Resistance to Tyranny is Obedience to God

Posted on April 3, 2015 by WashingtonsBlog

Should We Obey Authority … No Matter What?

A number of Christian leaders say that Christians must obey the government … no matter what.   For example, Robert Deffinbaugh – pastor at Community Bible Chapel in Richardson, Texas – says:

Whether the government be totalitarian or democratic, the Christian’s obligation to submit to it is the same.

Many ministers tell us we should act like slaves, blindly submitting to the government:
Some even allege that the U.S. government is coordinating with Christian ministers nationwide so that – if the government imposes martial – the ministers will urge their flocks to obey the government. See this and this.

This is not an unrealistic or abstract concept. After all, most churches in Nazi-era Germany supported the Nazis.    The German clergy used the same rationale to support Hitler that many American churches are using today to demand obedience to authority … Romans 13:

The German Christians were strongly nationalistic, and adopted … respect for state authority. This passage in Romans 13 was often cited as proof of a correlation between the Church and State:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists the what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.

German church leaders even criticized Christians for disobeying their “governing authorities” … by protecting Jewish refugees by hiding them in their homes.

 

1.  

And Hitler shows how tyrannical rulers view those who obey a demand for obedience … he ridiculed German Christians behind their backs for being so submissive in obeying the Nazis:

The Protestants haven’t the faintest conception of a church. You can do anything you like with them– they will submit. These pastors are used to cares and worries… they learnt them from their squires…. They are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them.

The Bible Urges Us to CHALLENGE – Not Obey – Bad Government

In reality, Christian (and Jewish) leaders throughout history have explained that we must disobey tyrannical governments.

The Book of Maccabees – an ancient Jewish book purporting to document the events which Chanukah celebrates - apparently says:

Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.

(Thomas Jefferson agreed.)

Gordan Runyan – pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church – points out numerous instances in the Bible of men and women who disobeyed their government rulers, and were rewarded by God and praised as holy.

Indeed, the Bible mentions “justice” more than almost any other topic. The Bible demands that we do justice and to stand up to ANYONE — including the rich or powerful — who do injustice or oppress the people.

Baptist minister Chuck Baldwin writes:

Did John the Baptist violate God’s principle of submission to authority when he publicly scolded King Herod for his infidelity? Did Simon Peter and the other Apostles violate God’s principle of submission to authority when they refused to stop preaching on the streets of Jerusalem? Did Paul violate God’s principle of submission to authority when he refused to obey those authorities who demanded that he abandon his missionary work? In fact, Paul spent almost as much time in jail as he did out of jail.

Remember that every apostle of Christ (except John) was killed by hostile civil authorities opposed to their endeavors. Christians throughout church history were imprisoned, tortured, or killed by civil authorities of all stripes for refusing to submit to their various laws and prohibitions. Did all of these Christian martyrs violate God’s principle of submission to authority?

So, even the great prophets, apostles, and writers of the Bible (including the writer of Romans Chapter 13) understood that human authority – even civil authority – is limited.

Plus, Paul makes it clear that our submission to civil authority must be predicated on more than fear of governmental retaliation. Notice, he said, “Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.” Meaning, our obedience to civil authority is more than just “because they said so.” It is also a matter of conscience. This means we must think and reason for ourselves regarding the justness and rightness of our government’s laws. Obedience is not automatic or robotic. It is a result of both rational deliberation and moral approbation.
***
Therefore, there are times when civil authority may need to be resisted. Either governmental abuse of power or the violation of conscience (or both) could precipitate civil disobedience.”

(Baldwin also notes that Romans 13 teaches that any government that is a “terror to good works” is acting beyond its authority and must be resisted. Therefore, Romans 13 compels us to resist and remove from power all elements of government which are corrupt.)
Reverend Howard Bess writes:

As modern New Testament scholars have reconstructed the context in which Jesus lived and taught, they have realized that Jesus was not simply a religious figure. He was a severe critic of those who controlled the temple, those who controlled the empire, and those who controlled the economic systems that starved and robbed the poor and left the orphan and the widow to fend for themselves. To Jesus, these issues were all tied together.
***
He advocated overthrow of a corrupt system. He believed the days of the oppressors were numbered. But he believed the overthrow could be accomplished by love, mercy and kindness.

Family Guardian Ministry notes:

The entire basis of the Reformation was that of disobedience to the “governing authorities” of Rome– the Pope and the Emperor, who both demanded submission to the Roman Catholic church as the religious and political establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth. When it was demanded of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms to recant of his opposition to papal authority, his only response was as follows:

Unless I am refuted and convicted by testimonies of the Scriptures or by clear arguments… I am conquered by the Holy Scriptures quoted by me, and my conscience is bound in the word of God: I can not and will not recant any thing, since it is unsafe and dangerous to do any thing against the conscience. Here I stand. God help me! Amen.  [See Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church]

Luther’s courageous stand against tyranny literally set off the spark which would eventually ignite the Protestant Reformation. As stated by Church historian, Philip Schaff:

Luther’s testimony before the Diet is an event of world-historical importance and far-reaching effect. It opened an intellectual conflict which is still going on in the civilized world. He stood there as the fearless champion of the supremacy of the word of God over the traditions of men, and of the liberty of conscience over the tyranny of authority….
When tradition becomes a wall against freedom, when authority degenerates into tyranny, the very blessing is turned into a curse, and history is threatened with stagnation and death. At such rare junctures, Providence raises those pioneers of progress, who have the intellectual and moral courage to break through the restraints at the risk of their lives, and to open new paths for the onward march of history…. Conscience is the voice of God in man.

***
This principle of the primacy of the Scripture-bound conscience over human tradition, whether it be magisterial or ecclesiastical, resounds throughout the writings of the most prominent Protestant leaders whom God raised up to defend the faith after Luther. Not one of these great men interpreted Romans 13:1-7 in the way it is so often interpreted today, and that should be sufficient reason to at least reconsider what is so commonly taught from the modern pulpit on the subject of civil obedience and disobedience. Without succumbing to the error of traditionalism, we are nevertheless to look upon the views of godly men of times past with respect.

John Calvin, known even by many of his theological opponents as the “prince of exegetes,” advocated the same position with regards to civil disobedience previously set forth by Luther.
*** Finish reading

Jesus died in a police state

By John W. Whitehead Posted on April 3, 2015 by John W. Whitehead

“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”―Lenny Bruce

If you buy into the version of Christianity Lite peddled by evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham, who recently advised Americans to do as the Bible says and “submit to your leaders and those in authority,” then staying alive in the American police state depends largely on your ability to comply, submit, obey orders, respect authority and generally do whatever a cop tells you to do.

If, however, you’re one of those who prefers to model yourself after Jesus Christ himself—a radical nonconformist who challenged authority at every turn—rather than subscribe to the watered-down, corporatized, simplified, gentrified, sissified vision of a meek creature holding a lamb that most modern churches peddle, then you will understand better than most how relevant Jesus’ life and death are to those attempting to navigate the American police state.

Indeed, it is fitting, at a time when the nation is grappling with moral questions about how best to execute death row prisoners (by electric chair, lethal injection or shooting squad), whether police should be held responsible for shooting unarmed citizens (who posed no threat and complied with every order), and to what extent we allow the government to dictate, monitor and control every aspect of our lives (using Stingray devices, license plate readers, and all manner of surveillance technology), that we remember that Jesus Christ—the religious figure worshipped by Christians for his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection—died at the hands of a police state.

Those living through this present age of militarized police, SWAT team raids, police shootings of unarmed citizens, roadside strip searches, and invasive surveillance might feel as if these events are unprecedented. Yet while we in the United States may be experiencing a steady slide into a police state, we are neither the first nor the last nation to do so.

Although technology, politics and superpowers have changed over time, the characteristics of a police state and its reasons for being have remained the same: control, power and money. Indeed, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, a police state extends far beyond the actions of law enforcement. In fact, a police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”

Just as police states have arisen throughout history, there have also been individuals or groups of individuals who have risen up to challenge the injustices of their age. Nazi Germany had its Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The gulags of the Soviet Union were challenged by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. America had its color-coded system of racial segregation and warmongering called out for what it was, blatant discrimination and profiteering, by Martin Luther King Jr.

And then there was Jesus Christ, an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day—namely, the Roman Empire—but provided a blueprint for civil disobedience that would be followed by those, religious and otherwise, who came after him. Yet for all the accolades poured out upon Jesus, little is said about the harsh realities of the police state in which he lived and its similarities to modern-day America, and yet they are striking.

Secrecy, surveillance and rule by the elite. As the chasm between the wealthy and poor grew wider in the Roman Empire, the ruling class and the wealthy class became synonymous, while the lower classes, increasingly deprived of their political freedoms, grew disinterested in the government and easily distracted by “bread and circuses.” Much like America today, with its lack of government transparency, overt domestic surveillance, and rule by the rich, the inner workings of the Roman Empire were shrouded in secrecy, while its leaders were constantly on the watch for any potential threats to its power. The resulting state-wide surveillance was primarily carried out by the military, which acted as investigators, enforcers, torturers, policemen, executioners and jailers. Today that role is fulfilled by increasingly militarized police forces across the country. Finish reading

Broward Cty Sheriff Deputies "assist" US Fed Troops in Training for Incarcerating US Citizens

Other states and their local police sure to follow...

Troops Training To Intern Citizens In Fort Lauderdale

Posted by Edmondo Burr

Video: Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Shot last week, shows military and law enforcement practicing  internment during martial-law style training.

Eu Times reports: The clip shows armed troops arresting role players on the street before a column of prisoners are marched towards a mock internment facility. Black Hawk choppers are also seen whizzing between buildings.

The exercise was accompanied by very little media coverage.
A Sun-Sentinel report said that Broward County police would be “assisting members of the U.S. Special Operations Forces who are undergoing urban warfare training.”

The drill, which was held in locations the military refused to disclose beforehand, began on March 17 and ended on Friday. 200 military personnel from all four branches, Air Force, Army, Marines and Navy, took part in the exercise.

“The goal is to prepare participants in realistic, unfamiliar training conditions before they deploy for combat overseas,” states the report. Residents were advised “not to be alarmed by the Black Hawk helicopters in the sky.”

Broward County also saw similar drills back in March 2014, when Navy SEALS practicing storming a university building from a helicopter.

Concerns continue to circulate that such drills are designed for dual purpose and are part of a plan to acclimate Americans to accept martial law in a time of national emergency.

As we have exhaustively documented, the fact that preparations are being made to use the military during domestic unrest is manifestly provable.

Jade Helm, an upcoming military drill that will involve nine states, caused controversy after Texas and Utah were labeled “hostile” territory in documents related to the exercise.

Choices - R. J. Rushdoony

The nation had been led to believe that Baal was in charge of fertility and the rainfall in particular. Elijah would show that "the Lord is God".

The Lastest News & Information August 4, 2014  Choices by R. J. Rushdoony  There is an old proverb which says, "We would all be rich, if we didn't have to eat." This is simply another way of saying that we all have priorities, and we make our choices in terms of them. Some men choose to be miserly on food, clothing, and shelter, because they value money so highly. They may like their family, but they love money more, and so they sacrifice everything to accumulate money. Others sacrifice for their children, and everything else takes second place in their lives. Many other examples could be cited, but we can summarize it thus: we are always making choices, consciously or unconsciously, in terms of what we prize or love the most. Our choices reveal our faith. Joshua summoned Israel and us to decision, declaring, "[C]hoose you this day whom ye will serve," the Lord or false gods (Josh. 24:15). Later, Elijah summoned the people to decide between God and Baal (1 Kings 18:21). Over and over again, the Bible demands that we choose, and warns us that all our actions represent a choice. "Our lives continually witness for us or against us as to what we believe in, what we sacrifice for, and what we have chosen." Everything you and I did last year and yesterday, and are doing today, represents a choice, and a decision about priorities. Our lives continually witness for us or against us as to what we believe in, what we sacrifice for, and what we have chosen. But here a strange and remarkable fact enters in. The godly man recognizes that he has been called and chosen by God. He is therefore under authority. His choices have been made by God and set forth in Scripture. The Ten Commandments spell out God's choice and law. Man has no free option. One way is sin, and the other faith, obedience, and blessing. The godly man rejoices in God's Word and choice, and it is his joy that God "shall choose our inheritance for us" (Ps. 47:4). Our choices thus reveal whether or not we are chosen by God or self-chosen. The self-chosen say, "My will be done," whereas the chosen of God, as C. S. Lewis saw, will say to God, "Thy will be done." Your life reveals your choices. What are they? Taken from the soon-coming A Word in Season: Daily Messages on the Faith for All of Life, Volume 5 by R. J. Rushdoony. You can get the first four volumes here.  Chalcedon Website  More About Us

The Hidden History of the Incredibly Evil Khazarian Mafia

Posted by Preston James, Ph.D on March 8, 2015 

The curtain is now being pulled back to fully expose the Khazarian Mafia and it's evil plan to infiltrate, tyrannize the whole World and eradicate all Abrahamic Religions and allow only their Babylonian Talmudism also known as Luciferianism, Satanism or ancient Baal worship.

by Preston James and Mike Harris

Note: The history of the Khazarians, specifically the Khazarian Mafia (KM), the World’s largest Organized Crime Syndicate that the Khazarian oligarchy morphed into by their deployment of Babylonian Money-Magick, has been nearly completely excised from the history books.

The present day KM knows that it cannot operate or exist without abject secrecy, and therefore has spent a lot of money having its history excised from the history books in order to prevent citizens of the World from learning about its “Evil beyond imagination”, that empowers this World’s largest Organized Crime Cabal. The authors of this article have done their best to resurrect this lost, secret history of the Khazarians and their large International Organized Crime Syndicate, best referred to as the Khazarian Mafia (KM) and make this history available to the World via the Internet, which is the new Gutenberg Press.

It has been exceedingly difficult to reconstruct this hidden secret history of the KM, so please excuse any minor inaccuracies or errors which are unintentional and are due to the difficulty in digging out the true history of Khazaria and its mafia. We have done the best we can to reconstruct it.

It was Mike Harris that connected the dots and made the actual discovery of the presence of the Khazarian Mafia’s secret history and blood oath to take revenge on Russia for helping Americans win the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, and their blood oath of revenge against America and Americans for winning these wars and sustaining the Union.

At the Syrian Conference on Combating Terrorism and Religious Extremism December 1, 2014 — in his Keynote address, Veterans Today Senior Editor and Director Gordon Duff disclosed publicly for the first time ever that World Terrorism is actually due to a large International Organized Crime Syndicate associated with Israel. This disclosure sent shock-waves at the Conference and almost instantly around the world, as almost every world leader received reports of Gordon Duff’s historical disclosure that same day, some within minutes. And the shockwaves from his historic speech in Damascus continue to reverberate around the world even to this very day.

We now know that the KM is waging a secret war against America and Americans by the use of false-flag Gladio-style terrorism, and via the illegal and Unconstitutional Federal Reserve System, the IRS, the FBI, FEMA, Homeland Security and the TSA. We know for certain that the KM was responsible for deploying an inside-job, Gladio-style false-flag attack on America on 9-11-01, as well as the Murrah Building Bombing on April 19, 1995.

---

The Hidden History of the Incredibly Evil Khazarian Mafia

 100-800 AD – an incredibly Evil Society Emerges in Khazaria:

Khazarians develop into a nation ruled by an evil king, who had ancient Babylonian black arts, occult oligarchs serving as his court. During this time, Khazarians become known to surrounding countries as thieves, murderers, road bandits, and for assuming the identities of those travelers they murdered as a normal occupational practice and way of life.

800 AD – The Ultimatum is delivered by Russia and other surrounding nations:

The leaders of the surrounding nations, especially Russia, have had so many years of complaints by their citizens that, as a group, they deliver an ultimatum to the Khazarian king. They send a communique to the Khazarian king that he must choose one of the three Abrahamic religions for his people, and make it his official state religion and require all Khazarian citizens to practice it, and socialize all Khazarian children to practice that faith.

The Khazarian king was given a choice between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The Khazarian king chose Judaism, and promised to stay within the requirements laid out by the surrounding confederacy of nations led by the Russian czar. Despite his agreement and promise, the Khazarian king and his inner circle of oligarchs kept practicing ancient Babylonian black-magic, also known as Secret Satanism. This Secret Satanism involved occult ceremonies featuring child sacrifice, after “bleeding them out”, drinking their blood and eating their hearts.

The deep dark secret of the occult ceremonies was that they were all based on ancient Baal Worship, also known as worship of the Owl. In order to fool the confederacy of nations led by Russia that were watching Khazaria, the Khazarian king melded these Luciferian black-magick practices with Judaism and created a secret Satanic-hybrid religion, known as Babylonian Talmudism. 

This was made the national religion of Khazaria, and nurtured the same evil that Khazaria was known for before.

Sadly, the Khazarians continued their evil ways, robbing and murdering those from surrounding countries who traveled through Khazaria. Khazarian robbers often attempted to assume their identities after they murdered these visitors, and became masters of disguises and false identities — a practice they have continued even to this very day, along with their child-sacrifice occult ceremonies, which are actually ancient Baal Worship.

1,200 AD – Russia and the surrounding nations have had enough and take action:

About 1,200 AD, the Russians led a group of nations surrounding Khazaria and invaded it, in order to stop the Khazarian crimes against their people, which included kidnapping of their young children and infants for their blood sacrifice ceremonies to Baal. The Khazarian king and his inner court of criminals and murderers came to be known as the Khazarian Mafia (KM) by neighboring countries.

The Khazarian leaders had a well-developed spy network through which they obtained prior warning and escaped from Khazaria to European nations to the west, taking their vast fortune with them in gold and silver. They laid low and regrouped, while assuming new identities. In secret, they continued their Satanic child blood and sacrifice rituals, and trusted Baal to give them the whole world and all its riches, as they claimed he had promised them, as long as they kept bleeding out and sacrificing children and infants for him.

The Khazarian king and his court Mafia plotted eternal revenge against the Russians and the surrounding nations that invaded Khazaria and drove them from power.

The Khazarian Mafia invades England after being expelled for hundreds of years:

To accomplish their invasion, they hired Oliver Cromwell to murder King Charles 1, and make England safe for banking again. This began the English Civil Wars which raged for nearly a decade, resulting in regicide of the royal family and hundreds of the genuine English nobility. This is how the City of London was set up as the banking capital of Europe and launched the beginning of the British Empire.

From David Icke’s website www.davidicke.com. David Icke was the first ever to courageously expose the Rothschilds publicly in front of hundreds. This of course makes him an international hero and we need more with his kind of courage to break open the coverup hiding the Khazarian Mafia and bring an end to their worldwide illegitimate power.

The Khazarian Mafia (KM) decides to infiltrate and hijack all World Banking using Babylonian Black-Magick, also known as Babylonian Money-Magick or the secret art of making money from nothing also using the power of pernicious usury to accumulate interest:

Continue reading here

Rights, Morality and the State - Wendy McElroy

EDITORIAL

Rights, Morality and the State

By Wendy McElroy - March 05, 2015

"Negative rights" have been a defining force in the rise and ongoing health of human freedom. A key reason for the drastic decline in human freedom has been the current popularity of "positive rights," including a popularity within some libertarian circles. The competing theories are mutually exclusive. To understand why requires an appreciation of the role that class distinctions and the universalizability of rights have played in the freedoms so many of us took for granted until they began to vanish.

Negative rights claim that individuals have jurisdiction over their own bodies and property, which no one can properly violate. In turn, individuals have the duty to similarly respect the bodies and property of others. Freedom of speech and conscience are common examples. Positive rights claim that some individuals have an enforceable claim upon the bodies or property of others, upon the actions or goods of others. Health care and education are common examples.

Negative rights are universalizable; an individual, simply by being human, possesses the same claim to right(s) as every other individual, and to the same degree. There is no qualification other than being part of the species; in the most literal sense, negative rights are human ones.

Positive rights cannot be universalized because they establish class distinctions in order to assign positive rights to some that must be provided by others. People are divided into classes according to shared characteristics, such as race or income level. 

Those who share the characteristic for inclusion into a class also share whatever privileges or disadvantages are attached to that class. Simply being human is no longer sufficient to qualify for the same 'rights' enjoyed by everyone else. A secondary characteristic is required; thus, positive rights destroy the basis of human rights by not being applied equally to all. They become 'special' rights.

Negative rights minimize conflict within society because their exercise by one person in no way prevents the equal exercise by another person or penalizes him. If 'A' exercises his freedom of conscience, it does not prevent 'B' from exercising the same right to the same degree. 'A' being a Catholic does not interfere with a 'B's atheism or penalize him. The only way 'B' can be penalized is if 'A' claims a positive right to any act or good from 'B', such as a restriction of free speech on religion or tax-support for the Catholic Church. For reasons of his own, 'B' may decide to speak discreetly or donate to the church. But the only way to create a positive legal obligation between the two is through a contract or another vehicle that expresses the consent. It is a win-win situation that promotes cooperation.

Positive rights embed conflict into society through class distinctions. If a class of people has an enforceable claim on the services and goods of others in society, then the 'others' are forced to provide them at their own cost and to their own impoverishment. 

If the positive right is health care for those with low incomes, for example, a doctor cannot legally decline a patient and the medical service must be 'free'; that is, the service will not be paid for by the recipient but by others, usually through a form of tax. The doctor and taxpayer no longer have a full claim on the peaceful use of their own bodies and property but are required to share the claim with anyone who holds the positive right to health care. This creates a lose-win situation by which some benefit by controlling others.

Negative rights – that is, human rights – expand only when positive rights – that is, special rights – crumble. Consider the universal human right of a person to own the property created by his own hands and with his own material. First, the person must be able to own property, such as land. In the past, states or kings restricted land ownership to classes such as nobles or the clergy. When class 'rights' began to crumble over the centuries, the right of land ownership opened up to other categories such as white males, all males, women. The closer a society came to making a right universal to all humans and not merely members of a group, the freer and more prosperous that society became.

Today, political correctness is destroying human rights by replacing them with positive rights that are created through class distinctions. Political correctness seeks social justice by forcibly redistributing the power, wealth and opportunities from those who are seen to be privileged (white males, the wealthy) to those who are not (minorities, women, the poor). More accurately, it seeks special privileges at the expense of human rights.

The forced redistribution is achieved through a partnership between two mutually-supportive types of class-privilege holders: those who claim a static class privilege; and, those who acquire a dynamic one. A static class privilege comes by virtue of birth or some other unchanging situation: race, genitalia, bloodline. A dynamic class privilege comes from joining an institution such as the American Federation of Teachers or the government. Both types claim special 'rights' under law. They reach out in tandem to acquire these special 'rights' by snatching them from individuals who are at the bottom of the class hierarchy and so unprivileged. With each privilege claimed, human rights are more narrowly defined.

Ironically, the politically-correct claim to be expanding human rights. Cynically, the institutions that support PC goals use terms like "equality" to justify the imposition of a class system.

Political correctness has been wildly successful because it wore a mask of benevolence. It appealed to the best moral sentiments within man: compassion, justice, goodwill. But that's what these responses are – moral sentiments, as Adam Smith would call them. What PC beneficiaries have actually done is to collapse the absolutely necessary wall between politics and morality, between what one has the duty to do and what one should do.

Smith maintained that a non-aggressive person deserved no praise because he merely fulfilled his social duty to respect individual rights; enforcement of this duty was the bailiwick of law and politics. To Smith, the praiseworthy man was one who actively aided others through acts of generosity, empathy, respect and the like; these acts were the bailiwick of morality. Both categories of action were essential to society and they had the mutually supportive effect of creating cooperation and prosperity. But using the law to impose morality only made enemies of the two categories with people's acts and goods being compelled rather than respected. Indeed, a legally imposed morality is not morality at all, but its death knell, because such acts must be voluntary.

Political correctness is the exact opposite of what is purports to be. It does not establish human rights; it destroys them. It does not express morality; it converts morality into a mockery of itself. Universal negative rights are human rights. Maintaining a wall between rights and morality is the only way either can be expressed. Collapsing that wall destroys both.

Source thedailybell

The Myth of the Voluntary Military

July 29, 2011 Jeffrey A. Tucker

Ludwig von Mises summed up the essence of government in words that are particularly vivid in wartime:

Government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action.… Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

What about those who are called upon to enforce state edicts, whether just or unjust? Every society includes people who are willing to act as the coercive arm of the state, those who are willing to use violence and freely risk their lives as they administer the law. The state has no great trouble recruiting policemen and prison guards. Are there enough such people to amass a huge army of hundreds of thousands of people who are willing to risk their lives carrying out destructive foreign wars of dubious merit?

When you see the pictures of American troops fighting their way through sand storms, in a strange land with strange people, seeking to overturn a government and transform a society that posed no credible threat to the United States, being shot at by average Iraqis who are clearly motivated only by the desire to expel the invader, it is not hard to imagine that US troops are wondering how it all came to this.

The British defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, claims that the coalition armed forces are made up of "men and women who made a free choice to serve their country," whereas Iraqi forces "are motivated either by fear or by hatred." It's hard to say what motivates Iraqi forces (perhaps the desire to repel invasion?), but what he says about coalition troops is simply not true.

The men and women now fighting initially agreed to be in the employ of the military. The United States is not yet conscripting people. And yet how many of these would leave Iraq if they could? What if Donald Rumsfeld announced that anyone now fighting in Iraq is free to leave without penalty? What would become of the US armed forces now attempting to bring about unconditional surrender in Iraq?

It's an interesting question, as a pure mental experiment, because it highlights the essentially forced nature of all modern military service. To leave once the war begins would amount to what the government calls desertion. This word sounds ominous, but in fact it merely describes what everyone in a civilized society takes for granted: the right to quit.

Deuteronomy's exhortation to encourage the Israelites into battle includes an invitation to freely leave: "What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house." (20:8) But there is no such right in the modern US military. If you try to leave, you face coercion, particularly if you try to leave in wartime. In this way, the military differs from the police and the ranks of prison guards, jobs from which people are free to walk away without penalty.

Punishing people for attempting to leave the military — to avoid killing and/or being killed — is not a new practice. Mises speaks of the "barbarous" practices used in the 18th century to keep soldiers from deserting their units. The more undesirable wartime conditions become, the more necessary it is for the state to force people to continue to endure them.

The scene that shocked me most in the movie Gods and Generals — and it was clearly not intended to be shocking — occurs when an assistant to Stonewall Jackson informs the general that some soldiers have been discovered in an attempt to desert the army under his command. The general orders them to be tried in a military court, and, if found guilty of attempted desertion, to be shot. They were indeed tried and shot. Thus did these men die for exercising their God-given right to walk away.

One of those shot in the film was a young man recruited by Jackson himself, the son of a friend who decided to return to the North. The scene was included to demonstrate Jackson's impartiality. This general is no respecter of persons — or (more plausibly) personhood. To me, the scene demonstrated the immorality of all modern notions of military discipline.

As the movie shows, the South believed it was fighting for the right of self-government, which required that the states be able to exercise their right to leave an increasingly despotic Union. But the military command would not allow their soldiers to secede. The Confederate generals believed that the Union must be voluntary, but the army itself must be kept together through coercion.

"The legalization of desertion might provide the very key to bringing about a more humane world."

Of course, Northern armies employed the same practice. Many Union troops believed they were fighting against slavery, which amounts to nothing more than forbidding people from exercising their right to flee their alleged owners. But the imposition of the death penalty for soldiers choosing not to fight, that is, to flee their military owners, was assumed to be a normal part of military discipline.

Both North and South claimed they were fighting in order to abolish a form of captivity — the right to self-government in one case, and the right to not be employed against one's will in the other — but the ability of the military to imprison and kill fleeing soldiers was never questioned. It is not often questioned tod

The scene parallels the opening sequence in the movie Enemy at the Gates, when Russian troops in boats are being bombed from the air by German planes. Russian troops begin to jump in the water to get away. Their Russian commander starts to unload his pistol as they leap. The viewer is rightly shocked by this incredible display of totalitarian brutality. Yet, in essence, what we are seeing is nothing more than a fast-forwarded version of the court-martial, death-penalty scene in Gods and Generals.

Both scenes underscore a reality hardly ever discussed: all modern armies are essentially totalitarian enterprises. Once you sign up for them, or are drafted, you are a slave. The penalty for becoming a fugitive is death. Even now, the enforcements against mutiny, desertion, going AWOL, or what have you, are never questioned.

This is remarkable, if you think about it. Imagine that you work for Walmart but find the job too dangerous, and try to quit. You are told that you may not, so you run away. The management catches up to you, and jails you. You refuse to go and resist. Finally, you are shot. We would all recognize that this is exploitation, an atrocity, a crime, a clear example of the disregard that this company has for human life. The public outrage would be palpable. The management, not the fleeing employees, would be jailed or possibly executed.

Murray Rothbard frames the question nicely: "In what other occupation in the country are there severe penalties, including prison and in some cases execution, for 'desertion,' i.e., for quitting the particular employment? If someone quits General Motors, is he shot at sunrise?"

The military has done a study1  of what causes people to go AWOL, concluding that the practice "tends to increase in magnitude during wartime" and when "the Army is attempting to restrict the ways that soldiers can exit service through administrative channels."

The same study profiles the deserters, as compared with nondeserters, as less educated, having a lower aptitude, more likely to be from broken homes, etc. — all the usual reasons why a person is so dishonorably disinclined to want to be killed. Finally, this study examined the effects of desertion on the individual, concluding that choosing to be disemployed from the ranks of the armed and dangerous causes "loss of self-esteem and confidence" as well as "embarrassment and even shame." Well, what else would you expect from someone who has "chosen a certain path and failed to meet the necessary requirements and/or sustain the fortitude to meet those requirements"?

Now comes the report from Diwaniya, Iraq, heavily cited by a US military spokesman, that many Iraqi soldiers were fighting at gunpoint, threatened with death by tough loyalists of President Saddam Hussein.… "The officers threatened to shoot us unless we fought," said a wounded Iraqi from his bed in the American field hospital here. "They took out their guns and pointed them and told us to fight."

It could be that the captured soldiers are only trying to win sympathy. But it would hardly be surprising if it were true. To force people to fight when they would rather not is the very essence of modern military organization. In modern practice, there is no such thing as a voluntary military. Whether you are forced into the machine or not (via conscription or via payments in tax dollars), once you are a cog, you must stay in no matter how much grinding you do or how much you are ground.

The slave-like nature of the military commitment has no expiration date. Yes, there are contracts, but the military can void them whenever it so desires. Predictably, it desires to void these contracts (through so-called stop-loss regulations) when the enlisted most want to leave: when they must kill and risk being killed. All branches of the military have implemented these stop-loss regulations because of the war on terror. This amounts to the nationalization of human beings.

 

Still, one wonders how much the ranks of the militarily employed would shrink in absence of antidesertion enforcement. If modern presidents had to recruit the way barons and lords recruited, and if they constantly faced the prospect of mass desertions, they might be more careful about getting involved in unnecessary, unjust, unwinnable wars, or going to war at all. Peace would take on new value out of necessity. When going to war, they might be more careful to curb their war aims, and match war strategies with those more limited aims.

In fact, we might discover through the study of the history of antidesertion statutes the key to the transition from the limited war and decentralized military of the medieval world to the mass murder of the modern total war. The legalization of desertion might provide the very key to bringing about a more humane world.

In the meantime, US officials would do well to stop complaining that Iraqi soldiers are being forced to serve and forced to kill. A press release from the Air Force announcing its new stop-loss rule says, "We understand the individual sacrifices that our airmen and their families will be making.… We appreciate their unwavering support and dedication to our nation."

One might even have a greater appreciation for their sacrifice (even if not their mission) if one knew that it were undertaken willingly.

This article is excerpted from It's a Jetsons World, "The Myth of the Voluntary Military" (2011).

source: Mises.org  

"Legalized" (but certainly not Moral or Constitutional) Govt Crime: CAFR SCHOOL

Charleston Voice 1st. Pub., 04.07.13

CAFR SCHOOL: School Districts And The Lottery (Rim of the World Unified School District)

This is an advanced lesson in government corruption - in legal, organized crime.

Covered here are the CAFR's for the "Rim Of The World" school district in San Bernardino County, and for the California State Lottery. District downloads below -

You can find your own district below -

37 States Allow Corporations To Get Rich Off Prison Labor

Posted by CV on 12 Nov 2013  

Source classwarfareexists

As you do your holiday shopping this year, chances are you’ll be surrounded by products that were made using prison labor.

Corporations are realizing that they don’t need to send jobs overseas to turn a profit any more. No, they didn’t have a change of heart and a new found willingness to share their hard earned profits with their workers. Instead, they’ve found a class of people that they can basically use for free. Even better, these people have almost no rights. No protections. No voice. They are numerous and growing every year. What corporations have realized is that they are sitting on the largest population of prisoners in the world.

One out of every 100 American adults is behind bars. That’s more than 2.4 million people who have been taken out of the workforce and had their rights legally stripped away. That’s a lot of potential exploitable workers for a corporation to use.

The United States has a long history of forcing its prison population to work as part of their punishment, although by no means is it the only country to do so. The 13th Amendment, passed in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude for everyone but prisoners. In 1871, Virginia declared prisoners “slaves of the state.” In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners couldn’t form unions or make work demands [source]. This all led up to the 1980s and 90s where under both a republican president and a democrat, the prison population skyrocketed. Locking up people for lengthy minimum sentences is truly one of the last remaining bipartisan agreements.

That set the stage for 1980s legislation that was passed to encourage workers to work as part of their restitution for court-ordered fines, victim restitution, child support, and other monetary judgments. In 1985, the federal government instituted the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program, meant to insure that victims got their money and the inmates learned financial responsibility. In theory it sounds reasonable. The thinking went that instead of just having prisoners sit around all day while the government picked up their bill, they could work menial jobs in order to earn their keep. In the meantime, they would learn valuable trade skills that would help them when they got out of prison.

But with any easily disenfranchised group (and prisoners might be the most disenfranchised in the country, almost by definition), the opportunity for exploitation and abuse is extremely high. The probability of abuse becomes even higher for a group of people typically perceived as “deserving” of it. Prisoners fit that bill nicely.

Given the substantial profits that could be made by moving your labor away from legally protected workers and over to legally unprotected prisoners, it was only a matter of time before states and corporations got busy hashing out the exact business details:

At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more.

All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call “highly skilled positions.” 

At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month. [source]

Prisoners are making roughly $20 per month. To put that in perspective: Bangladesh – a country that pays its workers some of the worst wages in the world – just raised their minimum wage for workers to $66 per month.

That cheap labor is then used to make an impressive assortment of goods:

According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people. [source]

Entire factories can be run by prisoners, and companies would only need to pay them dollars a day. Even better, if you’re a corporation interested in maximizing your profits, your workers can no longer get workers comp, they can’t call off, they are never late, they can’t complain. If one decides he doesn’t like his job he is sent to an isolation unit until he decides that he prefers working for nothing over psychological torture.

Private prisons have taken this idea and ran with it. The idea of a for-profit prison system is already terrible and predictably pockmarked with a steady stream of abuses, but prisoners being farmed out to the highest bidder, with the prison getting paid for their labor is stunningly audacious.

Today’s corporations can lease factories in prisons, as well as lease prisoners out to their factories. In many cases, private corporations are running prisons-for-profit, further incentivizing their stake in locking people up. The government is profiting as well, by running prison factories that operate as “multibillion-dollar industries in every state, and throughout the federal prison system,” where prisoners are contracted out to major corporations by the state.

In the most extreme cases, we are even witnessing the reemergence of the chain gang. In Arizona, the self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America,” Joe Arpaio, requires his Maricopa County inmates to enroll in chain gangs to perform various community services or face lockdown with three other inmates in an 8-by-12-foot cell, for 23 hours a day. In June of this year, Arpaio started a female-only chain gang made up of women convicted of driving under the influence. [source]

We are building an unethical and unhealthy economic system that is further destroying our country’s workforce and shifting it over to underpaid, abused prisoners. That system has a strong incentive to keep jails full and criminals locked away for exorbitant sentences. If we continue to do nothing, the problem will only grow. Unfortunately, the stigma that being in prison means you deserve whatever comes your way has supported of this dangerous system and given politicians and businessmen political cover in further enriching corporate interests at the expense of everyone else.