Quaker War

Real (to me) religion

2011-12-29T15:24:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure why I feel the need to say this right now, but I do. Religion is a very personal relationship between the inner me and God. I believe that every choice is a moral choice. I believe that I have to check in about even the smallest things. I have a conscience. It is my interface. I wrote a paper yesterday where I stated that I use the Ten Commandments as guidance. Well, I do but my main 'Commandment' is Thou shalt not use force or coercion on your fellow humans. My second 'Commandment' is Do not sit on your ass while force or coercion is used on your fellow human being. I have stated this previously in this blog. What religion certainly is NOT is a list of rules that want to govern every aspect of daily life. That is micro-management and is a substitute for the personal decision concerning what is moral. The ULTIMATE in this non-thought is embodied in islam. I looked at an article today that said that islam is overtaking the western world. I believe that the western world is skidding backwards towards islam, the ultimate in telling people what to do in every situation. I believe that islam is a filth casting its statist shadow over human thought. I cannot speak strongly enough against islam. I cannot speak strongly enough against statism. For as long as I draw breath I will oppose, nonviolently, the substitution of 'rules' for human thought.

HD Thoreau, my Hero (and Naylor for writing about him so well)

2011-04-25T04:53:00.000-07:00

Refusing Allegiance to the State

Henry David Thoreau Versus the United States

By THOMAS H. NAYLOR

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual has a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.

Henry David Thoreau, “On Civil Disobedience”

Henry David Thoreau, the iconoclastic, nineteenth century New England writer, has long been associated with simple living, solitude, independent thinking, environmental integrity, civil disobedience, nonviolence, and passive resistance. But few seem to have noticed that he was also a card-carrying secessionist.

Best known for its influence on Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., the South African anti-apartheid movement, and the Eastern European anti-communist movement in the 80s, Thoreau’s famous 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience” reads like a secessionist’s manifesto.

His two-year stay at Walden Pond near Cambridge, Massachusetts between 1845 and 1847, on which his 1854 book Walden was based, was little short of a personal secession from his village, his state, and his country. About personal secession Thoreau once said, “Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union. Why do they not dissolve it themselves—the union between themselves and the State?”

In 1854, when the population of the United States was around 20 million, Thoreau thought the country was already too large. “The nation itself is an unwieldly and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense.” He called for a “rigid economy” and “Spartan simplicity of life.” “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!” he said.

Thoreau’s principal grievances with the federal government were over its de facto support of slavery and its participation in the Mexican-American War, both of which he considered to be immoral.

When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country (Mexico) is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army (the U.S. Army), and subjected to military law, I think it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.

During the first half of the nineteenth century before the Civil War, New England was a political hotbed for secessionists, most of whom were abolitionists. Massachusetts Senator Timothy Pickering, a former high-ranking general in the Revolutionary War, was one of the most important leaders of the New England secession movement.

New England Federalists, who believed that the policies of the Jefferson and Madison administrations were proportionately more harmful to New England than to other parts of the country, thrice led independence movements aimed respectively at the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the national embargo of 1807, and the War of 1812. In 1814 New England secessionists expressed their opposition to the War of 1812 and the military draft of the Hartford Convention.

Thoreau, who was vehemently opposed to slavery, called for abolitionists to “effectively withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts.” He told them that, “if they had God on their side, even though they did not constitute a majority, that was enough.”

In response to the question, “How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today?” Thoreau presciently responded, “He cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” Clearly a man ahead of his time!

As for civil disobedience, of which secession is a special case, Thoreau said, “If an injustice requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the government machine.” Thoreau actually spent a night in jail for not paying his poll-tax.

No doubt many anarchists have taken note of the following two statements by Thoreau in “Civil Disobedience. “That government is best which governs not at all,” and “I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually.”

If Thoreau were alive today, it seems unlikely that he would have an e-mail address. He was not convinced that we all had to be connected.

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas, but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate…We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New, but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

Perhaps the reason given by Thoreau as to why he escaped to Walden Pond says it all:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Thoreau’s philosophy of secession was based on the premise that an individual’s moral principles have the first claim on his or her actions, and that any government which requires violation of these principles has no legitimate authority whatsoever.

One can only imagine what Thoreau would think of the United States today – a nation which has lost its moral authority and is unsustainable, ungovernable, and unfixable. What would he think of a government owned, operated, and controlled by corporate America and Wall Street? How would he feel about the illegal wars with Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya? What about our unconditional support for the bellicose state of Israel? Would he condone the torture of military combatant prisoners? And, alas, the war on terror?

Henry David Thoreau was arguably the most thoughtful, nonviolent secessionist of the nineteenth century. Unlike well known southern secessionists such as John C. Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee, Thoreau’s message was not tainted by the scourge of slavery.

Modern day New England liberals who summarily reject secession as a kind of racist conspiracy, should re-visit Thoreau. They just might be surprised at what they find.

Thomas H. Naylor is Founder of the Second Vermont Republic and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University. His books include: Downsizing the U.S.A., Affluenza, The Search for Meaning and The Abandoned Generation: Rethinking Higher Education

Founder of the Second Vermont Republic and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University; co-author of Affluenza, Downsizing the USA, and The Search for Meaning.

Two new articles that make sense to me

2011-04-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

Good Friday - Jesus Exposes the State for What It is Not

Written by beckychr007 on Apr-23-11 5:43am

“What Roman power slowly built, an unarmed traitor instantly overthrew.” ~ Claudius Claudianus

When Rome's representatives and toadies mocked the “King of the Jews” and he silently mocked them for believing that temporal power was the essence of divinity, an imperial existential crisis was created that could not be cured by the Jew's execution—for the State no longer had any legitimacy.

Recently Barack Obama fruitlessly struggled to explain why Muammar Gaddafi no longer had any legitimacy. Over the centuries other rulers, and their philosophizing apologists, have struggled to explain what gives them (and not the leaders of other nations) the legitimate authority to confiscate and redistribute the property of their subjects along with the power of life and death over them. All this scrambling has been necessary ever since the mocking of Jesus Christ, which exposed, at least to the Western World, that the Emperor has no clothes.

In the ancient pagan world, leaders had no difficult establishing their authority and legitimacy. There was no question why leaders had the right to rule—they were gods. But, Jesus had already blown that idea apart, and that is why he found himself in Pilate's deadly after-hours kangaroo court.

It is said the audience “marveled” when Jesus brought their attention to the image of Tiberius Caesar ( a homicidal pedophile, who claimed the right, as a god, to enslave millions, including the Jews) on the denarius. When the rabbi uttered the now famous phrase "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's” it was revolutionary and treasonous. With that one skillful rebuttal, Jesus brilliantly pointed out that the claims of God and Caesar are mutually exclusive. If one’s faith is in God, then God is owed everything. But Caesar’s claims are necessarily illegitimate, and he is therefore owed nothing. However, if one’s faith is in Caesar, God’s claims are illegitimate, and Caesar is owed, at the very least, the coin which bears his image, along with an incription certifying his status as a god.

Stripped of his divinity Caesar Tiberius is exposed for what he really was—a sexually deviant mass murderer—who is owed nothing.

Later, with his life, Jesus would mock the State's concept of the divine. Pilate asked him if he was the King of the Jews. Jesus, made the legalistic point that it was the Roman Prefect of Judaea himself--- who had confirmed the accusation. The soldiers mocked the King of the Jews for claiming divinity, while obviously having no temporal power to get himself out of the humiliating and deadly situation inwhich he found himself.

What troubled Pilate was that the King of the Jews , did seem to have the qualities of a god king, but apparently had no worldly power. If this Jesus was divine, then the power, legitmacy and authority of Rome could not be based upon the divinity of Caesar.

For the next three centuries Rome persecuted the followers of Jesus—not because they worshiped the King of the Jews, but because they refused to acknowledge the divinity, and thus the legitimacy and authority, of Caesar.

And forever after it has been difficult for the state to claim legitimacy. For a long time they tried to claim legitimacy through Jesus Christ himself—a claim that always seemed hollow and inconsistent (who can help but laugh at the mention of the “Holy Roman Empire”—an entity which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire)---it just never had the same type of authoritativeness as the claim that the dear leader is, himself, an actual god.

So there have been other attempts, to establish the legitimacy of the State by virtue of the leader's divinity—a type of godliness conferred by such things as being the “embodiment of the people”, “embodiment of the fatherland”, “embodiment of the Revolution" and etc. But, in the end, democracy, fascism and communism have never delivered the same quality of gods as was the case in the Pagan world.

Jesus Christ exposed the state for what it is not, and never again would it be the same.

AND

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Zero Degrees of Empathy

This is a review of a book titled 'Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty'.

It informs us on current understanding on the subject of empathy which is naturally clouded with uncertainty.

I also think non empathic relationships evolve and progress to absurdity, when unchecked by natural social norms. The individuals can become blinded to their own behavior.

I want you to think about something. The entire culture of precontact Amazonia accepted cannibalism as an ongoing way of life and this was readily supported because the fecundity of the land made eliminating individuals an option. This meant that if you were captured, you accepted you fate as dinner. You also accepted that it was fine to execute a victim who up to the moment of death had the free run of the village. The only empathy shown in a report I read came in not allowing the victim to see it coming.

Now apply the ideas in this review.

Why a lack of empathy is the root of all evil

From casual violence to genocide, acts of cruelty can be traced back to how the perpetrator identifies with other people, argues psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen. Is he right?

By Clint Witchalls

AFP/GETTY

The Rwanda genocide: should evil on this scale be blamed on psycopaths or on the perpetrators' beliefs?

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-a-lack-of-empathy-is-the-root-of-all-evil-2262371.html

Lucy Adeniji – an evangelical Christian and author of two books on childcare – trafficked two girls and a 21-year-old woman from Nigeria to work as slaves in her east London home. She made them toil for 21 hours a day and tortured them if they displeased her. The youngest girl was 11 years old.

Sentencing her to 11-and-a-half years in prison last month, Judge Simon Oliver said: "You are an evil woman. I have no doubt you have ruined these two girls' lives. They will suffer from the consequences of the behaviour you meted out to them for the rest of their lives."

Most people would probably agree with Judge Oliver's description of Adeniji as evil, but Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, would not be one of them. In his latest book, Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty, Baron-Cohen, argues that the term evil is unscientific and unhelpful. "Sometimes the term evil is used as a way to stop an inquiry," Baron-Cohen tells me. "'This person did it because they're evil' – as if that were an explanation."

Human cruelty has fascinated and puzzled Baron-Cohen since childhood. When he was seven years old, his father told him the Nazis had turned Jews into lampshades and soap. He also recounted the story of a woman he met who had her hands severed by Nazi doctors and sewn on opposite arms so the thumbs faced outwards. These images stuck in Simon's mind. He couldn't understand how one human could treat another with such cruelty. The explanation that the Nazis were simply evil didn't satisfy him. For Baron-Cohen, science provides a more satisfactory explanation for evil and that explanation is empathy – or rather, lack of empathy.

"Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling, and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion," writes Baron-Cohen. People who lack empathy see others as mere objects.

Empathy, like height, is a continuous variable, but for convenience, Baron-Cohen splits the continuum into six degrees – seven if you count zero empathy. Answering the empathy quotient (EQ) questionnaire, developed by Baron-Cohen and colleagues, will put you somewhere on the empathy bell curve. People with zero degrees of empathy will be at one end of the bell curve and those with six degrees of empathy at the other end.

Baron-Cohen provides vignettes of what a typical person with x-degrees of empathy would be like. We're told, for example, that a person with level two empathy (quite low) "blunders through life, saying all the wrong things (eg, 'You've put on weight!') or doing the wrong things (eg, invading another person's 'personal space')."

Being at the far ends of the bell curve (extremely high or extremely low empathy scores) is not necessarily pathological. It is possible to have zero degrees of empathy and not be a murderer, torturer or rapist, although you're unlikely to be any of these things if you are at the other end of the empathy spectrum – level six empathy.

"You could imagine someone who has low empathy yet somehow carves out a lifestyle for themselves where it doesn't impact on other people and it doesn't interfere with their everyday life," says Baron-Cohen.

"Let's take someone who's very gifted at physics and they're focused on doing physics. They might not be interacting very much with other people but they are interacting with the world of objects. They might have low empathy but it's not interfering. In that respect it's not pathological and they don't need a diagnosis. They have found a perfect fit between their mind and the lifestyle that they have."

Baron-Cohen doesn't see very high empathy as potentially debilitating. He sees someone with level six empathy as possessing a "natural intuition in tuning into how other are feeling".

I was intrigued to read a different account of empathy overdrive. In a recent newspaper article, Fiona Torrance described the hell of hyper- empathy. She has a rare condition known as mirror-touch synaesthesia. She first became aware of it aged six when she saw butcher birds hanging mice on a wire fence. "I felt the tug on my neck and spine; it was as if I was being hanged," Torrance recalled.

Empathy excess, however, is much rarer than empathy deficit. And while people with empathy excess suffer alone, those with empathy deficits cause others to suffer. Or at least some of them do.

At zero degrees of empathy are two distinct groups. Baron-Cohen calls them zero-negative and zero-positive. Zero-positives include people with autism or Asperger's syndrome

. They have zero empathy but their "systemising" nature means they are drawn to patterns, regularity and consistency. As a result, they are likely to follow rules and regulations – the patterns of civic life.

Zero-negatives are the pathological group. These are people with borderline personality disorder

, antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. They are capable of inflicting physical and psychological harm on others and are unmoved by the plight of those they hurt. Baron-Cohen says people with these conditions all have one thing in common: zero empathy.

The question is: did people with these personality disorders lose their empathy or were they born that way?

One of Baron-Cohen's longitudinal studies – which began 10 years a – found that the more testosterone a foetus generates in the womb, the less empathy the child will have post- natally. In other words, there is a negative correlation between testosterone and empathy. It would appear the sex hormone is somehow involved in shaping the "empathy circuits" of the developing brain.

Given that testosterone is found in higher quantities in men than women, it may come as no surprise that men score lower on empathy than women. So there is a clear hormonal link to empathy. Another biological factor is genetics. Recent research by Baron-Cohen and colleagues found four genes associated with empathy – one sex steroid gene, one gene related to social-emotional behaviour and two associated with neural growth.

Does that mean, in the future, we will have gene-therapy to correct for low empathy?

"I'd be very concerned about those sorts of directions," Baron-Cohen says. "I mean, they are at least plausible from a science point of view, but whether they're desirable from a societal point of view is another matter. I would probably put more emphasis on early interventions – environmental interventions. I think empathy could be taught in schools for example."

The other side of the empathy coin is environment. John Bowlby, the British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who developed "attachment theory", was the first to point out the lifelong impact of early neglect and abuse. "We think children are very robust, they'll somehow adapt," says Baron-Cohen, "but Bowlby showed that children who had what he called insecure attachment – a lack of opportunity to form a strong bond with a caregiver – are more at risk of delinquency and they're more at risk from a range of personality disorders, which I translate into a lack of empathy because many of the personality disorders, like the psychopath, or people with borderline personality disorder

are just operating on a totally self- centred mode. Early attachment is one big risk factor for low empathy."\

With functional magnetic resonance imaging

(fMRI) scanners, it is possible to look at the effect hormones, genes and the environment have on the brain. In his book, Baron-Cohen identifies ten interconnected brain regions that are part of what he calls the "empathy circuit". People who score low on the empathy questionnaire show less neural activity in these brain regions.

Science is beginning to unravel the mystery of why some people have less empathy than others and the implications are potentially far reaching, not least for the criminal justice system. "The hallmark of a compassionate and civilised society is that we try to understand other people's actions, we don't try to simply condemn them," says Baron-Cohen.

"There is even a question about whether a person that commits an awful crime should be in a prison as opposed to a hospital."

But if someone endures a neglectful upbringing and they subsequently grow up to be a violent criminal, should they be absolved of any wrong doing because an fMRI scanner reveals low neural activity in their inferior frontal gyrus? "When people do commit crimes there may be determinants to their behaviour which are outside their control," says Baron-Cohen. "No one is responsible for their own genes."

Indeed, but we are all capable of making moral choices. Making the right choice may be more difficult for people with compromised empathy circuits, but the choice still exists.

Baron-Cohen wants to move the debate on the causes of evil "out of the realm of religion and into the realm of science", but I wonder if he is going beyond science and into other domains such as moral philosophy and jurisprudence.

"I don't see that we have to keep them apart," he says. "What I'm hoping is that the book will be seen as: how can science inform moral debates. It might even have relevance for politics and politicians, that when we try and resolve conflict, whether it's domestic conflict or international conflict, issues about empathy might actually be useful. The alternative is that science just does science and doesn't engage with moral issues or the real world. I think that would be a backward step."

If you consider the big atrocities in history – the ones we think of as evil – the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, the slave trade, communist purges, Rwandan genocide, apartheid, etc, it took the support of the masses to make them happen. Can we blame evil on this scale on psychopaths (who comprise less than one per cent of the population) and narcissists (also less than one per cent of the population)?

Surely beliefs are a much bigger cause of evil than biology or upbringing? Negative memes are spread by the church or state about the outgroup until they become thoroughly dehumanised. And the thing to restore humanity to the outgroup is not drugs and therapy but re-humanising narratives.

"Whatever your causes of loss of empathy, it's the very same empathy circuit that would be involved when you show empathy or fail to show empathy," says Baron-Cohen.

He argues that our beliefs can have an impact on the empathy circuit. Our level of empathy isn't necessarily fixed for all situations and right across our lives. It can fluctuate, depending on the situation. When people are tired or stressed they may show less empathy than when they're calm and rested. Baron-Cohen wants to differentiate transient changes to empathy, where empathy can be restored, versus more permanent changes.

"If for genetic reasons, for example, you have low empathy, it might be much harder to restore it but I remain optimistic even in those situations that there are therapeutic or educational methods that could be tried to improve anybody's empathy," he says.

So far, science has made little progress in treating empathy deficits. Psychopaths, for example, are notoriously untreatable as are children who present with callousness/unemotional (CU) trait. And trying to improve the empathy of sex offenders is one of the least effective interventions, according to Tom Fahy, professor of forensic mentalhealth

at the Institute of Psychiatry.

As someone who works with violent criminals, I wanted to know if Fahy thinks zero empathy is a good explanation for cruelty. "It may be one of the ingredients," he says, "but it's not usually an entirely satisfactory explanation for cruelty or acts of serious violence."

Narrowing the focus down to empathy when trying to prevent repeat behaviour is not a very effective approach, in Fahy's view. "It's difficult enough, anyway, to reduce offending behaviour through complex psychological interventions," says Fahy, "but to put all your eggs in one basket is undoubtedly a mistake."

Although zero degrees of empathy is necessary for someone to do evil, it is not sufficient to explain it. As Fahy says, there is usually a "complex tree of experiences" that leads to a violent or cruel act. Also, not everyone who has zero empathy will commit evil acts – Baron-Cohen devotes an entire chapter to extricate himself from this dilemma. Zero degrees of empathy requires too many qualifications to make it a satisfactory explanation for evil. And trying to boost empathy using therapy and other non-drug interventions doesn't appear to have much effect.

I wholly agree with Judge Oliver's description of Lucy Adeniji as evil. That doesn't mean I want to shut the conversation down. I think it's important to know – from a biological, psychological and societal point of view – how someone like Adeniji came to be cruel and uncaring, but I also think it's important to condemn her actions. I don't see the two things as being mutually exclusive.

I agree with Baron-Cohen that we shouldn't use evil as an explanation for why people do bad things, and finding ways to improve empathy, can't be a bad thing. But, for me, replacing the idea of evil with the idea of empathy-starvation is a simplification too far.

'Zero Degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty' is published by Allen Lane on 7 April (£20). To order a copy for the special price of £18 (free P&P) call Independent Books Direct on 08430 600 030, or visit www.independentbooksdirect.co.uk

Time to trot this beauty out again

2011-02-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

Jesus, the Political Insurgent?

Decoding the Coders of Christ

By Rev. WILLIAM E. ALBERTS

The real conspiracy surrounding Jesus is not the cover-up of his marriage to Mary Magdalene, but his theological transformation into the "bridegroom" of the Christian Church (Mark 2: 18-22). Jesus was a Jew not a Christian. He was not about dying so that believers everywhere could inherit eternal life, but about liberating the Jews in his land from Roman occupation. His crucifixion was not about resurrecting the dead but about reviving the living. His sacrifice was not about heaven or hell for all people in the future, but about release and renewal for the Jewish people in this life. The great conspiracy is the early Christian Church turning his model of liberation from an oppressive state into one of accommodation to the state.

It is safer today, as in the past, to believe that Jesus died for the sins of the world than to join in seeking to rid the world of political, corporate and military sins that deny other people their birthright of freedom and fulfillment. Safer because many Christian denominations have allowed themselves to be integrated into and "blessed" and co-opted by the ruling status quo. The real deception of traditional Christianity is its reinterpretation of salvation as an individual matter, apart from institutionalized political and economic realities that greatly determine who, in the gospel words of Jesus, may actually "have life, and have it in its fullest." (John 10:10)

Ironically, Jesus himself seems to be the greatest threat to Christian Churches: his risky model of intervention-of speaking truth to power structures and acting it out-on behalf of oppressed persons. This risk appears to partly underlie institutionalized Christianity's most deceptive conspiracy: that of immortalizing Jesus in order to immobilize his dangerous model of liberation. The threat his cross poses as a model is removed by turning it into a monument and worshipping it. Vicarious identification with his struggle may be substituted for involvement in similar, hazardous ethical struggles today. Here the power is in the prayer. The stature is in the statue. The right is in the rite.

The personal appeal of saving one's own soul for all eternity replaces the more caring and challenging commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself. A gospel of personal redemption may also protect one from seeing how one's own institutionalized blessings may be another's curse-gained at another's expense.

A further risk for one's neighbor is that a one true and only saviour of the world appeals to insecure persons. Their need for absolute certainty and rightness, and intolerance of ambiguity, differences and complexity, invite and rationalize power over and domination of others. And another conspiracy is born: oppressing one's neighbor in the name of the very person whose mission was to set people free. Such conspiracies depend on rewriting history.

The early Christians' need to transcend the reality of the cross evidently led them to bury history. The historical reality was that the Jews suffered brutal oppression under Roman occupation, and that Jesus was merely one of many messianic prophets crucified Roman-style for political sedition. He was not about dying for the sins of the world so that believers could inherit eternal life, but about seeking to liberate the Jewish people from the sins of the Roman Empire-which had violated their national sovereignty, occupied their country, and crucified thousands of Jewish "insurgents" and bystanders. Belief in the Messiah was grounded not in heaven but on earth: national sovereignty, freedom and peace.

Jesus reportedly saw his mission as having a key political dimension. He was "anointed . . . to preach good news to the poor . . . [and] to set at liberty those who are oppressed." (Luke 4:18) As New Testament historian Paula Fredriksen writes in From Jesus to Christ, Jesus shared a first century Jewish consensus "on what was religiously important: the people, the Land, Jerusalem, the Temple, and Torah. . . . The political situation was of religious concern because," as Fredriksen has "repeatedly noted, Judaism did not draw a distinction between the two spheres: an idolatrous occupying force posed a religious problem." (Second Edition, page 93, Yale University Press)

The occupying power of Rome, in turn, saw Jesus as a political problem, and swiftly crucified him on a cross after his "triumphant" messianic-like entry into Jerusalem at Passover. A foreboding inscription also was posted above his head: "This is the King of the Jews" (Luke 23:38). Jesus' mission was to empower people not gain power over them-another ethical aspect of his model turned upside down through the ages by evangelistic Christian kingdom builders. They and their descendents have claimed to heed the call of a resurrected Christ: a risen Jesus appeared to the eleven disciples and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." (Matthew 28: 16-20) Never mind that The Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit was a Christological formulation of the early Christian Church created long after Jesus and his disciples had lived.

The early Christians seemed to stand history on its head in order to put a resurrected Jesus on his feet-and give him legs. They transported him from a political to a theological realm in order to survive and flourish in the Roman world.

The Jews believed in a living not a resurrected messiah. The real messiah would deliver them from Roman domination and restore their national sovereignty and freedom. Thus for most Jews, any belief in Jesus as the messiah faded as their oppression continued in the years following his crucifixion. Their ongoing struggle against Roman occupation culminated in a violent insurrection between 61-73, which saw Rome destroy Jerusalem, murder over a million Jews, and made tens of thousands of them slaves and captives. (Christians and Anti-Semitism: A Calendar of Jewish Persecution)

The early followers of Jesus found it safer to dissociate themselves from the Roman-despised and persecuted Jews. Safer to reinterpret Jesus' messiahship in theological and evangelical rather than political and institutional terms. Safer to appeal to the Gentiles because the survival of the early followers lay in spreading a Christian gospel to the Romans. The gospel of a resurrected Messiah and saviour of the world. Whose miraculous resurrection proves, rather than negates, his being the Messiah and also the only Son of God. Therefore, his followers hold the one true religion in the palm of their faith.

The conversion of Jesus from Jew to Christian is seen in his dissociation from Judaism and accommodating appeal to the Romans. This distortion of historical reality involves the shifting of blame for Jesus' crucifixion from Romans to Jews. The anti-Semitism in the New Testament is seen in reputedly cruel Roman prefect Pontius Pilate agonizingly sympathetic to a would-be liberator of Jews from Roman domination; in Pilate dramatically washing his hands of responsibility for Jesus' death, even though he alone had the power of life and death over Jesus. (John 19:10)

The distortion of historical reality is also seen in Jews being set up as "Christ killers." A "whole battalion-backed, yet uneasy, Pilate giving in to the "will" of subjugated, powerless priests, elders of the people, and other Jews who repeatedly cried out, "Crucify him!" (Mark 15: 12-16) Portraying the Roman Empire in such a favorable light in New Testament books written 50 to 100 years after the fact, may have advanced the evangelizing of Romans by the early followers of Jesus, but it cast a horrible curse on the Jewish people by putting into the mouths of their oppressed descendents, "His [Jesus'] blood be on us and on our children." (Matthew 27:25)

Around 300 years later the apparent conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine led Christianity to not only be recognized, but favored by the state. Finally, the persecution and martyrdom of Christians ended. But not so that of Jews. Their continuing oppression is suggested in Constantine's support for separating the observance of Easter from the date of the Jewish Passover. Calling the Jews "utterly depraved" and "murderers of our Lord," he also wrote, "It appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul. . . . let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way. (Eusebius, Life of Constantine, Vol. III Ch.XVIII [1]) (Constantine 1 (emperor)-Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

"We have received from our Saviour a different way?" From Jewish liberator to Christian Saviour. The oppressed Christians were legitimized and accepted by the state, and, in Jesus' name, joined the state in oppressing the very descendents of those he sought to liberate from the state. A similar conspiracy operates in the present.

The counterpart today is readily seen in the self-professed "Christian" who manipulated his way into the White House. President Bush has used religion to disguise and justify America's criminal invasion and occupation of Iraq. "Freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to every man and woman in the world," he told cheering Republican delegates at their 2004 national convention. ( The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2004)

The Bush administration's pre-emptive war against Iraq is not about "God" and "freedom" but about lies: Iraq's threatening mushroom cloud-like weapons of mass destruction that did not exist; Saddam Hussein's ties to the horrible 9/11 attacks against America that did not exist; "fighting the terrorists in Iraq so that we do not have to fight them here"-so-called "terrorists" who did not exist but do now because of the Bush administration's military aggression against Iraq..

The Bush administration is not about spreading "freedom" but American imperialism, not about "God" "anointing the Iraqi people with "the oil of gladness" (Hebrews 1:96), but about gaining control of the oil under the soil of Iraq, not about rebuilding Iraq but about refilling the coffers of administration friendly Halliburton types. The great conspiracy against the American people is the Bush administration reinterpreting its war crimes against the Iraqi people as an act of "God."

The conspiracy underlying the Bush administration's criminal war against and occupation of Iraq has reached an even more deceptive level. Now unraveling is the cover-up of last November 19's deliberate killing of 24 Iraqi men, women and children civilians in Haditha by US Marines. The apparent Haditha massacre is evidently one of a number of atrocities committed against Iraqi civilians by US troops. These growing horrible disclosures apparently led Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal el-Maliki to "lash out at the American military" in reaction, "denouncing what he characterized as habitual attacks by troops against Iraqi civilians." He was quoted as saying the "violence against civilians has become a 'daily phenomenon' by many troops in the American-led coalition who do not respect the Iraqi people.'" ( The New York Times, June 2, 2006) The fact that el-Maliki's government is dependent upon United States military for its existence suggests the severity with which he perceives the "daily phenomenon" of violence committed by American troops against Iraqi civilians

The Bush administration's response to the perceived " 'daily' attacks against [Iraqi] civilians" (Ibid) contains its own deceptive irony. The response became headline news: "US orders ethics training for all its troops in Iraq". The "ethics training" consists of "troops be[ing] taught about military values, Iraqi cultural expectations, and disciplined professional conduct," which includes "the importance of adhering to legal, moral and ethical standards on the battlefield." ( The Boston Globe, June 2, 2006)

If it were about ethics, US troops would not be in Iraq in the first place. This conspiratorial masquerade is not meant to win the minds and hearts of the Iraqi people, but to bolster the flagging support of the American people for a criminal war and occupation that is unraveling. "Ethics training" or window dressing for a corrupt- and corrupting-conspiracy?

The real conspiracy is not the cover-up of Jesus' marriage to Mary Magdalene but his marriage to the Christian Church-and Christian Churches marriages to the state. It is the corrupting "bond" between church and state that needs to be decoded.

Many Christian clergy often tend not to rock the boat, by speaking truth to power, fearing their own ship won't come in. In institutionalized Christianity, clergy usually get ahead by getting along-which often means going along. Hierarchical structures determine their advancements and thus tend to keep their conscience. You can't have a hierarchy without a lowerarchy.

Similarly, many bishops and other such church executives often tend not to rock the boat, by speaking truth to power, fearing constituents will abandon ship-and not merely Republican church members. The primary emphasis is on evangelism not ethics, on making all people "disciples of Jesus Christ" not doing justice for all people. It is the politics of religion that often keeps religion out of politics-out of risky political issues.

The apparent conspiracy here is turning a prophet into a profit. In other words, a primary characteristic of the successful Christian church leader appears to be the ability to maintain and enhance the institution as it is. Here again the gravest threat to institutionalized Christianity is believed to be Jesus himself-his model of setting the oppressed free rather than evangelizing and oppressing them in his name-or in the name of "freedom."

There are exceptions. One is Jim Winkler, head of United Methodism's General Board of Church and Society, the social action agency of The Church. He recently called on Congress to impeach President Bush, also a United Methodist, for initiating an "illegal war of aggression" against Iraq "based on lies," and contrary to The Church's Social Principles that declare, "War is incompatible with the teaching and example of Christ."

Not surprisingly, Mark Tooley, director of the United Methodist Committee at the Institute of Religion and Democracy, reportedly said Jim Winkler was a front for the "Religious Left," and would make a better "spokesman for a left-wing political action organization like MoveOn.org," as he "does not represent the mainstream opinion in the denomination for which he purports to speak." ("Blow-back for Methodist attack on Bush," UPI Religion and Spirituality Forum, June 1, 2006) Tooley himself seems to presume to represent the denomination's "mainstream opinion." Jesus' model of liberation is not about "left" and "right" but right and wrong.

It is time for the bishops of The United Methodist Church especially to follow Jim Winkler's example and speak truth to power more forcefully. Last November, 95 of the bishops signed a "Statement of Conscience" in which they "repent[ed] of complicity in what we believe to be an unjust and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq." They lamented "being silent in the face of the United States Administration's rush toward military action based on misleading information." They confessed "preoccupation with institutional enhancement [italics added] and limited agendas while American men and women are sent to Iraq to kill and be killed, while thousands of Iraqi people needlessly suffer and die." And their concluding commitment was to "object with boldness when governing powers offer solutions of war that conflict with the gospel message of self-emptying love."

The latest "solution" of the "governing powers" is to offer "ethics training" for troops, whose very invasion and occupying presence in Iraq are violations of international law-and that of any "gospel message of self-emptying love." It is time for the 95 United Methodist bishops to present a resolution to their own Council of Bishops, calling for the censure of their two most prestigious and criminal church members: President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The grounds for their censure are contained in the 95 bishops' own "Statement of Conscience."

Jesus is recorded as teaching that eternal life is not something one inherits but does. It is not primarily about belief but about behavior, just as the truth is reflected in what one does. When a lawyer tested him by asking, "Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?," Jesus confirmed that the two greatest commandments were the way: love of one's god and one's neighbor as oneself. " Do this [italics added], and you will live." (Luke 10:25-28)

Jesus did not say which neighbor to love. Nor specify the neighbor's race, religion, nationality or sexual orientation. Which evidently led the lawyer to test Jesus further by asking, "And who is my neighbor?" And Jesus said any person robbed of life and in need of a Good Samaritan. And there were no proselytizing strings attached. (Luke 10:29-37)

Religion is about seeing through and overcoming conspiracies. It is about setting people free, not imposing sectarian or political beliefs on them. It is about empowering people, not gaining power over them. It is about honoring people in calling them by their own names, and experiencing their reality not interpreting it. It is about loving one's neighbor as oneself. And one's neighbor is anyone-anywhere. Religion is not worshiping what the prophets did but doing what the prophets worshiped.

Rev. William E. Alberts, Ph.D. is a hospital chaplain. Both a Unitarian Universalist and a United Methodist minister, he has written research reports, essays and articles on racism, war, politics and religion.

Big brouhaha in Quaker Theology on this

2011-02-02T11:47:00.000-08:00

The Immorality of Patriotism

Tony White

Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence, we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury.

—William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist, "Declaration of Sentiments Adopted by the Peace Convention" (1838)

Most take for granted that patriotism is a virtue. We are taught at home, in school, and by the media that love and pride for our country rank among our highest moral duties. We are exhorted to patriotism daily by flags, songs, holidays, monuments, marches, speeches, images, literature, and more that extol the glory of our country. So deeply ingrained is our belief in the value of patriotism that to even question it is taboo. When someone criticizes our personal sense of patriotism—always a ready-made tactic for trashing peace activists—it stings, and makes us very defensive. We think they just don't understand what true patriotism is all about, and perhaps we are moved to buy a bumper sticker reading "Peace is Patriotic."

But is patriotism peaceful? Based on my life experience, studies, intellect, and conscience, I am led undeniably to the conviction that patriotism is immoral: it is selfish and irrational, hinders our judgment, divides the world, contributes to militarization, causes war, and contradicts the teachings of Jesus.

Patriotism is an attitude of favoritism toward "my country" and "my people." If egotism or pridefulness towards oneself is a vice, then patriotism or pridefulness toward one's particular country is likewise deplorable.

Patriotism clouds our judgment; it hinders objectivity and detracts from our ability to assess political situations rationally. Patriotism biases us toward our country's perspective, encumbering our desire and ability to consider outside perspectives. Put briefly, patriotism breeds conformity and closed-mindedness. Furthermore, patriotism makes us overly trusting of those in power over us, and susceptible to abuses of that power.

This is evidenced by what happened after 9/11; the U.S. population was swept up in a wave of feverish patriotism and fell in line with a corrupt agenda. As a prime example, take the U.S.A. Patriot Act—who would dare oppose such a noble-sounding ordinance? Never mind that it involves gratuitous violations of civil liberties; what freedom-loving U.S. citizen does not also love warrantless surveillance, wiretapping, search and seizure, as well as detention and no-fly lists? Clearly, the act was given that title because politicians know the efficacy of patriotism for manipulating public opinion.

Cathy Kaplan

That patriotic propaganda measures are increased during wartime should be reason enough to give us pause concerning patriotism. Notice also how many flags are displayed for U.S. holidays associated with war—President's Day (celebrating Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays, both notorious for leading war efforts), Memorial Day, Independence Day (celebrating the day war was declared by the colonists on Britain), and Veterans Day—and how few flags appear on other federal holidays—Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (honoring a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize), Thanksgiving (purportedly celebrating gratitude and cooperation between European colonists and Native Americans), and Labor Day. The bond between patriotism and war is not even covert.

I personally experienced the intoxication of patriotism. Right after 9/11 (before I was a Quaker), I supported the Iraq War. I believed that the cause was just. Looking back on it, I realize that I was living in a fog, basing my opinions on fleeting, vague notions. Because I heard something about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), I was able to watch "Shock and Awe" approvingly, naively envisioning the United States speedily wiping out terrorism by force across the world. I cringe when I recall arguing with someone publicly that the United States should ignore the United Nations' caution about entering Iraq.

When it became common knowledge that Iraq had no WMDs or links to 9/11, and that the war was based on lies, I felt betrayed. I also felt guilty for my own poor judgment—how could I have been so gullible? Grappling with this, I eventually saw that I had fallen prey to the stupefying effects of patriotism.

In kindergarten, I learned a mysterious morning chanting ritual in which one robotically pledges one's life to a flag and to one nation under God "invisible" (as my child's mind heard it) with liberty and justice for all. Now I understand what I was saying. And I understand that people, and certainly Christians, should not pledge at all (Matt. 5:34), certainly not to a material object (an idol), certainly not to one particular nation among many, and certainly not to something under God! I also know now that no kingdom save an invisible one (Luke 17:20-21) could truly have liberty and justice for all.

I remember getting emotional about the war song known as the "Star-Spangled Banner." In seventh grade, I even won third place in an essay contest on the topic "What does patriotism mean to me?" I virtually equated "America" with "freedom"—faulty reasoning on which the essay was based and for which I was rewarded.

If egotism or pridefulness towards oneself is a vice, then patriotism or pridefulness toward one's particular country is likewise deplorable.

Many of us are taught in school that "America is the greatest country in the world," while the darker aspects of our history are largely ignored or glossed over. So how could I not view the United States as innocent, and anyone who opposes it as unreasonable and even evil? How could I not assume that whatever the United States does is destined to work and that the President always speaks the truth?

Patriotism divides the world. Anarchist Emma Goldman, in a 1908 speech on patriotism and militarization, said, "Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate." Patriotism separates us from them and builds pride in our us-ness, setting societies against each other under the pretext that to protect us we must be prepared to kill any of them. If all countries are encouraged to be prideful toward themselves, how can we be surprised when war occurs? Further, patriotism has a tendency to result in nativism; for example, in Nazi Germany and in many in the United States who discriminated against immigrants.

For patriotism to be a universal virtue would be illogical. If it were virtuous for every human being to be patriotic toward the same country, then this—while crude—would be self-consistent. But if it is right for the English to be patriotic toward England and the French toward France, then when England and France have a conflict of interest, morality will conflict with itself. Two leaders will disagree and both will be right, and two armies will clash and both will be doing the right thing.

Patriotism is a major factor contributing to militarism and war. Patriotism is the primary force that glorifies combat, and nothing contributes to the propagation of war more than military hero worship. As long as the view prevails that there is no more glorious, honorable, and heroic service than to train to become a killing machine, there will be war, as any leaders who fancy an attack will have legions of glory-seeking yes-men at their mercy. Military hero worship is what makes it possible for a decent person to murder on command in good conscience. Albert Einstein wrote in The World as I See It in 1931, "The greatest obstacle to international order is that monstrously exaggerated spirit of nationalism which also goes by the fair-sounding but misused name of patriotism."

Patriotism is contrary to the teachings of Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declared, "You have heard that it was said ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies" (Matt. 5:43-44). In the context of the Hebrew Law, here referenced by Jesus, "neighbor" meant "fellow Israelite," i.e. "compatriot." Thus "enemy," used in contrast to this, would likely be understood to refer to a national enemy. Jesus was demanding that no distinction be made between countryman and foreigner.

Miguel Saavedra

In fact, allegiance to any current government is consent to violence. Governmental power is rooted in violence—in the military, as well as the armed police. No one sincerely committed to the principle of nonviolence can in good conscience give consent to an institution based on military force. We can contrive many rationalizations for the supposed necessity of government, but this contradiction cannot be denied. The United States Constitution, purporting to be the "Supreme Law of the Land," grants the government the power to declare war. But we are called to recognize a different law as supreme—since we cannot serve two masters (Matt. 6:24), let us not be servants of men (1 Cor. 7:23), but let our sole allegiance be to the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom not of the worldly kind and so which does not require its subjects to fight for it (John 18:36), for we have only one Master and are all brothers and sisters (Matt. 23:8).

Leo Tolstoy, in his 1896 essay "Patriotism or Peace" (how's that for a bumper sticker slogan!), writes, "If Christianity really gives peace, and we really want peace, patriotism is a survival from barbarous times, which must not only not be evoked and educated, as we now do, but which must be eradicated by all means, by preaching, persuasion, contempt, and ridicule." Further, in "Patriotism and Government" (1900), he writes:

It is immoral because, instead of recognizing himself as the son of God, as Christianity teaches us, or at least as a free man, who is guided by his reason, every man, under the influence of patriotism, recognizes himself as the son of his country and the slave of his government, and commits acts which are contrary to his reason and to his conscience.

If you still have any doubt about the immorality of patriotism, I urge you to read the peace queries in Faith and Practice and sincerely ask yourself whether patriotism does not conflict with each peace query.

The usual rebuttal to the condemnation of patriotism is that some patriotism is bad, but not all; only excessive, imperialistic, blind, narrow-minded, exclusivist patriotism, go the many variations—but not our "healthy" patriotism.

If all countries are encouraged to be prideful toward themselves, how can we be surprised when war occurs?

Patriotism in its purest form—from which all others derive—is the desire for one's country to claim glory and power over all others due to its people's superiority. To say that excessive patriotism is bad, but that there is a "golden mean" of patriotism, is to say that excessively promoting violence is bad, but moderately promoting it is good. Non-imperialistic patriotism still implies acceptance of past imperialism. What country was not founded on or upheld by unjust conquest? And yet we have no reservations in our allegiance. Patriotism itself blinds and narrows our minds; it is essentially a bias. This supposed "clear-sighted" patriotism doesn't exist, unless perhaps for self-interested manipulation of others, because to see patriotism clearly is to see its pernicious implications. If we remove all that is exclusivist about patriotism, nothing remains.

Most will grant that my argument holds in the context of despotism. However, some may object that since our government is a democracy, the right to dissent is its distinctive mark, and in fact, what makes it worthy of patriotism in the first place. It follows that it is our patriotic duty to question authority, and that, as Howard Zinn said, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

Given the First Amendment, I can understand why someone might believe that dissent is patriotic, and I used to. However, consider this statement by linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

In public discourse, there is a sense that we can disagree as we may, if only in the spirit of patriotism. Thus it seems as though dissent needs patriotism to legitimize it. So while we may dissent on particular issues, a prerequisite is assent to the system as a whole—a system rooted in violence. Each time we patriotically dissent, we buy into this violent system all over again. Perhaps nothing reinforces the violent status quo more than patriotic dissent—it implies that whatever our disagreements, the one premise that even the most radical dissident dare not question is rule by violence.

To break from patriotism may seem shocking and painful. But I dare say that many people in the United States reading this do not really love the United States, though we think we do. What we really love is an idealized version of United States. We love the values of equality and liberty in the Declaration of Independence. But these values did not originate in 1776; they existed long before, and will continue long after the United States is gone. And the actual United States has never really lived up to these ideals. Inequality and lack of freedom were written into the U.S. Constitution with the institution of slavery, and have since continued through various forms of oppression. To this, we might retort that what we love is the tremendous courage and perseverance of the people of the United States in overcoming these injustices. But why give credit to the United States for what resides in the human heart? Have not people from all corners of the Earth exhibited this same spirit? Most great reforms are initially opposed by governments, and thus much of the people's perseverance has actually been through persecution by the United States.

Some assert that patriotism keeps countries together. But why presuppose that this is good, that the status quo ought to be maintained? That this is even offered as a response reveals the depth of our indoctrination, and directly reflects the view that the powerful have always endeavored to inculcate in the masses through patriotism—that whatever upholds the current establishment is good and necessary. If patriotism alone were keeping a country together, it would be an artificial basis propping up an outlived tradition. Political establishments should be maintained only as long as they are just and beneficial. A sound social organization should be able organically to self-persist, rendering patriotism superfluous at best.

If we want to achieve world peace and a form of society not based on violence, the time for change is now. But if we eradicate patriotism, what unifying principle can replace it? One answer is humanism. It unites not a particular group, but all people. If humanism proves too weak a sentiment, let us embrace universal love. This can happen when we realize our connection to others and the underlying unity of all things; when we experience the Divine inherent in ourselves and recognize this same divine essence in others; when, as Quaker founder George Fox wrote, we "walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one."

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Tony White, an attender at Pennsdale (Pa.) Meeting, teaches Philosophy at Pennsylvania College of Technology and Misericordia University.

February 2011

This is a feature article from the
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Struggle over a piece from T.S. Elliot

2011-01-24T19:08:00.000-08:00

One of Quakerism's guiding light's is the Bible verse, from Acts 5:29 (and Romans 13:1; I Peter 2:13.), "Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men." It is commonly understood in Christian thought, Quakers included, that 'We should obey man only in so far that in obeying him we also obey God '(from the Geneva Study Bible). My problem with this is that every time we support the Parasite Class, we help heap suffering upon the latest victim of that despicable class. How is that "obeying God"? "Love thy neighbor" hardly means pay his oppressors, does it? Yet, "Christians/Quakers that I know, all pay taxes because they "see" no conflict. I spend all my efforts trying to raise that awareness. OK, then, connection to the title of this. The quote (from Murder in the Cathedral): "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason." The way I see it, the 'wrong reason' is the will of man. So, the thought of the Geneva Study Bible represents treason and why most Churches have devolved from bastions for God to being rah rah cheerleaders for foreign wars.

Outed - A new Hero in the fight against the anti-Christ

2010-06-08T02:46:00.000-07:00

U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe

By Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter
June 6, 2010 |
9:31 pm |
Categories: Breaches, Sunshine and Secrecy

Federal officials have arrested an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site Wikileaks, Wired.com has learned.

SPC Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Maryland, was stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, where he was arrested nearly two weeks ago by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. A family member says he’s being held in custody in Kuwait, and has not been formally charged.

Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.

He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing “almost criminal political back dealings.”

“Hillary Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public,” Manning wrote.

My love of good writers is giving me an overdose

2010-06-03T11:05:00.000-07:00

ANOTHER champion of freedom with a aptitude for expressing it.

Call (stupid) and Response (wonderful)

To the editor ...

Odd it is how Israel is always the bad guy. I saw the video the Israelis released, and they were without question attacked by a mob with clubs, chairs, and knives. (Nobody was sleeping, as claimed by pro-Islamic media.) Does Mr. Strakon not think it is right for them to search all ships coming in, considering the thousands of rockets that were lobbed into Israel from Gaza after Israel gave Gaza back to them?

You people who are always against Israel never posit the solution you'd like to see them submit to. I'd like to know specifically what Mr. Strakon would like to see them do, and if he really believes it would actually work considering the Islamics are committed not to peace but the death and destruction of Israel. You people amaze me, there is blind madness in thee.

Frank Schlernitzauer
June 1, 2010

Nicholas Strakon replies

I thank Mr. Schlernitzauer for his comments, except for the incivility in his closing.

As for the substance of what he writes, I begin by addressing the proposition that it was the commandos who were "attacked" aboard the vessel. That is the single most bizarre notion that's being advanced by supporters of Israel in connection with the pirate raid. Imagine a band of thugs complaining to the police that when they invaded a dwelling, the householder "attacked" them and that, when they killed him, they were only defending themselves! As revolting moral inversions go, that one is hard to beat. Uttering it in serious company takes a lot of gall, also known in some quarters, I believe, as chutzpah.

The next time Somali pirates board a vessel and attempt to take it over, and crew members defend themselves, it will be interesting to see who cheers for whom. Maybe it would help the pirates, in the eyes of Israel loyalists, if they tricked themselves out in Israeli military costumes.

I must say, the claim that it was the ship's crew who initiated force is so odd that I wonder whether I've missed some crucial but underreported fact. Did the convoy open the hostilities by firing 20mm AA cannon at the helicopters, which just happened to be flying nearby?

Now to the first question Mr. Schlernitzauer poses. I think it is wrong for Israelis, or anyone, to initiate force against civilian shipping on the high seas.

Some background on Israel's blockade of Gaza, imposed in 2007, may enable us to see the aid convoys in context. CBS News says that with "small exceptions for international aid projects," the Israelis ban importation of "raw goods vital for trade and construction." And that's just for starters. Other banned items include instant coffee, margarine, fresh meat, vinegar, jam, honey, and spices. According to the CBS story, "A Palestinian industry report says the blockade has wiped out over 100,000 jobs in Gaza by banning raw materials and stifling trade."

From time to time, and unpredictably, Israel revises the list of what is banned. A BBC "guide" to the blockade reports that "building materials such as cement, concrete, and wood were nearly always refused entry until early 2010, when some glass, wood, cement, and aluminium were allowed in." However, according to TVNZ, of New Zealand, cement still falls under the interdict: "The convoys would be taking in 10,000 tonnes of supplies, including cement — a material Israel bans, citing fears Hamas could use it to construct bunkers — as well as water purification kits, pre-fabricated homes, and medical equipment."

Before I drown this discussion in detail, I had better get to my point, which is that whatever the state of the Israelis' highly mutable list on May 31, if the Israelis found banned items on board any of the ships, they no doubt "seized" them. And that's state-speak for "stolen." The Israelis claim that if only the ships had docked at the port the Israelis chose, the cargo could have been unloaded and shipped overland to Gaza. What they don't mention is that they would have stolen a good deal of it first, at gunpoint. In case Mr. Schlernitzauer is wondering, I think robbery is wrong, too.

There's yet more that I think is wrong. According to CBS, the Israelis ban steel and fertilizer from entering Gaza for fear of their being used to manufacture weapons. Well, steel and fertilizer don't shoot people; people shoot people. I oppose gun-control — more generally, weapons-control — and not just in this country.

Driving toward my correspondent's second question, involving what the Israeli state should do, I must comment in passing on the business about Israel's giving Gaza back to the Gazans, apparently in an act of gentle generosity. In fact, Gaza was never rightfully in Israel's gift; it was never rightfully in Israel's possession.

So what should the state of Israel do now? Why, it should immediately dissolve itself, of course. Those who feared the results of that would either have to prepare to defend themselves — and in light of the present confusion I emphasize defend — or leave. But not-so-fearful Jews and Muslims would at least have a chance to build a free society with a free economy, together or at arm's length.

If Israel vanished from the political map, leaving free territory in its place, that would be one down, 194 to go.

The problem is that almost all Palestinians — Jewish and Muslim alike — believe in the state. But the popularity of statism does not mean that statism may rightfully continue, any more than the popularity of chattel slavery meant that it might rightfully continue.

I understand that the Israeli state apparatus will not voluntarily dissolve itself. States sometimes collapse, but they rarely commit that kind of suicide. The question really is, What should individual Jews and Muslims do? Just what all people everywhere should do: come to understand, and cherish, and promote liberty, justice, and peace.

Now, one who stopped short of my anarchism but still valued liberty, justice, and peace would probably propose more-moderate actions, among which would be a reversion to Israel's original borders, a return of all land stolen from Muslim Palestinians, and an end to all vestiges of Jewish privilege in the country's laws and regulations. That might, I suppose, have to include a renaming from "Israel" to "Palestine."

And, oh, yes, before getting to all that, our moderate liberty-lover would expect the Israeli state to stop accepting the fortune in money that is periodically stolen from U.S. taxpayers.

Some commentators are saying that the pirate attack has accelerated the "delegitimizing" of the state of Israel. If so, that would be one good thing to emerge from the crime, along with — I hope — new complications in the neocon and Israeli push for war with Iran.

Widening my scope, I see something else odd in this matter, as it pertains to The Last Ditch. I'm speaking generally: I don't blame Mr. Schlernitzauer for it; he's not responsible for the larger picture; and a man is free to comment or refrain from commenting on whatever he wants. I posted "Blackbeard's freedom" to our "Stop and Think" section two days after posting an installment titled "Forever FUBAR." In that entry, I wrote, "Let's choke the [U.S.] imperial legions with hurt feelings, discrimination complaints, assault investigations, pregnant soldierettes, queer diseases, and romantic melodramas in the midst of battle...." And I wrote that "if we're lucky, one thing we can have is a weaker [U.S.] military, less able to drown the world in bloody atrocity and less able to hold us normal people hostage to that atrocity." And even in the "Blackbeard" entry presently under discussion, I take a couple of shots at the U.S. military along the way.

If I had written any of that during Woodrow Wilson's second term, I'd almost certainly be behind bars right now, assuming I hadn't been beaten to death by Wilson's unofficial muscle-heads. I dare say that if I'd written it twenty-some years later, I'd be scheduled for a chat with President-for-Life Roosevelt's FBI goons. Even now, one might expect that I'd receive one or two missives denouncing me as a traitor, seditionist, un-American scoundrel, and the like. But it doesn't happen. I've explicitly called for the defeat of U.S. forces in the Middle East on a number of occasions. Negative response: zero. The indignation meter doesn't so much as twitch.

But let me criticize the Israeli military, and Katie bar the door!

The B.S. "Social Contract"

2010-06-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

Boy, I love good writers (like Mr. Higgs)

Consent of the Governed?

By Robert Higgs on Jun 1, 2010 in Civil Society, Liberty, Morality, Personal Liberty, Philosophy, Power, Surveillance, Taxation, The State

What gives some people the right to rule others? At least since John Locke’s time, the most common and seemingly compelling answer has been “the consent of the governed.” When the North American revolutionaries set out to justify their secession from the British Empire, they declared, among other things: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” This sounds good, especially if one doesn’t think about it very hard or very long, but the harder and longer one thinks about it, the more problematic it becomes.

One question after another comes to mind. Must every person consent? If not, how many must, and what options do those who do not consent have? What form must the consent take ― verbal, written, explicit, implicit? If implicit, how is it to be registered? Given that the composition of society is constantly changing, owing to births, deaths, and international migration, how often must the rulers confirm that they retain the consent of the governed? And so on and on. Political legitimacy, it would appear, presents a multitude of difficulties when we move from the realm of theoretical abstraction to that of practical realization.

I raise this question because in regard to the so-called social contract, I have often had occasion to protest that I haven’t even seen the contract, much less been asked to consent to it. A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration. I’ve never received an offer from my rulers, so I certainly have not accepted one; and rather than consideration, I have received nothing but contempt from the rulers, who, notwithstanding the absence of any agreement, have indubitably threatened me with grave harm in the event that I fail to comply with their edicts. What monumental effrontery these people exhibit! What gives them the right to rob me and push me around? It certainly is not my desire to be a sheep for them to shear or slaughter as they deem expedient for the attainment of their own ends.

Moreover, when we flesh out the idea of “consent of the governed” in realistic detail, the whole notion quickly becomes utterly preposterous. Just consider how it would work. A would-be ruler approaches you and offers a contract for your approval. Here, says he, is the deal.

I, the party of the first part (“the ruler”), promise:

(1) To stipulate how much of your money you will hand over to me, as well as how, when, and where the transfer will be made. You will have no effective say in the matter, aside from pleading for my mercy, and if you should fail to comply, my agents will punish you with fines, imprisonment, and (in the event of your persistent resistance) death.

(2) To make thousands upon thousands of rules for you to obey without question, again on pain of punishment by my agents. You will have no effective say in determining the content of these rules, which will be so numerous, complex, and in many cases beyond comprehension that no human being could conceivably know about more than a handful of them, much less their specific character, yet if you should fail to comply with any of them, I will feel free to punish you to the extent of a law made my me and my confederates.

(3) To provide for your use, on terms stipulated by me and my agents, so-called public goods and services. Although you may actually place some value on a few of these goods and services, most will have little or no value to you, and some you will find utterly abhorrent, and in no event will you as an individual have any effective say over the goods and services I provide, notwithstanding any economist’s cock-and-bull story to the effect that you “demand” all this stuff and value it at whatever amount of money I choose to expend for its provision.

(4) In the event of a dispute between us, judges beholden to me for their appointment and salaries will decide how to settle the dispute. You can expect to lose in these settlements, if your case is heard at all.

In exchange for the foregoing government “benefits,” you, the party of the second part (“the subject”), promise:

(5) To shut up, make no waves, obey all orders issued by the ruler and his agents, kowtow to them as if they were important, honorable people, and when they say “jump,” ask only “how high?”

Such a deal! Can we really imagine that any sane person would consent to it?

Yet the foregoing description of the true social contract into which individuals are said to have entered is much too abstract to capture the raw realities of being governed. In enumerating the actual details, no one has ever surpassed Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who wrote:

To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, trans. John Beverley Robinson. London: Freedom Press, 1923, p. 294)

Nowadays, of course, we would have to supplement Proudhon’s admirably precise account by noting that our being governed also entails our being electronically monitored, tracked by orbiting satellites, tased more or less at random, and invaded in our premises by SWAT teams of police, often under the pretext of their overriding our natural right to decide what substances we will ingest, inject, or inhale into what used to be known as “our own bodies.”

So, to return to the question of political legitimacy as determined by the consent of the governed, it appears upon sober reflection that the whole idea is as fanciful as the unicorn. No one in his right mind, save perhaps an incurable masochist, would voluntarily consent to be treated as governments actually treat their subjects.

Nevertheless, very few of us in this country at present are actively engaged in armed rebellion against our rulers. And it is precisely this absence of outright violent revolt that, strange to say, some commentators take as evidence of our consent to the outrageous manner in which the government treats us. Grudging, prudential acquiescence, however, is not the same thing as consent, especially when the people acquiesce, as I do, only in simmering, indignant resignation.

For the record, I can state in complete candor that I do not approve of the manner in which I am being treated by the liars, thieves, and murderers who style themselves the Government of the United States of America or by those who constitute the tyrannical pyramid of state, local, and hybrid governments with which this country is massively infested. My sincere wish is that all of these individuals would, for once in their despicable lives, do the honorable thing. In this regard, I suggest that they give serious consideration to seppuku. Whether they employ a sharp sword or a dull one, I care not, so long as they carry the act to a successful completion.

Addendum on “love it or leave it”: Whenever I write along the foregoing lines, I always receive messages from Neanderthals who, imagining that I “hate America,” demand that I get the hell out of this country and go back to wherever I came from. Such reactions evince not only bad manners, but a fundamental misunderstanding of my grievance.

I most emphatically do not hate America. I was not born in some foreign despotism, but in a domestic one known as Oklahoma, which I understand to be the very heart and soul of this country so far as culture and refinement are concerned. Moreover, for what it is worth, some of my ancestors had been living in North America for centuries before a handful of ragged, starving white men washed ashore on this continent, planted their flag, and claimed all the land they could see and a great deal they could not see on behalf of some sorry-ass European monarch. What chutzpah! I yield to no one in my affection for the Statue of Liberty, the Rocky Mountains, and the amber waves of grain, not to mention the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County. So when I am invited to get out of the country, I feel like someone living in a town taken over by the James Gang who has been told that if he doesn’t like being robbed and bullied by uninvited thugs, he should move to another town. To me, it seems much more fitting that the criminals get out.

My feelings on protest marches agree with Jim Davidson

2010-05-31T17:49:00.000-07:00

Sixty Wasted Years
by Jim Davidson
jim at vertoro dot com

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise

So, tonight I hung up on a decent, kind old man. The fact that I was tired, that I'd been up since the day before, that my mother's dog is quite probably going to die despite our trip to the emergency on-call vet's—that doesn't excuse what I did. And I'm not writing this note to excuse my action, nor to apologise, because I did what I thought was the right thing to do. And I still think so.

Julian Heicklen is a decent, kind, elderly man who believes in classical liberalism. He believes that he has constitutional rights, that the state exists with his consent, and that it proposes to take a large amount of his income, a part of what he spends on gasoline, and a part of nearly every other thing he does or buys, and with that enormous wealth—trillions of dollars over the last sixty years, defend his life, his liberty, and his property. He's wrong.

He's mistaken because the system of classical liberalism to which he has devoted his life is based on fallacies. It is based on the fallacy that the state cares about his consent. It does not. It could care less if he chooses to consent or not. The people who run the state do not care whether or not he agrees to their terms. If he objects, they'll put him in a cage. If he resists, they'll kill him. They have already put him in a cage and killed many who have resisted. For example on 4 May 1886 in Chicago those who ran the state instigated a riot by police which killed many. For example 4 May 1970 in Ohio those who ran the state instigated a massacre by national guard troops who killed and wounded many—on the orders of president Nixon. I could give other examples of people whose resistance at any level was met with brutality—Waco, Ruby Ridge, those people you saw being butchered by a militaristic pig in a helicopter on that Wikileaks video.

The state is killing people right now in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and sometimes you learn of it. The state has not "declared war" or followed the constitution in any aspect of torture, indefinite detention, execution, and mass murder. To expect it to do so is madness.

For sixty years the state has been making things safer for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. For sixty years the state has been capturing and logging all the communications in the world under a program called ECHELON administered by the National Security Agency. These institutions exist to protect these institutions, not you.

The state does not care whether you consent or not. The state is perfectly agreeable to killing you, today, without trial, to protect the interests of those who run the state. The state has not gotten better by being admonished about fully informed jurors. And the state has persisted in making up evidence, lying on the witness stand, and engaging in double jeopardy over and over again to get its way. The Donald Scott case, the Tonya Craft case, the Watergate investigation, every scandal for the last sixty years reveals that those who operate the state are prepared to lie, cheat, and steal in court just as much as they do in elections, just as much as they do in all other aspects of your encounters with the state.

So then a friend of mine informs me that he turned the conversation some hours after I hung up. w00t.

Well, tell me about it, Keith. Tell me about something involving not spending the next 60 years of my life doing the same things that Julian Heicklen has been doing, making things worse. Tell me about somehow not having the state get worse and worse, built up and built up over his objections to counter his resistance. Tell me all about how things are going to be better some other way.

Because I tell you this: No eternal reward can forgive us now for wasting the dawn. I cannot accept Julian's proposal that we join him in "doing this for sixty years" in celebration of the results of his endeavours. To accept his proposal would be madness.

For sixty years he has tried engagement, negotiation, and protest. For sixty years he has handed out literature and been arrested eight times. For sixty years he has demanded that the state fulfil its obligations under the classical liberalism fallacies that the state involves his consent, that the state serves to protect his freedoms. And for sixty years the state has spat upon his point of view and treated him like dirt.

Can you see that this proposal isn't working? Can you imagine that it would ever work? The people who operate the state are knaves who do not give a DAMN about his consent. They exist to separate him from his property, his liberty, and to the extent they choose, his life, for the benefit of those who run the state. Sometimes the state is polite about spitting on him, and sometimes they are unpleasant about it. But he is not welcome to speak, he is not "allowed" to pass out literature, and he is not to be photographed while being arrested, "or else." And on rare occasions, in their consummate finesse, they "allow" him to pass out literature and judges still excuse jurors who think they have the ancient authority to judge the law as well as the facts.

The justice he seeks in their courts does not exist. The state has taken away all due process, already, and the president has authorised the execution of an American citizen without trial, without any opportunity to present a defence, without any of the other protections for the accused. And Julian's method has therefore failed.

So, yes, Keith, if there is some way forward, I might like to hear about it. I'm not confident that I have the stomach to listen to the old man moan about the constitution again for the first hour to get to this glorious third hour you mention, so maybe you could simply riddle me this: What's it all about?

Confronting the state and resisting it directly is a snare for your feet. What is it about the results from the American revolutionary war that you would care to repeat? What is it about the protests at the Haymarket in Chicago and at the campus of Kent State in Ohio that you would like to see happen again? Is it the bloodshed? Are you thinking that you have enough blood, this time, to wash away the state and its depredations?

How many died in vain for this belief on the battlefields at Saratoga and Yorktown, all the while Washington and Hamilton were plotting the rise of their dominating central state? The regular army was a complete failure until Yorktown, losing battles, retreating in disorder. The militia, including the volunteer sharpshooters kept winning, including at Saratoga. Yet Washington insisted on a "professional" military with discipline he imposed—at times with death, on more than one occasion in the face of full blown mutiny.

Why? Because he wanted a cadre who would obey, no matter what. And he got it, and that is the seed around which the military of the USA was built. The direct, necessary consequence of that choice is a helicopter full of gung ho morons slaughtering civilians on that video at Wikileaks. Stare into the face of that viciousness. Or stare into the viciousness of the Nazi SS as they slaughtered 20 million civilians in addition to their share of the tens of million more dead from the combat.

And for what did all those people die? A different brand of injustice.

American soldiers and sailors and airmen have been fighting and bleeding and killing and dying since before the nation declared its independence for what? For nothing. It has done no good.

They swore an oath to uphold and defend the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic, and they failed. They failed and have been sent, since 1945, to fight countless wars in countries all over the world without any declaration of war. The USA has intervened in dozens of countries, has bases in over a hundred countries, and totally ignores the constitution. Is that the liberty these men fought and bled and died to defend?

They swore an oath to defend the constitution which says that the accused have rights. And the accused have been stripped of their rights on military bases in Cuba and elsewhere. The constitution says that no one who swears to uphold it shall inflict cruel and unusual punishments. And the military inflicts those cruelties and punishments, without trial, without compulsory process for defence witnesses, without the accused having the freedom to confront the witnesses against them. The military has failed.

And if the military has failed, if the millions who have worn uniforms and have fought and bled and died have failed, what a miserable idea it is to charge the barricades. What additional valour do you bring to this party? You bring more blood, it is true, and I would that you did not empty your arteries on the ground at the feet of tyrants. But you bring no greater gallantry, no more noble daring. And you don't have any better weapons. What usually happens when men and women without guns go up against men and women with guns? Consult the bodies at Kent State.

It hasn't worked. Resisting the state has built up the muscles of the state wherever it has been resisted. Protesting the state for sixty years has utterly failed to improve things. Rather, to the contrary, Julian Heicklen's efforts have made things worse. The state is more tyrannical, more vindictive, less amenable to change because it is being resisted.

Another Path
For some time now I have made this point and sought that it might sink in. I see that I too have been a failure. But at least I have not been at it for sixty years. Yet.

The point is not really my own, but was made by the ancient Chinese sage and philosopher Laozi. It was made again by Étienne de La Boétie.

You do not have to place your hands upon the tyrants to make them fall. Withdraw your support and they'll fall.

Shedding your blood before a federal courthouse in a reckless charge of the barricades is not withdrawing your support. It is engaging the system.

Arguing with federal pigs about your right to video an arrest or a distribution of literature is not monkey wrenching the system. It is engaging the system, asking for permission from the seat of power, validating their control.

What does it mean: monkey wrench? It refers to a particular type of spanner that was invented by Charles Moncky. It is an adjustable-end spanner. Throwing one in disgust into the works of a factory may have the sometimes desirable result of sabotaging that factory. Which brings us to the sabots or wooden shoes that workers in France used to use for such work, gaining them the name saboteur.

So monkey wrenching the system would involve shutting off the power to the court building. Or burning the post office to the ground the day before tax payments are mailed. (Whoops, most tax payments are not mailed, and most of those tax returns mailed in are demanding refunds of taxes already withheld. Too bad.) Monkey wrenching might involve an asymmetric thrust on one of the shuttle solid boosters causing carnage to all in the vicinity as the shuttle shears off its restraining bolts and makes like a Catherine wheel toward the viewing stands, as in a fabulous scene written by Victor Koman in Kings of the High Frontier.

But engaging the federal pigs and recognising their authority to accept or prevent your little literature distribution festival? That isn't monkey wrenching. That does not destroy the system's ability to oppress you. It recognises it.

I am not against the protesters
Don't mistake my position. I am for those who protest the state even though they do so in a way that I am confident won't work. I am for those who have been arrested and abused and seek justice. I don't expect them to get it in the enemy's courts, but I'm happy to support their efforts. I am for those who are oppressed winning the day.

And sometimes the system imagines that it is better served by letting our friends go, or charging them with assaulting a federal officer and then, curiously, releasing them on bail to be a future "danger" to other federal officers as they have confusedly done in the case of George Donnelly. I want George to have the best representation possible, and if that means money, I'm happy to provide money. If it means other forms of logistical or spiritual support, I'm happy to do that. Not at all because of any love lost between George and me over the years—I don't agree with his positions on many issues.

But I am also not for sending more men and women into the meat grinder. And if you are, if you can show me how this has worked out well in the past, if you can assure me that your generation of blood brings to the butcher shop some special class of bloodiness that is going to make all the difference this time, I shall listen, and watch.

Your path has failed, again and again. Men and women with equal vigour and far better weapons have failed again and again. Would you, looking at the mangled bodies of these people, consider another path?

I do not say that it is an easy path to walk. I do not offer medals for courage and the enthusiasm of those who seek only bravery. You may be called a coward and a reprobate and far worse things—a capitalist and a whore.

But it is a path forward that has worked, again and again, for free people. It is the path of agorism. It is the path of withdrawing your consent and your wealth and your mind from the state. It is the path of John Galt's strike of the productive. It is the path of Laozi turning away from power.

And I do say that in this generation we have invented something new that makes all the difference, that brings added value to this approach. We have open source software, encryption, and private economic exchange technologies that allow any two people anywhere in the world to exchange value privately without detection. Embrace these techniques, help make them easier to use, and gain for them widespread acceptance, and the state shall wither. For what they cannot detect they cannot regulate, prohibit, nor tax.

Without compulsory taxation, the state is just another bully. And perhaps in those death throes of the state it might make sense to charge the barricades one last time, for old time's sake, to mingle our blood with the wasted lives and crippled bodies of patriots who thought theirs was the final battle, or the final war. You can do that if you choose. You can go to hell, I'm going to Mars.

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Jim Davidson is an author, entrepreneur, and anti-war activist. His 1990 venture to offer a sweepstakes trip into space was destroyed by government action as was his free port and prospective space port in Somalia in 2001. His 2002-2007 venture in free market money and private stock exchange was destroyed by government action in 2007. He's going to Mars if he has to walk. His second book, Being Sovereign is now availble from Lulu and Amazon. His third book Sovereign Self-Defense will be released for Kindle soon. His fourth book Being Libertarian will be available for free download as a .pdf, being a compilation of all his essays and letters in The Libertarian Enterprise since 1995. Contact him at indomitus.net or indsovu.com.

There are always people in my life who need a well written explanation. Here is one.

2010-05-06T10:45:00.000-07:00

(author currently unknown)

Jesus was a libertarian

Most people have been deceived by Big Government for centuries, and Christians are not immune. Politicians and dictators like Roman Emperor Constantine and King James and others have altered the Bible to make it say what they wanted it to say, and various extremist groups today continue to tell Christians that they must support their political agenda or else they're not being "good Christians".

The startling truth is quite the opposite - in fact, no one who truly follows the teachings of Jesus Christ can in good conscience vote against the defenders of liberty, as Jesus Himself was a libertarian.

Jesus led an ideological revolution against the hypocrisy of the establishment organized religion of His time (the "scribes and Pharisees" etc.) and their political power. He taught that our connection to God is personal and individual and not subject to the whims of a self-appointed intermediary such as Church or State. God speaks to each of us individually and what He says to one person may differ from what He tells another, because His guidance is customized for each person. Therefore, we may not judge each other and we cannot assume or insist that others follow all of the same SHOULDs that we do, as we cannot know what is right for others. If people want to band together voluntarily and form a group with particular religious teachings to help them study and learn about God together, that's fine, as long as they don't impose their views on others or infringe against their right to do the same in their own way (or not). God is too big to fit into any one religion. Religion is man's puny attempt to understand God; so as with any other human endeavor, it must be imperfect and somewhat limiting.

This does not mean that "anything goes", or that we're all for anarchy and freedom and no responsibility. Freedom and responsibility are co-requisites, you can't have one without the other. In fact, there is a basic universal core that is the foundation of morality (the MUSTs) and is required for civilization to function. Christianity and other religions and philosophies add their own various teachings (SHOULDs) to this core, but these are just the icing on the cake; the important part is the core, without which everything else is superfluous and irrelevant.

What is this ethical core that Jesus and others throughout history have been teaching? It is referred to in many ways by different teachings as the Golden Rule, or Karma ("as you sew, so shall you reap"), or the Law of Return (everything you do comes back to you threefold), or the Rede ("if it harms none, do what you will"), or "live and let live", or part of the Hippocratic Oath - "do no harm", and it's referred to in many ways in the Bible, some more subtle than others. The Libertarian Party expresses it as "do not initiate the use of force or fraud against anyone's person or property". In other words, self-defense is OK if necessary, but don't be the one to start the fight, do not violate the rights of others. You should also not harm yourself. Jesus expressed this law as "love thy neighbor as thyself", and He said that this Ultimate Commandment (along with the other one which is not relevant here) supercedes all others - that's right, even the Ten Commandments are obsolete and superfluous, they are unnecessary as long as you obey this core principle of not harming others. This covers the key issues that the civil portion of the Ten Commandments tried to address, and does a better job of it.

So what does this mean for those of us who sincerely wish to follow Christ's teachings? It means that we must learn to distinguish between the core ethical principle (the MUSTs) and the optional extra stuff (SHOULDs) that is included in the religion of our choice. This does not mean that we should abandon our church and friends, it is good that we find like-minded groups of people who share common values and cultural traditions. But we must make sure that in following these customs, we do not lose sight of or even violate the Ultimate Commandment, the moral center at the core of all positive teachings. Often we can't see the forest for the trees, as we have been so long exposed to only one or very few interpretations that we can't see the overall picture. Thus it is helpful to explore many possible sources of enlightenment, not to swallow whole everything we read, but to seek the common pattern within. It may seem contradictory to learn more about Christ's teachings by looking outside what we think of as the Christian Church, but this is necessary to gain perspective. Once we can see more of the overall picture, we understand and appreciate Christ's teachings all the more. We can stay in our usual church, or not, as we choose; in either case with renewed understanding.

It may seem ironic that we may find much of this moral inspiration from a non-church institution such as the Libertarian Party, but many of us have found its simple rule, do not initiate the use of force or fraud, to be the simplest and most universal explanation of this ethical core, and it is neither for nor against any particular religion, nor religion in general, so people of all religions can use it. Remember, Jesus was a libertarian in the general sense, in that He lived by this rule and it was the core of His teaching on ethics.

Further evidence of Jesus's libertarianism is in His parable about the last worker who showed up an hour before quitting time and was paid the same as everyone else who worked all day. Obviously there was no union involved here; the employer's need to get the work done by the deadline was so great (and/or the worker was so highly skilled) that it was worth it to pay so much. It was a win-win situation, and everyone was paid and treated fairly according to the terms of their individual contracts, so they had no grounds to complain. This shows that Jesus was definitely a free market libertarian.

When asked whether people should pay taxes, Jesus dodged the question entirely, leaving it up to the individual. He said to give Caesar what is Caesar's, but he did not say that anything belongs to Caesar. Caesar already had whatever he really owned, and it was not necessary to give him (i.e. the government) anything else. Thus, Jesus did not condone any involuntary form of taxation, but left individuals free to voluntarily contribute whatever they wish to whomever they choose, whether governments, churches, charities, friends, or others. In fact, this excellent analysis shows that Jesus strongly condemned government-imposed taxation.

He was also a civil libertarian, and tolerant of others' lifestyles, as He refused to condemn the prostitute that the other people were about to stone. He implied that she had done nothing wrong, and the others were no better; none of them were fit to cast the first stone.

Jesus showed tolerance for the beliefs of others; He did not impose His opinions but only taught to the extent that others were willing to listen. Thus, religious tolerance is not at all inconsistent with following the teachings of Christ, but is in fact required for doing so - remember, the important thing is to understand and observe the ethical core, all else is secondary. Each person may follow a different path (religious or otherwise), or several paths, in order to learn this, according to how he is individually guided by God, and the best path for one may not be right for another. Jesus commanded us to be tolerant, saying that we should not judge each other, and that whatever you do to anyone else, you're also doing it to Him.

Here's another interesting article from a Christian Libertarian. More articles can be found by following various links from the Libertarian Party web site. But remember, since libertarians tend to be tolerant, they also tend to be more diverse; not everyone will agree with everything I say or the way I say it.

It took less than 4 centuries for Christianity to become the very thing that Jesus Christ revolted against (organized religion);
it took less than 1 century for the UNITED STATES to become the very thing that America revolted against (big government).

If this offends you, then perhaps you don't remember back when the government set up the "Social Security" system, and many concerned Christians compared the Social Security card to the Mark of the Beast. And perhaps you don't remember that the "Real ID" Act will soon require all States to conform to a national ID card standard, and this national ID card is even closer to the Mark of the Beast, without which eventually no one will be able to travel, buy, or sell. And if the reestablishment of Israel as a country was supposed to be a good thing, isn't America being a country also a good thing? Then why are so many Christians doing absolutely nothing about the US government's plans to merge with Canada and Mexico and essentially destroy America as a separate country? And since this is a step toward an all powerful one world government, which obviously would be ruled by the Beast, where are the concerned Christians? Why are Christians silent about the US government's use of torture and other illegal acts against innocent people and even our own citizens? Aren't we supposed to be the good guys? Many concerned Christians say that Bush (or now Obama) is the AntiChrist (or his herald), could they be right? Did you know that you even have to get the government's permission to set up a church (at least to get the tax exemption and be recognized by other government agencies)? See the Infernal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3) - and remember, if your church speaks out against the evil deeds of the government, the government will revoke your exemption! Why does the Church work so hard to comply with the laws of man? Are you going to let us get to the point where everything is either required or prohibited? Wasn't America supposed to be all about freedom of choice? Why are so many misguided Christians eager to use the coercive power of the State to impose their SHOULDs on others, thereby violating the MUSTs? Whatever happened to the separation of Church and State? In other words, what the hell is the Bride of Christ doing in Satan's bed!?

It took less than 4 centuries for Christianity to become the very thing that Jesus Christ revolted against;
it took less than 1 century for the UNITED STATES to become the very thing that America revolted against.

Belief in government (lies) is always a sin, no?

2010-04-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

Ender’s Game in Real Time

by Ron Shirtz
by Ron Shirtz
Recently by Ron Shirtz: Constitutional Litmus Test

Orson Scott Card’s prescient futuristic novel, Ender’s game, tells the story of an extremely intellectually gifted young boy, Ender Wiggin, who at the age of six is enrolled in Command School, a military academy of the best and brightest youth of Earth. He becomes an unwitting weapon in mankind’s war against the Formics, an alien race commonly referred as the "Buggers."

Ender is both ostracized by his peers and admired as a brilliant strategist, a situation fostered by his teachers to develop his creativity and his leadership abilities. His war training becomes all-inclusive – Daily he must defend himself from jealous, bullying classmates and outwit manipulative teachers. Dink, one of his few friends tells him; "It’s the teachers, they’re the enemy. They get us to fight each other, to hate each other. The game is everything. Win win win. It amounts to nothing." (p. 108)

Ender is constantly engaged in an ongoing series of war games to exploit his intelligence towards military tactics. Each one becomes more challenging than the next, pushing the young Ender to his limits.

At one point, Ender questions the reason of the conflict with Colonel Graff:

"So the whole war is because we can't talk to each other."

"If the other fellow can't tell you his story, you can never be sure he isn't trying to kill you."

"What if we just left them alone?"

"Ender, we didn't go to them first, they came to us. If they were going to leave us alone, they could have done it a hundred years ago, before the First Invasion."

"Maybe they didn't know we were intelligent life. Maybe – " (p.178)

Colonel Graff convinces Ender that there can be no negotiating with the inscrutable Buggers, that the war is a Darwinian battle for survival of one competing species against another.

In a final test, he is given a computer simulation to fight through the Bugger’s defenses and destroy their home world planet with a devastating bomb. Against tremendous odds, he succeeds – Only to discover afterwards from his adult mentors that it was not a simulation.

At age 12, Ender discovers he has single-handedly committed genocide of an entire planet.

"Real. Not a game. Ender’s mind was too tired to cope with it all. They weren’t just points of light in the air, they were real ships that he had fought with and real ships he had destroyed. And a real world that he had blasted into oblivion. He walked through the crowd, dodging their congratulations, ignoring their hands, their words, their rejoicing.."

"….. I killed them all, didn’t I? Ender asked.

"All who?" asked Graff. "The buggers? That was the idea."

Mazer leaned in close. "That’s what the war was for."

"All their Queens. So I killed all their children, all of everything."

"They decided that when they attacked us. It wasn’t your fault. It’s had to happen."

Ender grabbed Mazer’s uniform and hung unto it, pulling him down so they were face to face. "I didn’t want to kill them all. I didn’t want to kill anybody! I’m not a killer!…You but you made me do it, you tricked me into it!" He was crying. He was out of control.

"Of course we tricked you. That’s the whole point," said Graff. (p.208)

Predator drones are a progressive example of current military technology blurring the distinction between real and the digitally contrived. These technological terrors desensitize the inherent human aversion to violence by reverting harsh reality into an entertaining simulation. Such technology encourages a delusional mindset that killing in war can be sanitized, without the unpleasant experience of suffering the emotions of remorse or revulsion. Someone once said, "The first casualty of war is truth." The Government knows this, and seeks to hide this unpleasant truth from public. Examples include the previously suppressed 2007 Apache attack video of the killing of two Reuter journalists, the Pentagon’s censorship of pictures of flag-draped coffins returning from Iraq, and Defense secretary Robert Gates criticism of the published photo of the Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard dying in combat. "Why your organization would purposely defy the family's wishes knowing full well that it will lead to yet more anguish is beyond me." demands Mr. Gates of the AP Press. Perhaps if Mr. Gates and the rest of the Government had read Joseph’s Heller’s novel, Catch 22, he would understand war’s terrible secret, as Heller’s protagonist Captain Yossarian grimly discovers:

Snowden was wounded inside his flak suit. Yossarian ripped open the snaps of Snowden’s flak suit and heard himself scream wildly as Snowden’s insides slithered down to the floor in a soggy pile and just kept dripping out. A chunk of flak more than three inches big had shot into his other side just underneath the arm and blasted all the way through, drawing whole mottled quarts of Snowden along with it through the gigantic hole in his ribs it made as it blasted out. Yossarian screamed a second time and squeezed both hands over his eyes. His teeth were chattering in horror. He forced himself to look again. Here was God’s plenty, all right, he thought bitterly as he stared – liver, lungs, kidneys, ribs, stomach and bits of the stewed tomatoes Snowden had eaten that day for lunch. Yossarian hated stewed tomatoes and turned away dizzily and began to vomit, clutching his burning throat. The tail gunner woke up while Yossarian was vomiting, saw him, and fainted again.

Yossarian was limp with exhaustion, pain and despair when he finished. He turned back weakly to Snowden, whose breath had grown softer and more rapid, and whose face had grown paler. He wondered how in the world to begin to save him.

"I’m cold." Snowden whimpered, "I’m cold."

"There, there. Yossarian mumbled mechanically in a voice too low to be heard. "There, there."

Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollable. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all.

(Catch 22, Joseph Heller, chapter 41)

It is not my intent to write a screed on the moral evils of video games, or advocate we devolve into to Luddites. I only desire for the clueless to experience a second-hand Yossarian-epiphany by reading history and literature, like the books referenced here. To disabuse the notion that State-sponsored violence is necessary to safeguard ideals such as country and honor. To rediscover the lost truth that war is truly terrible, lest we, as Robert E. Lee warned, "should grow too fond of it."

April 17, 2010

Ron Shirtz [send him mail] is a transplanted Californian teaching Graphic Communications in Northern (Not "Upstate") New York. His hobbies include arranging deck chairs on sinking ships, tilting at windmills, and being fashionably late.

More confirmation of the State as anti-Christ (violence instead of love)

2010-04-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

Why Politics Is Not the Answer

by James Ostrowski
by James Ostrowski
Recently by James Ostrowski: A Strategy Manual for the Liberty Movements

This is Chapter 3 of Direct Citizen Action: How We Can Win the Second American Revolution Without Firing a Shot

“He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.”

~ Sun Tzu

There are three basic approaches to changing public policy: politics (elections and lobbying), direct citizen action and violence. We can quickly rule out violence as morally repugnant, inefficient and unpredictable.

Political action has rarely in human history caused government to shrink in size and power. The natural tendency of government is to grow and expand its powers. The events of 2008–2010 illustrate that. Over time, it will tend to tax and spend more, hire more people and assume more power over our lives, liberty and property. Government policies change continually but if you look closely, it is almost always in the direction of bigger government. If you favor bigger government, you really don’t have to do anything. Just sit back and enjoy the show. By the natural laws of politics, governments will tend to grow. If you check back in five years, it is highly likely that the government will be bigger and more powerful. Government in America has grown enormously since about 1917, the start of American involvement in World War I. No coincidence there; war grows the state.

By its nature, the state is the means by which some people can impose the costs of achieving their goals onto unwilling others. As Frédéric Bastiat put it, “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.” The desire to impose costs on others is virtually limitless. Thus, governments tend to grow over time.

There are five main reasons for this which are, unfortunately, structural features of political life:

rational apathy – the incentive some people have to increase the size of the state outweighs the incentive the rest of us have to fight them;
government control over political ideas – the state uses its control over schools and other idea-disseminating institutions to propagate support for further government growth;
government creates its own demand – because the state’s various interventions into the market economy always fail (e.g., health care), ironically, they increase the demand of the uninformed majority for even further interventions to fix the problems caused by the prior interventions;
the productivity of the mixed economy – given the inherent tendency of the state to grow, only extreme dissatisfaction among the populace will rouse them to act; however, even a partially free market produces enough wealth to mollify the people;
government has a monopoly on the use of legal force – government grows because it can. Given the universal human desire to accomplish goals with the least possible exertion, politicians have an irresistible urge to use the state’s powers to continually expand the amount of wealth they control. Anyone who objects can always appeal to the politicians’ judges and can expect to be told, “Get lost!”

Since it is in the structural DNA of government to grow, it is nearly impossible to persuade its officials to reverse that tendency or to persuade the voters to elect candidates who intend to shrink government. The last time a mass political movement was able to achieve power and shrink government was Thomas Jefferson’s velvet revolution of 1800!

Ron Paul’s campaign for president in 2007–8 showed how difficult it is to elect a candidate who favors smaller government. In spite of over 100,000 campaign workers and $30,000,000 and an articulate candidate with 20 years in Congress and a sterling personal life and record of accomplishment, he received less than ten percent in every Republican primary election. The system is thoroughly stacked against anyone who would attempt to reform it from within.

The main function of national elections in this country is to give the people the illusion that they are in charge and can change policy whenever necessary. However, the basic policies never seem to change. Elections allow people to blow off steam and thus serve as a safety valve for the regime that allows them to rule us for another four years.

With respect to the upcoming congressional elections this year, a Patriot candidate would need as much as two million dollars to run a competitive race for the House. Very few have that kind of money or can raise it. More likely, the Republican challengers this year will be party loyalists funded and controlled by the plutocrats and GOP establishment.

I know these are harsh realities to accept. They contradict what we have been taught in school and told to believe in endless TV ads urging us to vote and participate in the political process. However, to win this fight, you will have to be as clear-eyed as our adversaries are about the realities of power politics. That’s how the political class got all that power in the first place: by seeing things clearly and not being fooled by myths and clichés.

April 12, 2010

James Ostrowski is an attorney in Buffalo, New York and author of Political Class Dismissed: Essays Against Politics, Including "What’s Wrong With Buffalo." His latest book is Direct Citizen Action: How We Can Win the Second American Revolution Without Firing a Shot. See his website.

Chuck Baldwin, candidate for public office (Oh, my)

2010-04-09T12:53:00.000-07:00

Saving Souls--Losing Freedom
By Chuck Baldwin
April 9, 2010

This column is archived at
http://chuckbaldwinlive.com/home/?p=1373

One would have to be a blind man to not see that America is fast losing the
fundamental principles of liberty upon which our once-great country was
established. And, without a doubt, the single biggest reason for this
decline is the lack of concern and effort on the part of today's Christians
and pastors to resist it.

All over America, when one approaches our pastors and church leaders with
the obvious decay and ruination of constitutional government and Declaration
principles taking place in our land today, the response flippantly comes
back: "God hasn't called me to do that; I'm supposed to win souls and that's
it." (Or words to that effect.) As if the call to Gospel preaching,
evangelism, and missionary endeavor negates our responsibility as citizens
of a free land.

Of course, this call to "win souls" doesn't interfere with these preachers'
golf games; it doesn't interfere with their family vacations; it doesn't
interfere with their active membership in whatever local civil organization
they happen to belong to; it doesn't interfere with their hiring of a lawyer
if they are falsely accused or defrauded; it doesn't interfere with their
invitations to celebrity politicians for special church recognition on
patriotic holidays; it doesn't interfere with them going to the polls to
vote; it only seems to interfere when they are personally asked to take a
stand in the gap for our country's liberties. Then, all of a sudden, they
haven't been "called," or "God will take care of it," or "Jesus is coming
soon," or "Religion and politics don't mix," ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

As a result of America's preachers' indifference (and that of the Christians
they influence), our country is on the brink of becoming an oppressive and
tyrannical state. No, let me rephrase that. America is already in the
process of becoming an oppressive and tyrannical state. And it's the
preachers' fault!

For some, it is a matter of ignorance (I think "willful ignorance" is more
appropriate). For some, it is a matter of convenience. For some, it is
comfort. For some, it is ambition. Whatever the reason, America's preachers
are contributing to the collapse of the greatest free country the world has
ever known--all in the name of saving souls.

What these preachers seemingly do not comprehend is that when the hammer
falls on liberty in this country, it is going to FALL RIGHT ON TOP OF
THEM--HARD. There is no mistaking it: when oppression's hammer strikes,
Gospel preachers and Bible believers will be the anvil. And when it happens,
it will not matter that a preacher was popular, or was likeable, or was
non-controversial, or was compassionate, or was a Moose or Elk club member,
or had a big church, or was a friend of the governor, or had "Law
Enforcement Appreciation Day" in his church every year, or that he was
sought out by political candidates for his endorsement. None of that will
matter to a tinker's dam. The boot of state oppression will squash him like
a bug! It will not spare him, his wife, his children, his health, his
finances, or his feelings. And, ladies and gentlemen, at this very moment,
we are not very far away from the hammer falling.

I have just recently come across an official document from one of our war
colleges that is downright frightening. I will expose this document during
my Sunday morning address, which is livestreamed on the Internet, this
Sunday, April 11, 2010, at 10:30 a.m., Central Daylight Time. To watch this
address, go here:

http://crossroadbaptist.net/live.html

As I read over this document (and the chill bumps began rising all over my
body), I thought of all those preachers out there who have purposely refused
to engage the body politic on behalf of freedom's principles; those who
refused to take a stand for the Constitution and Bill of Rights; those who
took the path of least resistance and refused to be controversial; those who
put money and success before honor and right; those who meekly looked the
other way while George W. Bush (and other neocons) dismantled constitutional
government (and had John McCain been elected and was doing much of what
Barack Obama is currently doing--which he would have been--they would still
be looking the other way); those who claimed to be "too busy" to worry about
politics; and those who thought that somehow their Christian duty did not
include freedom's fight. What they do not realize is that they, themselves,
are in the crosshairs. While they are making a hundred excuses for not
actively helping to defend freedom principles, the enemy--after having
eradicated the constitutional protections of our liberties--will jump on
Gospel preachers and Bible believers "like a chicken on a June bug," as my
dad used to say. I am personally convinced that the plans for Christian (and
patriot) persecution are already in place.

As I read the above-referenced document (which I will expose this Sunday
morning), many things--including the now-infamous MIAC report that most
readers should already be very familiar with--began to make sense. And so
did those reports of FEMA camps that we have all heard so much about, and
maybe even the raid on the Hutaree "Christian" militia.

And does anyone really believe that those pastors who will not jeopardize
their social standing or retirement programs in order to be faithful to the
truth are going to miraculously grow backbones when serious persecution
comes? Get real! These timid trumpeters piously extol the ancient example of
Daniel's courage in rebelling against the unlawful command of his king;
praise the Three Hebrew Children who would not bow to the image of
Nebuchadnezzar; and commend Simon Peter for defiantly telling Jewish
authorities, "We ought to obey God rather than men"--while, at the same
time, quoting Romans 13 to justify their own cowardice and indifference.

It is no hyperbole to say that preachers who ignore and avoid the freedom
fight do so at their own peril.

At this point, it might be helpful to remember Winston Churchill's challenge
to England's citizens: "If you will not fight for the right when you can
easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will
be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to
fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of
survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there
is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as
slaves."

I invite readers to tune in to my Sunday address this Sunday, April 11,
2010, at approximately 10:30 a.m., Central Daylight Time, as I expose this
disturbing document from one of America's war colleges. Believe me, what I
am going to expose has serious implications for every Christian, every
freedom lover, and every American citizen who believes in an independent
United States.

To watch the broadcast live this Sunday, April 11, at 10:30 a.m. (CDT), go
here:

http://crossroadbaptist.net/live.html

I wrote back to him thusly:

Dear Chuck,

I'm sure I have said this to you before, but here it is again. One cannot be a "citizen" of ANY nation and be a follower of God. There is no wiggle-room on this. ALL nations (earthly) are representations of the devil. They all promise what they obviously cannot deliver HOWEVER "free' they (say they) are. GOD ALONE answers prayer. To Him go all thanks and all honors. Do you know of any earthly nation that has never murdered its "own" or any of God's creatures? No? I thought not. Is YOUR God Love? Mine is and does not visit murder on His people. The Beast does, though. Why would you consider yourself part of that? Easy way to tell Love from hate: hate uses force/coercion (government) and Love uses persuasion. Am I making sense yet? You are caught inside a mental box. Escape to God-given freedom. It can only cost you your life. Going along to get along will surely cost you your soul. Christ offers you a sword that cuts without harming and ennobles those who wield it. Its name is non-violence/civil disobedience. It entails action on your part in behalf of those most likely to feel the heel of oppression. Bonhoeffer, lately, taught this. Christ, earlier, said love thy neighbor as yourself. Love is NOT a passive activity. "Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill. God's truth abideth still. His Kingdom is forever." - Luther
You are certainly right about the "Church Profession" industry. They suck off the production of people and promise what they do not personally have - salvation. One must follow Christ's example to achieve that. They deliver compliant sheeple to the slaughter - in other words, citizens of one (earthly) nation or another, played off against other "nations" by greedy men and women whose only thought on earth is earthly wealth. These lost souls "win' no matter what "side" wins or loses. Sheeple lose all sides of this battle, souls included. Are the 'preachers' responsible? Yes and no. We all answer to our God as individuals. No Nuremberg defense to our Maker, please.

John Boanerges Redman
johnboanerges.blogspot.com

My recent 'argument' with a weighty Quaker

2010-04-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

As an debater, IMHO, this guy is a typical liberal lightweight and, of course, a hypocrite. He was, throughout, condescending and wrong, but YOU decide for yourself. It started with a editorial he wrote which made a point IF one supports war. He then sent it on to the ATlanta Friends discussion list. Bragging I could not let alone. I'll now lay it out, starting with his editorial:

WE THE PEOPLE: Our troops deserve better treatment

By XXX XXXXXX / Chronicle contributor
A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that large numbers of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and other mental health disorders. These symptoms often go untreated and lead to violent episodes when the soldiers return home from combat duty.

The problem the military has in confronting psychiatric problems is longstanding. Unless there is a dramatic change in the military's use of mental health treatments there will be more tragic violence as our troops return from war with serious psychiatric disorders.

Unfortunately, instead of making the needed changes to improve the quality of psychiatric services, the military has recently announced plans to paper over the problem by providing our troops with superficial new mental health treatments that could prove very harmful, especially when applied to the severe psychiatric disturbances caused by military combat duty.

With the current number of soldier suicides and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder reaching all time highs the pressure has increased on the military to address the mental health needs of the troops. Last year alone, more than 330 serving members of the US armed forces committed suicide.

One would expect that to help address this problem the military would turn to experts in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Instead, the military has developed a $119 million program to train 1.1 million American troops in the techniques of "Positive Psychology" that emphasizes substituting positive thoughts for unhappy or negative ones.

In announcing the new military program, Dr. Martin Seligman, the developer of Positive Psychology, said that "Psychology has given us this whole language of pathology, so that a soldier in tears after seeing someone killed thinks, 'Something's wrong with me; I have post-traumatic stress,' or PTSD. The idea here is to give people a new vocabulary, to speak in terms of resilience. Most people who experience trauma don't end up with PTSD; many experience post-traumatic growth."

It is difficult for me to understand how anyone familiar with post traumatic stress disorder in the military could make such a statement. PTSD, once referred to as "shell shock," occurs in soldiers who have experienced the horrors of war to such intensity that they psychologically crack.

In PTSD, victims are subjected to such overwhelming and horrible emotional trauma that they are unable to regain stability with typical psychological coping mechanisms. Instead, the rattled mind is driven into uncontrollable and rapidly changing, emotionally painful states. Night terrors, panic attacks, depression, and mental confusion occur in chaotic fashion in the helpless victims. It is not a mental state that can be treated by suggesting to the patient that he or she simply think positively about the situation, as Dr. Seligman suggests. His approach may work with minor stress experienced in civilian life but is unproven in cases of major traumatic stress experienced during war.

And yet the US military has bought into this untested notion to the tune of $119 million. This money, of course, could have been used to provide real mental health care to our troops. Instead, it is being used to tell military personnel that they can overcome whatever happens to them on the battlefield by using the power of positive thinking. Can you imagine telling a soldier that he needs to find the positive side of having seen his buddy blown to bits?

Our troops have been through enough. While most Americans have contributed very little to the war effort, other than to adorn their cars with decals that proclaim their support for the troops, we have subjected them to multiple deployments which none anticipated when they enlisted. They went into battle with inadequate armor. They have watched their buddies die. We have left the families of the troops without adequate support. We have caused their civilian careers to evaporate and let their businesses fail. Those who support war should be willing to pay an extra war tax to pay for it instead of borrowing billions from China and passing the bill onto our children and grandchildren.

Now, when our troops seek mental health care because their minds are like terrifying roller coaster rides, because of what they have experienced in combat, we are going to respond to their PTSD by telling them to be positive and turn their trauma into a “growth experience.” Our troops deserve better than this.

The best thing we can do for our soldiers is to keep them from sacrificing themselves unnecessarily. We are winding down the war in Iraq and its time to end the war in Afghanistan. Our costly military operation in Afghanistan is chasing a phantom. Al-Queda has already left Afghanistan for many other parts of the world. We are dealing with a highly dispersed global network that defies conventional military operations concentrated in a single nation. Tell the President and Congress to bring our soldiers home and provide the best possible care for those who suffer from the physical and psychological wounds of war. It is our responsibility to stop the war in Afghanistan from dragging on indefinitely. We owe this to our troops.

OK, I wrote to him:
Just so you get some perspective,XXX, you state worshiping idolater, HERE are the typical "soldiers" of the largest terrorist organization the world has yet seen calmly murdering people and blaming THEM. And YOU, you tax-paying apologist for Obama and his ilk are worried about treating them AFTER they "see their buddies gruesomely killed". Well, how about worrying about BEFORE they get lured by the tax-funded pay and "benefits" you help wave in front of their faces. How about the near total acceptance of government as a so-called "positive force" in the world of God's making. Thou hypocrite, thou pathetic 'do-gooder', thou public pray-er, sleep well in your scrapbook of letters to the editor. Sophie and Hans have nothing on you, do they?

A bit hash, but we have a history which you see in his reply:

Hello John. I see you are your old bombastic self. You need to understand that I am living in a rural area that is largely populated by fundamentalists who love the military. My column was written to show how the military is damaging their sons and daughters and to try to get them to start questioning the war in Afghanistan. You prefer to yell at people who disagree with you. I prefer to try to reason with them.

Of course, there is nothing in his piece to ask people to "question the war", so, I said:

XXX, you are starting at the wrong end, IMHO. Christ did not accept any government but God's though he loved all the sinners as persons. By trying to dress the beast with nicer velvet gloves you do disservice to all the victims of the anti-Christ. You do,XXX, you do. Get right with God and let His people see your lead. As HDT suggested, be a majority of one. Your letter only asks that government policy toward its expended 'bullets' be made 'more nicer'. Yes, that would help the housemates and coworkers of these damaged persons but still is only means to an end. The means still amounts to more theft from the people who lose more though less visibly. Getting back to the 'damaged bullets', every single one of those, my son included, is damaged from the day of entering service (to the beast). Rotten parenting (guilty), rotten churches (with american flags in the "sanctuary"), rotten preachers and wrong-headed pacifists who think that working within the system will improve it. Do you deny supporting Obama? No, you can't but think that by avoiding discussing it that it isn't important. The path to following Christ is a narrow one and involves risk to your person and fortune. It involves disrobing yourself of nationality and loyalties to 'of this world' distractions. It involves stop paying taxes and getting permission from government to live. GOD gives you permission. None other is needed. It means being in their face, too, as being a peace worker means non-violent resistance to tyranny. "Bombastic"? I think not.

PS. Did you WATCH that Wikileaks film clip? Did you listen to those non-PTSD so-called humans banter about murder? (No, he didn't)

I then sent him THIS:

Dear Joe,

More about those poor neglected "soldiers" (murderers):

Obama’s War: Death to Women and Children, Cover-Ups to Protect the US Killers

Mon, 04/05/2010 - 15:47 — dlindorff

So finally the truth comes out...sort of.

After initially claiming that two pregnant women and a teenage girl killed in a US Special Forces raid on an Afghan home in Khataba in February had been discovered bound and slain by the Americans, the US military has admitted that they were actually shot and killed by those US troops--who then tried to cover up their “mistake” by carving the bullets out of the bodies with knives, removing other incriminating bullets from the compound’s walls, and then washing away the bloody evidence with alcohol.

In this new grisly version of the story issued from the US command in Afghanistan, it was a case of the Special Forces Unit lying to superiors about what had transpired in their botched raid, which also killed an Afghan police commander and a government prosecutor.

The only reason we know all this today is because of the intrepid digging by a relentless reporter from the Times of London, Jerome Starkey, who, unlike the hacks in Kabul passing themselves off as journalists from American news organizations, didn’t just accept the press release on the incident put out by Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s office, but instead did his own investigation, talking to Afghan and UN investigators, as well as local people where the incident happened.

For his efforts at getting to the truth, Starkey was attacked by the US military, accused of lying and misrepresenting US statements.

Now that Starkey has been fully vindicated, there has been no apology from McChrystal’s office, or from the military public relations operation. Nor have US reporters and editors, who left Starkey undefended while his credibility was being attacked by the US, said anything about his role in bringing the truth to light.

The New York Times, in an article today by Richard A. Oppel, Jr., datelined Kabul, said that the US military, “after initially denying involvement in any cover-up in the deaths,” had “admitted that its forces had killed the women during the nighttime raid.”

The paper also credited the Times of London (without mentioning Starkey), with, a day before the military’s about face, disclosing that American forces on the scene had “dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath” and then “washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.”

What the paper didn’t mention is that Starkey had broken the story weeks earlier, only have his exposé ignored by the US media, which allowed him to be slandered by the American military.

This story is not over yet, either.

The US military, incredibly, is still claiming that despite an official investigation by US/NATO personnel into the incident, “Nothing pointed conclusively to the fact that our guys were the ones who tampered with the scene.” As Oppel demurely observed, “However, given that Special Operations forces killed the women, it was not clear why anyone else would have a motivation to remove bullets from the bodies or tamper with evidence at the scene.”

It would appear that a cover-up is still underway.

There has been no talk of bring charges against the Special Forces personnel who committed these killings and who then sought to cover up their actions, or those who were with them who allowed this crime to be committed and didn’t report it.

It is worth pointing out that Gen. McChrystal’s background is running Special Forces operations. He ran a major death squad operation in Iraq before being put in charge of the Afghan War, and was widely reported to be planning to repeat that tactic in Afghanistan. This particular night raid, on what was thought to be a Taliban household, but which turned out to be a party for the naming of a new baby boy, was almost certainly part of just such a mission.

The point to be taken from this ugly window on American operations in Afghanistan is that far from being an aberration, this is precisely how the war is being fought. Had this raid not been based on bad information, so that instead of killing a police officer and a prosecutor, the Special Forces hit-men had actually taken out a Taliban fighter or two, the fact that they also slaughtered a few pregnant women and a girl would have gone unnoticed and unremarked. In fact, the Special Forces killers wouldn’t have even bothered to try to cover up their handiwork by digging knives into the victims’ bodies to gouge out their bullets.

We can safely assume that this kind of thing is going on all over Afghanistan every day.

Welcome to Obama’s War.

Editorial Comment:

Once again, we need to make the point that while individual soldiers in the US military may behave in a heroic fashion on occasion, there is nothing heroic about our military these days. If you want proof of that, just check out the Wikileaks tape, just released over the strenuous efforts of the Pentagon to hide it for the past three years, of a helicopter crew in Iraq mowing down 12 unarmed Iraqis, including two Reuters photographers, and joking about the slaughter as they do it. There is no threat. They are way up in the air, firing 30 mm rounds with abandon. There is a lust to finish off one wounded man trying to crawl away from the scene, as there is a lust to blow away some samaritans in a van who stop and try to help the victim.

America's wars are obscene slaughters, in which the US kills from a distance, sometimes, thanks to robotic drone aircraft, even thousands of miles away from danger.

Our soldiers are hardly the "heroes" that our government and our media automatically refer to them all as. They are armed gangsters, sent out to enforce US hegemony over desperately poor societies, and their basic strategy is to spread fear and terror in hopes of isolating those few who dare to fight back against absurd odds from the general public. Of course, the majority of US military personnel are also victims--victims of poor education, victims of an economic system that leaves many without any opportunity other than military enlistment, victims of propaganda, and victims of recruiters' lies. But for all that they are not heroes.

The heroes are those few who realize what they are being ordered to do and who refuse, they are those who report on the crimes of their fellow soldiers and especially their commanders. And there are not enough of them.

THIS is his idea of answering me:

Dear John,

We have to remember that there is that of God in everyone---even soldiers and government officials. We cannot reach out to the God within them if we hate them. We are called by Christ to love our enemies.

To which I replied:

Dear XXX,

As usual I am not listened to. Please actually read what I have written to you so that you are not so ready to preach to me. I don't need it. Christ did NOT tell us to love the forms of government. Loving the individual, furthermore, does NOT mean agreeing with what they do with their lives. Finding common ground with them does NOT mean paying their salary. So STOP it XXX. STOP being a shill for the murderers. ANSWER what I say to you with argument not pap, XXX. Show me how Christ told us to pay for murder. I will prove to you the opposite. Prove, XXX, I will PROVE it. Then there is the Testimony of Integrity you can read by Wilmer A Cooper (Pendle Hill Pamphlet 296). All your wishy-washy backsliding IS the broad road to destruction. I may not be smarter than you, XXX, but I am NOT fooled by lies. I guess that makes me wiser.

PS. So, you did NOT look at that Wikileaks video because it might make you question your liberal, worldly conceptions. What a waste of intellect.

An idiot would have done better than THIS reply:

John,

Render on to Caesar.....it is not government that is bad. It is the control of government by corporations that corrupts it. The problem with America is that the military-industrial complex controls our government. Fight the corporations, not the government.

Is that lightweight? I think so, so, I gave him the condensed version:

Glad you said that. I was WAITING for you to make that mistake. BTW, I hate corporations TOO. Read the following. I don't think you will, you are sooooo sure of yourself.

Render Unto Caesar: A Most Misunderstood New Testament Passage

by Jeffrey F. Barr
by Jeffrey F. Barr

I. INTRODUCTION

Christians have traditionally interpreted the famous passage "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are God's," to mean that Jesus endorsed paying taxes. This view was first expounded by St. Justin Martyr in Chapter XVII of his First Apology, who wrote,

And everywhere we, more readily than all men, endeavor to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Him; for at that time some came to Him and asked Him, if one ought to pay tribute to Caesar; and He answered, ‘Tell Me, whose image does the coin bear?’ And they said, ‘Caesar’s.’

The passage appears to be important and well-known to the early Christian community. The Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke recount this "Tribute Episode" nearly verbatim. Even Saying 100 of non-canonical Gospel of Thomas and Fragment 2 Recto of the Egerton Gospel record the scene, albeit with some variations from the Canon.

But by His enigmatic response, did Jesus really mean for His followers to provide financial support (willingly or unwillingly) to Tiberius Caesar – a man, who, in his personal life, was a pedophile, a sexual deviant, and a murderer and who, as emperor, claimed to be a god and oppressed and enslaved millions of people, including Jesus’ own? The answer, of course, is: the traditional, pro-tax interpretation of the Tribute Episode is simply wrong. Jesus never meant for His answer to be interpreted as an endorsement of Caesar’s tribute or any taxes.

This essay examines four dimensions of the Tribute Episode: the historical setting of the Episode; the rhetorical structure of the Episode itself; the context of the scene within the Gospels; and finally, how the Catholic Church, Herself, has understood the Tribute Episode. These dimensions point to one conclusion: the Tribute Episode does not stand for the proposition that it is morally obligatory to pay taxes.

The objective of this piece is not to provide a complete exegesis on the Tribute Episode. Rather, it is simply to show that the traditional, pro-tax interpretation of the Tribute Episode is utterly untenable. The passage unequivocally does not stand for the proposition that Jesus thought it was morally obligatory to pay taxes.

II. THE HISTORICAL SETTING: THE UNDERCURRENT OF TAX REVOLT

In 6 A.D., Roman occupiers of Palestine imposed a census tax on the Jewish people. The tribute was not well-received, and by 17 A.D., Tacitus reports in Book II.42 of the Annals, "The provinces, too, of Syria and Judaea, exhausted by their burdens, implored a reduction of tribute." A tax-revolt, led by Judas the Galilean, soon ensued. Judas the Galilean taught that "taxation was no better than an introduction to slavery," and he and his followers had "an inviolable attachment to liberty," recognizing God, alone, as king and ruler of Israel. The Romans brutally combated the uprising for decades. Two of Judas’ sons were crucified in 46 A.D., and a third was an early leader of the 66 A.D. Jewish revolt. Thus, payment of the tribute conveniently encapsulated the deeper philosophical, political, and theological issue: Either God and His divine laws were supreme, or the Roman emperor and his pagan laws were supreme.

This undercurrent of tax-revolt flowed throughout Judaea during Jesus’ ministry. All three synoptic Gospels place the episode immediately after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem in which throngs of people proclaimed Him king, as St. Matthew states, "And when he entered Jerusalem the whole city was shaken and asked, ‘Who is this?’ And the crowds replied, ‘This is Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee." All three agree that this scene takes place near the celebration of the Passover, one of the holiest of Jewish feast days. Passover commemorates God’s deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery and also celebrates the divine restoration of the Israelites to the land of Israel, land then-occupied by the Romans. Jewish pilgrims from throughout Judaea would have been streaming into Jerusalem to fulfill their periodic religious duties at the temple.

Because of the mass of pilgrims, the Roman procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, had also temporarily taken up residence in Jerusalem along with a multitude of troops so as to suppress any religious violence. In her work, Pontius Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man, Ann Wroe described Pilate as the emperor’s chief soldier, chief magistrate, head of the judicial system, and above all, the chief tax collector. In Book XXXVIII of On the Embassy to Gaius, Philo has depicted Pilate as "cruel," "exceedingly angry," and "a man of most ferocious passions," who had a "habit of insulting people" and murdering them "untried and uncondemned" with the "most grievous inhumanity." Just a few years prior to Jesus’ ministry, the image of Caesar nearly precipitated an insurrection in Jerusalem when Pilate, by cover of night, surreptitiously erected effigies of the emperor on the fortress Antonia, adjoining the Jewish Temple; Jewish law forbade both the creation of graven images and their introduction into holy city of Jerusalem. Pilate averted a bloodbath only by removing the images.

In short, Jerusalem would have been a hot-bed of political and religious fervor, and it is against this background that the Tribute Episode unfolded.

III. THE RHETORICAL STRUCTURE OF THE TRIBUTE EPISODE

[15] Then the Pharisees going, consulted among themselves how to insnare him in his speech. [16] And they sent to him their disciples with the Herodians, saying: Master, we know that thou art a true speaker and teachest the way of God in truth. Neither carest thou for any man: for thou dost not regard the person of men. [17] Tell us therefore what dost thou think? Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? [18] But Jesus knowing their wickedness, said: Why do you tempt me, ye hypocrites? [19] Show me the coin of the tribute. And they offered him a penny [literally, in Latin, "denarium," a denarius]. [20] And Jesus saith to them: Whose image and inscription is this? [21] They say to him: Caesar's. Then he saith to them: Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are God's. [22] And hearing this, they wondered and, leaving him, went their ways. Matt 22:15–22 (Douay-Rheims translation).

A. THE QUESTION

All three synoptic Gospels open the scene with a plot to trap Jesus. The questioners begin with, what is in their minds, false flattery – "Master [or Teacher or Rabbi] we know that you are a true speaker and teach the way of God in truth." As David Owen-Ball forcefully argues in his 1993 article, "Rabbinic Rhetoric and the Tribute Passage," this opening statement is also a challenge to Jesus’ rabbinic authority; it is a halakhic question – a question on a point of religious law. The Pharisees believed that they, alone, were the authoritative interpreters of Jewish law. By appealing to Jesus’ authority to interpret God’s law, the questioners accomplish two goals: (1) they force Jesus to answer the question; if Jesus refuses, He will lose credibility as a Rabbi with the very people who just proclaimed Him a King; and (2) they force Jesus to base this answer in Scripture. Thus, they are testing His scriptural knowledge and hoping to discredit Him if He cannot escape a prima facie intractable interrogatory. As Owen-Ball states, "The gospel writers thus describe a scene in which Jesus’ questioners have boxed him in. He is tempted to assume, illegitimately, the authority of a Rabbi, while at the same time he is constrained to answer according to the dictates of the Torah."

The questioners then pose their malevolently brilliant question: "Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?" That is, is it licit under the Torah to pay taxes to the Romans? At some point, Jesus must have led His questioners to believe that He opposed the tribute; otherwise His questioners would not have posed the question in the first instance. As John Howard Yoder argues in his book, The Politics of Jesus: vicit Agnus noster, "It is hard to see how the denarius question could have been thought by those who put it to be a serious trap, unless Jesus’ repudiation of the Roman occupation were taken for granted, so that he could be expected to give an answer which would enable them to denounce him."

If Jesus says that it is lawful to pay the tribute, He would have been seen as a collaborator with the Roman occupiers and would alienate the people who had just proclaimed Him a king. If Jesus says that the tribute is illegitimate, He risked being branded a political criminal and incurring the wrath of Rome. With either answer, someone would have been likely to kill Him.

Jesus immediately recognizes the trap. He exposes the hostility and the hypocrisy of His interrogators and recognizes that His questioners are daring Him to enter the temporal fray of Judeo-Roman politics.

B. THE COIN

Instead of jumping into the political discussion, though, Jesus curiously requests to see the coin of the tribute. It is not necessary that Jesus possess the coin to answer their question. He could certainly respond without seeing the coin. That He requests to see the coin suggests that there is something meaningful about the coin itself.

In the Tribute Episode, the questioners produce a denarius. The denarius was approximately 1/10 of a troy ounce (at that time about 3.9 grams) of silver and roughly worth a day’s wages for a common laborer. The denarius was a remarkably stable currency; Roman emperors did not begin debasing it with any vigor until Nero. The denarius in question would have been issued by the Emperor Tiberius, whose reign coincided with Jesus’ ministry. Where Augustus issued hundreds of denarii, Ethelbert Stauffer, in his masterful, Christ and the Caesars, reports that Tiberius issued only three, and of those three, two are relatively rare, and the third is quite common. Tiberius preferred this third and issued it from his personal mint for twenty years. The denarius was truly the emperor’s property: he used it to pay his soldiers, officials, and suppliers; it bore the imperial seal; it differed from the copper coins issued by the Roman Senate, and it was also the coin with which subjected peoples, in theory, were required to pay the tribute. Tiberius even made it a capital crime to carry any coin stamped with his image into a bathroom or a brothel. In short, the denarius was a tangible representation of the emperor’s power, wealth, deification, and subjugation.

Tiberius’ denarii were minted at Lugdunum, modern-day Lyons, in Gaul. Thus, J. Spencer Kennard, in a well-crafted, but out-of-print book entitled Render to God, argues that the denarius’ circulation in Judaea was likely scarce. The only people to transact routinely with the denarius in Judaea would have been soldiers, Roman officials, and Jewish leaders in collaboration with Rome. Thus, it is noteworthy that Jesus, Himself, does not possess the coin. The questioners’ quickness to produce the coin at Jesus’ request implies that they routinely used it, taking advantage of Roman financial largess, whereas Jesus did not. Moreover, the Tribute Episode takes place in the Temple, and by producing the coin, the questioners reveal their religious hypocrisy – they bring a potentially profane item, the coin of a pagan, into the sacred space of the Temple.

Finally, both Stauffer and Kennard make the magnificent point that coins of the ancient world were the major instrument of imperial propaganda, promoting agendas and promulgating the deeds of their issuers, in particular the apotheosis of the emperor. As Kennard puts it, "For indoctrinating the peoples of the empire with the deity of the emperor, coins excelled all other media. They went everywhere and were handled by everyone. Their subtle symbolism pervaded every home." While Tiberius’ propaganda engine was not as prolific as Augustus’ machine, all of Tiberius’ denarii pronounced his divinity or his debt to the deified Augustus.

C. THE COUNTER-QUESTION AND ITS ANSWER

After seeing the coin, Jesus then poses a counter-question, "Whose image and inscription is this?" It is again noteworthy that this counter-question and its answer are not necessary to answer the original question of whether it is licit to pay tribute to Caesar. That Jesus asks the counter-question suggests that it and its answer are significant.

(1) Why Is The Counter-Question Important?

The counter-question is significant for two reasons.

First, Owen-Ball argues that the counter-question follows a pattern of formal rhetoric common in first century rabbinic literature in which (1) an outsider poses a hostile question to a rabbi; (2) the rabbi responds with a counter-question; (3) by answering the counter-question, the outsider’s position becomes vulnerable to attack; and (4) the rabbi then uses the answer to the counter-question to refute the hostile question. Jesus’ use of this rhetorical form is one way to establish His authority as a rabbi, not unlike a modern lawyer who uses a formal, legal rhetoric in the courtroom. Moreover, the point of the rhetorical exchange is ultimately to refute the hostile question.

Second, because the hostile question was a direct challenge to Jesus’ authority as a rabbi on a point of law, His interrogators would have expected a counter-question grounded in scripture, in particular, based upon the Torah. Two words, "image" and "inscription," in the counter-question harkens to two central provisions in the Torah, the First (Second) Commandment and the Shema. These provide the scriptural basis for this question of law.

God Prohibits False Images. The First (Second) Commandment prohibits worship of anyone or anything but God, and it also forbids crafting any image of a false god for adoration, "I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness [image] of any thing…." God demands the exclusive allegiance of His people. Jesus’ use of the word, "image," in the counter-question reminds His questioners of the First (Second) Commandment’s requirement to venerate God first and its concomitant prohibition against creating images of false gods.

The Shema Demands The Worship Of God Alone. Jesus’ use of the word "inscription" alludes to the Shema. The Shema is a Jewish prayer based upon Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13–21 and Numbers 15:37–41 and is the most important prayer a pious Jew can say. It commences with the words, "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad," which can be translated, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God – the Lord alone." This opening line stresses Israel’s worship of God to the exclusion of all other gods. The Shema then commands a person to love God with his whole heart, whole soul, and whole strength. The Shema further requires worshipers to keep the words of the Shema in their hearts, to instruct their children in them, to bind them on their hands and foreheads, and to inscribe them conspicuously on their doorposts and on the gates to their cities. Observant Jews take literally the command to bind the words upon their arms and foreheads and wear tefillin, little leather cases which contain parchment on which are inscribed certain passages from the Torah. Words of the Shema were to be metaphorically inscribed in the hearts, minds, and souls of pious Jews and physically inscribed on parchment in tefillin, on doorposts, and on city gates. St. Matthew and St. Mark both recount Jesus quoting the Shema in the same chapter just a few verses after the Tribute Episode. This proximity further reinforces the reference to the Shema in the Tribute Episode. Finally, it is noteworthy that when Satan tempts Jesus by offering Him all the kingdoms of the [Roman] world in exchange for His worship, Jesus rebukes Satan by quoting the Shema. In short, Jesus means to call attention to the Shema by using the word "inscription" in the counter-question as His appeal to scriptural authority for His response.

(2) Why Is The Answer To The Counter-Question Important?

The answer to the counter-question is significant for two reasons.

First, while the verbal answer to the counter-question of whose image and inscription the coin bears is a feeble, "Caesar’s," the actual image and inscription is much more revealing. The front of the denarius shows a profiled bust of Tiberius crowned with the laurels of victory and divinity. Even a modern viewer would immediately recognize that the person depicted on the coin is a Roman emperor. Circumscribed around Tiberius is an abbreviation, "TI CAESAR DIVI AUG F AUGUSTUS," which stands for "Tiberius Caesar Divi August Fili Augustus," which, in turn, translates, "Tiberius Caesar, Worshipful Son of the God, Augustus."

On the obverse sits the Roman goddess of peace, Pax, and circumscribed around her is the abbreviation, "Pontif Maxim," which stands for "Pontifex Maximus," which, in turn, means, "High Priest."

The coin of the Tribute Episode is a fine specimen of Roman propaganda. It imposes the cult of emperor worship and asserts Caesar’s sovereignty upon all who transact with it.

In the most richly ironic passage in the entire Bible, all three synoptic Gospels depict the Son of God and the High Priest of Peace, newly-proclaimed by His people to be a King, holding the tiny silver coin of a king who claims to be the son of a god and the high priest of Roman peace.

The second reason the answer is significant is that in following the pattern of rabbinic rhetoric, the answer exposes the hostile questioners’ position to attack. It is again noteworthy that the interrogators’ answer to Jesus’ counter-question about the coin’s image and inscription bears little relevance to their original question as to whether it is licit to pay the tribute. Jesus could certainly answer their original question without their answer to His counter-question. But the rhetorical function of the answer to the counter-question is to demonstrate the vulnerability of the opponent’s position and use that answer to refute the opponent’s original, hostile question.

D. REFUTING BY RENDERING UNTO GOD

In the Tribute Episode, it is only after Jesus’ counter-question is asked and answered does He respond to the original question. Jesus tells His interrogators, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God, the things that are God’s." This response begs the question of what is licitly God’s and what is licitly Caesar’s.

In the Hebrew tradition, everything rightfully belonged to God. By using the words, "image and inscription," Jesus has already reminded His interrogators that God was owed exclusive allegiance and total love and worship. Similarly, everything economically belonged to God as well. For example, the physical land of Israel was God’s, as He instructed in Leviticus 25:23, "The land [of Israel] shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is mine, and you [the Israelites] are but aliens who have become my tenants." In addition, the Jewish people were to dedicate the firstfruits, that first portion of any harvest and the first-born of any animal, to God. By giving God the firstfruits, the Jewish people acknowledged that all good things came from God and that all things, in turn, belonged to God. God even declares, "Mine is the silver and mine the gold."

The emperor, on the other hand, also claimed that all people and things in the empire rightfully belonged to Rome. The denarius notified everyone who transacted with it that the emperor demanded exclusive allegiance and, at least, the pretense of worship – Tiberius claimed to be the worshipful son of a god. Roman occupiers served as a constant reminder that the land of Israel belonged to Rome. Roman tribute, paid with Roman currency, impressed upon the populace that the economic life depended on the emperor. The emperor’s bread and circuses maintained political order. The propaganda on the coin even attributed peace and tranquility to the emperor.

With one straightforward counter-question, Jesus skillfully points out that the claims of God and Caesar are mutually exclusive. If one’s faith is in God, then God is owed everything; Caesar’s claims are necessarily illegitimate, and he is therefore owed nothing. If, on the other hand, one’s faith is in Caesar, God’s claims are illegitimate, and Caesar is owed, at the very least, the coin which bears his image.

Jesus’ counter-question simply invites His listeners to choose allegiances. Remarkably, He has escaped the trap through a clever rhetorical gambit; He has authoritatively refuted His opponents’ hostile question by basing His answer in scripture, and yet, He never overtly answers the question originally posed to Him. No wonder that St. Matthew ends the Tribute Episode this way: "When they heard this they were amazed, and leaving him they went away."

IV. THE CONTEXT IN THE GOSPELS: A TRADITION OF SUBTLE SEDITION

Subtle sedition refers to scenes throughout the Gospels which were not overtly treasonous and would not have directly threatened Roman authorities, but which delivered political messages that first century Jewish audiences would have immediately recognized. The Gospels are replete with instances of subtle sedition. Pointing these out is not to argue that Jesus saw Himself as a political king. Jesus makes it explicit in John 18:36 that He is not a political Messiah. Rather, in the context of subtle sedition, no one can interpret the Tribute Episode as Jesus’ support of taxation. To the contrary, one can only understand the Tribute Episode as Jesus’ opposition to the illicit Roman taxes.

In addition to the Tribute Episode, three other scenes from the Gospels serve as examples of subtle sedition: (1) Jesus’ temptation in the desert; (2) Jesus walking on water; and (3) Jesus curing the Gerasene demoniac.

A. EMPERORS OF BREAD AND CIRCUSES

Around 200 A.D., the Roman satirist Juvenal lamented that the Roman emperors, masters of the known world, tenuously maintained political power by way of "panem et circenses," or "bread and circuses," a reference to the ancient practice of pandering to Roman citizens by providing free wheat and costly circus spectacles. Caesar Augustus, for example, boasted of feeding more than 100,000 men from his personal granary. He also bragged of putting on tremendous exhibitions:

Three times I gave shows of gladiators under my name and five times under the name of my sons and grandsons; in these shows about 10,000 men fought. * * * Twenty-six times, under my name or that of my sons and grandsons, I gave the people hunts of African beasts in the circus, in the open, or in the amphitheater; in them about 3,500 beasts were killed. I gave the people a spectacle of a naval battle, in the place across the Tiber where the grove of the Caesars is now, with the ground excavated in length 1,800 feet, in width 1,200, in which thirty beaked ships, biremes or triremes, but many smaller, fought among themselves; in these ships about 3,000 men fought in addition to the rowers.

By the time of Jesus and the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the Roman grain dole routinely fed 200,000 people.

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, the Spirit led Him into the desert "to be tempted by the devil." The devil challenged Him with three tests. First, he dared Jesus to turn stones into bread. Second, the devil took Jesus to the highest point on the temple in Jerusalem and tempted Him to cast Himself down to force the angels into a spectacular, miraculous rescue. Finally, for the last temptation, "the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, ‘All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.’"

The devil dared Jesus to be a king of bread and circuses and offered Him dominion over the whole earthly world. These temptations are an instantly recognizable reference to the power of the Roman emperors. Jesus forcefully rejects this power. Jesus’ rejection illustrates that the things of God and the things of Rome/the world/the devil are mutually exclusive. Jesus’ allegiance was to the things of God, and His rebuff of the metaphorical power of Rome is an example of subtle sedition.

B. TREADING UPON THE EMPEROR’S SEAS

At the beginning of Chapter 6 in St. John’s Gospel, Jesus performs a miracle and feeds 5,000 people from five loaves of bread; He then refuses to be crowned a king of bread and circuses. Immediately thereafter, St. John recounts the episode of Jesus walking on a body of water in the middle of a storm. That body of water was the Sea of Galilee, which, St. John reminds his readers, was also known as the Sea of Tiberias. Around 25 A.D., Herod Antipas built a pagan city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee and named it in honor of the Roman emperor, Tiberius. By Jesus’ time, the city had become so important that the Sea of Galilee came to be called the "Sea of Tiberias." Thus, not only does Jesus refuse to be coronated a Roman king of bread and circuses, but He literally treads upon the emperor’s seas, showing that even the emperor’s waters have no dominion over Him. Treading on the emperor’s seas is an additional instance of subtle sedition.

C. A LEGION OF DEMONS

St. Mark details Jesus’ encounter with the Gerasene demoniac in another example of subtle sedition. The territory of the Gerasenes was pagan territory, and this particular demoniac was exceptionally strong and frightening. In attempting to exorcise the demon, Jesus asked its name. The demon replied, "Legion is my name. There are many of us." Jesus then expels the demons and casts them into a herd of swine. The herd immediately drive themselves into the sea. First century readers would have been well-acquainted with the name, "Legion." At that time, an imperial legion was roughly 6,000 soldiers. Thus, the demon "Legion," an agent of the devil, was a thinly-veiled reference to the Roman occupiers of Judaea. Swine were considered unclean animals under Jewish law. The symbol of the Roman Legion which occupied Jerusalem was a boar. The first century audience would have easily grasped the symbolism of Jesus’ casting the demon Legion into the herd of unclean swine, and the herd driving itself into the sea. Thus, the healing of the Gerasene demoniac is another example of subtle sedition.

D. TRIBUTE AS SUBTLE SEDITION

In the Tribute Episode, Jesus’ response is subtly seditious. The first-century audience would have immediately apprehended what it meant to render unto God the things that are God’s. They would have known that the things of God and Caesar were mutually exclusive. No Jewish listener would have mistaken Jesus’ response as an endorsement of paying Caesar’s taxes. To the contrary, His audience would have understood that Jesus thought the tribute was illicit. Indeed, opposition to the tribute was one of the charges the authorities levied at His trial, "They brought charges against him, saying, ‘We found this man misleading our people; he opposes the payment of taxes to Caesar and maintains that he is the Messiah, a king.’" To the Roman audience, however, the pronouncement of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s sounds benign, almost supportive. It is, however, one of many vignettes of covert political protest contained in the Gospels. In short, the Tribute Episode is a subtle form of sedition. When viewed in this context, no one can say that the Episode supports the payment of taxes.

V. WHAT DOES THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SAY?

The Catholic Church considers Herself the authoritative interpreter of Sacred Scripture. The 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church "is a statement of the Church’s faith and of catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition, and the Church’s Magisterium."

The 1994 Catechism instructs the faithful that it is morally obligatory to pay one’s taxes for the common good. (What the definition of the "common good" is may be left for a different debate.) The 1994 Catechism also quotes and cites the Tribute Episode. But the 1994 Catechism does NOT use the Tribute Episode to support the proposition that it is morally obligatory to pay taxes. Instead, the 1994 Catechism refers the Tribute Episode only to justify acts of civil disobedience. It quotes St. Matthew’s version to teach that a Christian must refuse to obey political authority when that political authority makes a demand contrary to the demands of the moral order, the fundamental rights of persons, or the teachings of the Gospel. Similarly, the 1994 Catechism also cites to St. Mark’s version to instruct that a person "should not submit his personal freedom in an absolute manner to any earthly power, but only to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Caesar is not ‘the Lord.’" Thus, according to the 1994 Catechism, the Tribute Episode stands for the proposition that a Christian owes his allegiance to God and to the things of God alone. If the Tribute Episode unequivocally supported the proposition that it is morally obligatory to pay taxes, the 1994 Catechism would not hesitate to cite to it for that position. That the 1994 Catechism does not interpret the Tribute Episode as a justification for the payment of taxes suggests that such an interpretation is not an authoritative reading of the passage. In short, even the Catholic Church does not understand the Tribute Episode to mean that Jesus endorsed paying Caesar’s taxes.

V. CONCLUSION

St. John’s Gospel recounts the scene of a woman caught in adultery, brought before Jesus by the Pharisees so that they might "test" Him "so that they could have some charge to bring against Him." When asked, "‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say,’" Jesus appears trapped by only two answers: the strict, legally-correct answer of the Pharisees, or the mercifully-right, morally-correct, but technically-illegal answer undermining Jesus’ authority as a Rabbi. Notably, Jesus never does overtly respond to the question posed to Him; instead of answering, "Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger." When pressed by His inquisitors, He finally answers, "‘Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,’" and, of course, the shamed Pharisees all leave one by one. Jesus then refuses to condemn the woman.

The scene of the woman caught in adultery and the Tribute Episode are similar. In both, Jesus is faced with a hostile question challenging His credibility as a Rabbi. In each, the hostile question has two answers: one answer which the audience knows is morally correct, but politically incorrect, and the other answer which the audience knows is wrong, but politically correct. In the scene of the woman caught in adultery, no one roots for Jesus to say, "Stone her!" Everyone wants to see Jesus extend the woman mercy. Likewise, in the Tribute Episode, no one hopes Jesus answers, "Pay tribute to the pagan, Roman oppressors!" The Tribute Episode, like the scene of the woman caught in adultery, has a "right" answer – it is not licit to pay the tribute. But Jesus cannot give this "right" answer without running afoul of the Roman government. Instead, in both Gospel accounts, Jesus gives a quick-witted, but ultimately ambiguous, response which exposes the hypocrisy of His interrogators rather than overtly answers the underlying question posed by them. Nevertheless, in each instance, the audience can infer the right answer embedded in Jesus’ response.

Over the centuries, theologians, scholars, laymen, and potentates have interpreted the Tribute Episode incorrectly as Jesus’ support for the payment of taxes. First, this interpretation does not square with the political climate of the times. The Tribute Episode is set in the middle of a decades-old tax-revolt against Caesar’s tribute. Second, the rhetorical structure of the Tribute Episode, itself, contradicts any interpretation that Jesus supported paying taxes. Third, the Gospels contain episode after episode of subtle sedition. The Tribute Episode is just another of these subtly seditious scenes. When seen in the context of subtle sedition, the phrase "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s," means that the emperor is owed nothing. Finally, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the authoritative interpreter of Sacred Scripture, does not construe the Tribute Episode to support the proposition that it is morally obligatory to pay one’s taxes. Indeed, it interprets the Tribute Episode to mean the exact opposite – that Christians are obliged to disobey Caesar when Caesar’s dictates violate God’s law. In sum, the pro-tax position of the Tribute Episode is not supportable historically, rhetorically, contextually, or within the confines of the Catholic Church’s own understanding. As Dorothy Day is reputed to have said, "If we rendered unto God all the things that belong to God, there would be nothing left for Caesar."

March 17, 2010

Jeff Barr [send him mail] practices law in Las Vegas, Nevada. He received a Master's Degree in Business Administration from UNLV where he took classes from Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Murray Rothbard.

PS. THIS government committed atrocities (think Shay's rebellion, Whiskey rebellion, "Civil "war (war of northern aggression)) LONG before there were corporations which are government creations in the first place. Wonderfully smart of you to make that distinction.

And then he really wrote this:

The reading of scripture is complex and we should avoid being sure that it supports our cherished assumptions.

To which I wrote the seeming last shot:

Yeah, XXX, THAT'S what "we" are doing. You are a joke, a perfect example of cognitive dissonance and a statist whore. I'm considering making this entire dialog available to the world.

Today's correspondence with a Friend fro Atlanta Quaker Meeting

2010-03-19T06:26:00.000-07:00

Dear XXXXXX,

I cannot understand the cowardice embodied in this letter. He is paying to help murder others but under protest. Is that what Christ did? Is He not his guide, his role model? Or is it the Sanhedrin, those dissemblers/enablers of the Roman occupation? The latter, I think. It is the "we", the "us" that is the root, here. To identify with the 'nation', rather than with God, puts lost souls in the position of worshiping gods other than God. That is mortal sin regardless of the 'under protest'. Earthly nations will ALWAYS commit bloody sin in everything they do. Godly people (remember the narrow way?) will not be associated with it and will, in fact, sacrifice their lives to stop it. Writing letters of "protest", asking for mercy from the anti-Christ, licking the hands of the enslavers is all being "Almost Persuaded" (P. Bliss) but wholly lost. If Ned Netterville didn't impress you (obviously he didn't), try this: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/barr-j1.1.1.html.
Thanks for again sticking your head into the hornet's nest.

Peace,

John

From: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
To: afmdiscussion@yahoogroups.com
Cc: John Redman
Sent: Fri, March 19, 2010 6:15:44 AM
Subject: Fw: Taxes for War or Peace?

----- Original Message -----

From: Every Church A Peace Church

To: XXXXXXXX

Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 3:06 AM

Subject: Taxes for War or Peace?

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What are you going to say to the government on April 15 about the way it spends your tax dollars?

My wife and I said this when we mailed our tax return today.

728 Fulton St.
Akron PA 17501
March 18, 2010

Mr. Douglas Shulman, The Commissioner
Internal Revenue Service Center
Kansas City MO 64999

Dear Commissioner Shulman,

We pay these income taxes under protest, because of the unconscionable way they are spent. You, the federal government, are spending about half of every tax dollar on the cost of past and present wars (48% in the 2011 budget).

With sadness we say, This is really no way to run a government.

Killing people is not a workable way to make the world a better place, nor the United States a more secure place.

We are concerned in particular that a future court may find us in violation of international laws pertaining to war crimes perpetrated by the U. S. Government (in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc).

Or, who knows, given the terrorist nature of warfare itself, we may be guilty of donating for the support of a terrorist organization as defined by U.S. laws in recent years.

As Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, we find our conscience offended, and the exercise of our religious belief infringed by coercion to pay for war--believing as we do that people are forbidden by God, and the teachings of Jesus which reveal the will of God, to kill people. By clear implication, paying people to kill people cannot be an innocent action.

As a free expression of our religion we are withholding $10.40 from payment of the tax which the enclosed form shows that we owe. This is less than one thin penny for every billion dollars devoted to military spending in the 2011 federal budget http://www.warresisters.org/node/642 We are donating this to the National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund, the legislative effort to democratize taxation http://www.peacetaxfund.org. This is a symbolic action, of the sort on which this country was founded. We are asking you, the government, to engage us, the citizens, in an honest discussion of federal spending priories. This would be an exercise in democracy (an exercise sadly becoming rare in this country.)

We ask the legislature to pass a law recognizing the right of conscientious objection to paying for war (The Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill) and the executive branch to cease and desist from limiting the free exercise of our religion by forcing us to pay for war.

Sincerely,

Render Unto Caesar: A Most Misunderstood New Testament Passage

2010-03-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

Render Unto Caesar: A Most Misunderstood New Testament Passage

by Jeffrey F. Barr
by Jeffrey F. Barr

I. INTRODUCTION

And everywhere we, more readily than all men, endeavor to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Him; for at that time some came to Him and asked Him, if one ought to pay tribute to Caesar; and He answered, ‘Tell Me, whose image does the coin bear?’ And they said, ‘Caesar’s.’

II. THE HISTORICAL SETTING: THE UNDERCURRENT OF TAX REVOLT

In short, Jerusalem would have been a hot-bed of political and religious fervor, and it is against this background that the Tribute Episode unfolded.

III. THE RHETORICAL STRUCTURE OF THE TRIBUTE EPISODE

A. THE QUESTION

B. THE COIN

C. THE COUNTER-QUESTION AND ITS ANSWER

(1) Why Is The Counter-Question Important?

The counter-question is significant for two reasons.

(2) Why Is The Answer To The Counter-Question Important?

The answer to the counter-question is significant for two reasons.

On the obverse sits the Roman goddess of peace, Pax, and circumscribed around her is the abbreviation, "Pontif Maxim," which stands for "Pontifex Maximus," which, in turn, means, "High Priest."

The coin of the Tribute Episode is a fine specimen of Roman propaganda. It imposes the cult of emperor worship and asserts Caesar’s sovereignty upon all who transact with it.

D. REFUTING BY RENDERING UNTO GOD

IV. THE CONTEXT IN THE GOSPELS: A TRADITION OF SUBTLE SEDITION

A. EMPERORS OF BREAD AND CIRCUSES

Three times I gave shows of gladiators under my name and five times under the name of my sons and grandsons; in these shows about 10,000 men fought. * * * Twenty-six times, under my name or that of my sons and grandsons, I gave the people hunts of African beasts in the circus, in the open, or in the amphitheater; in them about 3,500 beasts were killed. I gave the people a spectacle of a naval battle, in the place across the Tiber where the grove of the Caesars is now, with the ground excavated in length 1,800 feet, in width 1,200, in which thirty beaked ships, biremes or triremes, but many smaller, fought among themselves; in these ships about 3,000 men fought in addition to the rowers.

By the time of Jesus and the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the Roman grain dole routinely fed 200,000 people.

B. TREADING UPON THE EMPEROR’S SEAS

C. A LEGION OF DEMONS

D. TRIBUTE AS SUBTLE SEDITION

V. WHAT DOES THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SAY?

V. CONCLUSION

March 17, 2010

Jeff Barr [send him mail] practices law in Las Vegas, Nevada. He received a Master's Degree in Business Administration from UNLV where he took classes from Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Murray Rothbard.

A friends is worried about what "Tea-Baggers" are saying

2010-03-11T12:58:00.000-08:00

So, I said:

Dear Ricky,

Maybe I have not made myself clear, so, here I go in my typical, shocking fashion ( I am a racist, remember?)(humans vs all others and dogs are second). Any person that considers him/herself a "Mexican" IS a dirty soul. Any person that considers him/herself an "American" IS a dirty soul. A "Georgian" "Atlantan", "Hapevillan", whatever. God does NOT endorse nationalism in any fashion, so, neither can I. I DON'T believe in open borders. I believe in NO borders. I believe in INDIVIDUAL (not CORPORATE) private property but in welcomeness and generosity alongside that. I believe in Family and I believe in Friends. I love people and I hate some ideas, statism being number one in that category. If one pays any form of homage to the state that individual is worshiping false gods, period. That goes for Tea-baggers, Republicans and Democrats, too. "If they can get you to be asking the wrong questions then they don't have to worry about the answers" (I forget who).

Love,

John Boanerges Redman, Pain In The Ass always

Joe Stack's use of violence (which provokes more violence)

2010-02-18T23:08:00.000-08:00

I just wrote this to Chuck Baldwin concerning his wish that Joe Stack had not killed himself (and, potentially, IRS workers in the building).

Dear Chuck,

I, too feel that he jumped bad. He should, as ALL children of God SHOULD do, have turned his back on the false god and made it irrelevant. Instead. most people, yourself included, count yourself as "Americans" and (you) Floridians. Nonsense. God did not create nations. He created no separate peoples or races. He created Humans to love each and every other human as himself. THAT is the only recognized-from-Heaven (like seeing the Great Wall from space) way of worshiping God. Do you believe that He is vain in wanting people to mouth words about how much they "love" Him and then go pay taxes to a gang of criminals who use the funds to kill? You had better not think that or your soul is forfeit for worshiping false gods and not following the Christ who taught, as told us in Luke 24, 1 - 2, to NOT pay taxes. Preachers who lead their flock towards 'patriotism' and government service instead of rebellion to the anti-Christ are whores of the devil and partly responsible for the murder of millions, nay billions, of innocents. Bonhoeffer was on the right path, don't you think? He, like Christ, laid down his life to stop the oppression of innocents. Take up your cross and follow Him for his burden is light and the alternative is death of the soul. Luther taught "let goods and kindred go, This mortal life also. The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still. His Kingdom is forever." Lose your pride in what Reagan did. He killed innocents, too, as did every president and (earthly) ruler for the last 130,000 years (oldest carbon dated man-made tools). Civil disobedience (NOT what Joe did) cuts without wounding and ennobles every person that wields it (MLK).

Article from Saint Joe Sobran:

2009-03-13T06:25:00.000-07:00

The Reluctant Anarchist

(Reprinted and expanded from SOBRAN’S, December 2002, pages 3–6)

Text dropped from the print edition or modified solely for reasons of space appears in blue.

My arrival (very recently) at philosophical anarchism has disturbed some of my conservative and Christian friends. In fact, it surprises me, going as it does against my own inclinations.

As a child I acquired a deep respect for authority and a horror of chaos. In my case the two things were blended by the uncertainty of my existence after my parents divorced and I bounced from one home to another for several years, often living with strangers. A stable authority was something I yearned for.

Meanwhile, my public-school education imbued me with the sort of patriotism encouraged in all children in those days. I grew up feeling that if there was one thing I could trust and rely on, it was my government. I knew it was strong and benign, even if I didn’t know much else about it. The idea that some people — Communists, for example — might want to overthrow the government filled me with horror.

G.K. Chesterton, with his usual gentle audacity, once criticized Rudyard Kipling for his “lack of patriotism.” Since Kipling was renowned for glorifying the British Empire, this might have seemed one of Chesterton’s “paradoxes”; but it was no such thing, except in the sense that it denied what most readers thought was obvious and incontrovertible.

Chesterton, himself a “Little Englander” and opponent of empire, explained what was wrong with Kipling’s view: “He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reason. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.” Which implies there would be nothing to love her for if she were weak.

Of course Chesterton was right. You love your country as you love your mother — simply because it is yours, not because of its superiority to others, particularly superiority of power.

This seems axiomatic to me now, but it startled me when I first read it. After all, I was an American, and American patriotism typically expresses itself in superlatives. America is the freest, the mightiest, the richest, in short the greatest country in the world, with the greatest form of government — the most democratic. Maybe the poor Finns or Peruvians love their countries too, but heaven knows why — they have so little to be proud of, so few “reasons.” America is also the most envied country in the world. Don’t all people secretly wish they were Americans?

That was the kind of patriotism instilled in me as a boy, and I was quite typical in this respect. It was the patriotism of supremacy. For one thing, America had never lost a war — I was even proud that America had created the atomic bomb (providentially, it seemed, just in time to crush the Japs) — and this is why the Vietnam war was so bitterly frustrating. Not the dead, but the defeat! The end of history’s great winning streak!

As I grew up, my patriotism began to take another form, which it took me a long time to realize was in tension with the patriotism of power. I became a philosophical conservative, with a strong libertarian streak. I believed in government, but it had to be “limited” government — confined to a few legitimate purposes, such as defense abroad and policing at home. These functions, and hardly any others, I accepted, under the influence of writers like Ayn Rand and Henry Hazlitt, whose books I read in my college years.

Though I disliked Rand’s atheism (at the time, I was irreligious, but not anti-religious), she had an odd appeal to my residual Catholicism. I had read enough Aquinas to respond to her Aristotelian mantras. Everything had to have its own nature and limitations, including the state; the idea of a state continually growing, knowing no boundaries, forever increasing its claims on the citizen, offended and frightened me. It could only end in tyranny.

I was also powerfully drawn to Bill Buckley, an explicit Catholic, who struck the same Aristotelian note. During his 1965 race for mayor of New York, he made a sublime promise to the voter: he offered “the internal composure that comes of knowing there are rational limits to politics.” This may have been the most futile campaign promise of all time, but it would have won my vote!

It was really this Aristotelian sense of “rational limits,” rather than any particular doctrine, that made me a conservative. I rejoiced to find it in certain English writers who were remote from American conservatism — Chesterton, of course, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, George Orwell, C.S. Lewis, Michael Oakeshott.

In fact I much preferred a literary, contemplative conservatism to the activist sort that was preoccupied with immediate political issues. During the Reagan years, which I expected to find exciting, I found myself bored to death by supply-side economics, enterprise zones, “privatizing” welfare programs, and similar principle-dodging gimmickry. I failed to see that “movement” conservatives were less interested in principles than in Republican victories. To the extent that I did see it, I failed to grasp what it meant.

Still, the last thing I expected to become was an anarchist. For many years I didn’t even know that serious philosophical anarchists existed. I’d never heard of Lysander Spooner or Murray Rothbard. How could society survive at all without a state?

Now I began to be critical of the U.S. Government, though not very. I saw that the welfare state, chiefly the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, violated the principles of limited government and would eventually have to go. But I agreed with other conservatives that in the meantime the urgent global threat of Communism had to be stopped. Since I viewed “defense” as one of the proper tasks of government, I thought of the Cold War as a necessity, the overhead, so to speak, of freedom. If the Soviet threat ever ceased (the prospect seemed remote), we could afford to slash the military budget and get back to the job of dismantling the welfare state.

Somewhere, at the rainbow’s end, America would return to her founding principles. The Federal Government would be shrunk, laws would be few, taxes minimal. That was what I thought. Hoped, anyway.

I avidly read conservative and free-market literature during those years with the sense that I was, as a sort of late convert, catching up with the conservative movement. I took it for granted that other conservatives had already read the same books and had taken them to heart. Surely we all wanted the same things! At bottom, the knowledge that there were rational limits to politics. Good old Aristotle. At the time, it seemed a short hop from Aristotle to Barry Goldwater.

As is fairly well known by now, I went to work as a young man for Buckley at National Review and later became a syndicated columnist. I found my niche in conservative journalism as a critic of liberal distortions of the U.S. Constitution, particularly in the Supreme Court’s rulings on abortion, pornography, and “freedom of expression.”

Gradually I came to see that the conservative challenge to liberalism’s jurisprudence of “loose construction” was far too narrow. Nearly everything liberals wanted the Federal Government to do was unconstitutional. The key to it all, I thought, was the Tenth Amendment, which forbids the Federal Government to exercise any powers not specifically assigned to it in the Constitution. But the Tenth Amendment had been comatose since the New Deal, when Roosevelt’s Court virtually excised it.

This meant that nearly all Federal legislation from the New Deal to the Great Society and beyond had been unconstitutional. Instead of fighting liberal programs piecemeal, conservatives could undermine the whole lot of them by reviving the true (and, really, obvious) meaning of the Constitution. Liberalism depended on a long series of usurpations of power.

Around the time of Judge Robert Bork’s bitterly contested (and defeated) nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, conservatives spent a lot of energy arguing that the “original intent” of the Constitution must be conclusive. But they applied this principle only to a few ambiguous phrases and passages that bore on specific hot issues of the day — the death penalty, for instance. About the general meaning of the Constitution there could, I thought, be no doubt at all. The ruling principle is that whatever the Federal Government isn’t authorized to do, it’s forbidden to do.

That alone would invalidate the Federal welfare state and, in fact, nearly all liberal legislation. But I found it hard to persuade most conservatives of this. Bork himself took the view that the Tenth Amendment was unenforceable. If he was right, then the whole Constitution was in vain from the start.

I never thought a constitutional renaissance would be easy, but I did think it could play an indispensable role in subverting the legitimacy of liberalism. Movement conservatives listened politely to my arguments, but without much enthusiasm. They regarded appeals to the Constitution as rather pedantic and, as a practical matter, futile — not much help in the political struggle. Most Americans no longer even remembered what usurpation meant. Conservatives themselves hardly knew.

Of course they were right, in an obvious sense. Even conservative courts (if they could be captured) wouldn’t be bold enough to throw out the entire liberal legacy at once. But I remained convinced that the conservative movement had to attack liberalism at its constitutional root.

In a way I had transferred my patriotism from America as it then was to America as it had been when it still honored the Constitution. And when had it crossed the line? At first I thought the great corruption had occurred when Franklin Roosevelt subverted the Federal judiciary; later I came to see that the decisive event had been the Civil War, which had effectively destroyed the right of the states to secede from the Union. But this was very much a minority view among conservatives, particularly at National Review, where I was the only one who held it.

I’ve written more than enough about my career at the magazine, so I’ll confine myself to saying that it was only toward the end of more than two happy decades there that I began to realize that we didn’t all want the same things after all. When it happened, it was like learning, after a long and placid marriage, that your spouse is in love with someone else, and has been all along.

Not that I was betrayed. I was merely blind. I have no one to blame but myself. The Buckley crowd, and the conservative movement in general, no more tried to deceive me than I tried to deceive them. We all assumed we were on the same side, when we weren’t. If there is any fault for this misunderstanding, it is my own.

In the late 1980s I began mixing with Rothbardian libertarians — they called themselves by the unprepossessing label “anarcho-capitalists” — and even met Rothbard himself. They were a brilliant, combative lot, full of challenging ideas and surprising arguments. Rothbard himself combined a profound theoretical intelligence with a deep knowledge of history. His magnum opus, Man, Economy, and State, had received the most unqualified praise of the usually reserved Henry Hazlitt — in National Review!

I can only say of Murray what so many others have said: never in my life have I encountered such an original and vigorous mind. A short, stocky New York Jew with an explosive cackling laugh, he was always exciting and cheerful company. Pouring out dozens of big books and hundreds of articles, he also found time, heaven knows how, to write (on the old electric typewriter he used to the end) countless long, single-spaced, closely reasoned letters to all sorts of people.

Murray’s view of politics was shockingly blunt: the state was nothing but a criminal gang writ large. Much as I agreed with him in general, and fascinating though I found his arguments, I resisted this conclusion. I still wanted to believe in constitutional government.

Murray would have none of this. He insisted that the Philadelphia convention at which the Constitution had been drafted was nothing but a “coup d’etat,” centralizing power and destroying the far more tolerable arrangements of the Articles of Confederation. This was a direct denial of everything I’d been taught. I’d never heard anyone suggest that the Articles had been preferable to the Constitution! But Murray didn’t care what anyone thought — or what everyone thought. (He’d been too radical for Ayn Rand.)

Murray and I shared a love of gangster films, and he once argued to me that the Mafia was preferable to the state, because it survived by providing services people actually wanted. I countered that the Mafia behaved like the state, extorting its own “taxes” in protection rackets directed at shopkeepers; its market was far from “free.” He admitted I had a point. I was proud to have won a concession from him.

Murray died a few years ago without quite having made an anarchist of me. It was left to his brilliant disciple, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, to finish my conversion. Hans argued that no constitution could restrain the state. Once its monopoly of force was granted legitimacy, constitutional limits became mere fictions it could disregard; nobody could have the legal standing to enforce those limits. The state itself would decide, by force, what the constitution “meant,” steadily ruling in its own favor and increasing its own power. This was true a priori, and American history bore it out.

What if the Federal Government grossly violated the Constitution? Could states withdraw from the Union? Lincoln said no. The Union was “indissoluble” unless all the states agreed to dissolve it. As a practical matter, the Civil War settled that. The United States, plural, were really a single enormous state, as witness the new habit of speaking of “it” rather than “them.”

So the people are bound to obey the government even when the rulers betray their oath to uphold the Constitution. The door to escape is barred. Lincoln in effect claimed that it is not our rights but the state that is “unalienable.” And he made it stick by force of arms. No transgression of the Constitution can impair the Union’s inherited legitimacy. Once established on specific and limited terms, the U.S. Government is forever, even if it refuses to abide by those terms.

As Hoppe argues, this is the flaw in thinking the state can be controlled by a constitution. Once granted, state power naturally becomes absolute. Obedience is a one-way street. Notionally, “We the People” create a government and specify the powers it is allowed to exercise over us; our rulers swear before God that they will respect the limits we impose on them; but when they trample down those limits, our duty to obey them remains.

Yet even after the Civil War, certain scruples survived for a while. Americans still agreed in principle that the Federal Government could acquire new powers only by constitutional amendment. Hence the postwar amendments included the words “Congress shall have power to” enact such and such legislation.

But by the time of the New Deal, such scruples were all but defunct. Franklin Roosevelt and his Supreme Court interpreted the Commerce Clause so broadly as to authorize virtually any Federal claim, and the Tenth Amendment so narrowly as to deprive it of any inhibiting force. Today these heresies are so firmly entrenched that Congress rarely even asks itself whether a proposed law is authorized or forbidden by the Constitution.

In short, the U.S. Constitution is a dead letter. It was mortally wounded in 1865. The corpse can’t be revived. This remained hard for me to admit, and even now it pains me to say it.

Other things have helped change my mind. R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii calculates that in the twentieth century alone, states murdered about 162,000,000 million of their own subjects. This figure doesn’t include the tens of millions of foreigners they killed in war. How, then, can we speak of states “protecting” their people? No amount of private crime could have claimed such a toll. As for warfare, Paul Fussell’s book Wartime portrays battle with such horrifying vividness that, although this wasn’t its intention, I came to doubt whether any war could be justified.

My fellow Christians have argued that the state’s authority is divinely given. They cite Christ’s injunction “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” and St. Paul’s words “The powers that be are ordained of God.” But Christ didn’t say which things — if any — belong to Caesar; his ambiguous words are far from a command to give Caesar whatever he claims. And it’s notable that Christ never told his disciples either to establish a state or to engage in politics. They were to preach the Gospel and, if rejected, to move on. He seems never to have imagined the state as something they could or should enlist on their side.

At first sight, St. Paul seems to be more positive in affirming the authority of the state. But he himself, like the other martyrs, died for defying the state, and we honor him for it; to which we may add that he was on one occasion a jailbreaker as well. Evidently the passage in Romans has been misread. It was probably written during the reign of Nero, not the most edifying of rulers; but then Paul also counseled slaves to obey their masters, and nobody construes this as an endorsement of slavery. He may have meant that the state and slavery were here for the foreseeable future, and that Christians must abide them for the sake of peace. Never does he say that either is here forever.

St. Augustine took a dim view of the state, as a punishment for sin. He said that a state without justice is nothing but a gang of robbers writ large, while leaving doubt that any state could ever be otherwise. St. Thomas Aquinas took a more benign view, arguing that the state would be necessary even if man had never fallen from grace; but he agreed with Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all, a doctrine that would severely diminish any known state.

The essence of the state is its legal monopoly of force. But force is subhuman; in words I quote incessantly, Simone Weil defined it as “that which turns a person into a thing — either corpse or slave.” It may sometimes be a necessary evil, in self-defense or defense of the innocent, but nobody can have by right what the state claims: an exclusive privilege of using it.

It’s entirely possible that states — organized force — will always rule this world, and that we will have at best a choice among evils. And some states are worse than others in important ways: anyone in his right mind would prefer living in the United States to life under a Stalin. But to say a thing is inevitable, or less onerous than something else, is not to say it is good.

For most people, anarchy is a disturbing word, suggesting chaos, violence, antinomianism — things they hope the state can control or prevent. The term state, despite its bloody history, doesn’t disturb them. Yet it’s the state that is truly chaotic, because it means the rule of the strong and cunning. They imagine that anarchy would naturally terminate in the rule of thugs. But mere thugs can’t assert a plausible right to rule. Only the state, with its propaganda apparatus, can do that. This is what legitimacy means. Anarchists obviously need a more seductive label.

“But what would you replace the state with?” The question reveals an inability to imagine human society without the state. Yet it would seem that an institution that can take 200,000,000 lives within a century hardly needs to be “replaced.”

Christians, and especially Americans, have long been misled about all this by their good fortune. Since the conversion of Rome, most Western rulers have been more or less inhibited by Christian morality (though, often enough, not so’s you’d notice), and even warfare became somewhat civilized for centuries; and this has bred the assumption that the state isn’t necessarily an evil at all. But as that morality loses its cultural grip, as it is rapidly doing, this confusion will dissipate. More and more we can expect the state to show its nature nakedly.

For me this is anything but a happy conclusion. I miss the serenity of believing I lived under a good government, wisely designed and benevolent in its operation. But, as St. Paul says, there comes a time to put away childish things.

Joseph Sobran

My very good friend Ned who is much more erudite than I writes:

2009-02-18T17:17:00.000-08:00

To a Quaker Bible studies teacher. I have given up on this person. Ned is more tactful. I just called this person a non-Christian. So, that soul is now in Ned's gentle care.

XXXX,

I want to thank you for taking the time and effort to provide me with your very thorough and insightful analysis of various aspects of Jesus' relationship to taxes and other issues, which John Redman forwarded to me when you were unable to get it to me directly. I especially appreciate the spirit of helpfulness in which it was offered. God bless you for that as well as for the work you put into it. When I first received it my printer was misbehaving and these tired old eyes don't take to reading any but the briefest documents on the computer screen, so it was not until yesterday that I printed it out and read it.

One of the ways in which your analysis conflicts with mine is in our different understanding of taxation generally. The first point you make is that "the Roman tax in Judea was not a tax in the modern sense of the word. It was tribute."

You and I are in pretty close agreement regarding the nature of the Roman tax, as you explain in your enumerated points first, second and third. But when you say that the Roman tax "was not a tax in the modern sense of the word," without explaining what you mean by "the modern sense," I am forced to conclude that your understanding of the nature and history of taxation is radically different than my own. In my opinion, the Roman tax, the modern tax (whether sales, income, property, excise, duty, direct, indirect, etc.), as well as the tribute the Israelis exacted from some of the prior inhabitants of the Promised Land whom they did not drive out entirely as God told them to do, and the taxes the Egyptians undoubtedly levied on the Jews living among them to diminish them from the state of wealth they enjoyed when Joseph lived until they were utterly impoverished as slaves by the time Moses came along. All of these taxes share the same basic element, which distinguishes a tax from most other exchanges of wealth, and renders taxes next of kin to slavery. That basic element is this: all taxes are a form of extortion, viz., theft by force and violence or the threat thereof. They are all a way of taking the property of one person for the benefit of another or others without that person's freely given consent. They are violations of God's unequivocal command: Thou shalt not steal! Now you can take a modern tax, dress it up in the gayest legal finery, put lipstick on it, and, as the pig with those embellishments remains a pig nonetheless, the modern tax with its enFORCEMENT procedures, remains what is was at the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, to wit, stealing.

XXXX, you spoke of the "civil benefits derived from taxes" being incidental to Rome's [primary] purpose," which suggests to me that you may be making some kind of a distinction between taxes based on how the revenues therefrom are used. But, if so, this is, I believe, specious reasoning. Whatever reason a thief concocts for looting, or to what use he puts the loot, however noble or base, does not in any way diminish the crime. Remember, XXXX, Jesus told us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all of the necessities of life would be given to us. This admonition was intended for the tax collector and his beneficiaries as well as you and I. Furthermore, if Jesus knew what he was talking about, and I know from personal experience that he did, such dependence on God alleviates once and for all any reason for resorting to taxation and the concomitant, enslaving dependence on the state that it generates.

XXXX, you refer to the fact that the residents of Judea in the time of Jesus "did not have much if any input about what moneys were assessed on them and by whom," which, from the context, implies that having input into the taxation process changes its nature. I believe that the only change wrought by modern "participatory" government on the crime of taxation is to spread the sin like a contagious disease; that many, many more people, all those who willingly participate, become accomplices of the tax collectors and equally guilty of stealing. Surely modern taxation corrupts more souls than any other human institution, including even war, which of course is always and only financed by taxes.

I certainly agree with you, XXXX, when you say that "payment of the tribute said that you recognized the AUTHORITY of Caesar over you." And it is equally true that payment of a federal tax, for example, acknowledges the AUTHORITY of the United States government over you. That is what makes paying taxes to any state, I believe, unacceptable to disciples of Jesus, who clearly endorsed God's first commandment.

You say "Caesar accepted payment only in his own coin." But at another point you say, correctly I think, "Tax collectors were also moneychangers." My point is this: the fact that Caesar accepted payment only in his own coin, a point that many exegetes have for some misguided reasons dwelt on, is an insignificant fact that has no bearing on the question of Jesus' support or opposition to taxes, since Caesar did not do the collecting in person and thus the tax collectors would quite obviously and gladly have accepted anything given them in payment of the Roman tax so long as it was worth as much or more than the tax, for they could convert whatever they received into Caesar's coin before handing it over to whoever was over them, keeping the "vigorish" they made on the exchange transaction for themselves.

Based on what the gospels say, I think you have misinterpreted the intent of the Sanhedrin's plot to trap Jesus by his response to the question of whether or not it was lawful--according to God's law--to pay tax to Caesar, and, as Mark has it, whether or not to pay the tax. You say that "the Sanhedrin needed [Jesus] to be seen by the people to have committed blasphemy." This interpretation of the purpose of the coin question originated, I believe, with Eusebius (Jerome), after the Christian church became enthralled to the Roman state during the time of Constantine, and its leaders came to share in the booty of Roman taxes, which, by the way, is. in my opinion, wherein the need for separating church and state originated. Eusebius' interpretation ignores the fact that the Gospel of Luke clearly explains the design of the trap and the intent of their question, "so as to hand him over to the power and authority of the governor," who, they could be sure, would then execute Jesus as a tax resister. The Sanhedrin asked the question in the firm expectation that Jesus would say no. (If he said yes, they could hardly hand him over to the governor for supporting Caesar's tax.) Luke states the obvious design of the trap; Mark and Matthew don't mention it, but this is merely by ellipsis, because, I am sure, Jesus' stern opposition to stealing under the guise of taxation was as well known to the authors of the gospels as it was to the Sanhedrin.

You say Jesus was "only a minor annoyance from Pilate's point of view." You may have reached this erroneous, in my opinion, conclusion by misapprehending Pilate's responsibility in respect to the collection of Caesar's tax. Whereas you are correct that the actual collection was a profit-making business conducted by those who successfully bid for the right to collect Rome's taxes in Judea (as was the case throughout much of the empire's territories). Nevertheless the person ultimately responsible for the collection of taxes in Judea was Pilate. He was in virtually the same position regarding Caesar's tax in Judea as is a District Director of Taxation of the Internal Revenue Service, who is ultimately responsible for tax collections within his geographic district. Tax farming, as the Roman practice is known, did not relieve Pilate of his duty to ensure the appropriate tax revenues were collected and the appropriate portion remitted to Rome. Who actually carried out the collection process and how they went about it is beside the point. Pilate most likely executed Jesus, a man who had been "recruiting" his disciples from the ranks of Rome's tax collectors at an untold cost to the system, whose popularity was growing by leaps and bounds as he healed and preached a gospel of repentance, and who must have been notorious among those involved in collecting taxes for his repeated references to tax collectors as exemplars of sinfulness during his crowd-drawing sermons.

XXXX, you say that on one level Jesus' response ("render unto...etc.") "is saying to submit to Rome." What do you mean by "on one level." On what level? What are you saying? Was there a subliminal message? Jesus' response is as unambiguous as his Father's command, "Thou shalt not steal!" He said, "Give Caesar what is Caesar's, but give God what is God's," which of course begs the question, What is Caesar's and what is God's? Scripture says in at least five places (e.g. Psalm 24:1) that everything is God's, which leaves absolutely nothing for Caesar's. Should we pay taxes to Caesar? Not unless you have something that belongs to him (Thou shalt not steal, which goes for Caesar as well as you and me). Jesus was obviously guilty of the charge of sedition (not treason) by interfering with Rome's collection of taxes.

Have you read my interpretation of the Temple Tax incident recorded in Matthew 17? It is considerably different than yours. I think it is important that the Temple Tax, a forced, involuntary exaction, not be confused with tithing, which is an entirely voluntary donation or gift. ("Bring your gift to the alter.") Furthermore, it seems to me that Pilate would be interested in the collection of the Temple Tax, although not to the degree of his interest in the collection of Rome's tax. I'm sure you are familiar with the incident reported by Josephus when Pilate used Temple money to divert the waters of a Jerusalem stream. The Jews complained bitterly, and he had his soldiers violently quell their dissent at the cost of many Jews' lives. Evidently, then, Pilate did have a hand in the Temple's revenues. Suffice to say there are several other points on which I differ with your interpretation of the coin-in-the-mouth of a fish incident.

Bottom line: Jesus preached and practiced principles for right living--and dying. Those who follow his ways will be loyal to God alone. They constitute the Kingdom of God here and now upon this earth, living according to the law of God, who is Truth, and Love, and Justice, and Freedom, and Wisdom. When acting from Love, we are sure to comply with God's commandments--not preying upon our neighbors by means of "lawfully enacted" (by humans) taxes. Acting from Truth and Love we are certain to run afoul of the State and its man-made laws, which always represent a usurpation of God's role as our almighty and only Lawgiver.

XXXX, you stress the importance of Love in Friends' theology "when we decline to serve in the military. No way can one justify killing." If one pays federal taxes, that taxpayer supports the US military's almost daily killings just as certainly as if the taxpayer pulled the trigger. Indeed the taxpayer's guilt may be greater than the soldier's, for, pursuant to the system of government in America, the citizen-taxpayer is the principal, the soldier is merely his or her agent. There is nothing of God's love in killing--directly or by proxy.

Yours in the Love of Jesus, Ned

Another person who takes responsibility

2009-01-21T15:21:00.000-08:00

I encountered a kindred thinker on one of my YahooGroups. He said:

"The doctrine of accepting Jesus into your heart as your personal Lord
and Savior is a false doctrine and has absolutely no scriptural
authority at all. There is not a single passage anywhere in the Bible
that teaches this childish stupidity.

It is idolatry and dumber than some paganisms.

It is a magical belief that a magical incantation of specific words can
save you.

That rapist and murderer who does a deathbed confession is a "worker of
lawlessness" in the words of Jesus and IS NOT saved by a verbal
confession/magical incantation.

People who believe this false doctrine are misled and have no
understanding of what the bible states.

"Many will say to me LORD, LORD . . . but I will say unto them, Depart
from me you workers of lawlessness for I never knew you."

Very clearly Jesus is saying your salvation hinges on keeping his law,
not on drawing near to him with your lips on your deathbed. That's what
faith in Christ means...obedience, not hollow proclamation of belief.

That's why he will reject the workers of lawlessness, as he said above,
even though they claim to have him as their savior.

Jesus himself said those who do not keep his law, will not be saved in
His Kingdom.

Your false preachers are itching your ears by telling you a few hollow
words are the key to eternity. Actually the content of your character is
exactly what Christ will judge you by.

"Faith without works is dead, being alone."

Berkano"

Another ally in my Quaker War, Arthur Silber

2008-03-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

According to Limbaugh, Wright's condemnation of the white ruling class's numerous, brutal and unending sins and oppressions has nothing to do with "true" religion.For "true" religion, according to Limbaugh, is all about love, and sweetness, and making goo-goo eyes at everyone. "True" religion is /nice/, and bland to a degree that renders religion offensive to precisely no one. "True" religion is utterly unthreatening. It shouldn't upset anyone, but offer only comfort and succor.I would suggest that all this would come as a considerable shock to one Jesus Christ. I don't care in the least whether you think Jesus was the Son of God, or the weird guy from that little village over there, or an actual historical figure. I'm talking about the /actual/ essence of the story of Jesus as that story has come down to us. /In fact/, the Jesus of that story challenged every aspect of the behavior and thought of the ruling class of his time. He condemned that ruling class in stark and notably /un/forgiving terms. He was threatening to the powerful of his time to a degree that the powerful found intolerable.You might recall that the threat Jesus represented to the powerful elites of his time was so extreme that they killed him because of it. But in a pattern that is repeated over and over again throughout history, the ruling class found a very clever way to disembowel the threat Jesus represented, once they had disemboweled the individual in question. The ruling class appropriated the religion he had preached, purged it of each and every element that criticized them, and repackaged it as a bland, easily digestible pablum. They then pretended this tasteless, empty, sentimentalized religion was what Jesus had offered all along. And many people fell for it. (I note that the identical appropriation occurred with Martin Luther King, who also had been a dangerously threatening revolutionary figure. But for us today, King has been mainstreamed in a manner that I think King himself would have condemned in terms that most Americans would find as upsetting as Wright's statements. The King who is regularly appealed to by every mainstream commentator, of right and left, bears not a single significant point of correspondence to the statements and actions of the King who actually lived, until he too was eliminated because he was too profoundly threatening to the ruling class. For another example of this kind of appropriation by the powerful, see the general discussion of the profound changes in Christianity itself and of Augustine's role in that transformation, in "Of Abortion, and Women as the Ultimate Source of Evil <http://powerofnarra tive.blogspot. com/2007/ 08/of-abortion- and-women- as-ultimate. html>.")In brief: Jesus would recognize Wright (and certainly King), and see them as fighting the same battles that he himself fought. Jesus would also see Limbaugh very clearly, just as he would take the measure of many liberals who are running away from the full import of Wright's views as fast as their little accommodationist legs will carry them. I don't imagine that Jesus would offer much in the way of sweetness and succor to the Limbaughs of our time, just as I find it difficult to see Jesus exchanging mash notes with today's Vichy liberals and making goo-goo eyes at them.And we will crucify Jeremiah Wright, won't we? I suppose it's a marginal improvement that we only do it figuratively now -- except, to be sure, when we destroy entire nations and peoples in the pursuit of our fundamentalist religion /of state/ <http://powerofnarra tive.blogspot. com/2008/ 03/over-one- million-murdered -and-nothing. html>. In any case, Wright is about to retire, so it doesn't matter all that much -- right, Senator Obama? Moral cowardice, endless oppression of the weak and comparatively powerless, and brutal violence unleashed against those who are disfavored are the constants of humanity's history, stretching back through the blood-soaked centuries. These are our specialties, and we will not surrender them.So we conclude our short sermon. I do hope it contained enough sweetness to sustain you until dinner. And I surely would not wish to offend anyone at all.Surely not./posted by Arthur Silber at 11:15 AM

Another, in my view, true Christian soldier

2008-02-22T08:08:00.000-08:00

Legal eagle: Lawyer Hao Jinsong files lawsuits to establish the rule of law in China.
Peter Ford

How one man in China strengthens the rule of law
Hao Jinsong, a Beijing lawyer, defies authorities with small lawsuits.
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the February 22, 2008 edition E-mail Print Letter to the Editor Republish del.icio.us digg

Beijing - To most Beijingers, the receipt the attendant gives them for the six cents paid to use the public toilets in the subway is a worthless piece of scrap, quickly crumpled up and thrown away.

To Hao Jinsong, that piece of paper is a seed of Chinese democracy.

It took the 35-year-old law scholar a court battle to force the subway authorities to issue the legally required receipt, and he still treasures the one he sued for. But the chit itself, he says, is not important.

"Behind this receipt is a law that gives people the right to ask for one," he explains. "If nobody respects the dignity of the law, everybody loses his own dignity. If today you lose your right to a receipt, tomorrow you may lose your right to your land, your house, your freedom, and even your life."

Hyperbole? In a country where the rule of law is very much a work in progress, and where the ruling Communist Party routinely dictates judges' verdicts in sensitive cases, Mr. Hao's passionate faith in the law might seem naive.

But it is the very weakness of the rule of law in China that inspires his crusade, he says. If "people don't use legal recourse to defend themselves because they think it's useless ... the law grows even weaker," he argues.

"When ... people use the law as naturally as they use chopsticks, China will be close to democracy," he adds.

Hao is a pioneer of public interest lawsuits, a growing trend in a country where they were unknown, or dismissed by judges out of hand, only a few years ago.

He and a swelling band of lawyers like him have attracted less international attention than legal activists whose efforts to defend human rights have earned them beatings, house arrest or jail terms.

But they are achieving prominence in China, and winning plaudits from their peers. "We need someone to stand up and challenge shortcomings of institutions," says Wu Ge, a law professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University.

Hao is best known for lawsuits he has brought against the powerful Ministry of Railroads, challenging its refusal to give tax receipts for goods bought on trains, and its ticket pricing policy.

He won the receipt case, on his third attempt, earning the government $2.7 million a year in tax revenue from the railroads. And though he lost two court battles to stop the railroad management raising ticket prices during the Spring Festival, when 150 million Chinese go home for the holidays, his campaign attracted wide public support. Management bowed to the pressure, and has left holiday ticket prices untouched for the past two years.

That, says Yiyi Lu, a researcher at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London who has written a study of public interest lawsuits in China, is an example of how "you don't need to win the case to win the cause."

Key to such victories has been media coverage and the public debate it provokes. Though Chinese newspapers don't dare report court cases involving political dissidents, many of them – including the Communist Party's mouthpiece the People's Daily – have written approvingly about Hao's cases.

This would not happen if Hao confronted the government head on over issues such as free speech. Instead, he deliberately restricts himself to less political cases, holding the government's feet to the fire on a goal it has publicly set itself – the rule of law.

"I would like to say the government and I are going forward together," he explains. "I don't want to strip the government of its power, but to curb it."

Achieving that goal starts with citizens knowing their rights and defending them in court if need be, Hao says. "Ordinary people have to change into independent- minded citizens before China will be strong," he argues.

Even independent-minded citizens, however, could be forgiven for steering clear of political action when they see what happens to the few who publicly demand an end to one-party rule in China.

A proponent of gradual change, Hao insists that democracy can only be won "at the right pace.

"It's like a running track," he says. "A few of the elite are leading the pack, but if ordinary people see that the track leads to jail they won't dare to get on it. My way is a way ordinary people can imitate" by going to court to defend their rights as consumers.

"When they realize they have rights," Hao hopes, "they will call for other rights, like freedom of speech or publication, later."

Fewer than 20 percent of Chinese public-interest lawsuits end in even partial success for the plaintiffs, according to a 2006 study by legal scholar Huang Jinrong. But that does not daunt Hao.

The public attention that such cases attract raises public awareness of the uses of the law, he says, and with each case "we change officials' attitudes."

Li Heping, a lawyer whose human rights work has earned him a round-the-clock police shadow and who was kidnapped and beaten up last year, also believes the sort of work Hao and his colleagues do is helping to change China.

"Each bit of progress has to be made step by step," he says. "It takes a lot of people working from different perspectives."

Hao is currently engaged in a suit against the National Forestry Agency, which he accuses of refusing to investigate a false claim by the Shaanxi provincial authorities that a South China tiger, thought to be extinct, had been photographed. The incident drew massive interest on the Chinese Internet, and widespread criticism of the authorities for trying to create a lucrative tourist attraction out of a faked photograph.

The lawsuit, Hao says, is designed "to show people that the government does not have the right to say whatever it likes. The government cannot lie, and ordinary people have the right to unmask the government's lies."

Such cases may not shake the world, but "they have a cumulative effect," says Dr. Lu. "When lots of people bring them, they contribute to positive change."

"Today I am just a butterfly flapping my wings in the Beijing sky," says Hao. "But in 20 years there will be a storm in the whole country."

John Woolman's 'War on War' now

2005-08-24T17:04:00.000-07:00

I believe that God has but one rule to follow with many permutations. The rule is 'Do not use coercion on any fellow man capable of reason'. Permutations include 'Do not sit idly by while coercion is used on your neighbor'. I believe also that Christ taught two lessons - how to live and how to die. The living part is rather easy. Many people would rather gloss over how he died. I do not believe that he died in our place but that we must risk death at the hands of the tyrants or give up any claim to glory. Simple, right? Paying taxes to government is the opposite of preventing the use of coercion, don't you agree? Getting a drivers license and registration plates to use the roads that you own is, too. Anyone that agrees with me is welcome to manufacture your own plates and "register" them with www.automobile-registry.com (I own the site). Have transfer letters made that say that and fit across the top of a white painted-over state plate (saving the black letters/numbers) and other transfer letters saying "permanent" beneath them. When you write to me I will print out an official looking certificate and post your info on the database (accessible only with a password unique to you). This is the walk that I walk, the change that I wish to see made. In Connecticut, I am resisting property taxes for the eight years I have owned a townhouse in Clinton, relying upon the State Constitution, Article 9 (read it). I pay no income taxes to anyone, either. I do not have time to get around gas taxes, however. I buy most of my goodies on eBay. I advocate making direct, polite approaches to legislators at all levels pleading the position of conscience (NOT - spend the tax money on my favorite cause). I advocate easing out the traitors from all the Churches leadership positions (the ones that support Romans 13, 1-8). On the Duty of Civil Disobedience is nearly perfect gospel to me.