Tax Exempt Status for Political Churches?

   Today an executive order was signed which will allow churches to more freely endorse political candidates. Opponents say this chips away at the separation of Church and State, and something does seem fishy about what has occurred. In discussing this, I will tell a story, as well as argue, as I have to the Christians up the street, that the Christians are deceived by Donald Trump. Jesus does not support Tyrants, nor does Pope Francis- as the fake news story tried to have it- support Donald Trump, nor should American Christianity allow itself to be enlisted in the emerging anti-Muslim “nationalism,” elsewhere and more truly termed fascism. Who is your neighbor?

   I was pleased to find a church and preacher I quite liked, just up the street, as I could walk there, and had stopped going to both a Catholic and Baptist Church, each for different reasons. On my first visit there, the pastor commented that he was forbid to speak politics from the altar, and the whole congregation seemed quite paranoid about me, as if I were some liberal come to spy out their tax exempt status. They stopped raising their hands in prayer, for example, though the second time I was there, when they prayed for me as I had asked, they raised their hands, and some even spoke in tongues, which was quite a powerful experience. I told them I needed help, that I needed work and a lawyer, and was in some difficulty at home there up the street, but they would only give me their first names, and, as said, seemed quite suspicious. Apparently there had been a robbery on the property recently, and of course one never knows.

   After my second visit, I decided to write to the pastor about some things I had learned from his preaching on John, about the tax exempt status question, and about how the Christians are quite deceived about Donald Trump. When I was a teacher at the community college, of American Government, I would tell the kids that they of course were allowed almost limitless free expression of religion, but for me to preach Jesus from the lectern would violate the establishment clause, though I would comment on the Bible as a part of the unwritten constitution of the Americans, as George Anastaplo discusses this in his book on the constitution.* I thought maybe similarly the parishioners have a right to express politics, but not the preacher from the pulpit, and this is close, but not quite it. I said this as much to demonstrate how the Establishment and free expression clauses fit together as to communicate silently that I would like to teach about Jesus but cannot- and this was not my job. I told Tom, the Pastor, that similarly he was limited from certain things about politics, though that it not quite it. I too would refrain from any partisan politics in class, and, I told him, I was concerned that Christians be free to teach the ethics of the Bible, including the teachings that homosexuality is not good for the soul, from Moses and Paul, and even that abortion is wrong, though this is a Greek Hippocratic, and not a Mosaic teaching. Leviticus distinguishes between killing a born child and causing a miscarriage as by striking a pregnant woman, and the latter is not murder, though it is a crime. Jesus never got around to teaching against homosexuality, as though it were not so much a priority, though Paul does, in Romans 1. I wrote too that Paul in Romans 2 implies that violence against gays is the result of repressed homosexuality (“you yourselves are doing the same things”), as this is a more serious or higher level of sin. And what, I asked Tom, if it is true that homosexuality is bad for the soul and also true that our use of pesticides and suburban lawn chemicals is interfering with the hormones of our youth? Plus, people are not required to be Christian in order to be American, and this is extremely important. As I have a braided ponytail, since I have not been able to afford haircuts for two years, kind of like it, and used to grow my hair long when I was in High School and College, I think they thought I might be gay. Rather, I think of Lancelot when he comes out of the woods for the final battle in the movie Ex-Calibre.

   So I wrote him a two page letter discussing these things, since he did not have much time on Sundays for discussion. I also gave him my website and Twitter numbers, as I like to promote myself and was surely not worried about revealing my true self to him. I wrote that it seemed unconstitutional to forbid him to say just about anything as a preacher, except to incite crimes, as when a speech becomes an action, in slander, libel, false advertising, perjury, fake news and such, fraud and other ways of harming people, and this of course, like all our constitutional questions, can become extremely difficult. We forbid religious expression even of students when, as when the Texas High school prayed as a group in the end zone after each touchdown, though, unlike Germany, we try to allow hate speech, though this too can cross the line to become an action, violating rights that it is the purpose of government to secure.

   I wrote to Tom that Trump was not a Christian (though I might be wrong), that he hardly believes that murder is wrong, let alone that abortion is murder, that he does not care about any sexual morality, let alone transgender issues, that the Miss Universe Pageant (held in Russia at the building owned by Tillerson) demonstrates a disregard for adultery as an ethical crime, or promotes adultery as well as the regard for sex over love, that his defrauding of the elderly through Trump University demonstrates a willingness to lie and steal, and his willingness to use the law to hurt people, such as the blacks and the liberals and the Mexican immigrants is characteristic of a tyrant, and that the Christian’s opposition to Hillary was far from sufficient reason to invite Russian and KKK influence into U. S. politics. Fascism is quite opposed to the message of the Gospel, I argued, and the Christians quite snowed by Donald Trump, who is a salesman and will say and use anything for his own advantage or self interest. I think I am stating the matter a bit more clearly today than I did in the letter to him, but you get the gist of what was said in the letter.

   After missing Church the day that I delivered the letter, I appears for my third sermon, the fourth week since I began to walk up the street on Sundays to his church. He met me on the steps on the way in, said things that indicated he had misunderstood me to be pro-abortion and pro-gay- a misunderstanding, as I am quite the centrist, with rather unique positions on all the issues, due to thinking a lot about both sides, and trying to teach. Tom had said two things that had indicated the sort of news stations he was listening to- that the report of Trump calling up 100,000 national guardsmen was fake news (Trump changed his mind), and that Obama had christened many new intelligence officers just before he left office. It was also clear that he did not have time, as do I, for a detailed and vigorous study of the news. Teachers of American Government sometimes have a natural tendency to become centrists, though not always. My philosophic studies of the roots of both left and right wing extremes, in communism and fascism, and seeing how the extremes of both the right and left political characters leads people into twentieth century totalitarianism either way- this also impels me to my unique centrism.  I had argued that when we vote for a president, we vote for a man capable of the executive office more than for a party platform, one able to be president, for the good of our nation, and that both the Republicans and the Christians were simply snowed by Donald Trump. I do not much appreciate Jesus being used for political self interest, and so do not mind stepping up, even to talk to a preacher. I was told that I would not be happy at their church, and it was clear that I was being asked to leave. But I knew he misunderstood me and sincerely wanted to hear the sermon. A woman coming up the stairs backed my saying that Trump was cozy with the White Supremacists, as Steve Bannon had been chosen Chief of Staff. In his previous sermons he had added great points to my understanding of the famous scene where Jesus, resurrected, asks Peter, Do You love me? He said that God wants our fellowship, and Jesus indeed our friendship, profound teachings, and he had showed me that Peter just goes back to fishing, back to money-making, when he returns to Galilee after the crucifixion. A Catholic had showed me that cool thing about the two scenes with the charcoal fire, and I was seeing confirmation about my learning that it is John and not Peter who is the guy, even as the Eastern Orthodox Church might show us Catholics. And Tom showed me something about the calling to be a preacher, I thought, about agape and two kinds of philo, feed my lambs, shepherd my sheep,” and “feed my sheep,” thee different things in answer to the two or three different questions, do you love me, then he prophesied Pete’s death and he said “follow me.” And what is it to Peter if indeed John did remain until He came to visit him on Potmos, or even if John remained, as he did throughout the crucifixion, more faithful to the last day?

   These are the sort of things I was seeing, and though I was quiet throughout the sermons, and tried to be helpful and friendly to everyone- discussing the six kinds of machines with the son of one man who is a member, etc, Tom made it clear that it was not their choice that I return. I had said on the steps going in, “Do you mean to say that I am not welcome in you church unless I am a Trump supporter,”? and he could not say yes for fear of the law about the tax exempt status. I was attacked in speech on the way out as I tried to explain, accused of disrespecting our President and government contrary to Romans !3 1-7, and I asked what they thought Paul did when, some ten years after writing this, he was ordered by Nero to give up the names of his fellow Christians? Did he obey his government? No, that is surely not what he means by obedience, and if the Christians were ordered by the Nazis to answer, “Do you have any Jews,” we would be obligated to lie- that is my teaching, anyway, or that that is not what John means by liars. Rather, the “liars” might be those who tell the truth to save themselves, as perhaps Peter did around the first of the charcoal fires.

   I was also accused for raising my voice to the preacher, in the back of the church on the way out, though I said I thought Tom had the Holy spirit in his preaching, and “wise” I called him to one I tried to proselytize to come that Sunday but not his political theory. “I am a PhD in politics,” I pleaded. Accused of disrespecting the House, said to a woman, Who’s house is this? And to their surprise- for they did not seem to know the saying, I quoted: “Fist remove the log from your own eye, then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.” I backed out the door saying loudly, “This is the word of the Lord,” to my own surprise, and wandered home wondering about the ironic joke on me that I had clearly failed to remove the splinter from my brothers eye and keep myself in the class I was enjoying.

   I had put one dollar in the collection in an envelope which asked for my address. A few days later I received a letter with no return address, with a checklist of similarities between Hillary o the Democratic platform and the Nazi’s, things I too complain about when government becomes like Big Mother,” making me spend 1/2 hour plus a day for the last seven years rolling my own cigarettes ’cause they tried to tax us out of smoking, o indeed ending my teaching career because Politics and Philosophy had been White male dominated departments prior to affirmative action, and the liberal arts could be used in a way that medicine, for example could not to promote the feminist superiority teaching or the understanding that equality means numerical equality rather than equal opportunity regardless of prejudice, as if we would require a proportional number of short Asian women in pro baseball or the NBA.

   So, is Tom a religious or a political organization? And what would happen if the law compelled him to let me stay, so long as I was not disruptive? And just as I did not claim the benefits of common law marriage, because my fiance never would officially marry me, so I toil for free in the work of my nation and my faith indistinguishable. Perhaps if the Trumpsters are going to use Jesus to snow the Christians, they ought at lest pay their taxes.

 

Note *The Constitution of 1787 by George Anastaplo opens with a discussion of some of the comprehensive influences on the American Constitution. Examples of Biblical influences that can be discussed in a political science course are Genesis 9:6, which presents the reason that murder is wrong, and Deuteronomy 25:3, forbidding the return of escaped slaves. The difference between the scientific, Judicial and religious use of scripture is quite interesting in elation to the First Amendment and Establishment from the lectern. Deuteronomy 25:3, though it is not law for us, is yet why I could not, as a Michiganian, swear allegiance to the pre-Civil War Constitution. Up here, we knew that it was, as Montesquieu explains, a violation of political liberty to compel one to do what is wrong (or prevent one from doing what is right (Spirit of the Laws, XI). The contradiction could have been corrected by appealing to the Article IV requirement that each state be guaranteed a republican form of government, avoiding the civil war. But Jackson’s man Taney could have prevented the 265,000 American deaths in the civil War had he but decided that Dred Scott was a man. Sometimes there is silence in an awful moment which could and should have gone another way, and many lives and much suffering are at stake. This topic came up when we were discussing the engenius basis of Supreme Court case # 16-907, which argued that the election was unconstitutional because the national government is required to protect the states from foreign invasion, as occurred by the Russians through the internet.

Orwell’s 1984 in 2017: Truth and Delusion

   If you seriously cannot tell which is reality and which is illusion, I suggest you look at who is persecuting people for mere speech. And here we see the surprisingly deep importance of the principle of the free speech clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I keep forgetting that there are Trump supporters, and perhaps people who seriously cannot tell, as well as people who due to an ethical failure do not care or are simply willing to pervert the truth for baser interests.

   In Orwell’s 1984, there are of course people who believed that government, or, there are fools.  I recall Orwell’s description of his neighbor’s family, where all were as if wholly deluded, the father, mother and two children, all avid supporters willing to live wholly in the world Big Brother had created for them. There are also people who from fear do not consider truth, and of course a third sort, people who know well the difference, and for some ungodly reason are willing to impose the tyranny and its delusion onto everyone. That is how the domestic life of North Korea appears to us out here in the West. But seriously, who knows? Are there not “two sides to every story,” and did you not know that “truth is relative?” “We have our culture and they theirs,” and did you not know that ethical truth is culturally relative? “Who knows?” or rather, swallow this: if we lived in North Korea, Kim Jong Un would truly be the “Great Father!” Sarcasm is important, and does not, sometimes, come across through the written word. I keep forgetting that there really are Trump supporters. Trump has people willing to believe his fake news, and also to believe his accusation that any criticism of him is fake news. Our press struggles nobly to achieve for us objective clarity in the face of the stupidest lies. Many Americans seriously admire a good sales pitch regardless of the truth. Trump also has people who seriously cannot tell the difference, and, again, third, people who know the truth of the story quite well and are willing to produce for him fake news. And look now across America: Our democracy is seriously having difficulty telling the difference.

   2=2=4, and it does not equal 5. I had a great professor who once mentioned Orwell, and we, the students, were surprised that he would descend to discuss a novelist. He said he liked the work quite well, 1984, but took issue with Orwell’s presentation of human nature as being that malleable. But this was before the age of the Internet. If we do not act now, the orchestrated opinions may soon be those of We the people. It is perhaps an ethical problem, or, at root it is an ethical question: Are you willing to pervert your theoretical mind and common sense for the sake of bodily self interest? Will you do this if they threaten you? Or do they only need to pay you? And how much? For, like the joke about the prostitution of the wife of the man offered a “million dollars” to let the seducer sleep with his wife, we have already established that she is a prostitute, the only remaining question is the price. Read Machiavelli’s play Mandragola. And do you have enough money yet, America?

   But sometimes there is a serious difficulty about truth and a mirror image, which after all does have the same features as the true picture. Birds often are seen trapped in an illusion that the bird in the mirror is indeed another bird, because they have never yet seen such an example, and it takes a while to learn that such an illusion is even possible. Who would intentionally set up a mirror to confuse me in this way? Can we not just trust that the Lord would not make things so difficult for common sense? Do you mean, Mr. McDonald, to say that we really do have to consider such things about the president of the United States? Are we not obligated by the grandeur of the office not to question? Are we not obligated by the chain of command? Yes, indeed, this is not North Korea, yet, and every American citizen has a right to work on a Supreme Court case, to support impeachment when it in the nation’s interest, to speak freely and to ask questions freely. Trump had never read the constitution, and that is why he so often trips over it, and the Trumpsters do not care, and that is un-American!

   But this does not change the truth: Those who say 2=2=5 are lying. The philosopher can always be presented as mad, because the people cannot, without a great natural intelligence and a life of toil devoted to the truth, understand him, and, amid their life absorbed in practical concerns, they do not care. Again that is why our constitution is so important, and free speech so fundamental. I will add that that is why the abuse of our courts and the issue of perjury is so fundamental. I was taken from my driveway and held for 20 days without even getting a single word in to a judge, until a court appointed lawyer gained an independent evaluation by a psychologist who did not have an interest in filling a bed or getting me addicted to their drugs, and this convinced a judge of the rather obvious truth that they did not have a right nor any legitimate power to seize me 20 days prior. The abuse of our mental health system is, along with perjury, very serious, a very important development, because this system needs to be in place and honest for those who truly need it, that is, for genuine emergencies. I have seen it, the courts and our mental health system, corrupted by Trumpsters for political reasons, and this is simply not ok, that is, assuming that we do see something truly wrong with the way of life under Kim Jong Un, and we are not to assume it is simply our cultural preference. I am pressing charges of perjury, but it is quite likely that the police will be told to do nothing, and that the officer will again say that the question is “above his pay grade.” And it is perjury: When certain Tumpster relatives learned by experience that they could not have me “treated” by compulsion unless I were a “danger to myself or others,” they simply lied to say I was. We have an uncle who has a PhD in “Education,” and he was influenced too by some “psychologist,” likely a Trumpster, and perhaps someone in our government who has an interest in my being certified insane: I do not know, and fear to raise these questions so as not to appear “paranoid.” But someone sure does have an interest in presenting as insane, or a mere “conspiracy theorist,” anyone to whom it has become apparent the extent to which Russia threw the 2016 election. Again, if you seriously cannot tell which is truth and which illusion, I suggest you look to those suppressing the questions, to those suppressing free speech, for I was seized in my driveway while the Supreme Court Case #16-907 to void the 2016 election due to Russian interference through the internet was moving through the courts, I having done nothing wrong, not a thing I do not have a right to do, having threatened no one illegally, nor even said a single thing that is false, but for mere speech. One can always tweak and twist a word, and then forbid the accused to explain. The limed bird, remember, the more you struggle to free yourself, the more you will be stuck, if only we use everything you say only against you, will not listen, and insist it is you who will not listen, while it is we who are entering your world to determine how things shall be for you. Liberty is fundamental, and when one has violated the rights of no other, it is the obligation of government to leave him alone. This is fundamental law in America still, the principles of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments and the Third assertion of the Second sentence of our Declaration: “…to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” The purpose of government is to secure rights, and so again, since it is apparently difficult, when one has not violated the rights of another, government has no purpose and must leave him alone.

   But in the end, and in “this world,” these questions are determined not by equations on a blackboard, but by power. We must take a stand, or see free government perish from this earth. I can blog, and have a wonderful time, and you can read, dwelling here with the ideas, if you have leisure, but in the end, they control the visibility and access to my writings through the internet, because we have allowed this to occur. The Resistance can tweet all day, but in the end it is on Twitter, and Twitter is being monitored and controlled, and by someone other than “We the people.” They can win because they have money and power, and we are not taking a stand.

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and the “Last Man.”

   Nietzsche is of course a very bad man, a diabolical thinker, in fact. People do not realize how bad Nietzsche and Machiavelli are, until they are subjected to a tyranny and it is much too late, for the political expression of the diabolical is tyranny. Jung, though, knew quite well about Nietzsche. But then, once these things occur, everything we care about, everything worth living for will be gone, as it was for Germany in 1938, though they did not realize it until 1946, and it will be the same for us, apparently, as we are letting what is now occurring occur, and no one seems to be able even to see it, let alone to do a thing about it. We watch those who see be attacked one by one, and no one will stand. We are the “last men.”

   One respect in which Nietzsche’s Zarathusta is prophetic is in his foreseeing the coming of the “last man.” These remind me of our U.S. citizens on Oxy, where one can say to them the most earth shattering things, as Pope Francis just said, and they stare back in stupefied dull amazement, indeed like cows to whom Lincoln practiced his speeches. It is Sunday, indeed, what time is the game on? The world is in danger of nuclear war today, and Putin is trying to destroy America and with it all hope for political liberty, and they blink. They do not know what political liberty is, or why it matters if Putin destroys it and America, nor do they know what tyranny is, or consider the difference between tyranny and liberty, but how is that stock market doing, and jobs jobs jobs, it is the economy, stupid.” No, it is in fact LIBERTY, stupid!! And for nuclear war, well, it will likely only fall on those other people, right? What time is the game on?

   In the fifth section of the Prologue to Zarathustra, Nietzsche prophesies the “last man:”

What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star? Thus asks the last man, and he blinks. The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea beetle; the last man lives the longest.’We have invented happiness,’ say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one’s neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth. ..Who still wants to rule, who obey? Both require too much exertion.

No shepherd and one herd! Everyone wants the same, everybody is the same: Whoever feels different goes voluntarily to the madhouse.

Formerly, all the world was mad,’ say the most refined, and they blink…One still quarrels, but one is soon reconciled- else it might spoil the digestion. One has one’s little pleasure for the day and one’s little pleasure for the night; but one has regard for health.

   Bodily health has of course replaced all ethics for us, as the one objective good we can all agree upon. “Just don’t smoke,” they say, as they blink.

We have invented happiness, say the last men, and they blink.

‘Give us this last man, O Zarathust,’ they shouted. ‘Turn us into these last men! Then we shall make you a gift of the overman!’ And all the people jubulated and clucked with their tongues.

   Here are two lines to compare, from early and then late in Prologue 5:

They have something of which they are proud. What do they call that which makes them proud? Education, they call it; it distinguishes them from goatherds…

and then

I listened too much to brooks and trees: Now I talk to them as to goatherds…

   We, the Jesus philosophers, can appreciate the beauty of the diabolical, though it be at peril of our souls.

   The “overman” or “ubermench” is of course the superhuman tyrant who will seek to impress his form onto the matter that is mankind, since, you know, there is, according to Nietzsche, no natural form of man that we seek to fulfill in order to find true happiness (As for Plato and Aristotle), but rather a form that we create and impose tyrannically, expressing our “will to power,” since this- self-contradictorally- is the truth about how man is. All modern philosophy is self contradictory. And why should this form be cruel and tyrannical? It just is so? No, but there is a nature of these things, and there is good and evil, and evil is the perversion of the good.

   One saying of Jesus from the Gospel of Thomas is most helpful in the Christian reading of Nietzsche, because the diabolical has the forms of the spiritual though these are inverted, so that the spiritual reader sees the forms, and, not understanding the diabolical turning, strephein or tropos, as we call it- the fallen angel is also an angel- they think Nietzsche is some fine fellow. Many clergymen cannot see this. But the saying from Thomas is:

#7 Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man.

   In both, the lion becomes man. Both refer to a spiritual transformation, the first the natural form and the second the diabolic opposite. It is because of the possibility of our becoming saints, like John, the equal of angels, that the diabolical can occur, the equal of fallen angels, and since 1917, according to the vision of Fatima, Hell gapes and souls fall in, as in Twentieth Century Totalitarianism. It is possible for humans to not allow these terrible things to occur, but the last men are too busy clucking, and making for Zarathustra a gift of the overman, as though there were nothing better to do.

The Fear of Death

   The fear of death is a great and ancient topic. Its conquest is said to be the beginning of philosophy. Reversed, the fear of death becomes the desire for self-preservation, the great first principle of modern political philosophy. When I was first removed from the internet a couple months ago, I began to read the book of the brothers Grimm, and came across this point in the story of The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids, where the kids are told by the mother goat that they will know the wolf by his black feet seen under the door, but the wolf goes to the miller and has him whiten his feet with meal, having already had the baker rub them with dough…

The miller thought to himself, ‘the wolf wants to deceive some one,’ and refused; but the the wolf said, ‘If thou wilt not do it, I will devour thee.’ Then the miller was afraid, and made his paws white for him. Truly, men are like that.

   Tyranny advances by the fear of death that rules most parts of most people most of the time. When it reaches a critical mass, it can seize power in a regime, and so too in the world. But it can also be defeated, because the wolf or wolves cannot eat all day, and can only visit one goat’s house at a time. So too, if we all stand up at once together, tyranny will dissolve and simply go away to await another day, when men have become corrupt again and susceptible to its power.

   Why the human things are this way is of course a great mystery. But here too one sees the saying that if men would only pray and receive Him now, the age of the Messiah would come to be.

Trumps Answers Imply: If It Were So, We Could Not Know

 The answer of Trump to the charges of Russian interference in the election all imply that if it were so, we could not know, are disallowed from considering and thinking it, and should do nothing about it? He answers just as he would if it were so and he knew it. Do not forget that Bright Bart provided domestic assistance. Trump and the Russians keep parading out the error regarding Saddam’s WMD. No one is asking the Donald, “Do you mean that if it were true, the CIA could not know?” And, “Do you mean that it is fine with you if it did happen, and you are a tyrant who will destroy American interests to the great delight of Putin in an endless grasp for power?” This is in fact what he means, and it is obviously false that the CIA could not know it. It is also false that the electors should not consider these things when they resoundingly and heroically reject the Trumpster and fulfill the function which the founding fathers intended their college to serve.

   Dolts who have never studied are not very good at the Constitution, so as to know when the election is really over, nor are they very good at logic. They do not know to with begin a line of investigation from an hypothesis, then watch all the things that do appear magically line up. The cosmos which led to our picture of the Copernican universe presented mankind with the question of what accounts for these appearances. For thousands of years the truth was right in front of us, but it in fact is very difficult to demonstrate that the earth is going around the sun and not the sun around the earth: How could one tell?

   Induction and deduction are difficult, because induction cannot prove an hypothesis. All the white swans in the world do not prove that all swans are white. That “conspiracy theories” are often false surely does not prove that there are no conspiracies. But that is why humans do not have certain knowledge or what Socrates calls “divine wisdom,” a certain chain of reasoning based on a certain first principle, such as that sought by Descartes.

   We are hoping for at least 40 electors who know a scam, a scammer and a tyrant when they see one, and are capable of setting aside partisan differences for the good of their nation when great matters just might be at stake. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats need Donald Trump, and the risk, given the evidence that does appear, is just too great for our nation. Besides, Hillary won the popular vote, so that the choice of the electors has added legitimacy. And the hands of the Democrats were deliberately tied by getting them to respond when the Donald said that if he did not win, the election would have been rigged. So much of a salesman’s accusations must be turned back upon themselves to find the truth from what appears.

   Again, we are not Democrats, but the Centrist Libertarian Constitutionalist party, the smallest political party in America!

Michigan Recount: Use Logic, Not Just Calculation / On Islamo-fascism and Twentieth Century Tyranny

   We have 80,000 ballots in Michigan for which no vote was cast for president. Do these tend, say by 20,000, to be Democratic voters on the other issues? And is this number similar in all the states, or just the swing states? That is only one of a myriad of ways that the recount needs to be not only calculative, but intelligent. We can ferret these things out if we proceed intelligently. And how do the exit polls match the tally? In one county in Wisconsin, more votes were cast for Trump than thee were voters. Still, if the body politic were manipulated by spying and marketing tactics, we would only be recounting fraudulent or rather adulterated votes. That is why we have called for the Electoral College to revert to the original intent for that body and overturn the election results. But who knows, maybe Putin or Bart Bright Boy are stupid enough to fix our election in every way they could think of, rather than one sure way that we will not find because we ae repressing the truth regarding the spy-marketing, which the FBI likes so well and everyone thought would make them richer and safer, if we could just get around that dang Bill of Rights.

   Incidentally, that is how evil often works, using our own sin against us. In response to the question of whether I thought Putin was the Anti-Christ, I answered that he was not smart enough. Lest you fail too to get the joke, that means I do not think he is not wicked enough. Millions of corpses is the legacy of the Russian KGB, and we ae oblivious. Maybe we could have better relations, yea, if the Slaves would get up and free themselves from tyranny for a change, sometime this century. Yeah, how do you like us messing with your “elections?” Marxism is a German ideology, and fascism too comes from the West, whether out of German philosophy, Nazism or Italy. The fasces is of course the Roman scepter of rods and axes. These are the gift of the West to the East, and we would like to give them Jefferson to make up for it.

   New thought is emerging about the nature of Islamo-fascism, and as said, we suspect that this too has a Western source, and that the East might rid itself of this as well. We think that twentieth Century totalitarianism emerges out of the void left in the Christian or Biblical imagination when science asks a few questions that quickly lead to atheism. Again, Islam, we Jews and Christians are believers in “the God of Abraham and the last day,” not the “infidels” of Mohammed, who were the “polytheists,” and indeed the Atheists. Mohamed himself says that the Apostles wee “Muslim,” that is, people of the faith. And again, Moses was at least as vicious against the idolaters as is Mohammed, who also teaches not to idolatrize any man, such as Mohammed, as by killing those who write cartoons about him. We do not understand this very well how man was 3,200 years ago, but idolaters practiced human sacrifice, as did most peoples throughout the world (including our idealized native Americans and our British or “Celtic” ancestors, for some very strange reason that is not very well understood. The strange, irrational, anti-Darwinian practice somehow was the practice perhaps 70,000 years ago, when all the other races came out of Africa. Isaiah too describes the last day, and anything said about an Islamic aim at world rule could surely also be said of the Jews and Christians, though this is not what the prophecy means.

   These strange tyrannies are intellectual perversions or inversions of the imagination, based indeed as ‘Tocqueville says on the void in the Christian imagination. As Marx explicitly writes, revolutionary violence become spiritual violence, “philosophy in action,” I believe he calls it, when he is screaming for “torrents of blood” beyond 1794, and “Death to the Bourgeiose,” who are who, if not the parents of little girls dressed for Sunday school. Hence, Anastasia screamed in vain,” but if you want to do this to little girls, I am afraid you will have war from us, and would perhaps even from Martin Luther King, before we sit by as pacifists. Unlike Mohammed or Moses, Jesus sets aside the severity of the law. For the “Evangelicals, Baptists and those who try to rely on scripture rather than corrupt tradition, the word of God says “Moses says…but I say…” That is, the fact that the Bible is the word of God does not mean what we think it means, and I do not think the Bible anywhere teaches this, except to say that every word of scripture is inspired (spoke before there even was a New Testament). Here is an example: The Bible, which is the word of God, says that the word of God “was in the beginning.” The Jews teach that this is the Torah, and we too try to say that the New Testament “was in the beginning,” but this is not quite what it says. There is in fact no Biblical teaching that the Bible is the “word of God” in the sense that it would be refuted if Moses said one thing and Jesus another. Moses says stone the Adulteress, but we say, not that you have not sinned or that there is no sin, but “go and sin no more.”

Hey Hillary, Who Is The First Woman To Win The Popular Vote For The Presidency of the United States!

   Congratulations to Hillary Clinton, the first woman to ever receive the popular vote for the presidency of the United States. This is an enormous achievement in World History, though India and others have elected a woman. I am not a feminist, and do think that many things work like carpentry and sports, where even when allowed to compete equally, there may be exceptional women, but the males will simply usually produce the best. Socrates discusses this in Plato’s Republic, in the fifth book, where the same education for male and female guardians is proposed seriously for the first time, at least since Theseus defeated and then married the Amazon- perhaps the daughter of the same one from which he and Hercules stole the girdle. Politics, though, may be less like this than baseball is, especially since one third to one half of humanity is ethically bad, and ought be kept from positions of leadership and power. They, or we, simply desire the wrong things, and hold uncultivated priorities. Hence, ethical character is most important in politics, and while there are almost no woman philosophers, there are more often queens and princesses, or woman of noble and even royal character.

   Best of all, she does not have to bare the burden for which she is the best prepared, but gets to ride along here in the ship of state, as one of the heads of the Democratic Party. This might be a quite peaceful few years, if she did not have to watch one not prepared and not able try to drive this thing without hitting some reef, or titanic iceberg. But perhaps the two parties will even be able to work together, for example to keep a minimal health care while restoring individual responsibility, and paying for it by restraining the oxy drug companies and insurance fraud. Such a thing is not impossible, though I for one am not optimistic. As Hillary said, and of course, “we have to give him a chance.” And, Hillary, you ought to see the cabbages in my garden!

Gnosticism

A friend and seriously good Catholic scholar, whose name I would otherwise publish, has suggested, as I myself do in my Hamlet essay, that my work is gnostic and that inquiry of this sort into the higher mysteries is dangerous. My first response was to say that Nietzsche is indeed like Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias or like Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic, and I have not done much work on Nietzsche since college. Nietzsche is of course much deeper than the ancient Greek sophists, and much more harmful. We implicate these turns of modern thought in the origin of ideological tyranny, though it is a bit of an argument to demonstrate this. Nietzsche is generally well received due to reputation, and people like to repeat thoughts of his like “that which does not kill us makes us stronger.” But these thinkers, like the ancient sophists, hold that tyranny is the good for man, power the important goal of human endeavor. My work, in its explicitness, is a theoretical response to Machiavelli and Nietzsche, and my suggestion is that without some such basis, Catholic and Platonic thought in modernity does not have a response, nor any way to stop diabolism from taking over politics.

Gnostic is of course a word based upon the ancient Greek word Nous, translated variously, but we use the word intellect. It is different from the faculty commonly known as reason, and the two are gradually distinguished in Plato’s Republic. Logistike or calculation is used by us as an instrument when the soul is ordered to seek other goals, but for the intellect, the first principles both theoretical and practical are its proper objects. It is called the eye of the soul. The heretical gnostics considered for example by St. Ireneus spun imaginative cosmologies, going along with the two-thousand year post platonic effort to know being directly, the way we know the outside world. Following Leo Strauss, we keep much of the Platonic replacement for materialist cosmology, the theory of the ideas, and talk of light and word from the sixth book of Plato’s Republic, but we think that Leo Strauss has opened the way to a new effort, an attempt to know being by reflection in the human things and in the soul as an image of God, so we pursue this indirect effort, called political philosophy.

St. John is also called a “gnostic,” and we adhere to this Johannine gnosticism. In the first and third chapters of the gospel of John, the word that was in the beginning was made flesh and dwelt among us. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” John writes that although he came to his own home, his people did not receive him…

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power (or liberty, exousian)to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Hence we say that Nous is a thing begotten, and that this is different from the created reason. We think that Plato knew and taught this very thing, when he writes that intelligence and truth are begotten in the soul (Republic 490b, etc). Since this is in each, but is nascent or not yet awakened, we say with Jung that it is “in” the “unconscious.” Nietzsche’s “In the body is the great reason” is a perversion of nous. Hence, the ability to receive the faculty is in the soul, and can be inverted. But in its proper or natural form, it is the soul reborn, the very myster:y referred to by John in chapter 3:,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit…Are you a teacher of all Israel, and yet you do not understand this?

Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

So our “gnosticism” is like that of the reborn Christians, though we teach that this is not something one does by going through the ritual of baptism on the Church calendar, nor by receiving the Lord as your personal savior, nor indeed by anything that can be done by the will of man. It is not by convention, but by nature, and occurs through penance and a natural process, which opens the eye of the soul to the things of heaven. We say it is a natural process because Socrates and Plato were reborn in this sense, though of course they did not have access to the Christ made flesh or the Biblical teachings. And I suppose this is what the Catholics and Baptists will find objectionable and call heretical gnosticism. So let it be, as long as we are clear. We say that the sacraments are a “copy and a shadow” of the true things that do indeed happen to the soul, and that is our Christian-Platonic psychology.

Second, we refer to Ephesians 5, where Paul says of marriage:

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church…

The profound mystery indicates that the fundamental things of metaphysics are accessible for us through the image of God in man, or that, as Leo Strauss says, “the human things are the key to understanding all things.” We oppose this metaphysics to that of the Johnnies, who talk with great mystery and secrecy of the “Diad” or the fundamental two of the cosmos, heaven and earth or the inside and outside of the Cave in Plato’s allegory. We think the wedding of the Bride and Lamb, alluded to in the 19th chapter of the Revelation, is superior metaphysics, though the supposed opposition between “faith” and “reason” prevents the philosophers from considering such things, which they know ahead of time to be merely parts of our civil religion. We can give some answer to the question of why marriage is sacred or why murder is wrong (Genesis 1:26; 9:6), whereas they, from their metaphysics must simply let humanity descend into lawlessness.

So my critics, if they can stand these dangerous heights, when they look up from their Nietzsche and Machiavelli, might give an account of just why such “gnosticism” is heretical or harmful to the soul. Indeed, as Plato’s Socrates too teaches, anyone for whom the eye of the soul is opened and he begins to see the things of heaven will be considered mad by those around him, and our psychology will surely get out their DSM and seek to drug this thing, the very health of the soul that is the first principle of psychology. We seek a psychology that will teach them to be more moderate, and stop doing this, “Stop drugging my people.”

My Friend, My Error

When we meet any new person, or come into new relations through necessity, there is an assumption that we make, that this person is a friend. One speaks to them then as though they were a friend, till one hits that facet of their souls that reveals this to be an error. When I finally retire from each person back into my solitude and silence, I find myself muttering to myself “I have done you no injustice, and done not a thing wrong. Try to put into words your objection to me, and see how it sounds.”  What they do rather is to distort something I did do or say until a fits into a category that justifies indignation, and, while it still does not sound right, they let go the facts and cling to the abstraction. I am faulted for having spoke, and faulted for the very intelligence and truth in my words. And once this is done, my extreme fault is to try to explain myself to avert the slander. Of all the things I do, this is found most intolerable, and when they close their ears, oh, should I raise my voice, I am clearly over the edge, in need of some drugging or executive action.

It is like the experience in love, an analogy, of approaching a woman under a street lamp only to say, “I’m sorry, I thought you were someone I had known.” My error was to speak to you as a friend.

Anything you say will only be used against you. People will use you, then throw you away when you are no longer found profitable. Socrates was a gadfly to Athens, till the beast smacked him. He was prosecuted in the trial that was like that of a physician by a pastry chef before a jury of children.

What is “the accuser” another word for? Our error is to approach the world as though it were a friend, till we are broken on its rocks. Then we learn that friendship is actually quite rare, those capable of learning through discussion almost non-existent. Our error is to assume otherwise, and though they would be offended if we did not, assume that they were intelligent and capable of conversation and learning, they are not. That old thing the shadow kicks in, and soon they are after the splinters in our eyes again. Worst if all is if one says a thing they do not understand, that calls for an ascent of even a moments thought. In the pain of their ignorance, they will lash out most viciously, to everyone’s surprise, because they are not accustomed to take pleasure in learning.

Surveillance Legislation

Say, why do we not suggest to our legislators a new law giving the FBI and the police the powers to set prostitutes onto the citizens to get the suspicious individuals to fall in love. Then we could be as sure as possible that these odd-balls are not bad actors. And if these targets have a friend, we could give the prostitutes the powers to also “date” the friend, get the two accusing one another, and thereby, for every ten we target, we ought catch at least one spy or mobster? How many such have been missed by our failure to do so?

And, in section 2 of such a law, we could give the CIA power to hire certain professors, so these are wearing two hats, as it were, and are then able to watch the development of the young plants in their crucial phases, looking for any sign of terrorist tendencies, nascent communism or white supremacist? These are fairly inexpensive measures, and one just cannot be too sure now-a-days. We will further authorize any measures at all, from our book on princes, in order to protect these deeds of our intelligence agents from being considered as crimes or in any way brought to light.

Then in section 3 of such a law, we will forbid any looking into these measures if anyone ever figures out what their government has been doing, say, like Snowden with his documents, we will authorizes the agencies to chase them all the way to Moscow to preserve our government secrets and secret methods. Let us, in fact, pass this whole law in secret, and authorize the threatening of anyone who even thinks, say, of having Congress call FBI agents to tell the truth at hearings, or other such measures mortally dangerous to democracy.

You see, just because I am in the CLC does not mean I could not be a legislator in this political climate.