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Tyranny 101: Lessons in the fall of a nation
by Ron Gaudio
Featured writer of The Liberty Voice
In the Old Testament, during the iron age, Israel was ruled by “judges.” These were men of character chosen to be itinerant judges, making circuit rides on donkeys throughout Israel to hear legal cases (1 Sam. 7:16-17) The governing principles of Israel were found in the Law of Moses, given to the Israelites several hundred years prior. People were expected to be self-governing, but there were judges available to hear cases when the need would arise. In times of war, these judges often led the nation into battle as generals. There was no draft, but troops would rally around the generals and were mustered as needed. Those who, for various reasons, did not want to fight, were exempted.
This form of government was a great blessing. The judges did not rule with iron-fisted authority, but led by example and provided moral authority by humbly applying God’s law to the people. Often, after a judge would die, the people would lapse into immorality and end up being oppressed by a foreign power until another judge was raised up. The people were to rule themselves according to the Law of Moses, with God as their King, but they needed the moral guidance of the judges. They were most free when they were most obedient to God’s law, and most oppressed when they deviated from that law.
Israel was unique in the ancient world, for all of the other nations had kings. Their constitutional theocracy stood in sharp contrast to the hereditary absolute monarchies of the other nations. Often, the men who were chosen to be judges, such as Gideon, were reluctant men who did not desire power. After Gideon led Israel to defeat the Midianites, he wanted to retire, but the people wanted to make him a king. Gideon’s response was striking:
“I will not rule over you, nor shall my son rule over you; the LORD shall rule over you.”
Here is an early instance in history of a person refusing to be crowned a king, but instead directing people back to God. Not only that, but he rejected any type of hereditary monarchy.
Praise For Lee And Jackson
by Chuck Baldwin
January 6, 2010
January is often referred to as “Generals Month” since no less than four famous Confederate Generals claimed January as their birth month: James Longstreet (Jan. 8, 1821), Robert E. Lee (Jan. 19, 1807), Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson (Jan. 21, 1824), and George Pickett (Jan. 28, 1825). Two of these men, Lee and Jackson, are particularly noteworthy.
Without question, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were two of the greatest military leaders of all time. Even more, many military historians regard the Lee and Jackson tandem as perhaps the greatest battlefield duo in the history of warfare. If Jackson had survived the battle of
Chancellorsville, it is very possible that the South would have prevailed at Gettysburg and perhaps would even have won the War Between the States.
In fact, it was Lord Roberts, commander-in-chief of the British armies in the early twentieth century, who said, “In my opinion, Stonewall Jackson was one of the greatest natural military geniuses the world ever saw. I will go even further than that–as a campaigner in the field, he never had a superior. In some respects, I doubt whether he ever had an equal.”
While the strategies and circumstances of the War of Northern Aggression can (and will) be debated by professionals and laymen alike, one fact is undeniable: Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson were two of the finest Christian gentlemen this country has ever produced. Both their character and their conduct were beyond reproach.
BETH LEAR ANNOUNCES CAMPAIGN FOR 2ND OHIO HOUSE DISTRICT IN DELAWARE COUNTY
Galena, OH – Beth Lear, Republican from Galena, announced today that she will campaign for State Representative in Ohio’s 2nd House District, currently held by Kris Jordan (R – Powell). Representative Jordan is seeking the Senate seat being vacated by Senate President Bill Harris.
“For a long time now it has been true that as Ohio goes, so goes the nation,” said Lear. “But Ohio hasn’t been leading, we’ve been following. I want to change that.”
Lear said that, according the most recent “Rich States, Poor States” report from the American Legislative Exchange Council, Ohio ranked 49th in economic performance, with only Michigan doing worse.
“There’s a simple reason for that poor performance,” Lear said. “Republican and Democrat leaders alike for the last 20 years have been unwilling to rein in our state government,” Lear said. “Add burdensome taxation and regulation and it becomes awfully difficult to grow jobs. Ohio needs a different kind of leader, one who understands that government is best when it governs least. I pledge to be that kind of leader.”
Lear said Ohio must have a government that gets out of the way and allows small businesses to thrive. “If you want to keep college graduates in Ohio and encourage new business to locate here, then you must allow them to create and thrive, and reward them for it, rather than punish them,” Lear said.
Morality vs. Material Interests – Myths of Our Time
By Paul Craig Roberts
hat tip: International Clearing House
November 13, 2009
It is conventional wisdom that it was the draft that ended the Vietnam war. According to this explanation, cowardly college students subject to the draft and their unpatriotic families, forced an end to the war. This is Karl Marx’s explanation. Material interests, not empty morality, are said to have brought the war to an end.
That fact that in those days the US still had an independent media of sorts that sometimes framed the war in moral terms is ignored. Are we sure, for example, that the film of the naked little girl running in terror down the road burning with napalm was ineffectual in arousing moral opposition to the war? Are we certain that it wasn’t an aroused moral conscience that brought about the end of the war but was college students’ fears for their lives and limbs?
If we ascribe ending the war to material interests, it makes ending the war look as unworthy as the war itself.
Yet, virtually every conservative columnist, commentator, newsperson and politician, as well as today’s antiwar protesters and apparently the Pentagon, believes that a military draft would reduce Americans’ toleration for wars because of body bags coming home to middle and upper class parents. Apparently, the lower class doesn’t mind its kids coming back in body bags.
Never Again?
by Anna Baltzer
www.opednews.com
I am sitting in an internet cafe in Beirut trying to concentrate, but I just can’t. There are hundreds of heartbreaking emails to read through, each one worse than the last. The carnage did not stop with the so-called “ceasefire” (I use quotations because the slow massacre of starving an entire population of basic human necessities — sufficient food, water, medical supplies, heat — continues). Everyday on television we watch new bodies being dug out of the rubble. And now that a few international reporters and humanitarian workers have been allowed into Gaza, we hear more of the stories that had previously been left untold.
I do not have the resilience to even bear one more month here. I am so drained, so pained, and of course I have the luxury of being able to buy a ticket and leave whenever I want. It’s fitting that Beirut will be one of my last stops. Here a city, devastated by war after war, continues to rebuild itself, like the rest of Lebanon and like Gaza. Beirut nightlife buzzes around me as I write, and I have to believe that if the millions of Lebanese and Palestinian people repeatedly traumatized in this war-torn land have pulled themselves together to rebuild and look to a better future, then I’ll manage to as well.
What Happened to Western Morality?
Paul Craig Roberts
On the last day of the old year in CounterPunch, two Israelis, Jeff Halper who heads the Israeli peace movement ICAHD, and Neve Gordon, who is chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University, asked, “Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?”
“Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week,” report Halper and Gordon. They note that Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger, who has in the past ignorantly insulted Islamic representatives, “has been silent.”
It is the goyim moralists who are silent, not the Jews. It is the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, not the goyim media, that provides reports of Israel’s abuse of Palestinians. Gideon Levy’s “The Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again” was published December 29 in Haaretz, not in the goyim press. Levy’s words, “Once again, Israel’s violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom.” These are not words that can appear in American print or TV media. Such words, printed in Israeli newspapers, never reach the goyim.
The Demise of Conscience
Together, the welfare state and the warfare state have produced out-of-control federal spending, which has resulted in an endless cycle of financial, monetary, and economic crises, most recently demonstrated by the home-mortgage crisis and the 50 percent drop in the value of the dollar during the past five years alone.
Another adverse consequence – perhaps the most important – has been the demise of individual conscience among the American people, which has accompanied the rise of the welfare-warfare state.
Land of the Brave?
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
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