Rural Americans:Cannon FodderFor The New World Order

Dateline: 6 September 2013

Sergeant Alvin C. York  (this farmboy knew how to shoot!)

"They say farmers are good warriors because they learn to shoot at an early age. Sociological profiles done for the United States Army found rural, conservative boys from farms had a natural propensity to take orders, were in good physical shape, and naturally were accustomed to the outdoor life of nights on the ground. I suppose it is no accident that Sergeant York was of rural stock. The Roman strategist Vegetius over sixteen centuries ago agreed. “I do not think,” he wrote, “that there has ever been any question that rural people are the best equipped for military service.”

At the heart of the rustic’s ability to fight both effectively and brutally is [his] combative attitude toward nature—the very hard-headed view of the unending struggle to grow food. In my own family my Swedish grandfather who was gassed in the Argonne—my namesake, Victor Hanson, Jr.—who was blown apart on Okinawa a few weeks before the war ended, a cousin, Holt, with a bullet in his brain at Normandy, my late father who flew on the big B-29 thirty-four times over Tokyo, were all good warriors—the latter especially a lethal man with either a .50-caliber machine gun or 20-mm cannon. I think now that their skills derived from the years on this farm. These pest-sprayers and -dusters understood that you must—no, want to—kill things that destroy to survive, must obliterate those who would eradicate civilization, must as part of nature itself use muscle and brain to slay the slayer. When the warriors of this family recognized the character of the satanic Nazi or imperial German or racist Japanese, I’m afraid that not one of them blinked when his finger was on the trigger, and so slew many of those blindly obedient to an evil cause before being wounded, poisoned, and shot down themselves."

—Victor Davis Hanson
“The Land Was Everything”

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American Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, has recently stated that 150 years ago, when the USDA was established, 90% of the people in this country were connected in some way to rural America. Today it is 16%. 

With most Americans now crammed into high-density population centers, separated from the culture and values of rural America, rural citizens have virtually no political clout. Rural Americans are now pretty much disenfranchised.   Those in power recognize that we have a problem—but the problem they see is not the same problem that rural Americans see.

Joel Salatin, small-farm advocate, and a voice of rural-agrarian sanity, has recently written of a meeting he attended where Tom Vilsack expressed the main concern that the centralized "powers that be" have about the loss of population in rural America. What Joel heard upset him very much. He posted about it at His Facebook Page. The quotes below come from his commentary:


“...although rural America only has 16 percent of the population, it gives 40 percent of the personnel to the military. Say what? You mean when it's all said and done, at the end of the day, the bottom line--you know all the cliches--the whole reason for increasing farms is to provide cannon fodder for American imperial might. He said rural kids grow up with a sense of wanting to give something back, and if we lose that value system, we'll lose our military might.

So folks, it all boils down to American military muscle. It's not about food, healing the land, stewarding precious soil and resources; it's all about making sure we keep a steady stream of youngsters going into the military. This puts an amazing twist on things. You see, I think we should have many more farmers, and have spent a lifetime trying to encourage, empower, and educate young people to go into farming. It never occurred to me that this agenda was the key to American military power.

Lest I be misread, I am not opposed to defending family. I am not opposed to fighting for sacred causes. I am violently opposed to non-sacred fighting and meddling in foreign countries, and building empires. The Romans already tried that and failed.

But to think that my agenda is key to building the American military--now that's a cause for pause. I will redouble my efforts to help folks remember why we need more farmers. It's not to provide cannon fodder for Wall Street imperialistic agendas. It's to grow food that nourishes, land that's aesthetically and aromatically sensually romantic, build soil, hydrate raped landscapes, and convert more solar energy into biomass than nature would in a static state. I can think of many, many righteous and noble reasons to have more farms. Why couldn't he have mentioned any of these? Any?

No, the reason for more farms is to make sure we get people signing up at the recruitment office. That's the way he sees me as a farmer. Not a food producer. When the president and his cabinet have their private conflabs, they don't see farmers as food producers, as stewards of the landscape, as resource leveragers. No, they view us as insurance for military muscle, for American empire building and soldier hubris. Is this
outrageous? Do I have a right to be angry? Like me, this raw and bold show of the government's farming agenda should make us all feel betrayed, belittled, and our great nation besmirched."

Joel Salatin