Hooray for Holly-War!

The War-Torn Sign of Hollywood

"Public opinion in the United States is the point we must attack!" declared David Scott, the Undersecretary in Charge of American Affairs, told the June 1940 meeting of the new Winston Churchill government in London. Scott was well aware that wars are fought on public relations. Wars are the biggest business in the world and the finest salesmen are employed to make sure that the public will buy it. Hollywood, despite it's unfounded reputation as a bastion for peace loving hippies and liberals, has marched goosestep with the war mongers in selling every war from World War II to the endless War on Terror.

A scene from the 1940 MOI propaganda piece "London Can Take It!" I say London can take it up the rear.

In September 1940, Warner Brothers Studios released a 10-minute pro-war documentary entitled London Can Take It! Narrated by Collier's Weekly war corespondent Quentin Reynolds, the propaganda piece painted a skewed picture of a London bombed by Nazi bombers as a land that keep on going as if nothing was happening. "These are not Hollywood sound effects," Reynolds smoothly narrated as the bombs fell over Trafalgar Square, "This is the music that plays every night in London. The symphony of war." By December 1940 more than 60 million Americans had seen this piece of interventionist propaganda in over 12,000 theaters from Maine to California. It was believed that this film had been made by Warner Brother's studios, but no, it had actually been directed and produced by Humphrey Jennings, a director for the Crown Film Unit of the British Ministry of Information (MOI). Warner Brothers allowed this very important fact to be left out of the film. In fact, the only credits simply attributed the company that sold the film and the voice of Mr. Reynolds.

Warner Brothers allowed the Ministry of Information (MOI) to release this propaganda piece under the guise of a Warner Brothers film because it was seen as a flashy way to sell the war in Europe to a nation that did not want to go to war. A Gallup Poll from 1937 revealed that 95% of the population polled in the United States opposed entering another war in Europe NO MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCES. In November 1940, a series of university polls revealed that Americans did not care for the British. "Polls showed that Americans saw the British as guided by selfish interests and imperialism," writes Nicholas J. Cull in Selling War: The British Campaign Against American "Neutrality" in World War II. These polls were a disaster for the warlike Churchill regime that needed an Anglo-American Alliance to continue the dying British Empire. The British would find a friend in Hollywood.

The British Lion of MGM Roars America into War

MGM's Louis B. Mayer welcomed a representative from the British Ministry of Information (MOI) in late 1940. Mayer told the MOI representative that MGM was ready to to do, "everything possible to help the great cause." This "great cause" was Britain's war for Poland (otherwise known as World War II). By January 1941 the heads of MGM, Columbia and Fox studios had all agreed to distribute MOI propaganda documentaries to theaters. The MOI began to mass produce them, releasing them in American theaters at the pace of one new documentary every month! Now that is fast paced lying even a 300-word per minute politician would be jealous of.

Churchill, still desiring an Anglo-American alliance to hold up his illegitimate empire by the point of a bayonet, decided to meddle in Hollywood to influence American entry into his war for Poland. Hungarian-born British filmmaker Alexander Korda was Churchill's main Hollywood propagandist. IN his film That Hamilton Woman, a film about Lord Horatio Nelson's mistress, Churchill installed the jingoistic phrase, "You can not make peace with dictators. You have to destroy them." This type of over-the-top saber radling ran rampant in Hollowood in the early 1940s. Cary Grant, the fondly rememebred actor, was on the payroll of the MOI and was openly starring in pro-war films while President Franklin Double-crossing Rooseveltwas lying to America and telling the people of his nation that he would never, "Send your boys to die in a foreign war."

A long series of "America and Britain at War" films began to be released in Spring 1941, seven months before the bombing plot at Pearl Harbor. A Yank in the R.A.F. starred British actor Jerome Power as an American who joins the British to fight the Nazis in the Battle of Britain. A series of Nazi spy films, starring future James Bond star Carry Grant, were released in which over-the-top Nazi spies plotted against the safety and democracy of the United States. None of what was being covered in these films was true (especially the Nazi spy rings in the United States) but the constant onslaught of Hollywood driven pro-British, pro-war films were having an effect on the public opinion of the United States. By July 1941, 60% of Americans polled by Literary Digest supported H.R. 1776 (The notorious Lend-Lease Act) and even 50% of those polled supported American entry into the European war. The constant Hollywood propaganda machine was having a great effect in reworking the American mind.

Cary Grant: British-American Actor and War Enthusiast

Back in Britain many people were upset that actors like Cary Grant and directors like Alexander Korda were hanging out in Hollywood rather than facing the Blitzkrieg and dying at the escape from Dunkirk. Korda, Grant and other British Hollywood figures were maligned as, "Gallantly facing the footlights." However, Churchill realized he could not spare his propaganda agents in Hollywood so he had his American ambassador, Lord Lothian, explain that, "There is plenty of manpower in Britain" to keep his propaganda agents in Hollywood. Lothian wrote that these films were a "powerful nucleus" in the ultimate goal of forcing America into World War II.

Senator Gerald P. Nye: Hero of Truth and Anti-Propagandist

1941 was the most pro-war year in the history of film making. The once honorable profession of acting had been bought ought by the British war machine, and many in the American Midwest knew this. Senator Gerald P. Nye (Republican of North Dakota) announced in October 1941 that he was going to lead a congressional investigation into war propaganda in Hollywood. He declared he was going to end the influx of "non-American producers into American cinema." Nye, a prominent leader in the America First Movement, was correct in his fears. As has been shown, Hollywood was more than happy to propagandize for the British Empire. Director Alexander Korda was summonsed to testify before the committee on December 12th, 1941. FDR would ignore the warnings before Pearl Harbor to make sure that this interview never occurred. Instead of being grilled before the United States Senate for his work in lying to the American public and serving as a propaganda minister for war, Korda was instead knighted in 1942. He was awarded for lies well told.

Another Hollywood pro-war piece given accolades by a foolish populace.

In 2010 Kathryn Bigelow was given the Academy Award for Best Director for her pro-war film The Hurt Locker. This was nothing new in Hollywood. Casablanca, Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, and We Were Soldiers all have won Academy Awards and all show war as a fun game where men can show how "Manly" they are. None of these films show the waste, horror and sadness of war.

If Hollywood truly was a land of liberal, peace loving hippies the bravado of John Wayne and R. Lee Ermey would never have caught on. However, one is hard pressed to find a pro-peace or anti-war film in Hollywood that is ever honored. Hollywood has been firmly in the hands of the pro-war propagandists since Churchill and Britian destroyed the world's finest profession, acting, in the darkest era of the 1940s.

"We the People": A Slogan for Slavery

The Banner of Fascist Majoritarianism

Fake libertarian and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck is well known for his love of the term "we the people." He, and his fascist Tea Party supporters, throw about this term as if it was their version of Mein Kampf. This all encompassing phrase begins the United States Constitution and is probably the best known, and most misused, maxim in American history. In the name of "we the people" What these uninformed Beck-ites do not understand is that the phrase "we the people" is NOT one any conservative or limited government movement should hold up as their motto. The history of the term "we the people" is scary and was opposed by one of the biggest freedom fighters in American history.

Patrick Henry: The Hero of Anti-Federalism and the Leading Voice against "We the People"

The average college educated American may be able to tell you a little something ab0ut Patrick Henry. In most American History 103 classes the well meaning professor will generally tell the class that on March 23, 1775, Henry declared at St. John's Church before the Virginia Convention, "I know not what course others may take, but as for me give me liberty or give me death!" This speech is one of the most well known in history, but the context of the speech is not as well known. Henry, despite attempts by historians to say otherwise, was a radical who truly wanted a separation from government. In 1763, while arguing the Parson's Cause in Hanover County, Mr. Henry declared quite boldly that a king who would veto a just and necessary law voted on and passed by a locally elected representative body was not a father to his people but "a tyrant who forfeits the allegiance of his subjects." Henry then went on to state that "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third..." Obviously Patrick did not trust any form of central government tyranny and that is what led him to attack the statement "we the people."

"What right had they to say 'We the people,' instead We, the States?" Patrick Henry demanded at the Virginia Ratification Committee in June 1788. The "they" were the elites that wrote a Constitution against the will of the states. The Annapolis Convention of 1786 declared that a convention should be held to revise the Articles of Confederation, not replace them with an entirely new document. Patrick Henry could see through the scheme of the Constitution and declared that he, "Smelled a rat" when the document went up for ratification. The fact that Delaware, the home of ultra-conservative federalist John Dickinson, was the first state to ratify the new Constitution further worried Henry.

The Virginian saw the statement "we the people" as a slave compact where the people were directly contracted to the federal government, and not to their own state. "The fate of America may depend on [this statement of "we the people"]," declared Henry, "Have they said 'we the states'? If they had, this would be a confederation. It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government." Henry saw "we the people" as a big government plan to centralize all the states through a contract between the citizen and the federal government. The sovereign confederation of independent states was thus being overridden by a new monstrous federal government in the name of "we the people."

Additionally, Henry declared that the people could not have created the new Constitution because, "The people have no right to enter into leagues, alliances or confederations...States and foreign powers are the only proper agents for this kind of government." "We the people" was not only disingenuous, it was also illegal and wrong. Henry argued that the term "we the states" was far superior because it put forth the ideal that the Constitution was a contract between states, and not men, and thus the contract could be severed by the states if their rights were threatened by a tyrannical federal government. Henry insisted that "we the people" was nothing more than a big government scheme to rob the states of their sovereign powers in the name of the people. He was a prophet.

Daniel Webster: Big government hack and fan of the phrase, "We the People"

Since 1789, the term "we the people" has been used to justify more evils, waste and government fat then any other term. It is what gave birth to the dangerous "General Welfare" clause of the United States Constitution and his held up by big fat Republican and Democratic politicians in justification for their waste. The "will of we the people" is the majoritarian phrase which politicians have held up for generations as the reason they war and waste.

Of all the people who have most used and abused the term "we the people" Daniel Webster (Whig of Massachusetts) stands out as the most effective of procuring waste from it. Webster was a lover of big government. A student of the authoritarian economic theories of Alexander Hamilton, Webster and his cohort Henry Clay (Whig of Kentucky) envisioned a nation united by a wasteful and winding collection of roads, canals and other "internal improvements: The National System. Webster declared that this system was in accordance with "we the people" and for this reason state sovereignty could be ignored by the federal government and roads (like the corruptly built Cumberland Pass) could be forced into states. Webster argued in 1830 that the National System was in the interest of the general welfare of the people of the United States, and thus it had to be approved of by the Congress. In his January 1830 letter, The Second Reply to President Pro Tempore of the Senate Robert Hayne, Webster openly tells the South Carolinian that, "A national debt is a national blessing" and openly declared that the states had no power to decide their own destiny. The United States government was: "The people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people."

As you can see, Webster used the phrase "we the people" to rob the states of sovereign power. The people, Webster argued, were what made the federal government and that is why the federal government was able to trample on the rights of states. Webster knew that it wasn't the people, the common farmer and shop keeper, who was making laws and decisions, but it was a handy argument to use to justify the Northern elite's war on the states.

Daniel Webster's last words are probably the most chilling last words ever uttered: "I still live." He was right.

Abraham Lincoln: Murderer of over 610,000 Americans, destroyer of private property, butcher of Native Americans and lover of the term "We the People."

Look in the Constitution and see if you can find the term, "Indissoluble Union" or "Perpetual Union." Did you find it? No? Good, you are looking at the the correct United States Constitution. The fact of the matter was that the United States was meant to be a collection of states that had signed a temporary contract (the Constitution) that could be ended at any time a sovereign state felt that their rights had been violated. This is referred to as "secession" and it is not a dirty word. Secession was one of the most precious rights the Founding Fathers struggled for. James Madison, a big federalist no less, argued that an amendment allowing for the suppression of a secessionist movement was against the principles of the American Revolution and stated, "The use of force against a State, would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment." Madison argued that the the federal government could not war on a seceding state because secession was legal.

If this is so, why did Old Abe Lincoln come out of the Wideness and tear old Dixie down in the 1860s? "We the people" is the reason an illegal war raped the women (slave and free), land, wealth and prestige of the South from 1861 to 1865 and destroyed the meaning of the UNited States Constitution forever. Abraham Lincoln was a student of the oratory of Daniel Webster and Henry Clay. In fact, he kept portraits of both men in the living room of his home and his law office in Springfield, Illinois.

Webster was known for his quote, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" It was from this statement, said during the famed Hayne-Webster Debate of 1830, that Lincoln produced his argument that secession was contrary to the view of "we the people." Lincoln argued that secession was against the ideal of "majority rule." This was based on the ideal of a national consolidated "we the people" state that the framers of the Constitution envisioned. The humorous thing is that an independent state centered confederacy most likely would have represented the majority will more because the people would have had more say in their local state or community then in the entire federal government. In a consolidated "we the people" state, 51% of the people win and 49% of them lose.

Lincoln obviously did not care about majority rule, he saw "we the people" as a phrase he could use to justify an unjust war against a confederacy of states. In Lincoln's greatly over-hyped Gettysburg Address, Lincoln pulls a Webster and declares that his illegal war for Northern railroads was being waged in the name of, "That government of the people, by the people and for the people." "We the people" justified the burning of Hampton, Virginia, and Atlanta, Georgia. "We the people" justified the torture of Southerns at Camp Douglas in Chicago, Illinois. "We the people" were tied to a federal government that waged a total war against fellow Americans who simply wished to live up to the ideals of Patrick Henry. Humorist H.L. Mencken put it best:

"But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves."

Abraham Lincoln, like Daniel Webster before him, used the statement "we the people" to justify the War of Northern Aggression. Had the Preamble to the Constitution read, "We the independent States in order to form a more perfect Union" Lincoln could never have waged his war constitutionally.

"We the people" burn Atlanta in September 1864

The Tea Party Movement is correct to pick up "We the People" as it's motto. The history of this insidious statement fits the Tea Party Movement to a tee. The Tea Party Movement is ran by Glenn Beck, a big government man who masquerades as a libertarian and play acts as a student of history. Beck and and his Tea Party drones are for the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, support massive federal welfare for corporations and ConAgra and are card carrying members of the Republican Party. They fit Lincoln like his disturbing stove pipe hat. "We the people" is an evil term used by evil men to turn the United States into the bloated, centralized corporatism it is today.