“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write
for the public and have no self.”- Cyril Connolly (1903 - 1974)
The Truth About
American History
And the Wild Wild
West
By de Andréa
Opinion Editorialist for
‘THE BOTTOM LINE’
Posted April 9, 2019
If you would like to write me direct with a question
or a comment on this or any other article, you can contact me at writedeandrea@hotmail.com
Sorry
to burst your bubble my friend, but anti-American ‘Hollywood’ moguls turned an
otherwise mild historical west into the “Wild Wild West” in order to make money & promote anti-Constitutional gun
confiscation.
Senator
Diane Feinstein believes ‘Hollywood’s Fictional History’. She said: “Guns
will turn the country into the wild, wild West.” And then
she added, “There will be blood in the streets.” This’ while promoting her
gun ban legislation.
Read this,
then ask yourself if she’s right? How about a little historical truth for a
change, moreover you will discover why the Second Amendment right to keep and
bear arms was included in our Constitution and is still relevant today.
If one
hates the Constitution, one hates America and everything it stands for. Without
Constitutional law we have no America. Moreover without the Second Amendment we
have no rights. “…the
right of the people to keep and bear Arms, [is]…necessary
to the security of a free State…” As I said, without it we have no
American “FREE STATE”. It is at the very foundation of freedom in this country.
Hollywood had and still has a
clever way of distorting our perspective on truth and history, and a great
example of this are the Western films – a movie genre we've all come to love.
Cattle rustlers, guns blazing, outlaws running loose, and vigilantes dishing
out vengeance indiscriminately, and then we can’t forget the singing cowboy
coming to rescue the girl in distress. These scenes have become as synonymous
with the American Frontier as the Winchester rifle and their "Cartridge That Won the West." But these fictional tales have produced more than
entertainment for over a century; they also underwrote an ongoing contribution
to fake history and a political push for gun control, as well as the agenda of eventual gun confiscation, all
while making Hollywood millions.
The
Department of Education’s revisionist history books tell us that the “Wild West” was an anarchic period of time in America that was not
conducive to human safety and prosperity. Images of a brutal nightmare – are ingrained in our consciousness thanks to decades of
creative fictional history, in our government, in public schooling, and violent
images on the Hollywood silver screen, which are extremely light on actual
history and ultra-heavy on creative license.
However, individuals who
believe in liberty and developing their critical thinking faculties should be skeptical of most mainstream narratives, especially
regarding history, and especially American history. After all, these narratives
by and large have been created by Hollywood, a legacy institution that has
historically advanced politically correct content with the support of the Washington
shadow government, today known as the
DeepState in order to perpetuate a utopian culture with the chosen elites in
control. In a word, tyranny!
When the curtain of
political correctness that's been draped over this particular period of American
history is pulled back, we see a much more realistic picture of the Western
Frontier. In fact, research by historians such as Peter
J. Hill, Richard
Shenkman, Roger D. McGrath,
Terry Anderson, and W. Eugene Holland show that this period was rather indicative of a mild and
“not so wild, Wild West.”
So…for the purposes of this article, the
so-called Wild West will rather be referred to as the (Old West). This is not
meant to be a hairsplitting distinction, but rather as an acknowledgment of the
fact that this time period was not “wild” by any stretch of the
imagination when compared to other chaotic periods
in human history, or even by today statistics. Indeed, the Old West had its
fair share of challenges for American settlers. But as we’ll soon see, crafty
settlers found ways through ingenuity and mutual cooperation - all done with
very limited, or no government interference - to create a stable order for
generations to come. And when local governments did interfere, it did not bode
well for its intentions.
So let us delve into the truth
of the “not so wild, Old West.”
The Old West was not a paradise by any measure.
There existed conflict between groups, such as American settlers and Native Americans
once they came in contact in the Great Plains and other parts of the frontier.
This was natural due to the cultural differences that existed between these
groups and the lack of defined property rights in those regions.
However, in more settled towns
on the frontier, there was not near as much violence as the Hollywood indoctrinators
would have you to believe. One of the most important texts disrupting this
depiction of the Old West was W. Eugene Hollon’s Frontier Violence: Another Look. Hollon argued that “the Western frontier was a far more
civilized, more peaceful, and safer place than American society is
today.” Additionally, historian Richard Shenkman makes the case
that the popular depictions of the Old West belong more in a movie script
rather than a real-life historical account.
Shenkman
noted:
“Many more
people have died in Hollywood Westerns than ever died on the real Frontier.”
Dodge City has become a
landmark for Western movies, but its portrayal is more fiction than reality.
Shenkman also dismantled the Dodge City myth:
“In the real
Dodge City, for example, there were just five killings in 1878, the most homicidal
year in the little town’s Frontier history: scarcely enough to sustain a
typical two-hour movie.”
Larry
Schweikart of the University of Dayton also pointed out that the infamous bank
robberies that captivate movie audiences were not very frequent. His research
uncovered that there were fewer
than a dozen bank robberies in the entire Western frontier in the 40
year period from 1859 to 1900. In
essence, Schweikart argues that there are “more bank robberies in modern-day Dayton,
Ohio, in a year than there were in the Old West in the entire frontier period.”
Moreover, nearly every man between the ages of 17 to 67 were armed
prior to 1900. Boys carried small caliber rifles to school so they could shoot
small game on the way home from school.
Arguably, the strongest and
most concise text reclaiming the true history of the American West, Terry L.
Anderson and Peter J Hill’s The Not
So Wild, Wild West has
forever changed the way Americans view American history. Anderson and Hill’s
research found that the establishment of property rights was one of the keys in
taming the American West. Indeed, this process took time, but it was well worth
it. The Old West was a demonstration of human ingenuity and long-term planning
that avoided the quick fixes of the modern-day politics that we have today.
This manner of peacefully
settling property rights disputes carried over into other sectors, such as
ranching and farming. There were obviously various roadblocks at the start, but
settlers still found free-market ways of getting around these obstacles. In sum, Anderson
and Hill’s findings demonstrated that the Old West was not so chaotic:
“In the mining
camps and on the open range, the six-gun seldom served as the arbiter of
disputes. Instead, miners established rules in camp meetings, and cattlemen
used their associations to carve up the range, round up their cattle, and
enforce brand registration. Though not all attempts at dispute resolution
succeeded, institutional entrepreneurs found ways to define and enforce
property rights that created, rather than destroyed, wealth. In short, the West
was really not so wild.”
Such scenes of mutual
cooperation on a voluntary basis are almost unheard of in today’s political
climate. For many busybody politicians, all meaningful economic activity must
be conducted under government supervision and control. As a matter of fact, had
any of the problems in the Old West surfaced in present times, there would be
instant calls for the government to step in and try to fix things. Once the
unintended consequences of these interventions set in, the same calls for more
government “help” would come back to life.
Thankfully, our governments were much wiser through the 19th century. By maintaining
a relatively hands-off approach, the federal government allowed the unsettled
American Frontier to naturally tame itself through the voluntary cooperation of
settlers. Everything changed after 1913 when the foundation was laid for the
American Constitutional Republic to become a true Democracy. We slowly but
surely became a country ruled by the majority in government, rather than ruled
by law. (More on that later)
Understanding Violence in
the American West
The most infamous images of
the American Hollywood West always consisted of scenes of extreme violence and
vigilante justice. Many history books have implanted in the minds of millions
of students that violence was a normal way of life in the early American
Frontier. It also does not help that Hollywood’s greatest Western films were
laden with epic shootouts and a plethora of cliché conflicts between outlaws
and law enforcement.
In Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and
Vigilantes, historian Roger McGrath looked at
notable western cities in California, such as the town of Bodie and Aurora, to
see how they stacked up to modern cities as far as crime rates were concerned.
McGrath provided some context to famous scenes of bank robberies in the Old
West:
“Next to stagecoach
robbery, bank robbery is probably the form of robbery most popularly associated
with the frontier West. Yet, although Aurora and Bodie together boasted several
banks, no bank robbery was ever attempted, not ever. Most of the bankers were
armed, as were their employees, and a robber would have run a considerable risk
of being killed.”
Today, in all our ignorance,
we hang a sign in our banks and schools that reads GUN FREE
ZONE. As a result we have bank robberies
and mass school shootings. Which does nothing but advertise the
criminals to commit crimes HERE!
In addition
there was no FDIC government insured bank accounts at the time so citizens had
to defend the banks themselves. If they were successfully robbed the account
holders simply lost their money.
So armed citizens deterred
the robbery of individuals, while armed homeowners and merchants discouraged
the burglary of homes and businesses. So it’s clear America’s long established
gun culture and civic responsibility of providing defense transitioned quite
seamlessly to the American frontier.
McGrath provided some
interesting statistics on robberies in Aurora and Bodie:
“Between 1877
and 1883, there were only 32 burglaries – 17 of homes and 15 of businesses – in
Bodie. Again, Aurora seems to have had fewer still. At least a half dozen
attempted burglaries in Bodie were thwarted by the presence of armed citizens.”
The historian then compares these numbers to American
cities:
“Bodie’s
five-year total of 32 burglaries converts to an average of 6.4 burglaries a
year and gives the town a burglary rate of 128 on the FBI scale. In 1980 Miami
had a burglary rate of 3,282, New York 2,661, Los Angeles 2,602, San
Francisco-Oakland 2,267, Atlanta 2,210 and Chicago 1,241. The Grand Forks,
North Dakota, rate of 566, and the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, rate of 587 were
lowest among U.S. cities. The rate for the United States as a whole was 1,668,
or thirteen times that for Bodie."
McGrath came to several
powerful conclusions when observing Aurora and Bodie’s robbery rates:
“Institutions of
law enforcement and justice certainly were not responsible for the low rates of
robbery, burglary, and theft. Rarely were any of the perpetrators of these
types of crime arrested, and even less often were they convicted.”
In McGrath’s view, armed
citizens were the key factor behind low burglary rates:
“The citizens
themselves, armed with various types of firearms and willing to kill to protect
their persons or property, were the most important deterrent to crime.”
This is consistent with findings of John Lott, world renowned economist and statistician, uncovered in his
book More
Guns Less Crime when he statistically analyzed states that
liberalized gun laws during the 1980s and 1990s. Most of these states enjoyed
substantial decreases in robberies when citizens were allowed to not only
defend their homes, but also carry firearms for self-defense. From 1979 to 1997 the average violent crime rate went
down in the entire country. Today with the increase in anti-gun-laws the
violent crime rate is on the rise again and going through the roof in cities
like Chicago where it is against the law to even buy or sell a gun.
As far as rape was
concerned, women were virtually safe from all occurrences of rape in Aurora and
Bodie:
“Aurora’s and
Bodie’s records of no rapes and thus rape rates of 0.0 were not matched by
nineteenth-century Boston or Salem. From 1880 through 1882, Boston had a rape
arrest rate of 3.0 and Salem 4.8. A conversion factor of 2.6 – a figure
consistent with FBI data in 1980 – gives the town’s rape rates of 7.8 and 12.5.
Nor are Aurora’s and Bodie’s rates matched by any U.S. city today, although in
1980 Johnsontown, Pennsylvania, had a rate of only 5.7.”
McGrath did
concede that homicide rates were indeed high in the Old West, but there was a
caveat – the majority of these cases of homicide were confined to fights
between willing combatants, i.e., duels, as was common during this period where
“honor
culture” prevailed.
McGrath
explained:
“While the
carrying of guns probably reduced the incidence of robbery, burglary, and
theft, it undoubtedly increased the number of overall homicides. Although a
couple of homicides resulted from beatings and a few from stabbings, the great
majority resulted from self-defense shootings.”
When we think about it, this
makes sense. Firearms are very effective tools in dishing out lethal damage.
Guns did facilitate homicides, but McGrath argued that there was some nuance to
this:
“The citizens of
Aurora and Bodie were generally not troubled by the number of killings, nor
were they very upset because only one man was ever convicted by the courts of
murder or manslaughter. They accepted the killings and the lack of convictions
because those killed, with only a very few exceptions, had been willing
combatants, and most of them were criminals. The
old, the weak, the female, the innocent, and those unwilling to fight were
rarely if at all the targets of attacks. But
when they were attacked
–murdered – the reaction of the citizens was immediate and came in the form of
vigilantism."
Even in a relatively
anarchic environment like the American Frontier, there was a tendency for
society to police itself in some shape or form. When the weak were attacked,
citizens in these towns responded in vigilante fashion, but McGrath showed it
was not as chaotic as people think:
“Contrary to the
popular image of vigilantes as an angry, unruly mob, the vigilantes in both
Aurora and Bodie displayed military-like organization and discipline and went
about their work in a quiet, orderly, and deliberate manner."
“A well-regulated
militia” as depicted in the Second
Amendment.
All in all, McGrath
concluded that the violence we see in major urban centers today bears very
little resemblance to violence in the American West:
“The violence
and lawlessness that visited the trans-Sierra frontier most frequently and
affected it most deeply, then, took special forms: warfare between Indians and
whites, stagecoach robbery, vigilantism, and gunfights. These activities bear
little or no relation to the violence and lawlessness that pervade American
society today. Serious juvenile offenses, crimes against the elderly and weak,
rape, robbery, burglary, and theft were either nonexistent or of little significance
on the trans-Sierra frontier. If the trans-Sierra frontier was at all
representative of frontiers in general, then there seems to be little
justification for blaming contemporary American violence and lawlessness on a
fabricated wild frontier heritage."
Because of nearly a
century’s worth of historical misinformation spread in popular culture and
schools, Hollywood programed Americans have been led to believe that the
American Frontier was the most violent period in American history. On the other
hand, progressive urban centers like Chicago and Washington, D.C. are held up
as enlightened cosmopolitan hubs, when in fact, they have witnessed crime
sprees in recent decades that were unheard of in other points of American
history. These cities are in political jurisdictions that feature stringent gun
control even gun bans and universal background
checks and make it
nearly impossible for citizens to acquire firearms for self-defense. A prime
example of gun laws providing ‘only criminals will have guns’.
Northfield, Minnesota vs.
Tombstone, Arizona: A True Tale of Gun Rights vs. Gun Control
Any proud gun owner should celebrate when an armed citizen steps up to defend
himself and/or others against criminals. Researchers like Gary Kleck point
to over 2 million cases of individuals using firearms in self-defense. This is no recent phenomenon my friend.
Law-abiding citizens
standing up to criminals actually occurred on numerous occasions during the Old
West. The most notable case was the failed bank robbery attempt conducted by
the James-Younger Gang in Northfield, Minnesota.
The James-Younger
Gang gained national
notoriety for waltzing into towns and coming out with all the loot through
well-orchestrated robberies. With so many robberies under their belts, their
next robbery attempt in the sleepy town of Northfield, Minnesota seemed to
them, like a walk in the park. On the fateful day of September 7, 1876, the gang of outlaws would be in for a rude awakening
once they entered Northfield.
The last thing these criminals expected was an armed
citizenry that was willing to stand up
against their devious schemes. As the outlaws proceeded to carry out their
robbery, Northfield’s citizens quickly realized what was going on. Instead of waiting
for ineffective law enforcement, they took matters into their own hands.
The armed citizens of
Northfield fired back at the outlaws and successfully killed several members of
the James-Younger Gang. This incident had its fair share of tragedy when
members of the James-Younger Gang killed the First National Bank’s cashier
Joseph Lee Heywood and Swedish immigrant Nicholas Gustafson. However, these
deaths were not in vain.
After the smoke cleared, the
rest of the James-Younger Gang bolted out of Northfield, which marked one of
the biggest reversals in Jesse James’ criminal career. From there, James lost
considerable prestige as a criminal and would later be murdered by one of his own
partners in crime, Robert Ford, in 1882.
Despite the chaotic nature of
the Northfield incident, armed civilians made a positive difference to thwart
this criminal act. Had these citizens been disarmed, Jesse James and company
would have made their way out of town with a cool wad of cash. This is
definitely one story American students won’t find in their revisionist
politically correct history textbooks.
Gun Control Could Not
Save Tombstone
Although the Old West was
marked by high
degrees of freedom,
especially when compared to present times, it still had pockets of local despotic gun control throughout certain regions.
Take the example of the
infamous O.K. Corral standoff. This shooting has become legend throughout
American folklore and an integral part of Hollywood Western movies. However, as
usual, there is much more to this story than is being told. When we look past
the dramatic effects and scruffy gunslingers, we see a much more nuanced
picture of this event.
What Hollywood didn’t tell you about the shootout at OK
Corral.
What many people don’t
realize is that the O.K. Corral shootout actually took place because of a
dispute over local gun
control legislation in
Tombstone Arizona. According to an 1881 law, it was “unlawful to carry in the hand or upon the
person or otherwise any deadly weapon within the limits of Tombstone, without
first obtaining a permit in writing.”
This law, however, did not
deter the outlaw gang of Ike Clanton, Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury, Frank
McLaury, and Billy Claiborne. For them, criminal behavior like cattle smuggling
and horse thievery was a way of life. No law was going to stop them – above
all, any Tombstone’s gun control ordinance.
Laws don’t stop crime, they can actually promote it
The gang of outlaws were
ready to up the ante with their criminal behavior once they set foot in Tombstone.
From the get go, they encountered resistance from the Earp brothers – Virgil,
Morgan, and Wyatt, as well as Doc Holliday, who were ready to stop these
outlaws in their tracks. The law enforcers even demanded that the bandits hand
over their guns. But much to the law enforcers’ dismay, the outlaws could not
have cared less about Tombstone’s gun control laws and continued to disobey
them like any seasoned band of criminals would do. Today’s
legislators still don’t understand that criminals just don’t obey laws, that’s
what makes them criminals. So any gun control law is only going to affect the
law abiding citizen who already is not a threat to society.
Eventually, this conflict
escalated when both sides drew their firearms and engaged in an explosive
shootout. Once the smoke cleared, three of the outlaws died during this
confrontation. Thankfully for the citizens of Tombstone, there was an armed law
enforcement presence to push back against the outlaws. However, this just
goes to show that laws are not enough to prevent criminals from committing
heinous acts. Armed citizens are ultimately the best first responder’s against
criminals.
Gun control laws like those
in Tombstone were not the norm in the American Frontier. That being said, there
is still a valuable lesson behind this experience – gun control legislation
will not magically make criminal activity nor gun violence go away. As a matter
of fact it encourages it.
THE BOTTOM LINE: The Old West has not received a proper historical
assessment that is free of Hollywood dramatization and pro-government bias.
Advocates of gun rights and other facets of limited government would be wise to
closely examine the real and true history of the American Frontier and restore
it to its proper place. The United States is currently in a Democratic narrative
war of sorts, where advocates of Progressivism/Communism will distort historical
events or even eliminate them to advance their agenda.
The misleading depiction of
the Old West is a historical sleight of hand that not only advocates false
history, but also associates fundamental
freedoms, such as gun
rights and the right of self-defense, with sprees of violence that never even
existed. That’s why it’s so important to think critically and do your own historical research. Gun rights have historically
served Americans well,
providing them a means of defense against violent criminals while checking the
state from embracing all-out
tyranny as witnessed
in present-day Venezuela.
Note: 6 years ago
Venezuelans were deceived by the Communists into giving up their guns for the
sake of fighting crime. Today they are helpless against the tyranny of Nicolás
Maduro. That, my friend, is the future of America
if gun control continues.
We must remember that it’s
not those who have the right ideas who necessarily win. It’s those who create
the most compelling narratives to an ignorant citizenry who come out on top.
Political outcomes are ultimately value neutral. The forces of good and truth, are
not always a guaranteed victory.
Americans have been misled
about capitalism, about the New Deal, as well as the Green
New Deal, and it’s become clear
they’ve also been subjected to many falsehoods about the Old West. Government
school history departments across America by and large have failed in providing
their students with the right material to understand our country’s most
cherished political practices. When institutions of higher learning drop the
ball, it’s incumbent upon us to defend our history and culture by stepping up
to ensure America has "an alert and knowledgeable citizenry" as
President Eisenhower famously remarked.
Learning the truth about
American history is one step in that direction.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “The philosophy of the classroom
in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”
Constitutional
Law says: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary
to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed.” So I hope you now understand why the
Constitutional architects, included the Second Amendment as part of
Constitutional law. Just as happened in Venezuela, without it, you will lose
your freedom.
Earlier, I briefly mentioned the date of 1913 as being the end of our
Constitutional Republic and the establishment of the foundation of tyranny. You see in a Constitutional Republic, we are first
ruled by Constitutional law. And if that law is violated by elected officials
or bureaucrats, they are held accountable and punished accordingly. But the
foundation of tyranny is democracy. Where we are ruled, not by law, but by the
whim of the majority in government.
Today our U.S. Congress and State governments don’t even consider the
Constitution anymore, because we are not ruled by it.
Article 4 Section 4 Clause 1 of the U.S.
Constitution says: “The
United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of
government, and shall protect each of them against invasion…” Yes according
to law, we are guaranteed a Republic not a Democracy. Not only that my friend,
the Congress must protect us from the invasion at our border. It’s the law! But
you see that doesn’t matter in a democracy, the majority of Congress said “NO
WALL, NO PROTECTION FROM INVASION.” And in a democracy the majority rules. Not
the law.
Because of ignorance…Tyranny is just around the corner my friend.
Thanks for listening. Now go do the
right thing, pray and fight for truth and freedom. - de Andréa
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chance for your family and friends to hear the truth.
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1 comment:
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