← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 5519 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2003-03-13
2003-03-13 13:47 | User Profile
DESTINATION DESPOTISM MUTINY ON THE GOOD SHIP AMERICA
By: Al Cronkrite
Butler Shaffer writes insightfully, "Faith in constitutionalism derives from a failure to understand the basic nature of words: they are subject to interpretation. Words are abstractions and, as such, can never be what they purport to represent." He goes on to point out that with constitutions, interpretation is the dominion of the state.
President George W. Bush espouses Christianity. He reads the Bible and prays daily for guidance. As a candidate for the high office he now holds, Attorney General John Ashcroft was pilloried for his Christian beliefs. Evangelicals around the Nations fawn on any sign of Christian humility in our leaders and often overlook egregious error while supporting them.
One of the elementary facts about our Christian God is that He is autocratic. Reading the Bible quickly supports this assumption. God reigns and if we desire His benefits, we must do His Will. Evangelical Christians tend to believe that Christ's fulfillment of the Law nullifies its usefulness and they frequently ignore the Old Testament and the essential wisdom it offers.
Ignoring the Old Testament renders them equally as stupid concerning right and wrong as it does concerning God's delineation of government. The assumption that obedience to God can be achieved through the personal intervention of the Holy Spirit or that Law is written on our hearts in spite of the fact that most Christians do not even know the Ten Commandments is shear folly.
It is obedience that God wants from Christians and obedience is impossible without delineated law. The Laws that we are to obey are the Laws, which God gave to Moses. Humanistic law born of rebellion and deliberately contrary to the Laws of our Christian God has not only destroyed justice but has make our courts an abomination to the society they are designed to protect.
All of the praying and Bible studies in which our leaders immerse themselves will not make them better leaders until they read and absorb the Laws God gave us.
God's outline for government limits its involvement to administering the Law and defending the Nation. World government in a Biblical sense is tantamount to the Tower of Babel and the Fascistic Socialism being fostered by the Bush administration could only be an abomination to Him.
Reading the Bible without being guided by an orthodox theological base produces stupid Christians and toothless, anarchic Christianity.
It appears that our leaders have apprehended the autocratic nature of God and have taken that yoke upon themselves while they have utterly failed to contend with the structure of His government.
Of late, our government complicit press and media are serving up a smorgasbord of United Nations attempts at dominion. They are interviewing a plethora of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) members whose opinions are designed to lead our nation into the arms of imperialistic world government.
While the CFR is firmly behind world government and its founding Rockefeller guru donated the land on which their domicile is housed, our President, surrounded by followers of the Rockefeller guru's CFR, is bent on going his own way. One wonders what connivance is behind this deceptive procedure.
Will Americans be breathing a sigh of relief as our young men are pulled back from the danger of death and the United Nations becomes the knight in shinning armor, or will our President go ahead with his war against Iraq and gain the black gold while allowing the United Nations to be legitimatised and strengthened through defeat. Time will tell.
One thing is certain, losing our freedom as a result of the War on Terrorism nullifies the reason for backing the war in the first place and that appears to be exactly what has happened. The Patriots Acts, 1 and 2, have codified the structure of a police state. President Bush has estimated that this war will take another fifty years. All that is needed are a few concerted terrorist acts and American freedom will be gone.
As Butler Shaffer has pointed out, the Constitution is made up of words and unfortunately imperialists have a habit of ignoring words which they do not intend to understand.
"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."
url: [url=http://www.etherzone.com/2003/cron031203.shtml]http://www.etherzone.com/2003/cron031203.shtml[/url]
2003-03-14 11:46 | User Profile
Butler Shaffer writes insightfully, "Faith in constitutionalism derives from a failure to understand the basic nature of words: they are subject to interpretation. Words are abstractions and, as such, can never be what they purport to represent." He goes on to point out that with constitutions, interpretation is the dominion of the state.
As Butler Shaffer has pointed out, the Constitution is made up of words and unfortunately imperialists have a habit of ignoring words which they do not intend to understand.
This is the essence of the Catholic (and Eastern Orthodox) critique of Protestantism, and its interesting to see it being raised against the deformation of our Constitutional jurisprudence.
Luther and Calvin believed in sola scriptura - the idea that the exclusive source of authority for Christian doctrine and morals are the Scriptures alone, combined with the notion that every individual has the right to interpret the Scriptures as he sees fit.
There are several problems with this most basic of Protestant ideas, the most obvious of which is that it places the individual above the authority of the Scriptures. After all, as Mr. Shaffer points out, the question is not the text but rather how the text is interpreted, and therefore granting to each individual the right to interpret the Scripture authoritatively for oneself grants the individual de facto dominion over them. It is in fact an utterly idolotrous proposition.
Indeed, the entire project is a terrible temptation to solipcism - it renders any community moral values impossible. Thus, the Reformation contained the seeds of the extreme individualism that has born such poisoned fruit extending from our religion to our philosophy and into every aspect of our lives, including especially our jurisprudence.
The Catholic and Eastern Orthodox reject sola scriptura, and insist instead that the Scriptures can only be understood in the context of Holy Tradition; i.e. the way the Church always undertood the question. In addition to Holy Tradition, both also recognize the teaching authority of the Bishops, although the two Churches understand this question somewhat differently with the Catholic Church insisting on the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. I'm not an expert in this issue.
The point is that the two traditional branches of Christianity always believed that there exists a Tradition that forms the context in which the Scriptures consist and outside of which the Scriptures cannot be understood, that the Tradition is authoritative, and that all individuals must in justice submit to both Tradition and ecclesiastical authority in matter of faith and morals.
Derrida's solipcism is the end result of sola scriptura.
The sola scriptura mindset that prevails in our society (ironically enough even (especially?) among Catholics) lies close to the root of our present difficulties. The healing of Christendom is possible only through an acceptance of Christian Scripture as interpreted by Holy Tradition in unity with magesterium.
Now, who's more catholic than the Pope?
Walter
2003-03-14 19:14 | User Profile
Originally posted by Walter Yannis@Mar 14 2003, 05:46 ** The sola scriptura mindset that prevails in our society (ironically enough even (especially?) among Catholics) lies close to the root of our present difficulties. The healing of Christendom is possible only through an acceptance of Christian Scripture as interpreted by Holy Tradition in unity with magesterium. **
Walter,
Of course I would lovingly disagree with this. Following is a good summary article explaining and critiquing the Catholic view of sola scriptura:
[url=http://www.equip.org/free/DC170-3.htm]The Catholic-Protestant Debate on Biblical Authority[/url]
2003-03-15 11:56 | User Profile
Originally posted by Texas Dissident@Mar 14 2003, 19:14 ** > Originally posted by Walter Yannis@Mar 14 2003, 05:46 ** The sola scriptura mindset that prevails in our society (ironically enough even (especially?) among Catholics) lies close to the root of our present difficulties. The healing of Christendom is possible only through an acceptance of Christian Scripture as interpreted by Holy Tradition in unity with magesterium. **
Walter,
Of course I would lovingly disagree with this. Following is a good summary article explaining and critiquing the Catholic view of sola scriptura:
[url=http://www.equip.org/free/DC170-3.htm]The Catholic-Protestant Debate on Biblical Authority[/url] **
Here's a big, wet ecumenical kiss back at'cha!
I'll check out the article, and respond when I get a chance.
Walter
2003-03-15 12:00 | User Profile
Tex:
I should add that I don't see it as all negative. I think that both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions in practice didn't focus enough on the individual and didn't make the connection between a broad guarantee of individual rights and responsibilities and the good functioning of society.
The Reformation lead directly to the Founding of my beloved country, after all.
But I think it went too far the other way.
Still trying to strike that balance, I guess.
Walter
2003-03-16 14:08 | User Profile
Originally posted by Walter Yannis@Mar 14 2003, 05:46 The healing of Christendom is possible only through an acceptance of Christian Scripture as interpreted by Holy Tradition in unity with magesterium.
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"You will have already guessed how easily the priestly way of evaluating could split from the knightly-aristocratic and then continue to develop into its opposite. Such a development receives a special stimulus every time the priest caste and the warrior caste confront each other jealously and are not willing to agree about the winner. The knightly-aristocratic judgments of value have as their basic assumption a powerful physicality, a blooming, rich, even overflowing health, together with those things which are required to maintain these qualitiesââ¬âwar, adventure, hunting, dancing, war games, and in general everything which involves strong, free, happy action. The priestly-noble method of evaluating has, as we saw, other preconditions: these make it difficult enough for them when it comes to war!
"As is well known, priests are the most evil of enemiesââ¬âbut why? Because they are the most powerless. From their powerlessness, their hate grows into something immense and terrifying, to the most spiritual and most poisonous manifestations. Those who have been the greatest haters in world history and the most spiritually rich haters have always been the priestsââ¬âin comparison with the spirit of priestly revenge all the remaining spirits are hardly worth considering. Human history would be a really stupid affair without that spirit which entered it from the powerless.
"Let us quickly consider the greatest example. Everything on earth which has been done against 'the nobility,' 'the powerful,' 'the masters,' 'the possessors of power' is not worth mentioning in comparison with what the Jews have done against themââ¬âthe Jews, that priestly people who knew how to get final satisfaction from their enemies and conquerors through a radical transformation of their values, that is, through an act of the most spiritual revenge. This was appropriate only to a priestly people with the most deeply rooted priestly desire for revenge.
"In opposition to the aristocratic value equations (good = noble = powerful = beautiful = fortunate = loved by god), the Jews successfully and with a fearsome consistency dared to reverse it and to hang on to that with the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of the powerless), that is, to 'only those who suffer are good; only the poor, the powerless, the low are good; only the suffering, those in need, the sick, the ugly are the pious; only they are blessed by God; for them alone there is salvation. By contrast, you privileged and powerful people, you are for all eternity the evil, the cruel, the lecherous, insatiable, the godlessââ¬âyou will also be the unblessed, the cursed, and the damned for all eternity!' We know who inherited this Judaic transformation of values . . .
"In connection with this huge and immeasurably disastrous initiative which the Jews launched with this most fundamental of all declarations of war, I recall the sentence I wrote at another time (in Beyond Good and Evil, p. 118)ââ¬ânamely, that with the Jews the slave condition in morality begins: that condition which has a two-thousand-year-old history behind it and which we nowadays no longer notice because, well, because it has triumphed."
8.
"But you fail to understand that? You have no eye for something that needed two millennia to emerge victorious? . . . That's nothing to wonder at: all lengthy things are hard to see, to assess. However, that's what took place: out of the trunk of that tree of vengeance and hatred, Jewish hatred, the deepest and most sublime hatred, that is, a hatred which creates ideals and transforms valuesââ¬âsomething whose like has never been seen on earthââ¬âfrom that grew something just as incomparable, a new love, the deepest and most sublime of all the forms of love. From what other trunk could that have grown? . . .
"However, you must not make the mistake of thinking that this love arose essentially as the denial of that thirst for vengeance, as the opposite of Jewish hatred. No. The reverse is the truth! This love grew out of that hatred, as its crown, as the victorious crown extending itself wider and wider in the purest brightness and sunshine, which, so to speak, was seeking for the kingdom of light and height, the goal of that hateââ¬âaiming for victory, trophies, seductionââ¬âwith the same urgency with which the roots of that hatred were sinking down ever deeper and more greedily into everything deep and evil.
"Take this Jesus of Nazareth, the bodily evangelist of love, the 'Saviour,' who brought holiness and victory to the poor, to the sick, to the sinners. Was he not in fact seduction in its most terrible and irresistible form, the seduction and detour to exactly those Judaic values and new ideals? Didn't Israel in fact attain, with the detour of this 'Saviour,' with this apparent enemy to and dissolver of Israel, the final goal of its sublime thirst for vengeance? Isn't it part of the secret black art of a truly great politics of vengeance, a far-sighted, underground, slowly expropriating, and premeditated revenge, that Israel itself had to disown and nail to the cross the tool essential to its revenge before all the world, so that 'all the world,' that is, all Israel's enemies, could then swallow this bait?
"On the other hand, could anyone, using the full subtlety of his mind, imagine a more dangerous bait? Something to match the enticing, intoxicating, narcotizing, corrupting power of that symbol of the 'holy cross,' that ghastly paradox of a 'god on the cross,' that mystery of an unimaginable and ultimate cruelty and self-crucifixion of god for the salvation of mankind? . . . At least it is certain that sub hoc signo Israel, with its vengeance and revaluation of the worth of all other previous values, has triumphed again and again over all other ideals, over all nobler ideals."
9.
" 'But what are you doing still talking about more noble ideals! Let's look at the facts: the people have triumphedââ¬âor "the slaves," or "the rabble," or "the herd," or whatever you want to call themââ¬âif this has taken place because of the Jews, then good for them! No people had a more world-historical mission. "The masters" have been disposed of. The morality of the common man has won. We may take this victory as a blood poisoning (it did mix the races up)ââ¬âI don't deny that. But this intoxication has undoubtedly been successful. The "Salvation" of the human race (namely, from "the masters") is well under way. Everything is turning Jewish or Christian or plebeian (what do the words matter!).' "
2003-03-16 16:33 | User Profile
This article is quite sad dribble. The author offers a broad attack against 'evangelicals' without based purely in fanatical statements that non-evangelical interpretations are correct because they result in political behavior the author finds more congenial.
What a fun method: Let's see, Catholic politicians are insane because they follow a Pope intent on destroying national borders and thus the white race (they only disagree in order to get some more abortions of white children, and some more birth control for white couples). The Orthodox are insane because they support a religion rooted in ossified traditions that glorify reproduction with no thought to more scientific understandings of reality, such as what happens when you think it's cool for northern white women to shack down with Iranians and Armenians.
Ergo, we must all be evangelicals.
Wasn't that fun?
2003-03-16 16:54 | User Profile
Most Protestants give a very large role to tradition and the influence of the Holy Spirit in interpreting scripture. Sola Scriptura makes Scripture absolute, but the doctrine does not obviate the need to interpret Scripture, and here tradition is thought to have a role.
Sola Scripture does not lead to Derrida. Derrida provides a method for interpreting texts that shows the problems involved with the inaccesibility of authorial intention. Whatever this method's political implications, it is not a method that involves appeals to the Holy Spirit, as does the Sola Scriptura doctrine.
2003-03-16 22:45 | User Profile
It is interesting the Mr. Invade Iraq Now [For The Jews] would say that [downplay the egalitarian bent] of the Catholic cabal.
The Klan was anti-Catholic for years because they felt that Americans were getting egalitarian marching orders from a foreign entity -- the Pope in Rome. That idea was justified.
The Catholic church has done more to push egalitarianism and Marxist-style ideas in the 20th century than almost any other entity. Of course, it is not just Catholics -- every church on Earth pushes insane "all humans are equal" Marxist crapola.
2003-03-17 01:40 | User Profile
Franco, I in no way 'downplay' the 'egalitarian bent' of the Roman Catholic Church. Please try again.