The Establishment of an Absolute Tyranny

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

-          Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

The country is in the grips of many insanities, visibly playing out on the streets.  Usurpations inconceivable even four months ago, let alone in 1776, are accepted as liberty.  Most churches acquiesced as quickly as any.

Tomorrow is Independence Day in the United States.  On Sunday, most churches will continue down the ever-accelerating path of celebrating the destruction of that independence.  Independence Day is just one more excuse for many churches to celebrate the destruction brought on by US military power.

In the meantime, society is melting down, driven, at least as pretext, by the death of one man in Minnesota.  Millions killed overseas, no one complains – in fact, it is cheered on every Sunday.  Why complain about one man in Minnesota?

What a horrendous disservice to man and to God.

The loss of liberty has many fathers; it has one mother.  Christian churches have thrown away love and reason.  They cannot bring peace to a torn nation internally because (among other reasons) they cheer on the destruction of peace externally.

Matthew 7: 21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

It is very easy to understand why many see Christianity as a hindrance – even an enemy – to liberty, albeit not, in my opinion, for the right reasons.

Conclusion

Isaiah 10: 1 Woe to those who make unjust laws,

to those who issue oppressive decrees,

 

12 When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say, “I will punish the king of Assyria for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes.

 

20 In that day the remnant of Israel,

the survivors of Jacob,

will no longer rely on him

who struck them down

but will truly rely on the Lord,

the Holy One of Israel.

21 A remnant will return, a remnant of Jacob

will return to the Mighty God.

22 Though your people be like the sand by the sea, Israel,

only a remnant will return.

Destruction has been decreed,

overwhelming and righteous.

23 The Lord, the Lord Almighty, will carry out

the destruction decreed upon the whole land.

 

There will always be a Remnant.  This is our best hope for liberty.  First, we will live through the destruction of the whole land.  Arguably, this process has been ongoing for at least 100 years.

rEVOLution

Regarding the tumultuous 2020, there are some who are able to acknowledge the deeper roots of discontent in society – the underlying causes of division, angst, and anger.  This is not to discount the purposefully created agitation – certainly driven by the press and the many political agendas for which the press plays merely a public relations role.

But this manipulation by the press and its political clients can only work if there is a lever in society waiting to be pulled.  It only works because the cracks exist.  Society cannot be fragmented unless there are defects to exploit.

What are some of these roots of discontent?  It all certainly starts with central banking, and this exploded nationally in 2008.  What the people saw, fully exposed like never before, was a system designed to protect the connected and wealthy; a system that inherently disfavored the rest of us.

Trillions in bailouts – from both the federal government and the Fed.  Bankers saved despite making trillions in counterfeit loans – counterfeit due both to the fiat credit offered and counterfeit because the borrowers were unqualified in the first place.  Bonuses paid and stock values rising when making these loans, and further bonuses paid and stock values rising when being bailed out of these actions.

Next comes the drug war.  A pretext for every kind of intervention, search, invasion, and taking by the state.  The United States has the largest population of people incarcerated on the planet, and (if memory serves) something like half of these are in for non-violent offenses – primarily drug related.

Families torn apart, search and seizure, infinite additional cause for negative interaction between police and the people.  All designed to tear the fabric of society apart.

This issue cannot be separated from the militarism abroad.  An adventurous foreign policy – violent and ruthless – transfers its weaponry, hardware, skills and tactics to the home front.  But it is even worse: ethically, what’s the difference? 

A society that accepts – even worships – militarism and torture abroad cannot at the same time deplore it at home.  Many want to believe it is two different things, but the actor in each case is the same.  And the effect on our conscious selves of the foreign interventions dissolves any means by which to hold firm against a similar condition at home. 

We grow numb to all of it.  We decry the death of one man in Minnesota as an attempt to salve our wounds of supporting the millions of murders overseas.

Deeper in our conscience lies abortion.  Murder on a very grand scale, against the most vulnerable and most defenseless of society.  A society that sacrifices unborn infants for a better future.  No, child sacrifice has not left this earth.

No one wants to admit the damage this causes to society, but how can it not be a permanent scar?  Those who have gone through this trauma suffer one of two fates – either a permanent condition bordering on depression, or a permanent callousness.  Or some combination of the two, at neither extreme.  And this, not just for the mother, but all those around her – certainly to include the father.

Next: we live in a fact-free world.  The level of cognitive dissonance has reached unimaginable levels – both on the discussion around the corona and on the discussion of race relations (whatever that means) in American society.  The internal turmoil brought on by the prayerful desire to believe the story despite what our own “lying” eyes tell us can result in nothing other than societal suicide.

Finally, a sense of self and a sense of community.  This is manifest today in the debate on immigration.  Is there a culture and society worth protecting and defending?  Should it mean something to be a resident, and, ultimately, a citizen?  If the answer is no to these questions, society is lost.

Now, only the first and to some degree the second of these on the list above is being somewhat discussed as sources underlying the current turmoil in society.  Certainly, the Wall Street bailouts and a financial system designed to enrich the connected and exploit the rest is identified as such.  The drug war is only starting to be discussed in light of the question of policing. 

The rest I say are also underlying our condition, but I have not seen these discussed in the context of today’s turmoil.  Yet these are there, in varying degrees in the collective conscience of society.  The state of being human makes these internal conflicts unavoidable – and makes living a life as a human being rather difficult.

What does all of this have to do with rEVOLution?  That label was born in Ron Paul’s presidential campaign twelve years ago.  Ron Paul ran on all of these issues in 2008 and again in 2012.  I recall telling relatives and friends that he offered the last hope for holding the society together. 

Everything is Politics

Jonathan Pageau does a monthly Q&A.  This month, one of the questions regards why political narratives take up so much headspace.  Continuing with the question:

Why aren’t peoples’ narratives about small things, like having food, good friendships, doing a good job at work or school?  I see an implicit devaluation of all small things, and I am not sure where it’s from.

Pageau replies:

One of the places it’s from is people need to feel like they are connected to something bigger than them, so that’s inevitable.  We have to feel like we’re connected to a bigger pattern.  That’s why politics is so important; it is the manner in which we are connected to the people around us.  It contains the narratives that bind us together as a people.  So, it’s very important.

The question is: why is it one of the only narratives that bind us?  The other one I can think of is sports – not for everyone but a large portion of the population.  Here again, perhaps a reason why sports has been taken away – in addition to losing our outlet for violence, we have also lost an institution that brought society together (I say nothing of how healthy this is, just that it is).

Robert Nisbet did a very good job of answering the question – why is politics one of the only narratives that bind us?  He wrote in this in his book The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom.  I review this book through several posts:

·         One Hand Washing the Other

·         Community Lost

·         Community Found

·         No Turning Back

·         Name Your Poison

·         The Revolutionary Essence of the State

·         The Road to Sovereignty

·         Far Cry

·         Procuring Petty and Paltry Pleasures

·         The Missing Link

To make a long story short, all intermediating governance institutions have been taken away from us – stripped on any meaningful authority.  The most important was the Church (Christendom, Christianity), which could stand against the king and hold the king to account.  But it isn’t the only one.  For example, the family is no longer necessary; the university has been completely co-opted by the state.

This has been done with purpose – perhaps inevitable once Christianity was removed as the only obstacle standing in the way of the king becoming what we now know as the state – the monopolist of authority.

Returning to Pageau:

One of the problems we have, because of social media, we are bombarded with the political narrative, it can become obsessive.  Because the social crisis is real, it is also inevitable that people would be taken by it.  It feels like the fabric of their society is being threatened.

This certainly describes the immediate issue, but the “fabric of society” that was once made up of many threads has been torn apart over the last centuries, not the last years.

I still believe that the main solution to the problem is to focus on your sins, focus on your passions, to love your neighbor, at least for now.

He doesn’t explain the “at least for now” part.  It is quite an interesting drop.  As to the rest, he is right, of course.  Most important would be for Christian leaders to do these things, as the only institution that historically has ever been able to keep the king in check – able to keep the king from becoming the state – has been Christianity.

I have developed the many reasons for this in the past, so won’t dive into it here.  In any case, few of the reasons are repeatable, but the most important reasons remain.  These are permanently available to Christians.