Tag: 1st Century Christians

How to Deal with a Virus? Vax or Naturally?

Sorry to disappoint, as I am not talking about the Covid-19 novel virus, but the virus that is a whole lot worse and has a horrible half-life. That virus is government.

Governments come and go, they run the gambit from totalitarian “democratic/socialist” ones that kill millions of their own people, to totalitarian “communist/marxist” ones that kill millions of their own people, to monarchies that can do the same.

While the nomads in history had other things that threatened their lives, and pioneers the same in new lands, there is nothing like a government that has the ability to take out large swaths of people.

Oh sure on the front end of these governments the talk is all about “safety”, only in time do we understand that to mean safety for THEM. It only took until the 21st century to allow police officers in the “land of the free” to be told by the highest court in the land that they did not have to protect the people, but that their first priority was to protect themselves.

So here we are in 2020 which is turning out to be an epic year for governments around the globe, almost in sync, to rise up and control everyone. From small businesses to people who live on property in the middle of nowhere, the way this government addresses 330M people assumes that they all live in the city. Supposedly even Google is providing them data on how people are venturing out > 2 MILES away from their primary residence. For some people, that is just doing chores on the ranch!

Centralized government’s virus downsides have been noted most succinctly just before the American Revolution in much literature which then gave the Founding generation an opportunity to experiment one more time with a government in mind that might be, as they say, “exceptional”. Maybe this would be a government virus that was held in check by a vaccine like the Articles of Confederation (AoC)?

The problem is that after the independence from the British Empire, the idealists became pragmatists and many in the founding generation in their old age once again thought more of safety than of freedom, thought that a different BIG centralized government might be MORE beneficial (to them, the caretakers). Was the vaccine (AoC) too effective?

So from 1783’s Treaty of Paris under the Articles of Confederation came a whole new “operating system” (OS) .. the US Constitution. That coup d’etat forever changed the trajectory of the united colonies to become a united state. This vaccine actually still allowed the virus to grow, but at a slower rate, or as one might say, they flattened the curve!

The downside of having to travel down the centralized rails a bit is that once the momentum is there, there is little you can do to stop it. During the War of 1812, northern states contemplated secession as this war hurt the Northeast/New England region the hardest. It was after this war that arose a person who in time began to see clearly the “side-effects” of this virus. This man’s name was John C. Calhoun. One of the latest Abbeville Institute articles that deals with this 1619 initiative helps to paint why Federalists were mad at him from the War of 1812 until his death in 1850 and are still mad at him in 2020!

Side-note: This world also lost another prophet in 1850, Frederic Bastiat, whose thoughts I covered somewhat in these two posts here and here.

One should realize by now that those who propose the proper track to be on rather than the centralized government / totalitarian / empire track are marginalized from politics well before these ideas are squashed in the public square. So it comes as no surprise that John C. Calhoun, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, was:

… the last eloquent political philosopher to stand against the ideology and intentions of the Federalists. He was the last to stand firmly in the halls of the Senate and articulate exactly what it would mean to allow power to become centralized under an unconstrained federal government.

Talk about flattening the curve, this virus gained ground in 1865 with the Union’s brutal victory not just over the Confederate army that was protecting people’s homeland, but over the Southern region itself as Reconstruction again drove home the point that the virus (central / totalitarian government) was king. Everything beyond this point just added to this virus’ spread .. the Spanish-American War in 1898 based on a false flag, progressive movement in 1900, creation of the Federal Reserve and implementation of the DIRECT taxing of Americans (income tax) in 1913, WWI entry in 1918, FDR’s socialization and debt programs (New Deal) of the 1930s followed by a cover-up war (WWII) in which he economically goaded Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor WHILE keeping his navy commanders there in the dark, for the greater good. Since WWII this virus has gone out of control, but has been oblivious to millions that were educated in government schools reading government textbooks. The most ignorant generation in history is the most “educated” ones!!

In summary:

The Anti-federalist position, as proven by what has become of the Republic, was the only true, realistic and conservative position in 1788. The Federalist position, as evidenced by history, turned out to be totalitarian in nature, it is the power behind progressivism, it was from the start the seeds of the eventual destruction of the Republic; debt, discord, endless wars, less liberty. One simply could not have enacted the federal income tax, the New Deal, social security and all the enormous government and taxation that came from that without the Federalist position winning out.

Again, this did not happen overnight, so I call this a stealth-virus!

Calhoun, despite his flaws, despite the fact that the rights he defended are offensive to our modern sensibilities, despite all that, Calhoun was right on some important foundational issues. Progressivism could never have raised its head to expand government without the efforts of the Federalists from 1788-1870; no federal income tax, no prohibition and the resultant birth of organized crime, no New Deal, no dysfunction of government at the Federal level (because the Federal government would matter a lot less) no massive debt, no tariffs, no endless wars. This is the legacy of the Federalists.

Calhoun was prophetic in all this, and like all others who have raised the issues of the cost of this virus, continue to be marginalized and forgotten especially in these days.

So now that the centralized government is on display today as a totalitarian state that can shut down any business they want and make you mind (like a dog or a sheep), I can’t help but think of Toby Keith’s song:

How do you like me now
Now that I’m on my way
Do you still think I’m crazy standing here today
I couldn’t make you love me
But I always dreamed about living in your radio
How do you like me now?!

Same thing only different .. but do you feel the Gov-Love now?

Peace out.

-SF1

PS How about a “natural” way to deal with this virus .. go underground like the 1st century Christians who found their way around an empire’s persecution to help people “off the record”? The fix for government (virus) is never in politics, it is in building up a natural immunity!!!

 

“Land of the Free”? Not So Fast – the Trend-line is Not Linear!

1938 USA Communist Party Convention -Abraham Lincoln as centerpiece

Like most people my age, #60+, I can remember a time when we all were a LOT more free. Rifles in the pickup trucks, shooting guns near suburban neighborhoods, playing outside ALL day with the parents not really knowing where their kids were at. This was all “normal”.

Also during this time, it was the college campuses that allowed and even encouraged thinking and expressing one’s own thoughts no matter how popular they might be. Anti-government speech was not just tolerated, it was at the heart of what it meant to be an American, the Spirit of ’76!

Well those days are long gone, and the transition to where we are today was not a linear one at all. At first there was some minor deviation, but in the past 5-10 years, the college campuses are more group-think than ever, where the narrative of the day is king, where thought police thrive.

This is not the first time this has happened, but it does seem to be the first time it has happened without a war in the past 150 years, but it does have some similarities to a time in American history over 220 years ago where the thought police surfaced, when the “Land of the Free” enacted the Alien and Sedition Act in 1798 which …:

made it a federal crime to publish any false, scandalous or malicious writing – even if true – about the president or the federal government

You see, freedom of speech is a natural, God-given right that governments can and will take away. In the “Land of the Free” in 1798, there were many who took issue with this course change that occurred only 22 years after the thirteen American colonies sought independence from the British Empire. When Thomas Jefferson became president, he and his administration repealed this act. However, one this course change is embedded in a nation’s/empire’s DNA, there is no going back:

Abraham Lincoln arrested Northerners who challenged the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson arrested Americans who challenged World War I. FDR arrested Americans he thought might not support World War II. LBJ and Richard Nixon used the FBI to harass hundreds whose anti-Vietnam protests frustrated them.

In our own post 9/11 era, the chief instrument of repression of personal freedom has been the government’s signature anti-terror legislation: the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act permits FBI agents to write their own search warrants and gives those warrants the patriotic and harmless-sounding name of national security letters (NSLs). This authorization is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says that the people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that that security can only be violated by a search warrant issued by a neutral judge and based upon probable cause of crime.

To most libertarians, this is where we are today, where the government has successfully transitioned the US Empire to a static point where the “Land of the Free” is no more. However, there is yet another effort that has been made in the past five years or so to continue the transition towards a totalitarian state, and this one comes from the corporate side of Lincoln’s dream of mercantilism, where government and big corporations become two wings of the same bird.

– Murray Rothbard on Mercantilism

As Rod Dreher of Russian Insider indicates in this article, “A Russian Woman Working as a College Professor in the US Writes About the Sovietization of Amerika”, it seems that it is the former citizens of the old USSR are the most sensitized to this trend the most while typical Americans see this as no big deal, much like the Germans in 1930’s Germany as the Nazi’s came to power.

Clarissa [not her real name] is a college professor who emigrated to the US from Russia as a young woman, a few years after the fall of the Soviet Union. She is yet another ex-Soviet bloc person who is extremely anxious about the emergence of soft totalitarianism here. Of course she can’t use her real name, because she fears professional retaliation. It should tell us something that not a single academic from a former communist country that I interviewed for this book was willing to speak using their own name — this, in the Land of the Free. Why not? Because they were afraid of facing professional consequences for speaking out against identity politics and the “social justice” regime.

I am pretty sure if I were to chart out freedom in the USA, we are now at an all-time low as both the government and corporate America are actively seeking out dissenters to the latest narratives. The tools are in place to “take out” people professionally both in social media attacks:

Totalitarianism is something that takes away from people the unbearable burden of freedom. It allows many people to hound and persecute with impunity. That is pleasant in many senses. There was a practice in the Soviet Union where people would be told to get together in groups at work and write letters to the newspaper to denounce famous poets or artists. We see that today in Twitter. People love that because it allows a little person to completely destroy somebody who has done something great.

.. as well inside universities and corporations with diversity and sensitivity training in the workplaces:

All your co-workers are enemies. Either they can get you in trouble, or they are out to destroy you with an accusation. It destroys all sorts of uncontrollable communities – friendship, families, church communities. When you set people against each other, they are much easier to control. This is what it was like under totalitarianism.

So one might think I just need to be more careful about what I share in certain social circles. But that is not how this works, to see how any flavor of totalitarianism actually works, we need to learn from those who lived there:

… wokeness in corporate America is a weapon used by white-collar professionals to weed out competitors for increasingly scarce jobs. She said, “People find ideological purity tests useful to weed out people who compete for jobs you cover. Progressive forces are completely allied with globalist capitalism.”

She also said that people have no idea how vulnerable they are to this mindset, because of social media. “You will not be able to predict what will be held against you tomorrow. You have no idea what completely normal thing you do today, or say today, will be used against you to destroy you. This is what people in the Soviet Union saw. We know how this works. This is why people like me are so upset today.

One would think that at least the church might be a place where one can be real in this regard. Anyone who understands the 1st century church, it was the underground Christians in the Roman Empire that actually turned the then-known-world upside-down NOT with violence or revolution, but with love of their neighbor where .. :

[NOTE: It seems that true “diversity” does not focus on division based on race, sex or anything else. A true team sees each unique God-created individual as part of the crew that can help to keep the ship afloat.]

Well, a note of caution, most of the churches today, especially ones with government registration in place (501c3), are part of the corporate woke-ness effort underway in this country. Most of the church of today bears little resemblance to the church in the generation after Jesus was killed by religion and empire.

Until this trend is reversed, the ‘circle of trust’ is going to get mighty small. Take your time in knowing who your friends are, it is better to be lonely than to be a fresh target for either empire or corporate-elite.

Peace out

-SF1