In my previous post I opened up the whole concept of the remnant as it was offered by Albert Jay Nock in the 1930s to describe those who could see what the masses could not. His thought was that is was a huge waste of time and effort to educate the masses, and that it was much more effective to address the remnant, even if it meant a much smaller audience and rarely any reward factor.
I talked about my school experience transition where I was able to see it for what it was by age 10 as my parents separated and I moved with my mother and sister to California for my 5th grade school year. My whole personality changed with this new adventure in the midst of a time of crisis, where my parents were heading toward divorce.
My second of three major transitions came in the part of life that many people talk about the least. While most see this as religion, I see this more as faith and hope. Many, like myself were introduced to faith through religion, especially in my generation ( #60ish ), and that experience could have been good or bad, however, if you are one of the remnant, you might be “gratefully disillusioned”.
In hindsight I would change nothing, because my faith journey toward who I am today required that I navigate (with the assistance of the Great Navigator) my own way to the understanding I have today and where I might be going in whatever tomorrows I still have. I had mentioned last week:
I think it is by design that truth makes itself know in a process verses just being taught. While knowledge helps, there is nothing like a crisis to unpack that truth that had been simmering for months and years before.
This holds true for me in my own process of developing a faith worldview.
The process started in my earliest memories of attending a fairly large conservative church where a majority were of Dutch ancestry in the Midwest. The typical cycle of weekly religious life was church attendance TWICE on Sunday, at 9:30am and 6pm with almost NO “fun” allowed on that “day of rest”.
Many families would have cooked their Sunday meal the night before and prepared for a day, the “Sabbath”, to reflect on where they came up short with their creator. The church service was designed by John Calvin’s followers to be a rather dour experience where man’s degenerative nature was emphasized and I was quickly aware of the sour faces around me for that hour of organ music and hymns followed by a sermon from the “dominie” ( minister / professional pastor ) who spoke God’s Word at us in no uncertain terms.
Dominie is a Scots language and Scottish English term for a Scottish schoolmaster usually of the Church of Scotland and also a term used in the US for a minister or pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church
By Monday morning I was on my way to Christian school where the underlying emphasis was still communicated as almost all our lessons came from the Bible’s Old Testament and God was someone you always feared. Staying on the right path performance wise seemed to be the only way to avoid God’s wrath and judgement until one went to Heaven to be with Him forever. Midweek there was a Catechism class taught at the church and so we were bused from the Christian school to the church for another hour of instruction on what is called the Heidelberg Catechism, a question and answer format that was foundational to this Calvinistic theological matrix that emphasized total depravity of man, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. ( known by the acronym TULIP, how Dutch is that? ) The only day without religious expectations was Saturday, which to me meant Little League, college football and playing with neighborhood friends except for weekends when our family went to my grandparent’s dairy farm for the day to visit, which itself was an interesting experience that I plan to talk about someday.
Inside this rhythm of religion, I started to explore the only option I had during the minister’s sermon on Sunday mornings, the Bible. Instead of paging through the Old Testament, I started reading the New Testament books where I discovered a whole new “lens” to see what faith was beyond the typical religious wrappings and trappings. I found it interesting that Jesus came humbly into the world and took His time to start His official ministry, that he was marginalized in His own hometown and that He chose gnarly fishermen to be on His team. This was not an exclusive religious performance culture, but an inclusive relationship-based friendship culture. The nautical culture that Jesus introduced His friends to the real loving Father he had, would impact the early Jesus-follower’s vocabulary for generations. The anchor symbol meant a hope to a future, whether on this earth or not.
“At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.” ~ CS Lewis
So in the middle of religion, I found a relational faith that would take years and decades to unpack. I will post an “Episode 2” in a few days that expands on my journey during the balance of my school years from 5th grade and beyond.
In hindsight, towards the end of this journey, I have learned to relax in this relational faith in the middle of the storms of life.
As opposed to religious obligation says that it is all up to you, where, if God isn’t doing the things you want, you have to work harder, stand firmer and pray longer. The religious focus I have found is on your performance, your obedience, your righteousness.
Outside that box, you will learn to rely on Him ( Abba Father or Papa ) alone and recognize that any time you give up responsibility for your spiritual and faith nourishment to another person – whether friend, pastor or author, you’ve already traded away a bit of your freedom, for life in a box.
So in these days I picture this:
.. and I leave you with this:
Peace out ..
The anchor holds
Though the ship is battered
The anchor holds
Though the sails are torn
I have fallen on my knees
As I faced the raging seas
The anchor holds
In spite of the storm
Without a doubt, the current overarching panic has been framed to be that of COVID-19. From all angles, those opportunists are hoping that this crisis can assist them in burying some past or paving the way to some glorious future. Whether it is the unsustainable debt, the banking sector, the pharma sector or even those that deal in welfare (to both corporations (GOP) or individuals (Dems)), everyone it seems are bent on not wasting this crisis.
The very last thing on these people’s mind is that of personal liberties or the free market. To them it is the desire of command and control that consume their soul. Real men (when I use this word I use it the same way our Creator would, meaning men and women), men of character, principled humans who are both compassionate for others and yet principled in not attempting to fix other’s lives or circumstances. Help is afforded when both the opportunity presents itself and the help aligns with what is on the giver’s heart, because surely, Jesus did not heal everyone in the crowds, only those that were on His Father’s heart.
So here we are again where a divided nation is fighting both the effects of a virus as well as the proper method to achieve that. Authoritarians (even the ones that were libertarian just weeks ago) want the government to mandate nothing less than house arrest and martial law all across this land. Libertarian leaning people think the people themselves can figure this out on their own, since only they know their specific and unique circumstance. They might be a city dweller with a network of like minded people that CAN achieve social distancing while also bartering for what may be needed in the weeks to come, OR they might live on a farm or ranch that is miles from their neighbor who can also be in their network for critical supplies.
Montana “social distancing”
What comes to mind then, out of an article penned as Brexit was achieved, is that this is not too different than what face the American people in 1860. Yes there were those who felt righteous enough to demand that others free their slaves immediately, and yet if anyone knew how prepared these slaves were for freedom, it was probably their owners and others on the plantation or farm. While slavery was in fact winding down, there were people willing to demand their agenda no matter the cost, even if it was 700,000 dead soldiers and economically ruined regions of the country that would not recover for a century.
The American leader that most people black and white still rally around today as a man of principled freedom and equality for all is Abraham Lincoln. At times, if you read his very words you have to wonder when in fact he had his heart on the fate of the black slaves and IF his version of “the union” which he was so fond of keeping intact was the best for the marriage that existed between the north and south.
John Marquardt from the Abbeville Institute only a week ago penned an article that is rich in unpacking what really happened 150 years ago as well as the economic factor that was at the root of almost all the BAD decisions by politicians along the way. Lets work our way through some critical quotes and see where this leads:
1775:
… thirteen of its major colonies, with a cry of “no taxation without representation,” declared their independence, seceded from the British Empire and joined together to form the United States of America. Faced with the loss of a vast source of the revenue needed to fill coffers drained by its seemingly endless wars with France, Great Britain opted to wage war on its own colonies.
1860:
… seven of the States in the new American nation felt that the weight of long economic oppression by the Federal government was more than they should be forced to bear and opted to secede from the Unites States to form their own more perfect union . . . and once again the action brought forth a war in which the central government attacked its own citizens to prevent their departure.
At this point I think it is helpful to see Lincoln’s own thought processes and see how they changed through the years (an inevitable characteristic of being a politician as there is nothing off the table morally when a crisis is at hand):
1848:
.. when Lincoln was a U. S. congressman from Illinois, he gave a speech in the House of Representatives in which he stated “any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
1858:
“neither the General Government, nor any other power outside of the slave States, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists.”
Lincoln said that he did not understand the Declaration of Independence “to mean that all men were created equal in all respects,” and added that he was not in favor of “making voters or jurors of Negros nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people.” He then went on to say that “there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”
Lincoln was not a huge fan of the blacks it is very apparent, but his core philosophy that he never gave up was that the blacks were never to be allowed to migrate north and take away jobs from whites, which would cause economic upheaval. One has to come to terms that back in 1860, it was conceivable that the northern regions were more racist than southern regions who interacted with blacks on a daily basis:
The North feared that slave labor would compete unfairly with its own low-wage, largely immigrant labor force which, unlike slaves, could be willfully hired and fired as needed and did not require food, housing, clothing or even rudimentary medical attention.
It is at this point that John paints the real economic condition of the United States in 1860. Have you ever been taught this in schools as part of a CSI to understand what businessmen around the country thought about seven states leaving the Union? I doubt it, so here it goes, consider it COVID-19 home schooling:
In regard to the true economic cause behind the War, just as it was with Great Britain’s case in 1776, the gaping hole that would be formed in the Federal revenue served as the actual rationale for the Union to wage war on the departed Southern States. In 1860, there were more than thirty-one million people in the thirty-three States and ten Territories, with only a third of these, including almost four million slaves, living in the South. According to the U. S. Federal Abstract for 1860, the total Federal expenditures for that year amounted to some sixty-three million dollars, with over eighteen million of this being used mainly to finance railways, canals and other civil projects in the North. On the other hand, Federal revenues at that time amounted to a little over fifty-six million dollars. As there was then no corporate or personal income tax and revenue from domestic sources, such as the sale of public land, amounted to less than three million dollars, the remaining fifty-three million dollars were provided by what was termed “ad valorem taxes,” in other words, the tariff on foreign goods imported by the United States. The basic problem with this, however, was that as much as three-quarters of that revenue was collected in Southern ports, which meant that there would be a loss of up to forty million dollars in Federal revenue if the Southern States left the Union. Added to this was the fact that well over half of America’s four hundred million dollars in exports in 1860 were agricultural products from the South, mainly cotton, rice and tobacco.
You can see the predicament that Lincoln had when he was inaugurated in early March 1861. You can also see what the British view was back in 1775 and why they did what they did.
Now project yourself forward in time and try to understand what the so-called united States of America faces in 2020.
Will the economic crisis cause everyone to stick together and pay the $25T in debts over the next hundred years OR will regions of the US be allowed to go their separate ways?
Would anyone in the federal government be willing to let ANY state go in peace?
These are the questions one must answer themselves, along with, what is the moral path forward? Personally I think that bankruptcy is the only moral path forward, but as I was told in the US Navy, ‘opinions are like *ssholes, everyone has one’.
Ok then, let us look to see how Lincoln (Trump-like?) evolved as President:
04MAR1861:
Lincoln stated that he would “hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the (Federal) government, and collect the duties and imposts . . . but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using force against, or among the people anywhere.”
.. [then] stating he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Pretty clear that economics forced his hand to propose the absurd notion that tariffs would still be collected in the seven states that LEFT the union while he had no real heart change on the fate of the black slaves.
Early April 1861 before Ft. Sumter:
Virginia, which still remained in the Union, commissioned a three-man delegation headed by John Baldwin, a pro-Unionist and former judge of the State Supreme Court of Appeals, to meet with Lincoln at the White House in an effort to negotiate a peaceful settlement. During their meeting, the president was reported as saying privately to Baldwin “but what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery (i.e., the Confederates)? Am I to let them go on and open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry with their ten-percent tariff? What, then, would become of my tariff if I do that, what would become of my revenue? I might as well shut up housekeeping at once.”
By early April, Lincoln and his cabinet, the majority of the New Englanders as well as the farmers in the West (now called the Midwest) all saw clearly the economic ramifications of having just 7 states leave the union. Like today, the panic and gross exaggeration seemed to consume people and they were all looking to the US government to do something, ANYTHING!
Lincoln’s Cabinet
It is well documented that Lincoln’s plan to send troop transports to Charleston harbor where his Union garrison had broke a gentleman’s agreement on Christmas 1860 and moved from Ft. Moultrie to Ft. Sumter was to have the South Carolina cannon to fire the first shot (not unlike FDR’s efforts to have Japan do the same at Pearl Harbor, or Bush II’s efforts to have 9/11 be allowed) so he could be “justified” in his next action:
Lincoln’s call to the Union for seventy-five thousand volunteers to suppress what he termed the “rebellion” of the Southern States. Lincoln’s call not only led to the secession of Virginia, but Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee as well, and brought about a war that made casualties of five percent of America’s population, devastated a third of the nation’s States and left deep wounds in the American psyche that to this day have not yet completely healed.
Lincoln, a lawyer, never addresses the seceded states from this point forward, but relied on George Washington’s legislation created during the Whiskey Rebellion to “legally” put down the southern “insurrection” as if it was an unorganized scene of violence that had to be safely extinguished for the safety of the masses.
Keep this in mind for 2020, just sayin’.
By 1862, it was obvious what had happened:
A comparison between the conflicts of 1776 and 1861 was also made in a “London Times” article of November 7, 1861, in which it was said of the War Between the States that the “contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces.”
In a letter written in March of 1862, Dickens stated “I take the facts of the American quarrel to stand thus; slavery has in reality nothing on earth to do with it . . . but the North having gradually got to itself the making of the laws and the settlement of the tariffs, and having taxed the South most abominably for its own advantage, began to see, as the country grew, that unless it advocated the laying down of a geographical line beyond which slavery should not extend, the South would necessarily recover it’s old political power, and be able to help itself a little in the adjustment of the commercial affairs.”
So whatever became of Lincoln’s transition toward loving the black slave? Well, we do know that Lincoln was surrounded by a culture that he was totally in alignment up to the so-called Civil War:
… pertaining to racial discrimination, Dickens said “Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale.”
When the war went poorly and Lincoln was doubtful to his re-election and the possibility of an externally arranged peace conference, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation which sounded good but did not actually free one slave (and later admitted that this was a “war measure”). One can see that even this act was not from his heart as can be revealed by the following quotes:
“Send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” ~ Lincoln, speaking in favor of ethnic cleansing all blacks from the United States.
“I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I favor colonization.” ~ Lincoln, in a message to Congress, December 1, 1862, supporting deportation of all blacks from America.
“They had better be set to digging their subsistence out of the ground.” ~ Lincoln in a War Department memo, April 16, 1863
After securing a 2nd term as president he continued to meet with northern Black leaders about his plan to export blacks to the Caribbean or back to Africa after the war. For those black slaves that remained:
“Root, hog, or die” ~ Lincoln’s suggestion to illiterate and propertyless ex-slaves unprepared for freedom, Feb. 3, 1865.
So here you see that war and economics changes everything and allows politicians to make decisions that in peacetime or prosperity would have been prevented, one way or another.
It seems that today, most Americans have given in to their lot as tax slaves happy for just enough freedom for them to claim they live in the land of the free and are able to worship the flag and eat the occasional apple pie. To a majority of Americans, they know little of their history that would help them to see the red flags all around them as freedom and liberty evaporate in this once free land (mainly in 1783-1878).
May a new generation and a new remnant of Americans see though the infectious nature of government and decide for the future that they will take responsibility for themselves, their livelihood and the education of the next generation and never trust any government again.
I can dream can’t I? One day at a time everyone, one day at a time, however, it is good and well to dream and hope for a better tomorrow where the lessons of this crisis are well learned!
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.
Yes, thanks to a “slight” miscalculation on the part of the US Empire, I think many people will wake up to the fact of what has been coming down for 40 years in the Middle East.
Before this era, there was little terrorism while there were a couple of world wars. Which do you prefer? Personally, I prefer none, not for me mind you, but for my kids and my grand-kids I prefer peace.
The “slight” miscalculation is highlighted in this article that rightly makes prominent what most of MSM (no surprise there) and most people are missing:
The US did not plan to kill the vice commander of the Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi brigade Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes when it assassinated Iranian Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani on Thursday at 11:00 PM local time at Baghdad airport. Usually, when Soleimani was arriving in Baghdad, security commander Abu Zeinab al-Lami, a deputy officer to al Muhandes, would have welcomed him. This time, al-Lami was outside Iraq and al-Muhandes replaced him. The US plan was to assassinate an Iranian General on Iraqi soil, not to kill a high-ranking Iraqi officer. By killing al-Muhandes, the US violated its treaty obligation to respect the sovereignty of Iraq and to limit its activity to training and offering intelligence to fight the “Islamic State”, ISIS. It has also violated its commitment to refrain from overflying Iraq without permission of the Iraqi authorities.
As the article states, the US and Iraq are both embarrassed by this turn of events that unmasks the US Empire’s true intentions, on behalf of Israel. This has coalesced most of the various militias in the region (except ISIS of course, sponsored by US, Israel and Saudi Arabia) and has now linked former enemies Iraq and Iran to have common ground. It will be interesting the uptake of this outside the region as Russia and China, along with Syria find each others as friends with a common enemy, especially with all the trade sanctions and tariffs that the US has instigated. I am thinking too that the European “coalition” days are numbered as what nation in Europe will side with the US Empire at this point?
So is the US Empire at the 1775 point of the British Empire? An unmasked and revealed belligerent imperialist force for bad verses American Exceptionalism, a Global Force for Good. Time will tell.
I am pretty sure that with Brexit, and with Trump’s blunder on Iraqi soil, we will all see much clearer in 2020. As more and more people distrust huge government, distrust its partner in crime, the media, there will be all sorts of things that can be revealed in this new year.
One thing I do want to draw attention to is the difference in character between the typical US politician and the man (i.e. labeled a bad guy by Trump) that was murdered after a non-private commercial flight from Damascus, Syria to Baghdad, Iraq:
Soleimani’s handwritten will: “My wife, I have chosen my burial place in the cemetery of the Martyrs of Kerman, Mahmoud knows it. I want my gravestone to be simple. Just write ‘Soldier Qassem Soleimani’ no more titles and phrases.”
Quite the difference, no?
Interesting days to come .. enjoy each day and the blessings that God the Creator has blessed us with in the midst of “wars and rumors of wars” – Jesus in Matthew 24:6.
Hug your kids, your grand-kids and good friends!
I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It’s gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day
It’s gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day
Oh, yes I can make it now the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is that rainbow I’ve been praying for
It’s gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day
(Ooh…) Look all around, there’s nothing but blue skies
Look straight ahead, there’s nothing but blue skies
As a follow-up to my previous post about innovation hijacking, the above photo shows President George Washington leading 13,000 troops to put down a tax rebellion that was totally just according to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent
Alexander Hamilton’s plan to pay for the combined war debts of all the colonies with a heavy Whiskey Tax (in today’s terms, $2.50/gallon), in the Distilled Spirits Tax of 1791 act.
How very British of Alexander right? Apparently, the Amerexit (secession of the thirteen colonies from the British empire) was all in vain as the names and flags have changed but power instead of liberty reigns yet again. Hijacked!
So in my last post I had shown how George Washington, as a young British officer, sparked a war between two superpowers in the Ohio country, called the French Indian War (1754-1763), this conflict had a distinct fallout in the American colonies after its conclusion. My effort today is where:
… I hope to bring both the ramp-up to revolution over the next 25 years (1750-1775) as well as the end result of the quest for independence into focus, and how the dreams of the 20% of the people that were for independence, liberty and freedom were hijacked resulting in a culture in 1790 that involved the very things they were fighting against:
… tyranny, new or higher taxes, monopolies, and restrictions …
By the end of the war the British Empire was the undisputed superpower in both North America and Europe and was all too eager to foist upon their hapless colonial subjects the previously unenforced Navigation Acts along with new taxes. Thanks George!
The liberty experienced for the past 140+ years started losing ground to increased power that the state brings with coercion and violence. To be sure, this shift was gradual, but within a generation it was clear that the British empire failed to understand each of the American colonies to the extent that they should never had intervened from thousands of miles away. As any parent knows, once you have a child on the way to their own independent life, attempting to control that child for the parent’s own well-being is an effort in futility UNLESS you make slaves of everyone.
In England itself, with the liberal Whigs out of power and the warmongering Tories in control, there was fresh support for the new King George III who would station its troops in the colonies during peacetime, enforce the Navigation Acts, restrict western settlement to stunt growth, and institute new Parliamentary taxation. Statist power came like a pendulum to each of the colonies. So with the Proclamation Line of 1763 that restricted western settlement, the 1764 American Revenue Act that enacted taxes on sugar and increased customs enforcement, and the 1765 Stamp Act that raised new taxes on paper products, it was finally The Stamp Act that was especially hated and produced a storm of protest.
Why was there no general revolt in 1763, or 1764? Murray Rothbard has a thought from his fifth volume of Conceived in Liberty:
Ultimately, revolutions are mass phenomena, and cannot succeed without the support—indeed the active and enthusiastic support—of the great majority of the population. . . . Otherwise it will not even make a respectable showing, much less take and keep the reins of government. But the masses will not move, will not erupt, if they lack aggressive leaders to articulate their grievances and to point the path for them to follow. The leaders supply the necessary theoretical justification and analysis of the revolution’s short- and long-term goals. Unaided by leaders, the masses tend to accept each act of tyranny, not out of willing agreement, but from failure to realize that successful opposition can be mounted against the status quo. The articulation by the leaders is the final necessary spark that ignites the tinderbox of revolution.
Leaders are not appointed, they rise to the occasion when this kind of statist tyranny happens. These leaders risk all, as during the American Revolution demonstrated in just the lives of those that signed the Declaration of Independence.
In 1765, Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, who respectively wrote the Virginia Resolves and Massachusetts Resolves stepped up their game. Sam Adams also established a resistance group known as the Loyal Nine, which soon expanded into the colony-wide Sons of Liberty. The result was that by 1766 The Stamp Act was repealed.
However, in Massachusetts after the passage of the tax-increasing Townshend Acts in 1767, British troops occupied Boston and colonial assemblies were forced to be dissolved. The colonies responded to this increasing coercion with mass non-importation protests that severely hurt British commerce. This BOYCOTT sent a message to the British that eventually, three YEARS later resulted in that the Townshend Acts were partially repealed in 1770.
Yet again, the British Empire pushed buttons yet again as they are now dealing with a teenager, and enacted the Tea Act of 1773 that extended the British East India Company’s tea monopoly to American shores.
This was epic BS as ANY nation that picks and chooses where their people can purchase products THEY want (i.e. free trade) is not a friend of the consumer and is a fried of both economic warfare and eventual physical warfare. Here is looking at you President Trump with all your sanctions and trade deals. But I digress …
Those in Boston promptly responded accordingly with the famous Boston Tea Party of December 1773. Great Britain responded with the Coercive, or “Intolerable” Acts of 1774, which provoked the assembly of the First Continental Congress in late 1774.
It was at this point that the radicals (I am pretty sure in 2019 USA that these people would have been targeted, marginalized and most likely suicided), led by Massachusetts’ Sam and John Adams and Virginia’s Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, battled the conservatives and decided upon a colony-wide boycott of all British products.
In the spring of 1775, the British redcoats responded by trying to arrest Massachusetts radicals John Hancock and Sam Adams, who were currently near military supplies in Concord. Paul Revere traveled to nearby Lexington to warn of the impending British, and colonial minutemen confronted the approaching British troops. The showdown led to the famous “Shot Heard Round the World,” and the American Revolution began.
At this point, with open warfare on the people, which is what the confiscation of firearms is, how does liberty respond to power? Philosophically, it was with managing the war that the forces of liberty faced their most difficult challenge, since war is naturally a coercive event that leads to death and destruction.
The war itself split the liberty lovers that probably included less than 20% of the general population. Many would align with power within this renegade government and use British tactics and statism against the British. How absurd. Bringing war to a larger power in the same way that larger power does war is a study in insanity. This was accomplished both during the American Revolution as well in the Second American Revolution, the War Against Southern Independence that most people refer to as the American Civil War.
Murray Rothbard, in Conceived in Liberty Volume I-IV, yet again points to what method actually saved the American Revolution, which was the use of guerilla warfare where he is paraphrased as saying:
… the Patriots’ greatest military strength lay in their guerrilla warfare tactics (ambushing armies, sneaking behind enemy lines, disrupting supply chains, etc.) and he argued that the only libertarian method of fighting a war is through such guerrilla warfare. This is because it is relatively inexpensive since there is no standing army, soldiers are better motivated because they are close to home, and there is far less need for a stifling and oppressive military bureaucracy.
.. and beyond this, the strategy that was chosen:
.. the decision to fight the war conventionally led to enormous government intervention in the economy through paper-money inflation, debt financing, price controls, and confiscation of goods
War debt leads once again to a desire for a strong central government that will eventually bring tyranny to the forefront yet again, like in 1794 with Washington leading 13,000 troops into Western Pennsylvania and the very real situation we have today with a militarized Redcoat fully entrenched here in the USA in 2019:
So we have come full circle in showing how this struggle between liberty and innovation has with power and political status-quo bureaucracy.
So quickly, in general, I will offer two of my own experiences with this as I referred to in my previous post:
Also in “Part 2”, I hope to offer my own general experiences of where an innovative project’s dreams were hijacked by political and organizational forces bent on expediency and short term gains.
I have a two in mind, one in business and one in ministry, that I have personally participated in. The parallels are very interesting!
It does seem that innovative projects and initiatives do threaten the political status-quo in any organization. I have no doubt that this is the main reason that Jesus himself resisted the human-natural act of forming an organization to accomplish some vision or mission.
In corporate America, as opposed to smaller businesses, there seems to be a bent toward managing verses leading, that risks are to be totally managed so as to really make no progress at all for years or decades. In the end, the business can no longer sustain itself as management surrounds itself with “yes men” (I know that sounds wrong in this PC-world, just assume someone else e-mailed me about this aggression) and stifles innovation that would actually IMPROVE the ability of the business to provide value to its customers going forward.
In my specific case, a very innovative project was hijacked in the development stage by management that failed to understand the project’s attributes and decided to bring in a partner that was ill-equipped to compete development and bring the project into production. Along the way, typical traits were demonstrated like the marginalization of those who really knew the core philosophy of the project as well as how the design was intended to positively impact this business. In the end, money was squandered and the project, like so many in government circles (F-35, Ford Carrier Class, etc), ends up imploding and being a general dumpster fire where good money is thrown after bad.
In organized ministry circles, similar innovative approaches can also bring the status-quo political fake news people out of the woodwork to halt anything that they can understand as being beneficial for people who could use a relationship with Jesus to bring peace and love to their lives and give them an insight into the way that Papa (God, Father) is especially fond of them. Close-minded church-goers and rule-followers have little patience for alternative ways that people can be reached whether is be from one’s home, from a coffee-house or even in the marketplace.
In my specific case, a ministry that had already transitioned from an inward facing clique/country club to a spiritual family that actually had a heart for those without Jesus, just could not give up their view that the church building was the center of what Jesus-following is all about. Threatened that their years of tithing (investing) might find them not able to realize their ROI, they effectively marginalized any staff (professional/volunteer) personnel that would not maintain the new status-quo.
In both instances, the lost dreams of the innovators has to be grieved, which is a process that every visionary has to deal with in their own terms. While they will many times see the positives and learnings that came out of the process as being very beneficial for the next “project/dream”, there is usually always a scar on ones heart to those that gave their all to attempt something that others barely or rarely understand, something much bigger than themselves.
I can only reflect on how Francis Marion, guerilla leader of the militia in South Carolina (1780-1783) that successfully dogged Cornwallis so that he could eventually be trapped by the French fleet at Yorktown. After much of the conflict was over, he was already being marginalized for the next chapter of life in the American Colonies as I indicated in a previous post:
So by the fall of 1781 as the British catastrophe at Yorktown reverberated throughout the British Empire, there were nationalist forces that were already parting ways with the radicals, and even the militias that brought them to this day. By 1783, Francis Marion saw the writing on the wall. The NOV1782 election meant that Marion had to leave Pond Bluff yet again for the 06JAN1783 legislative session. Writing from there on January 18th he shared the inequalities that tainted his excitement about the future of the colony as well of the federation of states. It seems that the Rhode Islander Continental Nathaniel Greene was awarded 10,000 guineas from SC toward the purchase of a SC plantation and quoted an old saying “that kissed goes by favor”. Georgia had also given Greene 24,000 acres as well. Marion eventually was awarded 300 acres in 1785.
It should be noted that the correspondence Marion had with Greene stopped abruptly as the hostilities stopped in DEC1782. Marion had hoped that Congress would follow through on the promise of a lifetime of half-pay for officers but it would be 50 years before that practice would finally start. Marion lamented that “idle spectators of war” were in charge now.
It is little wonder then why there is much more effort needed to be put towards the maintenance of liberty in this broken world than it does to maintain power. It seems that power, and kings, is the default mode of man:
Just some things to reflect on.
I do hope this allows y’all to reflect on history as well as current events.
