While I do not subscribe to the left-right paradigm, the author makes wonderful points here about the importance of local activism in the battle to reclaim liberty.
When Mel Gibson starred in the 2000 movie The Patriot, he played the role of colonial father and farmer Benjamin Martin. Martin was portrayed as a prominent South Carolina resident whose word carried weight amongst all classes of men and women. In a meeting of the South Carolina Assembly, a discussion for vote is brought up regarding whether to take up arms against King George of England over his oppressive taxes and other ways against the Colonials. In the meeting, Martin (Gibson’s character) poses the following question:
Why would you trade 1 tyrant 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants less than 1 mile away
The movie made famous the real quote uttered by Mather Byles, Cotton Mather’s grandson, to Nathaniel Emmons in Massachusetts. The point of the quote was a very real issue of where the power of a representative republic truly lies. In a monarchy, it was assumed all power was…
By Doug Newman
Posted at Daily Paul.
Let’s connect on Facebook.
If you would like to post this elsewhere, please email me and include a link to this URL. Don’t just cut and paste the entire article, as I frequently update what I write. Thanks!
_____________________________________________________________
I hope I don’t give American police any ideas here.
It was recently reported that police in the Afghan capital of Kabul are puncturing car tires in order to prevent car theft. Mind you, Kabul does not have a major problem with car theft. However, according to the article, “Security officials fear that militants could use stolen vehicles as car bombs.”
Never mind that militants could plant bombs in cars that have not been stolen. Never mind that militants militant could plant bombs in their own cars. Never mind that militants could strap explosives on their bodies and walk into schools or restaurants and kill dozens of people.
The possibility that militants could commit crimes is being used to justify the police committing crimes. Let’s commit a crime to prevent a crime! Am I the only person to whom this makes zero sense?
Closer to home, Norman Gurley was recently arrested near Cleveland because he had a compartment in his car which could have been used to transport drugs. Never mind that any of us could transport drugs in the trunk of our car or in the glove box or in the spare tire compartment.
You put your weed in there.
Who here remembers this 1993 classic skit from Saturday Night Live? You can put weed in just about anything imaginable.
It reminds me of the 2002 science fiction thriller Minority Report starring Tom Cruise. This film depicts Washington, DC, in the year 2054, where the police had a division of “pre-crime” and apprehended people based on psychics’ foreknowledge that they could commit a crime. This division was hailed as a glorious success, as there had not been a murder in Washington, DC, in six years.
Tyranny always comes wrapped in somebody’s good intention. And it always grows bigger and uglier over time.
Any of us could do something wrong. Should we be arrested – and possibly executed – based on what we might potentially do? Imagine what that would look like in real life. Would you want to live in such a society?
Should those in a certain privileged segment of society have license to kidnap, steal from and kill innocent people based on what they might do? Should they be able to commit actual crimes in order to prevent theoretical crimes?
All across America every day TSA pervs commit sexual assault in the name of protecting us. Victim disarmament is likewise sold to us in the name of protecting us.
The very fact that you are reading this means that you have a tool that allows you to broadcast the following message to a very wide audience: NEWMAN IS A CHILD MOLESTER! Should you be pre-emptively prosecuted for the libel that you might hypothetically commit? Should SWAT teams go door-to-door executing no-knock raids in order to destroy these tools?
You put your weed in there.
One more time: should police be able to commit crimes in order to prevent crimes?
This makes as much sense as the army officer in Vietnam who said “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
This makes as much sense as when Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Hell) said “This bill offends my principles, but I’m going to vote for this bill in order to preserve my principles.”
This makes as much sense as the song that so many sang in the aftermath of 9/11: “We have to give up our freedom in order to preserve our freedom.”
And this makes as much sense as saying that people should fornicate in order to preserve their virginity.
By Doug Newman
Follow me on Facebook.
Posted at Daily Paul,Reddit and Freedom4um.
And if you would like to post this elsewhere – who knows why? – please just link to this URL, as I update my articles frequently. Thanks!
________________________________________________________________________________
On July 5, 2011, tax-mainlining thugs in Fullerton, California, beat, Kelly Thomas, an unarmed, mentally-ill, homeless man to death. The entire murder is documented on the following video. Watch the video and decide for yourself what happened. The struggle starts at about the 15:00 mark.
Today, they were acquitted.
John Barnett, the attorney for one of the killers, had this to say: “These peace officers were doing their job. They had no malice in their heart.”
Be very, very careful when googling “Kelly Thomas”. The pictures you will see will make your stomach do 360s. I have had to block several posts on my Facebook feed this evening. It reminds me of when George Orwell said “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.”
This is not an “isolated incident”. It happens all the time in America. If you don’t believe me, look at this page and this page and this page and this page and this page and many more. Look how the Denver PD beat my good friend James Moore to the point of flat lining in 2008. Google “police brutality”. Go to YouTube and type in “police brutality.” You will never have time to get to all the related articles and videos.
When I was growing up somewhere in the swamps of Jersey, “local cops” came just before “cherry tops” in a Springsteen lyric. (There are 2 other references to The Boss in that sentence.) Oh sure, they were a minor annoyance. But they were, for the most part, trusted members of the community and worthy of respect. In the last few decades, and especially since 9/11, they have morphed into an occupying army.
How did this happen? Just like any other aspect of tyranny, it metastasized with the blessing of the American people. Every bad thing that is happening in America has been happening for decades. When you place implicit trust in any governmental entity it inevitably grows out of control. The police are no exception. Those on the political Right, who insist they believe in liberty, had no problem with the police state until the current president took office. They told us again and again that we had to give up some liberty if we wanted to remain safe from drugs, terrorism, etc.
The Bill of Rights is dying because of the failure of the American people to insist that each of these rights be enforced vigorously. (That includes the Third Amendment, which is currently being invoked in this case near Las Vegas.) They remain for the most part ignorant about what these rights mean at the street level. They will moan and groan all day long about what the president is doing but will they ever meet the president? Meanwhile, they remain more ignorant than dog crap about their rights at a traffic stop, let alone their rights and powers should they be called to serve on a jury.
Watch the above video again and tell me what you see. Cops are doing this all over America and getting away with it. We need to be just as outraged by this as we are about the IRS, Obamacare, etc.
“But he must have been doing something wrong.” Fine, then. TELL ME WHAT!
And if the cops can just haul off and kill Kelly Thomas because “he must have been doing something wrong” they can do likewise to you.
Just because one rocks a blue uni and mainlines tax money and donuts does not elevate one above the rest of society. Murder is murder, no matter who does it. And until more people realize this, there is little hope for liberty in America.
We now return to our regularly scheduled twerking.
This was what Romney supporters told us in 2012 when they tried to convince us that the guy who brought the health mandate to Massachusetts really was the polar opposite of Obama. He was a “businessman”, so he would fight tyranny if elected, right?
Other successful businesspeople include: Ted Turner, Larry Flynt, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and all the Wall Street and auto industry executives who have taken bailout money. Do you want any of them as dog catcher, let alone president?
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 32,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 12 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Nope, the answer isn’t smoking. Or fatty food. Or 16 oz. sodas.
And it’s not alcohol, driving too fast, or standing between politicians and a TV camera.
In the past 100 years or so, the biggest cause of premature death has been government.
Back in 2011, while criticizing the Baltimore Symphony for using the Soviet hammer and sickle in a promotion, I linked to a website showing how many millions of people were murdered by the dictators who ruled the Soviet Union.
You’ll find similar data in this video, as well as some equally shocking numbers for other examples of democide (death by government).
I don’t know if all the numbers in the video are right. I don’t even know if the government bought 1.6 billion hollow point bullets. And I certainly hope our tax dollars didn’t help finance Pol Pot’s democide in Cambodia.
According to some, banks only loan out depositors’ money. But, in fact, they create what they loan out, based on a system known as ‘fractional reserve banking’. This is explained quite succinctly in the following excerpt from the January 1993 edition of National Geographic Magazine, entitled, The Power of Money by Peter T. White, Assistant Editor. (Pages 83-86)
Bills and coins make up about 8 percent of the U.S. money supply — the rest is in bank accounts, including checkbook money; at this writing the sum total is 3.5 trillion dollars, says the Fed — the Federal Reserve System, which is the central bank of the government of the United States — and that is three billion more than a month ago. This is how that happens. Every business day, after a telephone conference call at 11:15 a.m., the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, acting on directives from the…
Every year, I say I am going to write something new for Christmas. However, I always wind up just fiddling with the original.
Steve Benson, Arizona Republic, 12/25/88
Every year since I have been a Christian — 30 to be precise — I become depressed by what Christmas has become. Was it ever any different? Perhaps. There is no biblical basis for celebrating Christmas on December 25. A grotesque oversimplification of why we celebrate Jesus’ birth at this time of year can be traced to the ancient pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice. Christians jumped into the game with their own celebration in late December. The tradition is cultural, not biblical.
For all of our self-congratulation about “human progress”, our morals have not changed over the centuries. Contemporary Christmas is, for too many people, all about gift giving and commercialism rather than Christ. (I once heard a radio talk host say that a retailer’s favorite hymn is “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”) Too many Christians are caught up in this secular mirth.
I am a theological doofus and will probably always be one. The deep questions of theology dumbfound me just as much as questions like “How does my car run?” or “What do women want?” I will not let this deter me in my attempt to explain what makes Jesus RADICALLY unique.
Christianity is not a religion. “Christian religion” is an oxymoron. I am not a religious person. (I have a bad attitude about most churches, especially the larger ones.) Religion is man’s attempt to reach God on man’s terms. Christianity is when God reaches down to man on His supernatural terms. Our good deeds may impress man, but they will not save us. (Ephesians 2:8, 9) God spells out a plan for salvation, which comes only through faith in Jesus Christ. (Acts 4:12) This is so much easier than all the good works religions demand.
And so it was one night two thousand years ago that the King of the Universe was born to a virgin peasant girl in a forgotten backwater of the Roman Empire. Jesus never accumulated any wealth, invented anything, wrote any books, won any awards, broke any records, held any office, commanded any armies or did any of the other things that the world equates with greatness. At the age of 33, He was crucified for treason. (Luke 23:2) Yet, He lived the most remarkable life in human history. (Read the prophesies in Isaiah 52:13-53:12.)
He was born of a virgin and He arose from the dead. How’s that for remarkable? And He performed numerous other miracles in between. The secular evidence for the scriptural claims about the details of His Life is more abundant than that of any human life ever lived. It has been said that Christianity is either the greatest story ever told or the biggest hoax ever perped.
Jesus claimed that He was God. “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6) How is that for audacious? You simply cannot make a more audacious claim than this.
If I told you I was Oprah Winfrey, you would take me for a raving lunatic. But that is nowhere nearly as bold as if I claimed to be God. If I told you I was a particle physicist, it would be very easy to ascertain that I was lying. But this would not be nearly as outrageous a lie as if I had told you I was God.
Jesus was one of three things. He either was Who He said He was (i.e. God), or He was the biggest liar in history, or He was hopelessly delusional. Why would anyone want to follow, let alone worship, a pathological liar or a stark raving lunatic?
No religious leader – not Abraham, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha or Joseph Smith – ever claimed to be God. They may have said that God was somewhere up there in the heavens or that God spoke to them and commanded to proclaim what they heard. However, none ever claimed to be God. This makes Jesus radically different.
“Cafeteria Christian” is a phrase describing those who pick and choose which characteristics of Jesus they like, and disregard the rest. Many people think of Jesus as some kind of good dude, but they do not want to surrender their lives to Him. I call this the Doobie Brothers School of Theology. Jesus is just all right to them, but they do not want to be convicted of their sinfulness and need for redemption.
I have heard it said that the Gospel cannot be presented in a non-threatening manner. Just as Jesus rocked the world in Judea two millennia ago, He can rock your world today. Accepting Jesus means admitting that you do not have all the answers either in your own life or in your ability to influence the world around you. It means admitting that there is a God and that you are not He. It means admitting that you are wrong.
This is what it all came down to for me. I had been looking for the meaning of life for years. Wherever I went, I ran into these Christians who kept prodding me about Jesus. Finally, on October 22, 1986, I looked up into the sky over Tempe, Arizona, and asked: “God, please tell me what it is that all these Christians know.” I had an incredibly good supernatural feeling come over me and, while I certainly did not understand it all, I received Jesus into my life. I am no better than anyone. I am still a sinner. But my sins are forgiven through the redemptive blood of Jesus Christ.
Credit: xeniabaptistchurch.org
Hebrews 4:12-13 states “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” This is heavy stuff, especially for the haughty and arrogant. Contemporary, trendy spiritualism may make you feel good. But, Christianity is not about feeling good all the time. (Nor is it about feeling rotten all the time.)
God’s First Commandment states, in part, that, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3) A Christian counselor once gave me a thought experiment. He asked me to complete the following sentence: Life depends on _______. He said that if I filled in the blank with anything but Jesus Christ, I was practicing idolatry.
Tebow’s football glory was short-lived. However, he always new his true significance was as a Christian rather than a quarterback.
We act as if 1001 things are more important than our relationship with our Maker. Scripture never forbids us from pursuing excellence in business, academics, science, music, sports, etc. However, we are never to make worldly excellence our God. Worldly success is okay, provided you do not also lose your soul. (Matthew 16:26) Glory is fleeting. It comes and goes. It does not last. Your life is a vapor. (James 4:14) Kings and presidents are toppled. Empires fade into the dustbin of history. Mighty corporations go bankrupt. Scientific theories are proven false. Most athletes are over the hill well before 40. Fads in music and fashion come and go. The hair grays and thins. The love handles do not go away like they used to. However, the Scriptures teach that Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” (Hebrews 13:8)
Credit: youthgrouptruth.com
King Solomon had it all. He had more wealth than Bill Gates, more wisdom than Socrates and more women than Mick Jagger. And yet he tells us time and again in Ecclesiastes that it was all vanity. Indeed, Ecclesiastes is an extremely eloquent and poetic way of saying “I can’t get no satisfaction.”
It is quite fitting that perhaps the most famous song of the last 50 years is “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Mick Jagger has spent his life looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places. So, for the most part, have you and I. None of us is all that different from Mick.
I maintain two websites – here and here – devoted at least superficially to politics. More accurately they are about the uselessness and vanity of it all. Jesus had no political agenda. He would not join your party or mine. He would not vote for your candidate or mine. He had no blueprint for society or plan for humanity. He proposed no Great Society, Great Leap Forward, Five Year Plan or Thousand Year Reich. Indeed, He was offered political power three times – Matthew 4:8-10; John 6:15; Acts 1:6 – and each time He rejected it.
However, He offers a New Deal. His New Deal has nothing to do with the secular politics. Politicians always promise to transform society from the outside in and from the top down. However, the True Change that Jesus offers comes from the inside out and from the bottom up.
Jesus came into the world as a helpless baby. Right from the beginning, the kings of the earth felt threatened. (Matthew 2:3) Jesus never promised Utopia. However, He has a power that no earthly ruler will ever have. He has the power to change your life and to give you eternal life, if you will just make Him Lord over your life. He is the only King you will ever be able to elect, and in His Kingdom any day can be Election Day. And, unlike the secular state, His yoke is easy and His burden is light. (Matthew 11:30)
When Napoleon was dying in exile on the island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic, he said this of Jesus: “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I myself have founded great empires; but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His Empire upon love, and to this very day millions will die for Him.”
If you want to give and receive gifts and spend time with friends and family on December 25, then do so. But if Our Savior’s birth is not at the center of your day, it is all for naught. Jesus offers you so much that the world simply cannot.
I leave you with the last verse of the Bible, Revelation 22:21: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”
Food for the Thinkers
Foodforthethinkers's Blog 