Southern History, American Freedom, Christian Liberty
Voting is useless because what candidates say in their campaign is never what they do in office.
Bush 2000: “I don’t want to be the world’s police man, I want to be the world’s peacemaker.”
Bush 2003: “My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger. ”
Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooo, they’re red, white and blue.
And when the band plays hail to the chief,
Ooo, they point the cannon at you, y’all!
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, Son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one. No.
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don’t they help themselves, y’all!
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no millionaire’s son. No, no.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one. No.
Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooo, they send you down to war, y’all.
And when you ask them, how much should we give?
Ooo, they only answer more! More! More! Y’all.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no military son, Son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one, one.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one. No, no, no.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate son. No, no, no.
Legitimacy is the primary concern of any government. It doesn’t matter if they actually have any type of objective right to rule over others. The only thing that matters is that the populace believes they have such a right. That’s why democracy is so appealing to the power elite. Democracy gives the illusion that what happens in government is the “will of the people”, because they got to vote.
But, voting is worthless for the masses. You only get to choose between two buffoons, neither one of whom you would trust in your house for five minutes alone. No, all voting does is give the state that veneer of legitimacy that it so desperately wants and needs. Why else would there be politicians on the radio telling us to do our duty and not neglect our “sacred right to vote?” Sacred? Oh please. That’s just code language to try and influence the masses to keep taking them seriously and believing that simply voting for someone somehow gives them an objective right to rule and govern us.
I heard an example one time that summed up the problem with democracy and voting very well. Think of being at a party where there are a few different drink options. The host of the party decides to put it to a vote. He asks everyone to raise their hand if they would like sweet tea. Then he asks everyone to raise their hands if they would rather have beer. It turns out that a majority of folks vote for beer. Therefore, he only serves beer at the party. Well, what if you don’t like beer? Sorry. Your out of luck. What if you neither like sweet tea or beer, and would rather have a third option? Too bad. Go find another party. Sorry, but that’s democracy.
But, there’s another point to keep in mind. Thomas DiLorenzo puts it like this
…even the most brutal dictator ultimately bases his power on the opinions that are held by a majority of the population that is under his rule. After all, even dictators with large armies tend to be vastly outnumbered by the populations they rule over, and revolution is always on the dictator’s mind … democratic regimes also base their legitimacy on their ability to claim that their rule is “the will of the people.”
Never forget that the reason politicians croon so loudly about getting out and voting is because it benefits them to keep us lulled into thinking our vote matters. This is critical because, as DiLorenzo points out, the ruled always vastly outnumber the rulers. If the mob thought their vote didn’t matter, then the ruling class wouldn’t last very long.
You also have to think back and recognize that from the beginning of ratification of the constitution our choice of candidates for political office has always been limited to a very few in the ruling class. And, that’s how it will always be. You don’t have a chance in this world of becoming president, and neither do I. Here in Alabama, I thought Stan Cooke had a good chance of defeating Spencer Bachus for state representative during the primary. He wasn’t perfect by any means, but he had some views that were very good on the economy. But, of course he got trounced. It wasn’t even close.
I won’t be voting any more because I no longer want to contribute any legitimacy to our thug government. I voted for Bush and he ran this country into an economic and military mudhole just like all the rest of them do. Then Obama just took the baton and kept on running. I’d rather have a clean conscience and know that I withheld my consent to be governed by elitist warmongers. The R and D behind their names are irrelevant. They all hate us and just want power and money.
The oft-quoted statement by Emma Goldman sums it up best:
If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.
I’ve had these quotes from J. Gresham Machen for a while but I couldn’t confirm their sources so I hadn’t posted them. I saw them around on the web, but nobody gave a citation for where they originally came from. Well, I finally figured out that one came from a letter Machen wrote to his mother. This is documented in two biographies of Machen by Ned Stonehouse and D.G. Hart. The quote is interesting because it shows how he was clearly in the minority when it came to government controlled schooling. At the time he wrote this, which I think was 1911, the church had totally bought into state-run schooling.
I find there exactly the same evils that are rampant in the world — centralized education programs, the subservience of the church to the state, contempt for the rights of minorities, standardization of everything, suppression of intellectual adventure….I see more clearly than ever before that unless the gospel is true and there is another world, our souls are in prison. The gospel of Christ is a blessed relief from that sinful state of affairs commonly known as hundred per-cent Americanism.
The other quote is from his book The Christian Faith in the Modern World. Here he talks about the danger of losing our liberty and freedom in the name of national security. Anybody think that he would have subjected himself to a TSA naked body scanner? I don’t think so.
Don’t hold your breath to hear those quotes in Sunday School class anytime soon.
I’ve written about the growing public employee pension problem before, here and here. It’s a big, shadowy problem that most public employees(cops, firemen, teachers, etc.) seem to not even realize. What exactly is the problem? Those lifetime pensions that were promised can’t be funded. There isn’t enough money. And, let me be clear, it’s not just that there isn’t enough money. It’s that there is nowhere near enough money. The total cost of public employee pensions is so far out of whack with the available funds that there is no possible way they can continue to pay them out in the future. A recent article on CNBC dug deep into this issue:
Local governments use unique accounting methods that many, such as Mr Rauh, believe understate obligations. Based on his estimates, which use US Treasuries as the benchmark, each household already owes an average of $14,165 to current and former municipal public employees in the 50 cities and counties studied.
Did you catch that? He is saying that every homeowner in those states owes more than $14,000 dollars to the government just to pay for the pensions of current and former public employees. That means that you are paying $14,000 to your neighbor who’s a police officer to fund his retirement at the age of 50 or 55. Folks, that is not even remotely sustainable. And, if you’re a public employee you need to realize that now. It behooves you to make alternative plans for your post-retirement income. There is going to be a shift of focus toward this issue at some point in the future, because it’s literally killing state economies. Once the first state takes on this issue(perhaps Pennsylvania), and starts reducing benefits to public retirees, it’s going to create a domino effect across the country. All the states will then be emboldened to follow suit.
Current pension assets for plans sponsored by Philadelphia can only pay for promised benefits through 2015, while Boston and Chicago would deplete their existing funds by 2019.
Notice the number of stories coming out of Pennsylvania lately about how aggressive that state government is getting on collecting taxes. Remember the big brother video I posted the other day? That was Pennsylvania. This is a real issue that is going to pop at some point in the future. If you are publicly employed and betting on that big nice pension, you really need to pay attention to this issue. And, that means not just depending on voting for tax increases and such. Tax increases will not even scratch the surface of this problem.
Of the 50 state retirement systems, fewer than half had assets to pay for 80 percent of promised benefits in their 2009 fiscal years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Think about it. You’d have to raise taxes by $14,000 per family to cover these shortfalls. And that only gets you to par. Every year going forward after that you’d have to account for the new retirees by raising taxes again, and again, and again. That’s the inherent problem with pensions, and that’s why the private sector dropped them years ago. You won’t find any pension systems in the non-unionized private sector any more, because they are mathematically unsustainable. Simply moving the problem to government doesn’t magically make the math work.
We all know someone who works for the government, and those people aren’t bad people just because the government steals your money to pay their salary. It’s just the system we’ve grown up in. They are just living within the system as it exists. I think rather than chastising those folks, we need to be good neighbors and warn them about this issue. The fact that the government promised them such and so is irrelevant. If I promise to give you a Ferrari, it really doesn’t matter if I break my promise or not. The fact remains that I don’t have one to give to you. Governments promise people lots of things and then don’t deliver. It’s up to us as communities to look out for one another.
The modern politically engaged conservative christian is almost overwhelmingly in favor of the warfare state. But, this wasn’t always the case. In fact, it’s a most recent occurrence. You would only need to go back as far as the 1930′s to find a firmly anti-war christian mind in this country. Machen himself went over to Europe during WWI to help the YMCA with relief work. This gave him a close up view of what war is really like:
In reviewing a book in 1915 by a noted pro-English author, Machen remarked that the book was “a glorification of imperialism.” The author “glorified war” and ridiculed “efforts at the production of mutual respect and confidence among equal nations.”
So, why the change in recent decades? Why do we hear christians say things like, “we should turn that whole place into a parking lot”, when speaking of the Middle East. Well, I think it’s at least partly because perpetual war has been so well funded by our inflationary central bank, the Federal Reserve, that it allows us to wage endless wars in far off lands without any consequences back here at home. After all, better to have the brown people’s children get their legs blown off by drone attacks than ours right? As long as it doesn’t interrupt my morning latte’ from Starbucks.
But, it wasn’t just Machen that opposed war in far off lands. Take this quote from Spurgeon:
War is at all times a most fearful scourge. The thought of slain bodies and of murdered men must always harrow up the soul; but because we hear of these things in the distance, there are few Englishmen who can truly enter into their horrors. If we should hear the booming of cannon on the deep which girdles this island; if we should see at our doors the marks of carnage and bloodshed; then should we more thoroughly appreciate what war means. But distance takes away the horror, and we therefore speak of war with too much levity, and even read of it with an interest not sufficiently linked with pain.
We should heed these recent pillars of our faith and return to a default anti-war stance. Just because someone is muslim doesn’t mean they aren’t God’s precious creation. We should be praying and sending missionaries to that land – not bombing and sending drones.
I heard this lecture, given by Dr. Shawn Ritenour about 2.5 years ago and just now ran across it again. It’s an overview of J. Gresham Machen’s views on the state. He was staunchly anti-state and anti-war. Yet, as a solid Christian theologian he didn’t see how those things conflicted with his faith at all. To the contrary, he saw them as a compliment. This is a very good lecture and worth your time to listen to. If you don’t know Dr. Ritenour’s work, he’s very good. He’s a professor of economics at Grove City College, a christian liberal arts college in Pennsylvania.
Because you openly fantasize about killing people who disagree with you. Even schoolchildren. Sicko freaks. It’s because of this kind of crap that people who actually want to do good stuff with solar power and growing their own food get a bad name.
