From Feasting to Fasting

Thanksgiving is over, so let's change the subject somewhat.

I was hoping to complete a post on Foreign Policy this Thanksgiving weekend, but that hasn't happened. Here is an outline of the idea.

Thanksgiving is a religious holiday, a clear violation of "the Separation of Church and State." It has a long pedigree in American history. See some examples here.

But in addition to upbeat days of Thanksgiving, there were also official government-proclaimed days of fasting, humilation, and prayer. Here are some:

• Proclamation - Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer - 1795, Massachusetts
• Proclamation - Fasting and Prayer - 1798
• Proclamation - Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer - 1807, Connecticut
• Proclamation - Humiliation and Prayer - 1812
• Proclamation - Humiliation and Prayer - 1812
• Proclamation - Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer - 1860

John Adams issued a proclamation for a day of prayer, encouraging the nation in Trinitarian repentance:

• call to mind our numerous offenses against the Most High God, confess them before Him with the sincerest penitence,
• implore His pardoning mercy, through the Great Mediator and Redeemer, for our past transgressions,
• and that through the grace of His Holy Spirit we may be disposed and enabled to yield a more suitable obedience to His righteous requisitions in time to come;

If we can list our nation's blessings, can we also list our nation's sins? Do we understand the concept of repentance?

Conservatives will be quick to list off sins we should repent of: abortion, homosexuality, divorce, Godless education, etc. I agree.

But what about our foreign policy?

I'm inspired to ask that question by the recent debate over foreign policy, and the way the mainstream media fawns over Romney and Gingrich while dismissing Ron Paul. The CBS Sunday show "Face the Nation" last week showed the contrast between The Knowledgeable Gentleman vs. the Venomous Viper. The Viper described Ron Paul's foreign policy against the potentially nuked-up Iran as "being nice to Iran."

That got me thinking.

Doesn't Jesus Christ command nations to "be nice" to their enemies?

If I believed the federal government had constitutional authority to set religious days of fasting and prayer, I think it should proclaim one for our foreign policy sins against Iran:

• Overthrowing their popularly-elected government in 1953, in violation of Romans 13.
• Putting in place a dictator who was worse than the one complained about in the Declaration of Independence.
• Arming another dictator to wage war against Iran after Iran overthrew the U.S. puppet dictator.
• Arming Saddam with weapons of mass destruction to use against Iran

This list of sins could be repeated for U.S. sins against many other nations on earth.

God's commandments cover not just acts of violence against others, but also the failure to discharge the requirements of love. "Thou shalt not steal" also means building up the estate of others. "Thou shalt not kill" also contains a duty to create greater health and longevity for others.

America, the once-Christian nation, has gone from being a "City upon a Hill" to being an imperialist warmonger. We no longer export the Gospel, we are the world's largest arms dealer.

This deserves a national day of "humiliation and prayer" and repentance leading to a reforming of our anti-Christian foreign policy.

This is absolutely vital to our "national security." Only by repenting of militarism and imperialism can the United States ever hope to have "a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence."

Committees of Correspondence

On this day in 1772, Samuel Adams began a work that would earn him the title, "The Father of the American Revolution."

On November 20, 1772, Adams sent his first letter to the American colonists through a network of communication called "The Committees of Correspondence." You can read his letter here.

Unless you went to a government-run school.

America is largely illiterate compared to America in Samuel Adams' day.

Even those who know their phonics can't follow complex political arguments, like those that Adams used to inspire Americans to declare their independence from a tyrannical government.

But even those who can follow complex arguments are uncomfortable in the Christian milieu of the American Revolution. Adams' letter spoke of three issues:

I. Natural Rights of the Colonists as Men.
II. The Rights of the Colonists as Christians.
III. The Rights of the Colonists as Subjects.

Sam Adams did not see himself creating a new secular government, but operating within the centuries-old framework of Christianity.

1930 Article in Yale Law Journal Proves America is a Christian Nation

In 1930 the prestigious Yale Law Journal published a pioneering article by B.H. Hartogensis entitled, "Denial of Equal Rights to Religious Minorities and Non-Believers in The United States."

The article complains about all the ways federal, state, and local governments acknowledge Christianity, and demands that we become a secular [atheistic] nation.

By advocating such change back in 1930, the Yale Law Journal admits what the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 1892: That the United States is a Christian nation.

Perhaps the title of this post should be, "1930 Article in Yale Law Journal Proves America Was a Christian Nation." It certainly isn't any more. We've been deceived by the myth of "Separation of Church and State,"
which really means the separation of God and Government,
which is the claim that Government need not be "under God,"
which is the claim that Government can rightfully rebel against God,
which is really the claim that the Government is God.

While illustrative, this article is not a "smoking gun." By the time the Law School at the University of Colorado published an article entitled, "The Legal Enforcement of Morality" by Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner in 1967, the revolution was already well completed. Some suggest that the revolution began in 1923, with the founding of the American Law Institute, which began purging criminal codes of any Christian influence. Others would go back to 1870, when Christopher Columbus Langdell was appointed by Harvard Law School to replace "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" with a more "scientific" (Darwinian) approach to legal education. Others would even go back to the Constitution itself.

But if we can change from being a Christian nation into an atheistic nation, we can change back. Or forward, to Christian anarcho-capitalism. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it can collapse about that fast.

Holy War

The verses in the Old Testament which are used by supporters of "capital punishment" today are verses which required the shedding of blood to make atonement. Smaller sins required the shedding of the blood of smaller animals, but so-called "capital crimes" required the shedding of the blood of the murderer himself.

The concept of "holy war" in the Old Testament is capital punishment on a national scale. God promised Abraham the land of Canaan, but waited until all the nations of the land were completely devoted to genocide, child sacrifice, or ritual homosexuality.

Genesis 15:16
But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.

Leviticus 18:24-28
Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you:
And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.

No Christian today should use Old Testament verses on warfare to support U.S. intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Horn of Africa. No shedding of animal or human blood brings atonement or has any efficacy after the Cross.

"Holy wars" in the medieval age (the "Crusades") were defensive (e.g., defending Jerusalem from Muslim invasion) and limited to professional armies bound by medieval Christian codes of warfare which barred involving innocent non-combatant civilians.

Rushdoony makes the important point that today we live in an age of holy wars.

Much is said about "holy wars" in past history, and most of it is nonsense. The true holy wars in the fullest sense of the word are after Darwin and Marx. World Wars I and II were holy crusades "to make the world safe for democracy," and to "end war and ensure peace," and so on. The terminology of communist warfare is the most intense example of holy warfare in all history.
Since accepting the necessity of struggle for survival, our humanism of today has in it the grounds for the holy war of our evolutionary faith.
The age of the state, already firmly geared to warfare as an instrument of politics, thus turned warfare, with Darwin and Marx, into the holy crusade of humanism on its march to utopia.

The Warfare State

As James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, documented in his book, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, the rise of Marxism and Communism in the 19th century were explicitly religious, a perverse mirror image of Christianity. In 20th-century Protestant nations, however, the Religion of Secular Humanism has postured as completely non-religious and "scientific." Nevertheless, since all men are created in the Image of God, all men are at root religious, and secularism is a passionate faith which now dominates once-Protestant nations.

The fact of warfare gained prestige when Darwin set forth his theory of evolution. The struggle for survival was widely assumed to mean warfare in one form or another, economic and class warfare, warfare for resources, warfare in every area. When Darwin published his Origin of Species on November 24, 1859, a waiting world was delighted with his thesis and the entire edition sold out on the day of publication. Two of the happiest of the earliest readers were Marx and Engels, who rightly saw in Darwin the confirmation of their beliefs: they correctly held that Darwin's success would ensure the triumph of socialism. The reason is an obvious one. If evolution rather than creation by God is true, then two things follow: first, life is a struggle for survival, and, second, if God is eliminated, nothing morally binding remains to ensure private property, Christian marriage, and religious authority in any realm. Life is then an amoral struggle for survival, and in that amoral struggle mass man has the best chances for victory, supposedly.

Darwin promised the end of Biblical morality.

Secular holy wars have thus rejected the moral limits of Christian "just war" theory. Whereas hundreds, even thousands, of people were killed in medieval crusades, modern secular holy war has annihilated tens of millions of human beings.

War is the secular sacrament that brings salvation. Its architects passionately believe they are bringing in utopia by their political and military liturgies. "We the Sheeple" believe our leaders will bring us security. We believe it religously. We take their word by faith.

This is why I have spoken of "the Cult of National Security."

Do "Capitalists" Believe in Capitalism?

I have defined "capitalism" as

the social system based on the rejection of the initiation of force or violence against others

Many in the "Occupy Wall Street" movement have harsh criticisms of the Wall Street crowd -- Paulson, Rubin, Geithner, and others moving in the Revolving Door between Wall Street and Washington D.C.

Do these "capitalists" believe in capitalism? Gary North answers:

Hardly. Adam Smith described them well in 1776: ready to collude together against the public interest whenever they can get the state to provide them with a monopoly through state coercion.

Consumers pay them for only one thing: their ability to deliver the goods at a low prices. Capitalists stand ready at any time to get the state to skew the conditions in their favor. Smith did not have one good word to say for businessmen as a class. He distrusted their motives completely. But [Ayn] Rand treated them as if they were heroes under siege by the state. Better to see them as ideological trimmers laying siege on their competitors and consumers alike by means of the state’s collusion with them.

Ayn Rand Did Not Understand Capitalism * Godfather Politics

Review: The 2008 Bailout

Would Jesus Celebrate Veterans Day?

I myself have often succumbed to temptation, and have taken the easy way rather than courageously take the hard, narrow road of faithful obedience to God.

The military recruiters of Washington D.C. tell us that joining the armed services is a "patriotic" and noble way to "serve your country." They tell us it's a shrewed career move, a path to pay for college, a great adventure, or a way to "be all you can be."

All we have to do is kill some unknown brown people on the other side of the world.

Sometimes they threaten us with prison.

That makes it even easier to give in to temptation.

I can sympathize with Veterans, but I cannot honor them.

A truly honorable American questions the Federal Government.

A truly knowledgeable American knows that no war engaged by Washington D.C. has been a "just war."

On this Veterans Day, let's ask the question, "Would Jesus Celebrate Veterans Day?"

"America," my country, is an ideal:

• A people who enjoy "Liberty Under God."


• A "City upon a Hill," not a Roman-style empire.


• A country once identified by the Supreme Court of the United States as "a Christian nation."


• A place where an immigrant can get off the boat with nothing in his pocket and work and save and eventually live securely under his own "Vine & Fig Tree"

The Federal Government of the United States is at war with "America."

I love "America."

I hate "the United States."

Please use the comment box below to tell me why it is honorable to serve this atheistic regime.

Please tell me why I should honor those who chose to kill other human beings created in the Image of God, to destroy the homes they built, and leave their families in poverty and misery.

Please tell me which of the wars ever fought by the U.S. Federal Government has been a "just war."

We can debate this passionately, but we can also discuss it factually, rationally, Biblically, and prayerfully.

"Would Jesus Celebrate Veterans Day?"

Please leave a comment or join me at tomorrow's Ozarks Virtual Town Hall.

Can an Anarchist be Bribed?

Imagine that you receive an anonymous tip that a government entity is about to raid your home or business. Let's stipulate that the raid is manifestly, patently, indisputably unconstitutional, and that your rights will be vindicated in a few years after lengthy and costly litigation, and the government official who authorized this raid will be ignominiously drummed out of office in a great scandal which irreparably damages the reputation of his office, adversely affecting his successor's ability to discharge his duties.

Should you bribe this government official in an attempt to persuade him to call off the raid on your home or business?

Gary North defends Theonomic Bribery.

Does that justify the likes of Jack Abramoff?


Lesley Stahl of CBS News gets 'Jacked' on '60 Minutes'

An anarchist does not believe in using government force to redistribute wealth. This is a major benefit anticipated in exchange for a bribe.

Sometimes a person might bribe a Congressman to prevent the use of force directed against an otherwise peaceful and voluntary act of consenting capitalism. No need to bribe an anarchist to achieve this result, since the anarchist is already committed to that goal. A bribe would be wasted, since it would effect no policy change.

Everybody knows that lobbyists don't bother knocking on Ron Paul's door. He will always say "NO" to the unconstitutional use of government force to secure private advantage.

What if some really stupid criminal person offered Ron Paul a bribe to get the Federal Reserve audited?

If elected, I would accept bribes for this purpose, theologically speaking (Proverbs 13:22, Proverbs 28:8).

Legally speaking, I'd have to think about this. Does it violate anti-bribery laws to accept a gift if it can be proven that it had no effect on policy?

The Supreme Court further clarified the law by setting standards for federal bribery statutes in United States v. Sun Diamond Growers, 526 U.S. 398, 119 S.Ct. 1402, 143 L.Ed.2d 576 (1999). The Court concluded that a person did not violate the law merely by giving a gift to a public official. Prosecutors must show that there was a connection between a specific official act in the past or future and the gift.
Bribery - Definition, Court Cases, Articles, History - LawBrain