Christian Democrats in the United States

Monday, January 18, 2010 12:09 PM

These boys might have been sent to India 100 years ago

Two problem children in England, long neglected by social services bureaucracies as they killed small animals and burnt down buildings, beat the crap out of two smaller boys and left one in a coma.

The UK plans to ban the latest group of Islamic cleric Anjem Choudary, who calls for muslims to unite to establish sharia law in the UK.

Why are these two stories related?

Obviously, Anjem Choudary is a nut. Sharia law is in itself terrorism. Although incomplete and fallible themselves, if the safeguards of common law against human mistakes are thrown aside, the state becomes a power struggle of personal violence, and the people are thrown back into uncivilized anarchy. Under Sharia law and all forms of religious or secular fascism, the state is no longer connected to the reason why people naturally come together in town halls and temples: to make the best decisions they can. Those who come for selfish reasons, leave with a better understanding of others, and those who come from pure altruism come down from their lofty perch and get their hands dirty, doing the real work of moving society along. If officials in government leave behind those purposes, they become preoccupied solely with their own power. Religion is just one of the many tools such deceivers use to control their flocks, though it is not always a tool of such vile men, such as in Myanmar.

However, Anjem Choudary insists on protesting, on shouting from the mountains the truth of what he's seen on "the other side," where only violence reigns, where women and children are blown to bits by allied bombs and insane terrorists on a daily basis, and he is justifiably all the more angry when facing the implacable, utterly wealthy hypocrisy of the British populace, who are too cowardly to confront their own government.

I think Mr. Choudary is wrong that all British soldiers overseas are rapists and baby killers. However, Britain, like America, like the middle east, like everyplace humans live, has problems with violence. It's a problem we don't want to face. More than that, it's a problem that officials who have gained power really don't want people to face, by and large. A hundred years ago, the crown would have sent brutal boys like these two brothers to India or somewhere else, where their talent for brutality would have been applied in service of the state. The Royalty thought that if it could keep the public from confronting the spirit of violence, in the way we might imagine Jesus would expect us to, that they could breed that violence into a tool to subjugate the colonies. Mahatma Ghandi defeated the British with non-violence, but even today, Britons have a unique talent for compartmentalizing their thought and personalities, ignoring the history of war, that injustice is common, rape is common, and massacre is common, and for disavowing their personal responsibility in a democracy by hiding behind the Crown.

The question for Americans is, do you want to live that kind of dishonest life in the mind, where people don't acknowledge the reality of the rampant chaos and the blood our armed forces spill overseas? It happened in Vietnam. It may be happening again. The only way we found out in Vietnam was because soldiers had the courage to stand out of line and do the right thing.

If we allow our armed forces to become chaotic, that evil Mr. Hyde to the Dr. Jekyll of our "high and mighty" democracy, then they will do everything one might expect. In the zeal of our soldiers' violence, they would sow the seeds for nuts like Anjem Choudary to demand the overthrow of everything good about life in freedom. Nuts like Anjem Choudary would "throw out the baby with the bathwater" and plunge society back into darkness.

If military people choose their course of action to impose order on chaos, to make the world a better place, then they must impose order on themselves. Otherwise, they may become that Mr. Hyde: every human being is susceptible to the sin of rage. With a weapon in hand, and a system of symbols there to subsume individual moral judgment into unchangeable policy of the organization, every human being risks being every bit the rapist or baby killer that Anjem Choudary accuses at all the British. Like it or not, humans have a proclivity for violence, and ignoring it does not make it go away.

Faced with a choice of cliffs to walk off, it's time for America to make a decision. Do we go the way of violence, being led down the path toward chaos by al-Qaeda and the endless interplay of that hydra and the beasts of fascist government? That path leads either to fascism or chaos, but it is a false choice. The other path is for the world to walk forward together in faith and forgiveness. It was possible for Britain and India, and it is possible for the whole world.

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Sunday, July 5, 2009 12:08 AM

God Bless Rod Serling

Mike Huckabee is going to tell us what the nation will believe in for the next twenty years. Well poo on you, poo poo face Mike Huckabee, go poo on yourself, take your tasteless poo that you spew forth onto the screen and eat it.

Kim Jong-il and Sarah Palin: Both Annoying.

Fox News going to have a special on the history of "Governeor Sarah Palin," as if people will roll over and let her milk the title Governor even after she quit. Sarah Palin: A quitter. An opportunist. A sham. Sarah Palin, will you please quit your disastrous ambition for power and dutifully serve your community as a happy and content hockey coach.

Kim Jong-il: Dutifully playing the part of Doctor Evil for the Hollywood script acted out inside his demented mind. Really no more than a man, believing himself alone as equivalent to his nation, he thus finds himself alone, and will fade into history with the rest of a handful of talentless hacks dreaming themselves big with the barrel of a gun, remembered only as anecdotes of criminal psychology. Well dude, you haven't blown up California yet on this 4th of July. You could show your magnanimous wisdom and open your country to the world, and give up war... or you can shove it. Your act is boring -- learn a new song. It doesn't matter who you can kill, it matters if your name is in the book of life.

President Obama should stop using the word "sacred" to elevate the church of government, because our kingdom of iron and stone will one day be destroyed not by any rival nation or terrorist, but by God the almighty. Don't insult our intelligence. Managing the affairs of government well is necessary to a society free to reflect on the Lord, but it is not in and of itself a holy thing. President Obama, like Mike Huckabee, ought to resist the temptation to glorify themselves and their points of view in a bully pulpit. Democracy acknowledges that no individual or group can invade everyone's minds, so to speak, to know them, predict them or control them. In this the free mind is a unique entity, a radiation of being from a harmony of matter tuned to time, that cannot be categorized or explained.

"Christian Democracy:" A political spin created on democracy, abusing the trappings of Christian doctrine, to apply a split defined along arbitrary criteria: the ritual recitation of pledges or prayers, allegiance to this or that variation on metaphysical speculation, static, becoming stagnant and stifled, more and more the same. This notion mandates that the only legitimate democracy is one in which all people believe more or less the same thing, that is to say, they rehearse the same set of symbols and dialogs over and over, and these can be easily steered toward seemingly inevitable conclusions that benefit those in power. This idea is structurally identical to fascist governments today that manipulate the doctrines of Islam to corral their people ultimately with truncheons, tear gas and bullets. Well, that's not democracy.

Democracy means allowing new thought to emerge, to flower our potential in mysterious ways of the Lord. That means letting go of telling other people what they should believe, in order to explore what we could believe, in case we might stumble upon greater understanding. Christian Democrats, on the other hand, might be a name for we who choose to live at peace with the world, secure in our faith that one day Jesus of Nazareth -- the man, not the figurehead -- will return in the flesh, and that whatever may happen on that day we know not, but that it will be amazing.

The new world of the spirit and of new frontiers unfolds for the children of humanity. Ignorance and destruction will fade to dust. Let them go, and live! Happy 4th.

Rod Serling: Picture if you will, a place where the lies men tell themselves to numb their conscience take palatable form, not mere illusions of the screen but a reflection of tangible reality. Neighbors turn on each other and kill their friends and family to suppress their inner fear of what they cannot explain. Criminals of world war two are served justice by their victim souls. An old man would prefer to spend eternity with his dog than in heaven, only to find the heaven he deserved all along. The mind of this one man, an American, upending the lies of all men by touching the heart through a simple work of dramatic fiction, unadorned by the common desire to destroy the world to make it more simple to understand. A mind, secured to the earth by a good heart, which inhabits not only this world, but another dimension: the Twilight Zone.

There is a day, one of so many potential worlds, in which all human beings are free, free from material need and free from spiritual deficit, free to pursue art and love, and to transmit the seed of life and of mind into the void of the seas and the planets above. In this potential world all people would follow Christ because he was there, standing before you as any man would, but you just knew: everything would fall into place, and so it would be the obvious thing to do, because it would be good to do so, and the joy of knowing would overpower all our simian instincts to lie and to kill. Most curiously, he is there, and everything will fall into place if you let it. No one can trick people into the truth -- and no one needs to, because the truth is unfolding beyond anyone's control.

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009 1:36 AM

shakespeare and the case for humanity

A portrait of William Shakespeare purported to be the only one painted of the Bard in his lifetime was revealed recently.

Compare to period portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. Same facial structure, same nose, same sly grin.

It astonishes me how stupid people are, how for 500 years they've bought the lie that Shakespeare was a man. Clearly "he" had to be highly educated, versed in classical literature and had a radical and often feminist social agenda, and had a lot of spare time. And, "he" was of course highly favored by the Queen. Shakespeare, like Queen Elizabeth I, rejected the conventions and traditions of the day and created an empire of the English language, which has today reached its fruition across the globe.

Luckily in America we have every right to declare, without any further facts or evidence, that we see through it, that if so inspired, we can lay bare the truth before the world about this just as we can the misguided machinations of ancient orders who delude themselves that they can plan an architecture for the future. "The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone."

It is difficult for me to see God's justification for the continuing presence of humanity. We are very little different than the beasts of the field, except that we pretend to be in control of ourselves and when we cannot maintain that control we lash out at each other with far more vicious cruelty. We are prisoners of sin, we cheat and steal and rape and murder, we lie that we love, while under our breath we curse each other and are possessed by urges to destroy our children or our parents. When we are harmed by others and lose our innocence, then in our rage we hurt the innocent. We soil our nest and ravage the garden that was once Eden. Our presence here is undesirable. Deep down in our hearts we know this, and so we try to destroy ourselves.

Yet despite all this, despite our squabbles, despite our industrial attempts to lay waste the earth, despite 65 years of impending nuclear doom, we are still here. Why? What is it we are supposed to learn? I really don't have the foggiest clue. It must be something, or God wouldn't have declared his reality that night in the clouds. But I don't know what. Manifest destiny, to bring life to where it is not, on Mars our new Earth, and beyond, beyond our solar system, seems a possibility. To love one another, is another strong contender. Perhaps both, but many of us, myself included, often feel shut out from either process, with neither destiny nor love to guide our lives, feeling lost, and hopeless, and useless to ourselves and others, to humanity and to God.

Maybe there will be another sign, for all to see. I hope so. It is entirely possible to change the future, to deviate from our own self-destructive plans. Perhaps it gets slightly better each time we play it out.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
(As You Like It 2/7)

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Saturday, September 20, 2008 11:47 PM

private vs. public notions of government

To harp on Spruyt's The Sovereign State and Its Competitors, one of the reasons he cites why the Italian city-states and the German feudal states and city-leagues did not form successful sovereign states until very late, is that the people running the governments conceived of government as an extension of their own self interest.

This is what's wrong with America right now. People running the government think of it as a prize to be won, and think of their power as a means to achieve their self-interest.

While Hamiltonian self-interest is a primary motivator and principle of the freedom of the People at large, this principle has been twisted in the hands of those who win the power of government.

Once someone wins power in the public government by free election (or by derivative appointment), they become obligated by a greater responsibility to promote the self-interest of all Americans, and to ensure the continuation of the public nature of the government. The Founders recognized that many people are weak, not strong, when given power, so they made it hard to take, difficult to wield without majority support, and impossible to keep. That was about the best idea anyone in government had for the previous 500 years.

Early France was arguably the first "sovereign" state in the sense of defined territorial boundaries, regimented government, and citizenship as a formal status that excluded foreigners from rights and eligibility for state positions and benefits. Even then, however, the French kings perceived kingship as an extension of their self-interest. It just happened, that through fate of geography, economics, technological development and foreign relations at the time, that it was in the French king's self-interest to balance the interests of the aristocracy with those of the commoners in the newly developing towns, and thus the basic concept we know as "sovereignty" was born - quite by accident, and alternative organizations continued existing in the rest of the world for a long time.

But America was a new experiment in government altogether. It was the first government in which the rules of its institutions were for the purpose of promoting the self-interest of all citizens, or indeed, of all people in the world.

The current administration, in fact the current culture of politics in general, both in government, in universities, and as conceived by everyday people, tarnishes what America was supposed to be. It's time we all took a step back and look at what we've done to her.

In our mad drive for our own self-interest, we've forgotten that it's in our self-interest, each and every one of us, to stick together and to help each other. If we do that, we'll find ourselves in a really great world with everything we need, and many interesting things to do. If we don't, we'll find ourselves in a drab world of mindless labor, of slavery, and death.

It's your choice.

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Tuesday, May 1, 2007 8:31 PM

Civitas ad infinitio

Ancient Rome accomplished unsurpassed infrastructure of civilization, and we began our country with the same desires in mind. But Rome ruthlessly crushed all who stood in her way without regard to life or liberty, and its soldiers were encouraged to pillage and rape the frontiers just for R & R. For most people, that was a more unpleasant way to live than using an outhouse. They had clockworks, astronomy, elaborate roads, naval power, and they were almost onto steam power with a little toy they had. If Rome had assimilated the eastern number systems, she probably would have developed engines, rail, electricity, and very quickly, nuclear power.

So whether you believe that Jesus Christ was God's incarnation or not, if he hadn't come along when he did, we wouldn't be here. What's important is the message of peace and redemption for all people, and of our free wills that no person or country can ever take, even by death. We can all learn to live in a world without fighting.

I believe we are blessed by the love of God, the all-god who is the is that is, regardless of our names. God is a kind God who does not want to scare us. Let us not attempt to scare God, for with the powers we will discover, we would become a fearsome rage upon the face of the stars themselves, and blot out them and ourselves into nothingness. That's not what we want for America or the world.

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