Well, now, just who was this “John Brown” of Providence, Rhode Island, who ignited the Gaspee affair, and with its flames set afire one of the brightest torches lighting the way towards America’s War of Independence? After John Hancock of Boston, Massachusetts, Brown was probably the wealthiest man in New England, whose family fortune later endowed Brown University, in Providence. For his part in burning the Gaspee, though, Brown could have been convicted of treason and piracy—the punishments for which, if his ignominious death on the scaffold had not been enough, would have included the forfeiture of all his worldly goods to the Crown. (Hancock, too, would have stood in the shadow of the public executioner to pay the supreme penalty for his own acts of treason against Great Britain, had Major John Pitcairn and his Redcoats apprehended him in Lexington on the 19th of April in 1775.)

Although a shrewd merchant, John Brown did not organize the attack on the Gaspee because it was a good profit-making venture, a sound economic investment, or a clever hedge against inflation or depression. Neither did he mount the attack to curry favor from the political Establishment. To the contrary: From the moment he gathered his fellow patriots at Sabin’s Tavern, he stood to lose everything, including his life. His participation in the Gaspee affair was the riskiest speculation he had ever made or would ever make—under the circumstances, at least supremely reckless, in the view of the world perhaps insane. He was, after all, spitting in the eye of the entire British Empire, the supremely puissant “New World Order” of his day. Yet he—along with John Hancock, George Washington, and many other rich and influential Americans who wagered their all in the forefront of the fight for liberty—was eventually victorious!

So it is not impossible for the well-to-do to be clear-sighted, courageous, patriotic, and even self-sacrificing. Or at least it was not impossible then, although apparently it is very difficult these days. It should not, however, be too difficult, even today. For unlike John Brown, who in the comfort of his rich surroundings had nothing material to lose if he and his fellow Americans had simply sat down quietly under British rule, the wealthy among the middle class today have everything to lose if patriotic Americans—especially including themselves—do not stand up, muster their financial and other resources, and bring an end to the Federal Reserve System and the emerging national para-military police state. Because the Federal Reserve System will destroy the economy; and the para-military police state will clamp down on society in the aftermath of financial collapse; and then those who have wealth that can be stolen by political looters will have it stolen. Perhaps not as soon as tomorrow. But too soon for comfort.

FK – As I’ve said for a while, it won’t happen until the hogs figure out there’s no more corn in the trough.