Birdnow's Aviary

July 07, 2026

How to Fix the Birthright Citizenship Issue

This from Conservative writer and activist Ken Blackwell on Facebook:

BREAKING: Justice Brett Kavanaugh just handed Congress a clear legal path to end automatic birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens. No constitutional amendment required.

Here is what happened. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship in a case called Trump v. Barbara. Kavanaugh voted against the administration and agreed the order could not stand. But his separate opinion may prove more valuable to this cause than a courtroom win would have been.

Kavanaugh wrote that the order did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment at all. In his view, the order failed for one reason only. It conflicted with a federal statute, Section 1401 of the immigration code, that Congress passed and Congress can change.

Then he spelled out the path. Kavanaugh wrote that Congress could amend that statute or pass new legislation. Lawmakers could create exceptions to automatic citizenship for children born to parents who are in this country unlawfully or only temporarily.

A sitting justice of the Supreme Court put the roadmap in a published opinion for the whole world to read.

Understand why the statute matters here. Congress wrote the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship language into federal law in 1940 and carried it into the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The rule politicians call untouchable has been sitting in an ordinary statute for more than eighty years. Ordinary statutes can be rewritten by ordinary majorities.

For thirty years, the political class fed Americans a different story. They claimed birthright citizenship was locked into the Constitution and nothing short of an amendment could touch it. Amendments require two thirds of Congress and three quarters of the states, so the excuse worked. Politicians could wring their hands, mail their fundraising letters, and never cast a hard vote.

Kavanaugh demolished that excuse. He even pointed out that Congress has considered bills to change birthright citizenship for three decades and passed none of them. The barrier was never the Constitution. Congress chose the excuse over the work, year after year, while the abuse got worse.

And the abuse is real. Foreign nationals fly here on tourist visas for the sole purpose of giving birth. They collect an American passport for the child and fly home with a golden ticket. An entire birth tourism industry advertises this scheme openly, and smugglers sell illegal border crossings with citizenship for a future child as part of the pitch. Almost no other developed nation on earth hands out citizenship this way.

The Fourteenth Amendment served a specific purpose. Congress wrote it in 1868 to overturn Dred Scott and guarantee that no American could be denied citizenship because of his race. That purpose stands, and closing a modern loophole does nothing to disturb it.

The men who wrote the amendment never imagined visa overstays, birth tourism packages, or an open border used as a citizenship machine. Kavanaugh made this exact point. He argued that large scale illegal immigration and modern travel created conditions the Reconstruction Congress never envisioned, and that new exceptions can fit alongside the historical ones for diplomats and occupying enemy forces.

Now look at the math on the Court, because the press buried it. The headlines called this a 6 to 3 ruling. On the constitutional question, it was really 5 to 4. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented outright, and Kavanaugh joined them in rejecting the majority’s constitutional reasoning even though he voted to strike the order on statutory grounds.

That means four sitting justices have now signaled that automatic citizenship for the children of illegal aliens is a policy choice, and policy choices belong to Congress. When Congress passes a statute and that statute reaches the Court, the ground has already shifted. This is the strongest legal position the reform side has held in a century.

Washington got the message within hours. President Trump declared that "No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary!” and called on Congress to get to work. Senator Tom Cotton already has a bill, and Senators Cornyn and Scott have proposals targeting birth tourism. The Justice Department announced a crackdown on birth tourism visa fraud the same week.

Some Republicans, including Speaker Johnson and Senators Paul and Lee, still want a constitutional amendment. An amendment takes years while a statute takes months, and the Court’s own deciding vote just said a statute can do the job. Pass the bill now and let those who want an amendment pursue one on a parallel track.

So here is my message to every member of the House and Senate. The excuse is gone. Stop hiding behind a constitutional barrier that a Supreme Court justice just told you does not exist. Draft the bill, amend Section 1401 with clear exceptions, hold the hearings, and put every member on record before the American people.

Some members will vote no, and the voters deserve to see exactly who they are. Every politician who spent decades promising to fix this now has to show us whether the promise was real. There is nowhere left to hide.

American citizenship is the most valuable thing this nation confers. It should never be handed out automatically to reward lawbreaking or sold through birth tourism packages. The people’s elected representatives should set the rules, and the people should hold them accountable.

Justice Kavanaugh ruled against the White House on Tuesday and still handed Congress the pen. Our job as citizens is to make sure they pick it up.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 03:09 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 926 words, total size 7 kb.

Cuesta Mas, Du Fas

Timothy Birdnow

Yes indeed...Biden's open borders cost Americans are potfull.

Rents went through the roof. But so did mortgages, even though it was always believed illegals didn't buy homes. They do. But also a lot of speculators bought homes to rent to illegals and this demand drove up prices for everyone.

We all paid for Biden's little Cinco de Mayo party.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 65 words, total size 1 kb.

Cuba Wants to Negotiate Now

Timothy Birdnow

The end draws near for the regime in Cuba.

;link=https://thenationalpulse.com/2026/07/06/castros-grandson-seeks-negotiations-with-trump-as-nationwide-blackout-hits-cuba/]Castro’s Grandson Seeks Negotiations With Trump as Nationwide Blackout Hits Cuba

Tourism is one of the few sources of income for the communist country, yet tourism is down 58%. If they can't guarantee steady electricity nobody will come.

They can't make that guarantee.

So time is running out on the troublesome tropical hell.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 69 words, total size 1 kb.

Greenland - The Bill has Come Due

Timothy Birdnow

Trump doubles down on Greenland while speaking with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"That's what hurt my relationship with NATO. Greenland doesn't help Denmark. Denmark doesn't spend money to really help Greenland, but it's important for the U.S.,And it's surrounded by Chinese ships and Russian ships. Greenland should be controlled by the U.S., not by Denmark."

In other words NATO is still mired in past glory, dreaming of the days when it's members were great powers in their own right and not subservient to the U.S. military. They want the memories of glory, but are unwilling to do the hard work needed to be relevant as world powers in their own right. They want our money and protection but don't understand that with that comes our right to assert our will.

If others pay your way they are the boss. 'Nuff said.

Europe has yet to learn that. They want to play act at being important and owning places like Greenland make them feel like they are not the jokes they have let themselves become.

In the end Denmark will lose Greenland. It will either be to an America working as much on their behalf as on our own, or it will be to Russia or China. Take your pick.

This is exactly why it is not a good idea to leave your security to others so you can enjoy yourself while they pay. In the end the check will come due.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 251 words, total size 2 kb.

The Final Frontier

Timothy Birdnow

Another from American Thinker. This article argues for mining asteroids for building habitats and bases in space.

The author suggests space mining would primarily be of value not for bringing home raw materials but for space construction and he's right to a degree, but only to a degree. For instance, there is considerable Helium III on the lunar surface and it is a very important material, especially in medicine and the like, and we are running out of it. We'll need to get it from the Moon. There are a lot of other valuable things in space, be it on the Moon or asteroids, things like silver or lithium that will be in increasing demand as the AI revolution continues.

But I knew the naysayers would be out in force over this. So many people are so very short-sighted and ignorant and whenever an article like this pops up anywhere they come out in force.

Here are a few of the comments:

"There really isn’t any reason to go to other planets or the asteroids. Whatever we want to know can be found out remotely using robotic AI. No reason to go to Mars where there is no air.

It's not just about scientific curiosity, although there are things that can be learned by people that will be missed by a machine. A man might see something and just flip over a rock while the machine will just pass it by.

But that's not the point. The point was and is expanding, growing, becoming more than just a planet-bound, resource-limited species. We are now in a downward spiral and will continue so because we now longer have any frontiers to explore, to settle, to tame.

Imagine if after Columbus found America (and he only did because Europe was exploring and colonizing before he even proposed his little trip to Queen Isabella) the European powers argued the same "too far, too labor intensive, not worth our time or trouble". Anything worth doing is worth facing hardship.

Growth is often painful but that pain opens a whole new vista in life. As a species we have always faced such growing pains. Our distant ancestors climbed out of the ocean to suck air on land and found it difficult to move but we stayed at it, eventually colonizing the planet. Human beings came down from trees, then caves, and traveled from continent to continent. Are we to assume the journey is over now and we should just stay put, not leaving the comfort of our current home?

We need to colonize space - the Moon, Mars, asteroids, and the moons of the outer system.

Why? Right now just one of those asteroids could hit us and there isn't a single thing we can do about it and we would become extinct, if it was a large one. If people were on the Moon, just 240,000 miles away, the human race would survive. Ditto a major nuclear war. Ditto a doomsday virus. Ditto a massive volcanic event.

The farther and wider a species spreads the more likely it is to survive. There is a reason why crocodiles/alligators survived when things like dinosaurs died out; they were everywhere and could find places to ride out the apocalypse. We need to do likewise.

There was a paper that gained a great deal of fame back around 1900 called the Turner Thesis. The argument was that America was a frontier nation, and always had the safety valve of the frontier residing in the psyche of the People. If times were too hard, or if you did something bad and needed a fresh start, you could always flee to the frontier. It was a wild place and pioneers always felt a sense of satisfaction in knowing they were spreading civilization to a wilderness. Turner argued that the closing of the frontier would lead to profound psychological changes in the American People.

Turner wasn't wrong; we've changed immensely from what we were. (Immigration helped that along too but we were wise enough to stop immigration for over forty years.) But the frontier still holds a place in our collective hearts; it is the reason why Westerns were and are so popular. It's why shows about Alaska are popular today; it's our last frontier and it will close eventually, though few are brave enough to face the vicissitudes of that frozen and wild land.

Space is the last, and as Star Trek put it, final frontier. No matter how long or far we go there will always be more of it. And we can settle anywhere we like (within reason) up to and including just building giant space stations and living on them permanently. Scientists have invented many types of space colonies; O'Neil Colonies, Stanford Toruses, Bernal Spheres, etc. If you can build a suspension bridge you can build a space colony - it's just much larger and enclosed. Oh, and it spins to provide gravity.

At any rate let's continue with a few more of the stupid comments:

"Great Article… Though, using asteroids in space would still entail transportation costs. The asteroid belt lies beyond the orbit of Mars, if the goal is extract a meaningful amount of water and transport it back to earth and/or orbit, any transporting and processing costs would exceed the benefits.. …

As if we are going to use chemical rockets forever. This commenter doesn't understand that, in space, the engine gives just an initial push and inertia does the rest. It's like firing a bullet. There are many ways to move stuff in space that costs little.

For instance we could build solar sails. Light exerts pressure and a huge, very thin sail made of reflective material can sail as surely as a wind-driven craft on Earth. Low thrust by highly efficient and it keeps running, keeps accelerating, as long as you like. You can even tack into the 'wind' by various methods, and use the solar wind (charged particles coming out of the sun) as a further means of propulsion. We can also build an electric rocket, particularly a mass driver. Wonderful idea; much like a water-wheel a mass driver used electromagnets to move a bunch of buckets full of dirt, plain old dirt. Chucks the dirt out at the end and pulls the bucket back in. Power it with solar energy and you have a cheap propulsion system that could use the slag from your mining operation to get the ore back to Earth. There is also the Nerva K, which uses a nuclear reactor to superheat a material that you expel out the bottom - a nuclear rocket.

Getting around in space isn't expensive; what is expensive is leaving the Earth. And landing stuff is a LOT cheaper.

"Never happen. Not in this century or the next. #1 reason: Zero return on investment, which would be massive and impossible to recoup. #2: The technology doesn’t exist and the problems/obstacles to overcome are infinite and unknowable. #3: Magic thinking. Just because some brainiac reimagines the laws of physics, time and space, doesn’t mean it’s feasible or realistic.

People wishing to enter dangerous environments that are extremely hostile to human life ought to forget outerspace and focus on innerspace; stay home and explore earth’s oceans, which hold vast, untapped resources that would actually be possible to mine, unlike the moon, Mars, and asteroids."

I've already explained why, after the high initial cost, space resources would prove cheaper. That is often true of things - a hydro-electric dam has a very high up-front cost but produces power for a long time quite cheaply relative to other systems.

As for mining the deep oceans, the guy is just clueless. In space you need to keep the pressure IN. A thin membrane is adequate; the Apollo landing modules were as thin as a couple of sheets of Reynolds Wrap and pressurized - little more than balloons. The deep ocean, on the other hand, is so heavy we can barely send probes down to the bottom and even many well-tested submarines that did not go to the bottom cracked and people died. Also, there is a rich habitat in the oceans while nothing at all in space; mining the bottom of the sea could wipe out whole species while mining in space could wipe out - a couple of rocks. Oh, and how are you going to mine in the deep?

"There really isn’t any reason to go to other planets or the asteroids. Whatever we want to know can be found out remotely using robotic AI. No reason to go to Mars where there is no air.

There was no reason to go to the Marianas Trench either, or to the stratosphere, but the Picard family did it anyway. No reason to climb Mt. Everest. No reason to go to the North Pole or Antarctica.

Robot probes don't inspire people - people do. And robot probes don't colonize, making a new world for our progeny. People do.

"Agreed!

And a Mars colony is a Musk fantasy. Who wants to live out their life in a dark-skied, desert, and spend every waking moment just producing your food and maintaining the buildings you live in? Sounds like life-imprisonment with no parole to me. But a great way to bilk 10s of billions of dollars from the government."

Thousands have tried to sign up for Musk's Mars colony - they have had to turn them away. Obviously SOME want to live this way.

And what does this author do for a living? Obviously he's not a farmer or he wouldn't sneer at maintaining buildings and growing food, which is what farmers do. But if he's, say, an accountant, he still labors all day at a task that is at least as mundane, and a hellova lot less important than working to maintain a colony on another world.

Yeah; it would be a bit like life imprisonment as you couldn't go outside except in a space-suit and only when the sun is quiet and not for long lest radiation kill you. But there are plenty of people who are happy to live inside all the time. I would add that it would not remain prison-like for long as eventually large habitats will be built - in lava flow tubes, inside of bluffs and elsewhere, which will be filled with plants and water and feel very much like the outdoors. We can synthesize that, up to and including moving air for a "breeze". Also you will have plenty of computer technology to entertain you. On a Moon colony you could even get on the internet, even if it would be a bit slow.

We are, after all, just passengers in space anyway. Earth is just a much bigger space habitat than the kind we are going to build.

Here is the only really thoughtful critique:

"We are going nowhere locally in our solar system until we can generate artificial gravity. It is absurd to believe astronauts could live in Zero G for 10 months on the way the Mars and then go down to the planet and be able to function. It is well documented it can take weeks if not months the re-adapt to gravity with a myriad of physiological issues, like experiencing vertigo. A spinning craft to generate 1 G would have to be a minimum of 1/4 mile in diameter across to avoid the spatial distortion caused by the Coriolis effect."

Actually it's not at all absurd to think astronauts could spend ten months in space in zero G; they've done it in the ISS and the Soviets did it in the old Mir. But it's not optimal, for sure.

The main problem is radiation shielding. Radiation outside of the Earth's magnetic field is a serious issue, and you need mass - lots of it - to protect you. There would have to be storm "cellars" to act as shelters. This greatly increases the mass of the ship, making it harder to launch and harder to get the proper course window to each Mars. Oh, and harder to decelerate at the end.

He is correct; a rotating ship would have to be fairly large to avoid the Coriolis Effect. The CE is a phenomenon where acceleration is different at different points in the rotating body. Your head is moving slower than your body, in other words, and the result is there will be a lower gravity there than in your feet. This would be - disadvantageous to put it mildly. It would NOT be impossible but difficult, and everything you do would have to be quite different than on Earth. It could be useful when you sleep; it would tug on your body and help keep muscles working and help you avoid some of the more unpleasant issues of zero g, like your head bobbing in the low gravity, or breathing issues when you sleep. And it would be helpful when you use the toilet, at least more helpful than zero g pooping, which requires a lot of muscle use.

Difficult but not impossible. And if you are sending a whole space colony there, why not a big one? Then you can avoid the problem. Or increase your speed so you get there sooner.

An Orion nuclear drive would do that. Use atomic bombs and chuck them with a gun under a "pusher plate". I assure you you will go fast. Estimates said you could get to Mars in a month. Of course the Outer Space Treaty made this spacecraft drive illegal back in the late sixties, but Trump wants to get out of it.

Still, there is no reason to dawdle in space anyway. It's a whole lot of nothing except when there is something - and that something is rarely good. Radiation, micrometeors, ice, Little green space women, etc.

Space living is the next step in our evolution, like it or not. Staying here means staying in a place that will become increasingly poor, increasingly despotic, and wars will continue to break out and likely get nastier. Our only way out of this cycle is to do what our forefathers did, from the time they first left Africa so many millenia ago - colonize the wilderness. God commanded that in the Bible after all "be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth". So many think the Earth just means this planet. I take a larger view of that command.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 01:27 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 2420 words, total size 15 kb.

What is and isn't Mine

Timothy Birdnow

I remember when I first saw the ending of the television show Yellowstone. (Spoiler alert!) In that show the Dutton family had been fighting - often quite literally - to save their huge Montana ranch from developers and speculators, to keep it wild as it had been. The Indians who had lived there and still did wanted that land "back" as if they ever held any real claim to it. (Interestingly in the show Chief Rainwater was a very cosmopolitan guy who had been raised by white parents and thought he was Mexican by birth until he learned he was an Indian then threw himself into the tribal cause - they didn't care about the Dutton ranch but HE did.)

After the assassination of John Dutton (who had become Governor of Montana solely to stop the development) his family found themselves facing the loss of everything - including any hope of selling the property for what it was worth. Development was going to raise taxes and ruin them. So they sold it "back" to the Indians for a dollar and change an acre, or some equally ridiculous price.

The assumption was that it belonged to the Indians. But did it? They hadn't built anything on it, made any sort of improvements to lay claim to it. John Locke, the great English philosopher, set that as the standard for property ownership; you have to use a property and do SOMETHING to prove it is yours. That can be as simple as building a small cabin or even just a monument of some kind. But the Indians did nothing of the sort, just left the land fallow and as nature had made it. Often Indians did not even visit a place for years, maybe decades, yet still claimed it as theirs.

English law provides for what is known as Adverse Possession, colloquially known as"squatter's rights". While that sounds, even to modern ears, a bit unsavory, it was actually a very useful tool in advancing civilization. If a settler found land that was unused and could use it "openly and notoriously" as the law says, meaning everyone knew about it and the absentee owner had ample time to assert his claim to the property, then the property ownership transrfered to the squatter.

This meant that, unlike under Spanish law, say, a rich guy couldn't build a massive empire of land without risking losing it. As a result small farmholdings were common under English law - especially in America, where land was plentiful and cheap. This encouraged building things up, cultivating the land, etc. The Dutton ranch claimed that land by building a ranch, even though most of it was rural. (They had "east camp" - a cabin on wild land - to lay claim to a part of the ranch they seldom used. That part was retained by Jamie and his wife and kid after the sale.) The Indians had never made that claim on the land, had built nothing to justify their claim to ownership.

How do you own land you rarely set foot on and have done nothing with? What makes your claim stronger than someone else's?

At any rate here is an article in American Thinker asking why, if liberals believe all our land is stolen from natives, they don't just give it back. As the author points out, if you find out you possess stolen property you have a moral obligation to give it back. So if part of Harvard was owned by Indians (or all of it - it was "their country" before any white dudes showed up) why don't they turn it over to them?

As Brian Joondeph points out, partly because there is no way to determine who the rightful owner is; the Indians who had been there had undoubtedly displaced other Indians and so forth and so on.

The dirty little secret is that the Native Americans had been in a constant state of war with one another and so it had been for all of history and prehistory - until the white men came along and settled that once and for all. And none of them had any sort of valid claim to most of "their" property. Hunting on forest land does not necessarily give you deed to it. Plenty of people hunt on property that is not theirs - both national forest land and private. My own Ozark Hilton sees it's share of poaching hunters in deer season. I don't care; I don't deer hunt and while I like to see the deer when I go down there they aren't exactly my property but move from place to place. They can just as easily be killed right off my land as on. As long as the hunters are courteous and respectful of my property they are welcome. But that hunting in no way gives them any legal rights to ownership or even an easement.

We need a long national conversation on property rights and need to establish what they mean once and for all. Actually we've had it for a long time, that definition, but the media and the Left for whom they carry water keep trying to muddy OUR waters with their media-carried sewage.

In the end possession is 9/10 of the law and we are the ones who possess it - and that because we came and stayed while they couldn't be bothered to do the same. And we improved it - the other tenth. Teepees in temporary camps do not constitute improving the land. Permanent villages do (as in the Woodland Indians) or adobe houses but not most of the lands that were "taken". And you can't claim land a hundred miles from where you live just because you hunt there.

That was why the Indians were in a constant state of war to begin with; they had no good definition of property, and who owned what. So does the Left and that will cause the same bloody conflicts in the end.

BTW the title of this comes from the Seventies song Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree by Tony Orlando and Dawn which says "I'm coming home I've done my time...and I got to know what is and isn't mine".

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1051 words, total size 6 kb.

The Long Climate Con

Timothy Birdnow

Here is a good article from American Thinker yesterday explaining how the media gets their "warmest day on record" claims and how they "prove" it's caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide.

As the old saying goes, it's all done with mirrors. Or in this case with models based on a base model that does not comport with reality.

From the article:

Most people assume these studies compare today's weather with historical observations. In reality, they compare the present world with a hypothetical world that never existed—a computer-generated version of Earth's climate in which industrial carbon dioxide emissions never occurred. The difference between the two simulations is then presented as the human contribution to the event .

Attribution studies typically compare today's climate with a simulated pre-industrial climate to estimate how human emissions altered the probability of a particular event.

That sounds scientific until one asks a simple question: how do we know the model accurately represents a climate that no one has ever observed?

Climate models have long struggled to reproduce observed temperature records accurately, with many projections diverging significantly from other observational datasets [ii]. They have difficulty reproducing important regional climate patterns, and one of their most important tests—hindcasting, or reproducing known historical climate changes—remains problematic. If a model cannot reliably reproduce the past, confidence in its simulation of an imaginary pre-industrial climate should naturally be limited. Yet attribution studies depend precisely upon this capability.

And they fudge the real-world data to prove it.

How, you ask?

First, proxy data often diverges from what they think they know about pre-industrial climate, so they "data smooth" the record. Since data is coming from multiple sources they can decide that higer temperatures found in ice core or tree rings are an aberration and so they throw those out but keep in the lower temperatures. Traditional historical temperatures are then deemed inaccurate and the powers that be - NOAA, NASA's Giss, The Hadley Center in Britain, etc. then revise historical data down, so as to make it appear that our current observable temperatures are higher. It's a cute trick, a kind of three card monty.

The second trick they use is to increase surface data temperature by either citing bad stations (they are situated in some of the craziest places - guaranteed to give bad data) or they simply eliminate stations altogether and ASSUME an average temperature between two much more distant stations. The whole point of a temperature station is to take the guesswork out of it but they have been multiplying the guesswork on the theory that it doesn't matter.

Of course it DOES matter which is why we take the planet's temperature where we do in the first place.

Satellite data has long disagreed with surface stations but is generally dismissed. The main satellite data comes out of the University of Alabama Hunstville (UAH) where NASA satellite data is collated largely by Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christie. This data shows only a very modest planetary temperature increase and Roy Spencer's work suggests that increase is tied to land use changes - exactly as Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. insisted for decades (Pielke was at UC Boulder). I spoke to Roy Spencer about Pielke's theory (I had spoken to him a number of times when he used to have his blog) and Spencer laughed "he ALWAYS says it's land use changes!) but then Spencer ran the numbers. Now he agrees. A blacktop is hotter than a pine forest.

At any rate the datasets are corrupted and purposely so to get a warming trend, and they are "smoothed" to reject any evidence that the planet is NOT warming as much as they claim.

The reality is this is well within normal geological variability.

As for rising carbon dioxide, so what? We are in an era of low carbon dioxide and probably need some more. I would add that carbon dioxide generally rises AFTER a warming period and usually between four hundred and eight hundred years. The Medieval Warming Period was in full swing in the Thirteen century.

The article goes on to question if carbon dioxide is a primary driver of climate (I doubt it - Mars is drastically different than Venus despite both having primarily carbon dioxide atmospheres). He also points out that increasingly models are being used in litigation over all sorts of things and that they are probably unreliable.

Of course they are; a model is a representation of reality simplified so it can better be studied and understood. A model complex enough to understand something as complicated as the weather would have to be as complicated as the weather and then there would be no need of a model. So we dumb it down so we can grasp it. But what do we lose in the process? It's "flatter" than reality, far less nuanced.

I remember a story I read once, a science fiction story, that pretty much explained this very problem of relying on computer simulations. In it a guy was a laborer for the government who got mad when a directive came down that he had to haul his tools back to the headquarters every day rather than leave them on the job site. He talked to his boss, then talked to his bosses boss, and so forth and so on until he went to Washington and spoke to the head of the Department of Labor. This guy said "this policy is based on a report I received from the bureau of labor statistics". So the hero began working his way back down the chain, always being pointed to the next guy below. Eventually it turned out the whole thing was based on a computer report and the hero finds an old man who trolled inside the basement of an obscure data center who had taken to altering the computer code when he decided something should be done. It was this guy who saw some shovels left out in the rain and thought it wasteful so he programmed the computer to say it was more cost-effective to take all tools back to the warehouse. The old boy wanted to retire and the hero realized the implications. He volunteered to take this guy's job and essentially become king of the whole world by controlling the data stream to the power brokers.

It's kinda like that; I wonder if the original Gang Green guys who came up with this hadn't read this short story from the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

At any rate this is a very sneaky and underhanded trick used to push the narrative, and that narrative is done for money, power, and to promote societal change on a massive scale.

Don't believe it. It's a magic trick, a con, a swindle and you are the mark.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:36 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1141 words, total size 8 kb.

Someone's Kingdom Come

Timothy Biirdnow

Here is a good essay at American Thinker discussing how Dope Leo dissed America on her 250th birthday to wail and moan about the fate of illegal muslim aliens trying to invade Europe.

The author is right; this Pope doesn't understand the fundamental job description of his own position, thinking it is misplaced empathy rather than to defend the Church.

Prevost was seduced during his time in Peru and is a big supporter of Liberation Theology. Of course he came from Chicago, a city that gave us Saul Alinsky, Jesse Jackson, and Barack Obama, and now it has given us Pope Leo. It is a habitation of demons, a place of every foul and unclean bird. And Prevost didn't get his job because he was the best man for it so much as because he would continue the work of the late Pope Franics and Francis packed the College of Cardinals to see to just that, as well as demoted all the Conservatives in Rome.

If Leo is so touchingly concerned with immigrants why doesn't he open the Vatican to them? He is the king of a sovereign country after all.

The sad thing is even most Catholics don't understand the limited nature of Papal Infallability (ex cathedra). The Pope is only infallible when he is formally speaking ex cathedra and he must say so. Also, it is ONLY about matters of "faith and morals" meaning he can say homosexuality is a sin and say so infallibly, or say you have to believe in the Trinity and likewise be infallible. Speaking about immigration is just his personal opinion. (The last time the Pope spoke infallibly was in 1959 when the papacy declared the doctrine that Mary was bodily assumed into Heaven was confirmed.) Oh, and the Pope can't just do it; he has to consult with the Majesterium and it must settle a long-studied question. It is a very formal process.

I am always amazed at how many Catholics think the Pope is never wrong and if he says something they defend him no matter how ridiculous he might be. And of course this provides fodder for Protestant and other critics who sneer at the idea that a Pope is never wrong. He's wrong all the time - just not about very specific issues.

The American Spectator, which used to be a sensible publication, is now riddled with folks who think that the Pope said it so we must believe it. I stopped reading TAS some time ago because it became another NeverTrump operation, along with The National Review.

Anyway this Pope thinks it more important to welcome aliens who have no intention of becoming Westerners and will destroy what is left of Christendom through jihad by immigration. And he's so thick he doesn't see that is what is happening even though all sorts of terrible things are happening, like rape gangs in Sweden or France and Britain.

This is the prime mission he has chosen, apparently. He seems to think that surrender will change their behavior - it won't. Nor will it save any souls as in Islam you cannot change religions. They kill you if you try.

If Islam is to eventually be overcome by the Church it won't be by kowtowing to them. They respect strength and see what we see as kindness as weakness. Contemptible. The only way we will ever convert the Muslims is by the carrot AND the stick; they have to see that their way is a failure and that the Christian way is the better of the two. Obsequiousness and backside sphincter kissing isn't going to do anything but make them hate us more.

Leo either doesn't understand that or he believes the real danger is from Christians rather than Muslims, which would fit a man steeped in Leftism rather than Christ.

The Catholic Church has always believed the False Prophet of the Book of Revelations would be a Pope. I don't know if it is Leo but he appears to be a precursor.

Here is what Dope Leo says to the American People in his address to us on our 250th birthday:

Defending human life also includes welcoming, protecting and assisting immigrants, whose hopes, sacrifices and contribution have formed part of the history of this country from its very beginning. In every generation, those who have arrived seeking freedom, opportunity and a place to belong have helped to shape the nation’s character. To receive them with compassion and generosity is not only an act of charity, but also a recognition of the dignity that belongs to every human person.

In my recent Encyclical Letter, Magnifica Humanitas, I wrote about working together for the common good. "Building a world in which everyone can flourish requires shared responsibility and courage. No one can single-handedly bear the weight of the challenges the world is facing” (no. 13). We need one another, and we need to work together in unity to confront the challenges that the world is facing today.

May this milestone renew the shared commitment to the promise of freedom, justice, opportunity and democracy.

Here is a twofur of extreme liberalism - demanding we keep allowing huge amounts of immigration (illegal aliens aren't immigrants but invaders but even legal immigrants can't be enculturated at the pace we've been experiencing, and any fool can see it's destroying the entire Western world. Why aren't the immigrants fixing their own countries instead of coming here to wreck ours?) and the other calling for "community" by which he undoubtedly means a kind of socialism "everything within the state, nothing outside the state" as Mussolini explained of Fascism.

Just choosing these issues rather than speak of, say, abortion or rising sexual deviancy like transgenderism show where this man's heart lies. His is a social Gospel. No mention f the salvation of souls, his prime duty.

America was not built on communalism. It was built on the fundamental idea that the individual, first and foremost, was the core building block of society, followed by family, then local community, then state. We built our nation on the bedrock of "inalienable rights" held by the individual. All Leo can speak about is communal rights, communal responsibilities. As Christians we want to be servants of our communities but to do that we must first be servants to our families and ourselves. Putting the community first inevitably leads to societal disfunction. Human beings are not colonies of bees. We are communal but individuals living in communities. There is a reason why Jesus died for us as individuals, not just as part of some Borg collective.

Leo fails to understand that about his own country. Service to country comes first from service to ourselves, and that comes first from service to and love of God. Basically he's making a God of society and the State (as did Mussolini and Hitler).

Pope Leo was chosen to act as a counterbalance to President Trump. It was always said there would never be an American Pope because America was too powerful as it was and that would be gathering far too much power into one nation. But they chose Leo when Trump became President to pull the rug out on him.

Understand that and you understand him. He won't ALWAYS oppose Trump on everything but he'll oppose him on key issues, ones that have a lot of popularity among the People. This is to sever Catholics from his voting block. That is the intent. So he'll come out at seemingly inappropriate times to call out MAGA and Trump rather than call out real evils in the world becauses he's as much a part of the New World Order as is George Soros or the folks at the World Economic Forum.

This man is not trying to save souls. He's trying to win a kingdom for...something.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 1313 words, total size 9 kb.

July 05, 2026

Naziism is Socialism

This courtesy of Chester McAteer

"According to the idea of the NSDAP [Nazi party], we are the German left. Nothing is more hateful to us than the right-wing national ownership block”.

-Joseph Goebbels

"We are Socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”

--Gregor Strasser, one of the founding fathers of the National Socialist German Workers Party

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:37 AM | Comments (129) | Add Comment
Post contains 100 words, total size 1 kb.

No Modern Warming in Antarctica

Timothy Birdnow

Data conclusively proves there has been zero warming in Antarctica since 1979:

Ma et al. (2025: https://nature.com/articles/s41597-025-05175-6) - Satellite Data: UAH 6.1 (2025: https://nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.1/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.1.txt)

https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/.../v6.1/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.1.txt

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:59 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 32 words, total size 1 kb.

The President Who had a Hot Time in the Old Town

Timothy Birdnow

CNN yucks it up about the death of President Zachary Taylor.

Taylor had been elected just a few months prior to this. The former hero of the Mexican war was elderly and it was very hot that day. Taylor went to the Fourth of July celebration in a heavy coat (as was often the custom in those days) and his military uniform.

He had eaten cherries earlier but had not drank any water. When he suffered heat exhaustion his staff called in the doctor. Now, in those days doctors were pretty lame and his physician thought it was because old Zach was too frail and he needed to be built up, so he made the President drink lots of milk, when he needed water and to rest in the shade. His heat exhaustion began moving into heat stroke so the dimwitted doc decided to let Taylor's blood "to get rid of the poison". So they drained blood out of a man who desperately needed water and to cool down - and he died.

I have no doubt the host on CNN was wishing the same would happen to Donald Trump.

At any rate this story illustrates just how much we've learned since the nineteenth century, and it also shows the value of air conditioning. Our President will never die of heat stroke in these modern times! The late Pope Francis called air conditioning a terrible thing, bordering on sinful, and Europeans heeded his call to abolish it and are now dying literally and figuratively because they got rid of it. Had Zachary Taylor had just a window unit he would have survived.

It would have been interesting to see what kind of President Taylor would have been.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:36 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 300 words, total size 2 kb.

U.S.S. Clinton

Timothy Birdnow

Does former President Bill Clinton deserve to have a naval ship named after him?

Maybe this vessel would do him justice:

This ship needs to be purchased by the U.S. Navy and recommissioned the U.S.S. Clinton.

Oh, and the Taiwanese operated Panamanian flagged vessel is named the Ever Given. Fitting for a man who is forever givin' it to any woman he can grab.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 68 words, total size 1 kb.

Chris Murphy Says the Democrats will End the Filibuster when They get Power

Timothy Birdnow

I don't know why the Republicans can't figure out that the Democrats are going to do this as soon as they are in power.

Top Democrat Vows To Kill Filibuster As Trump Unveils Strategy To Secure GOP Victories For A Century

Dem. Senator Chris Murphy admitted they are plotting this on the Nobody Knows Anything podcast.

Republicans in the Senate have resisted eradicating the filibuster out of some misplaced sense of "tradition". But the filibuster is not written into the Constitution nor is it a venerable ancient rule going back to the beginning; the filibuster was an accident from it's inception.

Aaron Burr accidentally created it when he was cleaning up unused Senate rules. One was a time limit on debate by Senators similar to the one in the House. This made it possible to continue to speak indefinitely - and thus simply gum up the works of the Senate, preventing a vote.

So it wasn't even a rule put in place - just a result of eliminating other rules.

It was named after the Dutch word vrijbuiter meaning pirate because you were essentially commandeering the ship of state and stealing it.

It wasn't until the 1840's when Henry Clay sought to limit Senate debate and the Senate thretened to debate that rule change indefinitely that it started using it extensively that the filibuster became anything other than a curiosity.

But always it had to be someone actually speaking. In later years they would often read from the telephone book.

Cloture was put in place in 1917 to allow an end to debate. Because cloture required a 2/3 vote it was very rare; in the subsequent forty years it was only invoked five times.

Strom Thermond held the record for a talking filibuster - 24 hours and 18 minutes. The old windbag had stamina, I must say. His record was finally broke by Corey "Spartacus" Booker who yacked for a solid 25 hours without pausing for breath.

In '75 cluture was lowered from 2/3 to 3/5ths.

The Senate also made a rule change in the seventies that created a "two track" system so that a filibuster didn't stop ALL Senate business so other business could be conducted.

This had the unintended side-effect of creating the Zombie filibuster where bills could simply be set aside for a time rather than tie up Senate business. The end result was that it was possible to just filibuster one bill by saying you were going to filibuster it - and thus simply force it to be removed from senate business.

If the Senate wants to keep the filibuster out of a sense of tradition they should rescind the two track system and force a talking filibuster again.

The Democrats will do this at a minimum, and if the talking filibuster is reimposed and the GOP starts filibustering they will remove even that. They have shown time and time again that tradition and good manners mean nothing to them - only power matters.

Sadly the GOP in the Senate still thinks these are reasonable people and they won't launch the birds against the Republicans. They are living in the past. Or they want what Democrats are pushing but fear angering their voters.

Politics is a blood sport. If you aren't willing to draw blood you don't belong in the game.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 570 words, total size 4 kb.

Travesty of Justice in Birmingham, U.K.

Timothy Birdnow

Lesser Britain has gone nuts.

Here is a video of an incident in Birmingham where a bunch of black men assault a white guy and when police show up they throw the white guy against a wall and arrest him - and let the assailants walk away without even questioning them.

This video is going viral and the Birmingham police, after making outrageous lies about the incident, then changing their story to even admit the white guys was a victim, are continuing to try to prosecute him and even made an appeal to the public not to share this video "so justice may be carried out". Justice for whom exactly? It's so this guy will get railroaded and the department not embarrassed.

Everyone needs to share this abomination. Britain has gone mad with this DEI stuff. A few weeks back there was an incident where an Asian fellow stabbed a white guy in the gut and the cops showed up. The Asian guy said the white guy was making racial slurs - so they arrested the white guy who was laying on the ground dying of his wounds! The cuffed him as he was bleeding out.

Being white in Britain is a crime now.

Police are taught that whites are automatically the oppressors and always in the wrong in any altercation. The minorities there have figured that out, that they won't be charged or blamed in any way so they are now just acting with impunity. Why not? There will be no repercussions, no matter what they do.

A nation that represses it's own people will not survive, nor should it. And if there is ever an argument for defund the police it is this; the Birmingham police should be defunded and disbanded and they need to start from scratch. Clearly the wrong people work there - and they are being indoctrinated in a bad way.

BTW the cop who throws this poor guy against the wall appears a bit dusky herself...

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:22 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 340 words, total size 2 kb.

Paul Pelosi's Crackup

Timothy Birdnow

Old Hammertoe Pelosi was charged with hit and run in Napa.

✖

Paul Pelosi Charged In Napa Hit And Run After Striking Parked Car [WATCH]Paul Pelosi Charged In Napa Hit And Run After Striking Parked Car

Yes, Nancy Pelosi's AC/DC hubby, the man who was beaten with a hammer by a half naked dude in his own home, was three sheets to the wind and cracked up his car. (I suppose if you have to come home to Nancy anyone would ne three sheets to the wind much of the time.)

Authorities say that an alcohol test came back negative. Sure it did. If you believe that I have a nice bridge that crosses the strait at the Golden Gate.

While Pelosi was arrested the Sheriff's department has yet to determine if they will file charges, even though he clearly hit another car and left the scene of an accident. Now why would they do that? For the same reason they would find no alcohol was involved, methinks.

There are two sets of laws in America and Pelosi gets to enjoy the more lenient of the two.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:01 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 193 words, total size 1 kb.

July 04, 2026

And the Heat Goes On

This from meteorologist Christ Martz:

On today's date in 1901, over half of the U.S. was at or above 90°F and nearly 9% of the land area was at least 100°F. The same weather occurring this week occurred exactly 125 years ago, but according to most climate alarmists, it was just weather in 1901, but this week's three-day event is undeniable proof that we are facing a climate catastrophe.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:40 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 74 words, total size 1 kb.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Georgia

Button Gwinnett

Lyman Hall

George Walton

North Carolina

William Hooper

Joseph Hewes

John Penn

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge

Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton

Massachusetts

John Hancock

Maryland

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Franklin

John Morton

George Clymer

James Smith

George Taylor

James Wilson

George Ross

Delaware

Caesar Rodney

George Read

Thomas McKean

New York

William Floyd

Philip Livingston

Francis Lewis

Lewis Morris

New Jersey

Richard Stockton

John Witherspoon

Francis Hopkinson

John Hart

Abraham Clark

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett

William Whipple

Massachusetts

Samuel Adams

John Adams

Robert Treat Paine

Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins

William Ellery

Connecticut

Roger Sherman

Samuel Huntington

William Williams

Oliver Wolcott

New Hampshire

Matthew Thornton

Read Jefferson's original draft:

more...

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 3190 words, total size 21 kb.

The America that Was

Timothy Birdnow

An excellent piece by Tyler Durden. He nails it.

Would The Founders Still Recognize Their Republic?

The answer, of course, is a resounding "NO!" The America as it was founded is as dead as the Parthian Empire. Sadly it's mostly a memory.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:54 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 48 words, total size 1 kb.

The Winds of the American Revolution

Timothy Birdnow

A Revolution in Search of a Country

This is a decent essay, although I quibble with a bit of it. While it is true that there was revolutionary fever all over the West with the Enlightenment following on the heels of the Protestant Reformation (itself a revolution) the United States was a revolution that was essentially conservative in nature; it wanted to preserve the status quo while Britain began a very aggressive effort to reform the way the colonies were managed by the mother country.

Prior to the French and Indian War the British were pretty hands-off the colonies; they ran their own affairs and liked it that way. But the British were quite displeased with the colonial support they received during the war and they decided, since they had to leave troops in the colonies permanently, naturally wanted a firmer hand. The British back home also were angry about having to shoulder the cost of the war, which benefitted the colonials who were exempt from the taxes to pay for it. So Brain moved from a policy of salutary neglect to one where they were more active and where the colonies would be taxed.

Pissed everyone off.

In the process the British made a number of foolish mistakes by not treating the colonials with the same deference they did British born citizens. They suspended some of their rights. They taxed them even though they had no representatives in Parliament. They stationed troops in private domiciles without permission. They cracked down on smugglers who tried to dodge the new taxes.

So America rebelled to restore what she had known before the war with the French.

Also, America had been settled by very religious people who left England so they could be left alone to worship as they pleased. The American revolution may not have been openly religious as the Continental Army was diverse as was Congress, but at the core of it there was a religious fever, as sense that they were the modern version of the Macchabees, or of King David. In many ways it was a REJECTION of the Liberalism that was sweeping Europe at the time.

THAT is why America did not descend into a reign of terror as did France after their revolution. We had a diverse nation which had been wise enough to let everyone run their own affairs. If you lived in Rhode Island you worried about Rhode Island while the folks down yonder in Old Virginnie took care of themselves. And you worshipped your way and let those folks worship in theirs. That was quite different from the French revolution which tried to stamp out religion entirely and forced everyone to follow the revolutionary standard or enjoy your head rolling in a basket - or a fun-filled vacation in the Bastille.

See, they were trying to remake Man. We were trying to restore him. They rejected God and we embraced HIm. World of difference.

This essay also speaks much about "free labor" and says the rise of the Bourgeois class made that possible. Fair enough, but I would argue in America it had little to do with a CLASS so much as with the fact there was so much cheap land to be had that every man could be a squire on his own estate if he were ambitious enough. Most Americans were business owners - farms, blacksmiths, dry goods, etc. Americans were ALL Bourgeois and the laborers were temporary; they all had ambitions of being business owners themselves as soon as they could raise the capital. That is why America needed immigrants then; too much work, too few hands. And it was why slavery was attractive for a time.

And it was the hunger for land that helped precipitate the Revolution. The British put the Ohio territory off-limits to settlement after the French and Indian war, largely to protect the Indians, many of whom had settled there to get away from the increasingly anglo east coast. But the colonists wanted that land because everyone who came here wanted land. There was considerable anger at the crown for not allowing the settlement of the Ohio territory.

This was quite different from the European version of the revolution, in which the more crowded Europeans had to acquire what they wanted by killing those who had it and taking it away. It was quite a bit different (even though Americans did kill Indians, it was often over land that was lying fallow for years, decades even but which the Indians claimed because they occasionally hunted there but never developed.)

At any rate this is an interesting essay. As I say I have some quibbles with it but it's worth reading.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 11:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 793 words, total size 5 kb.