THE ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE THE WORLD
There is a genre of historical fiction writing called Alternate or What-If History. Its purpose is to focus on one of history’s critical forks in the road, and by speculating on what might have happened had a different fork been taken (e.g., if Lee had won at Gettysburg or if Booth had missed) it can advance our understanding of what did happen.
It can only be useful in that regard if it is to be anything other than pure entertainment and idle speculation – for history cannot be changed. What did happen, happened, and not something else. History is stochastic, a series of uniquely unrepeatable events.
Nonetheless, what-if alternate histories do help us realize that some events are more important than others, suddenly determining an outcome affecting the fate of very large numbers of people for generations to come.
Ideally, they could be forward-looking, helping us distinguish between inconsequential forks we’re facing and those we need to pay attention to – most especially enabling us to see when we’re headed for a major Fork of History, one that future historians will be writing about.
Like right now. A Fork that will determine the fate of the world, how the lives of billions of people will turn out. A Fork that will be endless fodder for future what-if histories. A Fork of History down one path of which lies doom, down the other lies liberation.
We’re there, folks. It’s time to choose. There’s only one thing that can extricate the world from the calamity descending upon it.
On Tuesday (12/06), President Zero delivered a farcically fascist speech in Kansas in which he offered to be a pied piper leading us down the path of doom. To take the other path, we first need a look at the history of religious wars.
It is a history drowning in blood. Islam stands out as a self-professed "religion of the sword," perpetrating an endless series of slaughters upon those who refused to submit to it. One example is Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030), who conducted such a horrific reign of Moslem pillage and murder directed at Buddhist-Hindu India, it prompted historian Will Durant to comment: "The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history."
Mohammed was a bandit chieftain who became a Prince of War towards infidels. Jesus was a carpenter who became a Prince of Peace towards our fellow man. Unfortunately, it took Christians in political power many centuries to figure this out. Ever hear of the Albigensians?
Named after the town of Albi in the Languedoc region of what is now southern France where their beliefs took hold in the mid-1100s, their rejection of the Church of Rome’s opulence and papal corruption spread like wildfire until Pope Innocent III (1160-1216) declared them heretics and ordered a Crusade to destroy them.
Innocent III initiated the Albigensian Crusade in 1208. His successors Honorius III (p. 1216-1227), Gregory IX (p. 1227-1241), and Innocent IV (p. 1243-1254) continued it until the heresy was genocidally extinguished with over one million dead.
But that death count is dwarfed by that of the Catholic Monarchy of France waging war upon French Calvinists called Huguenots from 1562 to 1598 – resulting in the deaths, estimated by French history professor Robert Knecht at between 2 and 4 million.
And that death count is dwarfed by the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants in Central Europe from 1628 to 1648, estimated by historian C. V. Wedgewood at some 7.5 million – between 30 to 40% of much the population of Central Europe.
Meanwhile over in England, Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603) in 1559 made it illegal not to belong to the Anglican Church of England established by her father Henry VIII, and not to attend official Church of England services every Sunday and holy day. Various groups of Christians rebelled, one of which was so turned off by state church repression and corruption they left – and sailed to America.
Once the Pilgrims had established their Massachusetts Colony, however, they demanded the same religious conformity that they had escaped from. The first Pilgrim to rebel was Roger Williams (1603-1683), who arrived in Boston in 1631. He immediately began advocating freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. There must be, he said, "a high wall of separation" between the "Garden of Christ" – one’s own religious views – and the "Wilderness" of the State.
In 1635, Williams was convicted by the colony’s General Court of "sedition and heresy," and banished. By the spring of 1636, he founded the community of Providence, which expanded into the colony of Rhode Island, becoming a haven for persecuted folks like Baptists, Quakers, and Jews.
Due to his own experience and his revulsion at the mass slaughter currently going on during the Thirty Years War in Europe, in 1644 he wrote a treatise entitled The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution. The English Parliament ordered it burned by the public hangman.
In it, Williams condemned attempts to compel religious belief to be "the rape of the soul," that "forced worship" had caused "oceans of blood" to be spilt, which is why "forced worship stinks in the nostrils of God."
The state, he maintained, had "no business" enforcing the "First Table" (1-4) of the Ten Commandments regarding the worship of God – only the "Second Table" (5-10) regarding civil obligations not to hurt other people (murder, steal, lie et al). "Liberty of conscience" is everyone’s God-given right.
"God requireth not a uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity (sooner or later) is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls.
"An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh."
These words of Roger Williams, the founder of the doctrine of church-state separation, had a profound impact on America’s Founders – in particular James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution and its First Amendment, which states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
and Thomas Jefferson, author of Virginia’s Act of Establishing Religious Freedom, which declares (full text in link):
"Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free… the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time"
It is because America’s Founders enshrined these principles of religious freedom at our country’s very inception that America has never suffered a religious war. Jefferson would attribute (in 1802 while President) America’s religious peace to the First Amendment "building a wall of separation between Church & State," using Roger Williams’ words of 158 years before.
OK – interesting, Jack, you may be thinking, but why the history lesson? What’s all this have to do with America’s fork in the road in 2012? With the impending economic meltdown of the European Union and much of the entire global economy? The odds of an economic conflagration like none of us have seen are growing by the day, and you’re talking about Church & State?
Yes, I am – because Jefferson is warning us right now about "the impious presumption of legislators and rulers… setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others." Because Jefferson’s and Madison’s solution to preventing religious wars – Religious Liberty – is the solution to preventing the economic wars about to descend upon us.
That solution is Economic Liberty. That solution is the Separation of Economy and State – for precisely the same reasons for the Separation of Church and State. Such a separation – capitalism for real – is the only thing that will save the world from plunging into economic darkness. Violently.
With Zero’s Osawatomie Speech, we have reached the fork in the road of America’s future. The critical moment has arrived. If you can stomach it, read the whole thing. It is diabolically dishonest. He is actually claiming his Marxist-Fascist values are those of America’s. He has the mind-boggling demagogic chutzpah to claim that free market capitalism "doesn’t work – it has never worked."
Free market capitalism – economic liberty – is the only thing that ever has worked to create widespread prosperity. What has never worked in history is what Zero advocates: socialism, fascism, and the destruction of economic liberty by government rules, hamstrings, restrictions, taxes, and subsidies.
In Osawatomie, Zero came out of the closet, exposing his stark naked Anti-Americanism for all to see. The President of the United States is not an American, not in his heart, not in his soul. Rush Limbaugh called Osawatomie a Marxist attack on America, and he is exactly right:
"This is foreign. This is what we have faced from our enemies since our founding, this characterization of our country. If you just substitute the word ‘proletariat’ for every time he said ‘worker’ or ‘middle class’ in his speech, if you substitute ‘bourgeois’ or ‘capitalists’ for the rich, this same speech could have been given by Lenin a hundred years ago.
"In fact, it is, my friend, and don’t doubt me, the same speech that Stalin always gave, that Mao Tse-tung always gave, that Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong-il still give. Communist leaders around the world give this speech constantly."
And Zero gave it two days ago. The battle is joined. He has declared war on his own country. He has a swarming horde of allies in public workers, Occupy Wall Streeters, and other parasites who want to feed off producers. They are fully willing to commit whatever pillage and violence is necessary to keep mainlining money stolen from producers into their veins.
Make no mistake: Zero is calling for a religious war upon creators of wealth. The only way to stop it is Jefferson’s and Madison’s way applied to the secular religion of Marxist Fascism: the separation of economy and state.
How is this to be done?
The first thing is to call for it. It should be the rallying cry of the Tea Parties. They sure have been quiet lately. Are they still alive? Comatose? Deep asleep and snoring? If Zero’s Declaration of War on America doesn’t wake them up, then nothing will. If they can’t and won’t defend, loudly and publicly, economic liberty and free market capitalism now, then they are useless.
Next is for a GOP presidential candidate to call for it and make it a major campaign theme:
"You have a choice, folks, Marxism or Capitalism. Compromises with Marxism are what have brought our economy down to where it is today, and Mr. Obama is promising to complete his Marxist task if reelected.
"We are facing economic war in this country, which could be as violent as the horrific religious wars of the past. Religious wars stopped when America created religious liberty. I will stop the coming economic war by creating prosperity through economic liberty.
"I am a proud advocate of Capitalism – real economic freedom, not crony-corporate capitalism that doles out government subsidies and monopolies. Mr. Obama is an arrogant advocate of Marxism – real economic slavery and parasitism. Mr. Obama advocates state control and state sponsorship of business, just as tyrants of yore advocated state control and sponsorship of religion which resulted in religious warfare.
"What Mr. Obama is offering is economic warfare, poverty, and slavery by combining the economy and the state. I am offering you economic peace, prosperity, and freedom by separating the economy and the state. Which do you choose, America?"
Third will be to knock down the inevitable straw men Zero and the Enemedia will set up, that economy/state separation will cause anarchy, mass starvation, the end of life on earth, blah-blah.
We do in fact have religious liberty in America, and government keeps it within civilized bounds. No Mexican cult is allowed to practice Aztec human sacrifice, Mormons can’t have polygamy. The same with economic liberty. Government is required for markets to function, for property rights to exist. "Ownership" is a legal concept which only a government can provide, as distinguished from physical possession (which a thief has of something he stole).
Thus government sets basic rules, such as regarding ownership and contracts, and is the referee adjudicating them – staying out of the game otherwise. Oh, and for "fairness," "inequality," "social justice" and other Orwellianisms of the left, just provide Walter Williams’ definition:
"What’s fair, equal, and socially just is: I get to keep what I earn, you get to keep what you earn. No problem."
We and America are in the game of our lives, the Mother of all Super Bowls. We can’t win by playing defense. We have to go on the offense. We have to be Pro-Capitalist, Pro-Creative Destruction, Pro-Personal Responsibility. Our opponents are religious fanatics. They worship the Church of the State. Their religion is the State. Ours is not.
The Constitution prohibits the establishment of a State Religion, for compelling historical reasons. For equally compelling reasons, we need to prohibit the Religion of the State itself. We must separate the economy, like religion, from being state-run. That is the only thing now that can save America – and America is the only hope of the world.