Category: Current Events

When the State, or Empire, and Religion Kills an Innocent Man – Who Can You Trust?

The occasion of the state (government) taking the life of innocent people is nothing new. History shows that government really cares very little about life and liberty. Government has its own agenda of self preservation and rewarding those who fall in line to protect it from the common person, insurrections and revolutions.

So the occurrence of an extremely innocent man with brown skin in the Middle East under occupation of an empire being put to death by the state seems to have little impact on the majority of people’s trust of the state itself. It seems whenever the people want things “fair”, the state is considered a neutral party that can facilitate that. How wrong they really are.

Consider this situation in the Middle East where the state/empire is brought a man who the religious leaders say is an insurrectionist, a revolutionary. Well the empire (in this specific case, the Roman Empire about 2000 years ago) definitely wants to minimize those people who stir up the masses and cause concern for the occupation army to be able to maintain control of this region of the empire. To defuse the public’s passion, a common move by the state is to allow the people to vote, and in this case, with their voice.

The people are offered to free one of two insurrectionists as a goodwill gesture of the occupation power in the season of Passover, the regions annual religious festival. The Roman governor, Pilate, had already indicated that Jesus’ “crime” was not worthy of death, however, the most vocal drown out the calls for justice and indicate that Barrabas (whose first name was Jesus, and his common name Barrabas means son (bar) of the father (abba)) be released and that Jesus be crucified.

What is clear is that the state did not and does not prioritize justice be served. One can never count on the state, especially an empire, to be moral or a proper arbitrator of true justice. What is worse is that in this situation, religion partnered with the state to accomplish this atrocity. What is clear is that the state and religion usually operate in very similar ways, as I said earlier:

Government has its own agenda of self preservation and rewarding those who fall in line to protect it from the common person, insurrections and revolutions.

Religion has similar DNA to the state and even empires. Do not look for justice in religion either!

So who can you trust?

I used to think that religion had the answer. The search led me through a rather complex path of mental gymnastics that focused more on a set of principles and a matrix of theological beliefs that actually distracted me from a relationship with the One who, as I found out, was especially fond of me (and you). Understanding how much one is loved releases one to explore why without a sense of urgency, without having to get everything lined up in one’s brain first, without having to know the complete truth.

One of the barriers I think that religion has had over the centuries towards unpacking who God and Jesus are is the dual mission and agenda that many organizations have in place. There are usually, at a minimum, a local building and staff that competes for the mission to make Jesus known to people. At the end of the day the local group or club, usually called a church, is very much into their own preservation, and the fact that money has been spent to establish and maintain this club has its members be protective of it and the ROI (return on investment) of the money (tithes and offerings) spent/invested to date. Many times, beyond the local is the regional or denominational aspect of the franchise network that requires more money and offers further distractions to the mission of making Jesus known.

Another aspect that usually accompanies this hierarchical organization is the propensity of titles. No matter how small there is usually always a pastor or elder or deacon or priest. The smallest clubs seem to need a holy place (house of God) and a holy man/guru.

When I was 6 or 7 and I read the New Testament books for the first time (while being bored to tears in a church service that focused on all the sins one may have committed in the past week), I was shocked to read that Jesus never established a club that had a holy place or had a holy man/guru. Those that followed him might have called him Rabbi or teacher, but at the end of the day he was essentially their friend, and in the night before Jesus’ death He confirmed that very thing (The Bible, John 15:15):

No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.

Beyond this, Jesus unpacked the real relationship matrix that would support them after He would leave them, a Dad (Abba Father or Papa) who Jesus had made known to them, having the same heart as Jesus PLUS Jesus Himself as a brother and then a Helper called the Holy Spirit who would be with them day-in and day-out. Wayne Jacobson in his book ‘Beyond Sundays‘ shares the simple reality quotes in his blog post:

Any title you wear be it pastor, best-selling author, or Done [a label that indicates one is “done” with organized religion but NOT done with God] will do more to separate you from others than it will help you recognize the incredible family that Jesus is building.

Claiming a label works against his prayer that his Father would make us one. The community of the new creation levels our humanity—from hierarchy and from our narcissistic notions of being in a better group than others. We are all sons and daughters of a gracious Father and that’s all the identity we need. (Matt. 23:5-12)

But once again, we risk being divided into “innies” and “outies” and falling into the false dichotomy our flesh so craves. Whether you go to “a church” or whether you don’t is a distinction without a difference .. the church is bigger than most of us would dare to believe and that his church takes expression wherever people engage each other with his love and purpose.

For those who claim that attendance at a local congregation is mandatory to be part of his church I hope they reconsider that false idea. Being part of his family is about following him not belonging to an institution.

Exactly. As I mentioned in one of my first posts last June, the hope that Jesus and His Father together worked to accomplish between Jesus’ humble birth, his life in a normal family and three short years with fishermen and tax collectors that ended with a state execution and Jesus’ life after death was to provide hope:

.. common people were given hope not just for what happens after life ends, but how one could live their life day to day in peace and with true rest knowing they were loved exponentially by an awesome father, well beyond how the best dads on earth can possibly love their kids.

This hope can be reignited when everyday people reach out across religious, socio-economic and racial barriers .. as well as across “in-church” and “outside-of-church” barriers as noted below in Wayne Jacobson’s blog post:

Anyone who finds more identity in their institutional affiliation or lack of it, their doctrine or lack of it, their ritual or lack of it, proves by doing so that they have yet to find their identity and validation in Jesus and their relationship with him. Can you imagine what we would demonstrate to the world if we were lovers of Jesus and each other, first and only? Isn’t that what he asked of us in John 13:34-35? By that, he said, the whole world would come to know we are his followers.

I contend that between those that really have a real relationship with the Father (Papa), Brother and Helper, and those who could be on a search for that relationship could help common people across the globe have hope and peace in the midst of the storms in this world, thanks to the thirst for war the current empire has here in 2019.

When one reads of Jesus’ and His followers talk about the new kingdom, it has to be done in a context that parallel’s Jesus own time of sharing of His Father’s love. Kingdom in Jesus’ paradigm does not focus on “church”, “royalty”, “slave”, “servant” at all but that of family … with Father, Brother, Sister and Helper .. and whenever these are together, THAT is the church, anywhere.

How can one explore this new kingdom? Wayne Jacobson has another post that has some clues:

When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. (John 16:8)

Some things in life are better explored than explained such as an alpine trail lined with wildflowers, the Basilica Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the shoreline of Galilee, or even chocolate ice cream. Explanations just can’t do them justice.

Agreed? I think Wayne is one to something. All the sermons, podcasts, articles in the world is no substitute for just “getting out there” ..

The same is true of a relationship to God. It can be explained to death, literally. We quote Scriptures, memorize cute aphorisms, and read books trying to understand it. We have sought to understand him with our heads and missed the joy of discovering how God makes himself known, and how his purpose in the world is revealed each day. Many who can talk about God in eloquent terms have no idea how to live in him with grace and affection through the difficult challenges of living in a broken world. They have never explored it.

It is like perpetual ground school for a pilot. Until they fly, until they have that experience, everything is theory only and the uptake of His relationship is relegated to basically book reading and hear-say.

Perhaps the most significant proof of this, other than what I’ve observed with people, is drawn from the way Jesus lived. He walked this out very differently than we try to. For instance, he wasn’t preoccupied with a Sunday meeting or building an institution he called church. He was more interested in letting the reality of the kingdom flow through him in the encounters he had each day. It’s why he could spend an afternoon with a woman at a well, or on the hillsides above Galilee with a large crowd.

Jesus moved with spontaneity, guided by His Father’s heart in every situation. There were times He retreated to secluded places .. other times with large crowds and parties .. other times at the bar or in family homes and then times with just His close friends. He lived life each day and never said “I will teach you about this Sunday at church”.

We act as if Jesus went to church every week to sing songs and listen to a lecture. He did no such thing, and, no, that’s not what going to the synagogue was like. He didn’t tell his disciples that’s what he wanted them to do every week. As far as we know, he never organized a single meeting, except for serving the Passover in the upper room, and even that didn’t take him long.

He seemed to wake up every day and navigate the circumstances and choices of his life with an eye to his Father’s unfolding purpose in the world…

No wonder the religious elite of the day suspected Him of perverting “religion”, and when people followed Him, they themselves were very worried and partnered with the state to plot an end game.

He didn’t offer them outlines of God’s characteristics or teach them a process for letting God’s power work through them. He didn’t offer them a curriculum, he let them watch it in his own life and explore that new reality in their own. He was offering them a different way to live—in a Father’s love, in power greater than their own efforts, in the growing simplicity of learning to trust his love.

He knew you couldn’t learn those things in a classroom or from a book. Real life has to be explored, and he encouraged them to do so—to ask questions, to struggle with their own fleshly ambitions ..

Real life. That is what Jesus did with others, a life shared. A key insight into the tight bond that developed between them is summed up in an encounter with Jesus after the cross (The Bible, Like 24:13+, The Message):

That same day two of them were walking to the village Emmaus, about seven miles out of Jerusalem. They were deep in conversation, going over all these things that had happened. In the middle of their talk and questions, Jesus came up and walked along with them. But they were not able to recognize who he was. .. They came to the edge of the village where they were headed. He acted as if he were going on but they pressed him: “Stay and have supper with us. It’s nearly evening; the day is done.” So he went in with them. And here is what happened: He sat down at the table with them. Taking the bread, he blessed and broke and gave it to them. At that moment, open-eyed, wide-eyed, they recognized him. And then he disappeared.

Back and forth they talked. “Didn’t we feel on fire as he conversed with us on the road, as he opened up the Scriptures for us?”

These friends of Jesus felt in their hearts the same fire that they had experienced over the previous three years when they had given up fishing and followed Love.

In summary, what are the paths forward? I still say a clue is to go back to uncover the Jesus style:

It is evident to me now that he [Jesus] wanted them to explore the kingdom, not analyze it. He knew they could only understand it by experiencing it, not by reducing it to a set of facts or propositions. The people I know who live most freely in the kingdom are those who are discovering it, not in seminars and classes, but in the circumstances of their own lives—a woman betrayed by her husband, a man who’s lost his job because of lies told about him, a mother whose son was convicted of murder, or a child tempted to betray his conscience for the approval of his friends. I am often asked if I have a discipleship curriculum I can recommend to others, or at least a resource to help them know the Lord better.

The curriculum for your journey is not in the Bible or some workbook based on the Bible. I know this gets me labeled as a heretic by some, but the curriculum for God’s work in you is in the Spirit himself. That’s why Jesus said that he would send the Comforter and he would guide us into all truth. He didn’t say he’d send us a book to follow, because you cannot follow a book. He didn’t entrust it to religious leaders. His Spirit alone can show us how to engage God in the reality you live every day.

Following a book is not following Jesus. Wayne explains:

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m a Bible guy. All the wisdom we need is in God’s revelation of himself, but it is the Spirit that helps us make sense of his words as they fit into our experience.

I know people well-learned in the Scriptures, who can argue theology with precision, but who have no life flowing in them. And, I know people who live by their feelings, thinking their every whim is the Spirit’s direction. They both flounder because in the end, we are still interpreting our own journey, instead of learning to listen and to rely on his indwelling Spirit.

This mirrors my own experience. So much of my more religious life took each Sunday’s sermon in application on their own tangents and never or rarely brought me closer to the One who loves me.

Jesus’ own style was a “one day at a time” adventure, seeking out those around us as the Father places them on our hearts. I contend it was intended to be that simple.

Living loved means understanding how much we are loved by Him, listening to His subtle whispers and at His prompting, love others as well, sharing our experiences as we “fly” through life’s journey.

-SF1

PS For an honest insight into the nature of Jesus is Gayle Irwin’s teaching, who admits that Christian’s over the centuries has distorted things about God and Jesus. This is entertaining and maybe corny but I love how this guy passionately unpacks these truths:

2019: A Year of Distractions – Why Keeping Us Busy with Fake News Works

Even yesterday I claimed in a previous post:

I plan to read this 120 page book by Hans this weekend and will get back to you.

Yeah right! I did not get far. Why? Distractions, and not just the ones that come with everyday life, work, marriage, family, travel, groceries, cleaning, etc. These distractions include Facebook, Twitter, Gab, MeWe, e-mails that bombard us with news. Just sorting out the real news from fake news can be exhausting (however, if one just refuses to turn on the TV, refuses to get their news-feed from FB, Google, Yahoo, Fox, MSNBC, CNN, etc .. you can cut down on the effort).

CSI is hard work, and the elites know that. Their hope is that you just accept what they are spoon-feeding you through main stream and main social media OR that you just give up and ignore the fact that Rome is indeed burning. Both options have pretty serious consequences.

How far did I get in Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s book? Only 25% in Kindle language. But far enough to see how this particular line of thought on “niceness” weaves in with what others are seeing.

I have been following The Burning Platform as one of the places that highlights articles that MSM will not touch. Sometimes is is easier than searching on my own with my other news sources line Lew Rockwell, Bionic Mosquito, Moon of Alabama, RT, Mint Press, Fort-Russ, Woodpile Report, Armstrong Economics and more. Just know that no one site mirrors my own life-views as I believe we are all unique, not just by the individual, but also based on where we are at on our life’s journey. The 1980 me would look at some of the sites and say “what?!?!?!”.

So in my reading of Hans’ book “Getting Libertarianism Right”, I found this gem that just might cause you to say “what?!?!?!”. First off, Hans paints the reality of the world we live in in 2019:

“Everyone and every conceivable group is a ‘victim,’ except that small part of mankind composed of white (including northern Asian) heterosexual males, living traditional, bourgeois family lives. They, and especially the most creative and successful ones among them (excluding interestingly only rich sports or entertainment celebrities), are the ‘victimizers’ of everyone else.”

Fact. You can’t escape knowing this in these days. It has come to that.

Next, Hans shows the difficulty the “left-libertarians” have in achieving their other goals of leveling the playing field:

“Both groups only differ on the cause of this similarly identified, described and deplored ‘structural state of victimization.’ For the cultural Marxists, the cause for this state of affairs is private property and unbridled capitalism based on private property rights. For them, the answer how to repair the damage done is clear and easy. All necessary restitution, compensation and redistribution are to be done by the State, which they presumably control.

For the left-libertarians this answer does not work. They are supposed to be in favour of private property and the privatization of State-property. They cannot have the State do the restitution, because as libertarians they are supposed to dismantle and ultimately abolish the State. Yet they want more restitution than only that resulting from the privatization of all so-called public property. Abolishing the State is not enough for them to create a just society. More is needed to compensate the just mentioned huge majority of victims.”

More is needed? Obviously, if one has proof of victim-hood like being the target of a theft, one has their own country’s judicial system to work that out as long as there is evidence. (NOTE: The US justice system is very unjust as we are approaching a time when what one posts on social media can alter some state score that therefore determines what if any justice they might grant you.)

The left-libertarians actually give an evasive answer that Hans sums up this way:

“From all I can gather, it amounts to little more than an exhortation. As a keen observer of the intellectual scene has summarized it: “Be nice!” More precisely: You, you small group of ‘victimizers,’ must always be especially ‘nice,’ forgiving, and inclusive vis-à-vis all members of the vast majority of ‘victims,’ i.e., the long and familiar list of everyone except white, heterosexual males! And as for enforcement: All ‘victimizers’ not demonstrating proper respect to some victim-class member, i.e., victimizers who are ‘nasty,’ unforgiving, or exclusive, or who say ‘nasty’ or disrespectful things about them, must be publicly shunned, humiliated, and shamed into obedience!”

This is reality in 2019. This is the reason for Diversity and Inclusion efforts across this land. It is no longer “fair” to let merit determine advancement or even retention at a corporation or government position, there has to be a victim rating/quota applied.

Hans has strong words for this:

“Why should anyone be particularly nice to anyone else—apart from respecting ones’ respective private property rights in certain specified physical means (goods)? To be nice is a deliberate action and takes an effort, like all actions do. There are opportunity costs. The same effort could also be put to other effects. Indeed, many if not most of our activities are conducted alone and in silence, without any direct interaction with others, as when we prepare our meal, drive our car, or read and write. Time devoted to ‘niceness to others’ is time lost to do other, possibly more worthwhile things.

This is a fact. Being nice takes energy, and to be authentic, it takes a heart action towards prioritizing the other at this point in time. What comes next had me “take a step back”:

Moreover, niceness must be warranted. Why should I be nice to people who are nasty to me? Niceness must be deserved.

My recoil has to do with my life-view that we are all made in the image of our Creator and are all loved by Him regardless of our performance. At the same time, being the perfect Father, He does not let our bad decisions from having their consequences in this broken world. In fact, many times it is just the fact that it is a broken world that has bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it, and in these situations, although He could intervene, He might opt out as any father of adult children might do as well. We love our adult kids, and we don’t want them hurting, but sometimes these things can down the road make you stronger and a better person, able to help others that have the same experiences. A perfect, all-powerful Father, not acting to prevent something is a stumbling block for many atheists and believers. However, as a Father, knowing what I know, I trust His judgement just as I would the Prodigal Father (The Bible, Luke 15:11-32), who let both his sons come to the end of their ropes because in the end he just wanted a relationship with him.

But I digress, basically, being “nice” is not always required. Yes, you have heard of “turn the other cheek” (not holding a grudge) and “pray for your enemies”, but this same perfect Man did turn tables on the religious temple police and speak truth (in love) to the religious elite of His day. His anger, his words (calling the religious elite blind guides) and His actions say that there is a time for not being “nice”. Even to one of His closest earthly friends He said: “Get behind me Satan” (The Bible Matt 16:23) as well as “Let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.” (for self-protection in a broken world).

Hans goes on to share what happens in the long run:

Indiscriminating niceness diminishes and ultimately extinguishes the distinction between meritorious and faulty conduct. Too much niceness will be given to undeserving people and too little to deserving ones and the overall level of nastiness will consequently rise and public life become increasingly unpleasant.

Moreover, there are also genuinely evil people doing real evil things to real private property owners, most importantly the ruling elites in charge of the State-apparatus, as every libertarian would have to admit. One surely has no obligation to be nice to them! And yet, in rewarding the vast majority of ‘victims’ with extra love, care, and attention, one accomplishes precisely this: less time and effort is devoted to exhibiting nasty behaviour toward those actually most deserving of it. The power of the State will not be weakened by universal ‘niceness,’ then, but strengthened.”

We have seen this. As the Zman on The Burning Platform shares:

.. the principled conservatives, who are always ready to create a new set of conservative principles to excuse the excesses of the Left .. It’s not hard to see why normal middle-class white people find this appealing. They live ordered lives and just want to be left to live those ordered lives in peace. What they don’t want to see is violence in the streets and they certainly don’t want to be asked to confront those violent crazies on their streets. ..

This cycle where the Left commits outrages against civility and the white middle-class accommodates it, has led to where we are now. The people calling themselves the defenders of democracy tried to subvert the last Presidential election. The so-called social justice warriors celebrate a black movie star walking free after perpetrating a blood libel against white people. The defenders of open debate on the college campus, rush to suppress any opinion not on the increasingly narrow list of approved opinions.

The link from CBS that set Zman off was this one .. know that this message is being propagated far and wide:

Zman concludes:

The blood lust of the ruling class for whites not obediently walking into the void, is now undeniable. Their response to the 2016 election was to declare war on white America. In their minds, it is a defensive war and they are fully justified to use any means necessary to win. There will be no point where they pull back, fearing they have gone too far. Instead they will always seek to go further.

Again, America is a land where books are banned, people are given long prison terms for holding unpopular opinions and the livelihoods of contrarians are destroyed. This is a land where gangs of roving mobs, financed by billionaires, commit violence against citizens without consequence. Now we have a major television network calling for violence against whites and celebrating violent acts against a specific person. All of this was thought to be impossible ten years ago. What impossible thing will tomorrow bring?

That is a downer. All one has to do is look at South Africa as a place that is only a few years ahead of the US as far as victims demanding property.

But Hans’ summary (long but very worth the read) hits the nail on the head and places things in their proper perspective and not in the fantasy land that the global elites / Marxists would like everyone to believe for their own agenda:

“And why is it in particular the small minority of white, heterosexual males, and especially its most successful members that owes some extra-kindness to the vast majority of all other people? Why not the other way around?

After all, most if not all technical inventions, machines, tools, and gadgets in current use everywhere and anywhere, on which our current living standards and comforts largely and decisively depend, originated with them. All other people, by and large, only imitated what they had invented and constructed first. All others inherited the knowledge embodied in the inventors’ products for free. And isn’t it the typical white hierarchical family household of father, mother, their common children and prospective heirs, and their ‘bourgeois’ conduct and lifestyle—i.e., everything the Left disparages and maligns—that is the economically most successful model of social organization the world has ever seen, with the greatest accumulation of capital goods (wealth) and the highest average standards of living?

Great question. Although the family has been under the attack of government types for generations (because without a daddy in the family, government can fill that role and have the mom and kids become dependent on him), there is a hint of jealousy and envy ramping up across various sub-cultures not only in the USA but in Europe and elsewhere as well.

And isn’t it only on account of the great economic achievements of this minority of ‘victimizers’ that a steadily increasing number of ‘victims’ could be integrated and partake in the advantages of a worldwide network of the division of labour? And isn’t it only on account of the success of the traditional white, bourgeois family model also that so-called ‘alternative lifestyles’ could at all emerge and be sustained over time? Do not most of today’s ‘victims,’ then, literally owe their lives and their current living to the achievements of their alleged ‘victimizers?’ Why not the ‘victims’ giving special respect to their ‘victimizers’? Why not bestow special honor to economic achievement and success instead of failure, and why not give special praise to traditional, ‘normal’ lifestyles and conduct rather than any abnormal alternative that requires, as a necessary condition of its own continued existence, a pre-existing dominant surrounding society of ‘normal’ people with ‘normal’ lifestyles?”

Ouch, truth hurts. The fact that government itself loves the idea of segregating society into victims and victimizers is that it can profit from being the arbitrator, the judge and in some people’s mind, a god.

Ok, enough distractions for the day, back to my book ..

In summary, it is important to know where people are coming from. The illusions they carry keep them from any foundational truths that might help them escape being used by the system to enrich the evil entrenched in the swamp in Washington DC as well as in many governments across the globe. Empathy is great, being nice is over-rated and comes will undesirable long term effects.

Remember:

“Religion killed Christ. Or I might add religion partnered with politics. History shows that when religious and political establishments come together for a cause, it often involves violence, war, and death.” – Bruxy Cavey in The End of Religion

“wise as serpents and harmless as doves“

PLUS

“Let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.”

You can do this.

Over and out.

-SF1

The Reparations Fad – This Issue is More Complex Than You Think, and It’s a Political Hustle!

The latest attempt at further fracturing race relations towards ensuring politicians are employed well into the future is the idea of reparations for blacks in the US. Just like the Republicans of the late 1860s and early 1870s, the Democrats of today want to use blacks in the US to enrich their future to provide a government service in the form of money to offset past wrongs. It isn’t that politicians want every black person in the US to get a check, oh no, it is that they would “manage” this enormous fund and determine who is worthy to receive other taxpayer’s money.

Walter E. Williams in a 2014 piece (yes, this subject has been cycling thorough the US for many decades) explains the complexities involved:

One of the most ignored facts about slavery’s tragic history — and it’s virtually a secret today — is that slavery was a worldwide institution for thousands of years. It did not become a moral issue until the 18th century. Plus, the moral crusade against slavery started in the West, most notably England.

By worldwide, Walter means that blacks AND whites were slaves at one time or another. Even Alphonse-Louis Vinh noted in this recent post that:

Yes, slavery is evil, but this was something that was universal. Slavery was the backbone of our ancestral civilisation, the Greco-Roman World. Slavery has been universal for at least 5,000 years. Slavery still exists in the Muslim world. The monstrous evil of sexual slavery, which is a major concern of mine, exists everywhere, and I want to help destroy it.

To be specific, a decade ago there was NO slavery in Libya, but today, thanks to the US/NATO overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, this horrible practice is again thriving in this region. Bombing the world for “democracy” should be the US Empire’s tagline!

So lets get back to Walter E. Williams list of complexities to consider.

First and foremost:

.. let me say that I agree with reparations advocates that slavery was a horrible, despicable violation of basic human rights. The gross discrimination that followed emancipation made a mockery of the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution. I also agree that slave owners and slave traders should make reparations to those whom they enslaved. The problem, of course, is that slaves, slave owners and slave traders are all dead. Thus, punishing perpetrators and compensating victims is out of the hands of the living .. What moral principle justifies punishing a white of today to compensate a black of today for what a white of yesterday did to a black of yesterday?

Exactly. Great question. However, there is more!

Government has no resources of its very own. The only way for government to give one American a dollar is to first — through intimidation, threats and coercion — confiscate that dollar from some other American .. A large percentage, if not most, of today’s Americans — be they of European, Asian, African or Latin ancestry — don’t even go back three or four generations as American citizens. Their ancestors arrived on our shores long after slavery. What standard of justice justifies their being taxed to compensate blacks for slavery? For example, in 1956, thousands of Hungarians fled the brutality of the USSR to settle in the U.S. What do Hungarians owe blacks for slavery?

Another great question. How on earth is government going to do this “fairly”? DNA testing? Even that has issues in trying to determine the descendants of both white slave-owners and black slaves. But wait, there is more!

During slavery, some free blacks purchased other blacks as a means to free family members.

But other blacks owned slaves for the same reason whites owned slaves — to work farms or plantations. Are descendants of these slaveholding blacks eligible for and deserving of reparations?

Exactly. How does one determine the motive of people that lived in the US states of MD, KY, MO, DE (yes, these were slave states too) as well as TX, LA, AK, MS, AL, TN, GA, SC, NC, and VA prior to December 1865 when chattel slavery was abolished?

Adding to the complicated nature of this issue is the way slaves were captured in Africa (by African blacks) and placed on US New England slave ships, financed by US New England investors to get the slaves to Washington DC (yes, slave auctions were a thing there), Richmond, VA and Charleston, SC.

When African slavery began, there was no way Europeans could have enslaved millions of Africans. They had no immunity from diseases that flourished in tropical Africa. Capturing Africans to sell into slavery was done by Arabs and black Africans. Would reparations advocates demand that citizens of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Kenya and several Muslim states tax themselves to make reparation payments to progeny of people whom their ancestors helped to enslave?

The final thing Walter corrects is the myth that the slave system made for

Reparations advocates make the foolish unchallenged argument that the United States became rich on the backs of free black labor. That’s nonsense that cannot be supported by fact. Slavery doesn’t have a very good record of producing wealth. Slavery was all over the South, and it was outlawed in most of the North.

Buying into the reparations argument about the riches of slavery, one would conclude that the antebellum South was rich and the slave-starved North was poor. The truth of the matter is just the opposite. In fact, the poorest states and regions of our nation were places where slavery flourished — Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia — while the richest states and regions were those where slavery was absent: Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts.

Basically, the only reason the North could do what it did in 1861 when it commenced a war on Southern civilians was because it had prospered much more than the South from 1820s on to 1860. It was not always that way as from 1775 to the War of 1812 it was the South that was the most prosperous section of the young nation. So strong was the South that the North considered secession in 1798 and again in 1814 but never pulled the trigger.

Lastly, do we really want to open up this can of worms in the 21st century as to reparations for past slavery? The fact is that every nation in the world owes REPARATION to somebody ELSE.

Case in point is in this 2002 post about a case for reparations that was filed here in the US by Jack Kershaw of Menphis, TN:

[Jack] wants to file a class-action lawsuit against the US government for reparations. Not on behalf of the descendants of slaves but on behalf of Southerners of all races whose ancestors were the victims of the US government’s rampage of pillaging, plundering, burning, and raping of Southern civilians during the War for Southern Independence [so-called American Civil War]

While the Southerners of 1865-1877 and beyond were undoubtedly trashed by the vindictive Northern army and later Republican politicians, should we go back multiple generations across this globe and transact billions or trillions of dollars IF there is evidence to do so?

To be honest, the South took it on the chin for only wanting out of the marriage to this psycho partner called the Yankee/Northerner/Defender of the Union. Not only was this a legal move constitutionally (Lincoln was very careful to never acknowledge that secession took place), it was the right thing to do as it was well known by 1860 that the North got rich in part due to the tariff revenue generated in the South being REDISTRIBUTED to Northern “improvements” (steel industry, railroads, etc).

Some examples of wartime atrocities abound. To start with, the specific targeting of civilians was outright illegal when the North started the war against the “insurrection” (Lincoln’s word) in the South:

In 1860 international law — and the US government’s own military code — prohibited the intentional targeting of civilians in war, although it was recognized that civilian casualties are always inevitable. .. The kind of wanton looting and destruction of private property that was practiced by the Union army for the entire duration of the war was forbidden, and perpetrators were to be imprisoned or hanged. This was all described in great detail in the book, International Law, authored by San Francisco attorney Henry Halleck, who was appointed by Lincoln as general in chief of the Union armies in July 1862.

Early on in the war, frustrated Union officers took war to a new level and outside the bounds of law:

Unable to subdue their enemy combatants, many Union officers waged war on civilians instead, with Lincoln’s full knowledge and approval. Grimsley describes how Union Colonel John Beatty warned the residents of Paint Rock, Alabama, that “Every time the telegraph wire was cut we would burn a house; every time a train was fired upon we would hang a man; and we would continue to do this until every house was burned and every man hanged between Decatur and Bridgeport.” Beatty ended up burning the entire town of Paint Rock to the ground.

Note that this vengence was not aimed only at white civilians in the south (only 5% of them actually owned slaves since in a typical family of 5 at that time, the father generally owned the slaves), …

Slave states NOT in the Confederate States of America (CSA):

DELAWARE 112,216 1,798 18,966 110,418 587 3% 2%
KENTUCKY 1,155,684 225,483 166,321 930,201 38,645 23% 20%
MARYLAND 687,049 87,189 110,278 599,860 13,783 12% 13%
MISSOURI 1,182,012 114,931 192,073 1,067,081 24,320 13% 10%

 

 

… but the targeting included the slaves themselves. This actually makes more sense as post-war there was NOT a mass migration of blacks to the Northern states. Blacks may have initially thought that the white army from the North was there to free them, but the fact is, most Northerners did not want blacks competing for their jobs. The very potential for this mass migration was what prompted Lincoln, a “free-soil” Republican, to seriously consider sending blacks back to Africa or to the Caribbean.

In October of 1864 Sherman even ordered the murder of randomly chosen citizens in retaliation for Confederate Army attacks. He wrote to General Louis D. Watkins: “Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses . . ., kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon . . .” (See John Bennett Walters, Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War, p. 137).

The indiscriminate bombing of Southern cities, which was outlawed by international law at the time, killed hundreds, if not thousands of slaves. The slaves were targeted by Union Army plunderers as much as anyone. As Grimsley writes, “With the utter disregard for blacks that was the norm among Union troops, the soldiers ransacked the slave cabins, taking whatever they liked.” A typical practice was to put a hangman’s noose around a slave’s neck and threaten to hang him unless he revealed where the household’s jewelry and silverware were hidden. Some slaves were beaten to death by Union soldiers.

It is no doubt that black slaves knew that the North was not their true friends. The “Underground Railroad” went to Canada, not to any particular northern state. Only Wisconsin ever nullified the Fugitive Slave Act which mandated that escaped slaves were required by law to be returned to their owners in the slave states.

The fact that when both Indiana (1816) and Illinois (1818) abolished slavery upon statehood, they also ensure that black immigration was minimized by requiring blacks to produce legal documents proving they were free and posting bond of up to $1000 (in 1860 dollars – approximately $30,000 today!). Additional anti-immigration legislation was enacted (and supported by Lincoln) in Illinois in 1819, 1829 and 1853 and in Indiana in 1831 and 1852 as well as in the Michigan Territory in 1827. The bottom line was that Northern whites, and politicians themselves, feared black immigration!

In summary, reparations are best applied in real-time, within the generation of the offense. This is why even an author who suggests that Southerners are hard on General Sherman and Sheridan would state on the record:

Historian Lee Kennett, author of ‘Marching through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians during Sherman’s Campaign’ page 286:

“Had the Confederates somehow won, had their victory put them in position to bring their chief opponents before some sort of tribunal, they would have found themselves justified (as victors generally do) in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.”

Now you know.

-SF1

A Rebel, or Just a Seeker of Truth and a Humble and Honorable View of Life

Over half a century ago, as my parents purchased World Book Encyclopedia set that came with Childcraft books for kids, I started my own quest of what the Abbeville Institute calls, as its mission, to:

preserve and present what is true and valuable in the Southern tradition

I did not know this at the time. The only reason I chose researching the “Southern tradition” when I was a young child was the fact that I was born in Columbus, GA back when they still had white drinking fountains, and black drinking fountains. I know just being born on land that happens to be south of the Mason-Dixon line does not make one a “Southerner”, just the fact I was born in Muscogee County within a few miles of the Chattahoochee River made me want to learn all I could of that region, its people and their history..

So starting when I was 6 or 7 and continuing into high school when I could go to the library and read all about the South, its culture, its quest for independence in 1775 and again in 1860 and the predominant aspect that set it apart from the rest of the nation, its connection with the land, and with kin. As the Internet developed, Amazon Kindles were manufactured, I have continued this research in the last couple decades.

Today’s installment of the Abbeville Institute daily educational e-mail brought me to a new place in my research journey. You see, for all these years I thought it was just because I am a rebel at heart, or sometimes being able to see ahead with a prophetic eye (not foretelling, but forth-telling) or maybe the fact that I tend to align myself with the underdogs in life, that these were the reasons I stayed in touch with my “southern research” and seeing value in much of the Southern traditions. But today, I saw something that I don’t think I understood before, it was the agrarian view of life that attracted me at my core to stay attached to how the South responded to the world around them through the centuries since a ship first landed at Jamestown in 1608.

Here is the paragraph that made the light bulb turn on:

In 1787, Patrick Henry warned Virginia and the South about the danger of forming a union with the people of New England. Patrick Henry predicted that the North, being the numerical majority, would control the Federal Government and use the Federal Government to extract tribute (taxes in the form of tariffs) from the South. Patrick Henry was joined by other Southerners, such as George Mason and Rawlins Lowndes who warned of the danger of a union with the North.[2] From its very beginning, the United States has been a nation divided. The division was not one of slave states vs. non-slave states but a division between a commercial society vs. an agrarian society.

Agrarian societies, in my humble opinion, know intimately well the realities of nature in this world and how broken it really is. One could plant a crop one year with the timing perfect and yet see the crops be decimated before harvest time. Alternatively, one could sow a crop in all the wrong ways and reap a bountiful harvest. Being agrarian, in my own opinion, keeps one humble, and keeps one from thinking that one could improve on nature to the point of perfection.

I look around today at the progressives, left-collectivists (as well as those on the other side of the aisle, so-called conservatives, neo-cons, right-collectivists) and know that they probably have never farmed a day in their life. These people, born into an urban or suburban setting only know how to idealize how everything can be fixed, in their utopian view for “free” based on their own shallow notion of where security and wealth come from. Government tends to be their god.

Alternatively, those who can tell the difference between capitalism and crony capitalism, between creating value honorably verses buying a monopoly via lobbyist actions in DC, know that there is a difference between labor, fiat money and wealth, values and a generational legacy to hand down.

This article also points out the heartache all honest businessmen and entrepreneurs  have in the current climate, that was the case even back in the 1800s:

In 1828, Missouri Senator Thomas H. Benton declared that the Federal Government’s tariff policy was forcing Southerners to pay 75% of the Federal revenue used to support the government. He lamented, “This is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North. Federal legislation does all this.” [5]

In an 1828 letter to Daniel Webster, Abbott Lawrence of Massachusetts advocated a proposed tariff bill because “This bill if adopted as amended will keep the South and West in debt to New England the next hundred years.”[6] As Patrick Henry had warned and Senator Benton noted, the agrarian South was being exploited by the commercial North—a Northern commercial and financial crony capitalist society that could not exist without the steady inflow of revenue gained from protective tariffs.

Massachusetts historian Charles Bancroft admitted this harsh fact ten years after the North’s conquest of the South, “While so gigantic a war was an immense evil; to allow the right of peaceable secession would have been ruin to the enterprise and thrift of the industrious laborer, and keen-eyed businessman of the North. It would have been the greatest calamity of the age. War was less to be feared.”[7] Follow the money, and you will discover the real reason for war.

Being exploited for other’s gain is never a good feeling. The ability of parasites both in industry and in government to siphon off one’s wealth and makes it that much more difficult to put profits away for future capital expenditures means that everyone is working harder for less realized credit. It does seem at times that the deck is stacked against the entrepreneur, not just the broken world part, but a government entity and all their regulations (federal, state, local) that sucks life out of …. life.

Here is a final quote from this article, one that shows not unlike those in the South after their attempt for independence failed, we too are in fact these days subjects, not citizens. We are tax slaves on the government plantation:

Confederate President Jefferson Davis explained the motive for Northern invasion of the South, “The lust for empire impelled them [Northerners] to wage against their weaker neighbors [Southerners] a war of subjugation.”[11] Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon in 1861 warned Congress that the Federal Government was becoming an aggressive empire.[12] The London Telegraph in 1866 observed that while the United States “may remain a republic in name, but some eight million of the people [Southerners] are subjects not citizens.”

So yet again there are forces in this land that are ripping people apart. The majority think this is a right or left problem, and that if we get government right, and get the right people elected, all will be well. But at our core, those that are critical thinkers know this all sounds very hollow. We know that it is not the takers that find truth and honor in this broken world, but the givers, those who sacrifice for their kids, grand-kids, family and friends to make this journey a more pleasant one.

Again, the land has a lot to do with this process, and in these days when so many are generations away from the land we tend (myself included) to take nature and the Creator of that nature for granted.

I guess I am coming to the age where I see that more clearly every day, just to watch ducks and geese in a pond for 10, 20 or 30 minutes observing their journey as the weather changes. These days it seems that we have to intentionally carve out time to enjoy this earth, but in my own mind, there are rewards in that that far outweigh that time on social media or in front of a television.

Not sure what the path forward is, but getting back to nature and self-sufficiency seems to be part of the formula. No answers here today, just a lot of questions.

-SF1

Empire Tactics: 1780 Green Dragoons/Hessians to 2019 US Special Ops/Blackwater

The benefit of knowing history is knowing when you are about to be scammed. In the past week we have heard that President Trump suddenly, without the blessing of his neo-con staff personnel, decided to exit Syria in the near-term. What happened next was typical to this empire’s entertainment aspects, people that were against war at some point in their life all of a sudden WANT war in Syria. I mean it was normal to hear most of Congress (who have been lobbied by the Military Industrial Complex – $$$) get upset that we can’t keep our “covert” war there intact since we have invested 7 years there with various rebel groups including ISIS.

It is all indeed a show, and having watched Home Alone over the Christmas break seeing Donald Trump giving advice to Kevin, we can’t be surprised in 2019 to understand that Donald Trump is still acting. All empires need good actors when they approach end of life status, it keeps the masses entertained while what is happening behind the scenes gets more and more desperate.

During the Revolutionary War, the British Empire used 30,000 Hessian mercenaries (30% of the total British force in the American Colonies) towards their attempt to hang on to their empire. Also deployed was their Green Dragoon Legions and the tactics that had local innocent citizens and their property in the cross-hairs of these forces.

During the follow-up of the Iraq invasion in 2003, the US Empire also used mercenaries in their attempt to hang on to the territory in Iraq as part of the US Empire. By 2007 there had been a huge number of incidents where these mercenaries were guilt of massacres throughout Iraq. In fact, trials are still ongoing here in 2019!

A more in depth article is this one by Chuck Baldwin who has been following closely the Trump promises before his election compared to the Trump realities to date. One of the most startling statistics is in the quote that follows:

.. the first two years of Trump’s presidency was a flagrant disavowal of that campaign promise. Not only did Trump not disengage our forces from these illegal and immoral wars, but, as I have documented, he dramatically INCREASED America’s involvement in these wars. In fact, President Trump has dropped more bombs on more people in his first two years of office than President Obama did in his entire last term in office. Plus, he sent thousands of additional ground troops to Afghanistan and Syria and several other countries.

So that leads us to Trump’s latest claim, that the US is “leaving” Syria and also drawing down troops in Afghanistan. Well, it all depends on who is doing the counting and what is being counted. Knowing full well that none of these numbers include deep state CIA operatives throughout the region, if we are talking “official military” personnel in Syria, the US claims that only 2000 are there currently. I highly doubt that. But what is really going on? Chuck says:

This month, in the January/February print issue of the gun and hunting magazine “Recoil,” the former contractor security firm Blackwater USA published a full-page ad, in all black with a simple message: “We are coming.”

Is the war in Afghanistan — and possibly elsewhere ― about to be privatized?

If Blackwater returns, it would be the return of a private security contractor that was banned from Iraq, but re-branded and never really went away.

21st century Hessians! This Empire is outsourcing the dirty work left behind by the 17 year Afghanistan conflict and the 7 year illegal intrusion into the sovereign nation of Syria that Obama pulled the trigger on.

The legacy is trillions spent, that we have a debt for, just to _______? You fill in the blank, is this to keep military contractors employed? Is this to keep the petro-dollar in placed globally? Is this to help Israel out .. perpetually?

And what of the US Empire’s legacy?

Here’s the horrifying part: These “private contractors,” i.e., mercenaries, operate in a manner that is totally unaccountable to the rule of law. Totally! They operate outside the Constitution, outside the Rules of Engagement, outside the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), outside the Law of Nations, outside law period—and also outside public scrutiny. There is virtually no accountability for whatever murders, rapes, plunderings or criminalities of any sort that these mercenaries commit.

More terrorists are home-grown the more the empire’s atrocities are known. This is “job-security” as the US Empire’s last gasp around the globe. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In summary, Chuck Baldwin concludes:

Combining Special Forces units that are already plagued with rampant abuses of power with mercenaries who are virtually unaccountable to any human authority is a recipe for the worst kind of barbarity and atrocity. This is what the Roman Empire did during its last days of power and what Great Britain did in its failed war against the American colonies. And this is exactly what Donald Trump is preparing to do. In fact, Trump is already setting the table for an unaccountable military force by shutting down military watchdog groups, thus turning off the light of public knowledge and ensuring military unaccountability.

The “swamp” is still intact. The cynic in me points to the root of this nation’s poisonous government. Many, including Chuck claim that if we would just get back to the Constitution … yeah, it was never meant to be “got back to”. As Lysander Spooner said in the 19th century:

“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”
― Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

My thinking, thanks to Ben Stone’s efforts and his manual , has evolved to this:

When I first read this a year ago I just laughed. About six months ago I read this and still thought that maybe Thomas Jefferson was blindsided by this whole Constitution coup d’tat that happened while he was Ambassador to France. I understood that George Washington was a Federalist at heart and wanted a mini-British nation on this continent, and that Benjamin Franklin was getting old and nodded his consent. But the likes of George Mason and Patrick Henry saw through all this and rightfully noted the slippery slope that this document created a path for going forward.

I now think that Thomas Jefferson really thought that there would be another revolution inside a generation as what was created was just an “experiment”, a beta-test version 1.0 of a federated republic that would have checks and balances like nullification and secession options that could keep it grounded until another version could be tried.

I do think that the pioneer spirit of that founding generation did not even last a decade before this country fell back into its old ways. Before you know it you have George Washington taking thousands of troops into Pennsylvania to enforce a 25% Whiskey Tax to fund his government. You can not possibly make this stuff up!

Happy 2019 y’all .. I will try to stay more positive in my future posts this year, if the Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.

-SF1

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun – Ecclesiastes 1:9