Read the Fine Print

I’ve been busy with personal stuff lately but I felt like this post is necessary because there is urgent need for clarification on multiple topics. There is a lot bad information especially historical economics. What I mean by historical economics is how systems of economics operated in previous centuries, or years for that matter. The change in a given economic system can be seen month to month, year to year, decade to decade. Obviously the more time used in comparison the more drastic the changes. I have seen on social media, multiple bad takes on historical economics that conflate unrelated instances of economic failure on the system itself. Fortunately for you, my areas of expertise in history and my self taught economics knowledge can help us “read the fine print” about the nature of historical economics. In this instance, I will use modern economics as a comparison. Modern being defined as past 20 years or so.

Capitalism- What is it?

Much of the misunderstanding comes direct from the definition of capitalism. Capitalism is a broad term that encapsulates multiple different economic climates and systems. Capitalism is almost never pure. There has been very few times where pure capitalism has existed. Even in those few times, it was brief. According Merriam Webster’s dictionary it defines capitalism as:

: an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market

This definition describes pure capitalism. At the end of the definition it says “Free Market” which in my opinion is a more accurate description of pure capitalism. You may ask what makes capitalism “pure”? Well simply, when a market is free of state or government intervention then its pure. If government is involved in doing any sort of regulations, laws or anything to that effect its not true capitalism anymore.

People often make the mistake of assuming that economic systems are black and white. Its either capitalism, socialism, communism or mercantilism. There is no in-between!  Wrong. An economic system can have facets or features of any combination of economic system.  Economic systems are normally in a gray area, a mix between capitalism and socialism.

Historically Wrong Assumptions

Let me start by saying it straight out: Anytime the government or state is involved in any economic system, that economic system is not “free market”. This is the pervasive commonality that unmasks all these assumptions as wrong.

The first assumption is that if a capitalist system is left unregulated or under-regulated it will lead to rampant corporatism.

This is false because all you have to do is look at our modern economic system here America. Just google how much corporate lobbyists give to government on yearly basis. The problem is that government actually allows corporatism to thrive. Government regulations and laws are usually written by or influenced by big corporations. It allows these big corporations to regulate out their smaller competition by making the business too costly and too complex to get into. Logically then, it would seem that only getting rid of government completely would defeat most corporatism. You also have to keep in mind that monopolies are in part created by government economic policies. In a true free market without state intervention, competition would keep big corporations honest. Plus there is such recourse as common law which would dictate negotiation of contracts being broken and other such infractions.

The second assumption is capitalism has killed 1.6 billion people. (From meme below)

Of course, nobody would argue that capitalism killed nobody. However, the death toll is not 1.6 billion. If you browse all the listed “events” that capitalism was supposedly responsible for the death, the great majority of them were caused by the state. You can’t possibly blame all the war listed under “America Imperialism” on capitalism. Economic systems don’t have armies or military. States do. Which leads directly into my third assumption which will finish this thought.

The third assumption is that the Military Industrial Complex is a result of capitalism.

One of my favorite areas of history and geopolitics is the MIC. I did my senior college project on the MIC. Capitalism is not responsible for the MIC. The MIC occurred as a vehicle for the government to streamline its war production capabilities. The MIC started out very grassroots during the early years especially during the War of 1812. It started to take on similar modernly known features during the American Civil War. One feature of the MIC is the government handing out contracts to private businesses. This is started in earnest during the civil war, Abraham Lincoln’s war department gave contracts to gun manufacturers and textile manufacturers for uniforms. You say but thats capitalism! No.

When the government gives out taxpayer money (stolen money) to a business for a good or service, its state socialism. (Remember government money is a net-negative on the economy because its stolen, and even though its used to help the economy, it gets taxed AGAIN, making its worth exactly zero dollars in creation.)  All of this to say that MIC progressively has gotten worse. It peaked during the Cold War into the mid 1990s when secretary of war (1995) and then former Vice President Dick Cheney modernized the whole process. Under Cheney, the Department of Defense gave out bigger contracts that costed even more money. During the cold war, the War department often gave contracts with little oversight. The DoD had absolutely no accountability for at least 40 years. In the end the DoD, the government squandered 21 trillion dollars. ( National Debt is 25 trillion for reference.

Conclusion 

We need to stop conflating an economic system with government intervention. The fine print literally reads: economic failures are usually involved with government actions. If you need further proof then just do a little research on the Great Recession of 2008. The Federal Reserve saw the collapse coming, yet they took no action. The government allowed banks to trade bad junk loans. The government allow the regulation to keep banks propped up with fiat via the federal reserve. Of course rather than letting bad banks fail, the government bailed them out. That isn’t capitalism. Capitalism or more accurately free market would have let those banks fail. Free market is the only pure form of capitalism. Its also one of the few economic systems to have never been tried. (Communism and Socialism have both been tried on multiple occasions and failed each time, 100 million deaths in 20th century)

So next time, someone blames a failure on capitalism, ask them to define capitalism. If they give you the dictionary definition then its likely the failure is due to state intervention rather actual economic system factors.  Economies are complex and multi-faceted, if they are operated without government regulation and laws then they can be very stable because only an overreaching power could cripple an economy similar to 2008 and now in 2020.

Think for yourself.

Thanks for reading!

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Don’t be an IDIOT. Solutions are not SIMPLE.

We are still in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder. I’ve seen more idiotic opinions on social media than I care to admit. Many people are just vastly under educated to deal with the complexity and innovation required to deal with our current situation. Fortunately, I am equipped with the tools and the skills to build a solution. Thus far, its been established that police as they exist today need to change. But the question is how do we change police? Train them differently? Defund them? Replace them? The answer isn’t simple. The solution won’t occur overnight. The first and foremost require to change is the participation of everyone. Everyone lives in a community. You might live in a city, village, town, rural county, and YOU have the power to initiate the changes that will prevent anymore police murders. But first we have to understand why police murder innocents and why police use violence so often.

Safety of Public

There are many supreme court cases that have shaped the police’s role within our society. You can google many of them but I just want use one specifically because it generally pinpoints how the police operate on a day to day basis. The case is Warren vs. the District of Columbia. In this case, the court ruled that police have no duty to protect individuals but rather to protect the public at large. This means that effectively the role of State funded police is to protect the safety of the public and that individuals who injured or killed are just collateral in that end. Now that we understand this, we can see why police training isn’t the problem. The police are trained to protect themselves and the public. As its been long identified, the problem comes down accountability. On duty police officers have qualified immunity  which was ruled by Supreme Court in 1967. Qualified immunity gives police protection to break federal and constitutional law under the guise of “reasonable force”. The problem is that police can easily abuse this power and have continually abuse it. Another problem occurs when the police investigate themselves. Obviously, why would any police department actively try to highlight when an officer does something wrong? Its not good publicity.

I also want to clarify that ALL COPS ARE BAD, the cops are not bad because each individual is a bad person, but rather because the job of being a cop makes them bad. The job requires the officer to do things that he/she otherwise wouldn’t do.

Legal vs. Illegal

There is another facet of this conversation which I think its overlooked when discussing policing by the state. There is a prevalent assumption that legal means moral, and illegal means immoral. (Could also be legal means good, illegal means bad) This assumption is state propaganda. The difference between legal and moral is that legal just means a law written by a group of men (and sometimes women) in a position of political power. Their authority is derived from nothing more then being voted into office. Even worse, is that these politicians don’t often write the laws anymore themselves, their basement of bureaucrats do it for them. On the other hand, moral means its universally considered ‘right’ or ‘just’. Nobody decided that something is moral because its an absolute truth. Morals come from within human existence, the context being that God created us to know right and wrong. (Atheism aside here)

The distinction should made that legal or illegal means absolutely nothing but allowed or not allowed by government. Moral and immoral are the correct terms to identify if something is right or wrong. We all agree that things like murder, rape, stealing is wrong. Its an absolute truth. Even those who have committed  those immoral actions know deep down that its wrong. (All motivations and intentions aside) The point here is that we need to phase out using legal and illegal as a justification for anytime someone does thing good or bad. Remember the police work FOR the government, they don’t work for you.

Multi-Part Solutions

With all of the legal mumbo jumbo out of the way, we can finally get down to brass tacks. I’ll just say it first: There is no blanket solution, there is no fix all solution, there are no easy hacks. Nothing I write here should be taken as the end all be all solution. I want to emphasize that each solution will have to fit each specific community. So think of my solutions within the context of your own community. For the sake of continuity, I will use my Bronx neighborhood as an example.

One of the ways we can start to hold police accountable and make sure they don’t get too oppressive is by de-funding them. This can happen in a lot of different ways. The first is by voting in your local budget votes. (Don’t normally endorse voting but here its ok) If the police want their budget they better behave themselves. Another way is to put public pressure on your local police department or in my case precinct to keep them accountable. I think this is where we should begin. Ultimately I think the problem will still persist.

The next way to make sure police don’t get too oppressive is by community strengthening. This means gathering community leaders and planning out neighborhood watches, voluntary security patrols and community watches. In my Bronx neighborhood, we have a neighborhood voluntary patrol force, they have a car and everything. Although they don’t carry guns or any actual power, they help keep the neighborhood safe by actively making sure everything is cool. I think these forms of self-policing can do more than any sort of de-fund or public pressure. Just think about it, if the police have nobody to arrest, shoot or bully then naturally their budget will have to decrease. But we shouldn’t stop here.

Full Private security forces. This is the ultimate replacement to state funded police departments. In this solution, the taxes paid to your local police would be instead paid to a private security force. No middleman either because government never touches this money. A private security force has many advantages. Among them being no loopholes like qualified immunity. Also private security forces have multiple forces to keep them accountable. Not only do community and neighborhood members  have a voice in telling them what kind of results they want to see, but also private security companies have to make money. They have to be insured for liability. There will be competition between private security companies to secure contracts. All of these free market elements would create private security forces that are actually interested to keeping your community crime free. They would also do it without any brutality. The private security has a vested interest in keeping that contract. Obviously breaking such a contract by murdering innocent people would be bad for business. Private security forces can be judge on merits, not only keeping crime down but doing it in a humane and moral way.

I think another way to prevent crime overall, is the increase of gun ownership nearer to 100 percent. The saying goes “A gun owing society is a polite society”. Gun control doesn’t work, never has. Let’s get everyone armed. There is an incentive not to mess with anyone if you know they are armed. If you do then you deserve to be shot.

Conclusion

I don’t have all the answers and I don’t know what will work best for your community. But you do. So take these ideas and start making them fit into your own neighborhood. I think we need to look at the big picture which is the elimination of government. The police work for the government to enforce its laws. The elimination of government means no taxes which instead will go to privately operated community services. Usually private services are cheaper than government run operations. The reason is because government doesn’t care how much tax money it wastes. Privately run operations care about money, they only get paid when the service is done satisfactorily.  The police never have to murder another black man or any man, woman or child AGAIN.

But here is the thing, it will only come true if we all step up and strengthen our communities. If we all embrace the idea of self ownership. Rule yourself. You know what’s best for you. Its not hard to do. Use your moral compass to guide you. Ask somebody you respect to help you. Ask me to help you. Whatever it takes to become self sufficient and buck off the shackles of government tyranny.

Stay safe. Thanks for reading

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Don’t Read This If You’re Narrow Minded! (Its OK if you read it anyway)

I’m glad you decided to read this post. Maybe you aren’t so narrow minded after all. I’ve been doing a LOT of thinking in recent days. Recent events like the George Floyd murder, and police brutality riots, have really formed a crucible of hard thinking. One of things I realized about myself was that I tend to gravitate to philosophical level thinking on almost any issue. Take for example, the George Floyd murder, in my post I talked more about how to approach the moral and principles in Anarchy that comes along with taking action to stop innocent people from being murder. Rather than reverting to emotions, I use rational logic to try to solve the problem. I also notice that I’m consistently pointing out the morality of certain actions. In this post, I want do something different. I want to show you how I think. How I analyze. How do I look so intelligent? Yes, I read a lot of books. Yes, I have a degree. But those aren’t the reason why.

Acquiring KNOWLEDGE

I just said that books don’t make you intelligent. However, that doesn’t mean that books and reading aren’t a useful tool to enhance yourself. I would encourage reading especially of books that are non-fiction. Personally I read history, biographies, political  and economic books. But any non-fictional topic can work. But you shouldn’t just stop learning after you put the book down. You continually pursue new information if possible. That could mean finding another book on that topic. It could mean looking up more information online. In addition, there is no better way to enhance your knowledge then talking to others about it. You can do this in a number of ways: person to person, social media, blogging, vlogging, podcasts…etc.  I have found discussing the things you learn really helps reinforce it.

Considering Sources

Intelligent people realize that not all sources of information are created equal. Hence the phrase: Fake News. But rather than using the Trump citation: “You know it, I know it, We all know it”, there are ways to examine sources to ensure you have context for that information. One of the easiest ways to make sure you avoid confirmation bias is to use many different sources. Sources that argue something different, or contrary. The goal of using sources as evidence is to support your argument. A well structured argument consists of pro-sources and anti-sources. It considers both sides and offers a new angle on any given subject. The new angle part is where the intelligence of a person shines. Leading us to the next part.

Analytics

The reason why your analysis shows your intelligence is because its puts your ability to take information (sometimes a ton of it) and make a coherent and sensible argument of that information. It shows your ability to extract the most important parts and apply it to your argument. Over the years, I’ve become an expert at crafting arguments. The formula is quite simple:

1. Present the argument as a question
2. Present Sources for said argument
3. Present Source against said argument
4. Give background (usually before question)
5. Show why pro-sources fit your argument better than against.

Now if you’re in a causal conversation, in person or online, you can use a similar format. First off, you need the other person or people to agree on the definitions  and basis of argument. Then you will want to present your angle with pro-sources. Allow them to present their against angle. The trick is to have thought about and previously examined evidence against, so you won’t be surprised when someone uses it. This is something that I do all the time. I almost research the opposition harder than I do the thing I’m trying to argue. There is nothing more effective than making your opposition turn on their arguments. If you spell it out in way that shows where their logic and their argument falls apart, it really makes them reconsider.

PERSPECTIVE(S)

This is an important one. The last thing that give intelligent people an edge over others, is perspective. When you talk about perspectives, you have to realize that there are millions, billions and trillions of them. Its ignorant to think that your perspective could be the only right one. Remember, your perspective is your world view. Others experience the world differently. Thats why you should carefully consider other’s points of view even if you disagree with what they are saying. I often try to put myself in the shoes of people who still worship the state. Its not too hard because I once did that myself. I also find that reading a variety of sources really helps with this. If you can afford it, and are able to, you should try traveling. It might be the most expensive way (Doesn’t have to be tho) to open your mind.

You can travel cheaply if you really want to. But the benefits of taking a trip to another country especially a poor country, can be eye opening. You really can’t imagine how others live in the world. Experience it for yourself. Don’t worry if you can’t travel,  you can read about other places, watch documentaries on other places, which is fine too.

Conclusion:

I hope this blog post was helpful. Its just a little insight to how I operate in my head. I don’t think everyone has the capability to be a philosophical thinker, because it requires an interest in learning that doesn’t exist for most. However, all my skills are learned, I’m not naturally intelligent. I would say I’m average. The difference is that I’ve been working on my skills for years. I’ve been honing my critical thinking, analytical and examination skills for 10 years now. Its never too late to start.

Thanks for reading

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What We Can Learn from the Murder of George Floyd

By now, you have probably heard the news out of Minneapolis, Minnesota where the local police took a knee on an innocent black man’s neck. He ended up suffocating to death. This tragic murder by police, has once again incited more tension and racial divide. It is not the first either, there have been thousands like George who were murdered in cold blood for no reason at all. Rather than type some angry tirade about how the police are murderers and the riots that have followed, I will instead outline somethings we can learn from this situation. There is a certain way to act in times like these, and the way you respond to anger triggering events tells me a lot about who you are as a person.

All Cops Are Bad 

I think this lesson still hasn’t sunk in. The nature of the job of being a police officer makes it impossible to be a good cop. You have to realize that police are not “protecting and serving” your community. The police don’t work FOR  you or your community. They work for the State. They are employed and paid by the state to enforce laws. In a Supreme Court case Warren vs. District of Columbia, the court ruled that “the duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists”. This means that police have no duty to protect individuals. But more importantly, this case brings up another point about the morality of laws.

If the police aren’t legally bound to protect you then that means they are bound to enforce laws. Obviously, the law doesn’t hold them equally accountable, because the officers who murdered George Floyd haven’t been indicted for murder yet. However, let us look at the bigger picture here. There is a distinct difference between morals and laws. How does one weigh which is worse: Rape or Murder? Stealing and Rape? Murder and Stealing? Of course, the law puts a value to each crime, typically the “worse” crime gets more years in prison and heavier fines. But when you examine crimes in a moral lens without considering what the law says, I think you find that all crimes equally bad especially when they hurt or kill others. Its an important qualifier because state also has punishments for victimless crimes like speeding tickets.

Eliminate Need for State funded Police

I believe that the solution for innocent people getting murdered by police is a combination of the elimination of state funded police departments and community action to help people who are in trouble. For example, rather than arresting drug addicts, we should be helping rehab these individuals. There is evidence for this working as a solution. Portugal tried a program where it instead of jailing drug addicts, it had them rehab by slowing weening them off the drugs. Here in America, we have rehab centers but often they are cost prohibitive. This is where charity could play bigger role. If you care about people then you will donate your money to help them. We don’t need government to do anything.

As for the elimination of state funded police departments, this will only work if we put into place community/neighborhood watch programs. Every community and every neighborhood should voluntarily fund their own security force. If the security force does something that the community doesn’t like, they can just stop funding it. The funding would be tied to performance. Also rather than being bullies for the state, the private security officers would be members of the community or neighborhood they patrol. So they would have a vested interest in actually keeping people safe.

Also just remember that there are no perfect or blanket solutions.

Conclusion: Looting Isn’t Justified

One last thing, I want to clarify that seems to be controversial is about looting. As a normal course of action, the people of Minneapolis started looting in anger against the police. But my problem with looting of the private businesses is:

1. They didn’t murder George Floyd
2. Morally; stealing and murder are the same in that they hurt somebody else
3. Although most of the businesses that were looted are big corporations, they will recover. However, two wrong don’t make a right.
4. Violence against the police is fine, Violence against innocent people or businesses makes you just as bad as the police. Also it turns people off  and away from the actual serious problem of the police murdering George Floyd.

I think the Martin Luther King JR. said it best about the use of nonviolent methods to achieve your goals:

“Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.”

Thanks for reading

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The Myth of Good Government

I constantly hear people on social media say something along the lines of  “Good government does X, Y and Z”. Full stop, there is no such thing as “good” government. There is no situation or circumstance where the government has done something with a negative consequence or impact on somebody! Also before you start spewing strawman arguments at me, I’m not saying there is an decision on an action that won’t have negative consequences or impact. I am saying that the weight of decision making should be made on an individual basis. The problem with government actions is that there is usually no way to avoid the consequences. All government action comes with teeth (Laws that fine or give jail time) which inevitably provides bad outcomes for some people.The fact is there is no such thing as fully positive blanket actions by government. Its impossible.

In this post, I want to do something different. Rather than try to dispel every single bad government policy, I am going to present to you what statist’s think “good government” looks like. Its going to be utter fantasy. I’ll make sure to emphasize the parts that actual make each particular policy “not good”. This will show you that “good government” is just a pipe dream. The reality is that government never achieves its goals or does what it says it  will. It will ALWAYS, I mean ALWAYS let you down. The lesson here is that government shouldn’t even need to exist because individuals make the best decision for THEMSELVES. It baffles me that people want a bunch of corrupt bureaucrats telling them how to live their life. What kind of pathetic, spineless, brainless retard are you? Think for yourself.

Healthcare

The ideal healthcare system in the eyes of “good government” statists is a universal healthcare system. Universal healthcare is used in many countries around the world but to the dismay of many statists its not used here in the US. They argue that healthcare is a RIGHT. (Ignoring the fact that doctors, nurses and such need to be paid for their work) Nevertheless, they want the government put trillions of dollars in a universal healthcare system. It would similarly to other countries where you have to just present an ID card to get the service. All of this funded by taxpayer money. Many supporters of this system say they don’t mind waiting longer. In Canada, an organ transplant can take up to 6 months. I guess if you don’t mind the high cost to the taxpayer and to the critically ill then its a “good” government function. (Veterans Affairs, Medicare are other examples of “good” government with similar problems)

Labor Laws

One of my personal favorite, statist claim of “good government”. Labor laws include things like minimum wage, mandatory paid leave and all that. The rationale with these laws and regulation is to make sure everyone gets paid “fairly” because their entitled to it for no reason other than existing. (Reality check: The market is supposed to decide your pay. A job is a literally a contract between you and a business, which you can negotiate the terms. Every job has an incentive to pay market value or above to keep the best workers. Minimum wage destroys that) The fight for 15 was a valiant effort to supposedly raise the wages of the poor. (Supposedly because raising the floor wage makes all other wage worth less) The cost of these labor laws is quite high because they contribute to unemployment and higher prices but statists are just fine with this.

Election Laws

Better a get a strong drink, this one is fantastically cringe. Statists believe in fair elections because they apparently exist in *other* countries. In order to achieve, the fairness some statists want voter ID laws. Others want dead people to be able to vote. Some want illegal immigrants to vote. Some don’t. They want the electoral college to cease existing because its unfair to their candidate. (Specifically that one in 2016) Voting is a civil duty. Nothing new here, but in recent years, we’ve heard calls for regulations on campaign donations and how candidates can use that money. Its funny how there is a lot of talk but no action on election reform. Its almost like candidates benefit from the corruption thats allowed to exist. What is more amazing to me is the fact that statists still believe you can VOTE harder to change country. (Chugs the entire jug of kool aid)

Foreign policy

A hotly debated issue among statists, its akin to play chess on teams of 150 million people and trying to agree on the next move. According to “good government” principles, foreign policy must be dominated by military intervention. If bombing another country is not considered an option then its not foreign policy. It doesn’t matter who is in office either. Americans just want to bomb “brown people” as George Carlin puts it. Statists will settle for nothing less than American hegemony across the world. You are either licking America’s boot or you are dead. (For reference, there is other foreign policy types such as soft power) If you are lucky enough to avoid the bombs, then you will probably get hit with sanctions. Statists love to impose economic sanctions on countries with undue vengeance. (See Iran) This is destructive foreign policy leads to blowback and inevitable terrorist attacks, which play into other necessary elements of “good government”.

Public Safety and Security

We are all familiar with the TSA, NSA, the Patriot Act, FISA, Cares Act and other safety and security measures. In fact, after 9/11, George W. Bush created a whole government department dedicated to “safety” at home. Well, Statists believe that if you have NOTHING to hide then it shouldn’t be your concern. They also don’t mind that cops enforce the unjust laws. The same goes for things like gun laws. Nobody needs a gun! Regardless of what side you listen to on guns, eventually the guns go bye bye. Don’t worry about that denial that surrounds who in fact will come and take the guns. The police will protect you from having too freedom! (Sorry, I can’t possibly spew this ridiculousness seriously) The main takeaway here, is that “good government” will protect you from all dangers either real or perceived.

Conclusion

If you’ve learned anything from this post, its that government’s so called “good” policies are actually not great. If you notice every single policy claims to help people but then in the end, it fucks over those same people. There are many more thousands of examples of this. But listen, I don’t need a thousand examples to prove that thinking and making decisions for yourself is the best way to live your life. Stop voting, stop depending government to make decisions for you. Start thinking for yourself. Start critical thinking about your health, financial situation and your community. Be the change that you want to see in the world. Don’t force others to do your bidding, don’t be an asshole. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Its not hard or expensive to be a decent human being.

Thanks for reading!

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Understanding Statism: Why Government replaces God

I was having a conversation on social media recently about obnoxious atheist. Someone brought up an interesting question that has little to do with being an obnoxious atheist. The question was why do atheist deny the existence of God but then turn around and support government? I realize as we were discussing it, that this would be a fantastic blog post. I wasn’t able to expand my full thoughts on this topic due to the character limits of this specific social media. Most of this information that I will use is from my other series “What is Nihilism“.

Nihilism is not Atheism 

I think that the difference between Nihilism and Atheism is an important distinction. You can be atheist and not a Nihilist. However, in order to be Nihilist, you have to be atheist. Nihilism is the destruction of truth through the denial and eventual replacement of God. So you can see why atheism might be mistaken as “nihilistic”. This presents the question of why is nihilism the best way to explain the phenomenon that is denying God and turning to the state? There is a few reasons why Nihilism perfectly explains this.

The first reason is that Nihilism like atheism denies the existence of God but it takes this one step further by replacing God. In the case of Nihilism, the replacement is a slow process with four distinct stages as prescribed by Eugene Fr. Sepahrim  Rose who wrote a whole book on the topic. The replacement of God, or in other words, truth as Rose puts it, is done through a restless search in earthly knowledge. The philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche who wrote extensively about nihilism, he wrote things like “There is no truth” and “God is dead”. These phrases all lend themselves to opening the door for the replacement of God.

The second reason why Nihilism perfectly explains why atheist would turn to the state over God is the aspect of control. Nihilism in a lot of ways is about feeling in control of your existence. Nietzsche doesn’t address control directly, but rather he discusses Value creation. This is an important building block to Nihilism. Value creation is basically the value relative to the desire of people that hold them. Simply put, what you desire is what you value. I think that Value creation is a good way to look at control especially when comes to the State. 

Control: Monopoly on Violence

There two universal traits in human beings: Self interest and Greed. Most political and economic systems operate on these traits, using them to help each person help themselves and others. Control when talking about government or the state is usually seen in a few ways. The State controls us through propaganda, violence such as police forces and military, laws, regulations, and the most relevant one to this question: voting. The state is similar to Nihilism in that its main weapon of choice is violence. The last stage of nihilism is the nihilist of destruction which means exactly what you think. The end goal of nihilism is to destroy all truth and replace God with something more earthly. Quite similarly, nihilism and statism ends in nothing.

Voting is the main way that the state lets people feel like they have control over their life and other’s lives. Voting operates on those same traits of self interest and greed. I made a point in the initial discussion, that statism is a convenient replacement. Its not hard to participate in politics. Everywhere in the world has a government. Voting rights have expanded significantly throughout the world since Nietzsche’s first writings about nihilism. So it should be no surprise that state destroys freedom, like nihilism destroys truth. To a lesser degree, religions can provide that sense of control and power over others. But that isn’t how it should be with religion. If you read my other series on “Civil Government” by David Lipscomb, you will find that actual if you are religious, specifically Christian, you shouldn’t participate or aid in Civil government. The civil government was created by the Devil and used by God to punish those who partake.

Conclusion

So when someone asks why do some atheist turn to the state after rejecting God? We can say that they want to feel in control. The need for control stems from self interest and greed that lead to a power trip by voting.  Just like a nihilist, the average statist atheist replaces God with the state through the destruction (violence) of freedom (God). I think that this is an interesting topic because humans always feel the need to be in control. Its quite unnatural to like chaos. That is why I often balk at people who claim Anarchists just want chaos. All humans want some form of control in one way or another. However, you chose to take control, just make sure you are not hurting others or infringing on their rights.

Thanks for reading

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Blogging: Idiot’s Guide To Starting and Running A Blog

Recently, I’ve had a few people inquire about my blog. The inquires have been focused on how to start and run a blog. These types of questions have inspired me to write a little guide. To be honest, I don’t know everything about blogging. However, I have been doing it for about 5 years. In addition, I won’t talk much about monetization because I currently do not monetize my blog. In order to monetize your blog, you have to get your own domain which you can either buy from your blogging platform or other websites. Then for WordPress at least, you have to upgrade to above the free version.  Its not that expensive, but you probably want enough readership to cover the cost at least. For me, this blog was never really meant to be anything but a passion project. I can’t rule it out in the future either, but for now my readership isn’t as high as I’d like for monetization.

Introduction

The first thing you probably want to consider before even creating the actual website, is consider what your blog name, content and style. For me, it was a no brainer that  I should write about history and politics because that is what I’m most passionate about. I decide on the name “Life Experiences”  because I see this blog as written from my point of view. Although I often cite and use other sources, I tend to always put my perspective on everything I write.

Once you have decided on that, then look into making a website. You can use a variety of different platforms. WordPress, Blogspot, and other website providers..etc, but from personal experience, I have primarily used wordpress. I think I tried blogspot a long time but don’t remember anything. I would recommend WordPress though, because its easy to use and its doesn’t cost anything if you don’t want to pay. WordPress also provides a bunch plug ins and analytic tools to measure and see how your blog is doing. You can see the statistics for views and visitors in categories like days, weeks, months and years. You can see where people found your blog. You can see statistics for each individual post. You can see yearly stats that show you the average words written, likes, views and other metrics. WordPress also allows pretty advanced customization of your website. They have a lot of free templates, plus you can edit them to make it how you want it. I have switched my look at two times. At first, I had like a red background with white writing. Then I decided to switch it up a few years ago to be black and yellow, my current layout.

Style and Writing

Its your blog so you can decide how to write it. Here my recommendation is that you stick to the same style. I think that style can be dependent on the topic and content as well. For example, I write in more of academic style like an essay. Whereas if you were to do, for example, an old English literature blog I am certain your style would be different. My other recommendation is keep it as short as possible. There is an old saying: Long enough to cover the topic, short enough to make it interesting. I live and die by this cliche. I would say that ideally, you don’t want to go above 1500 words. The problem with very long posts is that your readers attention span is probably less than 10 minutes. So its in your best interest to keep your posts as short as you can to retain your audience.

Content

When you are thinking up ideas about what to write about, consider all your options then pick the one you are the most enthused about. I’ve written previously, in another post about writers block. You can read that here. Content can be the hardest thing about blogging. You really have to be creative and desire to put out blog posts consistently. As I wrote in that post, I have personally struggled with posting consistently especially before December 2019. I would go months without posting sometimes. I wouldn’t recommend it. If you post consistently, your views and visitors will go up or keep steady. Some of the things that help me create content is reading books, reading other articles, looking at memes, daily conversations. You should consider all interactions in your daily life as possible kindling for creating a new post! I can’t tell you how many times, I’ve read or seen something that made me go, WOW thats a great blog post!

Goals/ Intentions

This is an important topic to me because I think it weighs heavily on the integrity of your blog. In the page, About Garrett’s Blog, you can find what is basically my mission statement. From the beginning, I have vowed to educate, nothing else really matters. Also I don’t obsesses over the views/visitor numbers. I get that if you monetize those are the important numbers. Also it feels good to have people read and enjoy your work. To me, you should start a blog because you want to share your knowledge or your passion. If you start a blog just to make a little cash, its alright but it won’t be as good as the person whose drive is passion. Take this advice or don’t, it up to you. Let me also suggest that you set a goal to write consistently and gain reasonable amounts of readers. Once you have acquired some readership then turn your attention to monetization if you wish.

Sharing

One last thing, make sure to share your blog on all your social media platforms. Nothing wrong some shameless self promotion. I plug my blog on every social media I can possibly handle. Sharing on social media along with word of mouth, is how you will get the majority of your readers. Also I would recommend googling your website to see if it shows up. Sometimes you can mess with settings to make it more visible on google. I get anywhere from 5 up to 20 hits from search engines a month.

Conclusion

I hope you find this guide helpful. If you have any questions, you can drop a comment. Also I do welcome guest posts if you would like to write something but don’t feel like a whole new blog is necessary. I always enjoy helping people to learn something so I hope this does exactly that!

Thanks for reading

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The Statist’s Bible: Pandemic Edition

If you missed my previous edition of this, then you can click here to read it. The last time I wrote one of this, I triggered a bunch of people. Let’s see if I can do it again. Its weird that bootlickers take such offense to their own arguments being called out. If your arguments were actually good I wouldn’t be able to even say anything. That being said, this is a parody, so if your mad then go be a Karen somewhere else because I don’t want to hear it.

In the first edition, I said I might expand it in the future. I didn’t realize the future would materialize this soon. This pandemic has really brought the stupid, especially in bootlickers. We can be honest in saying that state worshipers are always blind to their stupidity. This edition will feature some common phrases and arguments from statists during this pandemic. All them seem to try to justify state intervention to “save lives”.

Chapter 8: Infectious Sate Intervention

8:1; If it SAVES just ONE LIFE then its worth it! (Yes, because economic slaughter of millions to save a few thousand sick is totally worth!)

8:2: We’re all in this together! (Except Politicians, Celebrities and Elites because only plebs follow rules)

8:3; Follow the orders (Masks, Social Distancing, lockdown; no critical thinking allowed.)

8:4; Trump isn’t a socialist, he is just helping by giving out stimulus money! (totally not stolen!)

8:5; Trump hasn’t done enough to help! (See 8:4)

8:6; If you don’t want to keep everyone locked down, then you want everyone to DIE!

8:7 Narc-ing on your fellow citizens is your civil duty! (Karens Unite)

8:8; Money Printer go Brrrrr (Printing lots of money could never go wrong!)

Once again, this is a parody. The common sense approach to personal health is to do whats best for you and others. If you are keeping yourself safe then its likely others will be safe as well.

The Statist Bible is the go-to book for the rote memorization and repetition of statist worship arguments. I hope that you will study it closely because when you engage with Statists, you will run into these arguments. The state indoctrination or brainwashing by state creates NPCs who just repeat the same tired arguments no matter what response is given.

Thanks for reading!

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Shopping Cart Analogy Explained

You might have seen this circling around social media. I recently posted it and got a lot of interesting responses. Some of these responses gave me faith in humanity. Some of the responses made me lose faith and others just flat out confused me. A good many people focused on the actual shopping carts themselves. It should be noted, I captioned the photo: Why Anarchy will Work:

The responses that troubled me most were the ones that couldn’t wrap their head around the connection between Anarchy and putting away your shopping cart because you are a decent human being. The worst responses being along the lines of Anarchy wont work because:

• Feudalism will happen (Ok, LibertyHangout chill.)
• Anarchy has been tried and failed (Wrong)
• Military Dictators will take over (As if they hadn’t already)
• Liberty and Anarchy have no relation (Absurd!)

The truth is that if you are focusing on the shopping cart or Anarchy as whole then you missed the point. This meme goes much deeper than the surface reading would suggest. Most people will consider something like putting back a shopping cart as trivial. Its meaningless. However, this analogy gives us a perfect moral and principle test for anarchy. 

As the post explains, putting away your shopping carts presents no positive or negative consequences in either private or legal matters. Whether you do or don’t only results two outcomes: If you do, then its because you recognized that it was the right thing to do. As the post says “out of the goodness of your own heart”.  If you don’t put it away, then nothing happens but it does say something about you. 

You see its about morals and principles. Let me frame it in some questions, which you should answer for yourself:

Do you return the shopping cart?

Why do you return?

If you don’t return it, why don’t you?

Is it right to return it?

Is wrong to return it?

Is wrong not to return it?

Its likely that if you do return the shopping cart its because you know its the right thing to do. I would wager to guess that most people who return it, only do it because its common courtesy. However you might be still wondering what this has to do with Anarchy. First off, my caption Why Anarchy will work, implies nothing about scale, time frame or anything like that. Secondly, anarchy will not be installed overnight, tomorrow  and it won’t be easy either. Anarchy has to come into place by voluntary agreement of all individuals in a given community. The scale of anarchy could be just neighborhood up to whole continents, even the world. But none of this matters if people cannot self govern. 

The meme introduces the analogy under the premise of testing for self governing. Anarchy is quite literally self governing. Anarchy means without rulers therefore making self governing a necessary skill. If self governing is the primary skill need for anarchy then what is the foundation of self governance? How does one become adept at self governance? Morality and Principles.

Its inherent by the nature of mankind that humans know right and know wrong. It is a presupposition. God, or a higher power has given us this knowledge. Nobody invented this, we all just know. (See this post for on Transcendental Argument for God) So if we accept this absolute truth, that all humans inherent know right from wrong, then we can talk about morality. Morality can be divided into two distinct types subjective and objective. You can read about Objective Morality here. Morality is how you judge situations and make decisions based on right and wrong. In some cases, you choose the ‘wrong’ even if you know what is right. Does it make you a bad person? No. So if you don’t put away the shopping cart and you know its right then doesn’t automatically make you terrible. 

Some people argued, correctly that shopping cart gathers provide jobs for many. Of course this doesn’t change the morality of the decision. It is still common courtesy to put away your cart. The free market will create jobs especially for those who are disabled. Also its quite delusional to think that everyone will eventually put away the cart. Anyway, the point that I want to make is that if your moral compass tells you to put away the shopping cart, then you are ready to self govern. If you are able to do such a trivial task without any positive or negative reward, then I would trust you not to violate or infringe other’s rights. 

I find that with anarchy, many people will argue, wrongly, that laws effectively deter people doing wrong. Here is the issue with laws: laws are written by man, laws are arbitrary and don’t necessarily represent right and wrong. Another assumption about anarchy which persists is the fight for power because of a lack of government. This would be fair if suddenly the government just collapses. However, when I say Anarchy, I don’t mean instantly. Anarchy must be installed slowly by getting everyone to agree to live peacefully without government. 

I’m just as guilty as anyone of Gate-keeping. I often shit on minarchy but I think that Anarchy will be a step by step process. Unfortunately minarchy, which is a small government consisting only of basic public services will have to exist in some form before we can attain full anarchy. I address the topic of gate keeping quite often on other platforms. The message is the same here: Please, Please don’t shit on others valid paths to liberty. We don’t know what will actually bring us to our goal. We have to support and educate everyone that we can. 

A big part of self governance and anarchy is restraint and charity. I think these two traits are underrated. Restraint refers to being able to keep yourself from infringing on other’s natural rights. It also refers to not overreacting if someone does happen to infringe. Punishment should fit the crime. Charity is another very important aspect. Charity is the voluntary donating of money, goods or services. Charity is what will take care of the poor, take care of the sick. Society needs YOUR help. 

In conclusion, its the principle of doing what’s right even when nobody is looking. That is what the analogy of putting away the shopping cart brings to the table for anarchy. Anarchy will work by ALL of us putting away our shopping cart. It will work by all of us self governing by not infringing on other’s rights. Anarchy will not be tomorrow, will not be overnight, not be on scale of nations, but it does start with you.

“Anarchy amongst honorable men is better than democracy amongst thieves” 

Thanks for reading! 

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Why Anarchy will work: pic.twitter.com/SzrSudCN8k

— Garrett (@TechAnalytics12) May 9, 2020

Economics of Tyranny

While I try to think of another series to write, I have been thinking about an economics piece. In fact, I have a draft of another post explaining some basic economic concepts. But instead of finishing it, more interesting topics came up. In this post, I want to explore how the government uses economics to keep control over the population. There are some certain policies in particular that contribute to the tyrannical overreach of government. The policies include a lot of monetary policy which is primarily the tool of choice. Monetary policy is usually directed through the federal reserve. The other policies include things like minimum wage and industry regulations on banking. Some more unusual measures are ones that we have seen recently in this pandemic like price gouging measures. My point in the post is to dispel some of the myths of benefits of all these measures. Many politicians will claim policies such as these to be in the “best interest” of everyone. But what politicians usually don’t offer is the potential consequences of these policies.

Keynesian Economics

You may have heard of this term “Keynesian”. Keynesian just refers to the name of the economist who came up with this type of economics. The basic principle of Keynesian economics is to control the economy through monetary policy. The monetary policy involves controlling the interest rates of borrowing and savings. I find keynesian economic policy to be quite ineffective for the economy. However, it seems to be extremely effective for tyranny. The federal reserve is responsible for installing monetary policy. Although the federal reserve is not elected, the head chairperson is appointed by the President. One of the policies that keeps tyranny propped up is the printing of fiat currency or dollars. As you are probably know dollars are now backed by nothing after the removal of the Glass Steagall Act which keep the dollar pinned on the value of gold. The dollar is backed up by the credit of the government. Which means if the government goes bankrupt then the dollar loses all its value. (Yes, the government can default, doesn’t matter how money you print) This all means that the government can easily control the value of the dollar. All currency must be limited in supply in order to keep its value. The value of money equates to purchasing power. The over-printing of dollars often devalues the purchasing power. We will talk more about purchasing power when minimum wage is discussed.

Another policy that relates to the federal reserve is bank regulations. Not all regulations are bad, to be fair. But there are specific regulations especially regarding business operations. It has to do more with the borrowing interest rates because the government tries to control how much and when businesses can borrow. But in addition, the banking and industrial specific regulations encourage monopolies. There is a common misconception that government somehow prevents monopolies. But the reality is that government is actually a monopoly in and of itself. Big corporations often use government policies to their advantage. Regulations keep the price of business high, and keep potential new-coming competitors from being able to get in. This occurs in many industries such as energy, telecommunications and healthcare. The government uses the federal reserve coupled with regulations to keep businesses and individuals from being “too successful”.

Minimum Wage

I’ve written about minimum wage a bunch of different times. Its one of those commonly pushed economic policies that are perfect of keeping tyrannical control. Minimum wage is a genius policy because many people buy into it without realizing the dire consequences that occur after its enacted. If you remember earlier, I mentioned purchasing power would come up again in this topic. Purchasing power is one of the main consequences of minimum wage. Its quite ironic that poor who usually support minimum wage often end up being hurt by it the most. If you are poor, it doesn’t make sense to devalue your money. If anything you want money worth more. The way that minimum wage hurts purchasing power is by increasing the wages of the lowest wing of workers. The lowest paid workers have increased wages also causes the workers just above to either increase or become the new lowest wing. In turn, this decreases the purchasing power and value of that wage. Secondary effects include lay offs from smaller businesses, and increased prices. The argument against minimum wage is similar to the one against basic income which does the exact same thing with added bonus consequence of taking away motivation to work. This leads perfectly into the next segment about certain pandemic policies that keep government tyranny.

Bad Pandemic Policy

Some policies like social distancing are good policies but have little to do with economics. But many policies enacted during this time like stimulus checks, bailouts, and price gouging controls are overall bad especially when looking long term. Let’s start with the stimulus checks because I just finished the last segment off about basic income. Although the stimulus checks were only one time, its not a great policy. Like I said, the government just giving out free money causes prices to increase, people to loss jobs, currency to devalue, and lack of motivation to work. Not to mention, it adds to the National Debt which you can see on this page. Stimulus checks help government tyranny by keep citizens loyal. As if government needed to garner more loyalty via big corporations, we have bailouts. Bailouts keep corporations afloat that would otherwise go under. Its perceived by many that bailouts are necessary because millions would lose jobs. However, its a fallacy just like the sun goes up and down, so do businesses. When a business goes under it shouldn’t be bailed out. Failed business means there is another opportunity for someone else to be successful. Its a better policy to let business fail and ensure that good business practices are reinforced. Government allows bad business practices to flourish. This tyrannical tool is often seen in the banking and healthcare industries.

Last but not least we have price controls, particularly against price gouging. We might as well also include anti-hoarding policies here. These all seem to helpful because they make the distribution of goods “fair”. However, this approach is flawed. Rather than letting the market sort itself out by raising prices where demand is highest, instead, goods just run out completely because production of those goods ceases. What incentive do suppliers have to make goods that will be under sold? They are not in business for charity but to make profits. This group of policies has contributed to food shortages and masks shortages. I think these pandemic policies are examples of government tyranny that results in more harm than good.

Conclusion

I think its pretty clear that government tyranny comes in a lot of forms especially with regards to economics. Its a rule of thumb, that most government policies while being tyrannical are also ineffective and inefficient. Thats sort of the irony when talking about the government controlling every aspect of your life. It should make most people consider that most people would be better off making their own decisions. Its really not hard to take care of yourself and your family without government interference. Then add into that non-violent actions and you have the perfect setup for a voluntary society. You also have to remember that economics is merely the voluntary transaction of goods and services between businesses and individuals. I think that this is where keynesian economics goes wrong, they focus on borrowing interest rates and saving interest rates. I don’t believe that interest rates are the right thing to focus on for economic policy. The basis of economics is the voluntary exchange of goods with currency. So its in the best interest to foster that exchange.

Thanks for reading!

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Series Finale: Do you even Principles, Bro?

If you haven’t read the rest of this series then visit Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Also check out this book:Civil Government by David Lipscomb.

Background

In Part 4, we discovered that the will of each type of government is different. We found that civil government will is fueled by the lust of rulers. In contrast, the divine government will is fueled by being the antithesis of civil government. The civil government merely a counter-weight to those who support it and reject the love of God. This post will uncover another sort of level, in order to further the theological argument against government. We will re-visit civil government as punishment in addition to the principles that governments operate. Lastly, I will discuss how violence is viewed in light of the divine government. This may or may not be the last post of the series for now. I feel like its kind of been exhausted at least for me. I may re-visit it in the future.

Punishment

The point of this series is to add yet another reason to reject civil government. As any principled anarchist or libertarian does, we often find economic and social reasons for the government to not exist. The less argued, less beaten path is religious justifications. I believe its a requirement to be religious in order to use theological arguments. However, acknowledging God’s existence is necessary. Thus far, with Lipscomb’s help, I’ve fleshed out that Civil government is used as a punishment for revolting against God and his divine government. In addition, civil government is under the Devil’s domain of rule. There might be some confusion about the nature of Divine government because obviously the word ‘government’ implies some sort of force. Lipscomb helps make it sound a bit more anarchist/libertarian friendly:

He ordained human government as a punishment for rejecting his
government. Wherever and so long as man rejects God’s rule, he must be ruled by men, or as here developed he must be ruled by the devil. But Christ came to destroy human government by calling man back from sin to the rule and service of God. Man must come voluntarily at the call of Christ. Then Jesus proposed to destroy human government only as he destroyed sin and rebellion against God

You will notice that God never mandates that you must belief in him or participate in religion. You have to voluntary choose to do so. I think the voluntary element of religious participation makes it a viable justification within the anarchist/libertarian ideology. As I have discussed in other posts recently, if you don’t accept the presupposed notions or absolute truths then your whole argument negates itself. In my nihilism series, I focused quite heavily on this. The rejection of absolute truths and the Transcendental Argument for God are the main inspiration for this particular series. Lipscomb’s book really helps supplement  and give more context for why you should choose to believe in God’s divine government rather than the worldly and sinful civil government. Civil government only benefits those who rule it. The divine government can benefit those who serve it.

Principles of Service

On the topic of serving a government, Lipscomb brings up an eye opening passage. This paragraph that I will quote is based on the book of Matthew in the New Testament of the bible. However, the important takeaway is that principles matter. Principles are often the elephant in the room when it comes to politics. The problem in modern politics is that nobody has principles. Even libertarians/ anarchist are guilty of this. Its infuriating because principles are the anchor of the ideological ship. If you don’t anchor, you will keep floating and drifting forever. In this paragraph, we shall see how principles matter when involved in serving in a government:

He then lays down the principles that must govern in his kingdom. They are epitomized in 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters of Matthew. These principles are diverse from and antagonistic to the principles that have obtained and must ever obtain in all human governments. No human government can possibly be maintained and conducted on these principles laid down for the government of Christ’s subjects in his kingdom. The spirit that prompts the practice of the principles is opposed to the spirit needful for the maintenance of human governments. The two spirits cannot dwell in the same heart, nor the same temple, or institution. A man cannot be
gentle, forgiving, doing good for evil, turning the other cheek when one is smitten, praying “for them that despite fully use and persecute” him, and at the same time execute wrath and vengeance on the evil-doer, as the human government is ordained to do, and as it must do to sustain its authority and maintain its existence.

When people claim to be a believer in God yet support civil government there is no way both can be true. Either you believe God and his divine government or you are rebelling against God by participating in civil government. Pick your side wisely. Just remember that civil government will result in a punishment by God. You have to be principled, you have to stick a set of morals. The Devil can easily mislead you into thinking that somehow civil government is the right thing to support. You have to think critically about your decisions. This rings true for all things in life. Granted, everyone struggles with life decisions, I’m no exception. But there is power in God’s divine government that civil government doesn’t possess.

Illegitimate Violence

If you are anarchist/libertarian then you are probably anti-war. In fact, you probably don’t believe in violence for any reason with the exception of self defense. (If not, then consider not calling yourself anarchist) This is another topic in Lipscomb’s book that is necessary to address. In order to simplify ideologies, we usually place them into dichotomies, like Right vs. Left, You vs. State, and relevant to this: Violence vs. Non-Violence. In this quote, it isn’t suggesting that believers use violence or even that violence is answer. The suggestion here rather, is that civil government will die just as it came into existence:

all institutions built by the sword or by violence, must perish by the sword or violence. All human governments are built by the sword, therefore must perish by the sword. Christ’s church must be so built as to stand forever, therefore it cannot be built by the sword. It would seem that the sword was used to teach, that even though in the power and possession of the children of God they are not permitted to use it.

You can see at the end of the quote, it says “children of God they are not permitted to use it [violence]”. Earlier, I referenced the power of divine government. I think this quote sort of backs it up. Its very powerful to use only peaceful resistance to bring about the necessary violence to end the source of it. Simply put: God rewards those who follow him. I think that many libertarians/anarchists think that civil government will eventually collapse under its own weight and stupidity. Just because our ideology and religious beliefs say we can’t use sword, doesn’t mean there are not other methods. For example, counter-economics can easily bring down government. Jury nullification can stop injustice. There are little things that we can all do to help resist the government without using violence. Don’t worry, god will eventually use the same sword that brought about civil government to end it. God will start the boogaloo. Its coming.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this series. I think the main takeaway from this post, is that we have to maintain the course, keep our principles and use non-violent methods to bring about positive change in society but also resist government tyranny. The theological argument against Civil government really gives a solid foundation for us to rebuild society again. Its clear to us that society is broken, we aren’t meant to be so dependent on government for direction and subsistence in life. Its not normal. The belief in God is voluntary just like being anarchist or libertarian. Its worth repeating that good ideas don’t require force.

There will more blog posts coming soon. I had a bit of writers block recently, hoping to get back on track.

Thank you for reading!

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Managing the Pandemic: Voluntary Society

Taking a little break from other series which you can see the last part here. I’ve been thinking about writing a post about this topic for awhile. I know that everyone can relate to this post because we’re all going through it at the moment. I believe some people are probably experiencing less dramatic situations than others. The current event, a pandemic of proportions not unseen in history, has created a lot of government power grabbing. You may or may not know someone who has this virus or who has succumb to it. The inevitably of people dying is not something that humans can remedy. So this post will not focus on finding the cure or anything like that.

First, I feel like I should thank any front line nurses, clinical laboratory scientists, doctors, truck drivers, grocery store clerks and many others who must put their lives at risk. From my own perspective, I do know people with the virus. I do live in NYC  and it does have the most infections. Personally I don’t have it, nor does anyone close to me. I have a distinct point of view because my wife and mother in law are both front-liners. I drive them to work in Brooklyn nearly everyday. Often times, they tell me its been a pretty constant 50 percent rate of positives. They are clinical laboratory scientists, their job is to quite literally run the Covid-19 test. They have to deal with live samples of it in the thousands each day. Words really don’t do their efforts justice because they work 6-7 days a week for usually 12 hours a day. Not an easy gig.

Bad Government Handling

Many people feel underwhelmed by the government’s response to this pandemic. Others feel overwhelmed by it. I think the handling has varied depending on the place. Some governments have handled it better than others. But overall, I’d say that generally government does a bad job at handling stuff like this. The reason is because they try to apply policies that may or may not be effective to everywhere. The problem with blanket solutions is that sometimes that blanket doesn’t cover every situation. Take for example, in New York State, there are two distinct areas of New York State: Upstate and Down State. Upstate New York is mostly rural with lower population density. Down State contains New York City, a city inhabited by 8.6 million people with the highest population density in the USA. (Its ranked 8th in the world for population density of city proper) The State government in the beginning just spit out general regulations that were probably fine for upstate but in the city it wasn’t going to be enough.

I don’t think its a stretch to say that population density is a big factor in how fast this virus spreads. So its clear that here in the city, we would have need to be stricter on “social distancing” due to the close proximity of literally everyone. Especially baffling is the failure of the city to identify that public transit like subways are a hot bed for spreading. It took nearly a week or two before they decided it was a good idea to actually sanitize the train cars. (FYI they usually don’t clean subway cars in NYC, ever) In addition to all this, we’ve seen government bailouts which creates other problems that is probably entirely different post. However, I will address the mass unemployment.

Personal Responsibility

The goal of this post is to see how a voluntary society would handle such a pandemic. Let’s say that government didn’t exist. I think there are immediate changes that right off the bat would make a difference. First, without government there wouldn’t be shortages of medical equipment or hand sanitizer because there would be no restrictions on the production and release of those products to market. Second, without government there would be no food shortages, because the price of food goods would adjust to market value. While price gouging might seem unfair, its actually a protection for the supplier of that good. When the government tries to keep prices down artificially, it hurts the suppliers. It also hurts consumers because rather than having that good, its just sold out completely. Its better to have it especially in the case of something like bread, milk or eggs for a higher price. Instead with price gouging protections, we see high demand items sold out. Its because the producer or supplier can’t afford to make more, it makes no sense to put more out if they can’t get full market price. Its a loss for them.

I think the less obvious yet more important difference in a voluntary society would be how people and businesses go about protecting themselves. The main tool they would use would be personal responsibility. Remember there is no government to tell anyone what they should do or shouldn’t do. So it would be up to each individual to decide what is best. I know a majority will immediate disagree with me here by arguing that “nobody listens to government rules, what makes you think people will just naturally be responsible?” Sure its true that people don’t listen to government rules. However, the mindset of voluntary society is vastly different to compared to our current society. In a voluntary society, people aren’t complacent, they would be used to relying on themselves rather than on government for everything. But in order to answer these questions, we need to dig deeper into what personal responsibility actually looks like.

The personally responsible person would ideally take precautions, first and foremost for himself or herself.  This person would use common sense methods to prevent themselves from contracting any virus. Things like washing your hands, limiting public interactions, and generally just keeping themselves healthy. Now think about it: Keeping yourself healthy has additional benefits to society because if you aren’t sick then you can’t possibly spread the sickness. The same goes for businesses. A business can figure out how to operate without shutting down completely. We live in a world with technology beyond imagination. Surely nobody can tell me that technology can’t fix the government policy of total shutdown. Of course, before any business can innovate a way forward, the government steps in and subjectively rules between essential and non essential. In a voluntary society, businesses would only shut down if they absolutely had to. Technology would be able to cover gaps. I think in 2020, we have no excuses.

Let me also address something that media seems to find quite interesting: “No Libertarians in a pandemic”. Okay, first of all, excuse me but if you lose your principles on any basis like “an emergency” then you weren’t a REAL libertarian in the first place. Second, actual Libertarians and Anarchists don’t call on the government to do literally anything except shut itself down. Third, if your a libertarian or anarchist, and you think its rebellious to unsafely break “social distancing rules” then you are a part of problem. Listen, I’m not saying you should follow government guidelines because the government said so. I’m saying you should take some PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. It doesn’t matter what anyone says. Keep yourself healthy and keep others healthy too!

Conclusion

Last thing, I know that even in a voluntary society there would massive layoffs. A lot of business requires face to face interactions. Whatever technology can’t remedy, unfortunately some people would lose work. I have imagined that without government there would be a solution to this problem. Since without government, there would be no welfare state. Instead I think unemployment insurance would exist. It could be a multiple company, multi-trillion dollar business too. An unemployment insurance company needs to have very deep pockets to start or a large customer base. Either way it would work quite similarly to welfare.

In normal times, you would sign up by paying an upfront fee probably anywhere from 50 to 150 dollars. This fee would go straight to the company. Then on an app from your phone you would be able to set the amount deducted automatically from your paycheck. It would have to be in percentages with the lowest being probably 10-20 percent. That money deducted would be built up over the months and years that you work at any given job. A percentage deduction also means that the more money you make, more money you’ll receive if you do lose your job. Keep in mind that taxes wouldn’t exist so just imagine you get to choose how much is taken out. I would also think that a cool feature could be a retirement option. Let’s say you work 40 years without ever having to use this unemployment insurance. You could opt it into a 401k or IRA for retirement since you obviously put in the money and should be able to take it out eventually.

The moral of this post is that personal responsibility can be used in both a voluntary society and in today’s world. If you protect yourself then you will protect those around you too. Stay safe out there.

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Series: The Will of Divine vs. The Will of Civil Government.

If you have stumbled upon this series for the first time, please refer back to previous parts in order to fully understand: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Also I would recommend reading this book: Civil Government by David Lipscomb.

Background

In Part 3, the last part I wrote about how God uses Civil government as a punishment for man rebelling against his sovereign and sole status as law maker. Thus far, in this series, we have discuss a lot about the operation and functions of the civil government. In this post, we will focus more on the divine government. Of course, this will be in the lens of how God addresses the rebellion and the work of the devil. The divine government is not like any human government. I believe that government is a loose term, because its really only government in the fact that God rules over us. However, as we shall see in this post that God doesn’t use force or violence to make you accept him. You might think this is a contradiction because of God’s wrath against civil governments. God’s wrath is not aimed at families or individuals but rather at the civil government itself. The point is that anyone can have faith in God and turn away from civil government. Its a voluntary process. As it should be.

Work of the Devil

In order to begin this post, we have start with an actual bible verse. I’ve been sort of avoiding too much bible references because that isn’t my focus here. But this bible verse is important to understanding how the divine government operates. This verse originates from the crucifixion of Jesus. At this time during the ‘end’ of Jesus’ life, the devil comes to him and basically says “I will give you all kingdoms of earth back if you fall down and worship me” (Paraphrased). Here is what Luke recorded after this interaction according to Lipscomb:

“The devil taking him up into a high mountain showed unto
him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time,
and said unto him, all this power will I give unto thee
and the glory of them; for that is delivered unto me, and
to whomsoever I will, I give it. If therefore thou wilt
worship me, all shalt be thine.”

Lipscomb follows this quote up with an explanation about why this is a true statement. Specifically, the assertion that the devil possessed the kingdoms of world. Lipscomb points out that when the Devil says “they were delivered unto me” it is because of man’s civil government. Basically, the Devil offered the kingdoms of world to Jesus for the small price of worshiping the Devil. Obviously Jesus didn’t take it. Instead, Jesus was crucified for our sins. But this act has bigger meaning in our argument against civil governments for Anarchy:

“God made no attempt to abolish civil government; he
attempted to be the law-maker for one nation, and made
his law their civil law. He never tried to force those
laws upon other nations, or to legislate for them. There
is not one word of condemnation of any civil government
in the Bible unless that government enacted laws contrary
to natural equity, or was led by an unprincipled ruler.”

This quote is the essence of how the divine government operates. God gives each us of the choice to follow him. There are no consequences for not following with the exception of hell if you sin. Aside from that God really leaves it in a voluntary state. God also takes no action against civil government unless it starts to encroach on the divine government’s rule. But as we know, it impossible for the rulers of civil government to reign in their greed and self interest. Lipscomb then brings us another quote, this time it shows us that the divine government seems passive, leading to aggressive civil government overreach:

Imagined they could make governments better than God, and served the creature by honoring their own in preference to God’s government. Everyone who honors and serves the human government and relies upon it, for good, more than he does upon the Divine government, worships and serves the creature more than he does the Creator.

This is so true. It can be seen in today’s times. People think that civil government is the best thing to ever exist. There are people who think that government literally can’t do anything wrong. They always have some excuse for why any government program didn’t work. Its disgusting. But Lipscomb point is becoming more clear. We have to consider that even though civil governments were allowed to exist and overtake the place of the divine government, it was a part of God’s will to punish those who rebelled against him. This comes back to “Civil Government as Punishment”. But the greater point that I want to make with Lipscomb help, is that divine government has the same attributes that we should strive for in a voluntary society. Divine government is a passive, voluntary and self ruling form of government. God may make the rules but its up to each individual to follow them.

It is similar to NAP or Non-aggression principle. NAP is a rule of law wherein each individual who agrees to follow it, has to follow it or face the consequences. Its the same for the divine government because God sets consequences for sinners such as hell. Lipscomb frames the will of each divine and civil government in the persona of Jesus and Devil. Jesus being the divine government and the Devil representing the civil government. In this framework, its easy to see the contrast:

“If it be meant that civil government and nations were
under the control of the devil, and that Christ come to
rescue them from him, then Christ has failed, because we
all know, civil government and nations are now more
nearly universal than ever before, and that every
disciple of Jesus is a subject of some nation and is
subject to civil government.”

In this quote, Lipscomb makes us think that maybe the divine government’s will isn’t as strong. However, in the next paragraph, Lipscomb assures us that actually the failure is not with God but rather on human beings themselves:

But it is not true that civil government is honored and feared and that men
stand in awe of it and reverence its rule as they did in past ages. They now under the
enlightening rays of Divine truth understand government is for the people and not the people for the government and that rulers are men – selfish, wicked, corrupt men, with no more rights than others and human government is losing its hold on the affections of men

Unfortunately, its hard to believe the civil governments aren’t honored and feared. The amount of people I’ve seen that shared the sentiment of that first sentence. However, I think its important to point that leaders are “selfish, wicked, corrupt men, with no more rights than others”.  I think that politicians sometimes forget that they are merely humans themselves. Just by way that many politicians act, you can tell that think their above law of God. It is this smugness that stems from the power going to their head. This is why need to reject civil government because there is no benefit to anyone but the leaders and rulers of those civil governments.

Conclusions

To end off this part, I want quote quite a big chunk of Lipscomb’s book. This quote will explain why God allows civil government and hell to exist when we know God could just eliminate them. Once again, it comes back to punishing those who rebel against God. See, rather than smiting people down, God prefers to punish them with their own devices. The divine government operates in a very passive yet voluntary form that gives each individual the ability to choose. This choice is not without consequences, but at least you have a choice. Particularly the choice to reject civil government would seem to benefit you and those around you. Here is the quote to end this post:

But Christ came to destroy human government by calling man back from sin to the rule and service of God. Man must come voluntarily at the call of Christ. Then Jesus proposed to destroy human government only as he destroyed sin and rebellion against God. If there has been a failure it is not in destroying human government, but in destroying sin and rebellion since he proposed to destroy that only as these were destroyed. “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” He wishes human government to continue so long as man continues to sin. It is not wrong for the government of the devil to exist so long as men rebel against God and prefer to serve the devil. The wrong is in the rebellion that produces these governments and then, that those who have ceased to rebel against God and have taken the oath of fealty to him, should still support and strengthen these governments that have grown up as the fruit of this rebellion. Jesus Christ desires to destroy these governments only as he destroys sin which necessitates them. Only as his own government increases to fill the earth, just as God desires hell to exist so long as sin exists. It is right hell should exist so long as sin is in the universe to punish sinners and deter from sin. But it is wrong for the servants of God to enter into, become subjects and managers of the institution of hell.

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Series: Civil Government as Punishment

If you have just stumbled upon this series, I would read Part 1 and Part 2 first. I would also recommend giving the source material a read: CIVIL GOVERNMENT Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny, and the Christian’s Relation To It by David Lipscomb.

Why it matters?

In the last part, I discussed how civil governments operate according to Lipscomb’s analysis. Its wasn’t a very controversial or surprising outcome either: Leaders of the civil governments work to glorify and benefit themselves while the people who worship them get nothing. I also mentioned that civil government is a punishment for those who support it. Its true that God allows civil government to exist despite its antithesis to his divine government. But God teaches us a lesson with civil government. Its that lesson that this part will focus on. I believe that is an important part because it reinforces the idea that supporting civil government is truly evil. No good intentions can possibly come from supporting a government that run on pure greed, self interest and self-glorification.

This part might extend into the next part because of the volume of literature that Lipscomb provides. I just want to reiterate that each part of this series will be less than or around 1500 words in order for easier reading. With that said, lets start with God’s intentions for us and for civil government:

Intentions

Whether or not you believe in God, I think its important to consider what God has intended to happen. Whether or not you believe doesn’t change how civil government operates. This view of government is merely another lens and justification to look at how civil government is an illegitimate institution which we should resist at every turn. It may not matter to you that civil government is the antithesis to the divine government of God. But it should matter that supporting that same civil government will only result in your punishment. It’s not a hard concept to understand that leaders in the civil government will always be shady and corrupt because of the nature of civil government. Lipscomb discusses the intentions of God as it relates to his/her place in the world:

God created man as his own servant, to govern and control him; and in pursuance
of this design has at all times kept in existence a government of his own, changing it
to suit the changed condition and character of those willing to submit to him, reaching from the beginning until the present time.

In this quote, Lipscomb is talking about the divine government. Naturally, every christian will follow governance of God. No force or violence is required because you voluntarily become a believer. This is contrary to civil government which often resorts to force and violence. Lipscomb’s next passage give us, a clear message about the divine government:

That institution gave room for no human legislation; God is the sovereign and sole
law maker for it and he has ruled in it to guide and bless his children.

I think this whole quote could end my argument. (I’m kidding) But seriously, there is no higher ruling power than God himself. It begs the question why we even need civil governments? Fortunately, Lipscomb gives us the reason why God even allows such a thing:

Man, in the spirit of rebellion against God and with the view of living free from the
control of God, and independent of his authority, instituted governments of his own,
and those governments in their changing forms have existed from the days of Nimrod to the present time.
God, from its beginning, recognized this human government as rebellion against
him, and as the organized effort to throw off his authority and to conduct the affairs of the earth free from God’s rule and dominion.

Its clear to see that civil government is a rebellion against God because if God is the “sovereign and sole law maker” then any others would be competing. This is all interesting but we still haven’t gotten to the point of this post, the punishment factor. There is more background to the relationship between God and civil government and you. That we will discuss after this quote on punishment:

That God ordained the human government to punish those who rebelled against his
government by choosing the human, and he used and overruled this human
government to punish his rebellious children, and to destroy his enemies. For this
purpose God ordained and used it, and for these ends it was the ordinance of God. It
was good for the purpose for which he ordained it.

The”piece de resistance” of this particular post if you will, is this quote because God artfully uses civil government against those who support it in rebellion against him. If you’ve read the bible and seen some of the ways that God punishes people, I think its best not to piss him off. Putting that aside, lets step into some real world examples. Take for instance, the response to the current pandemic. A pandemic takes over the world. Civil government responds in the USA by shutting down the economy. Despite the positive results in stopping the spread of the virus, the consequences are numerous. Consequences such as food shortages, medical supply shortages, and restrictions on freedom. Civil government has hand in controlling all these things because it has many supporters. The leaders of civil government are often seen breaking their own rules even during this time of emergency. For example, Mayor DeBlasio was seen getting a haircut despite closing all the barber shops in the city. This is what God and Lipscomb are referring to when writing about leaders self glorification and greed in ruling.

Relationship of God, Civil Government, and YOU

To finish off this post, I want to continue discussing the relationship of God, you and the civil government. It is a triangle, each one of those entities has similar interests. However, they all have different intentions. The intention of God is to be sovereign and sole law maker to bless you (the believer). The intention of civil government is to revolt against God, glorify their leaders and enslave the worshipers of civil government.  The question is: what are your intentions? Who will you side with?

Not to fear, because Lipscomb can help us decide. He provides some insight through God and the bible to help you make the right decision. If it wasn’t clear, the right decision is to pick the divine government over the civil government. Lipscomb writes about what God says you should not do:

Regarding them thus, God always forbade that his subjects should join affinity or
affiliate with the subjects of the human government, or that they should make any
alliance with, enter into, support, maintain and defend, or appeal to, or depend upon, these human governments for aid or help.
That alliances with these human governments or their supporters arose from
distrust of, and were sins against, God, and without exception were punished. That
these alliances were sources of corruption to the children of God, weaned them from
God, from his service, and from fidelity to his appointments, and brought weakness,
shame, and disaster, instead of strength, security, and safety.

I think this gives the average christian, a relevant reason to reject civil governments all over the world. If you are not a christian but accept the existence of god, I think it still stands to reason that you shouldn’t side with civil governments. Civil governments don’t have your best interests at heart. I want to end with one more quote from Lipscomb. This quote builds off what we’ve already discussed. It takes a wider view of the relationship between God and the civil government. The relationship is viewed as a “war-like” one, but its waged against a specific group. God only punishes those who support, aid, appeal to the civil government:

The government of God and those of man were antagonistic and rivals of each
other, each contending for the rule and dominion of the world. Between them there
was an irrepressible conflict. God especially commissioned his local government to
drive out and destroy the human governments and their subjects that inhabited the
country they possessed. That this war of extermination was waged against the human governments and their subjects, not against them as individuals or families.

Conclusions

This post has discussed why God uses civil government as a punishment for its supporters. Civil government is a rebellion against God’s divine government. The rebellion is led by greedy, self glorifying leaders who leave their followers with nothing to show for. The divine government means that God is sovereign and sole law maker. I believe that civil government as a punishment makes perfect sense in the lens of a theological argument. If civil government is a rebellion against God then it stands to reason that any good christian would never think of supporting any human government. It also means that civil government is illegitimate in the eyes of God.

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Series: How “Civil Governments” Operate in Relation to the Divine Government

This is a new series, I suggest you read the introduction here. I would also recommend giving the source material a read: CIVIL GOVERNMENT Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny, and the Christian’s Relation To It by David Lipscomb. 

Foundations

The first few posts of this series will be of a foundational nature. This whole series will be structured as an argument. I am arguing that if you believe in the existence of god then you should reject “civil governments” on the basis they go against the divine government. Furthermore, I’m arguing that divine government helps anarchist achieve full anarchy because it peacefully rejects civil governments, which try to replace the divine government albeit unsuccessfully.  I realize that some readers will automatically agree with this. However, the majority will object on the basis of divine government. Don’t let that term scare you away. “Divine government” merely means the belief in God. Before I start marshaling evidence to support my argument, I want to start by defining and giving the background of civil governments. There is a quote by Sun Tzu from the Art of War that perfectly sums up what this part will do:

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

In this sense, we will get on with knowing our enemy.

Civil Government Worship 

In many Anarchist circles, there is a common analogy used to describe the fanatical nature of  statism. It usually compares statism to religion. It might not seem super believable, but I think that after this section, it will take on new meaning. We will start off with a quote from Lipscomb’s book. In a similar fashion to the Nihilism series, I will do the same process where I quote something and then analyze it. (Also trying to keep this series in shorter parts) Anyway, this post will be focusing “civil governments” and how they operate. We know how the operate in the worldly view. But its how operate within the context of God. This first quote will not surprise the veteran anarchist:

Every human government uses the substance, the time, the service of the subjects to enrich, gratify the appetites and lusts, and to promote the grandeur and glory of the rulers. And it is not true that in democratic or any other kind of governments the people themselves are rulers. They choose the rulers, at the instigation of a few interested leaders, then these rulers rule for their own selfish good and glory as other rulers do.

First and foremost, Lipscomb tells us what we already know to be true. Civil governments run by humans, are greedy and self interested. These two traits are universal in humanity. I think it comes as no surprise that rulers of human governments only seek to serve themselves despite the democratic nature. Lipscomb’s furthers this point in the next paragraph or so:

The rulers of the human oppress the subjects for their own benefit. The ministers of the Divine government deny themselves for the good of the subjects.

In this quote, Lipscombs does one of his first contrasts between the “civil government” and the “divine government”. We already knew that civil governments oppress their subjects. But its interesting that members of the divine government deny themselves. We will discover what exactly divine government ministers deny later on in the series. But its clear that each type of government has different intentions. I will say that its important to know that God intentionally allows civil governments to exist, despite their rebellion against him. Lipscomb expands the role of civil governments in God’s will:

So long as men refuse the rule of God, God ordains they shall be ruled by their own
governments and eat the fruit of their own ways and be filled with their own devices. Showing clearly that when men turn from the government of God to their own inventions and governments, then God ordains these governments as means of punishing them for their rebellion, and while this punishing them, they are God’s ordinances for this work and none should resist them. In doing so they are resisting the ordinance of God.

In this quote, we learn that civil governments are a rebellion against God. Not only that but when men turn from God by participating in civil government, that same civil government punishes them for it. This makes perfect sense, you get what you deserve. I think the average libertarian/anarchist can identify with this. Just look at how the American Government treats it citizens, especially in times of crisis. I don’t think anyone can counter-argue this without irrational or illogical statements. It seems to me that the participation in civil government does result in punishment for those who do it. This also could be reason that when you “vote” for something it rarely ever works as planned. Civil government has a lot of unintended consequences. This ordinance of God to punish those who rebel by participating in civil government could be the reason for these unintended consequences.

Outcomes of Civil Government

There is a distinct pattern that occurs when looking at how civil governments operate. Lipscomb uses the bible to examine the nature of civil governments. Before I share a long passage about the distinct pattern, we need to examine one more quote about how civil governments operate within the context of their rulers:

But it is not in man to form government in which the selfish element will not prevail, and which will not be used to tax and oppress the ruled for the glory and aggrandizement of the Rulers.

In a similar fashion to the contrast between civil and divine governments by Lipscomb, we see the same language used, words like “tax” and “oppress”. These words are commonly used by the liberty community to describe how the civil government inflicts its damage. At the end of this quote, we see the religious aspect of statism appear. Civil governments are ruled for the glory and aggrandizement of the rulers. Sounds pretty familiar to those of us in American politics. I’m sure you have seen people and even President Trump himself declare that he was sent from God. I’ve even seen people declare that President Trump is even more powerful than God. Its scary stuff. In the same way that nihilism works to replace belief in God with the belief in nothing, rulers of civil government also try to become god.

For the last quote, we have a biblical based story about the pattern of civil government. This pattern could be taken from biblical times throughout history. Every civil government can trace their heritage back to these biblical rulers. This story is an analogy about passing of power between iterations of civil government. I think its worth quoting in full:

Nebuchadnezzar, the great king, saw the vision that proclaimed his downfall and the downfall of all human governments. Daniel, the slave, interpreted the vision for the king, and it was also for the strengthening of the faith of God’s people. The image was that of a man, indicating the human origin of the governments typified by the image, in contrast with the Divine origin of the kingdom typified by the little stone cut out of the mountain without hands. Daniel interprets: the head of gold represents the kingdom of Babylon of which Nebuchadnezzar was head; the silver, the Medo- Persian; the brass, the Grecian; the iron, the Roman. The little stone cut out of the mountain without hands, represents the kingdom of God. It is not originated, shaped, or put into motion, or maintained by human power. It is God’s government. The lesson taught is, that the human governments must, one and all, be destroyed; and in their destruction, one after another, each became the prey of, or “was left” with all its strength, its riches, and its glories to the destroyer. It became the heritage of those who overthrew it. 

What I like about this analogy is that you can see it repeated through history. As each old government falls, a new government will form in its place. It seems like today, we find ourselves near the end of the road. Civil governments are starting to falter in many ways. I think the important message to take from this quote and from this part is that the key to destroying civil governments is it’s relationship (absence of  relationship) of the average christian. Or for our sake, the average believer in the existence of God. Lipscomb is arguing from the point of view of a christian. But I believe that you don’t have to be religious to understand and undertake the mission that is presented through Lipscomb’s writing by God.

Thanks for reading! This will be continued in the next part!

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