by Robert Wilkinson Today would have been the 140th Birthday of one of the greatest Americans ever to live, General Smedley Butler. And no, it’s NOT due to his military exploits, even if he did win two Congressional Medals of Honor! Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940) was a US Marine Corps Major General, the highest rank of the era, and at the time of his death he was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. But that’s not why he was a hero. He stopped wealthy plutocrats (who were mainly Republican banksters) from staging a military coup in “the Business Plot,” aka "The Wall Street Putsch, and overthrowing the elected president of the US at the time, Franklin D Roosevelt. Yes, we almost had a military coup by fascists, and Smedley Butler stopped it in a heartbeat! In 1935, he gave a talk that became a book, the singularly amazing “War is a Racket.” It was the first expose’ of how governments serve industrialists and corporations who make a lot of money off
