by Thomas Abshier | Apr 26, 2025 | Apologetics/Theology/Christianity, Politics/Economics/Culture
THE WORLD AT RISK
Throughout history, some part of the world has always been in turmoil. But before the era of worldwide instant communications, we were unaware of the conflicts and could enjoy what we thought were periods of peace. With 24-7 worldwide news coverage, we have no refuge and can no longer maintain the illusion of living in an era of peace.
And while we may have lost that false sense of security we once enjoyed, our news-saturated lives allow us to stay informed about many of the moves made in the world’s chess game of economics, culture, values, religion, politics, and war. Having an awareness of the global forces operating allows us to prepare and act in response to the real world that coming toward us. In this examination, I wish to focus on the warning signs we should heed regarding the threat of Islam to our government, religion, and way of life.
TYPES OF GOVERNANCE
Islam is a religion and social system intrinsically intertwined with government. To properly appreciate the threat of Islam to liberty, we shall examine it in relation to the spectrum of governmental systems.
There are many forms of government. The could be categorized according to economic system, religion, taxes, bureaucracy, chain of authority, voting system, or relationship of to industry, military, the individual, or education. But, “force” is common thread unifying all governmental systems. Government is by its very nature an institution of imposition of force to produce compliance. The Libertarian argues that all government is immoral because it imposes direction on men without their consent and contract. The Liberal argues that the masses need to be directed because they make foolish choices without guidance.
Thus, we shall examine government according to the amount of force used by each system of government. To illustrate the gradient of force, we shall organize the various types of government along a spectrum between total control and complete freedom. I have defined the center of the spectrum as the balance between control and freedom.
1) On the Left end of the spectrum, we shall place Strong Centralized Government, and call it “Statism” or “Authoritarianism”. At its extreme, Statism directs the entirety of every individual’s life.
2) On the Right end of the spectrum, we shall place Limited Government, and call this end “Liberty” or “Freedom”. At its extreme, there is no governmental control, only action by choice and interpersonal contract.
3) At the Center is the point of balance between freedom/Liberty and Authoritarian control. This mini-max solution is achieved by men exerting Godly self-control over their appetites, and learning the ways of knowledge and wisdom, and participating in the process of selecting wise and Godly men to execute those affairs peculiar to the domain of the state. When the state is governed wisely in these large affairs so that the borders are secure, and the populace free from the disturbance of war, crime, and corruption, the Righteous populace is maximally free to partake of work, invention, recreation, and relationship. This state of representative democracy in a nation populated by men committed to following the way of God we shall call, “The Righteous Republic.” Its ingredients include a blend of Right personal self-control, democracy, representative democracy, and bodies of law, action, and justice.
The Righteous Republic:
The optimum balance between tyranny and anarchy is the point of maximum personal freedom. The place for appropriate governmental control is in the enforcement of justice and as the focal point for defense. Properly implemented, the Righteous Republic would be government on Earth as it is in Heaven. The Christian Constitutional Republic places proper limits on the authority of government and the actions of men while leaving the individual free to act in the domain of personal taste, relationship, contract, industry, and economy. The standard underlying all of man’s law is Divine Law.
Freedom is given to men who are committed to following the path of Godliness in respecting other’s boundaries.
Government should be a tool used by men to coordinate their actions and optimize behavior around the patterns of Godly morality. Government should be the equivalent of a central nervous system that facilitates group directed action to accomplish goals too large for the individual. Government should be established on many levels: individual, family, local, mid-level, groups of groups, systems, and overall coordination.
The Founders intended that the Federal government unify and protect the States, and gave it a few Constitutionally authorized functions. They gave the authority to regulate the vast majority of individual and group activities in areas of commerce and morality to the State, County, and City governments. But, the point of government was not to regulate every individual and group activity. In fact, just the opposite. The optimum legal code is sparse and gives only general descriptions of desirable behaviors in the various aspects of community and individual life.
Such a system needs few laws when the individuals in the society are wise and sensitive to the judgment and leading of the Holy Spirit. In a wise, moral, and Godly society, the parents, friends, and community engage in counsel, reprimand, and applause to reinforce good thought, speech, and action, and extinguish the bad. Instruction in the Word of God is central to living a righteous self-directed life. How is one to know the Right way without being taught? How is one to become sensitive to the way of the Holy Spirit without being steeped in His Way? Parents are the primary teachers of a moral pattern by the examples of their own lives, as they give lessons in the practical application of scripture in their daily activities, chores, speech, work, leisure, exchange, and relationships. As a child grows more mature, he is given greater autonomy in self-direction. As an adolescent, he is given greater freedom in the world away from home in proportion to his proven trustworthiness in Godly self-discipline and wisdom.
Judges should judge based on the spirit of that law rather than parsing the letter of the law. Instead, they should judge based on the spirit and purpose of the law. Man’s legislation, man’s law should reflect God’s Law, and codify society’s best attempt at defining divine character in public and individual life. Legislators should strive to enact laws to make explicit the general principles of an effectively coordinated and righteous public life. And, the executive branch applies the appropriate force and organizational action to produce the outcome desired by the group.
The Spectrum of Government:
All societal-governmental systems fall somewhere along the continuum of complete freedom to absolute control. But unless a system is dedicated to implementing God’s Law in governing the individual and social order, all governments will tend to alternate between the poles of anarchy and totalitarianism. Communism, Socialism, Liberalism, and Progressivism are Statist-type governments, all of which have Dictatorships or Oligarchies. Fascism, the government of national unity, ideals, and purpose, is commonly called “Far Right”, but in fact, it is just another type of Statist government that easily morphs into totalitarian rule by an individual or group.
Anarchy, Democracy, and Republics are types of Liberty governments.
Democracy is essentially rule by the majority. This works out well if the majority is dedicated to Godliness, industry, invention, and self-restraint of passions. But, societies tend to move away from Godliness after a generation or two, since people usually only turn to God when they are suffering. Thus, democracy has a strong tendency to evolve into a ruling class of oligarchs and bureaucrats who rule over an enforced egalitarian society. Alexis De Tocqueville warned that democracy will fail when the masses discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. We have seen the slow encroachment of Statist policy since the New Deal and the de facto (or intentional) creation of a dependent class. The welfare recipient, government worker, and victim classes become a loyal constituency for the maintenance of the Statist ruling class since their survival depends on electing a governmental class favorable to perpetuating the transfer payments and
Anarchy is a system with no governmental body, agencies, judges, or legislators. This system has an appeal to those who believe that government is immoral because it is an inherently forceful institution. But, without a coordinating center, there is a loss of productivity. If there is little commitment to Godliness in the culture, the social order could decay into tribal factions, which could result in the people crying out for a central power to remediate the disorder of chaos and warring factions. The anarchic state may not have sufficient coordination to defend its borders and thus secure the social/economic environment. There is little actual freedom associated with living life with a heightened state of defense.
The pure Libertarian advocates anarcho-capitalism, which is the theory that government is unneeded because individual contract is sufficient, and more moral than government by force. But, this system is only theoretical, having never been implemented in reality.
Returning to the Republic, this form of government provides us with liberty and has shown itself stable over centuries. The Republic is based on a Constitution, from which flow all laws and justice. It executes coordinated action, led by men, elected to serve and represent the majority based on competence and character. The Representative Democracy is effective and valuable to the extent that the masses have a sufficient pool of Righteous men, and sufficient character to recognize those of elder status worthy and capable of making the judgments of public policy that are ultimately enforced. This form of government has proven to endure indefinitely, as long as the society maintains a commitment to living, teaching, and perpetuating Righteousness. The moral majority, the Tea Party, are activated because of the perception that the coalition of victimized minorities has elected a government committed to imposing socialism, using the facade of care and equality, to motivate and maintain their base.
Islam is a Theocracy. It is a totalitarian government given almost complete authority by the religious authorities. Islam is comprised of two major sects, Sunni and Shiite, which compete with each other for ideological dominance. But, to the outside observer, their division is over minor points of doctrine and history. Given that all the sects of Islam have a largely similar system of belief and culture. Islam is a Statist government, with a totalitarian theology that governs the state and culture. Most totalitarian governments are humanistic. The fact that Islam demands absolute compliance based on its religious tenets enables a very high degree of self-motivated compliance by the people in support of governmental policy. One could say that Muslims are free, but their freedom is very limited to choosing to strictly adhere to the tenets of Sharia Law.
The United States was founded as a Republic. But, through a century of Progressive political effort, it is behaving much like a Democracy. The coalition of Unions, Progressives, illegals, and those on various forms of a government-supported life/lifestyle have allied to create a voting block to institute a Statist government that can satisfy their needs, wants, and ideals. If this voting block is insufficient to create a majority, this coalition has shown its willingness to employ election fraud to enable a faux majority to use the color of democracy. Corruption/greed/power-lust and dependency are the twin demons that ally to create the majority which can never be deposed. The principles of democracy are hijacked to authorize the eternal dominance of the majority (real and vote-fabricated) and their persistent maintenance of the new socialist ruling class.
THE BATTLEFRONT
The battle by power-hungry sociopaths to control rages against the cry of the human spirit for the Liberty we are promised in Christ. Every country is populated by those who wish to be ruled, and those who wish to be free. The Statist struggle to overtake Liberty puts our lives at the threat of socialistic/egalitarian servitude. The Libertarian anarcho-capitalist desire for complete freedom from governmental presence/control eliminates the positive benefits that come from the unification and mobilization that comes from willingly choosing to unify around a Righteous set of goals and tasks. The bottom line for the Libertarian is that you can’t always get what you want, but if you push for what you need, then over time the focus and character of government may change.
In this essay, we shall focus on Islam as a combination of religion, government and culture. We cannot restrict this discussion to religion since Islam is a complete culture and governance system. I believe Radical Islam is a threat to our way of life and Republic.
HISTORY OF ISLAM
There are about 2.0 billion Christians, .5 billion Muslims, and 350 million Arabs in the world. There are many books and papers on Islam, Muhammad, the Koran, Hadith, and Sharia Law. See below for a brief review of some key concepts of Islam:
Islam
Islam is a monotheistic culture naming God as Allah, which is much unchanged from its inception around 600 AD. Some of Its belief system is rooted in Judaism and Christianity. It integrates church and state in its governmental code, which is called Sharia Law. Sharia Law has elements of Old Testament law, with a strict eye for an eye justice; it is militaristic, unforgiving and merciless.
http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Versions/003.054.html
Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist who became a Christian, in a 2008 Prophesy Conference, presents a convincing expose of Islam and declares that the Satan of the Christian Bible is the Allah of the Koran. Understanding Islam from this perspective gives new meaning to the various phrases used by the Islamic terrorists, such as, “You love life. We love death.” The meaning of the word Islam is “Submission.” The death of innocent civilians is praised and rewarded with “heaven”, as long as the death was dedicated to the advancement of Islam. Allah in Sura 3:54 names himself “most deceptive,” although many translations blunt the meaning of the words used. Sura 4:157 describes Allah as creating the myth that Yeshua had died and was resurrected to deceive the people. As Satan, Allah would enshrine as “holy” scripture in the Koran the revealed “fact” that Christ had not died and resurrected to deceive Muslims and immunize them against receiving the salvation and eternal life Jesus offers. The teaching of Islam is by rote repetition, see, learn, and do, as we would expect of the teaching of Satan. This contrasts with the Judeo Christian ethic of reason and understanding by building precept upon precept. The teaching of good works and character by Islam is part of the deception; as long as the fundamental teaching is in error, Satan can disguise the appearance of his religion with goodness, and still capture the majority of its followers.
Islam is composed of several sects; Sunni is the largest, Shia the next, and the mystical Sufi smaller yet. Its growth has historically been by conquest, but immigration, combined with high fertility rate, was its major source of growth in the late 20th century. The low fertility rates of the cultures which Islam has invaded all but guarantee the eventual extinction of the host countries’ population and culture. Proponents of Islam have become experts at using local systems to gain an advantage. In America, they have used Freedom of Religion as the cover for the subversive activity propagated at their mosques and madrassas. Most recently, the uprisings in the Mid East may signal a new wave of conquest. Islam demands that the rule of Sharia Law, and that by force if the infidels do not voluntarily convert.
Muslims
Muslims are products of, and participants in, Islamic culture and believers of its doctrine to varying degrees; the same is true of all religions. Is there a distinction between the religion of Islam and the Muslims who are its followers? No doubt there are Muslims who are true seekers of Truth. There are many stories of Muslims who have had miraculous visitations, dreams, and visions that revealed that Jesus is Lord. And, while Islam is a religion of conquest, either by war or expanding settlements, not all Muslims are driven by this desire. There are those who truly have not given their heart to the deception and conquest demanded by Islam. Others do not subscribe to Sharia Law and many simply want to live in peace. Nonetheless, there are many who follow the literal words of the Koran and are dogmatic in their commitment to impose the submission of Islam on the world. We need to admit the facts about the Koran, Hadith, Islam, and Mohammad, and speak the truth, rather than maintain fearful silence in the face of their threats and plans of expansion.
Radical Muslims (Terrorists)
When a dogmatic follower beheads or blows up an infidel (nonbeliever), in his mind, he has done a spiritually good deed that is pleasing to Allah. Such a sacrifice would, of course, be a sacrament of worship and spiritual credit to Satan. When a dogmatic follower blows himself up and takes others with him he also thinks he is doing a spiritually good deed even if those others are Muslims. In the mythology of the Koran, he becomes a martyr and reaps its attendant rewards. Those who applaud or approve of radical behavior are themselves radical. Such actions, in service of Satan, are worthy only of the rewards of Hell, and sadly those who serve the great deceiver will be rewarded by their master. We should speak the truth, and pray for an awakening of those who are possessed of this strong delusion.
Jihad
Jihad stands for struggle. It is used and described in several different ways, as a personal struggle, as evangelization, as aggressive evangelization, and as retaliation. The self-discipline and peaceful forms are referenced in the earlier portions of the Koran, whereas the aggressive forms appear later. Later references in the Koran are thought to supersede earlier ones, which makes hostility the most likely intention today.
Koran
Also referred to as the Qur`an, the Koran is the book of spiritual, moral and physical guidance as “revealed” to Muhammad. He taught that the Jewish Torah and Christian Bible had been “corrupted,” therefore the Koran was the one true book. Muhammad did not write the Koran. He committed it to memory and after his death, others recorded what they remembered him saying. Changes to its interpretation were declared complete around the year 1000 AD, and none have been allowed since.
Hadith
The Hadith is a record of utterances, decisions, and traditions of Muhammad and his followers during the course of his dictatorial reign. Islamic scholars, the Mullahs and Imams, study the Koran, Hadith, and declare the proper application of Sharia Law to current events and living. Muslim belief and behavior are governed by Sharia Law and the Hadith.
Sharia
Sharia Law is the implementation of spiritual, material and living rules “defined” by the Koran and the Hadith, as seen by Islamic scholars; they are restricted to medieval interpretation of the Koran. Sharia justice is cruel and vindictive, showing no mercy. It is “Old Testament justice,” an eye for an eye…
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Mullah
A mullah is a man well educated in Islam.
Imam
An imam is an Islamic prelate or scholar, a holy man recognized as a leader, possibly of an Islamic nation.
Caliphate
A caliphate is an Islamic empire. It is ruled by a holy man of Islam, an imam who becomes a caliph when he rules an empire.
Caliph
A caliph is an imam who rules an Islamic empire.
Dhimmitude
Dhimmitude is the “protected” status of a non-Muslim living under Sharia law with few rights and high taxes.
Madrassa
A madrassa is a Muslim school, typically a primary school in which Islamic history, superiority, radicalism, Sharia, and hatred of the West are also taught. They are active throughout the world, including in the United States.
Muhammad
Muhammad was born in 570 and lived until 632. He was an ethnic Arab, of the tribe of Koraish who were essentially bandits. They controlled Meccan trade. Mohammed had 11 wives but produced no surviving male offspring and only four surviving daughters. Daughter Fatima married Mohammed’s cousin Ali, bearing grandsons Hasan and Husayn. Later descendants at some point become blurred.
The Beginning
Islam started with Muhammad. He was an inhabitant of Mecca where tribal wars and plundering were commonplace at the time. Might was the determinant of right. Religious beliefs were varied between Judaism, Christianity, polytheism and Greek pantheism. Early on he was a bit of a misfit for the way of life in Mecca. He became a recluse. He claimed to have received the “true bible,” called the Koran, the word of the one true monotheistic God, whom he called Allah, from the Angel Gabriel while praying in a cave. He further claimed the Torah was corrupted by the Jews worshiping the golden calf, and he claimed the Christian Bible was corrupted by early persecutions. Muhammad claimed Christ was a great prophet, but that he, Muhammad, was the last prophet, the revelation was complete, and none would come after him. His beliefs were affected by Judaism and Christianity. He believed in individual accountability, Heaven and Hell. His claim of a monotheistic god put him at odds with the population.
Early Days
Muhammad got his start by promoting his brand of monotheism gleaned from his claimed divine inspirations. This led to conflict with the established culture and resulted in his fighting wars which included piracy, robbing camel trains and killing its occupants to support himself and his followers. He instituted Sharia Law, literally “an eye and more for an eye.” Public dismemberments, beheadings, and the “honor” killings follow from the Koran and Hadith, as does women being the possessions of men.
His first following, where he lived in Mecca, was small and unpopular. Many of them fled to Medina, where Muhammad eventually fled and organized a strong militant base. His following grew and he conquered other tribes upon whom he imposed Sharia Law. His strength and effectiveness grew to where he was able to overwhelm the tribes of Mecca without war and reestablish his base of operations there. He became the “Ruler, General, and Pope,” but without a surviving central religious authority as in the Catholic Church. He was a great military leader and cleverly used religion and revelation as tools of control.
Conquered peoples were given no choice of governance; they were made subjects of Sharia Law. They were given some choice of religion. If they were Jewish or Christian they could embrace Islam or remain in their faith, but if they did not embrace Islam, their rights were severely restricted and they were heavily taxed. This status is known as dhimmitude. If they were neither Jewish nor Christian, they also had two choices: Islam or execution. This is a very different religion than Christianity which teaches us to, “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, and strength, and love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Rapid Growth
Islam expanded rapidly in the late 7th and in the 8th centuries. Muslims conquered the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, and part of Asia, including Indonesia and Southern Europe. Their northward European plunge was stopped in France. They established a central ruler called the caliph who was believed to be a direct descendant of Muhammad. The line of descendants is blurred. Nonetheless one sect, the Shiites believe caliphs should be chosen using that criterion and another sect, the Sunnis believe caliphs should be “elected.” These two sects also disagree on inclusions of sacred writings in their faith. Centuries later, they still clash. Islam is not peaceful within itself as witnessed by the bloody Sunni-Shiite fighting in Iraq.
Periodic Resurgence
Islam has been actively and forcibly spread with renewed gusto about every 500 years since its inception. Aggressiveness grew with some success in the 1200s and in the 1700s when the Ottoman Empire was established. The Ottoman Empire was abolished at the end of WWI as it had sided with Germany. New countries were established in North Africa and the Mid East, and these borders remain much the same today.
Terrorism
Saudi Arabia is the present day reflection of its evolution from the houses (tribes) of Saud and Wahhab in an attempt to restore Arab hegemony in the Islamic world – an effort that was resurrected in 1913. Arabia became Saudi Arabia in 1932. The Saudis took the lead in governance and the Wahhabis took the lead in religion. The Wahhabis consider all Islamic change since the 7th century to be an error. They forbid drinking, smoking, gambling, music, graveyards, and shrines. Wahhabism declared jihad on all other Muslims as “unbelievers” (especially Shiites and Sufis, but also Sunnis). The Wahhabis declare that all Muslims who accept post-7th-century changes be treated as infidels and killed. Receiving billions of dollars of Saudi oil money, their influence has been enormous. They are an irritant to world Islam and a sponsor for terror (e.g., Hamas). Al Qaeda spawns from this root. Once again, Islam is not peaceful within itself.
Is the terror threat real?
The first World Trade Center bombing was a beginning. 911 was a continuation. More has been planned by terrorists. Remember Germany, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, US embassies, the USS COLE, Bali, the Mumbai Hotel attacks and more. Our homeland defense has been effective to this point, but much work remains to secure our borders and our way of life. Our southern border is a gateway to Islamic invasion. To date we have either benefited from Divine Providence, or we have just been lucky.
Today’s Uprisings
Perhaps we are witnessing the latest attempt at Islamic world dominance fueled by petro-dollars. Joining forces with Islam are various socialistic and communistic groups; they all have a common agenda, to take down existing governments so they can be replaced, each with their own different vision the new government. But for now, phase one, their agenda is common, eliminate what is currently in place.
WHAT IS THE 12TH IMAM? (From Wikipedia)
According to Islamic belief, an imam is an anointed leader or ruler. Especially among Shia, they believe an Imam is (though not required to be) a prayer leader or cleric when the word is capitalized. Sunnis believe an imam may be a prophet; Shiites believe not all prophets can be imams but an imam can also be a prophet. An imam is said to be anointed by Allah and a perfect example of leading mankind in every way. The 12th Imam is to be the ruler of the Islamic Caliphate that includes the entire globe.
The Shiite interpretation is that only Allah can appoint an imam and no man has the power to do so. The 12th Imam is said to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, having divine status as have each of the 11 successions of sons to date. He is also called the Hidden Imam and the Mahdi or al Mahdi (guided one).
Remarkably, the 12th Imam theory plays heavily into the world’s current concerns with Iran. The Shiite Muslim President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, is deeply committed to the Islamic Messiah, al Mahdi. There have been many through the years claiming to be the Hidden Imam, but Ahmadinejad believes he is yet to come. He claims that he is to personally prepare the world for the coming Mahdi. In order to save the world, it must be in a state of chaos and subjugation. Ahmadinejad claims he was “directed by Allah to pave the way for the glorious appearance of the Mahdi”. This apocalyptic directive includes some very scary proclamations. This does not appear to be a Sunni obsession, just Shia and primarily in Iran.
The 12th Imam: Why Is This Especially Important Now?
Christians look for Jesus’ 2nd coming, the Jews await the Messiah and Muslims await the 12th Imam. However, of the three, Allah’s designated Mahdi is the only one who demands a violent path to conquer the world. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his cabinet say they have a signed contract with al Mahdi in which they pledge themselves to his work. What does this work involve? In light of concerns over Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reportedly stated Israel should be wiped off the map.
He spoke to the United Nations in September ’05. During that speech, he claims to have been in an aura of light and felt a change in the atmosphere during which time no one present could blink their eyes.
Iran’s PM is also said to have spoken in apocalyptic terms and seems to relish conflict with the West, whom he calls the Great Satan. This is while he proclaims he must prepare the world for the coming Mahdi by way of a world totally under Muslim control. He is working hard to BRING ABOUT THE WORLD-WIDE HORRORS that must be in place for their al Mahdi to bring peace.
IS ISLAM A PEACEFUL RELIGION?
There are peaceful Muslims, but since its beginning, the Islamic movement has sought expansion through the use of force. Islam was, and remains, a government of church intermingled with the state (with some countries excepted). Church and State are inseparable and the local ruling dictator these days is a religious prelate called a mullah, or perhaps an imam, depending on locale.
In a recent poll in Britain, 25% of Muslims preferred to live under Sharia Law. Similar polls have shown about the same percentage support jihad. Why has there been no outcry from the peaceful Muslim community condemning terrorism? Is it possible that the scriptures, history, and beliefs of Islam so strongly embrace the concepts of forceful domination of the entire world that no Muslim could remain in orthodox standing with the Muslim community if he were to take a public and strong stand against terrorism?
Attempting to convert a Muslim to Christianity is a crime punishable by death in Sharia Law. Do you remember the young Christian missionaries in Afghanistan? Does this sound like a peaceful religion? The segment of Islam that supports this kind of “law” and this kind of violence we call Radical Islam, but Radical Islam is not confined to those who do radical things; it also includes those who say nothing and may approve of the radical talk and actions.
SHOULD WE BE CONCERNED ABOUT RADICAL ISLAM?
Contrary to today’s “journalism,” Islam is not a peaceful “religion.” While many Muslims live peacefully with others, they do so when they are a small segment of the host populations. Once demographically significant, Islam has a track record of demanding concessions denied to other groups. Chief among these is the use of Sharia Law with respect to banking and marital rights. England has caved in to their demands/intimidation, and at least one judge in the U.S. has seen the crescent “light.” Once demographically dominant, Islam can be intolerant of all other forms of religion and governance.
Sharia Law is without mercy in its judgment against those who have violated its tenets. What would be the moral outcry against Catholicism if the penalty for a Catholic turning Protestant was death? Islam is a Satanic religion, but not all of its followers embrace the full evil of its teachings.
International terrorism to further the expansion of Islam is a natural application of the command to subjugate the world under Islamic law. We must speak plainly and unapologetically that Islam is evil. But, not all Muslims are evil, and we should encourage those who have a heart for Truth to criticize the subjugation and forcible expansion of Islam mandated of the Koran and Hadith. Sadly, the number who will take such a public stand are extremely small because of the cultural/governmental force brought to bear against those who oppose the teachings of the Prophet.
Hatred of Christianity and the USA is taught in Muslim madrassas throughout the world. Islam is traditionally a religion of compulsion, as evidenced by Muhammad’s establishment of his empire through conquest. Petro-dollars may be enabling another successful campaign. This time the battlefield may be less bloody, with demographic expansion as the weapon of conquest. Muslims are taking advantage of the freedom of immigration allowed in non- Islamic countries, and then out populating the natives with their much higher birthrate.
Some question whether the expansion of Islam is truly the driving force behind the numerous Islamic conflicts, since there is a long history of political leaders using religion as a tool to control the masses, when their real goals were wealth and power. But, I believe Islam is animated by a satanic power, and it uses the human passions of politicians for power for its purpose.
Likewise, the natural resources of the Mid East have been the vehicle by which oil revenues can be leveraged for the penetration of Islam into every country, and give power to new world dictators. The leader of Iran is only the most current example. Saddam publicly stated his intention to rule Arabia and control oil just prior to the first Iraq war.
http://emanzipationhumanum.de/downloads/peace.pdf
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=4574
Many blame American for bringing 9/11 and other terrorist activities upon ourselves by our foreign policy, wars of aggression, and dishonoring of Islam. Such reasoning and argument ignore the long history of Islam as a religion which used terrorism as a policy. Thus, rather than appease Islam and attempt to coexistence, we must recognize that its philosophy and teachings are the mortal enemies of the Judeo-Christian Western civilization. We cannot fight and win against Radical Islam with bullets or security screens, although it does appear these are necessary tactics in the full battle against it.
Rather, we must fight Islam on the battlefield of ideology and truth. But, before we are ready to take on this vigorous enemy, we must first strengthen ourselves in faith and reason. We must put on our armor of righteousness and holiness as a society. Our heart and minds must know with certainty that our cause is righteous, and theirs is not. We must reject the leftist, multicultural, politically correct indoctrination of the media, and begin to speak the truth of intolerance. We cannot live in a world with people who are committed to our death, destruction, annihilation, and/or complete subjugation to their ideology. We must expose their deception. And yes, this is a war against Islam. The Muslims who carry this ideology of domination must be held at an appropriate distance while we attempt to save each one from this religion which steals their soul, humanity, and heart. We cannot be in close and trusting relationships with those who are committed to our eventual demise. We must take the fight to their soil. We must speak the truth of the gospel, the good news of liberty in Christ using all the tools of media at our disposal. If our cause is just, true, and right we will prevail because the True God of Heaven is on our side. It truly is a Holy War.
FERTILITY RATES
We are well into a demographic winter in Europe. The United States has just gotten a good start in its downward population spiral. Cultures with a birth rate below 2.1 declines. Those with birthrates below 1.3 cannot recover, as recovery could take 100 years; there is no economic model that can sustain such a culture for that length of time. No country with a birthrate below 1.9 has ever recovered. France is at 1.8, England 1.6, Germany 1.3, Greece 1.3, Italy 1.2, Spain 1.1 and the total for the European Union is at 1.4. The Western European gene pool is headed for extinction, and its culture will follow quite naturally. The worldwide target Muslim birthrate is 5. In France, the achieved Muslim birthrate is 8.1. In the U.S. it is 3.1. France will be an Islamic nation in 40 years if the current rates continue.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN EUROPE?
The great European multicultural experiment is a failure and they are admitting it. In order for a society to function well, its members must adhere to a consistent set of values. You cannot effectively govern a people of one value system with a different value system. The strongest binding force holding a nation together is neither race nor language. But, a common language is an important vehicle to communicate subtle cultural nuances, create interpersonal affinity, and forming and maintaining a uniform cultural value system. The values of a culture are the key to its identity and unity. Divergent values lead to divergent cultures, which in turn lead to discrimination and class separation. Many Muslims in Europe have not assimilated by their own choice. As a consequence, they have fewer jobs, poorer jobs, and worse living conditions. They have not accepted their host society, which in turn has not accepted them. Thus we see extreme dissatisfaction, rioting and clamoring for Sharia Law, which of course will not solve the problem. It will only separate the cultures further. Europeans must stand by their culture; otherwise, they will lose it even before their birthrate obliterates it.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN?
The constitutions of both newly formed “democratic” governments prohibit any law, not in harmony with Islamic Law. The U.S. caved into these pressures, and both countries will probably come under the full subjugation of Islamic Law.
WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH ISRAEL?
The world is uniting against Israel. Even the US president has declared that Israel should withdraw to its pre-1967 borders. Our withdrawal of support for Israel leaves it vulnerable to attack and retaliation. The consequences of a Mid East war could ensnare the entire world.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE MIDEAST?
The recent and concurrent uprising in some of these countries is not a coincidence. They appear coordinated and planned, as we see the rebel movements getting support from the administration, unions and Progressives.
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE US?
Our birthrate has dropped slightly below 2.1%, the replacement rate, but this includes Muslims and Latinos, each of which has a higher birthrate. Again, the worldwide target birthrate for Muslims is 5.0, and in this country, they are achieving 3.1%.
Our moral standards as a culture have declined for many years away from the strong ethic of individual responsibility and Judeo-Christian values. A radical change in worldview entered the group mind with the generation coming of age in the sixties. They had few economic burdens, the pill became available, mind-expanding drugs were popularized, the music reflected rebellion and sensuality, the war in Vietnam provided a countercultural uniting point, and the revolution of values overtook our culture.
This trend meshed well with the Progressive’s political campaign that has been nudging our education, governance, media and entertainment industry toward socialism since the early 1900s. We have not taught our children to follow in the ways of America’s Judeo-Christian heritage, nor the values which inspire and enable human achievement. We have been pressured into silence by media, education, and the humanistic doctrines of political correctness. We have given our children over to the education establishment and their Statist-favorable indoctrination in revisionist history, rage against the oppressors, America as victimizers of the poor and minorities, capitalist and corporate greed, and the American Imperialist agenda. The values that hold a society together with civil behavior, economic prosperity, and national security have been questioned and replaced by white guilt, nanny state dependency, capitulation to foreign law, Federal government intervention in all behaviors under the guise of commerce, and worship of the environment.
Strong central governments require that individual rights be granted by the government, not by God. The state cannot take away God-given rights. It is, therefore, necessary to rid the culture of any allegiance to God and true Bible believing religion. Churches have become the enemy. Christianity, and Catholicism in particular has strict and unchanging rules of behavior. The moral codes embraced by the Christian doctrine condemn homosexuality, adultery, fornication, drunkenness and other culturally popular forms of “victimless crimes.” The conscience of those who practice these abominations is pricked, and they retaliate, using a perversion of the “Rights” given them in the Constitution. But, such “Rights” are in direct opposition to those intended and given by God. Until the body of Christ stands together against the culture of sin, we will remain impotent, flaccid, and ineffective in the face of those who use the letter of the Law against those who are afraid to stand up and say “No” to this invasion of Satan.
The battle will rage until one side achieves domination. The Islamists have no qualms about using actual physical force to impose their religion upon us. We should have no compunction against using the words of Truth against false religions, and sinful thoughts, speech, and action. We must honor the family, and boldly affirm the sanctity of the marital bond. Federal law has no place in establishing moral limits, but every State, County, and City has the obligation to legislate its best understanding of the boundaries of Godly morality. We are not a theocracy, but if we are to be blessed by God, we must govern ourselves by the general principles of Christianity. If we wish to reach our peak, we must openly declare our allegiance to the God of the Bible.
We have been seduced by the Libertarian rhetoric of “Freedom”, but unrestrained Liberty is not the ultimate virtue. There are limits to our Freedom, and if we do not impose them upon ourselves, God will turn us over to the destroyer and we will reap the rewards of our own rebellion. We are, sadly, close to drinking from that full cup of wrath.
We have embraced relativism, as though the boundaries, beliefs, and feelings of our fellow man are superior to the absolute Law of God. We have attended churches where a watered down gospel is preached. The average parishioner receives words from the pulpit far removed from the wisdom and encouragement he needs to overcome the cultural tsunami of relativism, cultural Marxism, political correctness, values bending, and the Islamic invasion. There is a time for holiness and standing in the presence of our God in worship, and there is a time to equip the saints for battle. The appropriate venue may be a Sunday School, an email newsletter, cultural action blog, webinar for education and support, small group discussion, American Heritage seminar, organization for political action, community organizing, or judicial activism. Regardless of the venue or method, it’s time for the Church to come out of the closet and be the Christians who are salt and light in this world.
We have seen numerous cultural attacks on the church and family. The family unit competes with Statism, and the proponents of Big Government know that the family unit must be weakened for men to depend fully on government. The Statists know that a Christian Nation will not participate in the violent revolution required by the Marxist program. Thus, they have chosen the alternate route of breaking down the moral fabric and righteous discrimination of the people. When men have no proper concept of Truth they can be manipulated to believe the drumbeat of the State Run media propaganda. By seducing the Church to accept homosexuality in the name of “tolerance” “loving thy neighbor” and “Thou shalt not judge, lest ye be judged”, these enemies of our soul attempt to pervert, misstate, and then use our own values against us. Teaching our children the doctrines of relative morality, honoring diversity, homosexual marriage, abortion, and safe sex, the education-government complex has moved the minds of the next generation far down the road toward rejecting the message of Christ and embracing the propaganda of the government-media complex.
Those wanting unrestricted moral freedom, and the Muslims who want Sharia Law imposed, have one thing in common: change America by weakening its foundation so it can be replaced. Once weakened, they will then both take different approaches to implement their goals, but for now their strategies mesh. The societal pressures are increasing their accommodation of Islam while increasing their intolerance of Christianity. We see a course taken consistent with the goals and outcomes of a satanic strategy for domination of minds and hearts for the Kingdom of Darkness.
Our security as a nation and culture depends on our economic soundness. Economic freedom is the foundation of survival, without which there is no freedom. We must restore our economy, lest we will lose our lifestyle, freedom, national security, and hope for the future. We have emasculated our productive capacity with legislation that gives incentive for jobs and industries to migrate overseas to avoid taxes, environmental regulation, labor laws, and union demands. We must reverse the policies of Big Government which discourage American production.
U.S. RELATIONSHIPS WITH ISLAMIC COUNTRIES
We have gone to war to protect Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, and Iraq, but we have not used the capital of our sacrifice, care, and humanitarian service to win the hearts and minds of the Islamic world to Christ. All our good works will be for naught if we do not free the captives from the clutches of their satanic stronghold.
Not all Islamic nations have integrated church and state or practice strict Sharia Law, these include: Jordan, Oman, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. Some have had women heads of state; examples are Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia and Bangladesh. The weakness of their grasp is evidenced by their instability and periodic radical uprisings.
But, the disunity and turmoil of the Islamic countries, internally, and between each other, gives us only minor consolation. We would expect that a satanic coalition to have internal strife. These nations cannot be trusted allies until they overtly declare their opposition to the forceful expansion of Islam, and embrace the gospel of Christ. Until the people of a nation rebel and remove the oppression of Sharia Law from their heads, every such Islamic nation is still under the strong force and sway of Satan.
When a nation makes unambiguous national statements to the Islamic world that they condemn all forceful expansion, and subjugation of non-believers under Sharia, they can begin to be trusted. Until a nation makes such a forceful declaration, any appearance of an alliance is only a tactic of delay for advantage.
Iran is the most visible antagonist, but Saudi Arabia is also a threat. The Wahhabis are well funded and have deeply infiltrated American life. They have a strong influence in the Arab Study Institutes of American Universities, as well as in government, commerce, prisons, financial institutions, madrassas, mosques, and in phony charities. They preach their radicalism and hatred everywhere without check or opposition. Our media and culture should boldly condemn with words and action the Saudi and Islamic message of conversion, world domination, and violent jihad. Islamic theology and law is antithetical to Western thought, government, and culture, and we cannot give our mortal enemies unopposed access to our instructions of indoctrination and enculturation. These nations are not our friends, and Islam is not a religion of peace. We should courageously and vocally oppose their agenda and invasion in all its forms. We have clothed jihad-speak and Islamic proselytizing with the flag and First Amendment protections. Is it any wonder we have al-Qaeda cells here on our own soil? We must regain the will to perpetuate our national morality as a Judeo-Christian nation. No nation’s identity and culture can long endure that hates its own heritage, and grants preferred access to influence the minds and hearts of its youth, cultural institutions, and troubled populations. The time is now to put up barriers to prevent the invasion of those who are committed to our destruction. We have been made ineffective by our own foolishness in judging good and evil, which follows directly from our national turn from applying the Word of God as our highest guide to life.
WHAT IS OUR RISK?
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Militant Islam is a threat to us primarily because we have become weak in spirit. We have lost our fiery conviction that our nation is special because we are literally doing God’s work in spreading the gospel and implementing it on Earth as it is in Heaven. Although we have not lost the culture yet, we are at grave risk. There is still a remnant who remembers our heritage and the worship of the God of our forefathers. There is still time for the U.S. to recover its national will and restore its once great identity as “One nation under God,” but perhaps not much.
Our population has diminished in relation to those who would invade and usurp our culture. At a rate of 3000/day since Roe v Wade in 1973, we have aborted over 40 million new citizens. We have killed as many as Stalin. The family unit, the foundation of society, is becoming rare. Forty percent of those not aborted are born out of wedlock. And, those of us who oppose abortion have had little effect in changing the culture that makes abortion acceptable as an institution of freedom.
We want cars more than children. Lifestyle has become more important than life. We are focused on our own material indulgence to the detriment of our children and grandchildren – few though they may be.
Church affiliation and attendance have dropped. “We” has been replaced by “Me” all too often. Truth and morality have become relative, and we have become more self-centered. The entertainment industry keeps pushing the “decency” envelope to the point where someday, nothing will be considered indecent. “Getting away with it” is replacing dignity and honor. Education, governance, law, media, and entertainment have abandoned their sacred obligation to perpetuate and enforce the Judeo-Christian cultural and moral principles upon which our country was founded.
At least 50 million Americans and many illegals are on government assistance and many are voting. Many “immigrants” are illegal, and not all want to become Americans or share traditional American values. More than half of all “wage earners” pay no Federal Income Tax. One-third of them get a tax-credit check instead. Personal responsibility is waning. Our “educators” teach our children that Capitalism and free markets are bad and that Socialism is good. They demonize big business, glorify big government and call that “progressive.” What is the attraction to socialism? Where has it worked to produce the utopian dream of egalitarian prosperity?
Unless we drastically cut our rate of spending, or massively increase our production, the current rate we are accumulating the national debt, and the magnitude of the unfunded obligations associated with our entitlement system will collapse the economy, and with it our culture. We are committing national and cultural suicide. WE HAVE A CULTURE PROBLEM!
WHAT CAN WE DO?
Our national strategy has been to eliminate the consequences of poor choices, rather than making better ones. The entitlement mentality bred by our new national policy of cradle to grave rescue from consequences damages our survival instinct and blunts the drive to innovate. Our cultural hegemony is waning, but those who promote a world government praise our decline and speak a national loathing for our influence on the world and culture. To restore our greatness, we must return to individual responsibility and personal accountability, and personally act according to the ways of Biblical Godliness.
We are no longer a nation united by culture or under God, and without the glue of a common morality and value system; we will be usurped by those with the will to impose their will upon us. We must each use our sphere of influence to promote the Judeo Christian values as they apply in our personal world. There is only hope if we awaken to the Truth of Godliness, and exert the energy necessary to overcome habit, ignorance, error, and human nature.
The United States has been the most successful, generous and outreaching nation in recorded history. We have the historical and constitutional ability to change peacefully. It can all change if we as individuals are committed to restoring the values and actions that made this nation great. We are a majority still, but without individuals actively participating in restoring the culture, we cannot defeat the ideological threats of Radical Islam and Statism.
There is no solution for the problems we face in the material world – this is a spiritual battle. We can only fight the forces seeking to destroy us if we have a deep knowledge and understanding of our Judeo Christian values and speak, think, and apply them. Only by faith and works are the strongholds of Satan destroyed.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Prayer is a vital tool in bringing His Kingdom on Earth. Pray daily with fervent supplication to the God of Heaven for revival and a move of the Holy Spirit on our nation. Educate your sphere in daily conversation. Discuss the issues that face our nation and warn of the threat presented by our decaying moral standard. Encourage those in your influence to live holy lives. Vote for candidates with Judeo-Christian values who support limited Constitutional government. Encourage your priest or pastor to apply the gospel message to living holy lives as individuals and as a group (society and culture). Stand boldly against political correctness. Openly criticize our current ideological idolatry: multiculturalism, entitlement mentality, relativism, tolerance of sin, political correctness, Statism, false religions, immorality in media, perversion of Constitutional intent, and Separation of God from the Public Square.
These issues are important. Pray and let the Holy Spirit give you ideas. Revitalize your heart with hope, knowing this is God’s world, and He will restore our nation if the People who are called by His name repent and seek His face. Work to restore our national identity. Reform starts with knowledge, so study, read, discuss, and surround yourself with like-minded allies in this battle. Start a group in your home, view movies, read books, study the Bible, discuss the implications of the cultural message, and make plans how to respond to the people and circumstances of life. Be accountable to each other, encourage those of like mind, and share your trials and victories.
ALL IT TAKES FOR EVIL TO TRIUMPH IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING
by Thomas Abshier | Apr 25, 2025 | Politics/Economics/Culture
The State vs. Stateless Societies
By: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
2/20/2020
Background: John H is a Libertarian turned “Anarcho-Capitalist”. When asked the difference, John is fond of saying, “About 6 months.” The Libertarian desires a a society that allows men the freedom to make contracts between consenting adults, and judges behavior according to the “Non-Aggression Principle.” The Libertarian becomes an Anarcho-Capitalist as he realizes government inherently interferes with these prime tenents of Libertarianism. Thus, John advocates for a Stateless society – a world without nations, without government, where people choose their actions and associate with others by contract, providing all the services of government, but without the authoritarian power of government forcing actions authorized by a majority.
TLA: The conflict between the Libertarian and Democratic State begs the question, “What is the best method of making a decision for group action?” You passionately believe the best societal organization preserves the individual’s right to choose non-aggressive and loving contracts between consenting adults.
You believe the modern State, with its democracy-based and police-enforced laws and regulations violates your libertarian ideals and your God-given freedom. The State diminishes your happiness by forcing you into compliance with majority-imposed laws to which you morally reject.
The individual should choose his work, associates, culture, and the legal principles governing his group. Every community should choose its own laws and judges, and enforce its standards with private police, and provide all other community services through private contracts and voluntary participation.
You believe the Democratic State is a crude tool of social organization that forces participation in majority decisions, thereby dening men to exercise non-aggressive and loving actions of their choice. You believe the Stateless Anarcho-Capitalist society is superior, in that it allows men the granularity of individual choice vs. the blunt tool of democratic majoritarian mandate.
You believe the Stateless system provides greater productivity and happiness by giving men the freedom to work more creatively. You believe individuals, businesses, and industry are more productive and happier when given the opportunity to exercise their free will and negotiate for their best interests in the company of people with common values. You believe the individual experiences the highest quality of life when he can exercise free will in the marketplace of ideas and merchandise. In a free-will world, he will suffer or prosper according to his actions, and is most motivated by the self-chosen reward.
The ensemble of principles of free will choice resonate deeply within the human heart. Given the powerful motivators internal to the human psyche unleashed by the dissolution of the State, how can the Democratic State compete with the manifestation of the idealized Libertarian utopia?
The Constitutional Republican State can function better than the Stateless Libertarian world, but only when men rule themselves according to the Law of God. Such a society must be composed of a majority of Godly men, mature in guiding their hands, hearts and minds according to Biblical Law and the Love of God. Such men submit to the principles of Godliness and the people benefit from their self-disciplined compliance with His ways. The individual is sovereign over his own body-space, only if he is submitted and obedient to God’s law. Natural law contrains the man against his will, unless he complies with the way of Godliness. Such citizens fear God, and willingly submit to the laws of nature and nature’s God. Ignoring or rebelling against God’s Laws subjects men to suffering. The Stateless society can also work in a nation of mature Christian men, but the lack of an organizational focal point diminishes its efficacy.
You emphasize that people make poor choices in terms of judging the requirements of God’s Law as revealed in the Bible, and then impose their interpretation of scripture upon others. You, therefore, advocate just letting people learn from the feedback of life. You worry that imposing the laws of the Bible on people will cause suffering because of the errors that men make in their interpretation of God’s law. So, even though the Bible is right, you argue that the State should not impose Biblical law upon people, because man’s law will contain errors, and inflict its own type of suffering.
I agree with your concern about the fallibility of men in judging divine intent from Scripture. Nevertheless, we must crystallize the society and its legislative code around Truth. Legislating based upon man’s tastes and desires, wants and feelings, will almost certainly produce suffering. Standards-based upon man’s native instincts of right/wrong and the Biblical patterns can diverge greatly. The standards embedded in each man’s heart shapes the group behavior, and can bring the Kingdom of Heaven or hell on earth. Men can only institute righteous Republican government when they agree individually to live according to the constraints of the Biblical worldview. The group mandates merely codify the principles of individually chosen Godly conduct.
The Kingdom of heaven can come on earth by:
- The return of Christ to earth to rule and reign. When he comes He will impose God’s Law on earth
- God is the ruler of each life and heart when every man commits to implementing the Word, will, and way of God in his life. The success of this prescription depends upon adults guiding their lives by a mature interpretation of the Bible and teaching their children to follow the way.
Many/most people don’t read scripture and interpret its words in the context of its entirety, and many only listen to someone tell them what the Bible says and means. A Christian matures by reading the Bible, repeatedly, and considering each verse deeply in the context of the whole, and the mature Christian applies its commands to his life and thereby develops Godly character.
The Left, the rebel, the lovers of the flesh interpret the Bible opposite to its intention. The Bible reveals the absolute standard of good and evil, but the man of the flesh calls good evil and evil good.
The Biblical Libertarian incorporates and applies the Law of God in his life and government. In Christ is the greatest possible freedom, which means living by His principles and following the Holy Spirit’s guidance. The government should be a small part of life and legislate, judge, and administer according to Biblical principles.
The codification of Biblically-based standards into the laws of a nation provides a foundation for a nation conducting itself as a Godly government. Such legislation stabilizes the group’s moral ethic and gives conscious cultural recognition to the Biblically-based wisdom of a people. The implementation of such a Biblically-based government is stable in judgment and flexible in its adaptation to the circumstances of the current world. It allows for freedom within the limits of Godliness, allows for practical/adaptive change as recognized by the group, while maintaining the backbone of Biblical standards which limit and allow the acts of men.
JH: What is wrong with letting those who see the truth, follow the truth, and letting those who do not follow the truth be left by the wayside, where they will probably not survive?
This is the Darwinian process of morality. Offer Christianity, extol its virtues, and live its example. Wise people will observe, learn, and emulate it. Idiots will do what idiots do – falter and go extinct. It’s the way of the world, apparently. Why do you see an impetus to drag everyone along, even using force against their will? If they choose extinction, isn’t that their free will to do so? Didn’t Jesus and the original Christians ask for voluntary adherence? They didn’t force others to follow them, right?
I had a visit with two libertarians last weekend and spent the whole afternoon walking and talking. It was a beautiful hike and a great talk. I came to learn more about my own views, and perhaps I grew somewhat. I think I am coming to regard the libertarian mandate of the “non-aggression principle” as just as flawed as the communist imposition of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. I think mankind is so self-deluding that we will justify any aggressive action as moral. Even Hitler considered his actions moral – he was merely eliminating pests and filth from the people he held dear.
I think the unique libertarian distinction is the elimination of democracy and elimination of the State, which uses your own money to enslave you, and uses other people’s money to go to war that only the leaders want. At the very least, if each of us is limited to our own resources, and the resources of those we can enlist voluntarily, then we will be greatly curtailed in our aggressive urges. We won’t eliminate them, but at least, if I want to prevent others from doing whatever they do, I am limited to using my own resources to intervene and force them, not use the resources of my victims against themselves (as is done with the State).
Example: If my daughter is captured by Islamists and falls prey to Stockholm Syndrome, and begins to agree with her captors and wants to live an Islamic life, I may decide, in my own interests and in the interests that I BELIEVE are my daughter’s interests, to INTERVENE, KIDNAP HER, AND ATTEMPT TO RESTORE HER SANITY.
That is NOT a libertarian position! But it is a flawed human self-deluding position that humans naturally justify! In doing so, I would be limited to my own resources! I cannot vote and force the losers to PAY TAXES to support my cause. Many people will commit an aggressive act and justify it on moral grounds. That is not libertarian. But it would be an element of a free society. I see that now. I did not see it before. Of course, we will also defend ourselves from such aggression by others, and we will feel equally high minded and moral in defending ourselves.
TLA: John, you have taken a large step away from mainstream libertarianism with your rejection of the Non-Aggression Principle as an absolute standard of judging morality. You are correct, inside of their own perspective, people can justify any action as moral.
This begs the question, “How can we define morality?”
It appears you are struggling to find a solid standard upon which to define morality. You have chosen honoring free will as your solid moral ground. Your illustration of the terrorist kidnapping your daughter as an example of how seriously you have taken this principle.
In effect, you have taken the position of radical non-interference with the choices of another person as the ultimate good, their sovereignty of self-determination as the standard to honor above all others, and free will as the highest principle in God’s Law.
But, the elevation of free will to the pinnacle of the moral-standards hierarchy is immediately contradicted by experience. We can project that Hitler thought it a positive moral good for the group to kill Jews.
I note the combination of Free Will (allow all to do as they will), the Non-Aggression Principle (do not initiate force against another person), and the Golden Rule (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) together produce a reasonable approximation of a workable moral standard.
The actual absolute moral standard is, “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” The trio of free will, NAP, and the Golden Rule is very close, missing only the loving of God as the context of all moral action.
Free-will/choice/self-determination is an important principle, as it gives significance to our choice between good and evil. Free will is the context for action. By itself, Free Will is neither good nor bad. Free-will allows us to choose our actions, and the choice of actions reveals the state of our heart and soul. God desires that we choose His way. Our choice of actions determines our direction – toward fellowship with God, or away from Him.
God wants us to use our free will to choose to love Him. Loving God implies and entails emulating His Way by following His Law. Without purity, we cannot be in His presence. We see this principle illustrated in from the Sermon on Mount, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Unless we are cleansed of sin, we cannot fellowship with Him intimately.
The Golden Rule requires loving our neighbor, and one of the principles of love is advocating for his soul. By challenging, correcting, and encouraging him to right action we have served our friend greatly. Confronting a fellow traveler on his judgment of right action is an act of love.
God has a plan for the creation, to create a universe populated by souls with whom he could love and share a relationship. But, that relationship is meaningless if it is automatic, forced by structure, design, or natural law. If He imposed His will and way upon every soul, He has retracted His gift of free-will. We can assume we have free-will, and we are responsible for our actions. The mechanism by which God implements free-will is miraculous, and we must take the fact of free-will as axiomatic.
I agree with your emphasis on the importance of free-will. You are correct, free-will is important, it is the principle that allows meaning in life. Without free will, we are merely gears in a machine in the play of another.
As humans, we appear to have free will, but the mechanism of free will is a mystery. From the materialist perspective, we are matter and force, sequential, cause-effect machines, which exclude the possibility of free-will.
If free will exists, it is a miracle and inherent to the structure of the creation. The question underlying this concept is whether God can create consciousness which can exercise free will. In another thesis, I have developed the metaphysical sequence by which God created every point of the creation with free-will. Thus, without repeating the development, we shall take as axiomatic the hypothesis that man does have free-will.
Thus, the question is not whether a man has free-will (he does), but rather, what he chooses. In normal life, a man makes decisions based upon evidence, tastes, and standards. The question confronted by the libertarian consideration is whether it is ever right/correct/moral to force a man to comply with our demands?
You have presented a hypothetical situation, where your daughter was forcefully abducted, and during her captivity a new belief was implanted within her. The question is, “Is it wrong to abduct her forcefully and confront her with the (il)logic of her captors and allow her to confront her error?”
In short, the answer is yes, it is moral, and loving to forcefully kidnap her again. She was unable to make a free will choice in the captive situation, and is now living in a permanent hostage state with invisible captors. By intervening with force, we take break into the stronghold of the captors and free the captive.
Another aspect of this question is, “Whose life can we intervene in?” In general, those who trust you and would authorize your involvement. Because of the trusting relationship between you and your daughter, you have standing in her life. You have the right to enter into her life as a family member, friend, or intimate partner to advocate strongly for her sanity.
Obviously, you have the right to confront her ideology when she consents to such discussion and consideration. But, the question you have raised is whether we have the right to kidnap and rescue her from her captors when she desires no such rescue due to her altered state. At its essence, we are advocating for her return to loving the God of the Bible. In other words, this authorization for intervention is not symmetrical or universal. It is not OK for mafiosa parents to kidnap their children who were in protective custody, to bring them back to a life of crime.
By contrast, consider the case of the unrelated individual. In general, we do not have the right to detain and confront the random man on the street and challenge the basis of his thoughts, speech, and actions. Thus, the level of commitment, connection, and trust we have with the victim influences our authorization to intervene intimately. We have the right to challenge a man’s values and choices if we have procured permission for the challenge. This principle underlies the sequence of the rapport, confrontation, and change progression in the counseling intervention.
Again, we are honoring your daughter’s free will by confronting her, by asking her to examine the process to which she was subjected and challenging her to examine if those choices were justified by logical sequiturs? Obtaining permission to challenge her is the critical component. By challenging her to think logically about the premises and conclusions preceding her decision to change religions. We are not forcing her to change her mind by challenging her logic.
Rather, the confrontation is a challenge to the forceful acceptance of her captor’s belief system. In short, love confronts destructive thoughts, words, and actions, (and, all ideologies that oppose the Way of Christ are destructive of the Soul) and attempts to convince a man to remove his Soul from the fire. Intervention in a respectful, logical, adult consideration of values, worldviews, decision processes, honors your daughter’s free will. And, by challenging her on her new beliefs, we are expressing our love by helping her process her commitment to a new religion.
The Non-Aggression principle and the principle of honoring of free will underlie the libertarian belief that no one has a right to forcefully impose their will upon another person. By extension, this implies that God should not impose His will on anyone. And, in fact, God does not forcefully change the state and mind of a soul, but he does exert force on a man’s life circumstances. God has established natural law, and natural law imposes itself upon the individual. Thus, God exerts forces on a man to change his will and way, to turn him toward Godliness. In like manner, we should attempt to serve those we love by administering an analogous force and thereby forcefully confront the evil a man has embraced.
The fact that natural law imposes itself upon a man opens the door to the possibility of good/right/authorized force exertion upon another man. Obviously, natural law exerts a God-authorized force upon a man. Using the action of God on man as our precedent, we have the authorization to act on a man in the same way God acts. In short, God acts to oppose and correct men, and we are His hands extended in this world. God’s will and way IS the law, and He enforces it with natural law and by the miraculous organizing of consequences. The Bible provides a template of the types of violations that God may judge. Thus, using God as our pattern, we may confront various violations of His law with appropriate force to cause a man to confront the error in his moral standard. Of course, we risk being wrong in our judgment of God’s will. In which case, we risk being subject to God’s corrective action.
So, in summary, in your example, your daughter was kidnapped and subsequently rejected her family’s values and adopted the terrorists’ religion. Should she be captured and deprogrammed? My answer is yes. She was taken by force and subjected to indoctrination, not by her choice. She was unable to rationally consider the logic of their indoctrination and adopted their beliefs based upon coercion.
Her adoption of the religion of her terrorist captors was not a free-will act. Leaving her in such mind-captivity without a fight against the evil of her captors is to surrender the battle to the enemy. She was subjected to an unGodly belief system by force. To capture her, and subject her to the consideration of reason, and the analysis of her new beliefs is an act of restoring her free will.
Any person, forced into subjugation to a lifestyle, philosophy, or belief should be given the opportunity to reprocess the decision, and in some cases, the confrontation may require the use of physical force. The appearance of her making a free will choice to adopt her captors’ religion is deceptive. She was forcefully programmed and adopted a new religion/belief/loyalty/family, based upon a forced indoctrination. Upon erecting the bars and walls on her mind, she was released and appeared free, but she was still a captive. Taking her captive by force, and confronting her decisions, giving her alternatives, countering her objections, gives her the opportunity to make her decision and restore her free-will.
Regarding people who have adopted false religions from life interactions. The same force should be applied to them as that which programmed them. Life circumstances give people the opportunity to choose the content of their character.
Men should freely choose the content of their minds, hearts, and bodies. God intends that men be free to act within the boundaries of His Law. The continued embrace of unprocessed indoctrination does not fit into the pattern of God’s intention for men. God’s method for releasing a captive mind is to administer consequences to the errant soul. Life presents lessons in the man’s life who strays. He is always free to heed or reject these lessons.
Thus, the key pattern, the strategy used by God to restore the wayward Soul is by administering consequences. God continues to bring consequences into the life of men, both positive and negative to awaken the sleeper to turn from his ways. He desires righteousness, and if we act in concert with His will and way, we move His Kingdom forward.
Thus, we need not respect as final the choices a man has made under the duress of threats, captivity, and seduction. Rather, all such decisions should be confronted and processed. The counselor may judge the programming as good or evil. Either way, the victim of kidnapping and programming should be given the opportunity to confront her logic and reprocess her decision using multiple perspectives and lines of reason. Arguments confronting the implanted belief system, and administering life consequences that confront the implanted acts and beliefs, are appropriate. Properly processed, a man chooses his path in the moment and long term based upon an open examination of the relevant facts and factors. He should revisit decisions made from a single perspective or testimony.
Of course, confrontation of a decision with talk, advice, and argument does not interfere with a man’s free will. Argument and examination are the essences of the method by which God changes people’s minds. God brings life-experience into people’s lives. The law, the environment, the way of God confronts their decisions and choices.
Which brings us back to the question, “When is a forceful intervention into a man’s life justified?” In general, force is justified when his actions materially affect the lives of his neighbors. If a man’s actions threaten to violate the space or ideology of his neighbor, he should be restrained and confronted with corrective counsel, and aversive training such as fines, incarceration, labor. Men should respond with corrective force to violations that correspond to God’s law.
TLA: Here is an article that I read today. The replacement of Godly character with Leftist values in our children and society will eventually overtake the society in Godlessness. It is for this reason I fear for America.
In response to your question about whether a society is better organized as a State or Stateless, there is a factor that makes the State a better system. The State, organized as a Constitutional Republic, can only function as an optimal societal organization if it is instituted in a mature, Biblically-Christian culture. We don’t need angels to rule us in government, we just need mature Biblical Christians populating a society for the State to work well as the organizing governor of the group.
We cannot isolate ourselves from evil, and we can’t escape from it. It infects everyone, everywhere. The question is only how well we contain it as individuals and as a group.
As you note, your perspective is a Darwinian selection of the fittest. The ones who do not love the truth, either die, change, or rebel against the forces of life.
I rewrote the first sentence from your last email, since it seemed like it didn’t state what you wanted to say overtly enough to be unambiguous.
(Rewrite of a sentence): “What is wrong with letting those who see the truth, follow the truth, and letting those who do not follow the truth be left by the wayside, where they will probably not survive?”
Did I capture what you were trying to say properly?
JH: You said it correctly but from a more paternalistic and “less respectful” perspective. I would say “ …left by the wayside, WHERE THEY CHOOSE TO BE” instead of “ …left by the wayside, where they will probably not survive”. I think the ultimate respect for another human being is to recognize their sovereign right to decide for themselves based on whatever information they themselves deem necessary. Conversely, I think it is paternalistic *and condescending* to impose one’s own judgment call on the sovereign actions of others. “They probably will not survive” would be YOUR or MY judgment call, not theirs! Or, they may even agree with us and still choose their action despite the risks. Isn’t that their choice to make? Aren’t we giving them the *ultimate respect* to keep our opinions to ourselves and respect their sovereign human dignity to choose for themselves?
TLA: I think it is important to let people choose their consequences, but warn them. In the case where their choice will harm others, they should be restrained with force. Letting a man suffer his own consequences vs. forcefully restraining him gets complicated when their choices affect my world in subtle ways, where it is not obvious that harm is being done. The problem is that all choices have an effect on the world, it’s simply a matter of degree. There really is no such thing as a victimless crime.
There is no contract between consenting adults which has no effect on the larger world. A man’s actions are either Godly, or they are not. No one can hide their actions completely from the world. So, the decision of whether a community allows, or does not allow a behavior is based upon the community’s judgment of the magnitude of the degradation of the community by that behavior.
By not intervening, at least with words, we are assuming that the individual and his actions are disconnected from the group, and thus will have no effect on the group felicity. Or, we assume the detrimental effects are insignificant or others can compensate.
Allowing the individual to go down the path of self-destruction, knowing that it is a violation of God’s Law and that destruction awaits him, without warning him clearly and in strong terms, is the equivalent of hating him.
But, there is no private action. With a sufficient population of violators, the degradation of the individual will seep into society and have a noticeable detrimental effect on quality of public life. In particular, some of those men with character distorted by the habitual and committed violation of God’s law will occupy the offices of government. Such men do not have the foresight, insight, and standard of Godliness by which to properly judge, legislate, and administer. Such men are subject to the temptations of the flesh and are subject to the corrupting influence of monetary gain at the expense of the public good.
Thus, a Constitutional Republic with a government of the people will be subject to the influence of would-be-tyrants and thieves. Men who cave to the tastes of the flesh in one area of life have a weakness of character in resisting the flesh, and/or the discrimination of Godliness. Such men are susceptible to the corrupting influence of women, gold, and power. As such, these men can be bought, and their representation of the group can be used for self-enrichment at the group expense. UnGodly men and immature Christians bring foolishness, ignorance, and corruption into the guidance of society. At its roots, the State and Constitutional Republic are at risk when governed by immature men.
Your point was what to do with people who did not listen to the truth. In a survival of the fittest worldview, we should just let the individuals who flounder and rebel, experience the result of their own errors. Either such men learn from their pain or die from the consequences of their life of unrepentant errors.
One of the overriding principles of Christianity is loving neighbor as self. And, this includes the warning, counseling of him in the avoidance of his error. In a society of mature Christians, such a man would be recognized and barred from public service or removed promptly upon revealing his character.
JH: YES! I totally agree with “the warning, counseling of him in avoidance of his error”. That means expressing my own opinion. Whether that person chooses to listen is up to them! Remember, there is always the very unlikely and remote possibility that OUR JUDGMENT IS WRONG and THEIR JUDGMENT IS CORRECT. In any event, isn’t freedom defined by the right to be stupid? If we are forced by others not to make mistakes, we are not free.
TLA: I don’t think the best definition of freedom is defined as the right to be stupid. There are many times when we do things that are stupid, and we suffer. That isn’t being free, that is going off the track of life into a ditch. There is a moment of freedom in choosing the path of destruction, choosing to go down the unGodly path. But almost immediately the options of life become limited for a period of time. The maximization of freedom comes by sustained conduct of life along the path of Godliness.
The most meaningful definition of freedom is, “I have the freedom to do anything that is right, good, and Godly.” This is would be the most applicable definition to the phrase, “God-given rights.”
I recognize that you are pushing against the group/State telling the wayward soul to do/not do XYZ behavior, and forcing prohibition or action, as determined by legislators and bureaucrats. Of course this can be abusive. But, when the laws of the State are Godly, as are its judges and administrators, then the State is a reasonable surrogate for God. The State acts as God’s guide and enforcer. As such, the State serves as a living standard to God’s rule on Earth. And, because men are being shepherded by the efforts of mature Biblically Christian men, the benevolent, wise, and Godly State, enhances the cooperation between men. When men are united in purpose, and their hearts are committed to excellent action, they can accomplish great things.
If the nation is composed of Leftist atheists, the Constitutional Republic is vulnerable to usurpation by evil men, who use the power of the state for themselves. The same is true of every other form of government. Each system has its own deficits. A socialist system is already a covert oligarchy of government officials who decide many/all aspects of your life. Thus, an Anarcho-Capitalist society, where the strong survive, may function as a workable system. But, a pure Anarcho-Capitalist system has never matured or established itself.
Thus, the debate gets ambiguous in the case of a non-Christian or immature-Christian nation. There are advantages and disadvantages to both a Stateless world and a State-controlled world in these cases.
JH: The advantages and disadvantages depending on whose perspective we are speaking from! If we are speaking from the controllers’ perspective, certainly having others obey us is advantageous. If we are speaking from the subject’s perspective, being dominated by the controllers is never advantageous unless the controllers happen to demand the same behavior that the subject would choose himself. There are no other perspectives other than those of the individuals in the situation.
TLA: You are certainly correct in your assertion of the desirability of a submissive populace from the point of view of the controller. But, I intended to speak from the perspective of the governed. The purpose of the Constitutional Republic as was given to us by the Founders, was to ensure the free exercise of the God-given rights of the people. The question is whether the group would experience more or less happiness in a State-regulated world or in an anarchic world.
In a generally secular/humanist/non-Christian society, the type of men who seek office are most likely those who have not disciplined themselves in the principles of Biblical Godliness. Such men are less likely to be mature in resisting the temptations of the flesh. By nature of the power inherent to government, the power of the State temps leaders/bureaucrats/officials/administrators to use their positions to satisfy their own selfish passions to enrich themselves. Such men rule for the thrill of power or otherwise govern for their own benefit. Being governed by such men will almost certainly cause hardships for the people of such a nation.
This is in contrast to the men who should be chosen to serve in government when the general culture of the nation/State is based upon Christian values, ethics, morals, standards, and worldview. In such a population, the electorate should choose their most mature Christian men as their representatives. The character of the State is personified by those who administer, legislate, and judge.
If the body of laws from its history are based upon Biblical/Godly values, the legislature considers new legislation based upon new social circumstances, and appeals for reinterpretation and reconsideration of old legislation based on Biblical principles. The purpose of the legislature is the codification of right/Godly/Biblical responses to those social/economic situations.
The judiciary judges disputes about situations as per the standard of the legislation and the administration carries out the mandates of legislation. When the government is populated by mature Christian men, legislation is based upon Godly/Biblical principles, and the power of the State is checked by the three branches of government. The society so governed can realize the benefits of a Godly State, which are the same as living in the Kingdom of God.
The problem is that group behavior affects the individual’s milieu, environment, ecology, and wellbeing. In other words, the individual’s happiness cannot be separated from the behavior, attitudes, and moral tone of the group. The question is, what is the best way to affect group behavior? If the good behaviors embodied in the individual are not adopted/ normalized/ enforced in the group behavior, then the individual will suffer. Ideally, every man would follow the truth and wisdom of the Bible, but that will not necessarily happen, even when men are unconstrained by the State. Those who break God’s law will suffer the consequences of their choices, and the group will also suffer because of the man who violates His law.
In general, men follow a lower law, the pulls of the flesh, and they argue strongly for others to follow their basic natures. The problem with the State, is that men of low character can rise to positions of power and may prevail in their pressure for legislation to normalize such behaviors and prohibit punishment for the same.
Of course, this is a major deficit of the State. If there was no State, evil people could not legislate against good behavior and authorize bad behavior. So, the problem from this perspective appears to be law/the State, since that is the tool used by evil people to suppress goodness and normalize evil.
JH: Well said! I will add that dictatorial power appeals more to evil people than to righteous people. A righteous person doesn’t need power to be happy. An evil person gets their jollies by dominating others. They are more driven to achieve positions of power, especially if their power hunger is driven by hatred of righteousness.
TLA: Power-hunger is one of the passions of the flesh, and literally anyone can fall prey to its seduction. The hungers of the flesh are like a lion at the door, always ready to pounce on the unprepared and undefended man. But mature men, committed to Godliness and service, know the standards of Godliness and can resist the temptations of the flesh (money, women, and power; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life). The electorate of a Godly society can recognize such men, rejecting those who use appeal to vanity to manipulate others and submit to the temptation of self-enrichment at the expense of others. A society without Godliness at its center will likely elect vain, power-hungry men, being deceived by their disguise, or voting for such men because of their familiar spirit.
And, this is of course a true deficit of State rule. But, the cost of the lack of a centralized/public standard of enforced prohibition of bad behavior is the lack of the creation of a body of goodness which can stabilize and guide the individual throughout his development from immaturity into a mature/righteous citizen/soul. And of course the Libertarian would argue, that such standards should be taught in the family.
JH: Or anywhere else where the individual sees value in gaining guidance. It could be a counselor, school, church, family, unrelated father figure.
TLA: Yes, the whole society can, and should, train its citizens in right behavior. But, the optimal society embodies the Christian belief/worldview. Only a populace with these beliefs/values deeply embedded into the character of the individuals, and reflected in the laws of a society, can properly implement the State.
But, as important as society is in training the individual in right action, the nuclear family is the center and most important carrier/educator in the implanting and nurturance of personally embraced Godliness. The larger society supports and teaches the child the application of Godly principles in the larger societal context. But, without a Godly family embedding the principles of faith, service, justice, love, and belief in appropriating the role of Jesus Christ in restoring our relationship with the Father, the foundations of the society will be weak. Without a Godly culture, the good seed planted by the family will be uprooted by the example of a society that models and exhorts toward selfish satisfaction of the hunger and passions of life.
The problem an individual can have in his growth as a moral being is that he can come to a place of realization about life-principles where he believes he has found the absolute moral pinnacle in his worldview – only to find he was blinded by his own concepts and limited personal experience. Every individual is necessarily limited in his perspective. The adoption of the Biblical standard of life is the rock we can hold onto. Humility in learning wisdom is an important trait.
JH: Absolutely agree!
TLA: All of us can grow and mature in Godliness throughout life, and many people learn very good lessons and morals from simply observing/experiencing/learning from life. Nevertheless, there is a difference between the man who is raised in the humility of Godly Biblical instruction his entire life, and the man who only learns the principles of life from his experience and the lessons of living in the world. I believe it is possible for the man raised in the faith, taught by wise and experienced parents, living in a Christian society, to come sufficiently close to the embodiment of the principles of Godliness that he can be trusted as a State or national governor. Such men of Godly maturity are the only ones who should be elected to govern.
I do not believe we need to defer to angels or wait for the Lord’s return for Him to rule and reign on earth before we can have a good and Godly State on earth. It will require hard work, a huge renewal of the hearts of men to restore the faith our nation once had in the Bible and the Christian God. And, once established, it will take vigilance to maintain it. The flesh is eternally hungry, and it tempts us to indulge inappropriately.
If there is to be a State, then the ideal is the establishment of a righteous State, a purely Godly government which can divinely establish the limits of actually good behavior. (The self-judged “good” behavior of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot are clearly unGodly. But, politicians who are trade influence for money, or stand for legislation that opposes the Biblical standard are likewise unGodly, and their belief and acts will degrade the nation and inappropriately limit freedom.)
Your point is that such a State cannot be established by men, and that it will always be flawed, with evil embedded with good, thereby producing a de facto imposition of evil on innocent men by the protocol/law-bound leviathan State.
JH: YES !!!
TLA: And, while it is true that no man is ever perfect, the question is whether a man, or group of men checking and challenging each other, can be adequately mature, righteous, and Godly to administer, legislate, and judge the affairs and people of a state. And, I believe the answer is yes. Our government was appropriately and wisely established with 3 branches, each of which considers an important and qualitatively distinct domain of human action. The division of government into equally powerful branches allows men to evaluate the work and judgment of the other branches from a distinct perspective. Under such scrutiny, errors of intent and bias will likely be detected and corrected.
If the laws and culture of a nation are based upon Christian principles, and if the people are raised and disciplined on Christian principles, then administrators dedicated to living Christian principles will populate the government. When government is properly populated with Christian men serving in the 3 branches of government, they will all check and challenge each other’s judgment, to ensure that Godliness pervades all aspects of the governmental process. The self-approval of tyranny and self-benefiting acts of a man or group will seldom prevail in the milieu of such mutual scrutiny.
And, of course, you are right, some injustice will always be embedded within any State that man imposes upon himself. But in a fully/deeply Christian nation, the errors will likely be small, and time will illuminate the error, and men committed to righteous administration, legislation, and judgment will correct the error, resulting in a small length of time when the erroneous act suppressed the appropriate rights/happiness/acts of the people.
But, you have taken the extreme polar position of declaring that the State is the problem, and that man cannot establish a State where goodness/justice/freedom can prevail. Instead, of establishing the State and risking State-imposed consequence, you prefer to live in a State-less, Anarcho-Capitalist world where each man suffers the consequences of evil as a result of his own choices.
JH: Or enjoys the success of their goodness rather than suffering the injustice of State-imposed consequence.
TLA: I understand the attraction to anarchism since it seems as though the State is regularly/predictably hijacked/ by evil because of the seduction of power and misplaced enthusiasm for one’s personal moral view, etc. The question is whether the extreme rejection of the State and authority-based law and adoption of anarchism, is the correct/best worldview, that will produce the best possible outcome on earth?
JH: I don’t know that “best” is ever possible. I think it’s more a question of which is better. Which is the least flawed? Which will result in the least oppression and imposition by the will of others?
TLA: This is exactly my point. I believe the Godly/Christian State will produce a superior outcome. You look at Stateless anarcho-capitalism as the least flawed system. Your bias is against control because you have seen the abuses of power been done in the name of democracy. You have been deeply disappointed by men who have perverted the words and vision of the Founding principles and twisted their intentions to support a socialist vision for society. You have seen how the democratic will of the majority has force unwilling people to support policies and expenditures antithetical to their own values and interests. You feel that the Stateless AC world would make that magnified abuse impossible, and therefore it is the better system, since it allows for freedom, and prevents abuse by the power of the State.
I look at the Republic, as it was envisioned by the Founders, and I see a system that can literally manifest the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. I see the flaws you notice in the State and acknowledge that they all are real possibilities, and they have all regularly manifested. But, I see the possibility of men living in a Godly State in a nation fully committed to living according to the Biblical standard of Godliness. I see the quality of the Christian Republic being higher, as it allows the maximum possible freedom.
I don’t think a judgment as to the better choice of State/no-State is trivial. There is no obvious royal road to societal efficiency, maximum liberty, and justice. The radical anarchist/anarcho-capitalist world has the obvious flaw of human taste/nature being drawn toward satisfaction of personal flesh desires.
JH: I don’t think so. I think our human nature is for certain people to be drawn to those failings. Some people are never drawn to those failings. Others may be drawn, but possess the will and character not to succumb.
TLA: It is this universal pull of the flesh, and our inevitable failure to properly control those flesh-hungers to which I refer. All men are tempted to satisfy the hungers of the flesh – this is the nature of humanity. We were created as animals, and the hungers we feel were all designed to give us the native instinct to survive as individuals and a species. The problem is in the improper satisfaction of that hunger, the improper/unGodly actions that the hunger drives us toward. Some do better in controlling their actions in response to the temptations of their hunger, but no one is perfect, and all can fail in the next moment.
We see that principle in verses such as, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” and “There is none righteous, no not one.” This concept, of all men violating the appropriate/right/Godly standard of hunger satisfaction is at the center of Jesus’ teachings. It was for the rescue of men from the terms of that debt/contract that Jesus was incarnated and sacrificed on the cross. His death was a spiritual transaction that paid the blood debt man owed to that dark realm. That is the origin of the concept of the Faustian bargain – men get boost by sin, but the cost is their soul. By claiming that gift, the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus blood, we are freed from the debt if we pledge our allegiance to righteousness. Jesus’ death was necessary to cleanse us from the stain of our spiritual debts. Only pure spirits can be in the presence of the Father.
I agree that some do a better job of consistently saying no to excess/inappropriate satisfaction of the flesh. But, there is no one who is perfect in his avoidance of error. I don’t think we can separate out the wolves from the sheep fully, because there is a little of both in us all.
My point is that all men have the nature of being drawn to the satisfaction of the flesh. It is not possible to be otherwise (we all are drawn to satisfy the drives of breath, sex, hunger, warmth, shelter, life, repulsion from pain, attraction to pleasure, companionship, control, pleasure…). There is no one who is not subject to these hungers. The hunger for satisfaction of the flesh desires is not the issue. All hungers, and all satisfactions of them, have their proper place and time. The issue is the proper/right satisfaction of the flesh-hunger. As you note, some are better than others in their control.
In both the Statist, and Anarcho-Capitalist societies, men are drawn to satisfy these hungers. We cannot escape fully from men who yield to their improperly regulated hunger. It is a spectrum of weakness, some are better regulated than others.
In the anarchic world, there is an inherent lack of a formal societal codification of ethics of enforceable law. There is no clear society-wide lines of restraint and enforcement, so the nation/world becomes a patchwork of jurisdictions with possibly wildly disparate standards of behavior, judgment, and enforcement.
Ideally, the standard around which counties, states, and nations are crystalizing is Godliness, but that standard could be anything in a totally anarchic world. A nation which is dedicated to establishing the Biblical standards of Godliness has a higher chance of codifying and enforcing them than a society that is relying on men’s best intentions to develop a system of optimum laws without a guide.
Some granularity in interpretating the Biblical code is good, especially in terms of local conditions and specific circumstances. Both absolute individuality and homogeneity are bad in moral judgment. The median that incorporates two desirable principles is usually the optimum when they are combined. The states, with their individual county jurisdictions, provide for variety.
The hope of that radical Libertarian world is that those who follow the ways of error will self-extinguish, or congregate together in enclaves of like-minded degradation, or be punished by the more enlightened/truth-followers or those who can afford defense and offense, or otherwise receive their just consequences.
JH: Maybe not “the hope”, but the “likely outcome”.
It seems like people who submit to evil, animalistic, low-life behavior spring eternal. I’m not sure that those who follow degraded paths will self-extinguish. But, if society were to follow Paul’s rule to the Thessalonians, “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” this would rapidly extinguish the problem of sloth.
We all hope the world will manifest as we desire it, and we all believe that if the world changed as we hoped, that it would be much better. But, it is hope because the experiment has not been done. In my opinion, with a nation populated by men of Christian character, an excellent, corruption-free, tyranny-free, and injustice-free Constitutional Republic, is the likely outcome.
The radically anarchic world proposal is interesting, dynamic, and interactive. It includes much internal feedback and experimentation with individual and group behaviors. The problem I see with this system and its evolution is that I don’t see it reaching a high, or steady-state, of optimum goodness. The number of variables and forces acting in the system is so great that I see this system being in a continual state of significant oscillation. This may be a good thing, to have variety, and be free to choose whatever, and have no one tell you want to (other than those who can afford to impose it on you), but it isn’t obvious that this is the best organization of the group.
JH: Really well said, and you are getting me to start thinking…
But first, let me say that I see a free society as clearly superior in the following particular respect. That, regardless of the degeneracy and depravity of any others, THOSE WHO CHOOSE TO BE GOOD always have the ability to break free from the evil people. Always, always, always!
TLA: I have concerns about your statement, “Those who choose to be good in a free society people always have the ability to break free from the evil people.” The problem is that moving one’s colony, family, job, housing… is not easy. The cost of relocation is high. There is a cost barrier to exercising one’s freedom to escape the evil surrounding them. To move, there is a loss of support on all levels. Typically people have to re-start their lives in many ways to escape an evil culture. Those who choose to be good and break away from evil must pay a significant price, and that price may be too high for the amount of current pain. Thus, even when the option to move is possible, exercising that option will always be a cost-benefit analysis – what is the cost of staying in the evil, compared to the cost of moving away from it. Many will choose to stay in an evil situation, just because the cost is so great to leave.
JH: And that is the ultimate good of a stateless society. But in a statist society, no matter how Godly most people become, there is still the chance that the evil will gain power and oppress the good people.
TLA: Sadly, evil will likely invade or follow the man who leaves one community to go to another in a Stateless society. At some point, and at some level, evil is always attempting an invasion into the Statist and Stateless society.
JH: So, we are weighing one situation where the righteous ALWAYS have a means to escape and live free, against the opposite situation where the evil MIGHT (and probably more than just MIGHT) gain power over the good people and oppress (perhaps extinguish) the good people. This balance, with good people ALWAYS having an escape route, comes out in favor of pure freedom, in my view.
TLA: I see the problem of escaping the contact and influence of evil people as a universal problem. The pilgrims came to America and established a Godly society, and to a large extent, America grew from those roots, and that original seed influences the national spirit, even to this day. It isn’t that clear to me that it is possible to escape the influence of evil. There is always a Judas, even among the 12. There is always the temptation and taste for excessive satisfaction of the flesh hungers among every human, which can influence a faction of any community. Such factions which prey upon the sheep of the community are a threat to both the State and Stateless communities.
As per my taste, I would rather have a world where I was free to operate within the limitations of action associated with Godly law. There is still a degree of instability/flux and uncertainty with regards to the social order because of changes in technology, resources, climate, and the influx of children/new immature souls who must be trained in right-action. I am willing to sacrifice the degree of absolute freedom for the security of a world which has encoded Godly law, which is enforced upon me and all others. I recognize the vigilance giving someone else authority over me requires. I don’t think that is widely recognized in our current culture.
JH: Brilliant. Really well said, and perhaps the best thing I have ever seen you write!!
TLA: There is a cost of making that acquiescence to external control. There is the possibility that evil/selfish/self-deluded people will take the reigns of power and institute unjust administration of righteous laws, and legislate unrighteous laws, and judge unjustly in the prosecution of offenses. These are the types of violations of unGodliness against which we must be vigilant. It is this to which Jefferson referred when he said “The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots.”
JH: Agreed!
TLA: Thus, the eternal debate between liberty and the existence/rule of the State. Eternal vigilance against unGodliness is the price of the stability and order of the State. No vigilance against the excesses and perversions of the State is required of a world without the state. Only vigilance against the violation of neighbors and groups with sufficient resources to fund their particular form of space violation/aggression is necessary in an anarcho-capitalistic world.
JH: YES !!!
TLA: Maybe it’s only a sense of tidiness or simplicity, but focusing on the State as the opponent, seems easier than focusing on the writhing mass of humanity and all their possible coalitions to advance self-interest. The use of my resources by the State to prosecute me is of course a concern, and this single issue can be of overwhelming significance. Nevertheless, the State is a point of focus, an identifiable enemy against which to be vigilant. The group debate can be influenced by individuals of good character, and victories won can be established as standards for future reference and applicability.
What this debate illustrates is the extreme degrees of freedom present in this world. We can choose to be Statists or ACs, and there are points plus and minus on both sides. I believe the State in a strongly Christian has a high likelihood of producing a good living environment for the people. And, you believe the AC system is better because people will be held to account locally when there is no government to function as the intermediary to justice.
JH: Tom, that is awesome!! And you just made me grow and reach a new conclusion. Let me run this by you…
Someday the technology will exist for people to reasonably expect to leave the earth for other planets and establish themselves, either in orbiting man-made structures or by colonizing other worlds. Once this technology is widely available, it will last for eternity, for the rest of mankind’s existence. Living off-planet will be a viable choice for everyone. At some point, the number of days of human existence having that technology will FAR EXCEED all of the days of human history up to that point. We will describe human existence in two fundamental eras: The brief LANDLOCKED era of being stuck on earth, and the unlimited EXPANSION era of humanity spreading out into the universe.
But there was also an earlier EXPANSION era! All of human history up until the last couple of centuries was also an EXPANSION era because there was always a place on earth to settle and escape from civilization. So, our current LANDLOCKED era is quite short and unique in all of human existence!!
I think the answer about the state hinges on this perspective. When we are no longer landlocked, we will be able to live in a free society. People will be able to leave earth and be free to their own standards. Goodness won’t need to co-exist with evil.
TLA: This appears to be our major point of contention. I do not believe it is ever possible for man to not coexist with evil. Man can act out the ends of evil one moment, and goodness the next. Children can be born who have controlling, manipulative, surreptitious natures and their passion to satisfy the flesh will not necessarily be well controlled by the discipline of parents and the group. Such seeds can form communities of like-minded souls, and create their own potent form of evil. Without strong and effective parenting and Godly community standards, these tares will grow and contaminate the purity of the harvest.
Such growth of bad souls, and bad colonies of souls, is not the province of only the State or the Stateless community. Both groups are subject to the same consequences of uncontrolled passion. In other words, the common solution is men of right moral understanding banding together to enforce the standards of Godliness on the community. If the Stateless community has a strong and right commitment to Godliness, that system can work as well as the State.
In other words, I see the issue not as to whether the State or Stateless societal organization is better, but whether a society chooses to organize itself around Biblical Godliness or some other standard. I think it is easier to implement a State governed by the principles of Biblical Godliness than an amorphous Stateless group, hence I think the State is a better organizational unit than Statelessness.
JH: But, as long as we are landlocked on earth, it is as if we are all locked, shoulder to shoulder, inside a small room with potential lunatics who might destroy us. We cannot live “freely” in a room with insane and potentially violent people. As long as we are landlocked in a small room with evil, we will always need to struggle against EVIL for our survival. It may not be moral to dominate others! It may not be wise to have a political structure where evil might dominate! But our ability to achieve raw power over the insane, during this brief landlocked period in human history, is the best excuse for the temporary existence of the state that I can think of.
TLA: It is, and will always be, necessary to dominate evil in the Stateless community as well as in the State. Evil is ubiquitous, inherent, and unavoidable. It can arise in any person at any time. It must be defined, its practitioners identified, and their behavior extinguished by effective punishment, and the soul retrained in right action and control of passions. It is impossible to leave evil behind by escaping to virgin territory. It is only possible to advocate and educate for good behavior in each community/group and administer effective consequences and training for bad behavior. To my mind, such is the definition of a Godly State, and such is the Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.
What do you think?
TLA.
by Thomas Abshier | Apr 25, 2025 | Politics/Economics/Culture
Limited Federal Government
by: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
8/12/2008
I write this piece from the perspective of a Christian, a patriot, and an advocate of Limited Government. Its intended audience is all people of all political and theological persuasions but is primarily written for the conservative and believer to give apologetic support for Limited Government and America’s return to its foundation as a Christian Nation.
I believe America’s foundation and her Constitutional Republican form of government were ordained and inspired by God. I believe the Constitutional Republic, with its 3 separate branches, and its capitalism-based economy, contains the necessary elements to manifest an operationally perfect system of government. But, the economic-governmental system by itself is lifeless and will not mechanically bring forth the optimum experience of societal function. Rather, the Capitalistic Republic must be given life, spirit, and direction by an entire nation of men, representatives, and citizens, who are unambiguously committed to manifesting the will of God on Earth. The impersonal forces and machinery of government and the market can be bent to any purpose, and neither liberalism, republicanism, nor a libertarian government formed only by the requirements of a free market has sufficient internal boundaries or incentives to guide men into a state of fulfillment in their public and private lives.
Our nation, governed by the limits of the Constitution, can only reach its potential of maximal similarity to Heaven when the citizens continuously struggle to manifest Godliness in their private and public lives. I believe America’s first immigrants, and the framers of our founding documents, intended to establish a Christian nation, and that America is falling from greatness because of our rejection of the Judeo-Christian ethic and commitments. The responsibility for restoring our land lies squarely on the backs of believers. It is not the pagans, atheists, and humanists who must first become holy, righteous and repent so that our nation may prosper, rather it is we as Christians who must lead. When Christendom truly lives the holy and righteous life implied by the name “Christ-in”, the brightness and righteousness of our lives will shine, and enroll the world to imitate that goodness and share in the rewards such a life offers.
2 Chronicles 7:14 “if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Human nature is primarily driven by self-interest, which includes a lust for power, a desire to maintain its own existence and lifestyle at the expense of others, and a drive to control its environment by coercion, criticism, and force. A society populated with people who have not dedicated themselves to balancing these human traits with Godliness will manifest elements of these passions in their institutions of government and industry. The unsanctified human drive in the institutional, corporate, and governmental group-expression results in various forms of societal abuse. The compassionate Liberals now campaign on the promise to raise taxes to transfer wealth to the entitlement class. The holier than thou Liberals impose unGodly moral standards in the name of gender and sexual orientation equality and tolerance. The freedom loving Liberals legislate infanticide in the name of choice. The progressive Liberal declares Secular Humanism as the de facto state religion in the name of separation of church and state. The one world globalist Liberal opens our borders to illegal immigration, trade without restriction, and trilingual instruction pamphlets in the name of multiculturalism.
The stimulus to write this piece came from an email that raised the issue of imminent excessive government surveillance and regulation of personal decisions. A Godly government needs information to help facilitate the coordination of its various limited duties. But, surveillance as a tool for governmental quality control and management can be redirected to intimidate, coerce, and enable enforcement of laws that benefit the ego and unGodly social engineering of government more than it benefits the social order. Unless Godliness directs the individual and group spirits of a society, the government will pursue its own best interests at the expense of the populace. History is replete with examples of societies overtaken by tyrants. On some level, all people who have succumbed to tyranny have suffered from a deficiency in discernment and response to budding evil embedded within the social/political environment. Even the best government will be forced to engage in ever more draconian surveillance, legislation, and enforcement to fulfill its charter of maintaining the social order when the people abandon Godly self-regulation.
The philosophers from both sides of the political divide have offered solutions for social issues. The Liberal solution is, in general, an increase in government control, more spending on social programs, less religion, less government intrusion, and more enforcement in the areas of freedom of choice, tolerance, and equality. The Libertarian solution is little or no government and regulations while allowing the forces of the market to regulate human behavior. The Conservative seeks to reduce taxes, balance the budget, minimize government, and return God to public life. The following essay is largely an analysis of the Libertarian perspective of a society without government. The examination concludes that a central nervous system is required to control the movement of the body. Likewise, we need to fully represent the metaphor of the body in the society, by the organ of government, with its executive branch, courts, laws, and bureaucratic administration of those laws. But, having noted the necessity of government, we then emphasize that most of the duties of our current “New Deal-Great Society” government can be transferred to the private sector if the society is well organized and interconnected with the purpose of cooperation, and the people adhere to Godliness.
The essential hope of a Market-based government (Libertarian) is that the society will self regulate because the force of self-interest will be so strong and detailed that the regulation by law will be made obsolete. Such a system is value-free in the sense of not regulating anyone by any set of governmentally chosen set of supernaturally attributed morals. The essential hope of the Government based economy (Liberal) is that the wisdom of man will provide direction that will be higher than the pandering to base desires produced by the market and its appeal to man’s base appetites. The Limited Government (Conservative) seeks to take the best from both, and produce a synthesis of Godly Law that establishes the basic ground rules within which economy can function in its robust effort-rewarding manner that gives men the incentive to work and produce for profit and consumption.
The non-Christian population of the United States may see the common adoption of a Christian form of Godliness as the establishment of a theocracy or a Church-State religion. But, it is only returning America to its foundation, which has always tolerated other faiths, but it maintained the Judeo-Christian moral standard as the foundation for law and common civil relationship. Religion in a Christian nation would be self-imposed. But, without a majority who choose to vote, legislate, and manage the private sector on Christian principles, the social standard will revert away from the Godliness that produces the stable and lovely group ethic that allows Limited Government.
Prayer and Bible reading should not be mandatory, nor should church attendance, but if these good practices are not broadly maintained in the culture, the seeds of destruction will be sown in society. Limited Government allows people to choose their philosophical-religious beliefs, but social behavior that crosses the line of violation of others must be restricted. A judiciary comprised of men holding Godly standards is the only group that should try, convict, and punish on behalf of the state. But, the enforcement of most forms of antisocial behavior involving self, family, work, should be handled within the social unit close at hand. Likewise, the excellent behaviors such as prayer and Bible reading in school should be allowed and encouraged, as parents should be able to extend the teaching of their children to the large segments of imprinting time occupied by the classroom. Educational choice should be universal, as this makes the educational establishment accountable to the demands of a Godly marketplace. When people are enfranchised to vote with their feet and their money, the market responds to give them what they want. But again, the market is not the solution; it is only one tool of the society that must be sanctified.
I use the word “Godliness” extensively in this essay. The reader should understand that the intended meaning and implication of this word is love of self, neighbor, and God, as the Laws of God are summarized in this principle and spirit. Godliness refers to the entire spectrum of good and right manners, rules of relationship, ethics, and morals established by God as Right. Forgiveness of offense releases the soul to live in love and authorizes God to deliver justice. Love repays evil with good, but this does not mean accepting violation without response and letting evil prosper without resistance. Love informs the violator of his injury to person or property, and restraint is delivered in the form of boundaries, reduction in degrees of freedom and instruction. Love speaks the Truth but does so in love. To allow the evil to perpetuate unopposed enrolls the victim as a party to the violation. Confronting and establishing boundaries expresses love and creates a strong relationship with the violator. Confront the violation with humility, and have faith that the message will eventually be received. Always be open to the possibility of an error in my own judgment of right and wrong. Know that God loves each person, regardless of his or her political persuasion, economic standing, educational background, moral compass, or religious belief. But, there is a way of life that brings men into relationship with the Father God, and many ways that separate us from His fellowship. Following the path and pull of selfish human passions, un-moderated by love, separates us. It is our duty to be God’s light in showing that we actually care for the prosperity of every man’s soul and body.
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The following essay was initiated and stimulated when John, a Libertarian, sent me the following email dramatizing how much personal data could soon be collected and made available to government, corporations, law enforcement, federal and state agencies and bureaucracies.
From: John
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 3:38 PM
Subject: FW: Ordering pizza in 2010
Ordering pizza in 2010. This is funny, but scary because it’s probably not too far from becoming reality.
John
Dear John, I enjoyed the future-reality shock humor. The point of the piece was no doubt to illustrate that big government wants to control us in every aspect of our lives, and you are undoubtedly right about the propensity of Big Government to expand and control. But, in the vein of our previous discussions about adopting a Libertarian style economy-only society, I believe it would be necessary to implement even more data collection than was illustrated in the 2010 Pizza piece if we do not have a governmental system.
T.
Not sure about that, Tom. A completely private society could offer any services a government can offer, but services would be offered competitively, not monopolistically, and costs would be distributed more efficiently to those who benefit. You use a road and you pay for it. No collectivist taxes on everybody regardless of whether they use a resource or not. Etc.
There are private models of justice adjudication, private roads, private currency, etc. This pizza thing is a vision of a corporate society propped up by government protection from competition. In a private property society, one would agree to only the level of surveillance one chooses.
With government, you have monopoly power, and legislation, and if one does not participate in the national database one is a criminal and hauled off to jail. Government is about giving super-human rights to ordinary humans. I contend that nobody has the right to take my money by force regardless of whether he has a mask over his head or a shiny badge and a gun. We cannot hire others to steal, and yet voting is precisely a sanitized and respectable form of that. There must be something inherently immoral about giving certain human beings the right to steal with immunity or to initiate force against others.
Please don’t take my word for it! There are people smarter than I who have thought through all these issues and written books.
Cheers, John
John, according to the “Let go and Let the Market” article by Gladish that you recently sent me, one way of implementing a Market-Only system that replaces government would be to use RFID monitoring of the entire populace. Gladish uses the data collection capabilities associated with modern technology at the center of his theory. To implement a cashless society, where credit is given based on service to the society and credit is withdrawn from the individual’s account due to moral violations, requires a great deal of information about the person so that the society/market can make these kinds of judgments. The Gladish article illuminates the fact that any system that seeks to eliminate government will introduce other institutions or methods to serve the same function, and other remedies must then be applied to fix the unexpected and often unpleasant side effects. Upon examining this subject, I have come to realize that Limited Government can only exist for a righteous and Godly people. When the people, their representatives, and commitment of government is to Godliness, it is possible for Government to shrink to its minimal necessary size.
I understand and agree with your point about the intrusiveness of government, and the possibility of delegating and reallocating the functions of government to private enterprise. To summarize, you believe that it is not necessary to have a system of top-down government-imposed laws, (or at most, that government should be very limited), and that private citizens or corporations can organize to perform many of the functions of government such as police and justice, allocation of resources, punishment of moral infractions by economic sanctions of various sorts, and in short do all the functions of society without governmental direction. I agree that such a system is possible. But, my comment about the need for a strong information collection and surveillance system being necessary to implement an “economy-only government” was given credence by the concept introduced in the Gladish article.
From that essay, I was alerted to the likelihood that a vast databank about each person’s life-transactions was possibly necessary in order to give proper feedback to enforce economic sanctions against those who do things that some people might consider wrong (such as murder and theft). Gladish proposes that it is possible to implement market sanctions against people who have engaged in trespassing of various sorts simply by making their behavior available known to the market. This appeal to the market for an impersonal, non-law/government imposed response, was meant to show the plausibility of creating a society without any appeal to, or definition of, moral standards.
(Note: the lack of any religion/mysticism based moral system seems to be a primary point in the Gladish theory. He really wanted to develop a society that could implement a perfect market-based regulation of the society without the acknowledgment of God in any way. He was really arguing against the need for government, and the laws and moral codes they imply. He was using the elimination of government as a surrogate opponent to show that God and His standards were unnecessary. He sought to create a system where the humanistic understanding of “best practices” could be reflected in the economy and executed to show that an entire society could be regulated without an appeal or reference to Godly morality. Proverbs 14:12 “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” The Founders intended that our government reflect Godliness in its structure and laws, just as God Himself intends that righteous government reflects His righteous will and way.)
But in order to give concreteness to his theory, and to implement this Godless system of economic feedback he noted that information would be needed to give indicators of each person’s credit-worthiness. Thus he introduced the solution of RFID or Biometrics tracking of each person’s productivity and violations of property and person. With this information included in the personal database, the raw data would be available for the market to judge a person’s creditworthiness. The combination of collecting detailed data about the person’s life, and the absolute power to grant the credit that sustains life and lifestyle, makes it possible to apply economic consequences upon them. Such force in a cashless, credit-only, society provides a near-irresistible force on the violator. If the data collection were extreme enough, the economic pressure on the individual would create a nation of sheep. The force and judgment of the economic system would be so precise that the economic feedback would shape everyone to fit the algorithmic judgment of the system.
And yes, society can agree to any level of surveillance of its citizens, just as it can organize its own police force, currency, independent territory, defense, research, and education system, etc.
(Note: any time a regulatory function is exercised by a subset population over the larger whole (e.g. police, judiciary, housing association executive committee, etc.), that subset is operating as a de facto government. These mini-governments are simply of a smaller size, and offer the possibility of more local control and participation than the macro-federal and state governments; i.e. entities that exercise the onerous duties of taxation and foolish appropriation of those resources. And, if this is the goal, to reduce the size of government and make it more personal and wise, then the privately employed system can do that. But, even the private system can grow and become impersonal, rude, and foolish. If the goal of privatization is to eliminate governmental, parental, rule-making bodies entirely, this is not logically possible. If the private system executes or enforces any rule-making or regulatory function, it has power over the participants and is a type of government.)
If we are to use only the forces and tools of the market to regulate the interpersonal behavior of the citizens, then the amount of finesse, dexterity, nimbleness, and agility of the economic system to do all these functions, without government, will require a huge amount of data collection. And this is the point where the potential slide into tyranny enters the market-only solution. The database must be available to all people so that they can each individually evaluate the creditworthiness of a person before rendering them goods or services. Otherwise, if each person does not judge every other person’s creditworthiness, the database of service credit, consumption and violation debits must be computed by the impersonal judgment of the credit-debit algorithm. The entry of the credit-debit algorithm into consideration illuminates the potential for abuse and tyranny since the algorithm will necessarily reflect someone’s judgment of Truth and Right behavior, or “best practices”.
Gladish clearly wishes to implement a society without the embedded morality of law imposed upon society. He wants to show that it is possible to create a society which does not even refer to a moral system at all and thereby shows the irrelevance of God. He desires to prove that by appealing only to the sense of best practices within humanity that society can function in a good, peaceful, and well-regulated way. And his alternate system is to show that the market-alone can make judgments of people’s creditworthiness and that this tool will give social feedback that alters behavior and shapes it toward that excellent pattern that we all desire of our fellow man. Gladish is proposing a society-wide cybernetic feedback system to shape behavior using economic incentives and disincentives. He proposes using RFID implants or biometrics to track the movements and transactions of all people at all times doing all things seems. With this raw data, he then applies an algorithmic analysis and gives people the reward of credit for good behavior such as work, volunteer service, kindness, voting, etc. And, for consumption of resources, carbon footprint, rude behavior, and criminal conduct, credit is subtracted from his account. I must admit the system is brilliant. It will produce an incredible society. This will work! Government will absolutely be unnecessary using such a system. It appeals to the most powerful tools available to shape human behavior, reward/aversion training, Operant conditioning, the Pavlovian signal, and the cybernetic loop. With society hooked up to such a loop, it will not be necessary to use force or government to control the society. Thus my comment, that the 2010 pizza story sounded very similar to the society of an economy-only government.
Gladish’s economy only system transfers the central nervous system function of the traditional government to impersonal enforcement by an economic algorithm that judges our creditworthiness. Instead of government using laws, the courts and police as enforcers of moral standards, our behavior is “shaped” according to the judgment of the best practices of the group mind of that society.
A nation without any data collection system, and no government, would be regulated much like the economies of the pre-industrial and information age. The economies in these times were subject to frequent boom and bust cycles, which appear to have been smoothed out somewhat.
(Note: This smoothness lasts as long as we follow the rules of good monetary and fiscal policy both publicly and privately. I refer in particular to the laws that Congress passed which forbade lending institutions to discriminate against people who could not qualify for a loan for lack of sufficient collateral, thus precipitating the current housing crisis.)
My point is that without any (or only a small amount of) data collection about the internal workings of the economic system, the potential for huge disparities between production and demand, or monopolistic entities arising that take over the economic landscape are real possibilities.
Likewise, it is possible for the tipping point of loans and credit to extend past the place where a person could realistically produce the value associated with that credit. Without calculations, without data, without monitoring of transactions and comparing creditworthiness against the proposed purchase, the aggregate societal economic balance sheet could easily become unbalanced. When the supply and demand do not match, the system can go unstable and produce shortages, recessions, and even depression. But, even these problems may be eventually solved by various limits, and systems put in place to reduce the risk and consequences even without intrusive data gathering.
I do not wish to impugn the economy-only government solely on the issue of the need for excessive surveillance, although I think it is an important consideration for those who wish to advocate for this solution to the problem of intrusive, corrupt, and ever-expanding government.
Rather, the more important criticism that I wish to confront about the economy-only government is its basis upon self-interest. This criticism may be shocking since its advocates tout the superiority and advantages of the market-based government because of its dependence upon this strong natural human emotion. Structuring a system that caters to the self-interest of every man yields a most productive society. Each individual naturally purses his own best self-interest by whatever means he deems most effective. If society values production and does not give him food, shelter, and entertainment if he does not produce value, then he will receive strong feedback that production is required.
In such a system, every man is equal and is forced by the natural demands of fairness to produce value so that he can receive value from others. And as sovereign controller of his credit expenditure, he can choose to transfer that credit to farmers in exchange for food, or he can give that credit to charities, agencies, research, education, or any other entity of his choice.
Every person desires freedom from forceful domination. We desire a society that regulates the passions of men and honors our inalienable rights. We desire protection from the bullying of other private citizens, the monopolistic practices and tendencies of corporations, and from government corrupted by the influences of power, fame, and wealth. The economy-only system has been presented as such a system. But, we should be cautious in placing our full trust in a system that is free from an acknowledgment of every citizen’s responsibility to embrace Godly self-regulation.
I see polar expressions of the world in all circumstances.
In the axis of government, the extreme poles are tyranny and anarchy. Note that tyranny and anarchy are only an infinitesimal part. The economy-only government is a type of anarchy. No man is superior to another in this system, and each made advocates for his best interest economically and morally by judging the creditworthiness of his trading partners in the society. But, for each person to judge the creditworthiness of his partner accurately, he needs a strong database to fully know his partner, so as to properly extend him credit. But, to do this he needs a data collection system which gives him that information. As a result, every person in that society, wishing to execute the same totally-independent judgment of their trading partners, agree to institute a data collection system and algorithmic computation of creditworthiness. The result is total independence from each other, but total reliance on the computation of the algorithm. The result is the tyranny of the algorithm. By this example and analysis, the point of connection of the opposite poles is illustrated, as is the unification of tyranny and anarchy.
Moving a small distance away from the extremes on both ends, and toward each other, the left wing polarity would be the strong central government with a socialistic control of the economy, strong bureaucracies, and many laws. The right-wing polarity would be a small government, private ownership of production, an information-rich society about self, others, and groups that enables social decision-making, plus an algorithmic recommendation for voting and consumption.
Moving closer to the center, we see a government like our current Constitutional Republic with its strong bureaucratic control of all phases of economic life. And, on the other side of that polarity, we see an economic system with less data collection, without algorithmic enforcement, and the use of cash instead of the cybernetic tracking and feedback system.
At the center we find a blend of the two polarities – the government and economy mixed together to form “Limited Government”. In this expression, we see the vast mix of credit and cash, economic indicators and social trends guiding production, corporate and professional self-regulation, transparent accountability of the public officials, common defense, and a people committed to moral self-regulation. But, such an ideal blend of the government and economy in the context of a Limited Government will only occur when the people have a deeply rooted, and personally lived commitment to God and His Way.
In the extreme expression of any system, the power is more concentrated and hence there is the possibility of exerting undue influence for personal benefit or to manifest a personally held belief about a greater good (such as we see in the jihadist philosophy). Human nature is strongly tempted to take advantage of available power.
In the case of the world governed by self-interest only, the system is likely to allow the cultivation and growth of an extremely virulent strain of self-interested individuals. These people make an art form of evading the modest barriers erected within polite society. This is the predator species; the trusting people who simply do their job, think about others and expect truthfulness are the societal prey.
The more a society promotes the pursuit of self-interest (without a sense of moral/Godly regulation to temper the desires of the self), the greater the probability that it will evolve a subpopulation of predators. Such a system is closely akin to the law of the jungle system, and while efficient and free, it is brutal. Charity, kindness, and heart must be incorporated into a “self-interest” based system so it produces more than an abundance of products at low prices.
I believe that for the self-interest based world to actually produce the joie de vivre that people really desire, it must incorporate the personality and properties of Godliness into the individual and societal values. This point is the major theme of my essay and is the only force in which I place my faith in the possibility of man creating a successful and stable Limited Government.
One possible transition scenario from our current state of Traditional Government to Limited Government, is for the entirety of the nation, individuals and groups, to suddenly embrace Godliness. Such a scenario is obviously unlikely but is considered to note that any system of government could be sanctified if all the people in the society and government spoke, acted, and thought in terms of legislating, adjudicating, and governing under the influence of Godliness.
Limited Government could evolve from any governmental system. Limited government at its “sweet spot” nourishes private ownership, rewards the risk of investment, labor, and invention; it collects extensive but non-intrusive data about production, consumption, and opinions; it provides easy ongoing interim, official non-binding voting on issues to give feedback to professionals, corporations, government agencies, judiciary, legislators, and executives; it has a media that reports the facts as objectively as possible, provides a place for the expression of opinion, and allows a forum for discussion about the issues, and is committed to presenting the news through the lens of Godliness. Ideally, Limited Government optimizes the establishment of limits and the satisfaction of desires and does it through mechanisms that are largely generated by the community debate and arise as a social consensus.
In the society that expresses itself according to the moral bias of Godliness, and under the social organization of Limited Government, the behavior of each man is properly respectful of the property and interests of his neighbors. And, various other intangible “best practices” of mankind optimize interactions on many subtle levels. To coordinate public activities, the Limited Government will require some level of data collection. Likewise, the majority of citizens must participate in some level of active community and professional involvement such as staying informed and voting about issues within the profession, union, or corporation. And, unless volunteers handle the duties of management and decision-making, the group would need to assess (private tax) its members to support administrators that serve in each cluster.
Without a set of standards for performance, behavior, and goals, and actual data regarding these parameters, it will be impossible for a private society, or government to intervene to improve performance. Intrusive monitoring of personal behavior is not necessary when the principles of Godliness are widely inculcated into the group, and every person supports and confronts his family members, friends, business associates, customers, and leaders with the principles of moral self-regulation. Likewise, the social monitoring machinery established for purposes of safety and defense can be trusted when the governing agencies are dedicated to the principles of Godliness.
Next, we examine another transition scenario starting with the Strong Central Government, and follow its gradual evolution into the optimum Limited Government. The first step in this transformation is the installation, election, or miraculous conversion of the heads of state and their cabinet. The leadership enforces Godliness from the highest level, and with this commitment to Godliness, the parental government exerts an influence on the citizens and institutions at each successively subservient level in the society.
Any system of Government can be endured and reasonably well enjoyed as long as the leaders of business and industry, the bureaucrats, professionals, labor, and homemakers bow to the rules of Godliness in conducting their professional and personal lives. Any system of government can transform into the optimum mix of government and private enterprise to form a Limited Government if the entire populace is likewise transformed. There will always be a problem with the stability of the system though, since the heart of man has such great affinity for pleasing self, over the Godly regulation of desire to love God’s way and to love neighbor as self, that after the horrors of one historical vignette has past, they forget, and seek to increase their pleasure over the amount allowed by the moderated consumption of pleasure available to the Godly. People are greedy, they want more, and they take more than is fair, more than they deserve for the amount that they have earned. God has created evil to tempt us, to continually challenge us to choose Him over the pleasures of the flesh at the expense of someone else. Thus, the only way to maintain the ideal society where limited government thrives in perpetuity is for the people to continue to warn their children of the dangers of the spirits that lie inside. The children must be taught the principles of goodness, and the evil they express in their temptations and transgression in lying, cheating, stealing, and fornicating must be confronted and used as object lessons to awaken the soul to the dragon that lies within. The parent that does not reign in the child and teach him the ways of the Lord and embed the spirit of self-regulation in his heart is a violator and puts the entire society at risk. Only one strong charismatic deluder needs to enter the world stage for a nation of unprepared sheep to be led into slavery. Therefore, parents need to teach their children the patterns of truth and lies in the public arena, and impress upon each one the personal responsibility that he has to confront evil in his fellow man. Assuming that “it isn’t my fight,” and “what right do I have to confront another person in their sin,” is the method by which the wolves grow strong and eventually terrorize and control the herd.
If the people are forced to be good and Godly by men with guns and shiny badges, the society will prosper. The good people will love the enforcement of righteousness, the evil will hate it, and those without a Godly moral compass will not be able to tell the difference. When the general population adopts the spirit of Godliness as an internal commitment, the authority of the State can be gradually transferred to a Godly strong private sector to self-regulate. Such is the natural progression toward the appropriate level of freedom.
People have the “right” to do Right, but they have no right to do Wrong. It makes no difference whether government or hired security corporations enforce right behavior. The argument is over who is more likely to enforce righteousness, and who is more likely to use the power of force to perpetrate and use their authorized power to steal and enslave. The Libertarian argues that government is inherently susceptible to the seduction of power because of the lack of personal consequence and investment.
This argument and consideration are true, and for this reason, we must populate the ranks of our civil servants with Godly men. We must ensure that the charters of each bureau and agency have the service of God written into their charters. We must require that the leadership of agencies, be men committed to Godliness in character, discrimination, and courage. Such men should be able to examine law, policy, and intent and confront error in their construction and execution. The manager in government and industry often only sees his position as oversight, rather than as judge and advocate for righteousness. Such a frame cannot be allowed in a Godly society. Every day, every person must take on the job of advocating for righteousness in his sphere, and do so without fear of livelihood and status.
The person serving in the governmental machine clearly faces temptations. He faces the challenge of falling into bureaucratic malaise where anything is acceptable that is dictated by law or his superiors. The standards of right and wrong become blurred and questionable as he sees arguments for both sides of the issue. The numbing effects of peer pressure, management, repetition, and moral complexity cause him to lose courage and conviction to confront the wrong he once saw clearly. He conforms to questionable policies and enforces them out of fear of loss of position or promotion if the commands of the hierarchy are questioned, challenged, resisted, or exposed. Still, all these temptations can be overcome by a commitment to Godliness.
We have clearly identified the fact that government has difficulty solving the problems of wealth allocation, poverty, job security, health care, drug addiction, and unemployment. But simply turning these problems over to the private sector will present its own set of challenges. Ultimately, the same requirements for Godliness that we considered above in the governmental hierarchy are active in the private sector. The major difference between the two realms, public and private is that the private sector is subject to the feedback loop of wealth creation. If no wealth or value is created, and if there is no demand for the product created, then the private enterprise fails.
But, the private institutions are subject to their own fatal flaws. The requirement to produce quarterly profits causes companies to shortchange R&D expenditures. The drive of wealth and greed causes the captains of industry to seek to consume their competition and raise prices as they establish monopolistic control. The drive to produce more faster, cheaper, and better pushes managers to push workers to higher levels of stress, with longer hours, and lower wages.
Thus, for the society to truly be a pleasant and joyous place to live, the private institutions should require their employees to behave in the ways of Godliness. The citizen should realize that supporting the cheapest foreign brand may place workers, the environment, or prosperity at home in peril. Simply instituting private enterprise in lieu of government will not immediately solve all the problems of society. But, the dog eats dog competition of free enterprise will provide pressure to produce results. Thus, these various social problems will probably get better under the automatic disciplinary hand of free enterprise. But, until Godliness is instituted as part of the corporate culture the workplace will still be a painful experience.
When the individual, corporation, and government embrace Godliness, the system will assume relative stability and righteousness. It was the intention of the Founders in their framing of the Constitutional Republic to establish a system of Limited Government based on the broad embed of personal self-government.
In our modern wired world, we can each begin the process of pushing to establish Godliness in our sphere of influence. The chances of Godliness taking hold and pushing back the sea of hedonism and Godless self-indulgence is slim. But, there is no point in just sitting back and capitulating. More than likely we will have to suffer some very great disaster, where people realize that we are not adequate to hold against the powers of darkness without the help of a miracle working God. At that time, we should be ready with our testimony and our plan of action.
Much discussion is held bantering the term “Limited Government” among the conservative circles. But, the meaning of this term is so ambiguous that we could easily argue that the best government is no government. But, reason, history, human nature, the Bible, the Constitution, and the metaphors of nature argue for an ecologically complex system that incorporates government and private enterprise in a single system. The complexity of moderation associated with competing and mutually interdependent systems creates ecological complexity and system robustness.
Personal self-government according to the Biblical principles of Godliness was the intention of the Founders in their establishment of a Constitutional Republic. If we take the Constitution and its implicit standard of Godliness as our national charter, we will begin to transfer the various functions of government to private enterprise.
When Godliness is the primary rule in a man’s life, only a minimal level of government is needed to coordinate, enforce, and focus the individual and group activity. Regardless of the path to Limited Government, Godliness is the central key to allowing societal stability, security, and satisfaction.
From this point on, I shall dispense with the discussion of the “Economy-Only Government” and shall instead focus on the optimization of the “Limited Government”. The perfect mix of government and private enterprise will not be advocated or explicitly elaborated, other than to recommend that a limited Federal and State government as advocated by the Founders. I believe the Constitutional template was divinely inspired, and I believe it will function well as the initial template for the implementation of a consciously chosen system of Limited Government in a complex ecology of private enterprise and a family of nations.
There are many possible mixes of government and private sector functions that society may choose. A large body of people will necessarily require the performance of many types of functions. Thus, people will specialize according to the needs of the time, and talents of the individual. These disparate activities of individual and groups comprising the economy-society must be coordinated and centralized at various levels, whether by a governmental or private institution.
Each society must decide how much personal data and monitoring is needed to regulate personal behavior, ethics, environment, and educational standards, etc. Laws, policies, agreements, or contracts will be made to guide industry and private behavior and to thus institutionalize the wisdom of experience. Likewise, the contingencies for change must be built into the system to adapt to internal and external pressures such as new technology, environmental concerns, resource scarcity, and international relations.
Note: In this essay, we have not stated how Godliness will arise, or even how to make it arise. Obviously, this is a critical consideration because the foundational consideration in establishing the Limited Government is a Godly society. Nevertheless, in its implemented state, Godliness will be a form of non-denominational Judeo-Christian ethics that will permeate society. There will be no creed or standard of orthodoxy that anyone must believe, but the general standard will be the hologram of Biblical Truth. This will leave the specifics of what Truth is, and how it is to be implemented, open to debate in every situation, personally, publicly and in government. No act of Congress will establish a religion, people are free to believe or not believe anything. Still, the Constitution is to be recognized as being based upon the general principles of Christianity and governing a Godly people. Law will be established with its foundation based upon the moral principles of the Bible, and a body of cases with precedent, argument, and justification. There will be a spirit of reverence and respect for God as creator and author of life that is held by all respectable members of society. Parents, educational establishments, courts, businesses, and bureaucracies will all speak, teach, and legislate overtly in terms of Christian ethics. There will be no law passed requiring a particular denominational worship, and no law passed declaring a particular doctrine as orthodox. But, there will be an open consideration and acknowledgment and debate at all levels of government, business, and family about the righteousness of any rule, policy, or fee as it relates to the Judeo Christian concept of Godliness.
But, we currently live in a society without an overt commitment to Godliness. We once were much more committed to life governed by this principle and spirit, but, in our current era, we have a socially liberal contingent that actively campaigns against any acknowledgment of Godliness in government. Our money still says, “In God we Trust” and our pledge still says, “One nation under God”, but these are straggling remnants that are crumbling as the generations and traditions are being replaced by Humanism, selfishness, greed, personal satisfaction, and desire.
The fundamental commandment of the Bible is summed up in the following verses:
Matthew 22:37 Jesus said to him, ” ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’38 “This is the first and great commandment.39 “And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’40 “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
The above principle is the foundation of all social systems whether government or economy-based. Regardless of whether a nation is governed by law or by equity in trade, the nation and its people must have a respect for the Law of God and have the Spirit of God in their hearts. Godliness is expressed as acting on the spiritual insight that reveals how life really is to be lived in perfection as seen by God. Godliness is perceived as a vision, feeling, and/or sense of knowing of the way of God. Every person has the rudimentary leading of God in his heart, but it becomes much more refined and accessible when a person engages in daily Bible reading, accepts Jesus as his Lord, and immerses himself in the Holy Spirit. Thus, the personal vision of Godliness is available to every man who puts his heart, soul, mind, and strength into seeking to know the Truth.
For the sake of completeness, we must ask the age-old question, “What is Truth?” And, the simple answer is, “Truth is what God sees as objective reality.” Every moment has an actual content of physical position, a content of momentum, radiating forces, impending external forces, and intent. The momentum will provide a large force directing us toward our next moment’s position. Likewise, external forces (spiritual or mechanical), seen or unseen at the moment will influence us in the ensuing moments and may overpower and thus redirect our momentum. As spiritual and physical beings, we have a place in the universe as an active actor, and our presence, momentum, and intent will inherently influence the world around us. And finally, our intent can introduce a force into our own trajectory and alter it. God has a plan, a perfect template for our movement, and it is up to the individual to seek and find His way, and in that way is the optimized life.
Embedded in the very essence of life is the fact that laws govern the very structure and substance of the universe. These universal laws of nature extend outward from the conscious particulate understructure of nature, and they emanate outward from the structure and nature of our soul. Thus, the universal laws of nature penetrate into our volitional world and require us to function in various ways to avoid pain, experience pleasures, and maintain survival. As a result of the boundaries of movement that were built into the physical universe, we can only follow certain paths. As a result of the boundaries of pain built into the soul and the psychic universe, we are repelled from engaging in activities that threaten life and well being.
Regardless of our awareness of God and His Law, we are all subject to it. Consciously acknowledged or ignorant of the allowed pathways of the universe, they must be obeyed as a fact of life; no man operates outside of God’s laws, we just fail to optimize our experience by choosing a lesser subset of life rules. Attempting to escape and rebel only initiates forces that move to restore the errant soul toward the path of life.
We may feel that we are captains of our fate, and free to choose our moral standard. And, to an extent this is true. We can direct our lives toward a goal, and we may to a greater or lesser extent reach that goal, but ultimately, if forces larger than our will and physical power direct our lives and influence our minds, we will be blown by that wind. Disease, famine, war, pestilence, quakes, weather and death all demonstrate the existence of a force larger than our own. But these forces are not random or mindless; they all work together to manifest God’s purpose. The formative source-power is awesome, mysterious. Two paths can always be chosen, rebellion against God and hopelessness, or Hope and Faith that all things are working to move us toward the centerline of Righteousness and Truth. The framing of life as positive or negative, hopeful or hopeless, hating God as evil or loving God as good, seeing life as random or seeing life as God’s play, is our fundamental power of controlling destiny.
John, your premonition dream years ago of the cars piling up behind you on the freeway; and then shortly later in real life having a shopping cart actually appear in front of you, swerving, and seeing the cars pile up behind you, was a graphic illustration of the lawful, mechanical progression of life. It likewise demonstrated our ability to intervene to a degree in the sequence of life’s progression. We live in a Lawful universe, and we are subject to laws that in turn affect our sense of satisfaction and sorrow. Our free will is still operative even amidst this great mechanical progression, and our free will choices determine to a great extent our happiness and contentment with our state of life. Thus, the advantage to following the patterns of the larger Lawful universe; we will benefit by patterning our own lives along the paths of the God-given regulations and rules. We should follow the rules, not as a mindless true believer, but rather as a man filled with the Spirit, feeling, knowing, and riding the waves of direction by the Spirit. Such is where the mystery and adventure of life are experienced at their maximum. We are called to combat the forces of dissipation, disobedience and rebellion and enroll our fellow man in the way of Truth. We are to seek to manifest righteousness in the larger world by enrolling willing men to labor in the service of the Spirit of God in manifesting his plan of Goodness for mankind.
Thus, “self-interest” is just as important as “other-interest”, but both are subservient to the superior Laws of God, nature, and Life. No real wisdom is possible until we see the perspective of God. Until then we simply speak from example, experience, cited authority, or theory. Thus, self-interest is only one of the factors which must guide life. To hold self-interest too highly, places one of the gifts of God, one of his implanted desires, above God in our hierarchy of respect. When doing so we worship a false god, which produces its own failures. The only best, most satisfying paths of life are God’s paths; all else are suboptimal dreams and passions of man that seem good but produce less fruit than the bounty possible when following God’s leading and way.
We wish to progress from our current government as a Constitutional, Corporate Representative, semi-socialistic, Big Brother Nanny State, Globalist, Industrial-Government Alliance, to the optimum balance of market and government which we shall call “Limited Government”. The following sequence may produce this evolution.
1) Revival: This is a revival of the Spirit of God moving with power across the nation, moving people to conviction, repentance, and holiness. Either a renewal of the majority of the nation or all its leaders must overtake the nation. This could come by an act of war, natural calamity, Jesus returning as King with Power, the Spirit of God moving on the hearts of men such as in the First Great Awakening before the Revolutionary War, the Second Great Awakening before the Civil War, or by convincing proof that God was real by science or broad personal experience.
When the nation returns to God in a true, Spirit-led way, where every man knows that God is real and that His way is True, then the entire framework and spirit of the nation will change. Until then, the battle will rage between government, industry, nations, races, and the people. Currently, the battle for Godliness is being lost. The putative experts of our Secular Humanist nation, the physicists, biologists, and psychologists have used their interpretations of quantum mechanical uncertainty, relativity, evolution, and psychology to deny the Truth of God’s existence and give archeological, mythological, and theoretical credence to their claims of humanistic divinity; and the people have followed these false prophets like sheep.
The Humanistic path has won the hearts of man due to the combination of expert opinions of doubters in the specialized and esoteric fields of physics and biology; the desire of man to be free of external regulation so as to elevate the himself to the level of a god subject to no one; the lack of concrete daily experience of God and the associated plausible possibility of His non-existence; and God’s allowance of immediate pleasure associated with following the flesh.
As a result of God’s non-existence in the minds of men, the passions of the soul are elevated to the point that their satisfaction is the goal of life, rather than being the gifts of God whose proper satisfaction give life its texture and fullness. Every thinking man knows that the pleasures of the flesh are fleeting; that fame, gold, women, and power flare brightly, fade quickly, and leave us depleted. The long slow burn of moderation in all things gives us the daily long term satisfaction of a life well lived. The life lived with such balance in all things is its own reward; that path is the experience of Heaven on Earth, and the character one develops living in such a way maximizes our pleasure and reward in the life to come.
Godliness in its most practical terms means treating your neighbor, children, wife, employer, employees, superiors, and institutions with proper respect and love. That respect and love may at times appear more harsh than soft when discipline and boundaries must be established. The violator must be loved, but confronted, coached, and given proper instruction as to the fair and right boundaries of his territory. Fairness, justice, kindness, temperance, truth, and other virtues comprise the quiver of Godliness.
2) After a national Revival of Godliness, the sequences toward Limited Government may proceed from the top down, commencing with the commitment of the nation to Godliness at the highest level of national priority. a) The reversal of Everson vs. Board of Education bill that established by fiat Judicial activism the previously unknown, and unconstitutional precedent of “Separation of Church and State”. b) The reversal of Judicial decisions that take the 10 commandments from public buildings. c) The reversal of Judicial decisions preventing prayer and Bible reading in school. With this restoration of law that allows the next generation to carry on the faith of our Fathers, we can without impediment reinstate the extension of Godliness to every phase of government.
3) The sanctification should proceed in a parallel fashion, with all members, groups, and strata of society studying the Bible, learning the principles of Godly relationship, debating and studying how this applies to their particular life, making policy, and extending the discussion and enrollment to their superiors and inferiors. If we are to consider the transformation of the society from the top down, as in a leadership model, then the highest-ranking leaders (chief executive, cabinet and judges) will be the leaders in establishing Godly policy in their Agencies, and the leaders at each successive layer of management would do the same.
4) The people have the vote, and they must use their discrimination to elect governors, legislators, and judges who are mature in the faith, committed to putting on Godliness and restoring our way of life to its Godly heritage.
5) They are at the heart of government and give laws their power by interpreting and enforcing legislation. The bureaucrats must frame their reading of legislation in terms of the spirit of Godliness so as to properly direct the professions, trades, and corporations in righteous activity.
6) The influence of Godliness on the highest management throughout the society will trickle down through the layers of managers and workers in the professions, associations, administrative bureaucracies, corporations, managers, professionals, families, and children.
7) The media biases and shades the entirety of perceived reality. We no longer live in a world that is directly perceived. Our concept of the universe beyond our horizon is filtered, processed, and presented through the lens of someone and their agenda. The Bill of Rights gave us freedom of the press, but corporate interests and biases toward social radicalism have monopolized the information-space. They have directed our choices and made voting an exercise in giving public support to private enterprise large enough to pay for buying the public mind. Information must be made objective by intent. Commentary should be allowed, encouraged, and expected that frames the events of the day in terms of Godliness. Many commentators and much debate should be offered from many sides, but it should overtly confront how the daily stream of current events relate to Godliness.
As the society becomes more righteous, as per Matthew 22, placing God’s Law first in each man’s heart, and in turn loving neighbor as self, the society will become more refined at each layer in its functioning and relationship in Godly manners.
The society is affected from the top down, and the bottom up. As the people making up a group become more Godly, and they learn to give and take equitably, the professions and trades they occupy will become more Godly in their service of society. As the Associations learn Godly discipline, teaching, and regulation of their members, then the Administrative layer of Government that regulates the professions and trades becomes less necessary. Eventually, the Associations of professionals, trades, and corporations can take over the role of the Administrative Law, and this layer of government, which is currently so expensive and populous, can be largely eliminated.
An example of a profession regulating itself is seen in the Bar of lawyers, a privately operated, self-regulated, enforced, funded and administered group that is trusted by society to maintain the standards of Godliness among their practitioners. Of course Godliness has been lost as the standard by which Lawyers regulate themselves, and as a result, the trust society has placed in them is unfounded. But, this is an example of privatization of administrative law that has already been implemented, and it also illustrates the futility of expecting that privatization by itself will produce the intended result of moral optimization of professional self-regulation.
The same retreat of Government may occur in all arenas of regulation: energy, education, law, commerce, environment, etc. When the commitment to Godliness in control of self and in relationship to others is present, then there is no need for the overbearing force of Government to enforce Godliness. Rather, when those in society embrace Godliness as their primary directive and purpose, every layer and element within each layer of government and private industry becomes an agent of unified regulation to manifest the mind of Christ.
When Godliness is the prime directive of society at all levels, the layers of government become less and less necessary. Administrative government can be seen as a temporary teaching and modeling role to guide the Associations into establishing the proper machinery for Godly self-regulation. The layers of regulation by government can thus be abandoned, as their duties are relinquished to their corollaries in the private sector.
Of course, the dismantling of government agencies means that former public servants will be released from their duties and must be re-integrated into life as private employees. A note that may provide a bridge is that they could migrate into jobs as officers of the professional guilds in their regulatory functions. But ultimately, we wish to increase the labor force and hope that most will retrain and become productive members of society creating value by using their skills.
The natural outcome of this adoption of Godliness by the people, and their unions, associations, and guilds is the diminishment of government. As Godliness and the training and enforcement of right action are transferred to the people and their privately run organs of self-regulation, many of government’s current functions become largely unnecessary.
Such is the goal of Godliness, to let God be our king. Note that the cry of the Revolutionary War was “No King but King Jesus.” This is the goal, to have only righteousness and the spirit that directs righteousness be our overarching ruler to which we all submit. Until we all bow at that altar, we will be slaves of men and institutions that keep our animalistic passion underfoot. Such subjugation is well and right and all that man deserves until he has put on the adult maturity of Godliness. We must ultimately subject ourselves willingly, with awe, respect, and love to our Father God. He is the source of all, and to whom we bow and worship for the magnificent creation.
The overarching problem that must be solved is that,
Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?”
Thus, the self-interest of man must be properly regulated in some way. The individual who asks for too much is like a cancer, occupying too much space, and taking too many resources. Those around him, unless they are effective warriors that beat back the aggression, may be damaged by his excessive consumption and occupation of space. If the individual grows in influence and organizes a company, gets elected as a legislator, appointed as a judge or administrator, he can extend his malignant influence to a greater degree and cause an industry or governmental bureaucracy to revolve around his desire for expansion of influence. There must be some force to oppose the bullies and cancerous tumors of life, industry, and government.
We should all have the standard of perfection, the pattern of health, the Law of God in our hearts, and when we see the invader, the unrighteous man and his action in our midst, we should take it upon ourselves to exert a force to stop him. Such is the place of personal power. It is our personal responsibility to make the world a Godly place by expelling the evil which seeks to manifest through the hearts of men. When the bullies and tyrants of youth are poorly controlled, they can become tyrants and lead a nation to wars of aggression and enroll the entire world in destructive wars of containment or defense. The police with shiny badges and guns are needed and appreciated when they enforce and judge according to the standards of Godliness, but when they are the agents of bullies, tyrants, and megalomaniacs we shudder in their presence and hate their subjugation.
Thus, it is not government that we hate, rather it is unrighteous and unGodly government that we cannot tolerate. It is the bonds of evil, unGodliness, and the intrusion of the agents of Hell whose bonds we seek to cast off.
Limited Government is a realistic goal as a later stage in the development of a Righteous society. When a Godly government develops, and the society follows suit (or is the reflection of the righteousness of the people) the various layers of government may fall off. When the government is no longer needed to create and enforce the righteousness that we all desire, government should follow the Framer’s intent of limited government and cheerfully execute the process of dissolution and transfer power to the private sector.
This progression toward dissolution of the bureaucracies will happen most strongly when the nation has committed itself to Godliness. The people will fear letting corporations, trades, and professions rule themselves if there is no commitment to Godliness in that sector; the fox should never be put in charge of watching the henhouse. To allow a self-interested profession to regulate itself is to invite abuse in the form of bullies and thieves.
A primal desire of the heart is to understand the origin of the universe and life and to feel complete in its relationship with its creator on all levels. If society has not embraced God as its overt source, then the miraculous will be missing at some level, and the creatures will still be longing for completion of their hearts’ desire.
Taxes, for the purpose of supporting the regulatory bureaucracy, become less and less onerous as government shrinks. But taxes may take another form, such as association, bar, union, or guild dues. If the need for group coordination still exists, employees must be hired or volunteers must execute those duties. Thus, the forceful arm of coercion may not disappear completely even in the post-Administrative Law era. The professional standards must still be enforced, and due will go to enforce our proper professional standards and duties. But, given the structure, where the people will more readily submit to the jury and rules of their colleagues. These laws, regulations, and policies are self-imposed. Since the professional associations are committed to righteousness, we know that the regulations at least have the intent of Godliness. We can thus hope and expect that the penalty for violations would actually reflect an appropriate chastening that is needed to restore rather than mechanically punish.
The majority of the functions of government can be transferred to the private sector when sufficient infrastructure in the private sector has been established. But again, the manifestation of Limited Government as a realized actual possibility arises out of the intelligent expression of Godliness. The perfection of Godly and Lawful Righteousness in a people makes Limited Government possible.
T.
by Thomas Abshier | Apr 25, 2025 | Politics/Economics/Culture
by: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
5/28/2010
From: Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2010 11:39 PM
To: John
Subject: Looking Backward
John, I’ve spent a few hours today reading the book you recommended, “Looking Backward”, published in 1888, which you said is the Socialist’s best presentation of the problems of capitalism and the utopian solutions of socialism. I’m only a few chapters into it, but could not resist the temptation to comment on the concepts introduced so far.
Julian West, the narrator of the book, who had slept for 113 years from 1887 to 2000, has just begun to listen to his new 21st-century friend, Dr. Leete, talk about how the world had transformed from a grim and dirty capitalistic world, into a socialistic workers’ paradise. Dr. Leete has just given a critique of the “old capitalistic world”, and attributed the problems of capitalism as being due to the concentration of capital.
In real life, Looking Backward reached great popularity after its publication in 1888. In response to its socialist/utopian vision, a political movement called “Nationalism” sprang up, and the book was referenced in many Marxist writings of the era.
At your recommendation, I have taken on reading this book as an exercise in identifying the errors of the philosophy of socialism/communism/statism. If in fact these systems do not produce as much prosperity, freedom, or joy, then there must be reasons either in human nature (i.e. drives that cause men to act/not act), or in the rules/consequences that are active in the relationship between God and man (i.e. God has embedded organizing forces in nature and men which oppose pure collectivism).
The concentration of Capital under Control of the State:
As an opening critique and solution, Looking Backwards posits that the problems of capitalism are due to the impersonal nature and power of large corporations. They can demand long hours and low pay due to their domination of the market. Looking backward sees no relief in the trends of capitalism because of the natural progression of mergers and acquisitions to produce an ever-greater concentration of capital in ever-fewer companies.
Looking Backward presents the solution to the problems of capitalism by as taking the progression of corporate mergers to its logical conclusion and concentrating all capital production and distribution enterprises in one point under the control of the State/nation.
But, mergers will not proceed to completion to form the one large corporation controlled by the State. Nevertheless, Looking Backward proposes this counterintuitive method as the solution to the problems of capitalism. Concentrating capital in the State is simply a method by which all activities of life and all people in the society, can be directed by the State. Thus a solution deemed right and good by central planners is imposed upon all people. The socialistic solution gives those who imagine they have the solution to the problems of a free market the power of the State to impose their hypothetical solutions on the masses of humanity.
On its surface, it seems plausible given that all the problems associated with capitalism, such as monopoly, overwork, underpay, strikes, corruption, inequality, illiteracy, delinquency, and war would disappear when government took over, and mandated solutions that countered these problems. The socialist argues that brute animal passions dictate the free market and produce a system characterized by chaotic inequity. Whereas, the socialistic solution solves all these problems by the direction of intelligent and rational men. Labor, goods, and investment move according to the direction of learned men and thoughtful policies. Sadly, a structure which allows for total power over a people attracts the worst of men, and their economic-political systems end in oppressive regimes that require force to maintain the order they impose.
“Governments need armies to protect them against their enslaved and oppressed subjects.” – Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi (1828-1910)
The urge to merge:
Assuming that corporations will naturally choose to merge to form larger and larger entities is a somewhat plausible conjecture on its surface, but deeper analysis shows that this trend will reach a point of maximum merger size and concentration in a free market.
The natural draw of business to expand is plausible because the owner/entrepreneur is driven by the prospect of personal enrichment. The owner who draws a fixed percentage from his business can increase his personal wealth if his company’s net income increases. Owners, executives, and boards see that net total revenues can quickly increase by a merger or acquisition with another profitable entity. If their operations provide synergy, the sum may be greater than the parts, or at least increase the market share by the combination. The natural drive for riches is satisfied by concentrating capital, at least in some conditions.
But, the assumption of a natural progression toward an ultimate concentration of all capital in the State must be questioned, as the actual experience of history has proven it false to date. Over 120 years of actual history, we see that a freely ordered, self-organizing economy, has chosen to remain divided into a spectrum of micro, small, medium, and large capitalization business entities. In other words, the market does not have a necessary natural evolution from small to large.
Rather than being a natural progression to a single corporate entity, the ever-increasing size of corporations into a single government corporation will only come about by government command. The socialist has decided this is a good and desirable end since government is then authorized to impose good behavior upon everyone in the society. The socialist/utopian goal is the elimination of all the bad aspects of life (e.g. unemployment, poverty, professional confusion, crime, war…) by ordering the lives of mankind by a set of rules that properly order and direct humanity. This is a noble goal, the end is desirable, and the method is plausible, but there are errors of assumption that make this method of perfecting society unworkable.
A Metaphor from Chemistry – The Natural Size of Corporations:
Using a chemical metaphor, consider two chemicals mixed and reacting in a flask. In a reaction that does not go to completion, there is a portion of the reactants that react and form products and a portion of the products break up and form reactants. This is an example of an equilibrium concentration being formed between reactants and products. In general, reactions in real-world conditions do not go to completion (i.e. there is still a portion of reactants that do not proceed to form products when the reaction comes to equilibrium).
Generalizing from this example, systems that both form and break apart come to an equilibrium concentration of reactants and products for any given environment. In other words, at a low temperature, the reaction may go to near total completion, but at high temperature, there is sufficient energy to break apart the product and the reaction does not go to completion. Thus, the environment of the reaction is extremely important in computing the equilibrium point, as it changes drastically as the environment changes (e.g. pH, temperature, pressure…).
Examining the dynamics of the free market, there is a force pushing business toward concentration by mergers and acquisitions, but there is also a reverse process too, where businesses split and divest themselves of inharmonious divisions. Thus, the centripetal concentration force driving mergers and acquisitions is opposed by a competing centrifugal tendency toward spin-off in the presence of internal disharmony.
To bring this metaphor down to its the relevant economic specifics, small companies can react together by merging and forming a larger corporation, or a larger company can break up or spin off parts/divisions and proceed as two separate entities. In a free environment, companies will merge and concentrate to the point at which they maximize their profitability (profit/share). When their profitability drops due to their increase in size, they may break apart or spin-off to return to profitability. In any given free market environment, a balance forms between the concentration of small, medium and large industrial-business-service-manufacturing-materials entities. The key to capitalism is its flexibility in adapting the production solution to meet the consumer’s needs, which will change dynamically to optimize in each consuming and producing environment.
The utopian solution to the problems of production and allocation of wealth is to place the State in charge of all capital. Here, size and profitability no longer correlate to optimize productivity. The state-corporate leviathan simply directs production to satisfy the projected needs of the market. Bureaucrats, central planners, politicians, economists, and executives direct the productive and consumptive flow by command and judgment of what they believe is good and optimal. In this environment, one that requires concentration of capital under penalty of the State, there is no equilibrium between large and small sized corporations, only the uniformity of top-down direction regardless of the needs of the micro-environments.
The Purpose of Life, Freedom, and Utopian Selfless Service:
God created the creation, mankind, and society to function around the principles of reward for merit and consequence for error. The pattern of the Kingdom of Heaven is illustrated in Jesus’ parable of the man with 10 talents, 5 talents, and 1 talent. The men who performed well received a reward and those who did nothing were punished. This is a divine pattern and the society that violates it will suffer. Men must be rewarded according to their productivity. Being paid the same as all others, at a rate that is adequate to meet an average standard of living, and given an acknowledgment for being an extremely productive worker, is not adequate compensation to inspire outstanding performance.
The Declaration of Independence declares that all men were given the inalienable (God-given) rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. But, the utopian wishes to guarantee happiness, and to deliver this promise, he expects that all men will overcome their animal tendencies to sloth and greed. “Looking Backward” posits that mankind will respond with self-sacrificial, potential-maximizing effort in return for security and prosperity for self and group. But, since Looking Backward was penned in 1888, all the socialist experiments have met with abysmal failure. The Leninist and Maoist regimes tried to change human nature and produced horrific human suffering. Rebellion against the government was met by imprisonment and/or execution.
The socialist revolution sought to replace the passions of men, and cycles of the free market, with a constant flow of predictable production. But the cost of eliminating choice and risk resulted in a regimentation of men’s lives. Life with assured security and prosperity loses its dimension of risk and challenge. When total provision is made for all, men lose the opportunity to overcome their demons in real life testing. The soul longs to purify itself and overcome the demons of fear, greed, lust, anger, and pride, and only an environment containing true risk can develop and test a man’s character. Freedom implies the opportunity for failure, and men long for, and fear, an environment that offers both choice, accountability, risk and reward. Life at its finest offers both rewards for success and consequences for failure.
The free market allows for real-world testing and feedback that appeals to our inner drive to test and purify our character. Service of the group is good and noble, but it should be done out of choice, not compulsion. Virtue can be recommended, but cannot be forced. The socialistic philosophy is seductive because it commands all men to live with good and Godly principles such as service, charity, and industry, but the boundaries imposed on men put them in chains. Requiring men to serve under the direction of the State removes freedom and places every man in a place of option-less servitude to the state – a place little different than the slavery against which we have rejected as a nation.
Inequality:
Inequality has reached the pinnacle of modern social-economic evils that the new socialist utopia promises to overcome. The disparity between rich and poor is presented as axiomatic evidence of the evil of inequality. And using this justification, governmental programs that enforce equality are enacted. The progressive income tax and inheritance tax are two obvious examples of wealth redistribution/equalizing measures. The concept of enforcing equality may have already become a majority opinion, as the 2008 presidential campaign promised a redistribution by “spreading the wealth around” as a right and proper concept of “social justice”.
But, inequality cannot be eliminated without eliminating freedom. Wealth will necessarily, and appropriately, be unequally distributed as long as wealth reflects a disparity of talent, productivity, skill, training, risk, effort, invention, blessing, and luck. In fact, inequality is good, since a life with gradient gives the possibility of freedom, movement, and overcoming. The hope of greater wealth, pleasure, luxury, comfort, or efficiency motivates men to work harder and smarter. The possibility of failure inspires those who are not producing to faith and works in the hope of reward.
The trap of wealth is the illusion that it will provide happiness and those who have attained the heights of fortune uniformly attest to the insufficiency of wealth to fill the heart adequately. John D. Rockefeller, when asked once, “How much money is enough money?” He replied, “Just a little bit more.” Still, wealth is better than poverty, but by itself is not enough to be worshiped and pursued as the goal that will make life satisfying, full, and complete.
The problems and reformation of capitalism:
The problems of capitalism such as greed, hedonistic excess, white collar crime, poverty, monopoly, unfair competition, insecurity, immobility, long hours, boring work, difficulty of entrance, and cycles of boom and bust, would all appear best solved by a communal effort to create adequate wealth sufficient to provide for everyone’s comfort. But, every experiment attempting this seemingly noble equalization of benefits has produced less aggregate wealth than our current system of freedom and its associated inequality. The question is actually, how to modify the free market to produce the maximum wealth and mitigate the pain of its abuse. It is tempting to pass laws that outlaw the negative aspects, and mandate the positive, but then we return to the problems of demotivation associated with a command economy.
The reformation of capitalism will only come with the reformation of men’s hearts. When men sanctify their personal and public sense of fair play and righteousness, and take that into the marketplace, and refuse to bend to the pressures of quick profits that unfair and unrighteous tactics offer, the cycles of business will smooth, and the general welfare will gradually improve. The lure of quick wealth is the snare that ends in poverty for all. The consumer is the enabler of unethical business practices, and he must be willing to boycott and thereby punish those who engage in prurient or false advertising. The consumer is king in the market as long as there is competition, and he should use that power to discipline those who stray beyond the bounds of the highest ethics.
The solutions offered in Looking Backward are based upon the producing and consuming public adopting charitable and industrious behaviors, but the socialist/utopian solutions are unworkable because they attempt to control human natures by the mandates of government. The same excellent results desired by the utopian could be manifested by the capitalist if each man in industry and consumption were to sanctify his soul with relationship to money, work/consumption.
Reforming a nation by changing individual minds of an entire people is a large task, and will no doubt require an element of the miraculous. The problems of poverty will not resolve with socialistic solutions, nor with unfettered capitalism as their only tools. But, capitalism sanctified will usher in an era of continually increasing prosperity with freedom held intact. The requirement for this success depends upon men as a society, choosing to bridle their passions and be charitable as well as industrious. Putting on Godliness in the realm of money, consumption, and production will solve the problems of poverty, merit-based distribution of wealth, pollution, innovation, opportunity, and crime. The socialistic or government mandated solutions result in pain and chains.
Theft and Corruption:
Men need goods and services to survive, and when basic needs are satisfied, they begin in earnest the pursuit of comfort, relaxation, or thrill that wealth can bring. Greed drives men to lie, murder, take large risks, and work without a proper balance. Greed may drive men to steal to obtain the personal benefits/enrichment that comes with greater wealth. The spirit of greed tempts men with animal passions to pursue unearned wealth, and will relentlessly challenge him if those spirits and actions are not confronted, resisted, and replaced with a sanctified version of the temptation.
Charity is good, and providing for the basic needs of survival or comfort to the homeless man, gang member, ignorant, foolish, or addict is noble, but will only produce a curative solution to the extent that the basic patterns of truth are also taught along with the aid.
Men need an outlet to exhaust the beast inside the soul. Without a real-life challenge to push against, a percentage will choose to express themselves by pushing inappropriately against boundaries – “rebellion for the hell of it.” “Rebel without a Cause.” Without a direction, without a focus, the entire purpose of life comes into question. All the propaganda about equality and service to the State and general welfare becomes meaningless pabulum when the heart is unsatisfied in a world of enforced mediocrity.
The utopian hypothesis of theft, graft, and corruption fading into obsolescence in a world where the State has taken on the role of provider of the basic necessities has shown itself trivially untrue. Men always desire more comfort, thrills, or pleasure. A nation of people satisfied with the status quo stagnates. Thus, the real solution manifests in a society where the individual can fully pursue his desires and engage his passion by sincerely applying talent, will, and vision to accomplish dreams.
And yes, there are those who have little passion for extreme achievement. Some men are satisfied by repetitive tasks and predictable schedules, and this is an acceptable choice for those who wish to pursue it. But, others require more challenge, and to organize society around uniform compensation, and expect outstanding achievement, is to create a fantasy world equivalent to cartoons, fairy tales, science fiction, and myth.
As for those who are willing to violate Godly interpersonal boundaries, there must be an intra-societal policing that prevents men from advancing their personal gain by criminal efforts. The quick and obvious solution is to dedicate the role of policing, judging, and enforcement to government. But, in a free society, each person must dedicate a measure of time and effort to judging those around him. Everyone is his brother’s keeper to a degree, we are all related by the fact that our actions influence the web of life, we cannot separate ourselves completely from the actions and effects of others. Thus, if nothing more than a requirement of self-preservation, must all take the responsibility of judging and confronting those who violate the laws of righteous, fair, good, and Godly law. If we do not take that responsibility, then the State or God will take that role and judgment and enforcement will be imposed upon us.
Part of assuming one’s place as an adult in society is taking on the role of teacher, parent, guardian, or owner. If all participate in this responsibility, we each have many corrective forces act upon us. No one becomes God to another, but God can speak through the group voice with such volume, clarity, and uniformity that the conscience and soul can be rightly directed. Peer pressure has power, and while not irresistible, a group allied together in a direction is not easily resisted. In such a world, none escape the rebuke and group judgment that comes when all participate in sharing their perception of violation.
In such a system, the judge also receives feedback. Each man’s perception and delivery of right judgment is sharpened by confrontation and counter-confrontation. The result is fair pay for work, pleasant and appropriate relationships, and a level playing field that rewards effort and allows entry based on qualifications and character.
We all have the right to voice an opinion, and we all have a right to oppose or object to an opinion. We can oppose someone who is attempting to pursue an unrealistic or imprudent dream, and the dreamer has the right to oppose the counsel and continue his growth and preparation to manifest the impossible dream. Those who violate the sacred boundary of a man’s soul and prevent him from pursuing a Godly passion by force receive confrontation.
Bribery, cronyism, and petty kingdoms corrupt justice and Godly judgment. Exposing the violator to an endless stream of gentle to harsh personal/group censure will defeat the will of those who violate the boundaries of property and soul.
Barriers to Entry:
The utopian criticizes the capitalistic system as closing the door to manifesting a dream to all who wish to enter the entrepreneurial arena without a large capital deposit. This is truly a hurdle one must cross to enter the realm of business. But, is it bad or wrong for life to have barriers? Should there be a different standard for entry to challenge the inventor, businessman, manufacturer, or banker? What is the more optimal test of worthiness? How should society instead select who proceeds on with the authorization of the capitalist?
The capitalistic system uses the test of wealth accumulation (from self or others) as a requirement for initiating a small business. And, this is an appropriate standard, as per Biblical standards. We see scripture command us (paraphrased) “do not despise small beginnings,” and “How can a man be trusted with true spiritual/eternal wealth, if he has not shown himself faithful in the care of earthly riches.” The initial startup capital usually comes from personal savings, venture capital, angel gift, friend/family loan/investment, or saving from labor in another enterprise to devote to establishing the new one. But, in some way, the executive, the entrepreneur, the small businessman has shown himself trustworthy by executing other tasks faithfully first.
Society and economy in this realm mimic one of the most pervasive of all metaphors of nature – the activation energy. The initial capital investment into a business is the equivalent of the activation energy that must be brought into a system before a reaction can take place.
Using chemistry as an example, two atoms will not react and bond unless they have adequate activation energy. The two atoms must have enough kinetic energy available to overcome the repulsive force of their outer electron orbitals. In so doing, electrons from the two reactant atoms can intermingle and form a bond of mutually shared electrons. A great deal of energy can be released by forming a structure of lower potential energy.
Adding to this concept of bonding atoms, we introduce the concept of the enzyme or catalyst. The presence of a catalyst reduces the amount of energy needed by the reactant atoms to form the bond.
First, the entrepreneur needs the activation energy of startup capital to bring him into contact with the process of forming the business entity. The business entity once formed is the catalyst for the formation of wealth from two reactants – raw materials and labor. In the case of entrepreneurship, the setup energy is large, but once the activation energy of organization, invention, training… is complete, a much larger output results. The business functions in the metaphorical role of enzyme or catalyst. It takes a great deal of manufacturing energy to form the enzyme/catalyst but once formed/created, it can with relatively little energy input (compared to production without the organization of the machine) produce a continuous stream of wealth at low cost.
The owner/entrepreneur can then take a portion of the energy output of the machine as a reward for having invested the pain, intention, sacrifice of time, and divining the invention. Without the possibility of reward for the work and risk of building the catalytic business entity, little innovation would occur.
Capitalism vs. Socialism; State vs. Soul:
God wants man to prosper, and to love Him. God treats the State as a secondary consideration, more as a reflection of the hearts of men, rather than as a primary love-relationship. God rewards men with a good State when as a group their souls are pure and aligned with His will and way. Without righteous hearts, men struggle in vain for peace, happiness, and prosperity. Men have eternal spirits, and the spirit is clothed with the soul, and the soul energizes and enlivens the body. Man has a relationship with God on all levels, body, soul, and spirit, and God blesses individuals according to their righteousness and relationship with Him. The blessings of the State flow secondarily from the righteousness of its people. The organization and prosperity of the State are of secondary importance to the state of men’s hearts.
The Achilles heel of the socialist/utopian State is the lack of individual reward given to those who develop new and witty inventions. Without reward, men will not be motivated to invest the hard work of developing new machines/enzymes/catalysts for converting labor & resources into useful goods and services. Without the incentive of personal profit, some (Few? Many?) will not have sufficient motivation to engage the hard work of manifesting these new inventions. Others may be facilitated or encouraged by government programs that support invention. The experience of previous socialistic experiments gives evidence that the State will sink into the mediocrity of old technology or slowly advancing innovation. The lack of personal reward for innovation is a major deficiency in the utopian/socialist world.
So, that’s the book report and analysis for tonight.
T.
Tom,
I like your analysis. Parts of it are said better than I thought about. But my advice is to resist the temptation to analyze until you are finished with the book. The author presents more interesting arguments (anecdotal evidence) toward the end of the book. I am glad you are reading it! We will have lots to talk about.
John
