More Spanish Civil War Books:

An International History Of The Spanish Civil War, M. Alpert, Basingstoke, 1994.

Blood Of Spain, R. Fraser, London, 1979.

The Spanish Civil War, Hugh Thomas, London, 1961, 1977, 1982.

This is probably the most classic account of the war because the Franco regime's censorship and supression of information made truth a lasting legacy of the war until the liberalization of the 1960s. For the first time, a comprehensive account of what actually happened had been created and was circulated worldwide. The regime tried to ban it, but the genie was out of the bottle and led to over 40 years of new scholarship.

More Books:

More Books:

Leaders Of The Lost Cause -- New Perspectives On The Confederate High Command, Edited by Gary W. Gallagher & Joseph T. Glatthaur, Stackpole Books, 2004.

Gettysburg -- An Alternate History, Peter G. Tsouras, Greenhill Books, 2002.

Gray Fox -- Robert E. Lee and The Civil War, Burke Davis, The Fairfax Press, 1956.

"It's Time To End This 149 Year Civil War"

Could The South Have Won The "Civil" War?

This question has been the subject of so much speculation for so long that the real question is "Why bother?" The answer is that, of course The CSA could have won The War and their independence. They lost it for a variety of reasons. They lost because of botched opportunities at numerous battles. On more than one occasion, they could have ended The War with a quick stroke or even the capture of Washington D.C. They lost because of poor leadership from Richmond. This was as much due to political bickering as it was to Jeff Davis' myopic and constant attempt to run The War from The Presidential Mansion and assign generals based on favor rather than merit. Finally, they lost because, I believe, it was not ORDAINED that they win separation. A prophecy of Jacob in The Bible ordained that Mannassa (USA) would split from his brother Ephraim (Great Britain), but no such prophecy ordained that Mannassa would then split in two. Lest you think this is silliness, the prophecy was widely believed in the 18th century and was an official part of Anglican doctrine until it was removed for fear of aiding The American Revolution.

The war of 1861-65 was NOT actually a Civil War. It was a war for Southern Independence. What the Southern leaders SHOULD have done was wage a TRUE Civil War to take control of the overall government in Washington. That would have been a victory of Conservatism over Liberalism. That would have been Civil War of the same type as The Spanish Civil War which inevitably will be OUR model for what we will have to do here in our future.

The South should not have STARTED such a war. Both sides waited a long time for the other to fire the first shot. If and when The North fired first somewhere, The South would have had the moral right to then launch a Civil War and move on Washington. What actually sparked The War was either impatience, hubris, or just plain stupidity by either local Charleston leadership or by Jeff Davis himself depending on which historian is to be believed. Fort Sumter was fired on and the game was afoot.

As for the issue of slavery, that institution would have ended in any case. The United States was the only major power that, by 1861, still allowed it. The issues of slavery and of States' Rights SHOULD have been handled by The Supreme Ct. Both were appealed to The Court numerous times. But the Justices dropped the ball. They were too chicken to rule on these hot potatoes.

Westward expansion of new states in free areas, European revulsion and boycotts over slavery, new technology that loosed hand labor, and eventually film and modernism would have forced the end of slavery. But the States' Right to Secede issue has never really been solved! No new Amendment to The Constitution ever spelled out a final judgement. Northern Liberals, as usual, think that silence is acquiescence is agreement and that therefore no further codification is necessary! They spoke, "Make it so." And it WAS so. The 10th Amendment still stands as the argument that Confederates used for their actions.

Texas' Constitution of 1845 specifically spelled out in words a protection for it's right to secede at any time and for any reason. This was sealed by a treaty which, according the U.S. Constitution, became "Law Of The Land" for The USA! Yet Abe Lincoln trashed that Law Of The Land and FORCED Texas back into The Union! Later, a new State Constitution was FORCED on it's people via Northern Reconstructionists! Even if we accept that the other 10 states did an illegal thing by seceding, NO ONE can argue that Texas did. Could Texas therefore, actually, legally, maybe . . . be the only remaining part of The CSA? Today, Northern Liberalism has ruined northern States. We speak of the "Rust Belt" and high unemployment across them. The South has been in ascendency and Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma are three of the four biggest energy producing States. Industries have been relocating to the "right to work" South. Things don't look so good now for The North. Maybe The South actually DID win The "Civil" War!

--RPC, Sunday, November 1, 2009

References:

Command Magazine, "Could The South Have Won The Civil War?, Issue 35, Nov. '95

Dixie Betrayed -- How The South Really Lost The Civil War, David J. Eicher, Little, Brown, &

Don't we all remember the scene from "War Of The Worlds" (1953 with Gene Barry) where the preacher confronts a Martian Machine in the street of the pulverized city? He holds out his Bible toward the invader's pulsating "eye" and commands "In the Name of God . . . Stop!" The Machine zaps him with it's deathray beam.

The Martians have landed for REAL now, not at Grover's Mill, but in The Oval Office They did not ask to be taken to our Leader; they said, "We are the one you have been waiting for. We are your Leader." They have been pulverizing our economy and culture for months. They appear to be unstopable and NORMAL humans have no place left to flee. Despair settles over the land. Now Glenn Beck stands up to them holding out his book Arguing With Idiots in one hand and The Constitution in the other. Unfortunately, The Martians do not understand English and believe that power only comes from the barrel of a deathray.

Even though Glenn is a true American Hero and has educated so many Americans about the evils of Martian political ideology, he is about to have his molecules spread to the four corners of the Earth. You see, when The Martians are finished spreading the (our) wealth among themselves, humans will have little remaining value for them. They laugh at our reliance on WORDS and "The Democratic Process" after they had already taken the necessary steps to control both before their invasion.

The one remaining hope that Earthlings have now is that an external Conqueror more powerful than The Martians will come to our aid and bring a VERY BIG can of disinfectant!

--RPC, Friday, October 30, 2009

(for our political arena)

Does anyone else see this? Does it seem weird that so many ideas, characters, and incidents from the original TV series Star Trek relate to or foreshadow political people and themes today on The Left? How about the very last episode of Trek, "Turnabout Intruder", where a woman who bears an AMAZING similarity to Hillary Rodham bears a grudge against Captain Kirk for his position of power that she covets. A scientist helps her switch minds with Kirk and she finally has a command. Is this Hillary who cannot achieve her lust for power unless she uses a MAN to do it (first Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama)? Compare both Dr. Janice Lester and Hillary in pantsuits from behind and you will be SHOCKED!

Or how about the episode where Klingons seem to have taken over The Enterprise and the ship races on a heading to take it beyond our galaxy ("Day Of The Dove"). It has actually come under the control of an alien incorporeal entity that feeds off of fear and hate and stirs both the humans and Klingons to escalate their fighting forever. This is sort of the setting we are in now as the entity is Satan and the fighting board pieces are conservatives versus liberals.

Or how about the episode where Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura find themselves in a parallel universe ("Mirror, Mirror") where everything is backwards. It is a world of hate, intrigue, assasination, accusation, and fear. Hmm . . . sounds kind of like Communists, socialists, liberals, and/or Democrats today!

How many politicians today can't control their urges to spawn as Mr. Spock couldn't in "Amok Time"? Are conservatives (i.e. our GOOD side) weak indecisive weenies, while liberals (i.e. our BAD side) are slick conquerors as portrayed in "The Enemy Within" when Kirk was split into two by a transporter malfunction?

And later incarnations of the Star Trek world also contain foresight. How about The Borg Collective introduced in the first season of ST: The Next Generation? Are we all now being assimilated? Is all resistence futile? I could go on and on. Feel free to have fun with this yourself. Please keep us all updated on your speculations.

--RPC, Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Now that the final argument has been made, that Barack Obama is actually NOT eligible to be President because he is not a NATURAL-BORN U.S. citizen, all other arguments dealing with his birthplace, any later loss of citizenship, etc. are unnecessary. Even if he WAS born in Hawaii, one of his parents was obviously never an American citizen. Why didn't someone just bring this up before? We could have saved ourselves a lot of grief and infighting. As far as I can tell from searching blogs and hearing on radio talk shows, the one who finally spoke of it was Orly Taits, a woman lawyer of Russian-Israeli origin. I don't know enough about her, but this argument seems clear enough. The matter has been rendered academic. The creature is now after us! OK, the last two sentences are from Mr. Spock on Star Trek, but I just always wanted to say them. They are appropriate here too. You can follow the debate in archived articles (over 1,700 of them) at RepubX.com and, I'm sure, on many other sites as well. Read all you want. View the faked birth records, etc. to your own exhaustion. It won't matter. We can't undo now what was done.

The real question is - WHY? Why did this happen? For the first time in our history, we had the two major Presidential candidates INELIGIBLE for the office they ran for! WHY? Barack was not natural-born. John McCain was not native-born. So WHY are strange things happening to us? WHY are we being hit from 50 directions at once? Most of the pundits have noticed it too. I refer everyone to an article I wrote a year and a half ago. It is on my companion blog, the Great Big Picture Blog, here at Townhall. It's title is "Our Deuteronomy 28 Moment". Now read that chapter in The Bible and weep for America!

--RPC, Tuesday October 27, 2009

Western reporters gathered around Joseph Stalin for a rare opportunity to ask him questions during World War Two. One asked him, "Sir, why do your people still follow you since you are so harsh with them?" Papa Joe (as the mass murderer was so affectionately known) asked that a live chicken be brought to him. He held the chicken tightly as he began to pluck it's feathers. The animal made the most horrific screams (for a chicken) of pain and agony until the ordeal was over and Papa released it. The featherless, bleeding bird fled to a corner of the room where it remained corraled by some of Stalin's men.

Next, the loveable dictator reached into his pocket and brought out a handfull of grain. He held it out toward the frightened chicken and waited. Slowly, the little guy quieted, then looked over the grain, and finally began to move toward the food. It ate. Stalin grinned. He said, "THIS is why they follow me."

Evil minds know how to control other minds. They have learned the psychology of how to exploit human weaknesses. They only care about what WORKS, and not about whether the methods that justify the ends are moral. One of these immoral methods is to make the one who was wronged feel that HE is in the wrong when he doesn't graciously accept the offender's outstretched hand that forgives the offendee's wrong which he never committed! Makes sense, huh. The offender never does wrong as long as he doesn't ACT guilty! If he stays cool and acts magnanimous, he receives the praise of all that he is a "uniter" and not a "divider". At the famous "Beer Summit", Barack Obama held out the grain while the police officer fell for the trap and ate.

This whole scenario played out again about a month later at a townhall meeting in Houston, Texas. Sheila Jackson Lee was filmed talking on her cell phone while a citizen, Tracy, asked a question. The arrogance of the moment only meant something to the Congresswoman after the video was played for wide exposure nationwide. On Greta Van Susteren's show, Ms. Lee spoke into the camera lens, "Call me Tracy. We can work this out." She obviously hoped that a local version of the "Beer Summit" would deflect her own wrong.

To my observation, this "Beer Summit" tactic is ONLY used by leftist minds. While I don't think that Barack or Sheila ever studied Stalin so deeply that they consciously LONG to apply his methods, those methods just seem to be built into them naturally. So, if you have ever been wronged by a he of the twisted left, don't let him pluck your brain. He is the chicken, not you!

-- RPC, Sunday, October 25, 2009

Book Review:

Last Flag Down -- The Epic Journey Of The Last Confederate Warship, John Baldwin & Ron Powers, Crown Publishers, NY, 2007, 332pp.

This is the story of The CSS Shenandoah, the second most famous and successful Confederate Raider (the CSS Alabama being first) and the only Southern capital ship to sail completely around The World. She was purchased surreptitiously at a London dockyard and put to sea disguised as the coal freighter "Sea King" on October 7, 1864.

Sea King rendezvoused with a Southern supply ship at The Madeira Islands where cannons, powder, ammo, and a new crew were brought aboard. October 19th saw the commissioning of the new warship and the start of a mission that would take her around Africa, through The Indian Ocean to Melbourne, Australia where CSA sympathy was strong, and then up to the whaling grounds of The North Pacific to prey on Yankee vessels.

At the time, Shenandoah was likely the fastest ship on the planet because she was actually an early design upon which the famous clipper ships of the 1870s were based. She WAS a clipper ship except with both steam and sail. She even had a propeller screw that could be lifted out of the water for reduced drag. She was a clipper fitted for destruction. Her first owners had built her specifically to race the first tea from the latest Chinese harvests to the ravenous London markets. The first cargo to arrive each season was allowed to set the price and, in effect, corner the market. Barely 1 year old, she had set the London to Bombay and back speed record. She was 230 feet long, 32.5 feet wide, weighed 1,018 tons, and had a 250 hp steam engine. These early clippers were built to survive the worst storms and were able to ride WITH the storms (under full topsail) rather than INTO their winds (to ride them out without sail). These ships were known to cover 400 miles in a single day of "storm riding".

Unknown to Shenandoah's crew as they sped north past The Philippine Islands on April 9, 1865, General Lee was 10,000 miles away surrendering to General Grant at Appomatox Courthouse. But Shenandoah's intended mission had not yet begun. She wreaked havoc on whalers over the next four months with 38 total "prizes". She captured and sank 24 of them in one two week span. Finally, on August 2, 1865, the Raider's crew learned from a British vessel they met just west of Baja, California, that The War had been over. First Officer Conway Whittle, upon whose diary/log this book is based, wrote that it was "the darkest day of my life". Rather than surrender immediately and face possible trial and death as pirates, the men decided to return to England. They sailed around Cape Horn and arrived in Liverpool on November 6, 1865. The ship was sold to The Sultan Of Zanzibar who used her as his personal yacht. She broke up on a reef in The Indian Ocean during a storm in 1879.

There may be some sort of new mini-cult following for this ship and her story as I count at least 5 recent books about her. Here is a list of others :

The Last Shot -- The Incredible Story Of The CSS Shenandoah And The True Conclusion Of The American Civil War, Lynn Schooler, Harper Collins, 2005.

Confederate Raider In The North Pacific -- The Saga Of The CSS Shenandoah, Murray Morgan, Wash. State Univ. Press, 1995.

Sea Of Gray -- The Around-The-World Odyssey Of The Confederate Raider Shenandoah, Tom Chaffin, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006.

Gallant Rebel -- The Fabulous Cruise Of The CSS Shenandoah, Stanley F. Horne, Rutgers Univ. Press, 1947.

CSS Shenandoah -- The Memoirs of Lt. Commanding James I. Waddell, Annapolis Naval Institute Press, 1996.

 BOOK REVIEW:

Throes Of Democracy, Walter A. McDougall, Harper, 2008.

This book approaches the great rift that afflicted our country from 1861 to 1865 not just as a war but as the centerpoint of a whole era. The subtitle is -- The American Civil War Era 1829 - 1877. Expansion, Indian wars, growth of a new Industrial Age, "Social Perfectionism", and "Cultural Pretense" are some topics covered as they exacerbated regional differences. Myths were broken and reborn couched in new terminology. One chapter descriptor is "The Glory And Fraud of Manifest Destiny - 1841-1848". Religious differences between North and South bred tension. The North became what we would call "Liberal" today while the South remained "Conservative". With 19 maps, the book is a hefty 627 pages with 144 pages of notes.

I believe this book reinforces what I have said in earlier articles here, namely that the REAL beginings of America's political problems began in THIS ERA and NOT with The Progressives of the Roosevelt/Wilson era. Those later years were actually PHASE TWO in the long-range plan for the destruction of the country. The FOUNDATION was laid here which was the ENDING of our Constitutional Republic. It was replaced (primarily via the 14th Amendment) by a strong centrist Federal oligarchy. Progressivism, then Socialism, and now today's Fascism have only been possible because of the events of the much earlier "Civil" War era. And, the cracks and strains of this era were direct outgrowths of holes (I think I see 8 of them) in our Constitution from it's beginning. So, what we really need in the largest sense is a) a complete takeover of government at all levels by conservative people who will then b) restore The Constitution and repair it's holes. Something like this WILL happen. I believe it's guaranteed. But it may not be WE who actually do it.  I am grateful for everything that Glenn Beck is doing to wake up people, but somebody please tell him that we don't have a Constitution anymore except insofar as it spells out the structure of elections and offices.  And even these don't matter anymore.  Talking, tea parties, and street marches mean NOTHING to those who rule by fiat.  Their next step will be to SILENCE media opposition.  Then what will we do?

--RPC, Sunday, October 18, 2009

Property And Freedom, Richard Pipes, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

--RPC, 09Oct14, 2009

Enemies Within:

How To Beat The Democrats And Other Subversive Ideas, David Horowitz, Spence Publishing Co., 2002, 237 pages.

No one better understands the way leftists think than David Horowitz because he used to be one of them over 20 years ago. After a beginning section of the book where he summarizes "How the Left Undermined America's Security", David proposes a "Strategy Guide" for "How To Beat The Democrats". Four principles of politics: 1) politics is a war of emotions, 2) politics is a war of position, 3) politics is about fear. and 4) politics is about hope. Then Six Lessons of the (2000) election. He says that democrats win because they understand the "Romance Of The Underdog".

There is a lot of great stuff in the book, but my greatist lament is that we have never invented some way to keep leftist idiots and power/control freaks OFF OF OUR BALLOTS IN THE FIRST PLACE. Why should we have to fight them every election cycle? If we must remain in a two party system, it would be nice if we had two CONSERVATIVE parties which could then have civilized debate over slight differences in everyday issues. Instead we ALLOW (I'm sure Satan is laughing at us over this) the communist leaders of the communist Party of America (i.e. the democrat Party) to muck up the system as they pour sugar in our gas tank! This is the REAL subject of my article from last year (see below on a previous page) titled "If Hamas Is On The Ballot . . ." The point is is that if BAD guys are legitimized by allowing them on a ballot, then we are just GIVING THEM A CHANCE TO WIN! God forgives sins, but . . . how do you forgive stupidity?

 --RPC, Tuesday October 13, 2009.