Quote of the day—Lyle @ UltiMAK

The disease is socialism. Every little bit of it, and the perpetrators aren’t on the front lines. They use the poor for their dirty work. So regardless of the system to be used, the perpetrators, who tend to work from cover and often hold official positions, are the ones who need “schooled”. Go after the queen bee and you get the whole hive.

Lyle @ UltiMAK
August 10, 2011
Comment to What caliber for riots?
[In essence I agree and have a big blog post in mind about this. My disagreement with the above is that removing the “queen bee” will not be of any use if there isn’t an appropriate replacement for “her”. In the case of Europe and probably several states in the U.S. the great majority of the population cannot comprehend a free society.

I remember having a conversation with one person who insisted that “someone or something” had to be “on top”. It was either government or God that must rule the people. He didn’t trust government, governments were corruptible and had a strong tendency toward evil. Therefore it had to be God that ruled. Our government must be subservient to (his, of course) God.

I explained that is not how our government was set up and it didn’t have to be that way. Our government was found by the people and for the people with only certain enumerated powers that were granted to it by the people. Any involvement by god(s) was merely as an observer. The “one on top” is the people that granted the powers to the government.

The concepts presented yield a confused look and a mild protestation that “the people” couldn’t exercise power sufficiently wisely for that to actually work. The discussion was dropped after that because I think the light bulbs were starting to come on with the realization that god(s) and governments always communicate through people anyway so the situation wasn’t any better with his view of the world.

I think the same mindset exists in the socialists/progressives/leftists. They think of it as their people or their opponents ruling over the losers rather than a free society with government defending the rights of everyone.—Joe]

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8 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Lyle @ UltiMAK

  1. Joe,

    Here we part ways, not forever- nothing so dramatic, but on this issue.

    People are all too often replaced by person.

    God is immune to corruption. Now, I think that I know of your stance on god and respect it. But consider: Is it better rally behind “god” in an agreed manner, as did the colonials (in the non-revised histories)or behind men.

    The first gives you the American revolution.
    The second gives you the French revolution.

    Locke or Rouseau?

    I agree that a theocracy is a REALLY bad idea. But the concept that God (or nature’s god as the founders put it) is the organizing principle and giver of RIGHTS is a good one.

    As soon as man is “in charge” (at the top) Liberty is at risk. This includes a man claiming to speak for god, or the space octopus, or Xemu the magnificient…

    If God is not there then He cannot be capricious. If He is as represented in the Bible, then He is not capricious. Demanding and Holy yes, but capricious no.

    The people can and have ruled themselves. It is filled with messy bits, but we muddle on.

    BUT, underneath it all, here in the US the foundation has been Divine Providence.

    Paraphrasing Franklin:
    -There is a God
    -We will meet Him one day.
    -He will judge our behavior – how we served Him.
    -The best way to serve God is to care for our fellow man.

    This, to me seems the best short circuit of the disaster that was the French Revolution.

    Please pardon gaffes in typing. Commenting while running a fever may not be the best idea.

  2. The past is a different country. While the language and culture of Revolutionary America were much more religious than present, they were still people. People who partook of a culture that valued self-control, restraint, literacy, and avoiding acts which would harm others.

    However, Joe’s post does remind me of a teaching of Jesus.

    I’ll have to paraphrase.

    When an evil spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through the wilderness seeking rest…Then it says ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then out goes and finds seven other spirits more evil than itself and they enter the house and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.
    (Matthew chapter 12, I think.)

    For interpretation, try to replace ‘evil spirit’ with ‘meme’, or ‘influence of the queen bee’.

    As Joe says, removing the ‘queen bee’ isn’t an instant fix. Unless all the drones who used to follow the queen are somehow trained to take care of themselves–at minimum, take part in a culture of self-control, restraint, and not actively harming others–removing the queen bee is counterproductive.

    I suspect this is a problem which produces no easy solution. I hope that there are enough non-drones left in the American culture to bring the rest of the culture back from dependance on the ‘queen bee’.

    Food for thought: what would a religious revival, with a dose of individual responsibility in the teachings, do? In the Christian tradition, it is hard to confess sin without some understanding of Right/Wrong, and knowledge that some part of the Wrong is personal choices. While good deeds aren’t supposed to produce salvation, faith that produces salvation is also supposed to produce good deeds.

  3. It’s a fetish. The whole idea that individuals can’t govern themselves without either Nanny or God intervening is simply a mental fetish, an aberration, and those people following that fetish are not to be believed. Dismiss them from your mind.

  4. It’s not an outre fetish. It’s common magical thinking, a wish, based on understandable personal perception.

    When a person looks around at what is called “democracy” nowadays and sees nothing but corruption and failure, perceiving that it can’t work is a valid, if not absolutely correct, response. Particularly when even the past of our country, when we might have been closest to the philosophical ideal of individual liberty and equality of man, as written down in the Constitution, has deliberately been presented in the most unfavorable light for so long.

    Since a wish doesn’t have to be purely rational, those folks of course see only an idealized version. It will be “their” ideal God’s tenets that are chosen, not that “other guy’s” (wrong) version of the same God and same Scripture.

    And the “king” they pick will always be the archtypical strong, wise man on the white horse, not just another man like themselves, with all the human frailties they are too well aware of.

    That’s the most common thinking in the world, it is the belief that men can govern themselves as equals that is the historical and cultural aberration.

    We’re the “fetishists”. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

  5. @Rob, Most of the founders who believed in God were not Christian, they were Deists. This, and the words of the Constitution, is consistent with my claim that in regards to our government it was intended that, “Any involvement by god(s) was merely as an observer.”

    You may be able to present sufficient data to support the hypothesis that governments with stronger beliefs in the existence of god(s) are more likely to be benign but the sample size and quality of your existing data set is inadequate at the present time.

  6. 1) We can have a long discussion on the essential goodness or badness of man, but I will point out only this. If man is “good” why do governments need to be instituted to protect man’s natural rights?
    2) A government can only be as good as the standard it governs by and the men who govern.

    Joe, Benjamin Franklin is often pointed to as a Deist – this is a load of crap. No proper deist, who does not believe in an involved deity, calls for prayer and God to interven in the Constitutional Convention. In order for Divine Providence, to which the signers appealed, to be any good, any protection – it must be involved.

    I agree that the forms that the founders had in their churches, were not as found in most of today’s churches, I can and do argue that the form of government is much changed as well. Perhaps more origianlism is needed? Perhaps historical and biblical revisionism have not served us well (or even been intellectually honest)?

    Not meaning to start a firestorm, but my point remains, what is the foundation? What is the standard. If it is people (or a person as I initailly pointed out) how is this sustainable? It will sway with every wind of public opinion. How is this a stable way to operate, being subject to the wiles of practitioners of Edward Bernays’ thinking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays).

    “If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.”

    Operating with no external and solid foundation lead to manipulation by such as Bernays.

  7. Any country that has “god” in charge is a theocracy. The only admitted theocracy on the planet today is Iran. As we have seen, that single religious system with priests in charge tends to regularly murder their own people.

    A single religion results in tyranny
    Two religions results in war
    Many religions results in freedom

    America can do fine with a plurality of religions. The difficult comes when humans are elevated to the level of God. Secular humanism, which declares man as supreme is the dangerous position. The flip side of this is when people declare the government as God. Government cannot be God and God cannot be government. Only when governments realize their absolute dependency on God can they succeed. Every holy book is clear that God sets up and tears down kings, rulers and governments. The Christian Bible was written under the vile, evil, sexual deviant and murderous Romans, yet it clear teaches to be in subject to your government.

    In America we have an opportunity to change our government, which is something we need to do.

    My second point concerns the queen bee. Probably true that is you kill the queen bee things fall apart, but who is it? Clearly not Obama. There are 45 million people in this great land who receive government checks every month. I propose that the queen bee is collectively, those 45 millions people. That is because those people demand the money, it is not forced on them. Obama does not sign the checks, a bureaucracy of numb-nuts make sure each one of those 45 millions get money, food stamps, lunches, iPhone and color Tvs.

    Like Ron Paul, I believe welfare belongs in the hands of the church. Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist, or Zoroastrian. It does not matter. Mercy and compassion are the doctrine of the church, not the government. Ted Kennedy’s problem was that he believed he was the hand of God for mercy, with tax dollars. Ted should have given to his church and left the government out of the mercy business.

    Therefore, a government that supports God’s ideals (and yes, we can know them) is the government that will succeed. God’s people, not the government needs to manage welfare in this country. As American’s we can, theologically and legally “throw the bums out,” but until the culture of government = God changes, we are lost. Government is government and God is God and never the twain shall meet.

    Grace and peace,

    Michael

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