Benedict’s Birthday

If politicians hadn’t usurped the American Revolution, perverting it from a rebellion against a tyrannical empire into an attempt to enthrone themselves, the Feds would no doubt have decreed Benedict Arnold’s birthday today a paid vacation for the unions. Instead, Arnold’s conflict with homegrown dictators made him a prototypical Ed Snowden as he tried to save the country from its government. And Americans hated and vilified him for it, then as now.

Arnold was the rebels’ biggest military hero for the first two years of the war, winning battle after battle against overwhelming odds, often by his wits and other times through the sheer strength of his personality. Then a serious wound sidelined him. General George Washington appointed him military governor of Philadelphia, where Arnold quickly learned that the homegrown politicians who’d seized power weren’t fighting for the same freedom he was; rather, like modern Progressives, they’d created a huge, centralized bureaucracy — with themselves firmly in control, of course. Indeed, they idolized the State in the constitution they foisted on Pennsylvania: God “alone knows to what degree of earthly happiness mankind may attain by perfecting the arts of government…”

Arnold appealed to the Continental Congress for help in thwarting this cabal. But Pennsylvania supplied too many soldiers and materiel to the Continental Army for Congress to oppose its rulers. Next stop: King George III, whose Redcoats were the only force willing and able to save America from totalitarianism…

Revisionist? You betcha. You’ll never read this new theory of Arnold’s treason, based on meticulous research, anywhere but in my novel, Abducting Arnold. Meanwhile, David John Marotta, financial advisor and contributor to Forbes, kindly posted an interview with me in honor of Arnold’s birthday. As you might expect, we mention Nathan Hale, too,  and even the TSA.

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10:34 am on January 14, 2014