All these governments are law-abiding until they’re not. Then they sometimes become heavily armed mass killers.
Ritchie
June 13, 2021
Comment to Quote of the day—George Skelton
[Excellent response to those who say something similar about innocent gun owners.—Joe]
Excellent point. But kindly explain which government it is that hasn’t become a heavily armed mass killer? Government is indeed created by us for just such a thing. That’s how we provide a common defense. But it’s always going to be co-opted by tyrants. The framers knew that. It’s the natural course of all government in the hands of humans.
Our government was wise enough at it’s inception to give it’s own people a legal basis from which to fight back. Thus 2A. It gives us a peaceful framework from which to petition that government for redress of grievance. Failing that.
The backbone to resist that same government with manly force when the day comes. As it ALWAYS does.
It’s never been a matter of IF, it will become a killer. Always a matter of when it will wants to kill you. It appears we had the bad luck of drawing the moment.
The hole in that argument is of course the fact that governments can, and do, make anything “legal” so long as it serves their interests! What constitutes “the law”, then, requires this long-ish essay to flesh it all out and wrap it up with a nice bow on top (to steal a phrase from Anthony Brian Logan);
And so we need a better, and permanent, standard, and that standard is God’s law (primarily, but not exclusively, the Decalogue). The primary functions of socialism, which have all been enacted “legally” for example, can be nullified and erased for all time by the tenth commandment;
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.
Let’s break that down into specifics;
House = land and buildings
Wife = family sovereignty, family structure, family integrity and family harmony
Manservant and maidservant = workforce
Ox = capital assets = means of production
Ass = means of transportation
Anyone with a discerning mind will readily see that the fundamental tenets of socialism are a direct affront to every aspect and clause of the tenth commandment. That’s just one out of ten, and oh how they hate it! All the others are under similar, direct attack.
It is said of the anti-Christ that he will “seek to change times and laws” (whose calendar do we use right now, by the way?). I point out that it says “seek”, because in reality God’s law is forever and unchangeable. That basic fact however doesn’t prevent someone with title from seeking, or presuming, to change laws. You can put anything on paper, vote it through and have the president sign it, or the pope can declare it, and even have some dumb goon squad in snappy uniforms attempt to enforce it, but that doesn’t make it so! You can never presume enough, nor intimidate, persecute, rob or murder enough people, either, by the way, to make that which is NOT so, so. It simply isn’t impossible, but boy howdy, do some like to try!
And therein we come to the problem. We have a simple, clear and distinct moral law, easy enough for anyone to understand, unchangeable and eternal, referred to by Christ as “the perfect law of liberty”, but there is a rebel class in the world (the criminal mind – the mind of Cain) which cannot abide it, and will engage in every imaginable scheme, lie, strategy and tactic in the world to undermine it. And no Earthly power can ever get rid of that mentality!
And anyway, if all sinners (which is to say, violators of God’s law) were to be removed from the face of the Earth, there’d be no one left! “No not one.”
And so what is to be the solution? If we assume (“assume” momentarily for the sake of a logical argument, because I know some of you are atheists, or worse yet, Catholics) that all-powerful God created the heavens, the Earth, the seas and all that is in them, that all life comes from Him and is therefore His, and that His law is perfect, and that He is at the same time perfectly just (perfectly upholds His own law) and is perfectly loving and merciful, while upholding individual freedom of conscience, what, then, is His logical solution? That’s a tough nut to crack, isn’t it?
I’ve thought of presenting this question to a group of the best minds in science, logic, philosophy and law, just to see how long it would take them to come up with the notion of a one messiah, consisting of God Himself taking our just punishment (the wages of sin) upon Himself!
Our Messiah has taken the punishment for you, as a man, thus fulfilling the absolute requirement for justice, while exercising perfect mercy, all while upholding total individual freedom of conscience. But it can only work if you acknowledge your transgressions as being unacceptable in a perfect universe, and therefore as worthy of excommunication from existence (death), and only if you acknowledge God’s law as being perfect, and thus accept the Messiah’s gift as entirely unearned! (That’s a mouthful – you’d better read it again) This is, in short, the Biblical narrative, from Genesis through Revelation, and it later became known as the Protestant narrative (the actual Biblical narrative – now largely abandoned), also known as “Justification by faith (in Christ) alone”.
So it is that if you believe that there is anything you can do to save yourself (“salvation by works” as it’s been called), you’re totally missing the point. Believing that fallacy, you’d be taking the place, in whole or in part, of the Messiah, and that would undermine the whole, perfect system. Thus the Catholics invented the concepts of “penance” and “purgatory” for that purpose, and almost everyone (“Christians”, pagans, and atheists alike) believes in it, in some form, whether they’re fully cognizant of it or not! But if you look, scientifically, at that logic problem described above you’d see that justification (for life) by faith in the Messiah alone, while understanding the perfection in God’s law, is the only answer.
Much simpler: The US federal government has a basic set of laws that it is not authorized to change without the agreement of 3/4 of the states. When it breaks the Constitution – and it has, often – it becomes a lawbreaker, and no amount of packing the Supreme Court changes that.