The State has been tried in every form imaginable – monarchy, oligarchy, dictatorship, republicanism, constitutional monarchy, Socialism, minarchism, democracy, etc. In every instance it has failed. In every instance it has delivered the exact opposite of what it has promised. In every instance the dream of the State has proved to be a nightmare. So why on Earth do we keep trying it? That is a question I have puzzled over for some time now because I’ve never been able to wrap my head around it. But, I’ve finally found an answer. I have found the answer to not only why we keep reverting again and again to the State in all its different forms, but I’ve also found the answer to the question of why democracy always slides in to autocracy – one man authoritarian rule. Additionally, I have discovered exactly why minarchy – such as under the U.S. Constitution as it was originally written and interpreted – also always fails and descends first into populism and finally into oligarchy or dictatorship. In short, I have found the explanation of why voluntaryism and anarchism are the only ways in which to build a functional society which allows for any form of social governance without descending either into authoritarianism and autocracy on the one hand or chaos and self-destruction on the other. And I have found these answers from an unlikely source – the writings of Dr. Carl Jung.
Category: New Abolitionism
The U.S. Constitution: A Covenant With Death, An Agreement With Hell
In American Latter-day Saint circles there is much idolatry over the issue of the U.S. Constitution. Most of it has to do with a particularly willful misunderstanding of most statements on the Constitution found in the scriptures, the purpose of government, the rights of the people in the face of oppressive government laws, and the supremacy of God’s law to man’s in all cases. American Latter-day Saints also tend to idolize the American Founding Fathers. Much is made of the Lord’s statement, “by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose,” that is for writing the Constitution. (see D&C 101:80) It is without a doubt that they were intelligent men. The writings of Thomas Jefferson are still worth studying even today. But that doesn’t justify us in not creating something better now than they could envision then; that doesn’t justify us calcifying out social, spiritual, political, and economic development because they could not imagine the next step in liberty and individual freedom. It does not justify us in idolizing the Constitution (or your respective national charter), ignoring the many ways it has been wrong, corrupt, and evil form the very start, and choosing it over that which is better now.
God’s Will and Man’s Law
The following lost LDS Classic is an article I came across recently in my readings of older church writings. Though the author for the article is unknown, the editor of the Deseret News during this era was David O. Calder. What makes it interesting is the way in which it clearly lays out the limits on our obedience to the laws of man and the supremacy of God’s law. Further, it offers fuller, more correct interpretations of scriptures such as D&C 98: 4-6 which are often today used to justify our expected obedience to the State but which, properly understood, command that first and above all, we be loyal to God and His commandments no matter what the orders of the government may be. That man’s laws may make illegal that which God has commanded means nothing to the Saint who has dedicated his or her life to God. We are to obey God in all things, even if it means breaking the laws of men, even if it means suffering trial, hardship, suffering, and death for doing so. As the article points out, this is in fact the very test of life – to see if we follow God in all things no matter how all the powers of Earth and Hell may rage against us for doing so.
When We Should Break The Law
From our earliest days, when the Prophet Joseph and Patriarch Hyrum suffered in Liberty Jail and died in Carthage Jail, to the Saints spending nearly 30 years resisting Federal anti-polygamy laws, practicing civil disobedience and being willing to go to prison in order to serve God, on down to the modern day we have examples of the lives of great Saints who have repeatedly broken the laws of the land in order to do what is right and to serve God. Latter-day Saint history is full of rebels and rogues, people who would rather be exiled from the nation, who would rather be killed, than disobey the Lord. So how is it that so many of us have become so milquetoast about standing up the government tyranny? Why is it that so many of us think that the Saints should “strictly obey the laws of the government in which they live,” even when such laws aren’t just wrong or immoral, but even when said laws actively compel us either to disobey God or punish us for obeying Him? While there are numerous reasons, one of the largest is because Latter-day Saints have misinterpreted the Twelfth Article of Faith, D&C 58:21, and D&C 134:5 as giving commandments to the Saints to obey the law and to comply even with evil laws. A close examination of these scriptures though, as I attempt here, show that such interpretations are, by the large, gross nonsense.
Voting is Ineffective, Meaningless, And A Waste Of Time
It really doesn’t matter who you voted for, why you voted, or how you voted. Liberty is about much more than the number of autocrats on the ballots or what empty promises they make. Voting doesn’t work. It doesn’t just fail to protect your freedom; it actively creates the system by which the people are convinced to surrender their liberty. As a means to actually accomplish anything it is utterly meaningless and a total waste of time – at best. At worst it is an unethical exercise in appointing an autocrat who will use the violent powers of the law to try of force his or her Utopian vision of society upon all the people, if not the world (see the way the War on Terrorism promised to “”spread democracy” around the world and ask those being sold into slavery on Libyan beaches how that worked out for them.) Voting is completely ineffective and perfectly meaningless as anything other than a tool of control and a servile ritual that convinces the masses to love and protect the chains on their wrists and the boots on their necks.
The Ethical Argument Against Voting
If voting is a right then there are some very good reasons for why you should exercise your right to vote by refusing to support any of the people vying for power in the statist (“state-ist”) system. Over the next week, here at The Latter-day Liberator we plan to try and expose you to some salient arguments for exactly why you should refuse to take part in the system, for why you should refuse to vote and thereby refuse to give the appearance of your submission and consent to a system which is founded on violence and theft and ran by thugs and criminals. Today’s article is about laying a basic foundation for the argument against voting by introducing the morals, principles, and intellectual reasons against participating in the system itself in an easy to read and understand manner.
What Does It Mean To “Render Unto Caesar”?
“Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and to God the things which are God’s,” is one of the most abused and least understood scriptures in the Standard Works. For nearly 2,000 years it has been used to justify the violence, brutality, and evils carried out by the State and used by its defenders to argue that Christians should obey their governments when it robs and oppresses them. But this interpretation is way off from the true meaning of the scripture.
By delving into the scriptures themselves and examining the historical and scriptural context in which Christ was speaking not only do I conclude that the classic interpretation of this scripture is wrong, but that it means almost the exact opposite of what the classical interpretation says the scripture means. It is not a call to submit to Caesar, to obey our governments, and do what we are told by these in power. Rather it is a call to rebel against the powers of the world and serve God alone.
I also talk about how this scripture has special applications for endowed Latter-day Saints as they have covenanted to give everything they own and are to Christ alone for the building of His Kingdom, not to Caesar for the building of Babylon.
C.S. Lewis: “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State”
Lewis’s warnings about the way that science and good intentions have a way of being perverted by the government to become justifications for tyranny and genocide -Hitler’s scientific basis for the Holocaust and Stalin’s scientific atheism being prime examples – such that horrendous evils can be done with a clear conscience and in the name of the greater good by those in power, the true nature of all governments as de facto oligarchies, the rising threat of technocracy to the liberty and humanity of mankind, the threat to privacy that exists from state authorities, the tendency of people to sell themselves into slavery for the promise of having our physical needs taken care of materially, and the willingness of those in power to promise us anything and everything in order to obtain such surrender and devotion from us, whether they can actually deliver or not are all observations and warnings that don’t seem simply prescient to the modern eye, but down right prophetic.
The Religious Nature of the Political Left
Having just finished thoroughly discussing the ways that governments use secularized versions of religious symbolism and ritual to manipulate the public and generate a sense of loyalty and obedience to it from among the masses, I thought it worthwhile to explore how the different partisan denominations of the politics -the “Left” and the “Right”- function as secular religions as well. The value in this is in explaining why people adhere to their different political beliefs and parties even when all logic, science, and morality demonstrate the inherent flaws, errors, and failings of those political beliefs to either reflect reality or to reform reality and create the outcomes their adherents promise if people would but live them. In this article I address this in terms of the Left, exploring how and why Leftist beliefs act as religious dogmas in the lives of Leftists.
The Modern Moloch: The Complete Series
The links to the seven parts of the Modern Moloch series- about the idolatrous nature of the State and the way that the government manipulates the minds and hearts of the public using religious rituals, ideals, and symbols- can be found herein. Additionally, there is an Addendum that summarizes some of my final thoughts (for now anyway) on the subject. Also included is a section of poetry about modern day “Molochism” from American poet Allen Ginsberg that gets to the true heart of the wickedness of the State and which serves as a fitting epilogue to the series.