When was the last time the Czars walked the face of the earth?
1905? 1917?
How about today, in the United States, no less.
Can you believe that the Russian Imperial majesty walks in the land of the free and the home of the brave?
This is scary stuff. What's worse, there are more than one! How czars does it take to undermine freedom and liberty in a nation? One was bad enough for the Russians, but how about 42?
Why would the American people permit autocracy to breed and proliferate in the United States?
These royal figures have all been appointed unilaterally by President Obama; they do not suffer any oversight from Congress; therefore, the American voters have not had opportunity to denounce this overt power grab.
Even the late Democratic Senator Robert Byrd denounced the subtle and surreptitious appointments of these executive bureaucrats. They regulate commerce, political questions, and they have a firm say in the development and implementation in domestic policy, all of which compromises the Supreme Law of the Land: our Constitution.
We must dethrone His Imperial majesty and his mini-autocrats.
Vote out Obama November 8, 2012!
Friday, September 30, 2011
Two-faced cat with nine lives; politicians with one lie to live with
Frank and Louie the cat (Yes, two cats in one, because this cat was born with two sets of facial features) has survived into his (or their?) twelfth year, when normally such abnormal felines would not have survived past four days.
I have no problem with two-faced domestic animals.
But what about two-faced politicians who say that they will uphold the United States Constitution, then appropriate monies for departments and agencies whose roles extend far beyond the enumerated powers in the Constitution?
What about a Congresswoman who pledged to represent the CA-36th Congressional District, only now to turn inland and run for the 44th Congressional District next year?
What about the presidential candidate of 2008 who promised hope and change, now an embattled President who has given the United States nothing but "mope" and "pocket change"?
Two-faced cats with nine lives are an odd miracle, if not a blessing. Two-faced politicians are a curse, one which we deserve to be rid of come the next election cycle.
I have no problem with two-faced domestic animals.
But what about two-faced politicians who say that they will uphold the United States Constitution, then appropriate monies for departments and agencies whose roles extend far beyond the enumerated powers in the Constitution?
What about a Congresswoman who pledged to represent the CA-36th Congressional District, only now to turn inland and run for the 44th Congressional District next year?
What about the presidential candidate of 2008 who promised hope and change, now an embattled President who has given the United States nothing but "mope" and "pocket change"?
Two-faced cats with nine lives are an odd miracle, if not a blessing. Two-faced politicians are a curse, one which we deserve to be rid of come the next election cycle.
Dr. Murray, Dr. Fine, Dr. Murray
The Three Stooges were at least mildly entertainment in their inane attempts to do something, anything on the silver screen.
Two years after the (un)timely demise of the King of Pop, the jury trial has begun to determine whether Michael Jackson's personal physician was negligent or criminally reckless in his patient's death.
While the world watches to see how this trial will end, we still wonder if the federal government will be able to fulfill its obligations, cut spending, raise revenue without hurting the American tax payers, and provide some semblance of prosperity for our posterity.
Just as Jackson became addicted to tranquilizers to ease his tripped-up mind, the American public has become addicted to celebrity indictment to turn our feverish minds from dwindling bank accounts, reprehensible debt overlays, and irresponsible politicians who refuse to govern for our sake and for the future.
Yet we vote these men and women into office. We have a responsibility to see that they exercise all due diligence in caring for the state without leaving us holding an impossible debt to defray. When will we stop watching the media circuses of small-time wrongdoers and pay attention to the greater issues: our daily lives, our daily responsibilities, and our daily call to make the most of our time and money?
Two years after the (un)timely demise of the King of Pop, the jury trial has begun to determine whether Michael Jackson's personal physician was negligent or criminally reckless in his patient's death.
While the world watches to see how this trial will end, we still wonder if the federal government will be able to fulfill its obligations, cut spending, raise revenue without hurting the American tax payers, and provide some semblance of prosperity for our posterity.
Just as Jackson became addicted to tranquilizers to ease his tripped-up mind, the American public has become addicted to celebrity indictment to turn our feverish minds from dwindling bank accounts, reprehensible debt overlays, and irresponsible politicians who refuse to govern for our sake and for the future.
Yet we vote these men and women into office. We have a responsibility to see that they exercise all due diligence in caring for the state without leaving us holding an impossible debt to defray. When will we stop watching the media circuses of small-time wrongdoers and pay attention to the greater issues: our daily lives, our daily responsibilities, and our daily call to make the most of our time and money?
Alabama's Victory, Everyone's Victory
Ah, the joys of federalism!
Yes, the President and Congress have failed to provide comprehensive immigration reform, but can we really blame them?
The United States is deeply divided in this issue, within and among the several states.
Alabama is taking a bold, not draconian, stance on this issue. Finally, a federal court is recognizing the right of individual states to regulate the influx of illegal immigration.
Directing law enforcement and public sector services to investigate and confirm the status of suspected illegals is not cruel, yet is a necessary measure.
Once again, the crass editorializing of the LA Times shines through: The Alabama statute is anti-ILLEGAL immigration, not immigration per se.
Stop spinning the truth!
Besides, hand-out gestures like the DREAM Act and the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits, and Security Act only enable and encourage more illegal immigration. If the American People want to resolve this issue reasonably, perhaps we should demand that Congress take up former Republican Senator Mel Martinez' Compromise Bill, which would fine illegals who have lived in this country for extended periods of time, then require those who have lived in this country illegally for few years to leave and get in line.
In the mean time, we should applaud not condemn those state who have mustered the courage and initiative to deal with this problem.
Yes, the President and Congress have failed to provide comprehensive immigration reform, but can we really blame them?
The United States is deeply divided in this issue, within and among the several states.
Alabama is taking a bold, not draconian, stance on this issue. Finally, a federal court is recognizing the right of individual states to regulate the influx of illegal immigration.
Directing law enforcement and public sector services to investigate and confirm the status of suspected illegals is not cruel, yet is a necessary measure.
Once again, the crass editorializing of the LA Times shines through: The Alabama statute is anti-ILLEGAL immigration, not immigration per se.
Stop spinning the truth!
Besides, hand-out gestures like the DREAM Act and the Agricultural Job Opportunities, Benefits, and Security Act only enable and encourage more illegal immigration. If the American People want to resolve this issue reasonably, perhaps we should demand that Congress take up former Republican Senator Mel Martinez' Compromise Bill, which would fine illegals who have lived in this country for extended periods of time, then require those who have lived in this country illegally for few years to leave and get in line.
In the mean time, we should applaud not condemn those state who have mustered the courage and initiative to deal with this problem.
Government is funded, incrementally
So be it.
A handful of House Reps were willing to settle their differences, or pander to their more moderate constituencies, and offer up a bill to fund the government for the next few days.
With what, pray tell? Is the Government is neck-deep in red ink, what business does any politician in Washington have advancing even piece-meal appropriations?
Conservative Republicans are demanding more spending cuts, with confirmed liberals demanding that tax-payer money keep rolling in, grist for the creaky mill of government dysfunction.
Both sides of the aisle are fed up with government as usual.
Then let the ship of state shut down. Every American from coast to coast deserves to witness that We the People can run our affairs when the Government runs little, and does the least!
A handful of House Reps were willing to settle their differences, or pander to their more moderate constituencies, and offer up a bill to fund the government for the next few days.
With what, pray tell? Is the Government is neck-deep in red ink, what business does any politician in Washington have advancing even piece-meal appropriations?
Conservative Republicans are demanding more spending cuts, with confirmed liberals demanding that tax-payer money keep rolling in, grist for the creaky mill of government dysfunction.
Both sides of the aisle are fed up with government as usual.
Then let the ship of state shut down. Every American from coast to coast deserves to witness that We the People can run our affairs when the Government runs little, and does the least!
Ron Paul on the Assasination of Al-Awlaki
Despite the dangerous precedent of assassination an American citizen on foreign soil, I contend that any individual who firmly allies himself with a terrorist cell, especially the greatly-weakened yet insidious Al-Qaeda, has forfeited his status as a United States citizen, and is therefore subject to military reconnaissance.
I do respect the libertarian views of Congressman Paul. I may differ with him on his views regarding American military aggression, which only underscores that he would be reticent to send our troops on outlandish and purposeless ventures during his term of office.
Still, I believe that the United States did the right thing in neutralizing this polarizing cleric in Yemen. He chose to ally himself with our global opponents; he had to be taken out.
I do respect the libertarian views of Congressman Paul. I may differ with him on his views regarding American military aggression, which only underscores that he would be reticent to send our troops on outlandish and purposeless ventures during his term of office.
Still, I believe that the United States did the right thing in neutralizing this polarizing cleric in Yemen. He chose to ally himself with our global opponents; he had to be taken out.
Bank of America and the Law of Unintended Consequences
A $5 surcharge for debit purchases?
What gives? I'll tell you what. . .
Micromanaging bean counters, an overactive Congress, and an elite President insist that they are doing what is best for you and me by regulating the banking industry.
Initially, they wanted to curtail the merchant fees that banks could collect from clients. Since banks or in the business of making money, not just holding it, they have to reap profits elsewhere.
The bottom line for a financial institution will always be its Bottom Line.
So, once again, in all their elite wisdom, Democrats have stepped into economic affairs way over their egg-head minds, and have inadvertently fallen for the Law of unintended consequences.
Except We the People have to stomach these outrageous fees, not the Beltway Powers that Be.
Next time, the federal government should let the banks take charge of their own affairs, or we will all be charged more than ever before!
What gives? I'll tell you what. . .
Micromanaging bean counters, an overactive Congress, and an elite President insist that they are doing what is best for you and me by regulating the banking industry.
Initially, they wanted to curtail the merchant fees that banks could collect from clients. Since banks or in the business of making money, not just holding it, they have to reap profits elsewhere.
The bottom line for a financial institution will always be its Bottom Line.
So, once again, in all their elite wisdom, Democrats have stepped into economic affairs way over their egg-head minds, and have inadvertently fallen for the Law of unintended consequences.
Except We the People have to stomach these outrageous fees, not the Beltway Powers that Be.
Next time, the federal government should let the banks take charge of their own affairs, or we will all be charged more than ever before!
To Dennis Prager: For a Happy New Year . ..
Happiness is unshakable Holiness, the special grace of being God's Beloved, a sacrifice that we can never make, that is given to us through Messiah.
To know that every wrong we have done has been forgiven.
To know that every wrong that we have suffered will be made right.
To know that we will be made perfect in every way by the once and for all supreme sacrifice of Messiah.
To believe beyond a shadow of doubt, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that the Lord is with us.
Indeed, this belief, this faith, this truth, that makes every man happy, joyous, and free!
I am happy, nay joyous because . . .
אני מאמין Ani ma'amin
Why?
וצדיק באמונתו יחיה׃
The just shall live by faith, or the one justified by faith lives!
and
ואני ביהוה אעלוזה אגילה באלהי ישעי׃
I rejoice in the God of my Salvation!
L'shanah Tovah!
To know that every wrong we have done has been forgiven.
To know that every wrong that we have suffered will be made right.
To know that we will be made perfect in every way by the once and for all supreme sacrifice of Messiah.
To believe beyond a shadow of doubt, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that the Lord is with us.
Indeed, this belief, this faith, this truth, that makes every man happy, joyous, and free!
I am happy, nay joyous because . . .
אני מאמין Ani ma'amin
Why?
וצדיק באמונתו יחיה׃
The just shall live by faith, or the one justified by faith lives!
and
ואני ביהוה אעלוזה אגילה באלהי ישעי׃
I rejoice in the God of my Salvation!
L'shanah Tovah!
"Fighting to Preserve ObamaCare": Failing to Preserve Health Care
Ms. Freudenheim's frustrating wiht rising medical insurance is understandable. Health insurance costs are driving many companies out of business or restricting their investments to hire and expand their firms. Those who cannot afford coverage endanger our hospitals with needs far outstripping the resources and revenues of our medical facilities.
Yet ObamaCare is not the solution to these growing problems. By mandating that individuals purchase health insurance or face stiff fines from the federal goverment, the Obama Administration and Democratic Congress have unconstitutionally encroached on the private economic choices of the American People. Furthermore, this statist model will not drive down health care costs. By requiring medical insurance companies to take on patiens with severe or latent pre-existing conditions, the President's overbearing legislation has ensured that premiums will skyrocket (as they already are, contary to Obama's hollow promises), that insurance companies will close their doors entirely, and that medical facilities will hemorage talent and resources with growing number of patients arbitarily depending on a third party to defray their medical expenses.
Affordable health care can emerge from a free market mechanism, in which insurers compete with potential buyers if they choose to purchase medical insurance in the first place. As long as employers are required to foot the bill for their employee's medical expenses, insurers will be handling disbursements far beyond the initial and indisputable needs of the patient. Let us not forget that for years, individuals would seek medical care, then pay off the bills in installments following their treatment. Rather was there a complaint against this direct "pay-as-you-go" network.
If a client pays for medical care out of his own pocket, he will be more diligent to care for himself as much as possible before seeking professional medical help. Car insurance, for example, works along this model. Those clients pay premiums in the event of an accident and to comply with state law. For all other routine and ancillary needs, they pay for them out of pocket.
Also regarding competition, if insurance clients were permitted to purchase medical insurance across state lines, the market for insurance would expand, competition would ensue, and costs would go down. Currently, medical insurers operate within mini state monopolies, thus enabling them to raise premiums or keep them high.
On the matter of regulating to what extent insurers may or may not raise premiums, if the State of California insists on determining how much money an insurance company may take in yearly, these companies will either fold, limit their coverage, or rationing will ensue in clinics and hospitals throughout the state.
Indeed, health insurance can be confusing. But the red tape, regulations, and growing intervention of the government into the industry is instigating the rise in costs, the diminishing quality of care, and the rationing of personnel, facilities, and supplies in the health care industry.
It is admirable that Jewish communities are coming together to discuss options for dealing with rising health care and medical insurance costs. Yet topics such as tort reform, permitting the purchase of insurance across state lines, tax credits for health savings accounts, and even the near-certain repeal of ObamaCare and deregulation of the medical insurance industry, will all permit individual buyers to seek out coverage to suit their needs without breaking their bank accounts or bankrupting the federal and state governments.
Yet ObamaCare is not the solution to these growing problems. By mandating that individuals purchase health insurance or face stiff fines from the federal goverment, the Obama Administration and Democratic Congress have unconstitutionally encroached on the private economic choices of the American People. Furthermore, this statist model will not drive down health care costs. By requiring medical insurance companies to take on patiens with severe or latent pre-existing conditions, the President's overbearing legislation has ensured that premiums will skyrocket (as they already are, contary to Obama's hollow promises), that insurance companies will close their doors entirely, and that medical facilities will hemorage talent and resources with growing number of patients arbitarily depending on a third party to defray their medical expenses.
Affordable health care can emerge from a free market mechanism, in which insurers compete with potential buyers if they choose to purchase medical insurance in the first place. As long as employers are required to foot the bill for their employee's medical expenses, insurers will be handling disbursements far beyond the initial and indisputable needs of the patient. Let us not forget that for years, individuals would seek medical care, then pay off the bills in installments following their treatment. Rather was there a complaint against this direct "pay-as-you-go" network.
If a client pays for medical care out of his own pocket, he will be more diligent to care for himself as much as possible before seeking professional medical help. Car insurance, for example, works along this model. Those clients pay premiums in the event of an accident and to comply with state law. For all other routine and ancillary needs, they pay for them out of pocket.
Also regarding competition, if insurance clients were permitted to purchase medical insurance across state lines, the market for insurance would expand, competition would ensue, and costs would go down. Currently, medical insurers operate within mini state monopolies, thus enabling them to raise premiums or keep them high.
On the matter of regulating to what extent insurers may or may not raise premiums, if the State of California insists on determining how much money an insurance company may take in yearly, these companies will either fold, limit their coverage, or rationing will ensue in clinics and hospitals throughout the state.
Indeed, health insurance can be confusing. But the red tape, regulations, and growing intervention of the government into the industry is instigating the rise in costs, the diminishing quality of care, and the rationing of personnel, facilities, and supplies in the health care industry.
It is admirable that Jewish communities are coming together to discuss options for dealing with rising health care and medical insurance costs. Yet topics such as tort reform, permitting the purchase of insurance across state lines, tax credits for health savings accounts, and even the near-certain repeal of ObamaCare and deregulation of the medical insurance industry, will all permit individual buyers to seek out coverage to suit their needs without breaking their bank accounts or bankrupting the federal and state governments.
Response to "From Prodigal Child to Favorite"
I find it very intriguing that a Rabbi would make oblique references to the New Testament in extending his reading of Parashat Ha'azinu.
Yet in referencing the Parable of the Prodigal Son from the Gospel of Luke Chapter 15, Rabbi Korobkin would have done well to heed the outcome. Not only was the wastrel son received back into his father's house, but he celebrated his return joyously with feasting and restoration of honor.
This heartwarming welcome is in store for all who follow the Lord, no matter how far they may have wandered. Yet we can only follow Him to the extent that we receive Him by faith, and this reconciliation is only possible through the redemptive work of His Son Jesus Christ dying on the Cross at Calvary.
True, in Parashat Ha'azinu, the LORD reprimands His people, declaring to them:
"And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith.
"They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation." (Deuteronomy 32:20-21)
Much like the older so in the Luke's Parable, the older son, the one who stayed home and behaved like an obedient good boy, is understandably outraged when his father welcomes the prodigal son with the fatted calf, feasting, and a new set of garments.
What sets the younger son apart from the older, "more obedient" kid?
The prodigal demonstrated great faith, believing that his father would take him back as a hired servant, fully aware that he did not deserve anything.
This faith is the very thing that the Lord holds against His chosen people:
"And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith." (v.20)
Because they lacked faith, the Jews had no righteousness, for Abraham, the father of all believer, was justified by faith:
"And he [Abraham] believed in the LORD; and he [the LORD] counted it to him for righteousness." (Genesis 15:6)
What did Abraham believe, exactly? In the context of this verse, Abraham believed that the LORD would give Abraham descendants more numerous than the sands of the sea or the stars in the sky. Yet the verse is more explicit in its economy: Abraham believed in the LORD, not just limited to a specific promise, but he trusted absolutely in the Most High, that He was, is and is to come, and that He would reward those who diligently seek Him by faith (cf. Hebrews 11:6).
In the same resolute fashion, the prodigal Son of Luke 15 believed in his father's nature and endowment, enough that he said to himself:
"And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!
"I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,
"And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants." (Luke 15:17-19)
In this verse, the younger son was not afraid to appeal to his father as such, though he had practically disowned him by demanding his portion of the inheritance before his father's death.
And behold the warm reception that the younger son receives:
"But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.
But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet:
And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry:
For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." (Luke 15:20-24)
The father ran to his son, so glad to see him. Of course, in ancient times it was indecent for an older man to run, yet the father would not contain his love for his son.
This is the power and majesty of God's grace, which can only be accessed by faith.
For those familiar with the parable in the New Testament, they are firmly aware of the older son, who upon hearing of the feted return of his younger brother, pouts and shuns the feast. Why was the older son so angry?
"Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends:
But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf." (Luke 15: 29-30)
The older son betrays a wicked sense of entitlement and debt. His father, who has fed him and clothed him and provided for him in every way, should also give him more for doing what he was told to do. Such is the deep resentment of all who think that they can earn God's favor.
One can just as well submit that the older brother is jealous, an outcome which the LORD intended:
"They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation." (Deuteronomy 32:21)
Today, the follower of Jesus Christ have received righteousness by faith, believing on the saving Finished Work of Christ at the Cross.
Besides, on what grounds can the older son argue that he has kept his father's commandments and never transgressed them? For it is written in Psalms:
"Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." (Psalms 53:3)
Back to the Parable, the father attempts to entreat his embittered older son:
"Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.
"It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." (Luke 15: 31-32)
Here, the father makes very clear what the older son apparently never realized: everything that was the father's was already his as a son! All the older son had to do was ask, just as the younger son did upon returning to his home! All this time, while the prodigal son was wasting away his inheritance, the older son was obeying his father, but not from a light and cheerful heart, but from a grudging sense of duty.
This parable demonstrates the weakness and unrest that comes with (attempting!) to keep the law, versus receiving the grace of God by faith. Every since the Law was given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, they have attempted to keep the Lord's statutes, and have failed. Joshua told them plainly that that would be the case:
"Ye cannot serve the LORD: for he is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins." (Joshua 24:19)
Yet indeed the LORD would provide a full atonement for our sins, both Jew and Gentile, through Jesus Christ's death on the Cross.
When we come to the LORD with our weak and beggarly elements, unable to even care for ourselves, dependent completely on the good favor of the LORD, then we may enter into the grace of God, who then supplies all our needs.
Yet in referencing the Parable of the Prodigal Son from the Gospel of Luke Chapter 15, Rabbi Korobkin would have done well to heed the outcome. Not only was the wastrel son received back into his father's house, but he celebrated his return joyously with feasting and restoration of honor.
This heartwarming welcome is in store for all who follow the Lord, no matter how far they may have wandered. Yet we can only follow Him to the extent that we receive Him by faith, and this reconciliation is only possible through the redemptive work of His Son Jesus Christ dying on the Cross at Calvary.
True, in Parashat Ha'azinu, the LORD reprimands His people, declaring to them:
"And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith.
"They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation." (Deuteronomy 32:20-21)
Much like the older so in the Luke's Parable, the older son, the one who stayed home and behaved like an obedient good boy, is understandably outraged when his father welcomes the prodigal son with the fatted calf, feasting, and a new set of garments.
What sets the younger son apart from the older, "more obedient" kid?
The prodigal demonstrated great faith, believing that his father would take him back as a hired servant, fully aware that he did not deserve anything.
This faith is the very thing that the Lord holds against His chosen people:
"And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith." (v.20)
Because they lacked faith, the Jews had no righteousness, for Abraham, the father of all believer, was justified by faith:
"And he [Abraham] believed in the LORD; and he [the LORD] counted it to him for righteousness." (Genesis 15:6)
What did Abraham believe, exactly? In the context of this verse, Abraham believed that the LORD would give Abraham descendants more numerous than the sands of the sea or the stars in the sky. Yet the verse is more explicit in its economy: Abraham believed in the LORD, not just limited to a specific promise, but he trusted absolutely in the Most High, that He was, is and is to come, and that He would reward those who diligently seek Him by faith (cf. Hebrews 11:6).
In the same resolute fashion, the prodigal Son of Luke 15 believed in his father's nature and endowment, enough that he said to himself:
"And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!
"I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,
"And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants." (Luke 15:17-19)
In this verse, the younger son was not afraid to appeal to his father as such, though he had practically disowned him by demanding his portion of the inheritance before his father's death.
And behold the warm reception that the younger son receives:
"But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.
And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.
But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet:
And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry:
For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." (Luke 15:20-24)
The father ran to his son, so glad to see him. Of course, in ancient times it was indecent for an older man to run, yet the father would not contain his love for his son.
This is the power and majesty of God's grace, which can only be accessed by faith.
For those familiar with the parable in the New Testament, they are firmly aware of the older son, who upon hearing of the feted return of his younger brother, pouts and shuns the feast. Why was the older son so angry?
"Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends:
But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf." (Luke 15: 29-30)
The older son betrays a wicked sense of entitlement and debt. His father, who has fed him and clothed him and provided for him in every way, should also give him more for doing what he was told to do. Such is the deep resentment of all who think that they can earn God's favor.
One can just as well submit that the older brother is jealous, an outcome which the LORD intended:
"They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation." (Deuteronomy 32:21)
Today, the follower of Jesus Christ have received righteousness by faith, believing on the saving Finished Work of Christ at the Cross.
Besides, on what grounds can the older son argue that he has kept his father's commandments and never transgressed them? For it is written in Psalms:
"Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." (Psalms 53:3)
Back to the Parable, the father attempts to entreat his embittered older son:
"Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.
"It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." (Luke 15: 31-32)
Here, the father makes very clear what the older son apparently never realized: everything that was the father's was already his as a son! All the older son had to do was ask, just as the younger son did upon returning to his home! All this time, while the prodigal son was wasting away his inheritance, the older son was obeying his father, but not from a light and cheerful heart, but from a grudging sense of duty.
This parable demonstrates the weakness and unrest that comes with (attempting!) to keep the law, versus receiving the grace of God by faith. Every since the Law was given to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, they have attempted to keep the Lord's statutes, and have failed. Joshua told them plainly that that would be the case:
"Ye cannot serve the LORD: for he is an holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins." (Joshua 24:19)
Yet indeed the LORD would provide a full atonement for our sins, both Jew and Gentile, through Jesus Christ's death on the Cross.
When we come to the LORD with our weak and beggarly elements, unable to even care for ourselves, dependent completely on the good favor of the LORD, then we may enter into the grace of God, who then supplies all our needs.
Al-Qaeda Yemeni operative killed
U.S-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a joint CIA-U.S. air strike in Yemen.
Two major blows to the Al-Qaeda network in the last five months: this is really something to celebrate!
President Obama will have at least one legacy to be proud of: taking out upper-level leadership against the most savage terrorist network to strike the United States.
Praise is due not only to our CIA and military personnel, but also to U.S. District Court judge John Bates, for he recently threw out frivolous and treasonous lawsuit filed by Al-Awlaki's Yemeni parents. It is outrageous to think that this terrorist mastermind's parents would even dare to straitjacket our covert military operations just because Al-Awlaki was an American citizen. The moment the Yemeni cleric betrayed his country to aid Osama bin Laden, he was properly placed on top of this country's hit list.
Another Al-Qaeda terrorist bites the dust. They may run, but they cannot hide. Though still prevalent, Islamicist terrorism is now a growing aberration rendered marginal by the United States' growing military focus and the blooming Arab Spring, which is sweeping out the long-standing dictatorships that have enabled terrorist cells to fester in the Middle East.
Two major blows to the Al-Qaeda network in the last five months: this is really something to celebrate!
President Obama will have at least one legacy to be proud of: taking out upper-level leadership against the most savage terrorist network to strike the United States.
Praise is due not only to our CIA and military personnel, but also to U.S. District Court judge John Bates, for he recently threw out frivolous and treasonous lawsuit filed by Al-Awlaki's Yemeni parents. It is outrageous to think that this terrorist mastermind's parents would even dare to straitjacket our covert military operations just because Al-Awlaki was an American citizen. The moment the Yemeni cleric betrayed his country to aid Osama bin Laden, he was properly placed on top of this country's hit list.
Another Al-Qaeda terrorist bites the dust. They may run, but they cannot hide. Though still prevalent, Islamicist terrorism is now a growing aberration rendered marginal by the United States' growing military focus and the blooming Arab Spring, which is sweeping out the long-standing dictatorships that have enabled terrorist cells to fester in the Middle East.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Response to "We are Somebody"
Every individual is defined by natural right, not civil polity. I am a citizen of the United States by virtue of my birth, yet the rights I retain as a citizen and as a human being descend justly from
I am a human being because I have been endowed with rights by a Creator, not because of my status in a state.
Those living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are somebodies, not just one collective mass. There is no freedom or identity for groups.
Despite the growing clamor for a Palestinian state, the move does not spring exclusively from a desire to establish an identity, or for a nation of refugees to be defined as "somebody."
The only ones treating the "Palestinians" as non-persons are those who insist on the eradication of Israel as a precondition of peace in the Middle East. As of now, resident of the West Bank enjoy more peace and prosperity under Israeli jurisdiction than if they were to form their own separate nation-state.
On the contrary, the terrorist groups running the government in the West Bank and Gaza have predicated their identity on the eradication of Israel. This does not sit well with the Israelis, to be sure; yet to assume that if only those terrorists would renounce violence and work for a two-state solution would be to requires these groups to disband and regroup entirely, a move hardly likely to occur since this identity is suffused with religious zealotry.
Contrary to Mr. Repohl's contention, the United States does not have a contradictory position on Israel and the "peace process". President Obama certainly does, who is veering from right to left in fostering peace at any cost. However, such peace at such a price is too high to pay.
Besides, what business does the United States government having directing the Middle Eastern parties on promoting peace? Israel is a sovereign nation, including its political authority in the West Bank. Does the world want to see the entire region East of Jerusalem descend into the same immoral anarchy now erupting throughout the Gaza Strip?
Of course Israeli settlements continue to grow. As far as I am aware, Jewish settlers have a right to build Jewish settlements on Jewish territory.
Mahmoud Abbas may play the part of a civilized diplomat, but he plays both sides of the fence just as subtly as Yasser Arafat did, preaching moderation to the world, extremism to his own people. This division is not the only split cause of disruption in the region. The would-be Palestinian state is uncompromisingly divided by a huge patch of Israel in between.
Pundits on the left and the right continue pointing out that if only Hamas would "reject violence and embrace a two-state solution," yet the very identity of this terrorist group is predicated on the eradication of Israel.
At what point will the world community, including to the United States, reconcile themselves to the tragic fact that as long as Israel exists in the Middle East, terrorist and fundamentalist groups will never broker peace nor agree to a two-state solution. Instilling religious tolerance is a matter far beyond the capacities of state-to-state diplomacy.
I am a human being because I have been endowed with rights by a Creator, not because of my status in a state.
Those living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are somebodies, not just one collective mass. There is no freedom or identity for groups.
Despite the growing clamor for a Palestinian state, the move does not spring exclusively from a desire to establish an identity, or for a nation of refugees to be defined as "somebody."
The only ones treating the "Palestinians" as non-persons are those who insist on the eradication of Israel as a precondition of peace in the Middle East. As of now, resident of the West Bank enjoy more peace and prosperity under Israeli jurisdiction than if they were to form their own separate nation-state.
On the contrary, the terrorist groups running the government in the West Bank and Gaza have predicated their identity on the eradication of Israel. This does not sit well with the Israelis, to be sure; yet to assume that if only those terrorists would renounce violence and work for a two-state solution would be to requires these groups to disband and regroup entirely, a move hardly likely to occur since this identity is suffused with religious zealotry.
Contrary to Mr. Repohl's contention, the United States does not have a contradictory position on Israel and the "peace process". President Obama certainly does, who is veering from right to left in fostering peace at any cost. However, such peace at such a price is too high to pay.
Besides, what business does the United States government having directing the Middle Eastern parties on promoting peace? Israel is a sovereign nation, including its political authority in the West Bank. Does the world want to see the entire region East of Jerusalem descend into the same immoral anarchy now erupting throughout the Gaza Strip?
Of course Israeli settlements continue to grow. As far as I am aware, Jewish settlers have a right to build Jewish settlements on Jewish territory.
Mahmoud Abbas may play the part of a civilized diplomat, but he plays both sides of the fence just as subtly as Yasser Arafat did, preaching moderation to the world, extremism to his own people. This division is not the only split cause of disruption in the region. The would-be Palestinian state is uncompromisingly divided by a huge patch of Israel in between.
Pundits on the left and the right continue pointing out that if only Hamas would "reject violence and embrace a two-state solution," yet the very identity of this terrorist group is predicated on the eradication of Israel.
At what point will the world community, including to the United States, reconcile themselves to the tragic fact that as long as Israel exists in the Middle East, terrorist and fundamentalist groups will never broker peace nor agree to a two-state solution. Instilling religious tolerance is a matter far beyond the capacities of state-to-state diplomacy.
President Obama: Blame, Boo-Boo, Bust
President Obama is the quintessence of non-leadership.
Yet for a statist status quo liberal, he sure likes to tell everyone how to live their live and how to spend their money.
Bail out banks, failing auto industries.
Shovel-ready projects that are not shoveling anything.
A momentous natural disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, followed by ongoing environmental burdens which restrict exploring for oil.
And how is this nation healing from the East Coast strike of Hurricane Irene? Governor Christie and his gubernatorial colleagues demonstrated more leadership in easing the fallout on their residents than the President ever did. Shameful.
No, Mr. President, you cannot blame President Bush. These your policies, from failed stimulus disbursements to Obamacare, have all but placed on the road to ruin.
And where is President Obama now? Campaigning of a second term, even though he has neither finished nor fulfilled his commitments in the current one. Has he bothered to meet Congress on their terms? Will he accept that the center-right legacy of this country took back the House of Representatives, and as such represents the heart-beat, the pulse of the American people?
This nation wants respect for our constitutional rights, respect for the rule of law, and respect for limited government. The President does not share these views, not is he willing to implement this vision.
We the People deserve leadership, not compromising connivance. We wanted to change in our government, not just chump change left over in our pockets.
Yet for a statist status quo liberal, he sure likes to tell everyone how to live their live and how to spend their money.
Bail out banks, failing auto industries.
Shovel-ready projects that are not shoveling anything.
A momentous natural disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, followed by ongoing environmental burdens which restrict exploring for oil.
And how is this nation healing from the East Coast strike of Hurricane Irene? Governor Christie and his gubernatorial colleagues demonstrated more leadership in easing the fallout on their residents than the President ever did. Shameful.
No, Mr. President, you cannot blame President Bush. These your policies, from failed stimulus disbursements to Obamacare, have all but placed on the road to ruin.
And where is President Obama now? Campaigning of a second term, even though he has neither finished nor fulfilled his commitments in the current one. Has he bothered to meet Congress on their terms? Will he accept that the center-right legacy of this country took back the House of Representatives, and as such represents the heart-beat, the pulse of the American people?
This nation wants respect for our constitutional rights, respect for the rule of law, and respect for limited government. The President does not share these views, not is he willing to implement this vision.
We the People deserve leadership, not compromising connivance. We wanted to change in our government, not just chump change left over in our pockets.
Tax the Rich; Eat the Rich: Man, that's Rich!
Obama will never learn.
At least the previous Democratic President learned to shift his political strategy after suffering through a shellacking of his own two years into his first term.
Once again, the current President wants to tax the rich.
Who are these people, whom the President insists on treating like perennial, pervasive piggy banks, all ready for the pilfering?
The same people who have wisely and judiciously moved their stocks, bonds, and investments into off-shore accounts and hard-box trusts, where the prying hands of the state can never get them.
He has already raided Medicare to the tune of $500 billion dollars. He has forced $! trillion in wasted stimulus funds on a nation which needs more liberty, not more of its own money taken by legal theft.
He has played fast and loose with tax cuts and unemployment benefits, which only stir up mixed signals in the employee-employer market place. Why invest if you have no idea how much money you will be able to keep after sales? Why work when the state subsidizes you to stay at home and "look for employment"?
Whether the Republicans resist Obama's further forays into fiscal insanity out of principle or politics is besides the point. The President is a one-not tax-and-spend liberal with no other ideas beyond increase the size and scope of the state.
Taxing the rich will lead to eating the rich, at which point there will be no more rich people left. And that's just rich!
At least the previous Democratic President learned to shift his political strategy after suffering through a shellacking of his own two years into his first term.
Once again, the current President wants to tax the rich.
Who are these people, whom the President insists on treating like perennial, pervasive piggy banks, all ready for the pilfering?
The same people who have wisely and judiciously moved their stocks, bonds, and investments into off-shore accounts and hard-box trusts, where the prying hands of the state can never get them.
He has already raided Medicare to the tune of $500 billion dollars. He has forced $! trillion in wasted stimulus funds on a nation which needs more liberty, not more of its own money taken by legal theft.
He has played fast and loose with tax cuts and unemployment benefits, which only stir up mixed signals in the employee-employer market place. Why invest if you have no idea how much money you will be able to keep after sales? Why work when the state subsidizes you to stay at home and "look for employment"?
Whether the Republicans resist Obama's further forays into fiscal insanity out of principle or politics is besides the point. The President is a one-not tax-and-spend liberal with no other ideas beyond increase the size and scope of the state.
Taxing the rich will lead to eating the rich, at which point there will be no more rich people left. And that's just rich!
Response to Robinson "Nothing but dogs to hunt."
Yes, the Florida straw poll has confirmed that the Republican electorate is unhappy with the current crop of candidates.
Perry was a darling to many, yet as a presidential candidate, he is not perfect. The Lone Ranger he is not.
Yet the desire for a consistent candidate is admirable and acceptable, and the Iowa caucuses are still four months away.
Once again, Mr. Robinson relies on a tired trope repudiated since 1964: there is no Republican establishment, nor will there ever be one candidate to appeal to such a fictional constituency.
Granted, the GOP electorate settle someone who is "Mr. Right," though not "Mr. Perfect. Yet this is not a dire situation for the Republicans. President Obama and his party will succumb to a heavy drubbing next year no matter who runs against him in the general election.
For the record, it is also unacceptable for Mr. Robinson to tarnish the GOP faithful's opposition to in-state tuition as "heartless".
What about the thousands of legal residents, born and naturalized in this country, who also deserve to college? Why should they be forced to compete for dwindling seats in budget-crunched colleges? I think it is unjust and immoral to punish them, especially since they did not even break the law.
Perry was a darling to many, yet as a presidential candidate, he is not perfect. The Lone Ranger he is not.
Yet the desire for a consistent candidate is admirable and acceptable, and the Iowa caucuses are still four months away.
Once again, Mr. Robinson relies on a tired trope repudiated since 1964: there is no Republican establishment, nor will there ever be one candidate to appeal to such a fictional constituency.
Granted, the GOP electorate settle someone who is "Mr. Right," though not "Mr. Perfect. Yet this is not a dire situation for the Republicans. President Obama and his party will succumb to a heavy drubbing next year no matter who runs against him in the general election.
For the record, it is also unacceptable for Mr. Robinson to tarnish the GOP faithful's opposition to in-state tuition as "heartless".
What about the thousands of legal residents, born and naturalized in this country, who also deserve to college? Why should they be forced to compete for dwindling seats in budget-crunched colleges? I think it is unjust and immoral to punish them, especially since they did not even break the law.
Germany wants a Strong Greece?
If the Eurozone wants to stabilize its unifying currency, then they must cast out the offal that deceptively slipped into the Zone without playing by the rules in the first place.
Greece has got to go.
Italy and Spain may have to consider also releasing themselves from the Euro Common Market, and return to floating their own fiat currency.
A strong Greece will never reassert itself as long as it continues to rely on handouts from Germany.
Let Greece default. The severe market correction to follow will be severe, yet private banks and local governments will learn from this dramatic shock never again to play fast and loose with easy credit on the taxpayer dole.
Greece has got to go.
Italy and Spain may have to consider also releasing themselves from the Euro Common Market, and return to floating their own fiat currency.
A strong Greece will never reassert itself as long as it continues to rely on handouts from Germany.
Let Greece default. The severe market correction to follow will be severe, yet private banks and local governments will learn from this dramatic shock never again to play fast and loose with easy credit on the taxpayer dole.
Obama the Memory vs. Obama the Reality
"We are the change we have been waiting for."
Obama the community organizer, Obama the campaigner, is all washed-up as Obama the President.
Like a little child putting on Daddy's shoes, then tripping on his overcoat, lugging along a briefcase large enough for a child to sleep in, Baby Barry wanted to play grown-up. Now he finds that being an adult is not what it was all cracked up to be.
Mr. Obama's hilarious, disreputable, and pathetic turn as President is drawing to a sad close. The hope and change he mouthed to millions, drawing on their Anti-Bush animus, now haunts him wherever he goes.
He changed nothing. Chicago corruption has swamped the already swampy Beltway.
Of course voters are disillusioned. They expected a Messiah; what they got was an anti-Christ, a politico with a form of godliness, but no power whatsoever.
"I'm grayer, I'm all dinged up," the President mused, almost presenting his aged, worn handling of the head of state as battle scars worthy of admiration. What exactly has he done, besides lecture the American people on what they really need, which they never did; or condescend to the growing conservative (both Democratic and Republican) opposition in Congress?
Rather than lead, he has pouted, fretted, cajoled, name-called, then hired another slew of corrupt czars to micromanage more of our lives, all without Congressional oversight.
"The energy of 2008 is going to have be generated in a different way," Obama opined.
Yet the energy of 2008 was anti-Republican backlash, anti-Bush, anti-Establishment bashing. Now Obama is the establishment, the brand of government which we have suffered through for the last three years. Is Obama going to campaign against himself?
"It' time for us to change America." In our republican system of government, we get to change America every two years, setting up every House Seat and one third of the Senate seats, along with governorships and legislative posts throughout the country.
It's time that we changed America again, except this time we need to promote those who support Constitutional principles, limited government, and fiscal responsibility; prod those legislators who are on the fence about voting for law and order as opposed to constituency-baiting, and put away those legislators and leaders who respect neither the rights nor the liberties of the people, the several states, and the United States Constitution.
Obama the community organizer, Obama the campaigner, is all washed-up as Obama the President.
Like a little child putting on Daddy's shoes, then tripping on his overcoat, lugging along a briefcase large enough for a child to sleep in, Baby Barry wanted to play grown-up. Now he finds that being an adult is not what it was all cracked up to be.
Mr. Obama's hilarious, disreputable, and pathetic turn as President is drawing to a sad close. The hope and change he mouthed to millions, drawing on their Anti-Bush animus, now haunts him wherever he goes.
He changed nothing. Chicago corruption has swamped the already swampy Beltway.
Of course voters are disillusioned. They expected a Messiah; what they got was an anti-Christ, a politico with a form of godliness, but no power whatsoever.
"I'm grayer, I'm all dinged up," the President mused, almost presenting his aged, worn handling of the head of state as battle scars worthy of admiration. What exactly has he done, besides lecture the American people on what they really need, which they never did; or condescend to the growing conservative (both Democratic and Republican) opposition in Congress?
Rather than lead, he has pouted, fretted, cajoled, name-called, then hired another slew of corrupt czars to micromanage more of our lives, all without Congressional oversight.
"The energy of 2008 is going to have be generated in a different way," Obama opined.
Yet the energy of 2008 was anti-Republican backlash, anti-Bush, anti-Establishment bashing. Now Obama is the establishment, the brand of government which we have suffered through for the last three years. Is Obama going to campaign against himself?
"It' time for us to change America." In our republican system of government, we get to change America every two years, setting up every House Seat and one third of the Senate seats, along with governorships and legislative posts throughout the country.
It's time that we changed America again, except this time we need to promote those who support Constitutional principles, limited government, and fiscal responsibility; prod those legislators who are on the fence about voting for law and order as opposed to constituency-baiting, and put away those legislators and leaders who respect neither the rights nor the liberties of the people, the several states, and the United States Constitution.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Shame on You, Congresswoman Hahn!
Congresswoman Hahn, you were elected by a 55% majority to represent the CA-36th Congressional District, from Venice to San Pedro.
Now, you have set your sights on the newly-created 44th COngressional District.
The Beach Cities deserved, and still deserve better.
When a politician runs for office, there is an understanding that he or she will respect the needs of the constituents enough to get reelected. Yet your sudden assault into Congress automatically pitted you in a diverse, district-cutting scheme, which would automatically give you more power in another district.
Frankly, I do not believe that either you or Congresswoman Laura Richardson deserve to serve in Congress for another term; I hope that in the political slugfest to follow next year, your true colors, all bold, blunt, and bad, will shine for all to see.
Protect rights, secure borders, and return power to the states and the people.
Now, you have set your sights on the newly-created 44th COngressional District.
The Beach Cities deserved, and still deserve better.
When a politician runs for office, there is an understanding that he or she will respect the needs of the constituents enough to get reelected. Yet your sudden assault into Congress automatically pitted you in a diverse, district-cutting scheme, which would automatically give you more power in another district.
Frankly, I do not believe that either you or Congresswoman Laura Richardson deserve to serve in Congress for another term; I hope that in the political slugfest to follow next year, your true colors, all bold, blunt, and bad, will shine for all to see.
Protect rights, secure borders, and return power to the states and the people.
2012: Hope and Change to Come
No matter how wins the Presidency in 2012, whether the embattled incumbent or the challenger who is certain to do a better job of managing the Federal affairs of state, the United States will not only be in a position of recovery, but restoration of and renovation.
Free market principles are all the rage.
Keynes is out; Milton Friedman is in.
The American People have been forced to swallow the bitter pill of aggressive statist policies, from medical insurance mandates, to industry bailouts, to excessive regulation, to interventions in state and local economies all in violation of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the Bill of Rights.
Ron Paul is a respected statesman, nor longer the boogie-man also-ran of two previous election cycles. His sound arguments on sound money, limited government, and individual dignity and responsibility is catching fire across the land.
The Republican contenders for President are demanding that the United States Armed Forces get out of Afghanistan and Iraq -- end foreign entanglements in nations whose domestic interests have no bearing on our national interests. Michele Bachmann is a heroine to her district, voting against subsidised and pork, Rick Perry was a strong executive not afraid to talk tough and do right by his home state. Even Governor Mitt Romney has carefully crafted a meaningful response to combat the encroaching liberal menace on our rights and liberties as American citizens.
Even if President Obama manages to secure a second term, he will certainly face strong Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, both of which will thwart an further incursions into the rights and responsibilities of the several states and the people. The liberal fantasy of remaking the nation in the Progressive model of top-down elitist hierarchy is come to a protracted and welcome close.
Let us hope that the American voters bear in mind the nasty results of permitting a liberal-Democratic juggernaut to plow through a center-right nation.
Free market principles are all the rage.
Keynes is out; Milton Friedman is in.
The American People have been forced to swallow the bitter pill of aggressive statist policies, from medical insurance mandates, to industry bailouts, to excessive regulation, to interventions in state and local economies all in violation of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the Bill of Rights.
Ron Paul is a respected statesman, nor longer the boogie-man also-ran of two previous election cycles. His sound arguments on sound money, limited government, and individual dignity and responsibility is catching fire across the land.
The Republican contenders for President are demanding that the United States Armed Forces get out of Afghanistan and Iraq -- end foreign entanglements in nations whose domestic interests have no bearing on our national interests. Michele Bachmann is a heroine to her district, voting against subsidised and pork, Rick Perry was a strong executive not afraid to talk tough and do right by his home state. Even Governor Mitt Romney has carefully crafted a meaningful response to combat the encroaching liberal menace on our rights and liberties as American citizens.
Even if President Obama manages to secure a second term, he will certainly face strong Republican majorities in the House and the Senate, both of which will thwart an further incursions into the rights and responsibilities of the several states and the people. The liberal fantasy of remaking the nation in the Progressive model of top-down elitist hierarchy is come to a protracted and welcome close.
Let us hope that the American voters bear in mind the nasty results of permitting a liberal-Democratic juggernaut to plow through a center-right nation.
Truth is the Greatest Enemy of the State
Joseph Goebbels knew the power of the Truth.
He knew that the Truth is a Person, a Person who will not share His preeminent, Ultimate status with anyone.
Hitler wanted to be Power incarnate in the Third Reich.
Therefore, he and his propaganda minister had to suppress every call and connection to the Most High.
William Shirer, author of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", reports that Hitler and his Nazi thugs arrested a number of religious and clergy before World War II. Let us not forget the bold martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who refused to compromise the grace of God with the hateful State.
Truth indeed is power, yet that Power is embodied in a Person, Jesus Christ, who will strike down every thought and doctrine that rises against Him.
Let this example motivate every soul in the face of Government aggrandizement. Let every believer remember with gentle caution that the growth of the state is not just he diminution of the person, but an attempt to bring down the Person who has extended supernatural, eternal, glorifying grace to all who will believe.
He knew that the Truth is a Person, a Person who will not share His preeminent, Ultimate status with anyone.
Hitler wanted to be Power incarnate in the Third Reich.
Therefore, he and his propaganda minister had to suppress every call and connection to the Most High.
William Shirer, author of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", reports that Hitler and his Nazi thugs arrested a number of religious and clergy before World War II. Let us not forget the bold martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who refused to compromise the grace of God with the hateful State.
Truth indeed is power, yet that Power is embodied in a Person, Jesus Christ, who will strike down every thought and doctrine that rises against Him.
Let this example motivate every soul in the face of Government aggrandizement. Let every believer remember with gentle caution that the growth of the state is not just he diminution of the person, but an attempt to bring down the Person who has extended supernatural, eternal, glorifying grace to all who will believe.
Arbeit Macht Frei -- a Terrible Perversion of the Gospel
Before the Jews were forced into the Auschwitz death camps, they beheld an overarching motto over the entrance gate:
"Arbeit Mach Frei" -- roughly translated to mean "Work makes one free."
In the body of Christ, believers have received salvation by grace through faith, yet they have fallen for the devilish deception that they must work, strive, struggle for everything else.
Have the neglected the glorious, joyful turn of Paul?:
"What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? " (Romans 8:31 - 35)
Let us review, meditate, and triumphantly rest in the eternal promise of v. 32:
"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"
We receive all things as freely given, not striven for, not fighting for, not pining for!
So, rather than "Arbeit Macht Frei", let the arch of grace read over every believer thus:
Wahrheit Macht Frei -- roughly translated "Truth Makes One Free"
Indeed, the Truth Himself declared so:
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32)
And in case there is any confusion as to what is the Truth, let us look no further than the next few chapters of the same gospel:
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." (John 14:6)
It is no longer our striving, but His giving and our receiving, which makes us free!
Hallelujah!
"Arbeit Mach Frei" -- roughly translated to mean "Work makes one free."
In the body of Christ, believers have received salvation by grace through faith, yet they have fallen for the devilish deception that they must work, strive, struggle for everything else.
Have the neglected the glorious, joyful turn of Paul?:
"What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? " (Romans 8:31 - 35)
Let us review, meditate, and triumphantly rest in the eternal promise of v. 32:
"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"
We receive all things as freely given, not striven for, not fighting for, not pining for!
So, rather than "Arbeit Macht Frei", let the arch of grace read over every believer thus:
Wahrheit Macht Frei -- roughly translated "Truth Makes One Free"
Indeed, the Truth Himself declared so:
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32)
And in case there is any confusion as to what is the Truth, let us look no further than the next few chapters of the same gospel:
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." (John 14:6)
It is no longer our striving, but His giving and our receiving, which makes us free!
Hallelujah!
The Government is Too Damn BIG!!!
Rent is too damn high!
People are too damn scared!
The Government is too damn big, and we are all getting too damn tired of it!
Don't like high rent? Then despise and denounce rent control.
Don't like rising food prices? Then despise and destroy the Fed, which inflates currency far beyond its fiat value.
Don't like tax-and-spend politicians who take and take, with empty promises and hollow gestures declaring that the will end the economic crises, create jobs, and induct a new era of prosperity? Then tell them to do what you want, or throw them out!
The government is too damn BIG!!!!
The government cannot give what it does not have, and it has nothing apart from what it takes from you.
Protect my rights, defend my country's borders, then leave everything else to the state's and the people, like me!
Government is too damn big, and I am too damn tired of it, and I am not going to take it anymore!
People are too damn scared!
The Government is too damn big, and we are all getting too damn tired of it!
Don't like high rent? Then despise and denounce rent control.
Don't like rising food prices? Then despise and destroy the Fed, which inflates currency far beyond its fiat value.
Don't like tax-and-spend politicians who take and take, with empty promises and hollow gestures declaring that the will end the economic crises, create jobs, and induct a new era of prosperity? Then tell them to do what you want, or throw them out!
The government is too damn BIG!!!!
The government cannot give what it does not have, and it has nothing apart from what it takes from you.
Protect my rights, defend my country's borders, then leave everything else to the state's and the people, like me!
Government is too damn big, and I am too damn tired of it, and I am not going to take it anymore!
Global Contempt for Democracy
'Voting is worthless'? Global protests share contempt for democracy" --MSNBC
The global contempt begins and ends with the people demanding from Government what they are designed and properly destined to seek for themselves.
Yet as soon as the people realize that they can vote money, other people's money, for themselves, then the integrity and security of democratic government is lost.
We must also keep fervently in mind that a democracy without democratic values is a shell game that never materializes winnings for everyone.
A free society is not based on what I can get from government, or what government must get from me, but what I may freely do without the trappings or interventions of the state or the people.
Can I speak my mind in the public square?
Can I worship freely without fear of recrimination or reprisal?
Can I seek equity and redress in a court of law without resorting to force or bribery?
Can I join or form political parties in accordance with my views and interests?
Can I learn about my culture, my people, my language without being distressed or repressed?
These are the true conditions of a free society, not whether I can vote. Some of the most repressive regimes were Democracies in Name Only, like Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, all nations currently embroiled with internal turmoil.
"Global Contempt for Democracy" begins and ends with the people expecting from the government, which means taking from each other by force. People want jobs, money, security, material goods worth nothing without the requisite freedom and respect for individual life.
The global contempt begins and ends with the people demanding from Government what they are designed and properly destined to seek for themselves.
Yet as soon as the people realize that they can vote money, other people's money, for themselves, then the integrity and security of democratic government is lost.
We must also keep fervently in mind that a democracy without democratic values is a shell game that never materializes winnings for everyone.
A free society is not based on what I can get from government, or what government must get from me, but what I may freely do without the trappings or interventions of the state or the people.
Can I speak my mind in the public square?
Can I worship freely without fear of recrimination or reprisal?
Can I seek equity and redress in a court of law without resorting to force or bribery?
Can I join or form political parties in accordance with my views and interests?
Can I learn about my culture, my people, my language without being distressed or repressed?
These are the true conditions of a free society, not whether I can vote. Some of the most repressive regimes were Democracies in Name Only, like Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, all nations currently embroiled with internal turmoil.
"Global Contempt for Democracy" begins and ends with the people expecting from the government, which means taking from each other by force. People want jobs, money, security, material goods worth nothing without the requisite freedom and respect for individual life.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Dictatorship vs. Dysfunction
"It's better to have dictatorship like ghadafi than to have hundred fools in politics." -- quote from "YouTube"
Moammar Gadhafi killed his own people.
He is a megalomaniac who has skirted responsibility for his abject tyranny these last forty years.
After bombing a discothèque in Berlin 1986, President Ronald Reagan bombed Libya with airstrikes.
In 1988, Gadhafi instigated the Lockerbie Bombing of Pan-Am 187.
People dying, nations terrified and enraged, another culture of Arabs enslaved to a fashion-frustrated fool made dangerous by his petty global aspirations -- Gadhafi was, is, and soon no longer will be an evil dictator, a disgrace to government, leadership, and humanity.
In contrast, the "hundred fools in politics", whether the elected assemblies of Senate, House of Representatives, and Executive necessarily clash and mitigate their folly in the American system of checks and balances.
Unlike the monarchies, dictatorships, and tyrannies across the centuries, the United States Framework of Government, as outlined in the United States Constitution, expressly factors in the innate selfishness, folly, and depravity of human nature, forcibly frustrating its excesses.
If I had my pick, I would go with the "one hundred" fools constrained by Limited Government, divided by competing interests, and ultimately elected by the people, the states, and the electors.
Moammar Gadhafi killed his own people.
He is a megalomaniac who has skirted responsibility for his abject tyranny these last forty years.
After bombing a discothèque in Berlin 1986, President Ronald Reagan bombed Libya with airstrikes.
In 1988, Gadhafi instigated the Lockerbie Bombing of Pan-Am 187.
People dying, nations terrified and enraged, another culture of Arabs enslaved to a fashion-frustrated fool made dangerous by his petty global aspirations -- Gadhafi was, is, and soon no longer will be an evil dictator, a disgrace to government, leadership, and humanity.
In contrast, the "hundred fools in politics", whether the elected assemblies of Senate, House of Representatives, and Executive necessarily clash and mitigate their folly in the American system of checks and balances.
Unlike the monarchies, dictatorships, and tyrannies across the centuries, the United States Framework of Government, as outlined in the United States Constitution, expressly factors in the innate selfishness, folly, and depravity of human nature, forcibly frustrating its excesses.
If I had my pick, I would go with the "one hundred" fools constrained by Limited Government, divided by competing interests, and ultimately elected by the people, the states, and the electors.
Sowell, Mr. Perfect, Enemy of the Good, Presidential Elections
A commentary on Thomas Sowell's "Superman vs. Warm Body"
Mr. Sowell's case for accepting the good instead of waiting for the perfect is admirable. No Republican Presidential candidate will ever embody everything that the Republican electorate is looking for
Indeed, Mr. Perry has demonstrated terrific leadership as governor of Texas for the last ten years. His state ushered in pro-growth policies; he streamlined government; he has advocated for the life of the unborn child, and he opposes other inimical socially liberal policies.
However, he has not scintillated as a master debater. He has backtracked on his views about Social Security. His policies extending in-state tuition to illegal immigrants is immoral and offensive. And yes, his executive order requiring young girls to receive vaccinations was an encroachment of the state into the lives of the citizens.
The last issue is negligible, considering that Perry will have a much more power-hungry Congress to contend with, as opposed to a somewhat more compliant state legislature (the same issue which plagued Jimmy Carter after his election in 1976).
Yet his support for illegals receiving in-state tuition is simply unacceptable! As President, he must possess the power to persuade, not just his party, not just his constituents, but the entire nation. If he hiccups in a debate, will he also fail to convey his views to the voters?
Yet because of the pragmatism required in accepting a Presidential candidate who at least measures up to 80% of the party faithful's hopes and dreams, Ron Paul is the best choice. He has remained faithful to the Spirit and the Letter of the Constitution. He has voted against tax increases, reckless spending, and federal growth at every turn. He even repudiated the actions of Ronald Reagan during his eight years as President, when the Gipper talked the fiscal conservative talk, but did not walk the walk!
Congressman Paul's foreign policy is questionable, given that the entire world should not naively assume that Iran is developing nuclear power for purely peaceful purposes. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly declared that he wanted to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth." Such a heinous threat must be taken seriously.
Also, Paul comes off as extensively intellectual, going out of his way to make economic policy into haphazard talking points. For example, his argument about one silver dime buying $3.50 worth of gas was a worthy argument, yet not convenient enough for a sound-bite on stage during a crowded debate.
Notwithstanding these imperfections, Ron Paul is the best candidate for the job. As the more mainstream candidates go upstream trying but failing to make their case to the American People, Congressman Paul has remained constituent, committed, and clear about his message of limited government, sound monetary policy, fiscal conservatism, and constitutional governance.
Vote for Ron Paul November 8, 2012!
Mr. Sowell's case for accepting the good instead of waiting for the perfect is admirable. No Republican Presidential candidate will ever embody everything that the Republican electorate is looking for
Indeed, Mr. Perry has demonstrated terrific leadership as governor of Texas for the last ten years. His state ushered in pro-growth policies; he streamlined government; he has advocated for the life of the unborn child, and he opposes other inimical socially liberal policies.
However, he has not scintillated as a master debater. He has backtracked on his views about Social Security. His policies extending in-state tuition to illegal immigrants is immoral and offensive. And yes, his executive order requiring young girls to receive vaccinations was an encroachment of the state into the lives of the citizens.
The last issue is negligible, considering that Perry will have a much more power-hungry Congress to contend with, as opposed to a somewhat more compliant state legislature (the same issue which plagued Jimmy Carter after his election in 1976).
Yet his support for illegals receiving in-state tuition is simply unacceptable! As President, he must possess the power to persuade, not just his party, not just his constituents, but the entire nation. If he hiccups in a debate, will he also fail to convey his views to the voters?
Yet because of the pragmatism required in accepting a Presidential candidate who at least measures up to 80% of the party faithful's hopes and dreams, Ron Paul is the best choice. He has remained faithful to the Spirit and the Letter of the Constitution. He has voted against tax increases, reckless spending, and federal growth at every turn. He even repudiated the actions of Ronald Reagan during his eight years as President, when the Gipper talked the fiscal conservative talk, but did not walk the walk!
Congressman Paul's foreign policy is questionable, given that the entire world should not naively assume that Iran is developing nuclear power for purely peaceful purposes. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad openly declared that he wanted to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth." Such a heinous threat must be taken seriously.
Also, Paul comes off as extensively intellectual, going out of his way to make economic policy into haphazard talking points. For example, his argument about one silver dime buying $3.50 worth of gas was a worthy argument, yet not convenient enough for a sound-bite on stage during a crowded debate.
Notwithstanding these imperfections, Ron Paul is the best candidate for the job. As the more mainstream candidates go upstream trying but failing to make their case to the American People, Congressman Paul has remained constituent, committed, and clear about his message of limited government, sound monetary policy, fiscal conservatism, and constitutional governance.
Vote for Ron Paul November 8, 2012!
"A Plea for John Brown" by Henry David Thoreau: A deconstruction, rebuttal, refutation
Transcendentalist and Romantic Henry David Thoreau begins his paean to the spirit of John Brown, a “freedom fighter” who freely justified himself in killing innocent women and children, and moreover who felt that he had a right to take the lives of other men, even if they were slaveholders.
Personally, I believe that John Brown was a domestic terrorist, one who arrogantly decided that he had the right and duty to take the lives of men whom he believed had forfeited their right to live because they enslaved their fellow man. Slavery is wrong, but taking other people's lives, prosecuting for peace like a warlike, bloodthirsty vigilante, is never justifiable or justified. John Brown was no freedom fighter, but a hater of mankind who undermined the cause of freedom by taking the lives of others, in one instance cruelly and systematically slaughtering slaveholders in front of their own wives and children.
A free society does not necessarily mean a justice society, as Natan Sharansky wrote eloquently in The Case for Democracy, for in a free society citizens are allowed to make mistakes, to be wrong, to sin, to do things which an intellect, or intellectual, would deem wrong, inhumane, or even unethical. In a free society, human beings do not have the right to impose their views on anyone. They do, however, have the right to persuade without violating another person's rights. As Friedrich Hayek explained in The Fatal Conceit, a free market (of ideas) cannot be just because the outcomes that different people favor vary too widely for one imposed set of outcomes to accommodate all of them.
I do wish to emphasize certain points. Slavery is wrong; slave holding is contemptible, completely out of concert with the denizens of a free society. But to overthrow the established order, to ignore the classical liberal means of persuasion to effect change: that is also wrong. John Brown transgressed that boundary, and Thoreau seems unwilling to acknowledge that fact, or at least tries as much as he can to ignore it. He wants to champion the violent outrage of John Brown without legitimizing the violence, but in the case of John Brown, the two are inseparable.
Here Foucault’s analysis of Truth and Power coincide, if one understands truth as a mere byproduct of power, that might does make right. Yet in a free society, might may not define right, even though this ethical negative in a way serves as a definition in itself. Liberty is both a means and an end. Hot it is achieved is just as important as how it is defined.
Because Thoreau fails to distinguish them, he compromises the true definition of liberty, despising the correct means of its achievement and promotion, all the while misusing, misinterpreting, and misapplying historical precedent to his skewed understanding of liberty and a free society. Moreover, this misunderstanding of the true nature of liberty and its proper nurture is just one more example in a long chain of abuses by intellectuals like Thoreau who see how the world should operate, yearning (inadvertently, as Hayek posits in Conceit)for a primitive system which denies the need and wants of the individual at the behest of collectivist fantastical, fanatical (fanatical because having no ground or evidence in reality) hopes.
In the midst of this discussion, I am compelled to add that I am a staunch opponent of the death penalty precisely for the reasons that I despise John Brown for his murderous, blood-lustful killing mission to liberate: human beings are not the best arbiters of right and wrong. They make mistakes, especially in deeming guilt or innocence. The finality of the death penalty is too great for one man, or any community, to impose. Moreover, on a spiritual note, the Great Redeemer of the world, Jesus Christ, died on the Cross for all sinners, and for all sin committed by us sinners. His death is the death that every sinner, that every lawbreaker, no matter how depraved and demeaning, should have died. To insist on the death penalty is a mockery of the power of the Cross. Whatever human means we think that we can enact, the Cross has covered it; and God ultimately is a better judge than any human mind or intellect could ever be.
Following on this religious note, it is an outrage that anyone would dare compare John Brown to Jesus Christ. Thoreau begins his lengthy offensive comparison of John Brown to Jesus Christ by calling him a redeemer. (271) John Brown cannot, could not, never will redeem anyone. He was a human being in need of redemption, just like everyone else. No human being can offer himself as a propitiation for anyone else. No man can make another free. Freedom must be chosen, as even the much-maligned former President Bush declared in his Second Inaugural Address.
Adding to Thoreau’s outrageous analogy, John Brown claimed that he was attempting to purge the sin of slavery from the United States by shedding the blood of other men. Jesus Christ shed his own blood. He laid himself down as a sacrifice to save many. John Brown accomplished nothing noble in butchering other people in the name of Freedom.
Regarding questions of his state of mind, one should easily conclude that John Brown was not insane. On the contrary, he was too much in his mind, relying on an abstract order to justify imposing an ideal on man's frail flesh in an attempt to transform man's febrile mind. He was insane only to the degree that he allowed reason to determine the morality he would follow. The Scottish Enlightenment thinker David Hume asserted at least half a century before that “the sum of our morals are not the product of our reason”. Reason must defer to custom and tradition if societies are to survive, evolve, and thrive! John Brown was not crazy, he was evil, because he made himself God by taking upon himself the right (which he called a “responsibility”) to rid the world of slavery, and execute summary judgment, like some East Coast white Che Guevara, against all who disagreed with him.
Now that I have laid the groundwork for my opinion of this terrible man, let's evaluate Thoreau's fulsome praise of this evil renegade.
Thoreau admits up front in his plea that he has no interest in imposing his thoughts on his listeners, which is both true and admirable, since his listeners do not have to listen to him, and Thoreau has no other power but rhetoric, persuasion. In stark contrast, John Brown forced his views on others in the most violent way, by force, and worst of all, by taking their lives. Thoreau relies on an acceptable means of persuasion to justify the most heinous and unacceptable forms of persuasion, something that is the antithesis of persuasion because it ignores the dignity of the human will. His method justifies the violence which would have annulled his method in the first place.
A little further into his speech, Thoreau claims that it costs us nothing to be just, a term whose meaning he fails to define. Plato had acquiesced to define “just” as meaning that every person does what he or she is best suited to do, which no other person is really able to do, except an all-knowing entity, a status which no person can ever claim to hold. In addition to this length concern, being just should not cost other people their lives. Justice, ultimately, is about restoring rapport and respect among individuals. (See The Grammar of Justice) Death, mayhem, and murder are the most hierarchical and discriminatory of acts, because at the end of the exchange, one person is alive while the other is dead. Based on this analysis, John Brown was not a just man. He killed people, innocent or guilty, regardless of how they were labeled in their time or by our standards.
Frequently in his esteem of Brown, Thoreau also praises Oliver Cromwell, another rebel who brought down a king by execution. Let's explore the irony of this extended allusion.
First of all, Oliver Cromwell imposed morality on the English population after the Civil War. British citizens were not even allowed to go to the theater during the Republic. He dismissed parliament as summarily as King Charles the First had done nearly nine years before. Rather than expanding the franchise of the citizens, he made everyone equally enslaved. Unelected, ignoring the needs and will of the majority, Cromwell ended up being far more reactionary than even the Plantagenets and the Stuarts. How unfortunate, dismal, and ultimately disgusting that the forces for ending royal tyranny would end up setting up a far worse tyranny, one that would pressure a populace to welcome the Restoration of the Royal Line and lead to a more Glorious, read bloodless, Revolution a half-century later. Royal tyranny giving way to Totalitarian tyranny is a recurrent them in the 20th century (See “Dictatorships and Double Standards).
Another thing about Oliver Cromwell: he had King Charles the First beheaded, executed. He did not spare the life of a man, no matter how unpopular he may have been. Yet Thoreau speaks on behalf of John in order to spare his life from execution! In effect, he cites the life and means of an executioner to protect another executioner from being executed!
Following from the wrongdoing of executing the king, the execution of Charles the First incited more widespread disorder throughout the British Commonwealth. Rather than enhancing human liberty, the death of King Charles led to the further enslavement of the people, because in the worst instance the State that rose from the ashes of the toppled monarchy gave birth to self-righteous intellectualism, which put to death an individual, King Charles, and the individual through the ultimately invasion and marginalization of human liberty in the name of restoring order. It is fascinating to me that in the lengthy studies that current political philosophers make regarding the death penalty and its justification on moral grounds, that they do not consider its consequences following its practice on royal figures, no matter how demeaning, demanding, or demurred they may have been in their time. The political upheaval that resulted in European communities following the execution of their respective monarchs should perhaps give mankind pause. (Consider Balzac “An event during the Terror”. Also The Wrong Side of Paris, especially the comments proffered by Godefroid regarding the Guillotine)
Let's put it plainly: Cromwell was not a friend, but an enemy of liberty, and at that the worst kind of enemy, proclaiming the right to impose the good, to impose thoughts on others, even to the point of killing opposition or imprisoning them. It’s always the “do-gooders” who end up causing the most harm, this comment in respect to a quote by C. S. Lewis, because they are convinced of the righteousness of their cause, so that there is no stopping them.
Besides the intellectually bereft allusions to Oliver Cromwell in the face of one tyranny bringing forth one far worse, Thoreau engages in another widespread allusion by praising the Ancient City State of Sparta (264). Like Cromwell and his military rule, Thoreau praises Spartan habits, also contradictory to the major tenets of individual liberty. The Spartans, far from encouraging liberty, forced every boy into a fighting-machine condition, subsisting in a socialistic
(tribalistic, even atavistic) society in which every individual (predominantly males since despised females were abandoned in caves to die or be eaten) was merely a cog in the wheel of the State's power and advancement. They encouraged a primitive society, devoid of arts and inspiration, and certainly lacking in Freedom of expression. Once again, this atavistic-socialist longing for the micro-order described by Hayek undercuts the power of the individual, yet Thoreau seeks out this yearning nonetheless, a yearning which conflicts with his right and ability to praise at length the domestic terrorism of John Brown. Once again, the very order he praises and longs for, a step backwards into tyranny and slavery, whether under a Cromwell or a Spartan government, undercuts the society which he is addressing, a civilization which protects his very freedom to speak out. If his argument on behalf of John Brown were to prevail, he would not be able to support or continue in the freedom he so seemingly cherishes.
Further into his text, Thoreau despises free markets, money, and trade (267). Every Austrian economist, and every classical liberal worth his salt has testified and demonstrated repeatedly that commerce creates the sweet customs (moeurs douces de Montesquieu) which allow individual liberty, most importantly freedom of conscience, to endure. In sharp contrast to the Spartans, Pericles and the Athenian nation conquered the Hellenic world through commerce, not through war (See Durant, THE Age of Greece). A free market allows free trade. Free exchange of goods and ideas coexist. For just as a merchant must persuade a prospective client to purchase his product, a speaker must persuade his listener to espouse his views. No one forces me to buy or sell anything. In the realm of ideas and discussion, the realm in which Thoreau operates when delivering this “apology” for John Brown, no one can force another to believe anything. Even if we despairingly acknowledge that a hostile man with a radically different opinion may take my life, he cannot touch deter, or undermine my conscience
(See Socrates in Plato’s “Apologia”), the choice to do as one pleases, even if it is wrong, whether in his own eyes, the opinion of the community, or in violation of the dictates of natural law as laid down by God Almighty.
As an avid reader, attentive to the true nature and definition of liberty will attest, Thoreau's conception of liberty does not match will with John Brown's prosecution (read persecution) of that liberty. This schism of thought and deed becomes more pronounced when Thoreau declares that “John Brown was a peerless man.” In a free society, no one is above another, and certainly because he holds different ideas, or a more accurate notion of liberty. Furthermore, knowing more, having a higher sentiment of this liberty and wanting to force this right to others is not acceptable, either. By calling Brown “peerless,” he deifies Brown, a complete, unjustified, and utterly worthless fraud. There can be no liberty or victory between equals, as the Athenians stressed over and over when trying to put behind them the war and horror of the civil war in 403 B.C. that nearly tore the City State of Athens apart (See Remembering Defeat).
And therein lies a fundamental problem frustrating to all, intellect or otherwise. Freedom must be chosen (Refer back to Bush II’s Second Inaugural). It cannot be forced. It must be offered. (Refer also to Frederick Douglass’s Slave Narrative) Not at the barrel of a gun, but through the pulpit, through the written word, through the appeal to the human spirit does one find freedom, for freedom will find those who love it. (also from Bush's Second Inaugural.) John Brown was forced to confront this truth when he failed to organize slaves in the South into insurrection. They refused to join with him. (Consider this in light of the Allegory of the Cave) This highlights the source of the dilemma for many intellectuals. They have embraced a free society, yet they cannot understand, nor seem willing to recall, that this freedom must be chosen, that every person must start over again. That while society may advance technologically, every person must choose freedom individually, that faith the extended, spontaneous order must be fought, grasped, and accepted in a process of philosophical anthropology. Freedom is brought about by traditions, but not without the concerted choice of each individual. Each individual must choose to enter into those traditions for himself. Unfortunately, this choice cannot be forced or coerced. Young minds must be persuaded, a hard task when the benefits of order and tradition are immanent, though not necessarily imminent.
(At last, I have tied together Kierkegaard, the blessings of the bourgeois mentality, the free market, and the cause of liberty, and why reason and speculation have become enemies to such developments. The need for each individual to choose the traditions irrespective of rational, mindful, and intellectual development underscores why capitalism and democracy end up ultimately breeding anti-capitalist and anti-democratic cultures. Each generation has to be taught that their way of life, their freedom, is based on, defined on sacrifice, self-limitations. The fall of many civilizations seems to result when the people with those communities want to effects but are not willing to work for them. It requires faith to adopt traditions that do not make sense to the human mind, because Reason is obsessed with what it can sense or deduce. Faith uses imagination. No wonder Abraham was great, and no one can “go further” than” faith. Kierkegaard, inadvertently perhaps, acknowledges the limits of reason that Hayek discusses at length in Conceit. The problem for Hayek is that he refuses to acknowledge the Creator of the Universe, although his text frequently refers to ambivalence about his theological views.
Without a doubt, the Knight of Faith is a bourgeois, a capitalist, because he makes a living speculating, engaging in activities that require risk. No wonder he is despised by intellectuals. )
Returning to the indefensible defense of John Brown, let us take note that Thoreau in the long runs tries to sanitize (saint, beatify, make sane) his seeming justification for a terrorist by claiming to plead for Brown's character, not his actions. Cannot be done. His actions define his character, reveal his character: a self-imposed, self-righteous vigilante who ran rough-shod over the rights of others, who undermined human liberty in the name of liberty.
(Here once could inject another Foucauldian analysis. Just as in the earlier part of the nineteenth century courts spent more time trying to understand and reform the criminal as opposed to respond to the criminal act, Thoreau is trying to justify the criminal as opposed to explain away the crime.
Human exuberance does not compensate for truth, another fallacy of these Romanticized intellectuals.
Now, near the end of his plea for John Brown, not his character as he claims in the text, he refers to John Brown as an “angel of light”. In this seemingly innocent metaphor is encapsulated everything wrong, illogical, unethical, heinous and evil about Thoreau's contentions and John Brown's actions. This seemingly innocuous metaphor betrays the uneasy ambivalence of David Thoreau wanting to champion violent outrage while ignoring the violence.
An angel of light? In Isaiah 14, Lucifer, an archangel in the panoply of holy messengers in the heavens, was an angel of light—a star of the morning, but ultimately a deceiver and an adversary, one who thought he could run the world better, one who wanted to make himself God and run the universe according to his own limited dictates. Satan is an angel of light, a tempter, albeit Thoreau apparently intended the phrase to capture John Brown as a messenger of good to the world. John Brown either deceived Thoreau as well as Lucifer deceived one third of the angels—and then Adam and Eve, or worse Thoreau is complicit in a barbaric fraud. Then again, one could claim the metaphor is accurate when considered in connection with the Adversary.
This metaphor, “angel of light”, also applies itself very well to Thoreau and all his intellectual ilk. Like Lucifer, later Satan, they see the operations of the world and are dissatisfied. They want to change the order and nature of things to suit their own tastes, or their own thinking. This hubris on the part of Lucifer and many intellectuals is based on the false premise that one mind can understand the functions of the extender order, an arrogance which Hayek dubbed “the fatal conceit”, certainly fatal in the case of John Brown, who felt righteously compelled to force his righteous views on others, at the barrel of a gun when he saw fit.
John Brown was an angel of light, attract and enticing, yet his actions betray the dark and evil turn of his thought and actions, that a man made himself God and in the name of good perpetrate evil. The “do-gooders” and busybodies of the world do far more damage than the openly hostile and hateful.
Love means letting people be wrong and respecting their integrity to be free, even while they are limiting the freedom of others. It does not mean we should stand idly by and watch the encroachment of liberties. We must resist the proud, arrogant, egomaniacal, monomaniacal notion that one person has the right and responsibility to impose right on others.
In short, Thoreau wants to lionize, canonize Brown, yet cannot legitimize his putrid actions. This inner conflict is exposed in his telling metaphor comparing John Brown to “an angel of light.” (This connects with Willaim Empson’s 7th Type of Ambiguity).
Might can never make right, no matter how mighty one's sense of right may be. Foucault is wrong to assume otherwise, for truth as a matter of force can never be truth to begin with.
The highest law, then is not (individual) conscience, but commitment, to a person. Attachment to principles without attachment to the Person of Christ makes every man a tyrant, a hellish, hell-bent bully.
And now we can extemporize the wrong of Progressivism, a movement which believed that government wanted, and needed to, make society better.
Government uses coercion, not persuasion. Free people cannot nor should not be coerced into doing right. Therefore, government has not place in the progress of humanity. Human beings guided by the divine spark of life can do a better job, if permitted to. President Lincoln wanted to take steps to end slavery. He did not want to encroach upon the “peculiar institution” where it lay, but stop its spread to other territories. Despite the liberal basis of the Republican party, Lincoln wanted to follow a wisely conservative program to end slavery.
The role of government is not to make sure that each person does the right thing, but that each person does not encroach upon the rights of others to do the right thing.
Returning to Thoreau's plea, why did he and so many other intellectuals succumb to this temptation to make the world right by compulsion instead of persuasion?
They saw the growing industrialization of the world, and all the problems associated with it. They wrongly assumed that industrialization caused these problems, when rather state control, whether vested in a king, a congress, or a president made it more difficult for centralized cities to adapt to this growth. Reformers wanted to fix these problems, which is good. Yet they saw government as the means to do it. Private reformers using private means is the way to go!
Thomas Jefferson was a victim of this problem, too. He believed that government should be as neutral and as limited as possible in the affairs of men, yet at the same time he envisioned and idolized an agrarian economy of small, humble gentlemen farmers (of which he was NOT one, incidentally). Industry promotes freedom because it frees up people's time, getting them away from investing so much of their time in ensuring that there will be enough food on the shelves and in the pantry come winter. Even though farmers had to work sixteen hour days, they had a better life in a factory than in the sporadic, changing, and easily drastic life of a farmer, where one famine could wipe out a family and killing many of his offspring. In fact, the contiguity of family life was probably enhanced by the industrial revolution because instead of spending every waking hour having kids, working them to death, then losing more than half of them to famine and disease, families would be able to nurture and promote them, thus not having to have so many. Even if Mom and Dad went to work, at the end of the day they would come and have “family time.”
Thomas Jefferson wanted a free society, yet did not want a society free to pursue technological progress. He wanted people to choose his ideal development of the country, yet could not reconcile himself to the fact that maybe the country would not choose it.
Also, technological advances promoted the indirect free market, typified by Adam Smith in the Invisible Hand of commerce. Intellectuals were afraid, perhaps, that the industrial revolution on its own would not correct the problems exacerbated by the growth of populations seeking a more stable life.
Technological improvements gave some the impetus that they could improvise, and impose societal improvements as well. Yet the systems that define society are ultimately far too complex for any one person to understand.
And so we return to the dismayed assertion of Milton Friedman, that “people are afraid of freedom.” They are impatient for change, not understanding that the multitude of forces at work in the world are caught up in the hands of a Creator who does a better of job of correcting the ill in this world and promoting the good.
Jesus Christ died on the Cross, giving his life as a ransom for many. He did not impose his will on anyone. In fact, every step he took, every action he made was in concert with the will of his Father in Heaven, the ultimate and right judge of the world.
The British people reestablished this order when they rejected the “Christian” tyranny of Cromwell and the Commonwealth. The French people never recovered after they beheaded their behaved but hapless king.
No, we do not have the power to reinvent the world. Nor do we have to. The world as conceived by any person is too limited and false to be acted upon, and ultimately tramples on the liberty of every human being.
Once again, the technological advances inadvertently promoted the flawed notion that human beings could also reform society collectively. Intellectuals, ignoring the source of their reason in the trade and traditions of commerce, began to despise those very things that elemented their liberty because they did make sense to their limited intellect. Why? Because one man’s intellect is blind to the long, evolved process which elemented their reasoned liberty. The morals and values of a free market, honesty, integrity, obedience to religious dictates, do not submit themselves easily to rational or scientific scrutiny, yet they are true nonetheless.
Thus we return to the fundamental problems and contradictions in David Thoreau's pleas for John Brown. His intellect decries the mistreatment of other people as slaves, but hearkens back to atavistic means, the rampant bloodshed of other men, to perpetrate, to impose this freedom. This uneasy tense contradiction is bound up in Thoreau's styling Brown to be “an angel of light”
Refering back to the sudden insights:
Societies can promote liberty, but they cannot make it happen. Only an individual can do that, for freedom must be chosen, and only an individual can choose freedom. Society cannot do that for you, no one else can, not even family or friends, or other ideas.
Hence the frustration of intellects, who want everyone to hurry up and choose freedom (A fundamental trait of Progressives: Hurry up Progress), when it cannot be hurried. Freedom cannot be bureaucratized. The human spirit cannot respond to dictatorship, but the human body which frames the human spirit will suffer under dictatorship.
Hence the folly of radicals like Thoma Paine who assumed that we have the power to remake the world, or Karl Marx to change the world. The betterment of this world lies in the choice of each person to choose freedom, as Frederick Douglass did so many years ago as a harassed slave in Maryland. The world does not need to be remade, is passing away. Every person must be renewed, and renewed from within. Or as Hegel himself posited, “You cannot have a Revolution until you have a Reformation.” His mistake was assuming that tehh Reformation of the State would suffice, when such a matter is impossible.
And now I can frame the problem of the spirit of modernity, which foolishly charged that the human spirit could “go further” just like technology and commerce. Kierkegaard refuted that nonsense aimiably in Fear and Trembling. You cannot go further than faith! The “State” does not exist. Its Reformation, therefore, is an impossibility, and any results from such a nonsensical process would have no effect on an individual.
Society does not exist! Liberty cannot be imposed through an abstract that does not exist.
Persuasion person to person is the only path to true freedom, to unfettered liberty.
Rousseau was wrong. Man IS born in chains, yet in Christ he can find true freedom, for he whom the son has set free is free indeed. Man is born in chains, but he must allow traditions to fashion them away. A lack of restraint becomes another chain when unchecked. He must choose boundaries of some kind. The entire metaphor of chains is all wrong.
Faith cannot be passed down like any other tradition, yet the tradition of having faith and walk in it is the most worthy calling of every human being, which each person must find on his own.
This explains the major problem which this country began facing with the onslaught of the Baby Boomers, the hippies, the warped “civil rights” movement, and the (Not So) Great Society. The Greatest Generation wanted to pass on the wealth and prosperity that they had struggled to maintain and defend through two world wars without their children having to endure the hardship. The result: the next generation became dissatisfied and disaffected, not nurtured by the suffering and the struggle that leads to the faith in a cosmic order led by God. The Greatest Generation wanted to impart the prosperity without the anxiety, which no one can do.
The tradition of freedom, based resolutely and infinitely on the tradition of faith, must be relearned by every generation, persuaded into men, not forced or coerced. And it certainly cannot be transmitted passively, as the Greatest Generation had hoped.
The baby boomers despised the traditions passed down to them because they did not appreciate, nor certainly endure the hardship necessary to make them possible. They took the traditions for granted, then despised them outright thinking that they could do better, which the Greatest Generation had already learned could not be done.
Amen, and amen!
Personally, I believe that John Brown was a domestic terrorist, one who arrogantly decided that he had the right and duty to take the lives of men whom he believed had forfeited their right to live because they enslaved their fellow man. Slavery is wrong, but taking other people's lives, prosecuting for peace like a warlike, bloodthirsty vigilante, is never justifiable or justified. John Brown was no freedom fighter, but a hater of mankind who undermined the cause of freedom by taking the lives of others, in one instance cruelly and systematically slaughtering slaveholders in front of their own wives and children.
A free society does not necessarily mean a justice society, as Natan Sharansky wrote eloquently in The Case for Democracy, for in a free society citizens are allowed to make mistakes, to be wrong, to sin, to do things which an intellect, or intellectual, would deem wrong, inhumane, or even unethical. In a free society, human beings do not have the right to impose their views on anyone. They do, however, have the right to persuade without violating another person's rights. As Friedrich Hayek explained in The Fatal Conceit, a free market (of ideas) cannot be just because the outcomes that different people favor vary too widely for one imposed set of outcomes to accommodate all of them.
I do wish to emphasize certain points. Slavery is wrong; slave holding is contemptible, completely out of concert with the denizens of a free society. But to overthrow the established order, to ignore the classical liberal means of persuasion to effect change: that is also wrong. John Brown transgressed that boundary, and Thoreau seems unwilling to acknowledge that fact, or at least tries as much as he can to ignore it. He wants to champion the violent outrage of John Brown without legitimizing the violence, but in the case of John Brown, the two are inseparable.
Here Foucault’s analysis of Truth and Power coincide, if one understands truth as a mere byproduct of power, that might does make right. Yet in a free society, might may not define right, even though this ethical negative in a way serves as a definition in itself. Liberty is both a means and an end. Hot it is achieved is just as important as how it is defined.
Because Thoreau fails to distinguish them, he compromises the true definition of liberty, despising the correct means of its achievement and promotion, all the while misusing, misinterpreting, and misapplying historical precedent to his skewed understanding of liberty and a free society. Moreover, this misunderstanding of the true nature of liberty and its proper nurture is just one more example in a long chain of abuses by intellectuals like Thoreau who see how the world should operate, yearning (inadvertently, as Hayek posits in Conceit)for a primitive system which denies the need and wants of the individual at the behest of collectivist fantastical, fanatical (fanatical because having no ground or evidence in reality) hopes.
In the midst of this discussion, I am compelled to add that I am a staunch opponent of the death penalty precisely for the reasons that I despise John Brown for his murderous, blood-lustful killing mission to liberate: human beings are not the best arbiters of right and wrong. They make mistakes, especially in deeming guilt or innocence. The finality of the death penalty is too great for one man, or any community, to impose. Moreover, on a spiritual note, the Great Redeemer of the world, Jesus Christ, died on the Cross for all sinners, and for all sin committed by us sinners. His death is the death that every sinner, that every lawbreaker, no matter how depraved and demeaning, should have died. To insist on the death penalty is a mockery of the power of the Cross. Whatever human means we think that we can enact, the Cross has covered it; and God ultimately is a better judge than any human mind or intellect could ever be.
Following on this religious note, it is an outrage that anyone would dare compare John Brown to Jesus Christ. Thoreau begins his lengthy offensive comparison of John Brown to Jesus Christ by calling him a redeemer. (271) John Brown cannot, could not, never will redeem anyone. He was a human being in need of redemption, just like everyone else. No human being can offer himself as a propitiation for anyone else. No man can make another free. Freedom must be chosen, as even the much-maligned former President Bush declared in his Second Inaugural Address.
Adding to Thoreau’s outrageous analogy, John Brown claimed that he was attempting to purge the sin of slavery from the United States by shedding the blood of other men. Jesus Christ shed his own blood. He laid himself down as a sacrifice to save many. John Brown accomplished nothing noble in butchering other people in the name of Freedom.
Regarding questions of his state of mind, one should easily conclude that John Brown was not insane. On the contrary, he was too much in his mind, relying on an abstract order to justify imposing an ideal on man's frail flesh in an attempt to transform man's febrile mind. He was insane only to the degree that he allowed reason to determine the morality he would follow. The Scottish Enlightenment thinker David Hume asserted at least half a century before that “the sum of our morals are not the product of our reason”. Reason must defer to custom and tradition if societies are to survive, evolve, and thrive! John Brown was not crazy, he was evil, because he made himself God by taking upon himself the right (which he called a “responsibility”) to rid the world of slavery, and execute summary judgment, like some East Coast white Che Guevara, against all who disagreed with him.
Now that I have laid the groundwork for my opinion of this terrible man, let's evaluate Thoreau's fulsome praise of this evil renegade.
Thoreau admits up front in his plea that he has no interest in imposing his thoughts on his listeners, which is both true and admirable, since his listeners do not have to listen to him, and Thoreau has no other power but rhetoric, persuasion. In stark contrast, John Brown forced his views on others in the most violent way, by force, and worst of all, by taking their lives. Thoreau relies on an acceptable means of persuasion to justify the most heinous and unacceptable forms of persuasion, something that is the antithesis of persuasion because it ignores the dignity of the human will. His method justifies the violence which would have annulled his method in the first place.
A little further into his speech, Thoreau claims that it costs us nothing to be just, a term whose meaning he fails to define. Plato had acquiesced to define “just” as meaning that every person does what he or she is best suited to do, which no other person is really able to do, except an all-knowing entity, a status which no person can ever claim to hold. In addition to this length concern, being just should not cost other people their lives. Justice, ultimately, is about restoring rapport and respect among individuals. (See The Grammar of Justice) Death, mayhem, and murder are the most hierarchical and discriminatory of acts, because at the end of the exchange, one person is alive while the other is dead. Based on this analysis, John Brown was not a just man. He killed people, innocent or guilty, regardless of how they were labeled in their time or by our standards.
Frequently in his esteem of Brown, Thoreau also praises Oliver Cromwell, another rebel who brought down a king by execution. Let's explore the irony of this extended allusion.
First of all, Oliver Cromwell imposed morality on the English population after the Civil War. British citizens were not even allowed to go to the theater during the Republic. He dismissed parliament as summarily as King Charles the First had done nearly nine years before. Rather than expanding the franchise of the citizens, he made everyone equally enslaved. Unelected, ignoring the needs and will of the majority, Cromwell ended up being far more reactionary than even the Plantagenets and the Stuarts. How unfortunate, dismal, and ultimately disgusting that the forces for ending royal tyranny would end up setting up a far worse tyranny, one that would pressure a populace to welcome the Restoration of the Royal Line and lead to a more Glorious, read bloodless, Revolution a half-century later. Royal tyranny giving way to Totalitarian tyranny is a recurrent them in the 20th century (See “Dictatorships and Double Standards).
Another thing about Oliver Cromwell: he had King Charles the First beheaded, executed. He did not spare the life of a man, no matter how unpopular he may have been. Yet Thoreau speaks on behalf of John in order to spare his life from execution! In effect, he cites the life and means of an executioner to protect another executioner from being executed!
Following from the wrongdoing of executing the king, the execution of Charles the First incited more widespread disorder throughout the British Commonwealth. Rather than enhancing human liberty, the death of King Charles led to the further enslavement of the people, because in the worst instance the State that rose from the ashes of the toppled monarchy gave birth to self-righteous intellectualism, which put to death an individual, King Charles, and the individual through the ultimately invasion and marginalization of human liberty in the name of restoring order. It is fascinating to me that in the lengthy studies that current political philosophers make regarding the death penalty and its justification on moral grounds, that they do not consider its consequences following its practice on royal figures, no matter how demeaning, demanding, or demurred they may have been in their time. The political upheaval that resulted in European communities following the execution of their respective monarchs should perhaps give mankind pause. (Consider Balzac “An event during the Terror”. Also The Wrong Side of Paris, especially the comments proffered by Godefroid regarding the Guillotine)
Let's put it plainly: Cromwell was not a friend, but an enemy of liberty, and at that the worst kind of enemy, proclaiming the right to impose the good, to impose thoughts on others, even to the point of killing opposition or imprisoning them. It’s always the “do-gooders” who end up causing the most harm, this comment in respect to a quote by C. S. Lewis, because they are convinced of the righteousness of their cause, so that there is no stopping them.
Besides the intellectually bereft allusions to Oliver Cromwell in the face of one tyranny bringing forth one far worse, Thoreau engages in another widespread allusion by praising the Ancient City State of Sparta (264). Like Cromwell and his military rule, Thoreau praises Spartan habits, also contradictory to the major tenets of individual liberty. The Spartans, far from encouraging liberty, forced every boy into a fighting-machine condition, subsisting in a socialistic
(tribalistic, even atavistic) society in which every individual (predominantly males since despised females were abandoned in caves to die or be eaten) was merely a cog in the wheel of the State's power and advancement. They encouraged a primitive society, devoid of arts and inspiration, and certainly lacking in Freedom of expression. Once again, this atavistic-socialist longing for the micro-order described by Hayek undercuts the power of the individual, yet Thoreau seeks out this yearning nonetheless, a yearning which conflicts with his right and ability to praise at length the domestic terrorism of John Brown. Once again, the very order he praises and longs for, a step backwards into tyranny and slavery, whether under a Cromwell or a Spartan government, undercuts the society which he is addressing, a civilization which protects his very freedom to speak out. If his argument on behalf of John Brown were to prevail, he would not be able to support or continue in the freedom he so seemingly cherishes.
Further into his text, Thoreau despises free markets, money, and trade (267). Every Austrian economist, and every classical liberal worth his salt has testified and demonstrated repeatedly that commerce creates the sweet customs (moeurs douces de Montesquieu) which allow individual liberty, most importantly freedom of conscience, to endure. In sharp contrast to the Spartans, Pericles and the Athenian nation conquered the Hellenic world through commerce, not through war (See Durant, THE Age of Greece). A free market allows free trade. Free exchange of goods and ideas coexist. For just as a merchant must persuade a prospective client to purchase his product, a speaker must persuade his listener to espouse his views. No one forces me to buy or sell anything. In the realm of ideas and discussion, the realm in which Thoreau operates when delivering this “apology” for John Brown, no one can force another to believe anything. Even if we despairingly acknowledge that a hostile man with a radically different opinion may take my life, he cannot touch deter, or undermine my conscience
(See Socrates in Plato’s “Apologia”), the choice to do as one pleases, even if it is wrong, whether in his own eyes, the opinion of the community, or in violation of the dictates of natural law as laid down by God Almighty.
As an avid reader, attentive to the true nature and definition of liberty will attest, Thoreau's conception of liberty does not match will with John Brown's prosecution (read persecution) of that liberty. This schism of thought and deed becomes more pronounced when Thoreau declares that “John Brown was a peerless man.” In a free society, no one is above another, and certainly because he holds different ideas, or a more accurate notion of liberty. Furthermore, knowing more, having a higher sentiment of this liberty and wanting to force this right to others is not acceptable, either. By calling Brown “peerless,” he deifies Brown, a complete, unjustified, and utterly worthless fraud. There can be no liberty or victory between equals, as the Athenians stressed over and over when trying to put behind them the war and horror of the civil war in 403 B.C. that nearly tore the City State of Athens apart (See Remembering Defeat).
And therein lies a fundamental problem frustrating to all, intellect or otherwise. Freedom must be chosen (Refer back to Bush II’s Second Inaugural). It cannot be forced. It must be offered. (Refer also to Frederick Douglass’s Slave Narrative) Not at the barrel of a gun, but through the pulpit, through the written word, through the appeal to the human spirit does one find freedom, for freedom will find those who love it. (also from Bush's Second Inaugural.) John Brown was forced to confront this truth when he failed to organize slaves in the South into insurrection. They refused to join with him. (Consider this in light of the Allegory of the Cave) This highlights the source of the dilemma for many intellectuals. They have embraced a free society, yet they cannot understand, nor seem willing to recall, that this freedom must be chosen, that every person must start over again. That while society may advance technologically, every person must choose freedom individually, that faith the extended, spontaneous order must be fought, grasped, and accepted in a process of philosophical anthropology. Freedom is brought about by traditions, but not without the concerted choice of each individual. Each individual must choose to enter into those traditions for himself. Unfortunately, this choice cannot be forced or coerced. Young minds must be persuaded, a hard task when the benefits of order and tradition are immanent, though not necessarily imminent.
(At last, I have tied together Kierkegaard, the blessings of the bourgeois mentality, the free market, and the cause of liberty, and why reason and speculation have become enemies to such developments. The need for each individual to choose the traditions irrespective of rational, mindful, and intellectual development underscores why capitalism and democracy end up ultimately breeding anti-capitalist and anti-democratic cultures. Each generation has to be taught that their way of life, their freedom, is based on, defined on sacrifice, self-limitations. The fall of many civilizations seems to result when the people with those communities want to effects but are not willing to work for them. It requires faith to adopt traditions that do not make sense to the human mind, because Reason is obsessed with what it can sense or deduce. Faith uses imagination. No wonder Abraham was great, and no one can “go further” than” faith. Kierkegaard, inadvertently perhaps, acknowledges the limits of reason that Hayek discusses at length in Conceit. The problem for Hayek is that he refuses to acknowledge the Creator of the Universe, although his text frequently refers to ambivalence about his theological views.
Without a doubt, the Knight of Faith is a bourgeois, a capitalist, because he makes a living speculating, engaging in activities that require risk. No wonder he is despised by intellectuals. )
Returning to the indefensible defense of John Brown, let us take note that Thoreau in the long runs tries to sanitize (saint, beatify, make sane) his seeming justification for a terrorist by claiming to plead for Brown's character, not his actions. Cannot be done. His actions define his character, reveal his character: a self-imposed, self-righteous vigilante who ran rough-shod over the rights of others, who undermined human liberty in the name of liberty.
(Here once could inject another Foucauldian analysis. Just as in the earlier part of the nineteenth century courts spent more time trying to understand and reform the criminal as opposed to respond to the criminal act, Thoreau is trying to justify the criminal as opposed to explain away the crime.
Human exuberance does not compensate for truth, another fallacy of these Romanticized intellectuals.
Now, near the end of his plea for John Brown, not his character as he claims in the text, he refers to John Brown as an “angel of light”. In this seemingly innocent metaphor is encapsulated everything wrong, illogical, unethical, heinous and evil about Thoreau's contentions and John Brown's actions. This seemingly innocuous metaphor betrays the uneasy ambivalence of David Thoreau wanting to champion violent outrage while ignoring the violence.
An angel of light? In Isaiah 14, Lucifer, an archangel in the panoply of holy messengers in the heavens, was an angel of light—a star of the morning, but ultimately a deceiver and an adversary, one who thought he could run the world better, one who wanted to make himself God and run the universe according to his own limited dictates. Satan is an angel of light, a tempter, albeit Thoreau apparently intended the phrase to capture John Brown as a messenger of good to the world. John Brown either deceived Thoreau as well as Lucifer deceived one third of the angels—and then Adam and Eve, or worse Thoreau is complicit in a barbaric fraud. Then again, one could claim the metaphor is accurate when considered in connection with the Adversary.
This metaphor, “angel of light”, also applies itself very well to Thoreau and all his intellectual ilk. Like Lucifer, later Satan, they see the operations of the world and are dissatisfied. They want to change the order and nature of things to suit their own tastes, or their own thinking. This hubris on the part of Lucifer and many intellectuals is based on the false premise that one mind can understand the functions of the extender order, an arrogance which Hayek dubbed “the fatal conceit”, certainly fatal in the case of John Brown, who felt righteously compelled to force his righteous views on others, at the barrel of a gun when he saw fit.
John Brown was an angel of light, attract and enticing, yet his actions betray the dark and evil turn of his thought and actions, that a man made himself God and in the name of good perpetrate evil. The “do-gooders” and busybodies of the world do far more damage than the openly hostile and hateful.
Love means letting people be wrong and respecting their integrity to be free, even while they are limiting the freedom of others. It does not mean we should stand idly by and watch the encroachment of liberties. We must resist the proud, arrogant, egomaniacal, monomaniacal notion that one person has the right and responsibility to impose right on others.
In short, Thoreau wants to lionize, canonize Brown, yet cannot legitimize his putrid actions. This inner conflict is exposed in his telling metaphor comparing John Brown to “an angel of light.” (This connects with Willaim Empson’s 7th Type of Ambiguity).
Might can never make right, no matter how mighty one's sense of right may be. Foucault is wrong to assume otherwise, for truth as a matter of force can never be truth to begin with.
The highest law, then is not (individual) conscience, but commitment, to a person. Attachment to principles without attachment to the Person of Christ makes every man a tyrant, a hellish, hell-bent bully.
And now we can extemporize the wrong of Progressivism, a movement which believed that government wanted, and needed to, make society better.
Government uses coercion, not persuasion. Free people cannot nor should not be coerced into doing right. Therefore, government has not place in the progress of humanity. Human beings guided by the divine spark of life can do a better job, if permitted to. President Lincoln wanted to take steps to end slavery. He did not want to encroach upon the “peculiar institution” where it lay, but stop its spread to other territories. Despite the liberal basis of the Republican party, Lincoln wanted to follow a wisely conservative program to end slavery.
The role of government is not to make sure that each person does the right thing, but that each person does not encroach upon the rights of others to do the right thing.
Returning to Thoreau's plea, why did he and so many other intellectuals succumb to this temptation to make the world right by compulsion instead of persuasion?
They saw the growing industrialization of the world, and all the problems associated with it. They wrongly assumed that industrialization caused these problems, when rather state control, whether vested in a king, a congress, or a president made it more difficult for centralized cities to adapt to this growth. Reformers wanted to fix these problems, which is good. Yet they saw government as the means to do it. Private reformers using private means is the way to go!
Thomas Jefferson was a victim of this problem, too. He believed that government should be as neutral and as limited as possible in the affairs of men, yet at the same time he envisioned and idolized an agrarian economy of small, humble gentlemen farmers (of which he was NOT one, incidentally). Industry promotes freedom because it frees up people's time, getting them away from investing so much of their time in ensuring that there will be enough food on the shelves and in the pantry come winter. Even though farmers had to work sixteen hour days, they had a better life in a factory than in the sporadic, changing, and easily drastic life of a farmer, where one famine could wipe out a family and killing many of his offspring. In fact, the contiguity of family life was probably enhanced by the industrial revolution because instead of spending every waking hour having kids, working them to death, then losing more than half of them to famine and disease, families would be able to nurture and promote them, thus not having to have so many. Even if Mom and Dad went to work, at the end of the day they would come and have “family time.”
Thomas Jefferson wanted a free society, yet did not want a society free to pursue technological progress. He wanted people to choose his ideal development of the country, yet could not reconcile himself to the fact that maybe the country would not choose it.
Also, technological advances promoted the indirect free market, typified by Adam Smith in the Invisible Hand of commerce. Intellectuals were afraid, perhaps, that the industrial revolution on its own would not correct the problems exacerbated by the growth of populations seeking a more stable life.
Technological improvements gave some the impetus that they could improvise, and impose societal improvements as well. Yet the systems that define society are ultimately far too complex for any one person to understand.
And so we return to the dismayed assertion of Milton Friedman, that “people are afraid of freedom.” They are impatient for change, not understanding that the multitude of forces at work in the world are caught up in the hands of a Creator who does a better of job of correcting the ill in this world and promoting the good.
Jesus Christ died on the Cross, giving his life as a ransom for many. He did not impose his will on anyone. In fact, every step he took, every action he made was in concert with the will of his Father in Heaven, the ultimate and right judge of the world.
The British people reestablished this order when they rejected the “Christian” tyranny of Cromwell and the Commonwealth. The French people never recovered after they beheaded their behaved but hapless king.
No, we do not have the power to reinvent the world. Nor do we have to. The world as conceived by any person is too limited and false to be acted upon, and ultimately tramples on the liberty of every human being.
Once again, the technological advances inadvertently promoted the flawed notion that human beings could also reform society collectively. Intellectuals, ignoring the source of their reason in the trade and traditions of commerce, began to despise those very things that elemented their liberty because they did make sense to their limited intellect. Why? Because one man’s intellect is blind to the long, evolved process which elemented their reasoned liberty. The morals and values of a free market, honesty, integrity, obedience to religious dictates, do not submit themselves easily to rational or scientific scrutiny, yet they are true nonetheless.
Thus we return to the fundamental problems and contradictions in David Thoreau's pleas for John Brown. His intellect decries the mistreatment of other people as slaves, but hearkens back to atavistic means, the rampant bloodshed of other men, to perpetrate, to impose this freedom. This uneasy tense contradiction is bound up in Thoreau's styling Brown to be “an angel of light”
Refering back to the sudden insights:
Societies can promote liberty, but they cannot make it happen. Only an individual can do that, for freedom must be chosen, and only an individual can choose freedom. Society cannot do that for you, no one else can, not even family or friends, or other ideas.
Hence the frustration of intellects, who want everyone to hurry up and choose freedom (A fundamental trait of Progressives: Hurry up Progress), when it cannot be hurried. Freedom cannot be bureaucratized. The human spirit cannot respond to dictatorship, but the human body which frames the human spirit will suffer under dictatorship.
Hence the folly of radicals like Thoma Paine who assumed that we have the power to remake the world, or Karl Marx to change the world. The betterment of this world lies in the choice of each person to choose freedom, as Frederick Douglass did so many years ago as a harassed slave in Maryland. The world does not need to be remade, is passing away. Every person must be renewed, and renewed from within. Or as Hegel himself posited, “You cannot have a Revolution until you have a Reformation.” His mistake was assuming that tehh Reformation of the State would suffice, when such a matter is impossible.
And now I can frame the problem of the spirit of modernity, which foolishly charged that the human spirit could “go further” just like technology and commerce. Kierkegaard refuted that nonsense aimiably in Fear and Trembling. You cannot go further than faith! The “State” does not exist. Its Reformation, therefore, is an impossibility, and any results from such a nonsensical process would have no effect on an individual.
Society does not exist! Liberty cannot be imposed through an abstract that does not exist.
Persuasion person to person is the only path to true freedom, to unfettered liberty.
Rousseau was wrong. Man IS born in chains, yet in Christ he can find true freedom, for he whom the son has set free is free indeed. Man is born in chains, but he must allow traditions to fashion them away. A lack of restraint becomes another chain when unchecked. He must choose boundaries of some kind. The entire metaphor of chains is all wrong.
Faith cannot be passed down like any other tradition, yet the tradition of having faith and walk in it is the most worthy calling of every human being, which each person must find on his own.
This explains the major problem which this country began facing with the onslaught of the Baby Boomers, the hippies, the warped “civil rights” movement, and the (Not So) Great Society. The Greatest Generation wanted to pass on the wealth and prosperity that they had struggled to maintain and defend through two world wars without their children having to endure the hardship. The result: the next generation became dissatisfied and disaffected, not nurtured by the suffering and the struggle that leads to the faith in a cosmic order led by God. The Greatest Generation wanted to impart the prosperity without the anxiety, which no one can do.
The tradition of freedom, based resolutely and infinitely on the tradition of faith, must be relearned by every generation, persuaded into men, not forced or coerced. And it certainly cannot be transmitted passively, as the Greatest Generation had hoped.
The baby boomers despised the traditions passed down to them because they did not appreciate, nor certainly endure the hardship necessary to make them possible. They took the traditions for granted, then despised them outright thinking that they could do better, which the Greatest Generation had already learned could not be done.
Amen, and amen!
The Slave Owners were Enslaved, Too
Regarding slavery, Thomas Jefferson, drafter, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and slave owner, once admitted:
"But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."
Slavery enslaved the slave master, too. Let no one think for one second that the slave masters fully prospered from enslaving another group of people.
Three times a mass of slaves broke out rebellion throughout the South. How long did Southerns really believe that they could hold down one group of people and still pay lip service to the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence?
"But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."
Slavery enslaved the slave master, too. Let no one think for one second that the slave masters fully prospered from enslaving another group of people.
Three times a mass of slaves broke out rebellion throughout the South. How long did Southerns really believe that they could hold down one group of people and still pay lip service to the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence?
The Truth About John Brown Part II
John Brown was a self-righteous immoral, moralizing activist, a terrible zeitgeist of elitist reform who resorted to force instead of moral suasion to achieve freedom and assert the principles of the Declaration for all people.
Some of Brown's quotes expose the invidious arrogance of a man who gave himself permission to take the law into his own hands; by attempting to effect liberty for others by force, he undermined his cause, and the potential peace and prosperity of the land.
"Caution, Sir! I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice!"
Caution is the nature of our federal system, checks and balances which force voters and legislators to deliberate before they delegate. "Eternally tired. . " He presumed to be divinity in the flesh? Nonsense. Despite the innate evil of one man enslaving another, violence would never be an effective deterrent. In the 1960's, Civil Rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Baptist Christian League would use nonviolent means to effect moral change, upending the immoral segregation laws by forcing the powers which had enacted them to enforce them until protesters exhausted the state's resources. King and his colleagues were successful; John Brown helped to instigate a civil war, which wiped out 600,000 American troops. Confrontation in facing off against rogue police and white supremacists, but King and his colleagues were cautious in their approach, instructing every participant to abide by principles of non-violence, never attacking or slandering their detractors.
"I don’t think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion."
John Brown evinced an acceptable opinion; yet killing and raiding a federal arsenal was not the proper response or expression of this opinion. A nation of diverse political affiliations and calculations cannot long endure if every partisan zealot justifies using coercion, force, and violence to effect his limits ends. The United States is a nation of laws, and even unjust laws must be dealt with in a just manner
(though not necessarily a legal one)
"When I strike, the bees will begin to swarm, and I want you to help hive them."
On the contrary, Brown was stung, caught, convicted, and executed. Many slaves did not rise up; many black activists refused to assist Brown, not even Frederick Douglass.
"If it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments-I submit; so let it be done."
Force is a convenience for those who exercise it, but not for those who must endure it. Violence does not effect the lasting change of comity and understanding; human beings forced to endure policy, no matter how liberal and enlightened, will not suffer it for long. Freedom ain't' free, but it cannot be imposed, either. Besides, the shed blood of human beings will never assuage the guiltiness of mankind's inhumanity to man.
"I, John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."
Some scholars dress up this pronouncement as prophetic. Nonsense. His Messianic self-righteousness undid any attempts at peaceful agreements and conciliatory changes to the national system. Less heated political rhetoric combined with diligent non-violence would have transformed this nation from half-slave, half-free to fully liberated.
Some of Brown's quotes expose the invidious arrogance of a man who gave himself permission to take the law into his own hands; by attempting to effect liberty for others by force, he undermined his cause, and the potential peace and prosperity of the land.
"Caution, Sir! I am eternally tired of hearing that word caution. It is nothing but the word of cowardice!"
Caution is the nature of our federal system, checks and balances which force voters and legislators to deliberate before they delegate. "Eternally tired. . " He presumed to be divinity in the flesh? Nonsense. Despite the innate evil of one man enslaving another, violence would never be an effective deterrent. In the 1960's, Civil Rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Baptist Christian League would use nonviolent means to effect moral change, upending the immoral segregation laws by forcing the powers which had enacted them to enforce them until protesters exhausted the state's resources. King and his colleagues were successful; John Brown helped to instigate a civil war, which wiped out 600,000 American troops. Confrontation in facing off against rogue police and white supremacists, but King and his colleagues were cautious in their approach, instructing every participant to abide by principles of non-violence, never attacking or slandering their detractors.
"I don’t think the people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in its true light till some other argument is resorted to other than moral persuasion."
John Brown evinced an acceptable opinion; yet killing and raiding a federal arsenal was not the proper response or expression of this opinion. A nation of diverse political affiliations and calculations cannot long endure if every partisan zealot justifies using coercion, force, and violence to effect his limits ends. The United States is a nation of laws, and even unjust laws must be dealt with in a just manner
(though not necessarily a legal one)
"When I strike, the bees will begin to swarm, and I want you to help hive them."
On the contrary, Brown was stung, caught, convicted, and executed. Many slaves did not rise up; many black activists refused to assist Brown, not even Frederick Douglass.
"If it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments-I submit; so let it be done."
Force is a convenience for those who exercise it, but not for those who must endure it. Violence does not effect the lasting change of comity and understanding; human beings forced to endure policy, no matter how liberal and enlightened, will not suffer it for long. Freedom ain't' free, but it cannot be imposed, either. Besides, the shed blood of human beings will never assuage the guiltiness of mankind's inhumanity to man.
"I, John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."
Some scholars dress up this pronouncement as prophetic. Nonsense. His Messianic self-righteousness undid any attempts at peaceful agreements and conciliatory changes to the national system. Less heated political rhetoric combined with diligent non-violence would have transformed this nation from half-slave, half-free to fully liberated.
Monday, September 26, 2011
The Cantor Doctrine, and Moderate Democratic Shrillness
"And the rhetoric was far harsher during the day on the Senate floor, when Mary Landrieu, D-La., unleashed an unusually personal attack on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., saying the weeks-long controversy started when he said, "Before we can provide help we need to find offsets in the budget."
"She called that "the Cantor doctrine" and said the controversy "could have been avoided if Cantor had just said, 'I'm sorry, but I made a mistake.' But instead of saying that, he doubled down," she said." From "Senators pass bill to avert government shutdown." Source: MSNBC
The only aids that this Congress needs to offer plugging the leaking Ship of State, which is turning into a Ship of Fools crammed with shrill, hateful demagoguery against principled participants in the Federal Government.
Washington D.C. would run out of sand if it regulated its sale in the Sahara Desert. Every time a hurricane strikes the Eastern seaboard, desperate states sit knee-deep and worse in water, waiting for mismanaged federal agencies to make a desperate and despairing attempt to assist.
Ms. Landrieu, whose Louisiana Purchased support for ObamaCare almost certainly harmed job creation in her Bayou State, has no right to pick on the House Majority Leader. He has calmly recognized that if the Federal Government makes no attempt to make ends meet, there will be no government, and no federal response, for federal aid, to assist states and localities struck by natural disasters.
"She called that "the Cantor doctrine" and said the controversy "could have been avoided if Cantor had just said, 'I'm sorry, but I made a mistake.' But instead of saying that, he doubled down," she said." From "Senators pass bill to avert government shutdown." Source: MSNBC
The only aids that this Congress needs to offer plugging the leaking Ship of State, which is turning into a Ship of Fools crammed with shrill, hateful demagoguery against principled participants in the Federal Government.
Washington D.C. would run out of sand if it regulated its sale in the Sahara Desert. Every time a hurricane strikes the Eastern seaboard, desperate states sit knee-deep and worse in water, waiting for mismanaged federal agencies to make a desperate and despairing attempt to assist.
Ms. Landrieu, whose Louisiana Purchased support for ObamaCare almost certainly harmed job creation in her Bayou State, has no right to pick on the House Majority Leader. He has calmly recognized that if the Federal Government makes no attempt to make ends meet, there will be no government, and no federal response, for federal aid, to assist states and localities struck by natural disasters.
"The Christian’s Guide to Living a Godly Life": A Much Needed Illumination Part II
When we first met God, and understood His love, grace and mercy, we gave up everything, because we knew that God’s treasure was worth far greater than everything that we had. Also, God would not settle for anything less, so when God said give up everything, he meant everything, including: our desires, dreams, ambitions, aspirations, talents, comfort, opinions, money, material possessions, relationships, etc. Jesus wanted us to put our old self to death, so that it would never return and compete against our devotion to Christ.
When we began this race, we crucified our old life, putting it to death, and devoted ourselves to Christ. The overwhelming gratitude that we had, motivated us and filled us up with an inexpressible and glorious joy, a joy that filled our hearts and all of our days. Our lives were still challenging, but that was overshadowed by the overwhelming fulfillment that we experienced at understanding our unworthiness of having a true relationship with God.
We do not crucify the old life; we have no power to do so. Jesus Christ Himself had to be crucified, and he to be crucified by others for us; otherwise he most certainly would not have laid a hand on Himself. Throughout spiritual circles, there is still such an insane, arrogant, misguided emphasis on what we do for Christ, when in fact He has done everything for us! We cannot devote ourselves to God? We are slaves of sin! By the blood of Christ, we have been redeemed
What happened between then and now? Before God was awesome; before God was amazing; a life with God was the greatest treasure on earth. Now we feel unfulfilled, we are bored, we are not joyful and we are struggling with emptiness in our hearts. Before, “God” was the center of our life; now “we” are the center of our thoughts. How did “we” get to be more important than “God?”
It is unclear when it happened, or unclear why it happened, but it is obvious that it did happen: our self has been resurrected and is now trying to share the throne with Christ. We feel hopeless and unfulfilled with our Christian walk for this simple reason: Christ will not bless our lives, because he refuses to be part of a life that shares his throne with the god of self. As the Bible says:
On the contrary, it is very clear. When we dwell on what we have done and what we do, and what must keep doing, we are under law, and have therefore fallen from grace:
"Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.
"For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. 6For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love." (Galatians 5:4-6)
Christ's work becomes nullified when we attempt to get his grace, goodness, and godliness by our own getting. When we attempt in any way to make ourselves right with God by what we do, by rule keeping, traditions, works, we fall from grace. It cannot be emphasized enough -- it is not SIN that causes us to fall from grace, but the dead works of trying to keep accounts and work our way up to God. What then is to be done? Faith, the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-10) which works by love-- and this speaks of God's love, not mine!
Matt 6:24
24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. NIV
Here Jesus speaks of money, but it could be anything. The item is not the issue, our hearts are the issue. Jesus refuses to share his throne with another God; and until we put ourselves to death, we will live Christianity without Christ. How ironic that we complain that the world has taken Christ out of Christmas, when we have the audacity of taking Christ out of being Christians.
Indeed, we have taken Christ out of Christianity, but not in the sense of living in sin and seeking pleasure in things of the world, but rather in focusing on what we must do, on the effort that we expend. The rest of the passage in the Sermon on the Mount is crucial to understanding that it is not a question of serving God, but rather of letting Him be served in us by the Holy Spirit, who then works through us:
25“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27“And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? 28“And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, 29yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30“But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31“Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32“For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
25“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27“And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? 28“And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, 29yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30“But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31“Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32“For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. (Matthew 6:25-32)
Jesus does not end his point about the impossibility of serving two masters, but goes on to explain that there is no point to chasing after food and clothing, all of which God provides for the flora and fauna of his Creation. Since we are of infinitely greater value to Him than the lesser elements of creation, we can therefore be confidently assured that He, God the Father, will meet these needs: we do not work, strive, store, strain, or stress of over these things.
So, what are we to do, then?
“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
“So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Matthew 6:33-34)
"seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness." Wow, so simple, so easy, yet still so easily misunderstood. We do not even strive for these very crucial things, but receive them:
"But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:31-32)
God the Father wants to give you the Kingdom!
Regarding righteousness, it could not be any simpler:
"21For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. " (2 Corinthians 5:21)
By Christ's death, we are not only saved, not only made right with God, but we are made the righteousness of God, and unshakable foundation of affirmation, validation, and blessing. In effect, we walk by faith, the faith that we are infinitely loved, perfected by Christ. Therefore:
"For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." (Romans 14:17)
How does the Holy Spirit factor into this wonderful doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven? Refer back to the Gospel of Luke:
"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?" (Luke 11:13)
How much more evident could it be, then, that Our Heavenly Father's good pleasure is to give us the Kingdom of God, and to give the Holy Spirit, here evidenced in Luke 11 as the preeminent of God to his people, are one and the same? The Holy Spirit, His rule in ourselves, is the Kingdom of God! And every believer receives the Holy Spirit, for no can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit.
How more evident can it be? Everything that we are expected to seek is in fact given to us as an article of faith, and we are called to simply receive it!
Only when we die to ourselves, can we see the true glory of God, and experience a fulfilling relationship with Him. You see, fulfillment, joy, love, satisfaction, security, etc. are all byproducts of having a wholehearted, and single- minded relationship with God. Having God is the entire pursuit, and because we have God, we will reap all of the benefits of a relationship with Him. Once we understand that God is all that we want, we will feel as if we have received the world, because we understand that we have the best this world could offer in Him.
We do not have God. God has us:
"But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine." (Isaiah 43:1)
And
"Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me." (Isaiah 49:16)
And
"Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it?" (Isaiah 43:13)
Which connects beautifully with the eternally securing promise of Christ Jesus for His believers:
"And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." (John 10:28)
If God is not enough for us, we might want to consider why we are pursuing God in the first place. God is not just enough, He is all, and He is greater than all. God is immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine. God is searching for the men and women who will love Him, and pursue Him with this heart, sacrificing everything in order to have Him; the way He has sacrificed everything for us.
It cannot be repeated often enough. We do not seek after Him. He seeks after us. He loved us, therefore we can love Him. He desires us long before we ever desire Him:
"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:6-8)
God is Everything, the Author and Finisher of our Faith, the First and the Last, the Bread and Water of Life; the Shepherd, the Door, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Not one element of our lives is left uncared for in the Finished Work of Jesus Christ. There can be no question of his being or not being enough for every person who calls upon Him:
"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)
What is our ultimate purpose in our Christian life? God is our ultimate purpose. Seeking Him, knowing Him, loving Him, pleasing Him, understanding Him, walking with Him, glorifying Him and being downright passionately engrossed in Him is the entire purpose that consumes the true Christian life. As the Bible says:
Our purpose is to be One with Him.
"And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are on." (John 17:22)
Rev 7:11-12
…They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:
"Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!" NIV
Questions for reflection:
What changes are you going to make today - in order to allow Jesus to truly be the Lord of your entire life?
Let's press a different question, a questions which we cannot, nor do not, have to answer.
Are we willing to let the Lord God Almighty transform us into the likeness of His Son?
"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." (Romans 12:1-3)
How are we to have our minds transformed?
Paul provides the means in another letter:
"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the
Lord." (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)
The more accurate translation for "beholding as in a glass" would be "beholding one's self". In effect, because Christ lives in us, has been birthed within us by faith (Galatians 4:19), we already are endowed with his Power and His glory:
"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:
"The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
"And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,
"Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places,
"Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
"And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church,
"Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. " (Ephesians 1:17-23)
We are imbued with Christ's resurrection power, glory, goodness, dominion -- everything that Adam was first given, plus more:
"And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6)
We sit in high places with Him! With Christ!
And
"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4:17)
Decision:
God will be the consuming passion in my life; and I will die to myself and make Jesus Lord of my life always.
We have already been crucified with Christ. No longer do I live, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20)! Let His Life now be made manifested in us. For he comforts us with this knowledge:
"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." (Galatians 5:16)
Scripture memory:
2 Cor 5:13-15
14 For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. NIV
We no longer live for ourselves, because Christ died and now lives for us by living in us!
Practice:
Today I will die to myself, and live a life completely and passionately engrossed in my loving and awesome God.
We do not die to ourselves. We are crucified with Christ in identifying with his death as the Way to eternal life! Rather, let us practice the presence, the never-ending love of Christ, whose goodness far surpasses our fondest wishes, who is able to do for us more than we could ever ask or think (Ephesians 3:20)
When we began this race, we crucified our old life, putting it to death, and devoted ourselves to Christ. The overwhelming gratitude that we had, motivated us and filled us up with an inexpressible and glorious joy, a joy that filled our hearts and all of our days. Our lives were still challenging, but that was overshadowed by the overwhelming fulfillment that we experienced at understanding our unworthiness of having a true relationship with God.
We do not crucify the old life; we have no power to do so. Jesus Christ Himself had to be crucified, and he to be crucified by others for us; otherwise he most certainly would not have laid a hand on Himself. Throughout spiritual circles, there is still such an insane, arrogant, misguided emphasis on what we do for Christ, when in fact He has done everything for us! We cannot devote ourselves to God? We are slaves of sin! By the blood of Christ, we have been redeemed
What happened between then and now? Before God was awesome; before God was amazing; a life with God was the greatest treasure on earth. Now we feel unfulfilled, we are bored, we are not joyful and we are struggling with emptiness in our hearts. Before, “God” was the center of our life; now “we” are the center of our thoughts. How did “we” get to be more important than “God?”
It is unclear when it happened, or unclear why it happened, but it is obvious that it did happen: our self has been resurrected and is now trying to share the throne with Christ. We feel hopeless and unfulfilled with our Christian walk for this simple reason: Christ will not bless our lives, because he refuses to be part of a life that shares his throne with the god of self. As the Bible says:
On the contrary, it is very clear. When we dwell on what we have done and what we do, and what must keep doing, we are under law, and have therefore fallen from grace:
"Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.
"For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. 6For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love." (Galatians 5:4-6)
Christ's work becomes nullified when we attempt to get his grace, goodness, and godliness by our own getting. When we attempt in any way to make ourselves right with God by what we do, by rule keeping, traditions, works, we fall from grace. It cannot be emphasized enough -- it is not SIN that causes us to fall from grace, but the dead works of trying to keep accounts and work our way up to God. What then is to be done? Faith, the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-10) which works by love-- and this speaks of God's love, not mine!
Matt 6:24
24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. NIV
Here Jesus speaks of money, but it could be anything. The item is not the issue, our hearts are the issue. Jesus refuses to share his throne with another God; and until we put ourselves to death, we will live Christianity without Christ. How ironic that we complain that the world has taken Christ out of Christmas, when we have the audacity of taking Christ out of being Christians.
Indeed, we have taken Christ out of Christianity, but not in the sense of living in sin and seeking pleasure in things of the world, but rather in focusing on what we must do, on the effort that we expend. The rest of the passage in the Sermon on the Mount is crucial to understanding that it is not a question of serving God, but rather of letting Him be served in us by the Holy Spirit, who then works through us:
25“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27“And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? 28“And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, 29yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30“But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31“Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32“For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
25“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? 27“And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? 28“And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, 29yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30“But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! 31“Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32“For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. (Matthew 6:25-32)
Jesus does not end his point about the impossibility of serving two masters, but goes on to explain that there is no point to chasing after food and clothing, all of which God provides for the flora and fauna of his Creation. Since we are of infinitely greater value to Him than the lesser elements of creation, we can therefore be confidently assured that He, God the Father, will meet these needs: we do not work, strive, store, strain, or stress of over these things.
So, what are we to do, then?
“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
“So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Matthew 6:33-34)
"seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness." Wow, so simple, so easy, yet still so easily misunderstood. We do not even strive for these very crucial things, but receive them:
"But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. (Luke 12:31-32)
God the Father wants to give you the Kingdom!
Regarding righteousness, it could not be any simpler:
"21For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. " (2 Corinthians 5:21)
By Christ's death, we are not only saved, not only made right with God, but we are made the righteousness of God, and unshakable foundation of affirmation, validation, and blessing. In effect, we walk by faith, the faith that we are infinitely loved, perfected by Christ. Therefore:
"For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." (Romans 14:17)
How does the Holy Spirit factor into this wonderful doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven? Refer back to the Gospel of Luke:
"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?" (Luke 11:13)
How much more evident could it be, then, that Our Heavenly Father's good pleasure is to give us the Kingdom of God, and to give the Holy Spirit, here evidenced in Luke 11 as the preeminent of God to his people, are one and the same? The Holy Spirit, His rule in ourselves, is the Kingdom of God! And every believer receives the Holy Spirit, for no can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit.
How more evident can it be? Everything that we are expected to seek is in fact given to us as an article of faith, and we are called to simply receive it!
Only when we die to ourselves, can we see the true glory of God, and experience a fulfilling relationship with Him. You see, fulfillment, joy, love, satisfaction, security, etc. are all byproducts of having a wholehearted, and single- minded relationship with God. Having God is the entire pursuit, and because we have God, we will reap all of the benefits of a relationship with Him. Once we understand that God is all that we want, we will feel as if we have received the world, because we understand that we have the best this world could offer in Him.
We do not have God. God has us:
"But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine." (Isaiah 43:1)
And
"Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me." (Isaiah 49:16)
And
"Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it?" (Isaiah 43:13)
Which connects beautifully with the eternally securing promise of Christ Jesus for His believers:
"And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand." (John 10:28)
If God is not enough for us, we might want to consider why we are pursuing God in the first place. God is not just enough, He is all, and He is greater than all. God is immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine. God is searching for the men and women who will love Him, and pursue Him with this heart, sacrificing everything in order to have Him; the way He has sacrificed everything for us.
It cannot be repeated often enough. We do not seek after Him. He seeks after us. He loved us, therefore we can love Him. He desires us long before we ever desire Him:
"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:6-8)
God is Everything, the Author and Finisher of our Faith, the First and the Last, the Bread and Water of Life; the Shepherd, the Door, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Not one element of our lives is left uncared for in the Finished Work of Jesus Christ. There can be no question of his being or not being enough for every person who calls upon Him:
"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32)
What is our ultimate purpose in our Christian life? God is our ultimate purpose. Seeking Him, knowing Him, loving Him, pleasing Him, understanding Him, walking with Him, glorifying Him and being downright passionately engrossed in Him is the entire purpose that consumes the true Christian life. As the Bible says:
Our purpose is to be One with Him.
"And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are on." (John 17:22)
Rev 7:11-12
…They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:
"Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!" NIV
Questions for reflection:
What changes are you going to make today - in order to allow Jesus to truly be the Lord of your entire life?
Let's press a different question, a questions which we cannot, nor do not, have to answer.
Are we willing to let the Lord God Almighty transform us into the likeness of His Son?
"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." (Romans 12:1-3)
How are we to have our minds transformed?
Paul provides the means in another letter:
"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the
Lord." (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)
The more accurate translation for "beholding as in a glass" would be "beholding one's self". In effect, because Christ lives in us, has been birthed within us by faith (Galatians 4:19), we already are endowed with his Power and His glory:
"That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:
"The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
"And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,
"Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places,
"Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:
"And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church,
"Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. " (Ephesians 1:17-23)
We are imbued with Christ's resurrection power, glory, goodness, dominion -- everything that Adam was first given, plus more:
"And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6)
We sit in high places with Him! With Christ!
And
"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4:17)
Decision:
God will be the consuming passion in my life; and I will die to myself and make Jesus Lord of my life always.
We have already been crucified with Christ. No longer do I live, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20)! Let His Life now be made manifested in us. For he comforts us with this knowledge:
"This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." (Galatians 5:16)
Scripture memory:
2 Cor 5:13-15
14 For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. NIV
We no longer live for ourselves, because Christ died and now lives for us by living in us!
Practice:
Today I will die to myself, and live a life completely and passionately engrossed in my loving and awesome God.
We do not die to ourselves. We are crucified with Christ in identifying with his death as the Way to eternal life! Rather, let us practice the presence, the never-ending love of Christ, whose goodness far surpasses our fondest wishes, who is able to do for us more than we could ever ask or think (Ephesians 3:20)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)