On this day in 1992, the Ruby Ridge standoff ended with the surrender of Randy Weaver. I certainly think that this is one of many examples of where the federal government didn’t deal well with a volatile situation. Just the same, why is it always the right wing loons who cause these kinds of stand offs? Weaver’s family was given millions of dollars for the death of his wife. But it was fully his own fault. But these “live free or die” types are always the first to go running to the government when they feel that they’ve harmed.

But I’m really not interested in Weaver as a violent extremist. I’m interested in how he became a hero to so many people on the right. These are people, after all, who claim to be such patriots. If Weaver had been a Muslim, they would have fully backed the government. What’s more, Weaver would undoubtedly be spending the rest of his life in prison — if not having been put to death. But when it comes to right wing bigots, well, the conservatives think that they are the great defenders of freedom.

I don’t know what the right wing thinks of Ruby Ridge at this point. It seems that they have mostly forgotten it. But if it happened again, they would think the same thing. It’s also interesting that even though Ruby Ridge took place under Bush and the Waco siege took place before the Clinton administration was fully settled into the job, on the right, both cases were blamed on Clinton. Because regardless what they say, the extreme right wing is ultimately loyal to the Republican Party.

Regardless, people like Randy Weaver are not patriots; they are traitors to the aspirations and the facts of America. They should be shunned and hated. And they are by me.

On this date the British Empire abolished slavery with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. It was a long time in coming. In fact, slavery was illegal in Britain itself from 1772 onward. I’m mostly interested in it because of the effect of the abolitionist movement in Britain on the Revolutionary war.

I find it constantly amazing to look at the lies I was told growing up. I’m a good example of the “whistleblower mentality.” Studies show that whistleblowers tend to be the true believers who find that they’ve been lied to. Growing up, I believed all that garbage about the United States standing up for democracy and all the myths about people founding America for freedom and how we had to break with Britain because of a lack of representation. (That last one is a hoot!)

None of this is to say that there wasn’t a lot of noble idealism that built the United States. But there was a lot of vileness that built it too. I’m fine with that. I just don’t like to be lied to. And I think it makes the nation worse. It is what allows Chris Christie to run his television commercials claiming that the nuclear deal will give Iran nuclear weapons and to generally dehumanize other countries.

As Dylan Matthews wrote last month, the American slave population was not in favor of independence. They understood that they would be better off under British rule. He also quoted Simon Schama as saying that the Revolutionary War was “first and foremost, mobilized to protect slavery.” And the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 is a good symbol of that. It doesn’t mean that the Brits were great and we were horrible. But it does mean that slavery was far more important to our economy than it was to theirs. And so they stopped doing what everyone must have known was wrong.

On this day in 1967, the founder of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell, was assassinated. What I find interesting about him is that he was a conservative. I understand: there have been some liberal loons as well. But Rockwell worked for National Review. As I discussed early this month, The Fascism of National Review, the magazine has a long love affair with the vile movement. The magazine wasn’t pro-Nazi, of course. They weren’t idiots. But it was quite fond of the Italian and Spanish forms of fascism.

This is undoubtedly why Rockwell found the conservative movement wanting. It wasn’t willing to stand up for what he felt it really represented. And I have to say: I think Rockwell was right. I think that the conservative movement in the United States is fascist, and that the only reason it isn’t explicit about it is because of World War II. But if you look at what conservatives actually believe: the fetishizing of strength and hierarchy and purity, it’s all fascism.

Maybe if Donald Trump manages to win the Republican presidential nomination, the party can finally admit to what it is. And maybe they can create a George Lincoln Rockwell Day. Today would be a good day, because there aren’t any real holidays in August. And it would be a whole lot more honest for the Republicans to pay tribute to Rockwell than to Reagan.

On this day in 1996, Osama bin Laden released a fatwa titled, Declaration of Jihad Against Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques. Now I don’t much care about his complaints. Everyone has their complaints — few start wars over it. But I do think it is interesting that his fatwa didn’t have anything to do with theology. It’s very concrete: he’s pissed off at the US for occupying some land.

My perspective on all of this dates back to my childhood living through the Cold War. Then, we couldn’t trust the communists because they were atheists and whatever else you wanted to throw in there. But the bottom line was always that they weren’t rational. Now the Soviet Union is long gone and now we are oh so scared of the terrorists. Now we say that they are irrational because they are too religious — or too the wrong religious. It doesn’t matter who our enemies are, they are irrational and thus we can’t do anything but destroy them.

The case is always the opposite. I don’t think that the Islamic State is run by irrational people. If they had been irrational, they wouldn’t have succeeded as much as they have. And to think that they are running around killing people because of religious concerns is just silly. This is a resource war and the people heading it want what all people who wage war want: power.

It wouldn’t matter, except that understanding your enemy is important. You could convert every one of those vile murderers into Christians and not a damned thing would change — except that the US might be selling arms to them. People have reasons for doing things. And blaming what they do on ancient books they use as justification doesn’t tell us a thing.