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A letter Ernst Zundel had written from prison, commenting on the magnificent vision of America's Founding Fathers – a theme he has often discussed with friend and foe alike in the past.
But now to George Washington and the American tradition. David, I don't know that I ever told you – to me, Thomas Jefferson's
thoughts and outlook on the world were very much in line with my own thinking. I admired some other figures in history for their drive, their fearlessness – and courage to face off against the forces of evil
– but Thomas Jefferson was, in my view, one of the most inspired minds who did more than any other man in the history of Western civilization to formulate the concepts of individual freedom and of human
liberty than anyone else! I say that after over half a century of studying these topics.
The reason why I think so highly of Jefferson is that not only had he these lofty goals and this enormous vision of a government by the people, of
the people, for the people. David, that was at a time when England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia etc. were run by despotic kings, kaisers, czars, emperors, fancying themselves to be ruling their countries by a
kind of "divine right" bequeathed to them by God Himself. Imagine the gall!
David, remember these utterly merciless despots had allowed a 500 years ruthless suppression of free thought, persecuting and fiendishly torturing
untold millions of dissidents, political and religious reformers and witches. I am embarrassed to be a European when I hear of the criminal nature of these European aristocratic rulers and their regimes. Good
riddance!
David, compare that to Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence – and all it meant. It was not just political or state
independence from those monstrously exploitative, repressive European "old order" regimes like England, Britain, France, Spain etc. The American Revolution, and what the Founders envisioned, was the FIRST
true self-liberation with relatively little bloodshed, compared to Europe's murderous dynastic wars, crusades, and empire-grabbing global wars. You have to remember – they had no other template of state
craft, no model, to go by! Jefferson created it.
Jefferson and Franklin, and to a lesser extent, George Washington, the military genius, started with an almost blank piece of paper when they sat
down to give this new Union or these confederated former colonies the structure of a modern state – a Republic! And you a right – the absolute centerpiece and heart of this new state was that "All
politics is local!" I loved the formulation of the strict order of the checks and balances. That is in the way it was meant to be – the greatest leap forward made in the thinking and organizing of human
society.
Going backwards, the America of George W. Bush, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Wilson, even Lincoln were very poor imitations of the vision of Washington
and Jefferson. America has, in fact, been so transformed by the "termites from within" that the rulers of the last century paid only a hypocritical, cynical lip service to the original concepts of the
"American order" of 1776. Inferior men ruined the American dream and thoroughly destroyed, by infiltration and stealth, by corruption and misinterpretation of words, what America should have been, could
have been, and was meant to be.
That's not just the tragedy for America, but for the world at large, especially for the Western world, because Europe was shaking off its
tyrants, and naturally was orienting itself on America, which had shed its imperial occupiers without the grotesque bloodbath and massacres of the French Revolution. You will recall that Thomas Jefferson was
Ambassador to France until 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution. He left France with 51 crates of books, maps, even wall paper he used in Monticello and later bequeathed to Congress. In fact, it was
Jefferson's own private library that built the nucleus of the Library of Congress
Benjamin Franklin was not only Ambassador to England but Roving Ambassador to Europe because the young Republic did not have the money to
establish embassies in all European kingdoms, and as Roving Ambassador he apparently visited Russia. King Frederick the Great, in fact, signed one of the first bipartisan treaties with America. Russia thus was
crucial in legitimizing a "Government of Rebels", America, as many monarchies in Europe called it.
It is also thought that the contact of Benjamin Franklin with Baron von Steuben was arranged at the court of Frederick the Great in Potsdam.
Steuben was an expert in supplying the Army with food, ammunition, and equipment like blankets, tents, and medical supplies. History records that he arrived in Valley Forge in that terrible winter of 1776 when
Washington's troops faced defeat by disease and hunger. He was appointed Quarter Master General – in short, supply and troop trainer. It did not take long before the largely German settlers and
frontiermen, first and second generation German immigrants from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York, flocked to Valley Forge, feeding the troops from their own farms, darning socks, mending shirts, repairing boots,
nursing the sick. Von Steuben could not speak English, so he rode with German-Americans who translated his commands for the English speakers amongst Washington's troops, nearly half of which were German
immigrants themselves, first or second-generation.
Washington's 200 men body guard was German. Washington knew enough German to command and converse with them. The American Revolution was
partially successful because these strong, resilient, capable German-American settlers had no felt loyalty to the British, only to America, the land where many, if not most, were born. The Declaration of
Independence was first published in a German-American paper in Philadelphia.
Revisionism pure!
And, after Napoleon devastated Central Europe, and a combined force of Prussians under Feldmarshall Blücher and the British defeated him at
Waterloo, the victorious Germans turned their eyes to America when they tried to reorganize their statelets, kingdoms etc. A constitutional-national assembly in Frankfurt was called into session, which after years
of haggling and wrangling passed an almost carbon copy of Jefferson's American Constitution in 1848. 34 German states accepted it as Germany's new Constitution.
They made one mistake. They had no Second Amendment, no Minute Men – and the King of Prussia called out the troops. The dream of a
Jeffersonian United States of Germany died, bleeding to death in a hail of bullets.
Ernst
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