"....America has grown rich at the Expence, & not to the Advantage of G. Britain; that the northern Americans in particular are rather Rivals in our Trade than Merchants in it, and if a considerable Reduction take Place in the Strength & opulence of America, it will render her the longer dependent upon G. Britain. The Americans have quarelled with the old System, while they grew rich & powerful under it as to bid us Defiance; for which Reason we may justly quarel with it too, and insist upon another, which will bring them, & keep them when brought, into a closer Union & Dependence with the Parent State" (Ambrose Serle, secretary to British General William Howe, New York, 2 Sep. 1776).
Never in the Bard's education was he taught that the American Revolution, or more correctly The War for Independence, was in fact a battle against monopoly interests. Nor was he taught that it was a civil war.
The Bard was taught that the American Revolution was about Independence from British rule. He never learned that the Colonists loved Britain and considered themselves loyal British subjects. He never learned that the American colonists often tried to abolish slavery, but that the mother country, Britain, would rather defend the monetary interests of the traders and merchants than the value of human life.
A great many of the colonist slave owners lamented that they had not chosen to own slaves, but had inherited them from preceding generations, and because of British law they could not free them. They were stuck between a rock and a hard place; fighting against enslavement to monopoly interests while owning slaves. Several colonist slave owners hoped that the American War for Independence would change this situation and allow for them to free their slaves into a land safe for them to prosper without fear of being kidnapped and sent off to British plantations in the West Indies.
If the American Colonists had been allowed freedom from monopoly interests there would have been no slavery, or very little of it, at the time of the Revolutionary War for Independence, and probably none after the Constitutional Convention. There may not have been an American Civil War in the 1860s. When people are left alone, they more often do what is right, rather than what is wrong. Freedom is not an escape from danger, but allowance to face it as a single individual.
And the Bard wonders to himself, is there any war that is not about monopoly interests? Are many of the wars fought actually several monopolies vying for control of monetary interests? Is there ever a just war?
The only just war the Bard knows of at this time with his limited knowledge is the American War for Independence. This was a war of many individuals against the large monopoly, more than against Britain. This was a war for the rights of people to compete in every way possible. The Revolutionaries believed in competition of ideas, religion, speech, trade, time, and that it was the right of each person to defend these rights.
"They will not fight at any Rate, unless they are sure of Retreat. Their army is the strangest that ever was collected: Old men of 60, Boys of 14, and Blacks of all ages, and ragged for the most part, compose the motley Crew, who are to give the Law to G. Britain and tyrannize over His Majesty's Subjects in America" (Ambrose Serle, New York, 2 Sep. 1776).
How is an army of ragged old men and young boys a tyranny? Because they dare stand against enslavement and submission to unnatural laws? Isn't it interesting that old men and young boys evoked such a threat to supposedly superior powers? These "tyrants" were individual citizens, not an army in the general sense, not a corporation.
"Her [Great Britain] Fondness for Conquest as a Warlike Nation, her Lust of Dominion as an Ambitious one, and her Thirst for a gainful Monopoly as a Commercial one, (none of them legitimate Causes of War) will all join to hide from her Eyes every view of her true Interests; and continually goad her in these ruinous distant Expeditions, so destructive both of Lives and Treasure, that must prove as pernicious to her in the End as the Croisades formerly were to most of the Nations of Europe....
"....your Lordship makes it painful to me to see you engag'd in conducting a War, the great Ground of which as expressed in your Letter, is, 'the necessity of preventing the American Trade from passing into foreign Channels.' To me it seems that neither the obtaining or retaining of any Trade, how valuable soever, is an Object for which Men may justly Spill each others Blood; and that the true and sure means of extending and securing Commerce is the goodness and cheapness of Commodities; and that the profits of no Trade can ever be equal to the Expence of compelling it, and of holding it, by Fleets and Armies" (Benjamin Franklin to Lord Howe, 20 July 1776, emphasis added).
And so, we must stand back and ask ourselves have we been deceived by our modern expeditions and wars? Is it possible, that we are not at war in distant countries for righteous reasons, but for reasons of corporate interest?
Have we been made dependant upon the corporate monopolies and upon the Government which acts upon their behest? Is it possible that most laws are not there to protect us but to protect a giant corporation's interests? Are we still independent citizens?
It cannot be denied that there are radical Islamic factions that have endangered lives across the world, but are they really Islamic, or are they something else hiding under the robes and headdress of religion? If we lift the head dress and look a little closer we see something else, the religion of greed.
Look, at what we're fighting. Are we fighting against ragged old men and young boys? I hope not.
Look at the Taliban. Are they really any different than our own governments? They require large taxes and protection fees from the villages. They control traffic, monitor all aspects of life. They prevent competition. And they profit from the West's war, rather than being harmed by it. Every contract for construction also includes a hefty fee and agreements with the Taliban. The Western world knows this, but won't speak of it.
The Taliban not only makes giant sums of money from the Western world in all kinds of hidden fees, but makes agreements to allow the projects, such as bridges to be finished so that the engineering firms will be paid by western governments who know that the project will be destroyed by the Taliban not long after completion. The Taliban doesn't care about the welfare of the citizens, which should lead us to question if the Taliban are citizens themselves or a front group (much like TobaccoFree and Co.)for an unknown corporate monopoly.
What gives the Western world the right to fight against the Taliban on moral or just grounds, or to call them terrorists when the Western world practices the same atrocities upon its own populations?
Rather than fighting the corporate Taliban, we should send in the Samuel Adams and the George Washingtons to go in and bolster the morale and courage of the individual citizen. We should empower the citizens in every way possible so that they know who they are and of their self-worth, not as radicals or members of mobs, but as intelligent and industrious people endowed with the right to life, liberty, and property. Then, let those old men and their grandsons go out and get the job done of cleaning out those radical front groups for foreign corporations.
Set up the Committees of Correspondence between the villages, meet under the Liberty Trees, and find that 25% of the population willing to defend life for everyone else. Don't offer to pay the corporate Taliban off, force them out. And the same needs to be done around the world. It can be done. It has been done, although very rarely.
"[I] always took them for a people, whose very horrid figure had a greater effect on their enemy than any courage they possessed, as their cruel turn often assured me they could not be brave, Humanity & pity for misfortunes of the wretched, being invariably the constant companions of true courage; theirs is savage and will never steadily look on danger" (William Digby, British, observations of the Native Indians who fought alongside the British troops, 1777).
Digby's comments on the Native Indians during the American Revolution could now be used to apply to a great number of modern savages, who wear intimidating costumes, and perform cruel acts upon innocent people.
Digby was on the wrong side of the War for Independence against State enforced Monopoly, but his comment is one that ought to encourage each of us as it reminds us of what true courage and bravery look like. It looks like me and it looks like you. It looks like old men and young boys, the light of life flaming in their eyes.
image:Gustave Dore, Death of Samson
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