Then Jesus asked them, "When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?" "Nothing," they answered. He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: `And he was numbered with the transgressors' ; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment." The disciples said, "See, Lord, here are two swords." "That is enough," he replied. (Luke 22:35-38, NIV)
O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love
our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth:
deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in
your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
O God our Father, whose Son forgave his enemies while he
was suffering shame and death: Strengthen those who suffer
for the sake of conscience; when they are accused, save them
from speaking in hate; when they are rejected, save them
from bitterness; when they are imprisoned, save them from
despair; and to us your servants, give grace to respect their
witness and to discern the truth, that our society may be
cleansed and strengthened. This we ask for the sake of Jesus
Christ, our merciful and righteous Judge. Amen.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Nemo me impune lacessit
Nemo me impune lacessit is the Latin motto of the Order of the Thistle and of three Scottish regiments of the British Army. The motto also appears, in conjunction with the collar of the Order of the Thistle, in later versions of the Royal coat of arms of the Kingdom of Scotland and subsequently in the version of the Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom used in Scotland
Friday, December 23, 2011
Truth is treason in the empire of lies.
Ron Paul is the only politician with a consistant message... the only politician that offers real solutions & hope for America's survival. The following is from the preface of his 2008 book "Revolution: A Manifesto".
"Every election cycle we are treated to candidates who promise us "change," and 2008 has been no different. But in the American political lexicon, "change" always means more of the same: more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.
Real change would mean something like the opposite of those things. It might even involve following our Constitution. And that's the one option Americans are never permitted to hear....
With national bankruptcy looming, politicians from both parties continue to make multi-trillion dollar promises of "free" goods from the government, and hardly a soul wonders if we can still afford to have troops in - this is not a misprint - 130 countries around the world. All of this is going to come to an end sooner or later, because financial reality is going to make itself felt in very uncomfortable ways. But instead of thinking about what this means for how we conduct our foreign and domestic affairs, our chattering classes seem incapable of speaking in anything but the emptiest platitudes, when they can be bothered to address serious issues at all. Fundamental questions like this, and countless others besides, are off the table in our mainstream media, which focuses our attention on trivialities and phony debates as we march toward oblivion.
This is the deadening consensus that crosses party lines, that dominates our major media, and that is strangling the liberty and prosperity that were once the birthright of Americans. Dissenters who tell their fellow citizens what is really going on are subject to smear campaigns that, like clockwork, are aimed at the political heretic. Truth is treason in the empire of lies.
There is an alternative to national bankruptcy, a bigger police state, trillion-dollar wars, and a government that draws ever more parasitically on the productive energies of the American people. It's called freedom. But as we've learned through hard experience, we are not going to hear a word in its favor if our political and media establishments have anything to say about it.
If we want to live in a free society, we need to break free from these artificial limitations on free debate and start asking serious questions once again. I am happy that my campaign for the presidency has finally raised some of them. But this is a long-term project that will persist far into the future. These ideas cannot be allowed to die, buried beneath the mind-numbing chorus of empty slogans and inanities that constitute official political discourse in America.
That is why I wrote this book."
~ Ron Paul
"Every election cycle we are treated to candidates who promise us "change," and 2008 has been no different. But in the American political lexicon, "change" always means more of the same: more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.
Real change would mean something like the opposite of those things. It might even involve following our Constitution. And that's the one option Americans are never permitted to hear....
With national bankruptcy looming, politicians from both parties continue to make multi-trillion dollar promises of "free" goods from the government, and hardly a soul wonders if we can still afford to have troops in - this is not a misprint - 130 countries around the world. All of this is going to come to an end sooner or later, because financial reality is going to make itself felt in very uncomfortable ways. But instead of thinking about what this means for how we conduct our foreign and domestic affairs, our chattering classes seem incapable of speaking in anything but the emptiest platitudes, when they can be bothered to address serious issues at all. Fundamental questions like this, and countless others besides, are off the table in our mainstream media, which focuses our attention on trivialities and phony debates as we march toward oblivion.
This is the deadening consensus that crosses party lines, that dominates our major media, and that is strangling the liberty and prosperity that were once the birthright of Americans. Dissenters who tell their fellow citizens what is really going on are subject to smear campaigns that, like clockwork, are aimed at the political heretic. Truth is treason in the empire of lies.
There is an alternative to national bankruptcy, a bigger police state, trillion-dollar wars, and a government that draws ever more parasitically on the productive energies of the American people. It's called freedom. But as we've learned through hard experience, we are not going to hear a word in its favor if our political and media establishments have anything to say about it.
If we want to live in a free society, we need to break free from these artificial limitations on free debate and start asking serious questions once again. I am happy that my campaign for the presidency has finally raised some of them. But this is a long-term project that will persist far into the future. These ideas cannot be allowed to die, buried beneath the mind-numbing chorus of empty slogans and inanities that constitute official political discourse in America.
That is why I wrote this book."
~ Ron Paul
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Liberty vs Power
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” This quote by Thomas Jefferson reflects an understanding that no matter what period of history one looks at governments always tend to expand their power and control. It has happened countless times in history, and it is always at the expense of liberty. Our Founding Fathers waged a classic struggle between liberty and power and in so doing succeeded in subjugating government to the will of the people. They won their struggle because they understood some things that we have forgotten. The Founders knew that liberty and power cannot coexist and that when either of the two expand, the other must of necessity recede. They knew that since government is an aggressive force and liberty a delicate flower, defenders of freedom must be constantly vigilant.
As I explain in, Liberty VS Power, when the colonists saw the British government trying to exercise unprecedented power in the 1760s, a spontaneous resistance movement emerged. It was an eighteenth century version of the modern-day Tea Party Movement, and it literally led to the Tea Party in 1773 which gives today’s movement its name. In an effort to undercut this resistance movement, the British press tried to discredit the protesters by characterizing them as an angry mob, radicals, and rabble. The resistance movement eventually flourished into a revolution and a war for independence.
The new framework of government that our Founders produced in 1787 was a remarkable achievement. By separating power between the states and the nation, dividing federal power into three branches, and devising an intricate set of checks and balances, they created a Constitution that bound the federal government by law and made it answerable to the people. The Constitution is the law or the framework that is supposed to keep the federal government in its place—that is to say limited.
We often forget that the Constitution was not written to govern people, it was written to govern government. Whenever you hear someone arguing that the Constitution should be viewed as a “living document” whose meaning can change over time, you know that person is in favor of big government. At the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention a woman is said to have approached Benjamin Franklin and asked, “What have you given us?” to which he responded, “A republic if you can keep it.”
____Timothy D. Johnson is a history professor at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee and the author of Liberty VS Power which is available at http://www.libertyvspower.com/.
Insurrectionary anarchism
An influential individualist concept of insurrection appears in the book of Max Stirner The Ego and its Own from 1845. There he manifests:
"Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synonymous. The former consists in an overturning of conditions, of the established condition or status, the State or society, and is accordingly a political or social act; the latter has indeed for its unavoidable consequence a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from it but from men's discontent with themselves, is not an armed rising, but a rising of individuals, a getting up, without regard to the arrangements that spring from it. The Revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on "institutions." It is not a fight against the established, since, if it prospers, the established collapses of itself; it is only a working forth of me out of the established. If I leave the established, it is dead and passes into decay. Now, as my object is not the overthrow of an established order but my elevation above it, my purpose and deed are not a political or social but (as directed toward myself and my ownness alone) an egoistic purpose and deed."
"Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as synonymous. The former consists in an overturning of conditions, of the established condition or status, the State or society, and is accordingly a political or social act; the latter has indeed for its unavoidable consequence a transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from it but from men's discontent with themselves, is not an armed rising, but a rising of individuals, a getting up, without regard to the arrangements that spring from it. The Revolution aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer to let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and sets no glittering hopes on "institutions." It is not a fight against the established, since, if it prospers, the established collapses of itself; it is only a working forth of me out of the established. If I leave the established, it is dead and passes into decay. Now, as my object is not the overthrow of an established order but my elevation above it, my purpose and deed are not a political or social but (as directed toward myself and my ownness alone) an egoistic purpose and deed."
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
We’ve Crossed the Rubicon/ from Eric Peters
"Do you suppose cows have any idea what’s coming as they’re marched down the chute? Or do they stare with bovine indifference at the tail and hind quarters in front of them, until they’re suddenly — and very briefly — startled by the man with the nail gun?
Perhaps Americans will — likewise too late — ask themselves what happened in the very near future. Perhaps just after the midnight knock comes and they are taken away into the night.
It is not an exaggeration.
America is now on the cusp of becoming a state that does exactly such things — things exactly like the things done by 20th-century horror shows such as National Socialist Germany or Stalin’s USSR. Literally. Not “this is where it might lead” or “the tendency is similar.” Exactly, literally, the same thing. The only difference is that it awaits being done on a mass scale. But the power to do it openly — brazenly — has been asserted.
And is about to be sanctified by law.
The National Defense Authorization Act will make it official. It will confer upon the executive branch and the military (increasingly, the same things) the permanent authority to snatch and grab any person, U.S. citizens included, whom they decree to be a “terrorist” — as defined or not by the executive or the military — and imprison him indefinitely, without formal charge, presentation of evidence or judicial proceeding of any kind. These “detainees” will have neither civilian rights in the civil court system nor — crucially — even the minimal rights to due process and decent treatment conferred upon prisoners of war. (And we are allegedly “at war,” are we not?)
The language of the bill specifically includes American citizens “caught” within the borders of the United States — aka, the “battlefield.” It is claimed by sponsors that only those awful them – you know, the enemies of freedom the Chimp and his successors like to reference as they systematically gut our freedoms — need worry. But read the actual document, and be afraid.
The wording is such that any shyster lawyer for the government will be able to draw up a memorandum at some point in the near future equating, say, criticism of the federal government’s policies in the Middle East with “substantially supporting” the enemies of the United States. As defined by the United States.
That is, as defined by the government.
At its whim. At the personal discretion of whomever happens to be the Maximum Leader, or even one of the ML’s duly appointed minions.
As the always excellent Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone recently observed, what happens when some nutjob who attended a few Tea Party meetings tries to bomb a federal building? Will the Tea Party itself — and anyone who “substantially supports” it — be thus transformed into an “enemy combatant”? How about the OWS protestors? How about this newsletter or website — and this author — which have on several occasions called bullshit on the federal government’s usurpations and follies? How hard will it be, really, to describe such actions — such thoughts expressed in an article or an interview — as “substantially supporting” whatever the government decides amounts to “terrorism” or the threat thereof against itself?
Surely, the door is now wide open for such an interpretation by some John Woo or Dick Cheney waiting in the wings. Prospective jefe Newtie is practically turgid at the prospect of getting his hands on such power. And there is no longer (or soon won’t be) any legal means available to contest a one-way trip to Treblinka in Topeka — or wherever it is they will send you.
Taibbi writes:
As Taibbi notes:
And it’s coming for us."
- Eric Peters
Perhaps Americans will — likewise too late — ask themselves what happened in the very near future. Perhaps just after the midnight knock comes and they are taken away into the night.
It is not an exaggeration.
America is now on the cusp of becoming a state that does exactly such things — things exactly like the things done by 20th-century horror shows such as National Socialist Germany or Stalin’s USSR. Literally. Not “this is where it might lead” or “the tendency is similar.” Exactly, literally, the same thing. The only difference is that it awaits being done on a mass scale. But the power to do it openly — brazenly — has been asserted.
And is about to be sanctified by law.
The National Defense Authorization Act will make it official. It will confer upon the executive branch and the military (increasingly, the same things) the permanent authority to snatch and grab any person, U.S. citizens included, whom they decree to be a “terrorist” — as defined or not by the executive or the military — and imprison him indefinitely, without formal charge, presentation of evidence or judicial proceeding of any kind. These “detainees” will have neither civilian rights in the civil court system nor — crucially — even the minimal rights to due process and decent treatment conferred upon prisoners of war. (And we are allegedly “at war,” are we not?)
The language of the bill specifically includes American citizens “caught” within the borders of the United States — aka, the “battlefield.” It is claimed by sponsors that only those awful them – you know, the enemies of freedom the Chimp and his successors like to reference as they systematically gut our freedoms — need worry. But read the actual document, and be afraid.
The wording is such that any shyster lawyer for the government will be able to draw up a memorandum at some point in the near future equating, say, criticism of the federal government’s policies in the Middle East with “substantially supporting” the enemies of the United States. As defined by the United States.
That is, as defined by the government.
At its whim. At the personal discretion of whomever happens to be the Maximum Leader, or even one of the ML’s duly appointed minions.
As the always excellent Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone recently observed, what happens when some nutjob who attended a few Tea Party meetings tries to bomb a federal building? Will the Tea Party itself — and anyone who “substantially supports” it — be thus transformed into an “enemy combatant”? How about the OWS protestors? How about this newsletter or website — and this author — which have on several occasions called bullshit on the federal government’s usurpations and follies? How hard will it be, really, to describe such actions — such thoughts expressed in an article or an interview — as “substantially supporting” whatever the government decides amounts to “terrorism” or the threat thereof against itself?
Surely, the door is now wide open for such an interpretation by some John Woo or Dick Cheney waiting in the wings. Prospective jefe Newtie is practically turgid at the prospect of getting his hands on such power. And there is no longer (or soon won’t be) any legal means available to contest a one-way trip to Treblinka in Topeka — or wherever it is they will send you.
Taibbi writes:
“The really galling thing is that this act specifically envisions American citizens falling under the authority of the bill. One of its supporters, the dependably unlikeable Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, bragged that the law ‘basically says …for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield’ and that people can be jailed without trial, be they ‘American citizens or not.’ New Hampshire Republican Kelly Ayotte reiterated that ‘America is part of the battlefield.’”Graham further stated:
“It is not unfair to make American citizens account for the fact that they decided to help al-Qaida to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next. And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.’”The key thing being…it is entirely up to the government to decide what constitutes “helping” al al-Qaida. It can be nothing more than a vague assertion. Indeed, no evidence of any kind whatsoever is necessary to “hold them as long as it takes” in order to “find intelligence” (not defined, either) by any means it wishes to employ.
As Taibbi notes:
“If these laws are passed, we would be forced to rely upon the discretion of a demonstrably corrupt and consistently idiotic government to not use these awful powers to strike back at legitimate domestic unrest.”The Fuhrer (oops, President Obama) is about to sign this latter-day enabling act, and when he does, it will mark the moment that America’s coffin is nailed shut. The corpse has been on view since Sept. 11. But there was always some hope that, perhaps, it might be jolted back into life. Now we know the awful truth. Death is permanent.
And it’s coming for us."
- Eric Peters
Monday, December 19, 2011
Historical Perspective
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
- John Adams
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
- George Washington
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."
- Samuel Adams
- Thomas Jefferson
"Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
- John Adams
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
- George Washington
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."
- Samuel Adams
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Definition: in·sur·rec·tion
in·sur·rec·tion
[in-suh-rek-shuh
n] 
Show IPA noun
an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.
Origin:
1425–75; late Middle English < Late Latin insurrēctiōn- (stem of insurrēctiō ), equivalent to insurrēct ( us ) (past participle of insurgere; see insurgent) + -iōn- -ion
1425–75; late Middle English < Late Latin insurrēctiōn- (stem of insurrēctiō ), equivalent to insurrēct ( us ) (past participle of insurgere; see insurgent) + -iōn- -ion
Related forms
in·sur·rec·tion·al, adjective
in·sur·rec·tion·al·ly, adverb
in·sur·rec·tion·ism, noun
in·sur·rec·tion·ist, noun
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