Speaker 1: If you want to support the show and get the
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slash Support and do it there. Thank you. I want
to welcome everyone back to the Peaking Yana Show for
the first time. My OGC brother Classington. How are you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm doing fantastic. A lot of the times, Uh, when
I'm just hanging out with the uh the o GC
guys in my local chapters, I'm I'm always asked like
if I if I've ever been on too Pete q'es
show before, because that's how a lot of guys and
uh finding OGC. You know, I'm I'm almost embarrassed to
say no, but uh, I guess we can rectify that today.
Speaker 1: Well, you pretty much had to write a book. Yeah,
that that helps, so yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I have a nasty habit of you know,
maybe once every you know, six months to year, I
just crank out like a small book for the OGC
sub stack. And uh, this one, you know, ended up
being a little bit longer than most, with being you know,
thirty thousand words long, takes like three hours to listen to,
uh if narrated, you know, two hours to read. It's
a it's kind of a behemoth, and I think it's
something of the greatest hits of maybe six or seven
decent books on early colonial history and Pennsylvanian history in particular.
And I don't know, I started out just looking around
my current city, Pittsburgh for We're the historical markers, and
when I started noticing, Hey, this island here is named
after so and so, that brand is named after what's
his name, and no one actually knows about it. People
don't really have a good idea of what actually happened
in the Whiskey Rebellion, what happened in the early Confederation
and early Constitutional period. Most people kind of line, ee,
the first presidency of George Washington, but no one can
actually tell you exactly what he did or what his
administration was like. And people, you know, they don't, particularly
in Pennsylvania, they don't really have a good grasp of
what their own state history was like. And so I
ended up writing over two weekends this sort of treatise
on you know, early Pennsylvania, colonial and Republican American history,
history of I guess, alcohol production in the early American Republic.
I wrote a sort of polemic sort of strong manning
the pro whiskey tax and anti whiskey tax positions by
laying out the necessity of having a stable currency from
the perspective of of the federal administration, but also the
justification for resisting the whiskey exercise tax. Going into the
fine numbers, of how profitable, how the profits of the
whiskey trade was essentially the only lifeline that the Appalachian
economy had to hard currency and they couldn't survive without it.
And I ended up just going on this sort of long,
I guess, interlaced narrative, weaving in different characters from the
pro and anti whiskey tax sides, and I've had a
very good reception from it. Just writing a book. It's
certainly as it's a feather in OGC's cap that they
they will both publish your small books. And I think
our OGC audience is how would you say, we're sophisticated
and to have a good reception for that kind of thing.
So I'm all around blessed to have have OGC platform.
Speaker 1: Me well, considering how many books we're apt to reading.
I mean, this was really more of a a novella
kind of thing, a you know, more of a kind
of book let, a classic kind of booklet. And you know,
it interests me because I have a lot of family
who are who still live in Western Pennsylvania and are
buried in Western Pennsylvania. So the history there is, you know,
of great interest to me. So all right, let's just
jump right in. This is a theme that we've heard
before about. I think libertarians have a tendency to talk
about the Whiskey Rebellion a lot as a as an
example of state over reach right from the beginning, or
even even like a like oligarchy right from the beginning,
or a corporateocracy right from the beginning. So you know,
when it comes to taxes and state overreach, you know,
how does that play out in everyday life.
Speaker 2: Well, part of the reason why I picked this particular
subject was Patrick Newman's book Cronyism, Liberty Versus Power in America,
published by the Mesa's Institute, and I had something of
a I don't know, something of a visceral reaction against it. Well,
I had a reaction against it because in a lot
of ways, sort of libertarians underplay the amount of violence
that actually went on in the back country and underscore
the necessity of actually, you know, having having a federal
income to actually, you know, payoff war debts. I mean,
I do go into the numbers where seventy percent of
the federal budget was just paying off interest on the
war that's accrued from the American Revolution, and twenty percent
was you know, fighting Indian wars, and then five percent
was just betteral salaries and paying off barbary pirate ransoms.
But I also I do have a sort of soft
spot for the resistors of the taxes because you know,
as I go into my article, tax collectors on the
frontier are particularly corrupt and particularly hated. In America has
a long history of regulation of communities, self regulating corrupt
tax collectors and land agents and vigilanteism. But a lot
of people of the particular back country persuasion have a
very they don't like tax collectors. And there was a
certain out of truth to the fact that yes, there
was a very plutocratic banking elite being established in early America,
and as I kind of lay out, there was a
necessity to having both income from taxes. But at the
same time I name a few of the different plutocratic institutions,
one being the Essex Junto. But if there are quite
a few of them across New England and the Middle colonies,
and they did actually fleece the fleece the little guy
for all he was worth to pay off their essentially
their you know, their bonds that they paid for. So
I want to add a little bit of nuance and
a less ideological I guess have a little bit of
a less ideological take on what what actually happened in
the early administration. So I'm not necessarily pro taxation anti
taxation in one way or the other. I just want
to present the narrative from the both the federalists and
and anti federalist sides, respectively, in a very humanizing way.
Speaker 1: Is that how you're able to because you mentioned the
reference the American revolutions, tax disputes and everything. Is that
where you draw draw your inspiration from?
Speaker 2: Well, for for the Old Glory Club, I actually toured
Valley Forge last year with the Delaware Crossing Society, and
in going to that event, I did a substantial amount
of research on you know, why did people starve at
Valley Forge? You know this place Pennsylvania. As I talked
about in my article, it was like a linen like
the linen and flax manufacturing colony. You know, they made
clothes and they were kind of the The county was
also something of a bread basket. And how come these
soldiers starved at Valley Forge? A lot of it was Yeah,
if you really want to get into it, it is graft.
And there were contractors that did fleece Congress for all
that they were worth. But at the same time, the
continental dollars were worthless. And why were they worthless? I
mean they weren't backed by anything. America kind of started
out as this this sort of startup company and you know,
they took they didn't have any creditors. They just printed
money and no one accepted the money. And you know,
there weren't a taxes. So this is this is a problem.
This is a genuine problem. Guys in the field can't
you know, they can't buy shoes. And as I lay
out later on, like later in my article, you know,
the one institution that was actually set up by these
putocrats to actually you know, finance the revolution, the first
National Bank or the first National the first Bank of
North America. I forget it's something like that, but it's
essentially this shipping magnate's you know, personal bank backed by
you know, hey, he promises to pay out gold if
you if you if you want to sell your stock
in the bank. But you had these if America was
something of a startup company, and the early investors wanted
their pound of flesh out of it, and they were
essentially the only people that you know, kept Congress afloat
for all that was worth. And Robert Morris, you know,
this shipping magnate, he personally, you know, anted up and
paid for the supplies for the final siege at Yorktown.
And after Yorktown, you know, Washington's army was basically they
put New York City under siege, like besieging the last
remaining British army. Look it in New York City and
no Congress. They couldn't pay their soldiers, and the odds
were that they weren't going to pay any of the
veteran officers pensions that they were promised. So now the
officers were gonna they were gonna mutiny, and they might
have coued the second they we coued the Confederation Congress.
And it's it's a very dire situation that the American
Republic was in, not having not being able to pay
their own soldiers and their should soldiers. You know that
they they actually did, like someone like Washington was able to,
you know, appeal to his officer's sense of duty and
posterity to talk them down from mutiny. But that didn't
stop you know, a few garrisons of Pennsylvanian soldiers from
mutinying and forcing Congress to evacuate Philadelphia. So paying your
army and paying your debts is a very valid concern,
especially for the early Republic. So I can't be totally
anti tax after witnessing and hearing about, and reading about
Valley Forge and reading Washington's very personal Newberg address where
he talks his army from out of mutinying. So it's
a tough thing to just come at, you know, tax
tax collectors evil as a as an ideological position, although
I do end up going into the regulators and and
how they fought back back against cor like more corrupt
tax cutch and practices.
Speaker 1: Well, centralization is you know something you talk about in
the article when when you look at like the articles
of Confederation and you compare it to the Constitution, what
would what would you say would have been the better
the better way of going about the state going forward
at that point or the or the confederation or the
state union.
Speaker 2: Well, frankly, I think this the confederation just was not
going to work. And I'm personally a huge fan of
you know, James Madison's political career in his his writings
in the Federalist papers, and I did think that he Madison,
you know, as sort of the Constitutional Conventions organizer and
you know, early federal later you know, Democratic Republican. I
think he meted out just about the correct middle ground
for how America should have approached centralization. I do get
into nullification and how localized communities could nullify state or
national law like this has had very strong precedents in
American history and even in colonial history, which I which
I do get into.
Speaker 1: Well, the you mentioned state and federal nullification, and it
seems like federal nullification was given to us in the Constitution,
but nullification on the state level would would have to
be written into the state constitution or you're basically doing
it where it's more of a what could turn out
to be termed as a revolt if it's not if
it's not written in you know, the I can't remember
the the Virginia resolution and the Kentucky resolution, those were
those were national nullification discussions and issues. But as far
as as far as I know, when it comes to
state nullification, nullifying a location, nullifying in your own state,
if that's not written into your state constitution, which I
don't think it's written into any of the fifty state constitutions.
Then that would that could be something that would be
looked upon as extra extra judicial.
Speaker 2: Yes, like when I when I talk about regulators and
communities self regulating, a lot of the time these are
just county level acts of nullification where this is not
something in a particular state constitution. It's more of a
sort of Appalachian backcountry cultural staple that was somewhat born
out of necessity. But in terms of actually organizing anything
beyond the county level an even regional level, the regulators
were very careful in how they worded their speeches at
their conferences. If you're going to nullify a law, you
know what you do is you get all of the
most prestigious guys and you know affluent you know, the
most affluent citizens and prestigious politicians together in a conference
and you work out exactly what you're going to propose.
And reading some of the transcripts from these regulator conferences,
they were very very careful as to not be seditious
at least be as as as implies little sedition as possible,
because people who people would get, you know, their territory removed,
they would get their property seized, and they would have
been hanged as traders if they were seditious. And the
early Republic, you know, we didn't really have like a
you know, as I talk towards the later end of
my article, there really wasn't much of a consensus as
to what was treason against the federal government in the
early Republic, and they really kind of kind of shrugged
off defining it because it was it was such a
difficult thing to different thing, difficult thing to actually define,
I guess, but perhaps maybe I should just talk about how, yes,
these early vigil anti posses carved out their own little
their own little statelets that nullified national law. One of
the more esoteric things that came across was the fact
that throughout the American back country, they're about, depending on
how you count them, somewhere between a dozen and maybe
twenty independent states that were never recognized as full states,
but kind of independent, independently operated by themselves outside of
the federal government and even outside of the Confederation government.
A lot of them were squatters who refused to accept
speculator claims to land ownership and just declared themselves an
independent association or even applied for statehood, but we only
ended up with thirteen states. I guess Vermont, Tennessee, and
Kentucky eventually became their own independent states anyways, so it's
not something of a moot point.
Speaker 1: But in the.
Speaker 2: Late Colonial era and early Republican period, the Apple Achian
Mountains were something of a dividing line between what were
royal colonies in what was kind of Indian land and
kind of settler territory. It's somewhat murky. After the French
and Indian War, there's a proclamation line of seventeen sixty
three where essentially settlers were forbidden from crossing the Apple
like Appalachians and selling into Indian territory. However, settler, you know, settlers,
free land is free land, and the settled it. And
a posse of a couple of thousand regulators from North
Carolina they launched an unsuccessful vigilante revolt against the corrupt
governor of North Carolina and the North Carolina tax collectors.
You know, they they'd take the taxes of backcountry farmers
and they just pocket it and then say that the
farmers they didn't pay their taxes or land agents would collect,
you know, collect money from farmers to purchase land, but
they'll never actually file it. And this one, uh, this
one man named this one surveyor named herman husband came
across you know, two hundred instances of one single tax collector,
you know, taking phony taxes off of farm and hope
two thousand militiamen essentially tried to fight off the corrupt
governor and they lost their revolt, and in losing they
fled to Marday, Tennessee, where they created the Wataga Association
and had their own independent republic. So when the state government,
when the colonial governments refused to acknowledge that there was
systemic and widespread corruption, they tried to self regulate. They
burned down the house of a very nasty tax collector.
And when they lost, they just created their own country,
completely independent of the colony of North Carolina. And you
look up the state of Franklin, but they tried to
create their own state afterwards too. Or the state of
Vermont was basically a bunch of squatters who organized the
under the Green Mountain Men and uh, they created their
own independent little republic. Like Daniel Boone is very famous,
but he tried to he created He tried to create
the Transylvanian Colony, which you know, very wealthy speculators bought
like a large chunk of land off the Cherokee and
they tried to create their own little state, but didn't
didn't work out too well. Let's see, there was also
like the Pine Tree the pine Tree Boys in northeastern Pennsylvania.
They declared themselves or they tried to declare themselves their
own independent republic. Didn't go out to didn't go too
well during the Revolution. But you know, sometimes, you know,
when you're just in the wilderness, you can just do
things and you can just kind of you know, string
up corrupt tax collectors or declare yourself independent. But yeah,
when it comes to actual sedition, like the regulators for
a Cha's Rebellion, like I said earlier in the Essex Juneto,
they did they tried to create a very nasty system
where the accrued state debt for that, you know, Massachusetts
accrued during the American Revolution was essentially contracted out to
the public speculation market where very wealthy merchants could essentially buy,
like buy chunks of the Massachusetts state debt and created
a sort of speculative bubble because you know, there were
interest payments to pay off the debt, and you know,
certain percent of return on income was very good. But
to pay for the interest on these debts, let's say
of Massachuset, it's you know, increased property taxes, increased poll taxes.
In the early Republic, there are tariffs between the individual states,
so like if you wanted to do business from Massachusetts
to Connecticut, you'd have to pay a tariff. And this
this was just it was nasty, it was regressive. A
lot of veterans went into debt fighting the American Revolution,
and they weren't being paid their pensions. Uh so Western
so farmers in western Massachusetts, you know, they saw the
corruption and seditiously seized an armory and burned down locations
that had the records of of you know, these farmers debts.
So the backcountry was wild nullification. It it could happen
at a very local level, assuming no one notices. But
even back then, sedition was pretty quickly stamped out. And
you know, Kentucky was a particularly you know, wild and
lawless territory, especially in the beginning. So it's it's it's
complicated in terms of precedents.
Speaker 1: Well, why don't we talk about what, uh, what led
up to the Whiskey rebellion itself. Give us a little
background on that, and you know what you wrote about
in your article.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to give something of a history of
you know, a history of colonial Pennsylvania, which is something
that it's it's sort of a niche local topic, but
I wanted to explain how odious these tax is were.
Speaker 1: So the.
Speaker 2: So the national debt, right, it was funded by first
by a tariff. It was essentially like a five percent
tariff on all imported goods, which it wasn't too much,
but we weren't really importing much anyways, because immediately after
the American Revolution, we didn't exactly have any trade treaties
with any other countries. We were locked out of the
British economy because they were so heavily protectionist. We didn't
have any treaties with France or Spain, so we couldn't
actually ship any goods out out through New Orleans. All
the entire economy was being rejiggered to be its own,
its own collective market. But Pennsylvania, the way that it
was settled was that I use a source from on
the Frontier with Colonel Anti's that basically describes how Pennsylvania
was settled. Where you had, you know, a small sort
of Quaker elite established in the seed of Philadelphia and
in the immediate suburbs outside of Philadelphia. You had essentially
these large estates owned by Quakers, but you also had
large estates owned by Dutch traders who brought over German
like starving Germans who they sold into indentured servitude. And
then outside of the Dutch and German ring you have
the Scots Irish who have a long history, have a
long and fun history. If you had actually care to
read about colonial Appalachia. The one of the problems on
the frontier is that you have to organize things in
a very ad hoc fashion because there isn't exactly any
There aren't any roads, there aren't any there's no government infrastructure,
there aren't any banks. You know, very little hard currency
comes out to the back country. But what you do
have are a very clannish people who fought off bands
of Indians who some of them were Christianized, and a
lot of them were kind of just roaming bands of hunters,
like one of the big Indian tribes, of course is
the Iroquois Confederacy, but a lot of them were more
permanently stationed in a state New York, while they had
sort of these roving bands of Mingo Iroquois who you
might sign a trade or you might sign a property
agreement agreeing to buy a certain amount of acres off
of one Indian band, but the other won't actually accept it,
and there will be all sorts of Indian wars on
the frontier. And in response to these Indian raids, what
these sort of Scots Irish communities did was they formed
local militia where every man of fighting age from eighteen
to forty six had to go to these either like
monthly or quarterly militia musters, where you'd go out learn
how to how to conduct drills in march in line,
you practice shoot and then afterwards you know, you have
a nice barbecue with your neighbors. And this created a
very strong sense of camaraderie and organic social fabric. You
train to fend off and fend off Indians and defend
your homes with your neighbors, and everyone kind of knows
each other and inevitably they form sort of social network associations,
and in the very far west of Pennsylvania, on the
on the west of the Appalachian Frontier around Pittsburgh, there
were five counties, the biggest being Washington County and then Allegheny, Westmoreland, Fayette,
and Bedford. And what happened was the only way that
these people so land speculation, right, So the frontier of
Pennsylvania was sort of de facto owned by the Penn
family who had their original charter now the pens In
order to actually make money, they sold land to other
large corporations of land speculators who they'd buy like ten
thousand acres off of the Penn family for five cents
an acre, and then they'd parcel out the chunks of
land at at a profit. Or even better, they loan
money to farmers like the poor people that will ship
them out west to sell the land. But they'll give
these farmers loans to settle their speculated territory eight to
ten percent interest rates, which is pretty which is pretty good.
But the problem is that in order to pay off
these loans, you have to have hard currency to pay
off them. So how do you actually make money on
the frontier. So the one product that was actually very
easily grown. On the frontier were grains, so corn, barley,
and rye, and you could easily distill. I think the
figure was something like one two hundred pounds of you know,
grains into one hundred and sixty fluid pounds pounds of
you know, of whiskey. And if you could get in
on the frontier, you know, a gallon of whiskey costs
like between a quarter and thirty five cents. But if
you could get it to if you could get Philadelphia,
you could sell it for about a dollar, and if
you could ship it down to New Orleans, you could
sell it for you know, a little bit over a dollar.
And it costs almost nothing to float whiskey down the
Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. That that costs nothing.
But we didn't actually have a trade treaty with Spain
ironed out yet, so we couldn't actually sell anything there.
And it costs a whole lot of money to ship
whiskey three hundred miles and over a mountain range from
Pittsburgh to Philly. So you know, the profit margins are
very thin, but it is you know, it is a
way of actually making money However, that the tear riffs
that the Washington administration first came up with to pay
off the national debt, this was not sufficient to actually know,
there was still a large gap between what the federal
budget was and how much they needed to pay. Hamilton
proposed a property tax, you know, a flat tax per
acre and per house and per slave. But everybody hated this,
so he suggested something a little bit more targeting a
luxury good whiskey, which at the time, you know, people
drank the equivalent of, or people took consumed like the
equivalent of like three or four shots of alcohol per day.
You know John Adams, you know, every morning he'd drink
a tankard of hard cider like Tidewater Virginians. Every night
they'd have, you know, a bowl of punch. And this
is partly out of necessity because we didn't they didn't
have sanitary water, and you know, a little bit of
whiskey in your drink, uh sterilizes it. But people still
drank in absurd excess. And it was it was this
excess that you know, concerned physicians who are a little
bit more genteel and urbanite who backed certain tax on whiskey. Uh,
it would in theory, it would raise I think the
the the breakdown of the federal budget was something like
we had expenditure and expenditure of about five million dollars
per year in the Washington administration, and we spent about
and we had a budget of about three and a
half million per tariffs and the whiskey excise tax which
Hamilton proposed, Alexander Hamilton proposed, was calculated to bring in
about eight hundred thousand dollars a year. So it does
a good bit to close the gap in the in
the federal deficit. It doesn't fully doesn't fully close the gap,
but it does a good bit to actually close it.
So Hamilton's whiskey tax is a nine cent per gallon
tax on all distilled liquors. We used to have before
the American Revolution, a thriving rum industry where we had
rum distillers in New England. But after the Revolution, we
no longer had access to Jamaican sugar plantations, so we
had to pivot to different So consumers had to pivot
to a different, different source of alcohol, and that's where
whiskey came in. And what Hamilton did was he essentially
made whisky unprofitable for pens West Pennsylvanian farmers. And worse yet,
if you didn't pay the whiskey tax, he'd be fined
twenty dollars and you'd have to actually pay it, you know,
you'd have to be served your serve the fine in Philadelphia,
which you know, three hundred miles in a mountain range
away from Pittsburgh, and most people only made like between
twenty and one hundred bucks a year in hard currency.
So it's you have to pay your entire life, saving
your entire year's salary upfront and hard currency for not
being able to have a profitable whiskey stillery. So Hamilton's
whiskey tax is it just wasn't going to work in
the back country, and the back country didn't really support
the national government the creation of a national government anyways.
So what happened was the five counties of Western Pennsylvania
developed various conferences where at first, we know, put together
all of our grievances and sent them to Philadelphia. But
when no one actually did anything about the tax. Instead,
what happened were spontaneous sort of militias developed in each
of the counties to resist paying the excise tax. So
it was sort of like a county level, like per
county level, a nullification of the tax. We just weren't
going to pay it. And you know this, this strategy
was adopted throughout at Palacha, Kentucky they didn't pay their
whiskey tax. West Pennsylvania, we didn't pay our whiskey tax.
North Carolina, or like Tennessee, they didn't pay their whiskey tax.
But Pennsylvania was the only West Pennsylvania was the only
region that actually erupted into armed violence against the federal government.
And that's that's why it gets you know why it
gets a little bit more of the limelight. So that
that that's that's why I ended up writing this in
a very long winded kind of way. That's that's why
these these farmers resisted dak size tax. It was it
completely invalidated there their entire local economies business model, so
of course they fought it.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess one of the things that we could
look at is how that would be used today, because
you know, the when we talk about the old Glory Club,
you know, we we talk a lot about what we
have is we have people who are gathering in you know,
creating groups in certain areas, and how do we make
that actionable today? Because I think that's what you know.
We can talk about history all we want, and I
love to talk about history, obviously, anyone who listens to
my podcast knows I love to talk about history. But
I also want to apply what's been learned in the
past to today. You know, I can think of one
city on the East Coast where I'm not going to
say where it is, but a bunch of our people
have my rate it too. And how do how do
we begin to have that same kind of spirit, especially
when I mean we know that the federal government, as
big as it is, it doesn't have the manpower or
even the will at this point to go to target
a certain areas that have decided, well, we're not just
not going to do it that way anymore.
Speaker 2: So I guess the more app like, the more applicable
angle that you could take from my article is the
OGC Pittsburgh chapter named ourselves the Mingo Creek Society after
the sort of working man's resistance against the whiskey tax.
And in my article I highlight two different groups that
organized against the whiskey tax and emulating their model. Is
I mean, it's it's somewhat anachronistic, but it is. It
is exemplary of how in the past people locally organized
resistance against federal tyranny. So the two different tiers of organization,
right there was the sort of local farmer, you know,
the local militia where every month or every every quarter
of the quarter of a year, guys would get together.
They'd know, they'd train at the local muster point, they'd
break bread, and then they'd scheme of how to properly
how to properly regulate their own communities. This is the
sort of it's it's civil society in action. It's it's
actual democracy as it funk as it was designed to
have functioned, where these local society, these local militia societies
would Essentially what the Mingo Creek Society ended up doing
was they they both nullified the federal the federal excise
whiskey excise tax. But they also, you know, they they
drew up you know, their their their local county or
local township school board curriculums. They they developed their own,
you know, process for electing Pennsylvania state assemblymen. They know
this this this club. That club was the sort of
model society for the working man back in seventeen nineties.
But there was also the higher t of the democratic
societies that were the sort of socialite more socialite societies
where the more affluent members of Western Pennsylvania society would
you know, they'd host all sorts of speakers and make
all sorts of toasts. Two more high minded, ideological, ideological
It's what they wanted to see America become. They were
these democratic societies. They emulated the democratic societies that spawned
the French Revolution. But you know, don't don't get that,
don't let that, uh that put you off. It's what
they did, was they sort of they sort of what's
the right term for uh? They they branded the the
sort of lower level Mingo Creek society action into something
palatable for the elites of their time in place. And
this the sort of ideological like laundering trans like went
from your localized the localized guys would do what they
need to do on the ground, and then the more
high higher members of society wined and dined the elites
and put into practice and distribution what the guys on
the ground were up to. Now it's it's difficult to
recommend this because of the actions of the actual Mingo
Greek Society or MCO Greek Association as they were called,
because what they were doing were you scaring off tax
collectors and tarian tarian feathering people for most of the time.
But it's it's it was exhilarating to actually read about
how these guys organized way back then. And I think
bringing back the old sort of democratic model that we
that this country's was actually founded on is I guess
it's a it's a breath of fresh air because these societies,
you know, went to Tolkville talks about how we have
the social fabric of interlocking fraternal and societal organizations. He
really he really underplays the level of communal societal obligations
that there were organization on a local level. Is is
one hell of a drug. And it was exhilarating to
actually read about. But you know, I do, I do
have these two models that we could discuss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's do that, because one thing that's been
really drilled into us, you know, especially since the War
of Northern Aggression, is that we're a federal society and
national politics is the only thing that can cause change.
So and we know that that's not true. We know
that that's never been true. So why don't you talk
about your models?
Speaker 2: Well they I sort of already went over the two
different the two different tiers that were organized during the
Whiskey Rebellion. But there's the I want to say that
before you know, like you said, you know, the Civil Wars,
the society was a lot more democratic, and it's still
it was still a whole lot more democratic after this
al ward than what we have now. There's something that
was lost in the sort of mass media age in
the it's sort of impersonalizing, because impersonalization of politics. I
have a book called for the Common Good by Kaufman
that goes over I guess fraternal networking at the turn
of the century, late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds, and
even back then. You know, there's a chapter called competitive Militants,
where you know, your local guys would compete to get
into the most exclusive rifle club or rifling militia. It's
it's exhilarting to actually read about. And it's a shame
that all this was sort of killed in the well.
The problem is that the boomer generation never actually took
up these fraternal these for these old Boomer the pre
boomer fraternal organizations that their forefathers actually had, UH, and
there was a whole lot there wasn't as much of
a need to have militias, you know, in place when
there weren't massive unions that the militias were used to
actually put down. And also there was a whole professionalization
of the American military that really kind of was the
death death nail for that for that sort of Mingo
Creek association social networking order. I guess, I guess I'm
sort of I guess my article is somewhat anachronistic in
terms of the era that I actually describe, But there
are sort of through points that still exists today where
having a local gun club that it is actually prestigious
and brings all of like the local movers and shakers
into into one room. It's still it still has a
whole lot of potential. It's one thing that I could say,
I guess I didn't really. I guess I really didn't
address your point of elaborating on the two different models.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's and maybe that's a good thing. Let's keep
some things close to the vest. Yeah sure, yeah, but
what you're talking about gun clubs and everything. Is basically
what you're talking about is you're talking about natural what
are known as natural elites. You know, people in the
people in an area who you have something happens. They're
the kind of person what they used to call commonly
pillars of the community. And I don't think that a
lot of people realize just exactly how much power people
like that have. I've been mentioning lately, mentioned it on
my My Life Dream yesterday, and I think I mentioned
on my sub stect this morning that you know, in
the small town that I live in, we we had
a couple people transplants move in and try the woke
stuff and there was just one guy. There is one
guy in the community who pushed back against it, and
we never heard from these people again. So all it basically,
all it takes is will. All it takes is someone
who's like, who's who's going to stand up and go, yeah,
that's that's not the way we do things here. You're
not going to say that there are consequences that come
along with thinking like this, but that's not the way
we do things here, and we are going to defy you.
And that's exactly what happened they were openly defied and
things reversed and those people weren't heard from again. And
if you have people who are willing to do that,
you have power.
Speaker 2: Right it. Uh. It takes a very like a remarkably little,
like a very small number of actual confrontations like this
too to actually put a full stop to a sort
of local activism, like I guess in terms of scale,
really they were only like maybe like twenty guys in
all of like in all of like western Pennsylvania that
that actually went out and you know, knocked heads to
make sure that the whiskey tax wasn't actually paid, that
you know, across several calend Like That's all that I
really took to completely nullify the federal government's you know,
the federal government's presence in Western Pennsylvania. Like it's it's
a little bit different now in the a much more
digital age. But I think the type of people that
you're talking about are are even more afraid of confrontation
than than I guess anyone you know, two hundred years ago.
Like all it takes is one guy in one incident
to actually get a certain point across, Like you don't
want this type I can only imagine what kind of
nonsense the person was bringing. But it doesn't take much,
is what I'm just trying to say, to have a
very very large rolling impact.
Speaker 1: Well. And also if this was happening in Atlanta, that
person could call upon reinforcements, could call upon NGO's with money,
could could fight it. Could they could, they could get
law enforcement to force. But when you're in a smaller
when you're in a smaller polity, you know law enforcement,
You go to church with law enforcement, you know where
law enforcement lives, you know where the sheriff lives, you're friends,
you go to the gun you're at the gun range.
At the same time, that kind of stuff doesn't fly.
Speaker 2: I mean when you know when I'm when I talk
about I guess this h this very localized activism that
went on back in the day. Everyone knew, everyone knew
their neighbors like everyone. In order to in order to
convert your greens into whiskey, you have to like only
like one one in five or one in ten guys
actually owned a whiskey. Still you had to you relied
on your neighbors to actually convert your grains into money.
You spent. You know, once a month, you know, training
with your fellow guys. You you know, there wasn't exactly
TV or smartphones to entertain you, so you actually had
to be somewhat sociable. And in it was a much
more it was a much more uh I guess, low
tech age where the mechanisms of actual communication and socialization
were a lot more straightforward. But well, these guys went
to church together, they practiced, you know, practice drills together.
They they knew each other very intimately, and when the
Feds came not talking, they closed ranks in a very
organic kind of way. And that's a certain there's there's
a certain virtue to that that you can encourage all
of your all your listeners to actually participate in, because
it makes one hell of a difference when you know
you're going on you're coming onto hard times and you
actually have a vast social network to actually fall back on, uh,
you know, whether it's your church or it's you know,
gun club or you or even your little local OGC chapter.
When when you know, social contagions enter your social network,
you can actually socially deal with it internally. And these things,
these things work themselves out very naturally, or like you said,
the natural leaders kind of arise out of chaos to
actually fight off contate social contagions. And that's something that
all of the more anti social WOLP types don't Actually
they can't actually like whenever they actually do show up,
I RL, they can't really fight off you know, the herd,
the hard edged reactionary, you know, much more this rule
turn a phrase.
Speaker 1: Well, these are people who are not used to hearing
one word no, and people have been basically conditioned to
not want to say no. And when you tell somebody
now and you tell it to them firmly, they they
don't first, they don't know what to do, and then
it sort of instills a little bit of fear in them.
And I guess that's the yes, that might be one
of the stages that we're at right now.
Speaker 2: I mean, I won't be so and send the area
as to as to advocate for physical intimidation. Uh my.
What I'm suggesting is that having a strong social network
pays dividends in the long run. And it's not it's
almost never immediately clear how when you first get started,
but it does end up actually making a difference in
ways that spontaneously arise.
Speaker 1: And that's part of the Yeah, it's part of the
lesson from the that's part of the from the that's
a lesson from the history lesson you've given us.
Speaker 2: Yep, well, thank you, thanks Pete for for letting me,
uh pontificate a little bit. And it there's a I
don't know coming doing this This project was I guess
it was both I guess humanizing where you know, you
literally I literally read the personal correspondences of all these
actors who participated in the Whisky Rebellion, But it was
also it was also interesting to see the social dynamics
actually work themselves out because nominally, you know a lot
of the people on the frontier weren't particularly eloquent people,
but they did have very complicated uh business models and
social networks and it's you know, the past is a
foreign country and it's it was very interesting to see
the rise and fall of the original Mingo Creek society
and how what not to do is what I'd say,
because they yea, their their sedition eventually did bite them
in the the rear end. But in terms of in
terms of finding a good vigilante story, I don't think
you could go much farther than that the original MCS.
Speaker 1: All right, Clossington, let's close this out here and I
will link to the long article slash book on the
o GC substack. Everybody, go to the OGC sub stack
and please subscribe. We do keep some stuff hidden behind
a paywall, and that stuff is is always reviewed well
by those who are supporting the o GC. So do
that and watch for anything in the future of Clossington
puts up. He has a tendency to do long form,
so he's not gonna You're not You're not writing something
long form every week, but like you said, you know
every months. Yeah, as a couple of months ago by
you're like a time to write another book.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I only really come out to discuss
like either a whatever whatever book I public, small book
of an article that I publish, or respond immediately to
infrastructure collapses or explosions or anything like that. Just as
a professional engineer. That's yep. There there's my hobby of
writing novella's and then there is my professional gig of
trying to tamper down more incendiary discussion around infrastructure collapses.
So it's it's a it's a it's a very wild
tone shift that is why I'm trying to get across.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you come, you grace us with your presence on
the OGC live streams. When a bunch of pajeets run
into the key bridge and knock it down.
Speaker 2: Well they're still here or unfortunately. Yeah, I think I
think I mentioned that they they had the goal of
actually applying for you know, via work visas while they're
while they're still here, even though they're like foreign citizens.
That's that's like a that's a whole nother tangent though.
Speaker 1: All right, man, I'll I look forward to seeing you
in just over a month at the at the event,
and yeah, keep it open that you can come back
on soon or whenever anytime. Just reach out. Thank you,
all right, thank you, Pete Su