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.

Return of the Jedi

I think it’s very interesting that the cattle at Faux News—who engineered Dr. Ron Paul’s exclusion from key primary debates and general marginalization in presidential primary reporting, conspiring with other MSM to virtually hand Obama victory by handing McCain victory first—now can’t get enough Paul.  Since the bailout of AIG and the collapse of Lehman last fall, and certainly since the November election, Faux news in particular and the MSM in general have been giving Paul more uninterrupted on-screen time in a given week than he got during his entire presidential campaign (which lasted nearly a year and a half, if you’re not keeping score).  Now that the good Doctor has been vindicated by unfolding events, his wisdom is seen for its merit, rather than being dismissed, Cassandra-like, as lunatic raving.

Nor is he still a lone voice, crying in the wilderness.  His cohort of congresscritters have begun collectively pulling their heads out of their (presumably) proverbial asses.  They begin, in this age of blatant fascism, to see the wisdom—or at least the political expediency—of auditing the Fed.

From FAUXNews.com:

All of a sudden, Congress is paying close attention to Ron Paul.

The feisty congressman from Texas, whose insurgent “Ron Paul Revolution” presidential campaign rankled Republican leaders last year, now has the GOP House leadership on his side — backing a measure that generated paltry support when he first introduced it 26 years ago.

Paul, as of Tuesday, has won 245 co-sponsors to a bill that would require a full-fledged audit of the Federal Reserve by the end of 2010.

Paul attracted just 18 co-sponsors when he authored a similar bill, which died, in 1983. While the impact Fed policies have on inflation is once again a concern, fears about loose monetary policy and excessive federal spending appear even more widespread in 2009.

“In the past, I never got much support, but I think it’s the financial crisis obviously that’s drawing so much attention to it, and people want to know more about the Federal Reserve,” Paul told FOXNews.com.

With the Federal Reserve holding interest rates at rock-bottom levels, pumping trillions into the economy and now poised to have new powers to oversee the financial system under President Obama’s proposed regulatory overhaul, Paul said lawmakers want transparency.

“If they give them a lot more power and there’s no more transparency, that’ll be a disaster,” he said.

The bill would call for the comptroller general in the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed and report those findings to Congress. The GAO’s ability to conduct such audits now is severely restricted.

A slew of top Republicans are backing the bill, as are many Democrats.

It seems much more like they’re giving him credit because they can’t find a way not to.  I’m sure that if they could pin this on their own neocon Sean Hannity or pseudo-libertarian Glenn (“I’m a libertarian, but…”) Beck, they certainly would.  Despite the final line in the above excerpt, the article leaves one with the impression that this is actually a spontaneous and solely GOP-backed initiative [it's actually (as of this writing) about 30% bipartisan; 72 of the current 245 cosponsors are Demoblican], instead of the most recent battle in a nearly three-decade-long struggle on Paul’s part.

I guess the “perfect storm” of a Democratic Congress, a Democratic President, and an unmitigated economic disaster finally goaded the Republicans into actually acting republican for a change.

Like the Tea Parties.  But who am I to criticize?

Years ago, Murray Rothbard laid rest to the idea that the perfect is the enemy of the good.  In “Why Be A Libertarian?,” Rothbard opined

Antilibertarians, and antiradicals generally, characteristically make the point that such “abolitionism” is “unrealistic;” by making such a charge they are hopelessly confusing the desired goal with a strategic estimate of the probable outcome.

In framing principle, it is of the utmost importance not to mix in strategic estimates with the forging of desired goals. First, goals must be formulated, which, in this case, would be the instant abolition of slavery or whatever other statist oppression we are considering. And we must first frame these goals without considering the probability of attaining them. The libertarian goals are “realistic” in the sense that they could be achieved if enough people agreed on their desirability, and that, if achieved, they would bring about a far better world. The “realism” of the goal can only be challenged by a critique of the goal itself, not in the problem of how to attain it. Then, after we have decided on the goal, we face the entirely separate strategic question of how to attain that goal as rapidly as possible, how to build a movement to attain it, etc.

Obviously, Paul’s ultimate goal remains unchanged:  End the Fed.  But an open audit is a logical first step, and ultimately serves the purpose of liberty — if the purse strings are first cut, it follows that all publicly funded abrogations of liberty will eventually have to end.  The Fed is the enabler of all of the graft the infects Capitol Hill.  It drives Americas foreign adventurism.  It makes the domestic welfare/police state possible.  Auditing the Fed will bring down the American Empire and return us to a manageably-sized, more constitutional republic.

Of course, no Empire means no killing the “little brown people” in other countries.  It also means no more handouts, whether personal, corporate, or international.

Far too many modern Americans are bound to their pet projects, their imperialism, their fascism, or their socialism.  I include these tea-partying, politically “born again” conservatives.  They trust their government far too much.

Too Funny for Prime Time

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey opened SNL last Saturday.  I missed it because our house has about 10 more people in it than normal, thanks to Ike.  (The hurricane…?)

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve seen it, but in case you haven’t, it’s right here.

As a critic of both the Demopublicans and the Republicrats (aka, the Demopublican Unity  National Committee  for Elections, or “DUNCE”), I found the lampooning of both women to be hilarious.  My partisan friends all thought SNL was satirizing only the “other” party’s standard-bearer.  Silly rabbits…

A Conversation with John Carter — UPDATED

Turns out, he’s not actually from Mars…  Who knew?

I recently had the pleasure of contacting Mr Carter, the honorable US Representative for my Congressional district, in regards to the abhorrent levels of immigration our proud country now enjoys.  And make no mistake:  when I say, “immigration,” I mean both the legal and the illegal varieties.

The event that made this conversation both necessary and possible was the confluence of (1) a trip by the likes of none other than William T. “Bill” Gates to Washington, DC, and (2) the Mr Carter’s coming re-election bid.  I have come to realize that every time Mr Gates flies from Washington (the state) to Washington (the city) — if he’s not fending off charges of breaching antitrust laws — it’s to bemoan the  perennial dearth of “qualified” software and design engineers.

At this point in the discussion, one must be aware that when Mr Gates says “qualified,” what he in fact means is “willing to subject themselves to indentured servitude.” And of course, when he offers this gleaming opportunity to American software geeks, he runs up against a shortage of people willing to prostitute themselves out like $5 dollar whores after getting a highly technical four-plus year degree (something a younger, perhaps less savvy Bill Gates likely would have been hesitant to do, himself).

Anyhoo… I expressed my concern to the honorable Mr Carter that the H-1B levels were fine “as is,” perhaps even a bit high.  I expressed to him my further concern that perhaps the levels of immigration across the board might be a mite bit high as well.

I then suggested to this worthy that perhaps we should take a new tack on the entire immigration question:  border enforcement, deportation, and reduction in legal immigration levels (which currently exceed the “limits” by at least a factor of two).

This was Mr Carter’s response:

How Do You Spell “False Dichotomy”? (Updated)

A friend at work recently sent me the following email, which I’m sure has been bouncing around the ether for years and doubtless surfaces during the home stretch of every presidential campaign cycle:

As I was talking to this little girl Catherine, the daughter of some friends, she said she wanted to be President some day.

Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there with us - and I asked Catherine – “If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?”

Catherine replied – “I would give houses to all the homeless people.”

“Wow – what a worthy goal you have there, Catherine.”  I told her,”You don’t have to wait until you’re President to help the homeless, you can come over to my house and clean up all the dog poop in my back yard and I will pay you $5 dollars. Then we can go over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $5 dollars to put toward a new house.”

Catherine (who was about 4) thought that over for a second, while her mom looked at me seething, and Catherine replied, “Why doesn’t the homeless guy come over and clean up the dog poop and you can just pay him the $5 dollars?”

And I said, “Welcome to the Republican Party.”