The title of this post is neither controversial nor revelatory to anyone who has even briefly studied early American history of the post-Revolutionary period. But this YouTube video that nicely (and humorously) summarizes the events of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 (H/T Lew Rockwell), illustrates, in a way that even acerebral NPC normies can understand, the pointlessness of the American Revolution as an act of “fighting for freedom.”
It has been asserted by more than one revisionist historian that the USA’s founders were what we today call “One Percenters.” They waged rebellion against the British monarchy not because they wanted “freedom” for their countrymen (they gave no more of a shit about the ordinary colonial farmer or shopkeeper than Russia’s tsars did about that country’s serfs), but because they chafed at the idea of continuing to obey and serve the capo di tutti capi in faraway London, rather than rule over a realm of their own in North America. Naturally they would have a difficult, if not impossible time fighting the King and his colonial armies by themselves, so they had to come with what we today might call a “pitch,” a “con,” or a “hustle” by which to “pull the shuck on the rubes” (i.e., bamboozle the ordinary colonial rabble they despised). How to do this?
Why, convince them that meany King Georgie was “oppressing” them with taxes that they shouldn’t be paying at all, and that the King’s red-coated soldiers were tyrants (only if they were provoked, so it was essential to find ways to goad the rubes into provoking the King’s soldiers, which they did one day in Central Boston in 1770, with predictably deadly results). They also decided that they should promise the rubes freedom once they were freed from the British Crown’s rule, this representing a concept that the average American peasant was barely familiar with, let alone longing for. In the end, these early One Percenters fooled just enough of the colonials into fighting against the home country to wage an actual war. Imagine their surprise when they actually won said war against the world’s then-mightiest military power. They now faced the problem of having to make good on promises that they never intended to keep in the first place.
The first step that the now-ruling American One Percenters took was to subvert and then replace with a centralized government the confederacy of independent states that they were forced to agree to in order to get the rubes to keep fighting their war. As soon as was feasible they demanded a “constitutional convention,” ostensibly for the purpose of “modifying” some “errors” in the Articles of Confederation (which didn’t exist, but that’s a whole other story). This convention was chartered with very specific terms and aims, but quickly morphed into a secrecy-shrouded instrument for completely changing the new nation’s government (read Gary North’s Conspiracy in Philadephia for the whole sordid story). After successfully ramming a new constitution down the throats of each of the thirteen original states, the Founding One Percent now had the mechanisms to literally force their will upon the various states and their now-subjugated residents.
The linked video about the Whiskey Rebellion summarizes in fascinating detail how the reigning One Percenters managed to metaphorically shred the new constitution and wipe their arses with it. So blatant was this act of unrepresented, non-consensual taxation that logic would seem to have dictated that it ignite a second revolution. Instead, after a brief dustup of resistance, the citizenry adopted the sheeple garb that they’ve been wearing since they surrendered to President George Washington’s troops (if your opinion of Washington as a man doesn’t change after watching the video, it means you weren’t paying attention). Other than a brief burst of rebellion between 1861 and 1865, the sheeple have remained compliant ever since.
What shocks me most, upon considering the events surrounding the Whiskey Rebellion, is both how blatant the trampling of rights was, and how recently after the “war against taxation without representation” this war occurred. It certainly explains the dull passivity of today’s normies. If the founding generation that had just fought a war for “freedom” couldn’t be bothered to keep up the fight to maintain it just as soon as it had been won, there’s little reason to hope that posterity that has never known it will fight for it, either.