A Small Medium at Large
Oct. 4 2018 Galen Chadwick
“And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own; but all things were common property to them.” Acts 4:32
Last in the Series- Part 8- The law in Troubled Times.
Usury is perverse, and inasmuch as lust for money takes precedent over the interests of democracy, insinuates raw degeneracy into law and justice. On December 22nd 1913, total control of the Nation’s money fell into private hands, entirely beyond the reach of the American voter. This fraud, combined with the insertion of a fractional reserve system, began our decline into collective suicidal debt. Now, for this reason above all, the promise of America flickers; the twilight of our times is the harbinger of democracide.
Under the absolute ownership of global currencies, the wealthy easily corrupt and take over the proper functions of government through various forms of economic hegemony, by any means fair or foul. The path to destruction is broad and our decline rapid because the human heart is easily tempted. This is an age old story: When the sociopathy of the usury system becomes impossible to hide, when hereditary elites create crushing debt out of thin air, the State tends to fight back, tries to reassert itself by taking over the economy and merging with it.
Under corporatism-cronyism, a blend of capitalism and socialism, multi-national businesses and international bankers both contend and cooperate to take-over the American government. The swamp grows while individual liberty dies. The embattled Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in his hearing that “judicial independence means the executive branch is subject to the law- no one is above it- and the court is not supposed to be influenced by the executive and congress- no matter how rich or poor.” No one is above the law and Tinker Bell still flies!
Writing this in advance, if Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination goes forward, then six of the nine justices are Catholic, if you count Neil Gorsuch, who was raised Catholic and has attended an Episcopal Church (Church of England). The other three are Jewish. “It’s extraordinary and unprecedented in American history,” said Louis Michael Seidman, a Constitutional Law professor at Georgetown University, which is affiliated with the Catholic Church. “There was a time when, for example, there was a tremendous anti-Catholic bias and, of course, there was a time when there was a lot of anti-Semitism and a lot of that has gone away.”
“It’s a bit of a mystery why we have so many Catholics, in an era in which Protestant Evangelicals are in such strong political power,” said Marci Hamilton, a professor at University of Pennsylvania, and a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner. Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman adds: “As for why members of the Jewish faith have been elevated by Democratic presidents, such as Merrick Garland, who was nominated to the court by President Barrack Obama. The reason for that is a little hard to pin down . . .”
“In a perfect world, the justice’s religion- or lack of it- wouldn’t matter. It would just be about who is a good judge. If you think about it, the Constitution itself says there shall be no religious test for office, so it will be good not to think about it in any way. In reality, of course, there is some broad cultural association sometimes between people’s religious beliefs or affiliations and the politics.”
There are good justifying beliefs for the inclusion of these two faiths and I have no disagreement about the logic of inclusion in the sentiments just quoted. But Protestantism in the United States is the largest grouping of Christians with its combined denominations accounting for about half country’s population, or 150 million people. How are the supreme arbiters of our legal system chosen? Given mathematical probability, everything indicates a religious test. Follow the money.
The Greek word (oxford dictionary) is pleonexia- abnormal avarice, unbounded covetousness. It is a deep and disturbing pathology, something that we refuse to see because it squats at the very top of earthly hierarchical systems. The outward appearance is that of executive power and privilege; a spiritual x-ray reveals ravenous skeletons fighting over dry crusts of toast. Their bones break apart and continually regrow, yet they do not die. This hunger to rule, to strive for luxury and power, is insatiable desire and the wages of greed is the fate of Tantalus.
He was made to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low branches, with the fruit ever eluding his grasp, and the water always receding before he could take a drink. Tantalus, as the son of a mother who got her start as a nymph, dwells in the lowest pit of hell- not a surprise. Her name is Pluto (as in plutocrat).
Tantalus was initially known for having been welcomed to Zeus’ table in Olympus where he is said to have stolen ambrosia and nectar for his people and revealed the secrets of the Gods. Most famously, Tantalus offered up his son Pelops as a sacrifice. He cut Pelops up, boiled him, and served him in a banquet to the gods who mostly refused to eat, seeing through the ruse, and thus created the kind of feelings about cannibalism and filicide that a majority of voters share to this day.
But anyhow, I’m not describing the local banks where our friends and neighbors work; this is a totally different thing. Neither am I concerned with apportioning blame, nor with the rights and wrongs of the situation. My focus today is the ongoing extirpation of the American Spirit in favor of corporate collectivism, corruption, and antipathy under the administration of the American legal system. The underlying theme, what I hope comes through in my writing, is the need for the courage for truth, as joined with a heightened feeling of responsibility.
Deep in our hearts, we all want to leave a better world for our children and we cherish the hope that we may experience this for ourselves in our own lifetimes. However, as the long and terrible wars of the last century metastasize and come closer to home, an anticipation of untold suffering comes with it. People feel that the future is being despoiled, that the unrelenting challenges we now face are too great for our ability to address politically. The evidence at hand seems to agree.
When we look at the way things in the world relate to each other, we find that the economic life, the political life of rights, and the cultural life are all entangled like a loose ball of fishing line in the bed of a pickup. If we want to avoid being pulled under by a cultural life and a rights life that are degenerating rapidly, we have no choice but to organize society back towards clarity concerning these threefold functions. To reinstitute such a society requires faith in a regenerative economic life that grows out of independent roots, not politics or law.
Hence, the Farm Resettlement Congress 20 Year Plan, as delivered piecemeal through these columns, speaks to the four megatrends that will converge upon our Ozark communities over the next twenty years. These trends are climate change and the collapse of biodiversity; growth in the breakdown of the family and increase of the elderly; monetary and economic instability; and the militarized Dark Side of the Information Revolution.
In spite of countless billions spent, all the treaties and educational emphasis, nothing has stopped the destruction of the life web, nor turned a long list of social issues for the better. Why is this? As political ads blare from every channel, and protests in the streets turn ugly, is it possible that our attention has been actively misdirected, that our insecurities are symptomatic of a deeper paralysis?
When independent farm families lost ownership of our common food resources both the throat and heart of our independence was truly cut. American exceptionalism, as a summation of the historic life of rights and law, boils down to this: The farmer, scholar, and patriot citizen, through the demonstration of merit is fitter to rule himself by democracy than rule by royalty, bureaucrats, bankers and corporations. But if the rule of law exists to serve an economic hierarchy then the fix was in from the start, the system was always rigged . . . and yet:
Americans cannot be written off in spite of all the difficulties still to come. For what, ultimately, has led to the downfall of the American Dream? We must look at this honestly and openly. Our differing religious beliefs, cultural values and politics have not led to solutions. The cause, said Mark Twain, is that we have stampeded into rank materialism without having any real talent for it.
We have more than enough religion to divide ourselves, but not enough to truly love each other, nor respect the “laws” of nature as embodied in creation. A high bar has been set for living this earthly life: Usury, as charging of interest, takes the snare of worldly attachment and institutionalizes it. Maybe, if we again grew grain and shared our daily bread, we could bring each other back into alignment. Make Missouri Grain Again! Maybe if the Bible said that the brain is an app more people would start using it.
