Tag: government

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

Hurricane Florence: Why Did the Experts Get it All Wrong?

I really do think there is a lot of “group-think”, not unlike what happened with 9/11, going on. Multiple departments of the government, and entities tied closely with the government (including major media) do their best to predict this “super-storm” in the middle of “global-warming” that had everyone implying the overheated oceans would let the CAT4 hurricane in North Caroline.

The Global Warming community has been at it for some time now, even saying to President Bush that this threat was worse than “terrorism” according to this The Burning Platform article:

A secret report by the US defense chiefs warned President Bush that Global Warming was such a great threat that it would destroy the United States and major European cities. They told the President that cities would sink beneath rising seas and Britain would be plunged into a “Siberian” climate by 2020. They warned that mega-droughts, famine, and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. The document warned that the planet would fall into anarchy and the nuclear threat would rise as countries then sought to defend themselves in the face of declining food, water, and energy supplies.

OK then. Fast forward a few decades and you now have a whole generation of climate specialists trying to predict the path and the strength of this hurricane, and they blew it! Dr. Tim Ball in this article explains:

With Florence, they got almost everything wrong. The computer model predictions of the path and strength were wrong even in such a short distance and in 48 hours; a period for which they claim a high level of accuracy. They claimed the hurricane path was very unusual because it was further north than usual. No, it wasn’t. I was in Bermuda in the early 1960s when we were forced to evacuate because of a hurricane moving in.

OK, so they got some history wrong, but wait, there is more!

… the NOAA forecast ignored … major mechanisms. One was the presence of colder water as Florence moved north. The fuel source for a hurricane is the latent heat of evaporation carried up and released as sensible heat after condensation. Estimates are that a moderate hurricane, like Florence, evaporates 2 billion gallons of water an hour. This is why, when the system moves over land it dissipates very quickly. Another was the three-dimensional dynamics of a system that stretches from the surface to the Tropopause. That very distinct boundary is twice as high over the Equator (approximate average, 18 km) as it is over the Poles (approximate average, 8 km). This means the system gets flattened out as it moves north, which explains why Florence became much wider. As it widens the wind speed diminishes … Very simply, the speed of rotation is determined by the radius of the mass from the axis of rotation. The combination of the energy in the system and the reduced speed of rotation served to alter the path the system takes. The Coriolis Effect is changed, which is partly why they got the direction wrong in such a short distance.

Yes, again there is MORE!

Unseen in all this, is the role insurance companies played in this history of this exploitation.

Say it isn’t so .. but wait .. never mind, you get the picture:

… with the misinformation and unadulterated exploitation of hurricane Florence by alarmists and the media. Attempts to present the hurricane as abnormal and link it to climate change were naked and almost desperate. It reached a nadir when the Washington Post wrote,

“Yet when it comes to extreme weather, Mr. Trump is complicit. He plays down humans’ role in increasing the risks, and he continues to dismantle efforts to address those risks. It is hard to attribute any single weather event to climate change. But there is no reasonable doubt that humans are priming the Earth’s systems to produce disasters.“

Oh no!

OK, let’s back up here. On Wednesday the 12th, the “experts” had Florence at a CAT4 and entering SC/NC with that strength, and other reports indicated that there were 80 foot waves in the open ocean with this global warming produced super-storm. However, things started unraveling pretty quickly:

By Wednesday evening they already downgraded Florence from a Category 4 to a Category 2, and it came ashore barely as a Category 1. In fact, it was amusing to see how long they continued to report it with wind speeds of 75 mph because if it was 74 mph, it was no longer a hurricane. NOAA control the wind speed determinations with their estimates from one or two flights above the hurricane from which, using models they estimate surface speed. We know these are consistently higher than reality, but a higher speed allows for a higher hurricane category and greater media attention.

Can you believe it? Fake news to keep the media abuzz with the “abnormal” nature of this event. But, how abnormal is this really?

The list of North Carolina hurricanes where Florence hit prior to 1900 yields a list of 139 tropical cyclones/hurricanes. In fact, North Carolina was hit by 7 storms during 1893 ALONE!!!!! … The worst hurricane season on record still remains 1893 before “Global Warming”. The 1893 Atlantic hurricane season had 12 tropical storms of which 10 became hurricanes. Then of the 10 hurricanes, FIVE became major hurricanes. Two of those storms kill over 2,000 people each. The 1893 season remains the most deadly storm season in American history.

OK, that was just one year .. but wait, there’s more!

The second season on the list was the 1998 Atlantic hurricane season, where there were 4 Atlantic hurricanes that were active on the same day. The hurricane season is at its peak in August to October. Records before 1851 are really spotty. We do know that the Spanish Treasure Fleet of 11 ships were sunk in a hurricane during 1715, which is believed to be a category 4+.

See the trend. Neither do I.

Back to the REAL factors that can be seen in the destructive nature of hurricanes (remember, even the French in 1782 LEFT the Caribbean during hurricane season to assist the Americans at Yorktown, as they did not want their fleet battered by this seasonal beast):

Over time more and more people moved into the hurricane-prone region and suffered the consequences. All of the more severe consequences resulted from the enabling and false sense of security created by government and insurance companies. For example, two of the greatest loss of lives involved Galveston, Texas and New Orleans. In 1900, an estimated 12,000 people drowned in Galveston because an earthen dam failed. Authorities dramatically downplayed the loss of lives for political and economic reasons. In 2005, hurricane Katrina came ashore at New Orleans, and 1833 people died, most from the flooding. They were behind a dike that the US Army Corps of Engineers sought to fortify but were blocked by environmental groups. Katrina, like Florence, was hyped and even today Wikipedia still says,

“Hurricane Katrina was an extremely destructive and deadly Category 5 hurricane that struck the Gulf Coast of the United States in August 2005.”

In fact, Katrina was barely Category 3 when it came ashore…

Wikipedia also contains fake news!

Also, about insurance companies:

Perhaps the most egregious distortion created by the insurance industry was the claim that hurricanes were increasing in intensity. It turned out the data they used was the increasing cost of claims. Of course, this was almost all due to the increasing gouging for materials and labor before and after the event.

Fake, fake, … fake, fake, fake

The bottom line is that:

[Global Warming] is the biggest fake news story of all created and perpetuated by the bureaucrats who are the deep state. A single small moderate and normal hurricane named Florence demonstrated the level of deceptions across the social and political spectrum. We need to ask how much longer can people who consistently get their forecasts wrong, retain credibility and keep their jobs?

-SF1

While Talking About Lies to Start Wars, What About Lies to End Them?

While I won’t even discuss the fact that the surrender Japan offered in May/June 1945 was identical to the surrender Japan was given AFTER the atomic bombs were dropped on civilian (not military) targets, it is what the public believed in August 1945 that ticks me off the most, that 85% approved the use of atomic weapons by Truman at that point in time. The wartime propaganda was most effective that is for sure, and truth had long been the first causality of that war from the outset.

While the support for these two atomic bombs has fallen to slightly less than the majority in recent years, a 2015 study showed:

… a clear majority of Americans would approve of using nuclear weapons first against the civilian population of a nonnuclear-armed adversary, even killing 2 million Iranian civilians, if they believed that such use would save the lives of 20,000 U.S. soldiers…

So human nature has changed very little indeed as once we are told another people group, defined by lines on a map, are bad .. we are quick to slaughter these people based on what the government/media has told us. Mark Twain said it best when he said:

Consider the thoughts that the military commanders of the day, who were either ready to retire or had retired had to say on the events 73 years ago this month:

Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

Dwight Eisenhower, “I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary.”

President Truman’s Chief of Staff, Adm. William Leahy, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

So government lies to get us into wars, lies to get us out of the wars and then lies to keep their narrative intact for as long as they control the history books. We need a counter balance to this onslaught of fake news that has been around for hundreds of years, we need researchers to go to the source material to unpack the truth.

Along these lines, could Truman have been lied to as well? You might want to consider this quote:

“The World will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians..”(President Harry S. Truman in a radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945).

In fact, Hiroshima in 1945 had 350,000 people and was a city that had remained untouched through years of devastating air attacks on the Japanese home islands, and never figured in Bomber Command’s list of the 33 primary targets!

So in effect, the US “stalled” Japan’s surrender for months demanding “unconditional surrender”. Was this so the atomic bomb testing could still be achieved? Unconditional surrender meant to the Japanese was that the emperor, regarded by them to be divine, the direct descendant of the goddess of the sun would certainly be dethroned and probably put on trial as a war criminal and hanged, perhaps in front of his palace.

In hindsight, it was not the United States’ intention to dethrone or punish the emperor but this implicit modification of unconditional surrender was never communicated to the Japanese. In the end after Nagasaki, Washington DC acceded to the Japanese desire to keep the dynasty and even to retain Hirohito as emperor.

Could “miscommunication” have cost 200,000 people and hundreds of thousands more radiation poisoning effects for life? The US has NEVER apologized for the dropping of these two lethal bombs.

Guess I Will Always Be a Sailor at Heart: Domestic Transport Solutions

In this past week I have commuted to my employer’s headquarters twice and was shocked yet again in 2018 on how bad the highways were in terms of potholes and bridge expansion joints still impacted from the previous winter. I mean, come on, it is the end of July and there seems to be a huge delay in government getting their act together for the necessary maintenance and repairs. I have come to expect this in states that seem to always struggle with its infrastructure like Michigan and Illinois but this was in a high growth area near Indianapolis, IN.

Five and ten years ago it seemed that Indiana always not only maintained their roads the best in the Midwest, but also was able to upgrade the highway system. However, for whatever reason it is becoming evident that the wheels might be coming off the complex federal/state/county/municipality bureaucracy, and before you know it we will have another round of precipitation and freezing temperatures that will work its way into all the highway cracks and do even more damage this winter.

From the Cato Institute is an article that suggest some possible reversals that might take the weight (literally) off this aging infrastructure by using once again our waterway systems in this country to facilitate freight transportation. Seems that in researching why waterways were not prioritized in the last half century or so the author came up with a piece of government regulation that seems to have stifled any entrepreneurship of this option:

Passed in 1920, this law mandates that ships transporting cargo between two points in the United States be domestically flagged, owned, crewed, and built. Intended to bolster the U.S. maritime sector, the Jones Act has instead been a case study in the failures of protectionism. Absent foreign competition, U.S. shipbuilders produce vessels whose price is as much as eight times higher than those built abroad. This disincentive to the purchase of new vessels means we have fewer ships and a fleet that is old and inefficient.

High costs have inevitably followed and, along with them, increased demand for transportation alternatives such as trucking and rail.

Again, government interference in the market means distortions that might benefit some industries for a time but long term causes ineffective options for the customers (personal and business) that utilize any transportation system domestically. The proof of this is below:

From 1960 to 2014, the amount of freight placed on railroads increased by 48 percent while intercity trucks saw their loads grow by an impressive 217 percent. In sharp contrast, the amount of cargo carried by ships sailing around the coasts during this period decreased by 44 percent. And Great Lakes shipping declined by 43 percent.

Obviously, the government is inept at keeping the transportation infrastructure up to code (let alone, up to speed) as a monopoly always provides substandard service. The shift to waterways also will cause many to suspect environmental abuses from entrepreneurial endeavors that don’t have government oversight (even though our own government, especially the DoD is the largest polluter on the planet). I think that some Dutch expertise could be sought out as they have had plenty of experience of dealing with waterways WHILE balancing ecological impacts with automated systems for loading and off-loading:

A Dutch consortium of nearly 20 partners launched a project this month to study and demonstrate the technical possibilities for autonomous shipping, in the framework of the Smart Shipping Challenge 2017.

While there are attempts at innovation in the waterways of the US, the leader of this can not be the status-quo based government that is usually ony worried about their “cut” (revenue) instead of providing the market with some technological solutions that not only improve efficiencies but actually disrupt the market enough with some brilliant technologies that drop the cost of transport while being sensitive to the environment.

This can be done

SF1

Christians (Not the Religion, But Jesus Followers) and Government

Now this is a topic that seems to have been misunderstood by generations of Jesus followers since governments started tolerating and later embracing Christianity as a religion especially after Constantine converted to the religion in the year 312AD and re-directed all his pagan priests and temples to transition to the new religion. One of his directives was to replace December 25th which was observed as the birthday of the pagan Unconquered Sun god to become celebrated as Jesus’ birthday.

Many Christians love the “faith-religion-state” relationship that Constantine offered better than that which Jesus had offered (“faith-God”).

The matter of fact is that Jesus had zero influences on the “religion-state-complex” back in His day and was routinely on the run but eventually allowed Himself to be captured and executed as an innocent man that was framed by the religious elite who were in tight with the Roman Empire government officials of the day. Blow-back was real as over the years and decades of oral story telling, thousands of people were personally touched with Jesus’ message that freed them while in the physical state of slavery in an empire. (50% of the Roman Empire were slaves at that time) This “blow-back” actually turned the then known world upside-down in a generation as their lives were touched with love while many of their hearts were touched directly by Love.

I contend that if God is love, and perfect love drives out all fear then – 1 Cor 13 sets the stage for the characteristics of perfect love or a misunderstood God. (Read the next paragraph and then re-read it substituting God for Love)

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails

As with all movements (even spiritually sparked ones) the subsequent generation takes the personal convictions of the previous and turns them into traditions, programs and rules. Even before Constantine converted, there were significant changes in the Jesus follower communities that were based more on safety and fear than the real presence in one’s heart of our loving Creator giving us fatherly advice daily on how to live in a broken world.

Bionic Mosquito’s article I will then use as a springboard for future posts, discussions and dialog. The author refers to a book by Gerard Casey where it becomes essential to refer to scripture (Bible) in addressing society and governments. Here is a sampling:

Freedom’s Progress?: A History of Political Thought, by Gerard Casey

“I know full well how hazardous an enterprise it is to set sail on the controversial and disputed sea of Scriptural interpretation….”

Yes, same here. This is one reason (of many) that I strongly prefer to keep theological discussion off limits. I know this is difficult to do, given the topics at this post, and I appreciate that you all respect this desire. As you know, my intent behind these topics is to examine the ramifications of broad religious issues on the social, governance, and political aspects of society.

I guess today I am going to somewhat cross that line…

Good for you Bionic Mosquito! Having been immersed for a season in what I had hoped was a grassroots informal faith community network, I became disillusioned as I hit full on with the Christian religion that as I said defers to Constantine’s model more than that of Jesus’. Bionic Mosquito goes on to say:

… The reasons are twofold: first, the examination Casey takes on is precisely on the point of freedom; second, the topic is one of the most misunderstood, misrepresented and misused regarding the Christian take on government.

The topic? In two words: Romans 13. Casey offers a full examine of both Old and New Testament Scripture regarding kings and government authority, as a few verses should not be taken in isolation.

Bionic Mosquito goes on to expand Casey’s thoughts regarding both Old and New Testament telling of various “faith-state” moments. 1 Samuel 8 is a good “go-to” to see God’s view of earthly kings (verses the wise judge model He attempted with the theocracy Israel) followed by Hosea 8 in which shows God allowing governments while not endorsing them.  On the New Testament moments, this proves to be a “target-rich” environment to see how Jesus as well as His followers dealt with the “State” while living their “faith”:

Regarding the life of Jesus, Casey offers…

“…we can see immediately that his very life was bookended by acts of political significance, from King Herod’s murderous intentions at his birth to the final drama of his politically inspired execution.”

This is the lens through which all Scriptural discussion of kings and earthly authority should be viewed. Casey offers that the New Testament is a target-rich environment when one wants to find passages regarding kings and government; he limits himself to five. I will touch on only a couple of these.

As much as I want to proceed with these, I believe they would be well served to address in a future post. Romans 13, taken in isolation, has formed the bedrock belief most Jesus followers have today about their relationship with the State. This view is enhanced by the Christian Religion which in the US has identified themselves (with a few brave exceptions, please see Chuck Baldwin’s rebellion to this alliance) with financially beneficial 501C3 status as state recognized corporations. Bionic Mosquito also offers this in conclusion:

Keep in mind: virtually every one of Jesus’s disciples died in martyrdom, died in disobedience to the political authorities. Do you really believe they are all damned to hell due to their “disobedience”?

Got that? Now I think you know where I am heading ..

SF1