WHY GOD IS IN THE DECLARATION BUT NOT THE CONSTITUTION

WHY GOD IS IN THE DECLARATION BUT NOT THE CONSTITUTION

No country venerates its “Founding Fathers” like the United States. Academics, legislators, judges, and ordinary citizens all frequently seek to validate their opinions and policy prescriptions by identifying them with the statesmen who led America to nationhood. It is not surprising, therefore, that debates about the role of religion in the United States are infused with references to the faith of the Founding Fathers and to the two greatest documents they gave to the fledgling republic: the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. People across the religious spectrum, from the most devout believers to the most committed atheists, look to these documents for support. Yet the blessings they offer are mixed. The Declaration contains several references to God, the Constitution none at all. The reasons for this variation reveal a great deal about the founding principles of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence is an apology for revolution. Support for a complete break with Great Britain was growing stronger week by week in the spring of 1776, both in the Continental Congress and in the thirteen colonies at large. On June 7, 1776, a resolution advocating independence was presented to Congress by Richard Henry Lee of the Virginia delegation. Four days later Congress appointed a committee of five delegates to draft a document explaining the historic separation it would soon be voting on.

The resulting Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson and edited by his fellow delegates, contains a theory of rights that depends on a Supreme Being, not man, for its validity. The Declaration states that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is possible to see in these words an affirmation of the Founders’ religious faith, but God-given rights had less to do with theology in the summer of 1776 than they did with rebellion.


In stating that people’s rights were given to them by their creator, the Continental Congress endowed those rights with a legitimacy that knows no parallel in mortal sources. What God has given to man is not enjoyed at the sufferance of any monarch or government. Liberty is the inviolable birthright of all. The right of revolution proclaimed by the Declaration flows directly from this notion of inviolability: it is to secure people’s divinely endowed and unalienable rights that governments, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” are established. The people consequently have the right and indeed the duty to alter or abolish a form of government that becomes tyrannical.

The Declaration contains several other references to a higher power. The introduction states that the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” entitle the American people to a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. In the conclusion, Congress appeals to “the Supreme Judge of the world” for the rectitude of its intentions and professes its “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.” In each case, reference to a deity serves to validate the assertion of independence.

The genius of the Declaration is the inclusive way the divine is given expression. The appellations of God are generic. Adherents of traditional theistic sects can read the words “Nature’s God,” “Creator,” and “Supreme Judge,” and understand them to mean the god they worship. The claims made on numerous Christian websites attest to this. Yet opponents of dogma read those same words and see an embracive, non-sectarian concept of divinity. This is no small testimony to the wisdom and foresight of the Founding Fathers. All Americans could support the Revolution and independence. All can regard their rights as unalienable, their liberty as inviolable.

Unlike the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution contains no reference to God. At first, this may seem odd. Why did the men who drafted the Declaration invoke a Supreme Being several times, while the men who drafted the Constitution did not mention a higher power even once? Only six individuals signed both documents, so it could be hypothesized that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention that convened in Philadelphia in 1787 were a different and less religious group then the delegates to the Continental Congress, or perhaps that the delegates to the Continental Congress were savvy freethinkers cynically manipulating people’s belief in God to win support for their overthrow of British rule. Neither explanation holds water. Some of the Founders were conventional Christians and some were not, but the belief in a deity implied in the Declaration was sincere and likely universal among the delegates to both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention. And a belief in the possibility of divine favor was held by even some of the least religious Founders. So, again, why no invocation of God in the second major founding document?

The threefold answer lies in the stated purposes of the Constitution, its religious neutrality, and the theory of government it embodies. Whereas the Declaration explained and justified a rebellion to secure God-given rights, the Constitution is a blueprint for stable and effective republican government in a free country. The Preamble to the Constitution declares that its purposes are “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.” These are wholly secular objects; religious references are extraneous in a document drafted to further them.

Eighteenth century America was religiously diverse, and by the time of the Revolution religion was widely viewed as a matter of voluntary individual choice. The Constitution acknowledged these realities and, unlike contemporary European political orders, promoted no sect and took no position whatsoever on theological issues. There is no state religion and Article VI of the Constitution provides that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” The First Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1791, provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The absence of references to a deity in the Constitution is consistent with the strict religious neutrality of the entire document.

The Constitution established a strong national government to replace the relatively feeble Confederation Congress created by the Revolutionary-era Articles of Confederation, but the Constitution is hardly a document glorifying top-down power. On the contrary, the theory of government underpinning the United States Constitution is popular sovereignty. The government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, not from an assembly of elders, not from a king or a prelate, and not from a higher power. The stirring opening words of the Preamble, “We the People of the United States,” make it clear both who is establishing the government and for whose benefit it exists. There is no consent required beyond the will of the people for the people to govern themselves.

This view that the Constitution is a bold assertion of popular sovereignty is often countered by pointing out how elitist some of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were and how allegedly undemocratic the document they drafted was. Only the members of the House of Representatives were initially chosen directly by voters. Senators were to be chosen indirectly by state legislatures, and the President by electors appointed by the state legislatures.

This criticism confuses an admittedly elitist preference for government by the able with a theory of power emanating from above. The Constitution not only rejected monarchy, but all forms of hereditary privilege and arbitrary rule. It established fixed rules that delimited the powers of the governors, not the rights of the governed. It is to the citizens and the states, not to the executive, that legislators are answerable. The source of all legislative and executive power can be traced, directly or indirectly, to the people.


And in the early years of the American republic, the people in question were deeply suspicious of power. There was considerable opposition to the Constitution as initially drafted, both in the state conventions called to ratify it and among ordinary Americans. Opponents believed that a centralization of authority would lead to tyranny and argued either for outright rejection or, at a minimum, for amendments to limit the powers of the new government and safeguard liberties. In such an anti-power environment, few Americans wished to see their new rulers claim, as European rulers did, that their authority was divine in origin. In creating a political order based on popular sovereignty, the Founding Fathers thus turned prevailing European political theory on its head. In place of the divine right of monarchs, the Declaration asserted the divine rights of all men, and both the Declaration and the Constitution source the legitimacy of political rule exclusively in the consent of the governed.

The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution do not therefore represent competing views of the existence of a Supreme Being or its role in American political life. They are two sides of the same coin. When read together, the Declaration and Constitution tell us that the people’s rights are divine in origin, sacred and unalienable, while governments are human in origin, answerable to the people and dependent entirely on their consent.

by Anthony J. Minna

Does anyone tell the truth anymore?

Omission--keeping the facts and the truth from the indigenous population

Does anyone tell the truth anymore?

As an outsider, I have been witnessing the weaponizing of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of the United States to try and fraudulently win an election, and then attempt to stage a political coup against a duly elected president.https://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/2019/06/to-force-another-to-consent-is.html

Begun under the Obama Administration, we have seen the CIA (under John Brennan), the National Security apparatus (under James Clapper), the FBI (under James Comey), the Department of Justice (under Loretta Lynch), bring a fraudulent dossier to the secret government FISA court, for permission to engage in espionage against, conduct illegal unmaskings of American citizens, spy on anyone connected with their political rival, and set the top level personnel in the FBI and DOJ on a prolonged campaign to indict a sitting president on the fake charge of Russian Collusion, a charge, it transpires, that they themselves were guilt of.

Does anyone tell the truth anymore?

In America, the 2020 Presidential campaign is already underway. The Democrats are pretending they are running a progressive campaign when in truth they are hell bent on transforming America into a Socialist state. In truth, they are running a campaign built on hate, racism and division. The stench of Socialism is in the air and, if we listen to Bernie Sanders and some of the new Democratic faces, Socialism is only a temporary pause on the road to full-blown Marxism.

Does anyone tell the truth anymore in America?

Marxism doesn’t start in Congress. It starts with the radical brainwashing of impressionable young minds on campus. US campuses have become Marxist factories of lies, churning out the next generation of indoctrinated opinion and influence makers and future lawmakers. From campus they go via community organizing to State elections to Congress. That is the path chosen by those who present themselves as “the attractive new face of progressivism.” They win over the hearts and minds of the young, but they are anything but progressive or liberal. They are intolerant radicals promoting big government control over every aspect of citizens lives based on an economy that will ruin the country.

They have the narrative buttoned down. Speak truth to their lies and you are branded as a racist, white supremacist, a toxic male. Any insult will do to shut you up.

Does anyone tell the truth any more on the left of American politics?

Next time, when new smiling faces appear to replace the old school Democratic incumbent, beware of progressives bearing gifts. They are hiding inside the Trojan Horse of a Marxist ideology being wheeled into the heart of American political power.

Evidence of that appeared in the form of Ilhan Omar, she of the “Benjamin” insult, she of the “May Allah protect you from an evil Israel that is hypnotizing the world,” she of the smiling face when talking about “Some people did something” on 9/11. She, whose family got rich working for a genocidal Marxist dictator in Somalia back in the day when she lived a protected life in Mogadishu. That was until the people rose up to depose Siad Barre and entered the capital. That is when her protected family had to escape at 4 am in the middle of the night to catch a special flight to Kenya. By the way, she did not live in a dusty refugee camp. She lived comfortably in a residential district of Mombasa until her family engineered their entry into the United States and where she continued to live with a false name. Her family name is Nur Elmi, not Omar. That name was adopted from the sponsoring family already living in America.

When will Ilhan Omar begin to tell the truth? She had lied about everything in her life. Her false marriages including a legal one to her gay brother, Ahmed Elmi of London. Her tax and student loan frauds, her destruction of evidence and her perjury. I even have evidence that she lied when she had a private meeting with the corrupt President of Somalia in December 2016 about the identity of the man she travelled with to this meeting.

This failure to tell the truth is not confined to the United States. America is a few years behind Europe on several issues. An open border policy is one of them.

Open borders were fine when it was confined to open travel for citizens living within the European Union but it began to collapse when that included the free movement of terrorists from one European capital to another.

European leaders lied to their people about what the result of unbridled and incompatible mass immigration would do to their countries. They lied on purpose. Cynically, they saw a mass of future voters rather than a massive headache that will irrevocably change the face of their countries and their continent.  So they told their people to welcome the stranger in the spirit of “multi-multiculturalism” and to celebrate diversity.  The only problem was that a hardcore of the migrants from the Middle East and North Africa didn’t know how to assimilate and didn’t want to integrate. They wanted to keep their cultural norms and to live in their own isolated communities, simply carrying on as they had done in the lands of their birth. Simply put, they did not leave the Middle East, they brought the Middle East with them into Europe.

Part of their baggage were behavior patterns never before experienced by the refined Europeans. So of course they were alarmed at the gang rapes of German and Swedish women and English girls and by the authorities who tried to keep the identities of the perpetrators secret. In England, they even arrested and imprisoned one protester who insisted it was his civil duty to warn the population who were perpetrating these crimes and why it was being kept hidden from them.

No. European authorities don’t tell the truth anymore. Omission—keeping the facts and the truth from the indigenous population—is pernicious in too many European countries.

Try this statistic. Demographically, the indigenous Swede will be a minority in their own country within their lifetime. It amazes me how a dependency population—Sweden practices a free market socialism—keep voting for a government that is turning off the lights in their own country and, like hand-fed lambs, they take the free handouts and remain silent.

Don’t they realize they are sleepwalking to their own demise?

I am writing this in my own country—Israel. Has the media in your country ever told the truth about Israel? Have you really been given the truth about our life experience and the hostile environment we face on a daily basis? Part of that environment calls itself Palestinian.

Are you not aware that every time Palestinian Hamas or Islamic Jihad fire a barrage of rockets into our civilian areas it barely gets more than a cursory mention? But, when Israel is forced to respond in our defense to put an end to the violence, we are accused of acting inhumanely, disproportionately, that the missile fire was our fault because Palestinians live in such ghastly conditions.

Does anyone tell the truth anymore?

Did you ever hear about the oppression under which a deeply divided Palestinian leadership abuse their own people?  Was that ever covered in your national media? I think not.

Human Rights Watch recently reported that the oh so decent Palestinian Authority were detaining hundreds of Arabs protesting against their corrupt dictatorship in detention camps in Jericho where at least twenty-eight peaceful protesters have been tortured? Or that both the PA and Hamas are founded on deeply anti-Semitic ideologies that include rewarding the killing of Jews?  Is it any wonder that Israel does what it has to do to defend itself?

Does anyone tell the truth anymore?
https://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
Barry Shaw

God Isn’t Welcome At The UN

Meanwhile, Climate Change is not killing off people, the persecution of people of faith is

God Isn’t Welcome At The UN And Hasn’t Been For A Long, Long Time

Before yesterday when President Donald Trump invoked it, when was the last time you ever heard the name of the Creator at the United Nations?

God having been driven from the UN, the children’s classroom and the Public Square, the president’s address yesterday was like a breath of fresh air wafting through the bureaucracy’s staid and stale Manhattan headquarters.

God’s name is anathema at the UN as it is in much of the secular world the UN now controls.

False gods and their destructive Marxist messages live rent-free at the world’s biggest bureaucracy, which now counts on indoctrinated school children to continue the Climate Change scare.

Thanks to a president progressives want to impeach, we now know that Christians being killed daily don’t have to wait for the world to end within the next eight to twelve years due to Climate Change because they are dying daily all for “following the teachings of Jesus Christ”—a situation far scarier than the prospect of Climate Change killing off all inhabitants of the world.

This was a true-life factoid laid out by President Trump to a body far more concerned about that bogus killer known as man-made Global Warming/Climate Change than they are about the persecuted believers of the planet.

President Trump told all gathered at this year’s UN Summit:  “Today, with one clear voice, the United States of America calls upon the nations of the world to end religious persecution.”  

“We’re standing up for almost 250 million Christians around the world who are persecuted for their faith.  It is estimated that 11 Christians are killed every day for the following — I mean, just think of this: Eleven Christians a day, for following the teachings of Christ.  Who would even think that’s possible in this day and age?  Who would think it’s possible?”

People love being frightened, and don’t even step up when their children are being abused by needless fright
Polite applause was rendered to the president from the hopelessly politically correct summit attendees, who were far more interested in what 16-year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg had to say.

People love being frightened, and don’t even step up when their children are being abused by needless fright.

“The United States is founded on the principle that our rights do not come from government; they come from God, Trump reminded the assembly.   “This immortal truth is proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence and enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution’s Bill of Rights.  Our Founders understood that no right is more fundamental to a peaceful, prosperous, and virtuous society than the right to follow one’s religious convictions.

“Regrettably, the religious freedom enjoyed by American citizens is rare in the world.

“Approximately 80 percent of the world’s population live in countries where religious liberty is threatened, restricted, or even banned.  And when I heard that number, I said, “Please go back and check it because it can’t possibly be correct.”  And, sadly, it was.  Eighty percent.”

The president made it clear to the assembly that it isn’t only Christians being persecuted worldwide:

It is not only people’s right to believe that gets them persecuted, but their right to worship
“As we speak, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Yazidis, and many other people of faith are being jailed, sanctioned, tortured, and even murdered, often at the hands of their own government, simply for expressing their deeply held religious beliefs.  So hard to believe.”

The president’s words are backed by action.  Adding to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last year hosting the “first-ever” Ministerial to Advance International Religious Freedom group, and this year’s creation of the International Religious Freedom Alliance—an alliance of likeminded nations devoted to confronting religious persecution all around the world, his administration is introducing another first— The United States formation of a coalition of U.S. businesses for the protection of religious freedom.

“This is the first time this has been done.   “This initiative will encourage the private sector to protect people of all faiths in the workplace,” the president said.

“Too often, people in positions of power preach diversity while silencing, shunning, or censoring the faithful.  True tolerance means respecting the right of all people to express their deeply held religious beliefs.”

It is not only people’s right to believe that gets them persecuted, but their right to worship.



The once Al-Gore led Climate Change alarmist regime has now been handed over to school children
“Today, I ask all nations to join us in this urgent moral duty”, the president continued.  “We ask the governments of the world to honor the eternal right of every person to follow their conscience, live by their faith, and give glory to God.  The United States has a vital role in this critical mission.”

There is, of course, no guarantee that the UN will turn back to God from their Gaia religion, a religion that worships ‘Mother Earth’ rather than the Creator, or no guarantee they will ever turn away from their overzealous adoration of all things ‘green’.

But some things in the Climate Change Movement have changed, dramatically.

The once Al-Gore led Climate Change alarmist regime has now been handed over to school children.

In delivery of a warning that was more sulk than message, 16-year-old teen activist Greta Thunberg told the assembly:  “I should be in school.”





Climate Change is not killing off people, the persecution of people of faith is
And so, too should the millions of children called out of school to protest Climate Change on city streets.

Not every teen activist can sail the ocean like a conquering princess in a solar ship accompanied by Princess Grace of Monaco’s grandson.

Not every child in poverty-stricken nations can afford to go to school.

Meanwhile, Climate Change is not killing off people, the persecution of people of faith is.

God isn’t welcome at the UN and hasn’t been for a long, long time.


Judi McLeod


Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience in the print media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com.

“Law” as a Jedi Mind Trick

“Law” as a Jedi Mind Trick

About half the time it is used, possibly more, the word “law” is nothing more than a Jedi mind trick. There is nothing noble, righteous, or even ‘conservative’ about it. It’s a way for you to be abused via ignorance and inertia.

We’ve all seen this trick in action, of course. It’s very common. And, sadly, more or less all of us have fallen (or rather, were pushed) into it at some point. That complicates things because people generally don’t like to admit their errors.

Nearly all of us have been taught, repetitively, to “respect the law,” and because of those teachings, nearly all of us have decided certain things must be right, simply because they were “the law.”

We decided this, not because we understood the benefits that would follow certain actions, but because of the aforementioned ignorance and inertia.

It’s important to be clear on this: To uncritically, reflexively obey is not respect… it is to hold “the law” above reason… above reality. That, in simple terms, is worship.

Saying, “Everyone else did it too,” makes this no better.

It is also common for obedience to follow intimidation: Obey, or else… armed men will hurt you; teacher will shame you; the other kids will laugh at you; important people will criticize you in public. Please note all of these are primitive, degrading reasons. But they were thrust upon us as small, coerced children, and they very often stuck.

The really damaging part, however, comes after you obey reflexively or fearfully: when you leap to justify your past actions. Not many of us enjoy admitting our errors, but if we want to become honest, conscious adults, that is precisely what we need to do.

“But, but…”
Yes, yes, I know the same automated slogans:

Without the law, all would be chaos and death!

Outside of law is tyranny!

We are a nation of laws, not of men!

Only law separates us from savages!

Please take a couple of deep breaths and continue.

There’s Law, and Then There’s Law
In the modern West, there are two different kinds of law. Unfortunately they are usually rolled up together and placed under a single tag. That’s a major part of this problem.

If the early days of Western civilization, law was simply the process of determining what was just. Law was considered good if it were reasonable, fair, and had stood the test of time. And that’s all.

Historian Fritz Kern, in his Kingship and Law in the Middle Ages, explains it this way:

For us law needs only one attribute in order to give it validity; it must, directly or indirectly, be sanctioned by the State. But in the Middle Ages, different attributes altogether were essential; medieval law must be “old” law and must be “good” law…. If law were not old and good law, it was not law at all, even though it were formally enacted by the State.

Law, in the old days, was developed locally, and judges were simply trusted men who reasoned well. The form we in the English-speaking world know best was the common law of England, and it was precisely this type of law. In fact, the historical record shows early English kings having to adopt customary law:

The 1164 Clarendon Constitution cites a “record and recognition of a certain portion of the customs and liberties and rights of… ancestors.”

Article 39 of the Magna Carta (1215) reads, “No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed, or outlawed… except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

Now, before I explain how we got from law based on reason and experience to where we are now, there is one thing that is necessary to understand:

Until recent times, law was not legislation.

I know this is contrary to what you’ve understood, but it’s true all the same. Legislation is primarily a modern invention. Law in the old days was not made by politicians or even by princes. Law was, as we said above, the process of determining what was just. The common law was created and updated by judges, not by legislators.

To buttress this point, consider that when philosopher Jeremy Bentham died in 1832, he was revered as “the founder of modern legislation.”

I won’t belabor this point, but consider these two statements, please:

Legislation displaces law that is based upon reason and experience.

Legislation is the edict of politicians, and nothing more.

Under legislation, reason and experience are not required. Politicians – whom nearly all of us hold in low regard – create this new law and can change it on a whim.

So…
Let me ask some pointed questions:

Is it sensible to worship the words of people we also condemn?

And if we hold words above critical thought, are we not holding them above reality? Is that not a kind of worship or idolatry?

Idolatry is precisely what we do when we hold politician-created “law” above reason. (Whatever you hold above reality is your god.)

Yes, I know, we did this because we were trained to do it and because we were intimidated into it. But we’re adults now; we should be ready to face our errors and correct them.

The law of reason and experience always stands, of course, simply because it is reasonable and useful.

An uncritical respect for legislation, on the other hand, is a mind trick and differs little from that of a Star Wars Jedi. It requires us to bypass our minds and sacrifice our will to inertia and fear.

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

Destroying the Myth That Military Power Equals Freedom

Destroying the Myth That Military Power Equals Freedom

Military power equals Freedom

As I was finishing up my liberty entertainment article a few weeks ago, I checked lists that other people had made, just to see if I had forgotten something. As I did, I was dismayed to find that in most of these lists, pro-liberty really meant pro-military.

So I think it’s time to take a quick look at the myth that military power gives us liberty.

The Fantasy of the Foreign Oppressor
There is a plot that lies behind this “military power equals freedom” belief. It says that the enemy of liberty is a foreign invader. So, if the outsider is afraid to approach, we are free.

It implies that “local rule equals freedom.”

This is simply a lie. But it’s a lie that works very well in fiction.

Back in the real world, the hometown of an oppressor – whether it be near or far – makes him no better or worse.

Are we free because the people who rule us reside within local borders? Does that remain true even when it’s the “inside our lines” people who oppress us?

May only foreigners be oppressors?

Consider these recent cases:

No people suffered more to defeat Hitler than the Russians. So did killing the foreign invader make them free? Hardly – it kept Stalin, who killed far more people than Hitler ever did, in power.
What about Southern blacks in 1950? Almost everything done to them was “under the law,” and they were protected by a massive military and a nuclear arsenal capable of reducing any invader to ashes. Were they free?
And what about their great-grandparents who were slaves? They were militarily protected, after all. And their local oppressors operated fully under the rule of law. The  Supreme Court approved. Did that make them free?
The people of Eastern Europe were protected by a Soviet arsenal that included thousands of atomic bombs. They were further protected by constitutions and courts, all of which were locally administered. Were they free?
I could go on, but I think the point is made: The vast majority of human oppression comes at the hands of locals, not foreigners.

That’s a fact, whether or not it works as a movie plot.

I know that many good men and women have spent time in various military capacities, but the fact is this:

Foreign invaders abuse far, far fewer people than do local bosses.

And here’s another fact: Once a foreign invader takes control of a new place, he usually tries very hard to keep the populace happy. The foreigner does not murder civilians by the millions… but local rulers do. (Think of Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc. They each killed millions of locals.)

The Flip Side of Xenophobia
Xenophobia is fear of the foreigner and usually applies to things like hating immigrants. But it’s not always “fear.” It’s more often a need to keep the foreigner beneath us.

In any case, classic expressions of xenophobia involve punishing immigrants, Jews, or some other outsiders (justified by whatever facts can be conveniently assembled).

It seems to me that the myth we mentioned above, “military power equals freedom,” is the flip side of this xenophobia phenomenon:

On one side of this “xenophobia coin,” we have outsiders whom we need to keep beneath us.
On the other side, we have outsiders whom we must prevent from putting us beneath them.
Both of these fears come from a dominance instinct:

We must allow no one above us.

We must keep those below us in place.

Both of these impulses are irrational, and they tend to travel together.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but my experience tells me this:

The people who love the “military equals freedom” fantasy are the same people who oppose immigrants.

That’s not just an American thing, by the way. You see it more or less everywhere.

I know that there are many exceptions to this statement (we’re talking about millions of individuals, after all, many of whom DO analyze their own minds), but I think this statement holds up:

“Military equals freedom” grows from the same impulse as xenophobia.

The Case of America
Since the majority of my readers seem to be Americans, I’ll devote a minute to the US’s fear of the “foreign devil.”

Should Americans really take an “alien invasion” seriously? Even when surrounded by two huge oceans and friendly people to the north and south? (The trouble in Mexico exists largely because the US government created it.)

There is no potential invader who takes invasion seriously. Here’s what Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto said during the hostilities of World War II:

You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass.

No foreign power would seriously consider invading America, where there are 270 million guns in the hands of ordinary people. Everyone, not just boys in uniforms, would be a deadly threat.

The US can be taken by stealth, but not by an open invasion. If the American people ever paid attention to what was being done to them, no oppressor would survive it.

To close this discussion, here’s a quote from General Douglas MacArthur, who knew something about America and war:

Our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.

We need to let go of fear and think rationally.

Very seldom do foreigners oppress us. The vast majority of oppression comes from within.

What Is Liberty Exactly?

What Is Liberty Exactly?

what is liberty
More or less every modern politician talks about “freedom” or “liberty.” Actually, they don’t talk about it as much as they use it as a magic incantation. They go on at length about “our free country,” but if you could get them to define freedom, that definition would be something along the lines of “what we have.”

Once we’re past such self-praising nonsense, we’re still left with the original question: What is liberty exactly? And then the trouble begins. There are dozens of definitions. This is a problem. We’re all going around talking about liberty, but no two of us mean precisely the same thing. If you’re looking for reasons why liberty gets so little real traction in the world, this would be a good place to start.

So, it’s about time that we clarified what we mean by these terms. And, since I’ve spent decades pursuing liberty, and since no one else seems to be addressing this, I’ll take on this chore myself.

First of all, I’m going to treat “liberty” and “freedom” as the same concept. After all, the word freedom comes to us from old English and liberty from old French, and they both mean the same thing: unconstrained.

The problem with unconstrained lies in the fact that we are constrained by the natural world, by everything from gravity to rocks to weather. Nature constrains us. Yet, we don’t feel oppressed by nature – it isn’t trying to hurt us or limit us, it simply is what it is, and we can use it as we wish too. Our bodies are part of nature, after all.

It is when other people force us to obey, use violence against us, or simply intimidate us, that we feel constrained and abused. (Which tells us all we really need to know about the nature of liberty and humanity.)

So What Is Liberty?
Here is a precise definition for freedom/liberty:

A condition in which a man’s will regarding his own person and property is unopposed by any other will.

That is the bedrock. From there you can add other aspects if you wish, but you cannot deviate from this core and still be talking about “liberty.”

For example, Thomas Jefferson used the same core idea (notice the inclusion of “will”), but added a political aspect:

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

The great John Locke also held to this core, but took it in a more philosophical direction:

All men are naturally in a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.

Personally, I like a very plain version of the same sentiments:

We should be allowed to do whatever we want, so long as we don’t hurt others.

I generally call these statements as Lockean, since John Locke was the first person to clearly define the concept of liberty in modern times. But, that’s just my preference.

These statements are clear, and they define liberty. No more really need be said.

You can ignore manipulative “freedom to” statements like Franklin Roosevelt’s famous Second Bill of Rights, whose proposed ‘rights’ included the right of everyone to their own home. This, of course, would require the enslavement of builders, suppliers and taxpayers. (Roosevelt never mentioned that side of the equation, of course.)

There’s only one thing which I will add to this discussion, and that is this: None of us have a monopoly on Lockean liberty.

Anyone who holds to Locke’s formulation is your brother and sister, and you must accept them as such.

We are past the time when we can be insular (if there ever really was such a time). You don’t have to agree 100% with the Ron Paul people or the free-market anarchists, or with anyone, but if they accept the core statements above, you must accept them as joint heirs of the Lockean liberties.

If you think someone is wrong, you can ignore the difference of opinion, or you can, respectfully, correct them. Better still, you could laugh at your joint human frailties and move forward together. What you may not do, is to cast them off as idiots; you may not resent them for honestly disagreeing. If they believe in John Locke’s liberty, they are your allies, not your enemies.

If we can’t do that, we don’t deserve to succeed.

Paul Rosenberg
What is Liberty Exactly?
FreemansPerspective.com

Does Western Civilization Still Have a Purpose?

Does Western Civilization Still Have a Purpose?

When Western Civilization began to form at about 500 AD[1], it was full of purpose. In particular, it was devoted to bringing the light of Christ into the world: to overcome the ancient darkness and to replace it with righteousness.

But please don’t imagine that when I say “bringing the light of Christ” and “500 AD,” I’m talking about the reign of the Roman Catholic Church and the “Dark Ages.” First of all, the capital-C Church didn’t exist at that time. The Rome-based church had just lost the sword of the emperor in the West. There was still an emperor in the East, but he ordered the church around more than did favors for it. Furthermore, the Rome-based church had serious competition from Arian Christianity and lesser competition from a host of smaller versions.

Second, the popular idea of the Dark Ages is mostly a myth. 500–1000 AD was a terribly rough time for rulership, but it was a good time for farmers. As historian Peter Brown noted:

[I]f anyone was happy in the early Middle Ages, it was the peasantry. Freed at last from the double pressure of landlords and tax collectors, they settled back to enjoy a low-profile golden age.

Whatever we might say about their specific beliefs, the people of early Western civilization were devoted to something… something supremely good. Their new civilization had a goal. It had purpose. There was something for everyone – rich, poor, old, young – to work for. And the civilization they created produced more benefit for mankind than any other civilization in human history, and by a huge margin.

Fast Forward to Today
What does civilization in the West hold as a goal today? Is there anything we can really point to?

At best, the “leaders” of our hyper-political age claim to serve “freedom.” But what does that really mean? Can any of these leaders define it clearly? Do they even try?

Freedom, in the modern political context, simply means stasis: what we have now, without end. In other words, it’s propaganda for the maintenance of the existing regimes.

So, what are the West’s goals? For the rest of the world to acknowledge our greatness? To force them into our image?

Where I live in the US, a “politics almighty” culture has divided the populace in two, the goal of each half being to defeat the other half. After the other half is defeated, they suppose, the magnificence of life will prove that they were right all along… hooray for us! This is not only juvenile, it provides no civilizational goal whatsoever. But all through the West this type of mindset, or something resembling it, reigns.

Politics of course is strictly parasitic. Bricklayers and nurses and farmers produce; politicians skim and punish. Politics literally cannot produce. And without production, there is no forward movement for a civilization.

Residues of Purpose
Some purpose remains of course. Young people usually want to mate and reproduce, for example, and all of us want to live in comfort. These, however, are limited goals. They neither satisfy nor motivate beyond their limits.

And then there are the dark goals of status, power, and lust for the sake of lust. (Think Harvey Weinstein, his many protectors, and many like them who’ve not yet been exposed.)

For a civilization to thrive, however – and for limited goals to have real force behind them – big goals are necessary.

Have you noticed the falling birth rates in the West? (And this with sexual images being pumped into everyone’s life 24/7.) Did you know that the same thing happened as Rome declined? Have you noticed it in an aging and purposeless Japan?

While I can’t prove this, I can say with some assurance that these things substantially result from a lack of purpose… from having no compelling vision of the future.

Have you noticed that religious people still have babies? And the more religious, the more babies? Religious people, you see, have some sense of purpose in their lives. As a result, they believe in the future and embrace it. The purposeless people around them tend to hunker down and enjoy whatever they can on their way to the grave.

A few of you may have noticed that young people in the new world of cryptocurrencies are tending to have babies. These people believe in the future too.

The Verdict
I could go on, but I’ll jump to the conclusion instead. And that is this:

Western civilization no longer has any purpose, save for self-congratulation.

Please understand this situation is perfect for those who are strip mining our civilization: the states who skim away half our produce; the corporations who, in partnership with the states, skim most of what remains; the pharmaceuticals, academia, central banks, and Wall Street. All of these thrive when people lack an outside standard by which to judge their actions. The victims live inside a bubble maintained by the strip-miners and cannot see outside of it.

With no purpose, there is no view to the outside.

Islands of Purpose
While Western civilization in the overall has no valid purpose, there are islands of purpose springing up in it. I’ve written often of the cryptocurrency movement, which is, very clearly, a rising island of purpose. Beyond the value of cryptocurrency technologies, there are scores of thousands of people who have become devoted to the principle of decentralization through them. These people have gained a purpose: constructing a better, decentralized world.

Likewise homeschoolers, whose goal is not only to escape centralized schooling, but to populate the earth with better children. This also is a worthy purpose. And there are others.

What Happens Next?
Wherever you see people suffering to live a better way, you’re seeing islands of purpose rising in the midst of a purposeless culture dedicated to itself.

It will take time to see what comes of this. If these islands grow and eventually converge, Western civilization will renew itself. This is what “should” happen.

As the status quo culture is seen as purposeless and barren – and as the new islands are seen as dynamic – emotionally healthy people will leave the moribund way and join the life-embracing way.

The status quo and its profiteers remain as obstacles of course, but their deceptions and distractions are starting to fade. Their ability to call forth violence remains, but even that rests upon the automated compliance of the masses, which may not endure.

So, please find a deep, meaningful purpose for your life. To live without it is to waste a precious gift.

The Separation of Righteousness and Politics

The Separation of Righteousness and Politics

Righteousness

“Righteousness” is a seldom heard word in modern life, but the concept is still very much with us. In fact, political arguments all through the West focus on shows of righteousness.

So, how does someone show themself to be righteous without ever coming near the word? It’s done with a simple trick that you’ll recognize immediately:

Rather than declaring ourselves righteous, we show ourselves to be the enemy of unrighteousness, gaining the same result without ever having to utter the R-word.

Here are a couple of examples:

If you’re an American left-winger, you talk about the monsters who tear children from their parents, who collude with enemies to steal elections, and who’d support the KKK if they could.

If you’re an American right-winger, you talk about the insane defenders of cop-killers who want to destroy our civilization and who violently attack anyone voicing a contrary opinion.

By raging against the evil of your adversary, you take on the gleam of righteousness – you’re defending the world from evil, after all – but you stay far from religion or even an obligation to behave well.

The trick has worked exceptionally well, and the voting public sees politicians as agents of righteousness, even if the word is never used.

The Decider of All Moral Questions
Can you think of any area of life that isn’t impacted by politics these days? Everything from what you know to how you raise your children to how you die is affected by politics, which is the true god of the age. This is something Peter Drucker noted as it was forming:

Increasingly, politics is not about “who gets what, when, how” but about values, each of them considered to be absolute. Politics is about “the right to life”… It is about the environment. It is about gaining equality for groups alleged to be oppressed… None of these issues is economic. All are fundamentally moral.

Politics, to put it simply, has overtaken society. In eras past, politics was limited mainly to the realm of the external. Ruling types would tell you how property would be bought and sold, where soldiers would be sent, and how much of your money would be taken… but they seldom told you what to think or how to speak. However, once they got into the habit of telling every child in their domain how to think and speak and run or walk – as they did with government-operated schools – they found one way after another to expand that dominance (which is like crack cocaine to ruling types) throughout the whole of the civilization.

And that’s where we stand now: Politicians feel confident inserting themselves into any and every area of life. And they do precisely that, expecting to be thanked for it as well. (And there are always enough sycophants to do so.)

Politicians of course are anything but righteous. Their work involves two fully amoral activities:

Say whatever is required to get votes.

Do whatever is required to get donations.

And since #2 turns #1 into lies, we can confidently say that politics is the practice of unrighteousness. And in fact, nearly all modern people will admit that politicians are liars and thieves.

Still, the well-trained politician can use the trick we opened with and suck the populace into a moral drama that pays them off with feelings of righteousness. More than that, the people can feel righteous nearly for free; all they have to do is support a slayer of iniquity.

At the same time – and all of us have noticed this to one extent or another – politics has also overtaken big business, as Frederick C. Howe wrote back in 1906:

These are the rules of big business. They have superseded the teachings of our parents and are reducible to a simple maxim: Get a monopoly; let Society work for you: and remember that the best of all business is politics, for a legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax exemption is worth more than a Kimberly or Comstock lode, since it does not require any labor, either mental or physical, for its exploitation.

The Fate of the Populace
Honestly, I think it’s a good thing that the Western populace is still committed to righteousness, even if they don’t realize it. That’s a characteristic that may be engaged positively in the future.

But right now, the people of the West are massively manipulated by their instinct for righteousness. Still, I don’t think this condition will endure forever. All things change, and the dream of righteousness through politics disappoints endlessly. At some point, people will choose to see it.

Until then, a lot of disappointment, confusion, and suffering awaits. To put it bluntly, so long as the Western public believes in the union of righteousness and politics, it will be strip-mined without mercy and without end. There is nothing to stop it, and more is never enough for ruling or strip-mining types.

But once they do start to call things by their true names and stop playing political make-believe, great things await the people of the West.

May it be soon.

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE

Ex-Google Engineer Fears AI ‘Killer Robots’ Could Perpetrate Unintended Mass Atrocities

Ex-Google Engineer Fears AI ‘Killer Robots’ Could Perpetrate Unintended Mass Atrocities

We have entered a time in our history in which advanced technologies based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) may become increasingly prone to unintended actions that threaten the safety and autonomy of human beings. And those of us who believe in the safety and autonomy of human beings–trust me, most at the top of the current power pyramid don’t need to become increasingly aware and vigilant of this growing threat.

The arguments for and against the unfettered development of AI and its integration into military capabilities are as follows: those in favor of the development of AI simply point to the increased efficiency and accuracy bestowed by AI applications. However, their unrestrained zeal tends to be based on a rather naive (or feigned) trust in government, corporations and military intelligence to police themselves to ensure that AI is not unleashed into the world in any way that is harmful to human individuals. The other side of the argument grounds its fundamental mistrust in current AI development on the well-documented notion that in fact our current corporate, governmental and military leaders each operate based on their own narrow agenda that give little regard for the safety and autonomy of human beings.

Nobody is arguing against the development of Artificial Intelligence as such, for application in ways that will clearly and incontestably benefit humanity. However, as always, the big money seems to be made available in support of WAR, of one group of humans having dominance and supremacy over another, rather than for applications that will benefit all of humanity and actually help to foster peace on the planet.
Ex-Google Engineer Speaks Out

Perhaps there is no way to fully prevent militaries from doing research into AI enhancements to their applications. However there seems to be one clear line of demarcation that many feel should not be crossed: giving AI programs sole authority to determine if a given individual or group of human beings should be killed.

Software engineer Laura Nolan resigned from Google last year in protest after being sent to work in 2017 on Project Maven, a project used to dramatically enhance US military drone technology, and put much more of the onus on AI to determine who and what should be bombed or shot at. She felt that her work would push forward a dangerous capability. She could see that the ability to convert military drones, for instance into autonomous non-human guided weapons, “is just a software problem these days and one that can be relatively easily solved.”

Through the protestations and resignations of brave people like Laura Nolan, Google allowed the Project Maven contract to lapse in March this year after more than 3,000 of its employees signed a petition in protest against the company’s involvement. It should be indicative to all of us that these big corporate giants do not make ethical decisions on their own, since they are fundamentally amoral, and continue to require concerned human beings to speak up and take actions in order for humanity’s interests to be considered.

Killer Robots

Since resigning, Nolan has continued her activism amidst news about the development of “killer robots,” AI machines designed to operate autonomously on the battlefield with the capacity to kill large swaths of enemy combatants. She has called for all AI killing machines not operated by humans to be banned. She joined the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and has briefed UN diplomats in New York and Geneva over the dangers posed by autonomous weapons.

Unlike drones, which are controlled by military teams often thousands of miles away from where the flying weapon is being deployed, Nolan said killer robots have the potential to do “calamitous things that they were not originally programmed for”:

The likelihood of a disaster is in proportion to how many of these machines will be in a particular area at once. What you are looking at are possible atrocities and unlawful killings even under laws of warfare, especially if hundreds or thousands of these machines are deployed.

There could be large-scale accidents because these things will start to behave in unexpected ways. Which is why any advanced weapons systems should be subject to meaningful human control, otherwise they have to be banned because they are far too unpredictable and dangerous. (source)

Pledge From AI Researchers?

Certainly we see mainstream headlines like ‘Top AI researchers say they won’t make killer robots‘ where pledges have reportedly been made:
More than 2,600 AI researchers and engineers have signed a pledge to never create autonomous killer robots, published today by the Future of Life Institute. Signees include Elon Musk, Alphabet’s DeepMind co-founders Mustafa Suleyman, Demis Hassabis, and Shane Legg, as well as Google’s Jeff Dean, and the University of Montreal’s Yoshua Bengio.

However this does not mean that we can desert our posts and trust that corporations that could make billions of dollars from contracts to advance such automated applications will decline to pursue them if they thought they could get away with it. Indeed, it is the watchful eyes and powerful words of conscious people that has so far prevented this from occurring.

The Takeaway

Events in our world such as the emergence of autonomous ‘killer robots’ are ominous and foreboding, but we need not shrink away from this kind of news in a state of fear and resignation. If we can see, in the bigger picture, that it is ultimately a projection of our collective consciousness that brings these events into being, then we can take these events to be a trigger for each of us to determine exactly what kind of world we want to live in going forward, and have that determination clearly reflected in our thoughts, words, and actions. In this way, we participate in the larger awakening process and help to move humanity forward in the transition to a world of greater peace and harmony.

Reprinted with permission from Collective Evolution.

Saudi Arabia Executes 134 People Including Six Kids as Brutal Crucifixions Spike At least six teens were reportedly executed this year for supposed "crimes" when they were kids

Saudi Arabia Executes 134 People Including Six Kids as Brutal Crucifixions Spike
At least six teens were reportedly executed this year for supposed "crimes" when they were kids

Share: The Death Penalty Project: Organisation explains what they do

The Death Penalty Project explains what they do in a short video. The organisation aims to promote and protect the human rights of those on death row, working primarily in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/saudi-arabia-executes-134-people-20072152
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THE DEATH PENALTY PROJECT: ORGANISATION EXPLAINS WHAT THEY DO
More than 134 people have been brutally executed in Saudi Arabia so far this year, including six who were just kids when they were arrested.

A massive spike in crucifixions and beheadings has seen the slain tortured and slaughtered by brutal methods, according to a human rights organisation.

In a report presented at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC revealed a further 24 people are at “imminent risk” of execution.

They include three children, prominent political opponents of the crown prince, clerics, and human rights campaigners.


A massive spike in crucifixions and beheadings has seen the slain tortured and slaughtered by brutal methods (Image: Rex Features)
At least six teens were executed this year after being arrested for supposed "crimes" when they were kids, the report claims.

An event hosted by The Death Penalty Project highlighted the “illegal and arbitrary executions” in Saudi Arabia as well as human rights abuses for both detainees and their families.

Experts said these abuses have been "exacerbated by the systematic torture of detainees and grossly unfair trials culminating in death sentences".

Among those executed this year are three women and 51 who were facing drug charges that would be considered minor offences elsewhere in the world.

At least 58 of those killed were foreign nationals and most were accused of spreading Shia Islam - a crime in the Sunni Arab state.

There were 21 Pakistanis, 15 Yemenis, five from Syria and four from Egypt.


Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pledged to reduce the use of the death penalty (Image: REUTERS)
Two Jordanians, two Nigerians, a Somalian and two from unidentified nations were also included in the figures.

On April 22, a horrific mass execution was carried out by the savage regime involving 37 men being killed.

One was crucified and another had his head impaled on a spike.

Those killed during the beheading bloodbath had all been convicted of "terrorism offences" in the hardline kingdom.

One of those beheaded was Abdulkareem al-Hawaj, who was arrested while attending an anti-government protest when he was aged just 16.

The lad was tortured with electricity and beheaded for sending WhatsApp messages about the protests.

He was convicted of being a "terrorist" in a trial branded a "farce" by Amnesty International.


Abdulkareem al-Hawaj was tortured with electricity and beheaded for sending WhatsApp messages about the protests (Image: Twitter)
He had his head cut from his body in front of a baying, bloodthirsty crowd along with 36 other men in the medieval country.

At least one of the bodies were reportedly crucified and put out on display after the execution.

Sentencing a person to death who is aged under 18 is banned under international law.

Another victim, Mujtaba al-Sweikat, a teenager who was set to start a new life in the US, studying at Western Michigan University, when he was arrested for attending an anti-government protest.


Mujtaba al-Sweikat was a teenager who was set to start a new life in the US (Image: Twitter)
The then-17-year-old – who had enrolled in an English language and finance and was at the airport to catch a flight to the US who he was arrested - was badly beaten including on the soles of his feet before he “confessed” to crimes against the state.

Human rights charities claim he was also tortured into confessing and convicted in a "sham trial."

The “alarming rise” in state executions comes despite Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's pledge to reduce the use of the death penalty.

In an interview with Time magazine in 2018 he said: "There are a few areas we can change (or lower the sentence) from execution to life imprisonment.

"So we are working for two years through the government and also the Saudi parliament to build new laws in that area.

"And we believe it will take one year, maybe a little bit more, to have it finished... We will not get it 100 per cent, but to reduce it big time."






Daily Star

Fear, Shame And Intimidation Are Chemical Weapons

Fear, Shame And Intimidation Are Chemical Weapons

Imagine that some combination of circumstances end with you walking into a so-so bar, then accidentally causing some gigantic brute to spill his drink. Imagine also that this brute just learned that his girlfriend moved out, taking his bank account with her.

The brute, towering over you, clenches his fists and start spewing horrifying threats. Your knees go weak, you can barely think or move… you try to back up but do it so clumsily that you’re grasping the edge of the bar to prevent yourself from falling.

The brute hasn’t touched you, but you’ve already been seriously impacted. This happened because of well-known and well-studied chemicals. So, then, was fear not a type of chemical weapon? (It was, in fact, the bully’s first blow.)

Yes, the chemicals in question were generated by your own body, but they are chemicals just the same, and the actions of the brute were the cause of their release.

Fear, then, is clearly a chemical weapon. So are intimidation and shame. As are their cousins, guilt, blame, and probably a few others, depending upon how we write our definitions.

Robert Sapolsky studied the chemicals involved (he studied baboons, but their body chemistry and ours is nearly the same), finding that these “chemical weapons” resulted in more stress, higher blood pressure, a suppressed immune system, and reduced fertility. We must, then, consider these very potent weapons.

Consider these three cases, please:

• Solomon Asch found that about 37% of people were willing to say something they knew to be untrue if they saw other people saying so first. (Fearing their shame.) 75% would go along at least some of the time.
• Stanley Milgram found that 65% of people would obey an authority figure (an imposer of shame) and deliver electric shocks to another person, even to levels that would be fatal.
• Philip Zimbardo found that placing people into polarized groups (ramping up their subjection to intimidation) voided their personal ethics.

Our Unfortunate Biology

For both better and worse, we have a biological history. On one hand, that biological history has kept our species present and thriving, and so our complaints, however legitimate, are mitigated. On the other hand, however, our hormones, after who knows how many generations, have been trained to respond to things like authority and group identity. As a result they can release some very unpleasant and harmful chemicals into our bodies at certain times… times that the manipulators of mankind have learned to use.

Our hormonal responses are not indelible, nor are they necessarily overwhelming, but they do have their effects… and poisonous effects. By triggering fear, shame or intimidation (and the boundaries between all these can be fuzzy), our hormones are triggered as well. And these hormones do more than just spur some of our thoughts and actions, they directly damage our health.

And, by the way, people display higher IQs and do far better in executive control tests when they are feeling less rather than more intimidated.

Western Guilt

We Westerners are especially susceptible to some of these influences because of our cultural traditions[1]. The particular characteristics of this culture leave it vulnerable to guilt. As a result, we’ve developed political classes that are devoted to finding fault, assigning blame, and then offering paths to absolution that suit their selfish goals.

In other words, our civilization has been attacked with the chemical weapons of intimidation and shame, purposely and very effectively.

Blame, of course, is a method of assigning shame. Political types, especially – and very definitely authority types – thrive upon assigning shame. It has worked for them, time after time after time.

Nonetheless, our hormones, however long trained, can be managed. Prize fighters, football players and other repeated participants in violent activities learn how to manage those chemical attacks.

And so, we who are subjected to endless chemical attacks both large and small (even ads that make you feel insufficient qualify)… we are also able to manage our responses.

We must train ourselves to not respond to guilt.

We can consider facts, then repair and improve our actions if they are truly harmful, but merely feeling these weaponized chemicals is not to be taken as any sort of verdict. It may, in fact, be a hijacking of our internal chemistry, by and for professional abusers.

In point of fact, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent every year, precisely to take advantage of our biological history. And so I say again, we must train ourselves not to be moved by those chemical weapons… and particularly not to respond to guilt. 

**

If you want a deeper understanding of these issues, see:

          FMP issue #38

          FMP issue #100

          Parallel Society #2

          The Breaking Dawn

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com