A photo and meme selection.
May we find ways to live up to the gift they gave us! (Next: Fireworks at Mt. Rushmore) (And see the thoughts of guests Doug and Tom, at the end.)
None of the four men remembered on Mount Rushmore were perfect. They were human. Some (many) of the things that they did were damaging to liberty, to freedom, and to the nations (States) they were supposed to serve. But we should look at the ideals, the vision, and the potential for liberty and freedom we have today because of how they are perceived today. And we must remember that simply trashing the memory of such men and their times is not going to give us much opportunity to teach people today about freedom and liberty. (Next picture: the 106th Black Hills Roundup Parade in Belle Fourche, South Dakota.)
Yes, those are cattle – longhorns – being herded along a downtown business district street. They are not “running the bulls” and they are not “mistreating” the livestock. The people of the Black Hills, for all our faults, are celebrating the ideals of freedom, of independence, and of personal responsibility in the context of voluntary cooperative efforts.
Let us quote another lover of liberty:
As the US approaches its 250th anniversary, how would you compare the personal and economic freedoms Americans have today with those envisioned by the Founding Fathers in 1776?
Doug Casey: The US has had a good, long run as a beacon of freedom for the entire world, but nothing lasts forever. Things started changing radically with the War Between the States, and the ascendancy of progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Then came FDR with his New Deal, and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. And it’s accelerated downhill from there.
The trend in the US is critically important. However, Western civilization is in decline throughout the world. And it’s more than just a civilizational issue. There’s a rot in ethics, philosophy, and even the makeup of the population. People of European descent are declining all over the world, especially in Europe itself, where the native population is dropping rapidly. Even in the United States, figures show that the white population dropped by 250,000 in the last year, while the populations of all other ethnic groups rose substantially.
So, to answer the question: Apart from the huge and obvious changes in technology, I think the US founders would find the country culturally unrecognizable. This trend is underscored by the presumptive election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York. He’s young, affable, charismatic. His appeal is understandable relative to the corrupt and constipated alternatives. But he’s also a Muslim communist who openly wants to overthrow what’s left of American traditions in the largest and most important city in the country.
And a digest of what another lover of liberty (Tom Woods) has to say:
Independence Day is coming up, and I wonder how many people really get why it matters.
In school, we were told this: “No taxation without representation.” Zzzzzzzz.
The real principles were more like the following.
(1) No legislation without representation. The colonists insisted that they could be governed only by the colonial legislatures. This is the principle of self-government.
(2) Contrary to the modern view that the state [or State] must be considered one and indivisible, the colonists believed that a smaller unit may withdraw from a larger one. [The principle of secession.]
(3) The colonists’ view of the (unwritten) British constitution was that Parliament [was limited in power]. Customary practice was the test of constitutionality. Parliament … [claimed] … that the will and act of Parliament sufficed to make its measures constitutional. This is the principle of strict construction. [And therefore of limited government.] … [not] … a “living, breathing” view of the Constitution.
[The above concepts were a good start: the Founding Fathers still believed that human government could indeed be a faithful servant and protect liberty, not steal it. In 250 years, we have learned better, and their understanding is shown to be lacking. But they were headed in the right direction.
The Price of Liberty 
Things to ponder: the coming transition: Collapse and catastrophe? Or rebirth?
Cleaning up messages and files is never fun, but sometimes it triggers a fresh look at things worth sharing. Think about these things we at TPOL discussed back in early 2023.
Is the cup half-empty? Or half-full? We face such a situation, at least the way we interpret Martin Armstrong’s discussion on Addison Wiggins’ Wiggins Session for 14 December 2022:
Of course, while Armstrong (looking forward a decade) wrote of “our Republican forms of government,” we take his language in an ironic sense. We here at TPOL have never shied from stating our strong belief that the American Republic ended more than a century ago in the cataclysmic year of 1913. And that what we live under today in these States is an ever more corrupt, debased, and debauched democracy. And one which is rapidly sliding into more and more evil forms and actions of populist, regressive tyranny. (The last two+ years demonstrate this, do they not?)
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