Hail to the King

Another Independence Day has come and gone.  I’m struck by how often the celebration becomes not one of freedom, but of love for the government and its use of force:  dusting off and rolling out of the increasingly rare World War II veterans, the vintage rolling stock, droves of firemen and police strolling down a thousand versions of Main Street.   These blatant displays of state power during what should be a celebration of the triumph of Providence and liberty are growing increasingly more disturbing.

[Conveniently Unfortunately, an exceedingly pregnant wife and a sick child conspired to exempt me from the obligatory parade attendence this year.  The wife is still pregnant—for now—but the child is well.]

Equally as disturbing is the extent to which the Church seems to have bought into the militarism.  From flags under the cross, to campaign speeches from the altar, to “honoring our veterans” in the service, the State and its machinations are increasingly a visible part of the Church.  William Norman Grigg recently wrote, in part [links in original]:

As Richard Gambale documents in his indispensable study The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation, the militarist heresy is of relatively recent vintage. It was an outgrowth of the WWI-era “Progressive” conceit that the Christian Church had to justify its existence by playing a “positive” role in the expansion of the meliorist state.

Rather than playing the biblically mandated role of peacemakers, the progressive clergy eagerly supported World War I “as transforming event in the life of the church,” observes Gambale. Many of them applauded the Wilson administration’s war aims as a form of Christian “altruism,” one that promised temporal redemption “at the sacrifice, if need be, of five millions of men and billions of wealth,” as an effusive Literary Digest editorial put it.

Nor would this righteous campaign to re-make the world through state coercion cease once altrusitic mass murder ceased. Writes Gambale: “The progressives longed for, and expected, the war for righteousness to continue after the guns in Europe fell silent.” They would not be disappointed.

Again, one collides with an arresting irony: The most outspoken “conservative celebrations of militarism during what used to be called Independence Day a promoting a view devised by the leftist Progressives of the early 1900s, what Gambale aptly calls “the rhetorical sacralization of the nation-state.”

The more pronounced our ruling elite’s apostasy from America’s republican origins, the more insistent became their invocations of our sacred national “mission” in the world. As Gambale notes, one particularly notable example was provided on September 11, 2002 by Bush the Lesser as he “appropriated the words of John 1:5 as if they described not just the Incarnation of Christ but the mission of the United States: `And the light shines in the darkness; and the darkness will not overcome it.’”

To the extent that any radiance attends the labors of the Regime ruling us, it is the demonic nimbus of shock-and-awe, not the divine radiance of the Shekinah. The true tragedy of our time is that so many American Christians are blind to that critical distinction.

 I grew nauseous as I read this today.

In all honesty, I vaguely remember cheering Bush II as he spoke these words almost seven years ago, still beholden to the American “mandate from God” fallacy.  I had read and re-read Romans 13 at that point, and heartily supported following my secular leadership.

That worldview—incidentally, the prevailing American [evangelical] Christian worldview—discounts the thousands of years of recorded history chronicling the depravity of all human authority.

Dunamis, dunamai, didomi, arche, ischus, ischuros, kratos and energes are all translated in the New Testament as “power”, but have decidedly different meanings than the word that appears in Romans 13.

The word is exousia and it is from two Greek words. Ex means “of” or “from”, while orousia is “what one has, i.e. property, possessions, estate.” The word is defined: “power of choice, liberty of doing as one pleases.”  Is Paul simply telling you that you should remain subject to the right to choose under the perfect law of liberty?

From the beginning, God has endowed man with freewill, which is the power to choose. This inalienable right to choose is man’s responsibility to govern himself under the providence of God. The Bible also clearly tells us that man goes out of the presence of God, sins against God, and even rejects God when he goes under the authority of other men like Cain, Nimrod, Pharaoh, even Saul and Caesar.

God desires that every man should be a free soul under Him directly, having that divinely endowed right of choice unimpaired. He, like Paul, does not desire that we go under the power of any.

The foundational misconception upon which Christian statists of every stripe build their defense of government power is that the State is ordained by God.  But again—and I cannot stress this enough—this outlook ignores the words of YHWH to Samuel:

⁷And the LORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. ⁸According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. ⁹Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.” [my emphasis]

Fealty to Caesar is rejection of God.

I imagine that in their heart of hearts, most American evangelicals believe they do God’s work when they call on their “leaders” for the slaughter of innocents abroad, when they debase themselves in deference to the Almighty State (even the American State), or when they surrender their own freedoms in trade for ephemeral and often-absent “protection.”

But these actions echo the Pharisees’ declaration to Pilate:

 We have no king but Caesar.

This Veteran’s Thoughts on 9/11

I bring a nearly-unique perspective to this, one that, to my knowledge, is radically different from about 306,999,877 other Americans’ experiences.

In 2001, I was stationed on a fast attack submarine in SUBLANT (East coast).  I was about 3 months from the end of my enlistment, and counting the days.  On the morning of September 11^th, we were headed out to sea for some exercises off of Puerto Rico.  Everyone was looking forward to the fantastic liberty that PR afforded.

Several hours before our dive point, I left my watch post in the engine room, and cut through the mess deck to go make a head call.  As I was heading back aft to resume my watch, I saw the image of the burning towers from the CNN International satellite feed we had, at that time, just achieved the ability to copy.  I remember seeing a guy in my division staring into space with red-rimmed eyes (he was from the Bronx, and his mother worked across the street from Tower 5 — thankfully, she was late to work that day), but didn’t have time to ask him what was wrong.  As I made my way aft, I was wondering what in hell they were doing watching a movie in the middle of the day.

If it was several hours before the rest of the country knew the full story, it was several days before we even knew the barest facts.  Sea duty on a submarine is like living in a time capsule.  It’s kind of like that Brendan Fraser movie, Blast from the Past.  When you’re underway, there is virtually no information from the outside world, except the heavily censored “sports page,” almost literally only football/basketball/baseball results – and apparently many games were canceled that season.  There were two indications I had that something had changed on a visceral level:  when we got to the “great liberty port” of Roosevelt Roads, PR, we were restricted to pier liberty (meaning we could leave the ship and go as far as the M-60-barricaded ends of the pier), and my father sent me several emails that sort of chronicled his take on what was going on.

Our planned three-week underway became two months.

Obamaghanistan?

I have a friend at work who is an ardent Obama supporter, much like my parents and my in-laws.  I have yet to have anyone pin down for me exactly what an Obama presidency would entail — or even one unqualified position the man takes on any issue of substance.  The only — thoroughly unsatisfying — answers I get are along the lines of “he’s gonna change everything for the better,” or “check out his website… it’ll tell you everything you need to know.”  This last, if true, tells me that a prole like me doesn’t need to know much about the Obamessiah; his website doesn’t hold much besides talking points and rhetoric.  [Do not question happy fun ball...]

On lewrockwell.com, however, there is some meat, finally, zip-tied onto the Obama policy skeleton.  In his usual “no malarkey” style ["no bones"?  Okay, I'm ashamed of myself], the inveterate Charley Reese has this weekend set his sights on what an Obama foreign policy would look like.  Unfortunately, when you flesh this thing out, it starts looking suspiciously like a Clinton-Bush-McCain foreign policy.

Ron Paul Revolution (XVI): Like Flies From the Bug Zapper

So fall the real fringe candidates.

To recap:

• DEMOCRATS
  • Tom Vilsack (IA – fmr. Governor):  withdrew 23 February 2007
  • Joe Biden (DE – US Senator):  withdrew 3 January 2008
  • Chris Dodd (CT – US Senator):  withdrew 3 January 2008
  • Bill Richardson (NM – Governor):  withdrew 10 January 2008
  • Dennis Kucinich (OH – US Representative):  withdrew 25 January 2008
  • John Edwards (NC – fmr. US Senator):  withdrew 30 January 2008
• REPUBLICANS
  • Jim Gilmore (VA – fmr. Governor):  withdrew 14 July 2007
  • Tommy Thompson (WI – fmr. Governor):  withdrew 12 August 2007
  • Sam Brownback (KS – US Senator):  withdrew 19 October 2007
  • John Cox (IL):  withdrew 19 December 2007
  • Tom Tancredo (CO – US Representative):  withdrew 20 December 2007
  • Duncan Hunter (CA – US Representative):  withdrew 19 January 2008
  • Fred Thompson (TN – fmr. US Senator):  withdrew 22 January 2008
  • Rudy Giuliani (NY):  withdrew 30 January 2008

My, that’s a long list.  And if you add the nth party candidates, it gets much, much longer.  So, to get on to moving forward:

• Mike Gravel (D – AK, fmr. US Senator) will drop out only if someone wakes him up and tells him it’s over; otherwise, he’s here through the convention.
• Alan Keyes (R – MD, fmr. Assistant Sec’y of State) may stay in to the bitter end, like he has tried to before.  I gotta give this to him, he’s a True Believer, and is about as unswerving in his convictions as Paul is.  He’s just wrong on many counts.
• Mike Huckabee (R – AR, fmr. Governor) is on the ropes.  After a media-driven surge late last year, and a first-place finish in Iowa, his star is dwindling fast.  Spending all his money while getting millions of dollars in free advertising from the MSM, he’s now yesterday’s news and can’t make ends meet.  His staffers are being made to work without pay, and that is the harbinger of a failed campaign.  He’s likely to drop out shortly after tomorrow’s primaries.
• Mitt Romney’s (R – MA, fmr. Governor) days are also numbered.  He has far outspent the entire Republican field – largely with his own money, to the tune of $30-plus million – and yet still trails in national polls.  His late weaker finishes, combined with lack of the only popular support that pays the bills, will cause Mitt to tap out, possibly before March.

So the race comes down to a four-person show.  Dems have a Clinton-Obama race, GOPers have a choice between McCain and Paul.

I don’t think I’m overstating the situation here.  Paul has been fighting a war of attrition, biding his time while the flash-in-the-pan guys wear themselves down.  As more candidates have bailed out, Paul has gotten more air time [or at least more serious questions], despite all attempts to edge him out of the conversation.  When Huckabee and Romney have packed it up, the media will have no choice but to give Paul equal treatment, equal time, and equal consideration.

And in the free marketplace of ideas …well, free markets are Ron Paul’s home turf.  McCain would be so much detritus.

The only fly in the ointment is the possibility that the fat-cat Americans [and that applies to us all] who actually get out and vote are so snookered by the propaganda of the “threat” of “Islamofascism” that they will vote their cowardice, vote for someone else to fight a war they’re too scared to fight themselves.  A neocon Establishment yes-man leading a party full of chickenhawks will guarantee a Democrat victory in November.  A President McCain would be the continuation of George the Younger’s rule into a third term [which makes it odd that Coulter would vote against him], and, what with the low approval ratings Bush enjoys, I don’t think the Mancainian Candidate will be getting sworn in January 20th next.

As for the Democrats, I still say this is Obama’s [Democrat] race to lose.  A lot may settle out on Tuesday, but I think events are trending more in Obama’s favor [and even he knows he can beat McCain].  Yes, I know “latest polls” and all that tripe [after NH – and, really, just about everywhere else – are ya' really still trusting polls?  Really?].  But the junior Senator from Illinois, like Dr. Paul, has a groundswell of popular [if not truly grassroots] support, and draws out non-traditional and new voters.

Ron Paul Revolution (X): An Open Letter to the Establishmentarian Elites

[Author's Note:  The following has been inspired by the series of "Open Letters" that is ongoing over at Lew Rockwell's site in support of Ron Paul's candidacy.  With apologies to Murray Rothbard (the inspiration for the series), Walter Block (the conceiver of the series), and Lew, I offer this, an open letter to the self-appointed derailers leaders of the American state and the future of American history.]

For nearly a year now, you Beltway insiders and MSM punditry have relegated Congressman Ron Paul to the “kook-marginal” fringe.  With vested interest in the status quo, you have, when you’ve bothered to mention his candidacy at all, decried it as a “lost cause,” insisted he has “no chance,” and attacked both his reasoned, principled beliefs and his unassailable character.

But despite your monolithic campaign to shut out Dr. Paul’s message and its merit, word has gotten out.  His message has taken wing precisely because it is rooted in the founding principle of this once-and-future great nation:  Liberty.

“The flames of Liberty burn in the hearts of men everywhere,” you have told us, as justification for a war of aggression in the Middle East; yet you systematically erode the freedoms of your own citizens and beg clemency because it’s “for our own good.”  And you have depended on the conditioning of a decades-long campaign of increasing public dependence on the government to cow a willing public into accepting your small tyrannies.

You have told us:

• Our property is not our own.  Through the over-reaching judiciary, a complicit Congress, and a series of increasingly ruthless Chief Executives, you have convinced the People that their land, their homes, and their businesses are only on loan from the State, and so we cannot ever truly own anything that is not subject to federal rapacity.
• Our money (and time) is not our own.  By insisting that all of each person’s income is subject to direct taxation, you devalue the effort, expertise, and entrepreneurship of all Americans.  Your irresponsible monetary practices over the past century of the fiscal autonomy of the Fed has exsanguinated what was once a rock-solid, robust, and innovative economy, and indentured the futures of this country’s children to foreign masters.
• Our thoughts are not our own.  In the name of “equality,” you have made it impossible for anyone who does not play identity politics – within, of course, the approved demographics – to be treated fairly with merit as an individual, thereby replacing one form of discrimination with another.  In the name of “diversity,” you have ensured that any business or organization – public or private – must conform to your preconceived formula, no matter how baseless that formula is.  In the name of “free speech,” you have virulently attacked anyone whose ideas did not conform to your strange calculus of political correctness, regardless of the truth.
• Our beliefs are not our own.  In a self-destructive multiculturist frenzy, you have screamed “tolerance!” while simultaneously eradicatingfrom any public venue acknowledgement of Jesus Christ, or of Judeo-Christian theology, which is indisputably – by any honest, serious scholar, anyway – the foundation upon which this country was built.  You reinterpret the Constitution to suit you fancy, and then ignore it altogether when it becomes inconvenient.
• Our children are not our own.  You seek to limit the influence of parents on their children, by slowly but deliberately eroding the moral and ethical fabric of our society in your books, television shows, and movies.  You claim that Americans are too incompetent to educate their own children – flying in the face of thousands upon thousands of years of human history – and demand that we submit them to the propagandizing bureaucracy of the public school system, while placing your own children into elite private institutions.  You expose our children to modes of thought and lifestyles of which their parents do not approve, without first seeking our permission.  And if any of us presume to actually take responsibility for the education and upbringing of our own children, you respond with unfounded allegations of abuse and neglect, and try to have us declared unfit as parents.
• Our lives are not our own.  It’s not enough that you sap our intellect, our pride, and our will with your ubiquitous, oppressive “Nanny State” policies; you crave power, for the sake of power.  You are willing to sacrifice any number of us to feed your insatiable lust for dominion; you will use any means available to try to dupe the witless and inattentive among us into voluntarily buying in to your machinations – your wars, your “police actions,” and your “conflicts” – and if we refuse, you grant yourself the ability to compel our obedience, on pain of imprisonment.  And by your treatment of foreign nationals, you are preparing us to accept the despotic enforcement of your unconstitutional “laws” against American citizens.

But we are a new breed of American citizen.  You have not seen our like before; you’ve seen us, but you did not recognize us, because we do not fit into any of your pigeonholes, we do not comfortably wear any of your labels.  If you wish to see our faces, look to those of your own children.

We do not listen to your propaganda machine, the MSM in print and broadcast.  We do not buy into your lies; we seek out the truth, and we are patient enough to find it, and intelligent enough to recognize it when we see it.  You try to tell us what to believe, but the current economy forces you to put the facts on the Internet, where we are much more savvy at finding them than you are at obfuscating them.

We have not vested our careers into oiling your machine; we don’t care about your legacies, and so we are at greater liberty to expose the truth and your fabrications.

You have told our parents and grandparents what to do, what to say, what to think, and how to vote.  But we are wise to your agenda.  We are more discerning than they were, more cynical of your intentions.

You say, “Ron Paul isn’t a serious candidate.”  But you fail to understand how serious we are in our support of him.  You have discounted us as a political force because you saw us as apathetic.  The truth is, we have been uninvolved to this point, because the choices in Presidential candidates we were offered had no substantive differences among them.

You cannot measure that which you cannot define.  We do not conform to your templates.  We don’t commit to political affiliations; many, if not most, of us have never bothered to vote.  We don’t register with your pre-approved political parties.  Many of us don’t own a land line.  We have caller ID and screen our calls.  We slip through the seive by which you prognosticate American elections.  And we are at least half of the electorate.

Dr. Paul, at long last, offers us an option besides “politics as usual.”  Your candidates of choice cannot hope to “out-Paul” Paul, because they can never counterfeit his honesty, integrity, and devotion to principal.  And even if you’re right and Dr. Paul is not elected, his “Revolution” has already succeeded:  his candidacy has changed the political paradigm of this country for good.

Do you hear that sound?  A new wind is blowing – the wind of change.  Its name is liberty.  Its cause is freedom.  And its champion is Congressman Ron Paul, MD.