled "Nullification," and its author branded as a Disunionist. Unfortunately, the world has got most of its opnions of Southern parties and men from the shallow pages of Northern books; and it will take it long to learn the lessons that the system of negro servitude in the South was not "Slavery;" that John C. Calhoun was not a "Disunionist;" and that the war in 1861, brought on by Northern insurgents against the authority of the Constitution, was not a "Southern rebellion." Names are apparently slight things; but they create the first impression; they solicit the sympathies of the vulgar; and they often create a cloud of prejudice which the greatest exertions of intelligence find it impossible wholly to dispel. But it is not the place here to analyze at length the party terms of America; and the proper definition of the words we have referred to as falsely applied to the South will appear, and will be easily apprehended in the general argument and context of our narrative.

-E.A. Pollard