Why does the whole world have to listen to America? Why is everyone supposed to care about this place, no matter where they live on earth? What is so important about this society? And can’t we just ignore them? Aren’t they just evil, selfish, bad, no-good merchants of death and inequality?
The USA is a complex and difficult place to comprehend. Anything you can say about this great country can be true, and yet, it’s opposite may also be true. The land of the greatest peace, and the greatest violence. The land of the greatest wealth, and the greatest debt. The land of the brightest as well as the dimmest of intellects. The land of greatest productivity ever known on earth, as well as the most profound laziness. The home of the most religious, charitable, philanthropic, and welcoming people on earth, as well as the most debauched and amoral.
Liberty tends to produce contradictions like that because liberty is the only thing that actually can produce and protect diversity in any real sense.
The only country in the history of the world to be founded not by accident of history and geography, but by philosophers, America, turned 247 years old on the 4th of July. However, yesterday, the Federal Government celebrated its birthday, at 236 years of age.
When I first came to the USA I was working on cruise ships, and I found the post 9-11 security presence to be seriously alarming. It seemed like there was a man with a gun everywhere I went. All of the US flags in public buildings had that gold braid trim around them, to signify that they were military banners, not civilian flags (sailors notice things like that). Paranoid messages played on every P/A system. Teams of USCG divers would search the quayside for bombs before every docking manoeuvre. Gun ships escorted us in and out of every harbour. Passports and documents were checked thoroughly, and somewhat capriciously, as frequently as I’d expect to see in a movie about another ‘papiere, bitte’ time in our recent past.
Wasn’t this supposed to be the land of the free?
I’ve spent the past week explaining the Second Amendment to the children, by pointing out that in this state, it probably isn’t a good idea to just jump over the neighbour’s fence if you kick your football into their garden. The second amendment seems frightening to city dwellers and Europeans, but the other factor is that if you kick the football over the other fence toward the pond, you might need that gun to protect you against alligators, cottonmouths, copperheads, coyotes, bears and rattlesnakes while you fetch it back.
Yesterday, the 17th of September, was Constitution Day. Interestingly, the day before that was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Celebrating the greatest political statement of human freedom ever made in the entirety of history seems appropriately juxtaposed with the original celebration of creation.
Few things can make me as uncomfortable as attending religious ceremonies that are not Christian. Although I’ve been to many across the world, from India to the Outer Hebrides. As a Christian, I have read all of Jesus’ arguments against the sins of the Jewish people, and I do find their exclusivity slightly at odds with Christian Universalism. So why do I do it? Why attend these ceremonies, and speak with these people?
The rabbi – a former Londoner who retains his English accent here in the capital of the Southern US – put it very well in one of his opening anecdotes:
‘ Last year in Israel there was a tragic bus crash. A beautiful young woman, a newlywed, visiting the holy land with her husband, tragically had to have both of her legs amputated.
Lying in her hospital bed, painfully adjusting to their new reality, a life of permanent disability, the young woman asked her husband a difficult question.
Would you have married me, if you met me like this?
And the husband gave her a difficult but important answer.
‘No. If I’d met you six months ago, and you had no legs, I would probably not have married you. But now we are married. So, this accident didn’t happen to you. It happened to us’.
My wife and I are one month short of our ten-year anniversary, but we are celebrating it early here in Charleston, while we have extra hands to babysit. We’ve already had all the kinds of fights you are likely to have in a marriage, so I’d say we’re pretty solid for the next ten years, and beyond. She is the love of my life, and she tells me I am the love of hers.
So that means to me, that the fate of the Jews, and the fate of the Americans, is my fate too. So, I might as well learn what they are all about.
One of the only other things that makes me as uncomfortable as that, is witnessing American people perform their rituals of veneration of the nation-state.
The pledge of allegiance was promoted by American national socialists and originally included what we now call the ‘Nazi’ salute. The idea of the Nazi or Bellamy salute, where the right hand is held in the air above the head, is to elevate respect for the nation-state above the individual. This practice was instituted in 1892 but abandoned by US national socialists when America finally got off its fat behind in 1942. Instead, the state now covers the heart of the individual. Presumably, to make you think it cares about you deeply.
The first time I ever went to a Jewish temple, it was a ‘reformed’ temple in the aforementioned Roslyn, NY. Within a temple, there is a synagogue. At the front of the synagogue, behind what us Kirk boys would call the pulpit, is the Ark. At various times throughout the service, the veil over the Ark is removed, and within is revealed the Torah. Torah means three things: Teaching, Instruction and Law. It is a large scroll, containing the first five books of the Bible (and is distinctly different to the Talmud, written in response to Christianity), that is wrapped in a velvet cover marked with various patches and Hebrew letters, whose meanings I have yet to discern, aside from the US Coast Guard patch I saw on one yesterday, which I presume was donated by one of the local USCG stations.
I now know, having attended various flavours of Jewish temple, that it was probably more the befuddled and feckless attitude of the Long Island Limousine Liberals that annoyed me, than anything, particularly Jewish. The ceremony was total chaos. There was a cheese and wine tasting going on in the hallway the entire time that the service was taking place. The service was outdoors in a courtyard garden, and the cheese and wine tasting was held indoors in a nice air-conditioned room. The chairs seemed to point in different directions, and people seemed to completely ignore any sort of ceremonial procedure or etiquette, coming and going as they pleased between the wine tasting and the service, spilling drinks, and chatting with friends as they squeezed between pews. Whether the rabbi was chanting, praying or singing in Hebrew, or thanking almighty President Obama for answering her prayers to legalise homosexual marriage, the congregation displayed absolutely no unity, coherence, or reverence, in my mind.
What did you think? Said my father-in-law afterwards.
‘Utterly Bizarre’, was my honest answer.
I felt far more at home in the Orthodox temple in Glasgow, which had a much more sensible 19th-century church feel about it. And the Jewish Chabad we attended yesterday was really something I think modern churches should aspire to be. That is a community centre, designed to welcome and unite all denominations, with a focus on unconditional love and support for all Jewish denominations, and to promote celebration of the creator and creation. The movement was chased out of Russia, and Poland, only to find its feet here in the United States.
The Chabad movement, unlike many Temples, does not require compulsory fees or tithes to be a member and religious favours may not be purchased. This was just as well because I’m still saving up to be Jewish.
I can say that joke in the land of the First Amendment, despite wokeism, because in general, the Yanks still enjoy banter. Political correctness seems to live only in mega-corporate boardrooms and the big cities that suckle at the teat of the welfare state. Blackrock and Vanguard are one thing, but if people truly understood that the Limited Liability Corporation is an extension of the nation-state, they would better understand how and why bad ideas seem to spread so evenly and ubiquitously through our hyper-connected societies. Even billionaires can have their licenses revoked, and assets seized if we put our minds to it.
Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. Thomas Jefferson.
I have no problem attending services like these that worship The Lord of Hosts, the creator, the God of Israel because he is my God too. These guys in the Chabad don’t seem to mind a dumb goyim like me sitting in the bak, and reading their books in silence, either. I simply also believe that Jesus Christ was His manifestation on earth, which revealed to us how the world works. Or at the very least, the memory of Him can be applied to every aspect of life.
Freedom of speech protects freedom of worship and of life itself in this country. And that attitude is completely naturalised in the American way of life, which is tolerant beyond anything else in the world. Despite what the media or the activism industry will have you believe.
Theoretically, Muslims also worship the same God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And in theory, they are closer to the Jews, in that they do not accept Jesus Christ as God, although they do accept Him as a prophet. However, I’m not sure the character of the God in Islam is the same being that I am coming to know. I must confess my ignorance on that subject for the time being.
As a native of the Church of Scotland, and a fish that swims in the waters of a post-reformation, post-Scottish Enlightenment world, I have always had a deep distrust of ritual practice, or superstition. My Catholic Grandmother used to leave rosary beads and little medallions with icons of saints lying around our house, or hidden under my pillow whenever she would come over and babysit, in an effort to bless us or infuse us with some kind of Holy magic, by means of an osmosis that I never quite understood. The burning of incense and the singing in Latin seemed similarly magical and silly to me when I was young. My objectivist mind was almost deistic, understanding the laws of physics and maths to be divine enough for me.
I have viewed the Jewish man, who recites repetitively and touches and kisses the Torah, as worshipping an idol. Just as I have looked upon my Catholic and Orthodox friends and family as superstitious idolators.
I have been judgemental and presumptuous.
It is only now, as we are coming to the end of the age of modernity, and the limits of reason, that I am coming to appreciate the purpose of ritual and the meaning of ceremony. By the absence of God in our society, I can see His form, in the shape of the hole we gouged Him out from.
I can see that for all of the beauty, power and success that has come out of our reformed and enlightened path, we have also lost much.
Many of us are preparing for the end times. And by that, I mean the obvious end of post-WW2 American hegemony, the end of the ptero-dollar, and possibly the end of Constitutional Republicanism – for all its contradictions and flaws – as we have known it.
Place, space, time, loyalty, and credulity have all been disrupted. Nation states have become the playthings of supranational corporate interests and are working actively to erase themselves in favour of totalitarian one-world government, and neo-feudalism. And no, feudalism is not a good thing. Or at least, not for us serfs.
What can it possibly mean to be a citizen of a democratic, constitutionally restrained republic (or monarchy), if your government actively suppresses freedom of speech or opinion, displaces and replaces the population, pays for dysgenics and institutes antifamily policies, and puts the children of those who do somehow manage to raise children into an inflation filled debt bondage that will last through eternity?
The purpose of Rosh Hashanah is to shout and blast a loud appreciation for existence itself. To thank God for another year of Creation. To cast off the sins of the past, and hope for a sweet future. Apples, from the garden, are dipped in honey and eaten, to make that hope a part of oneself.
What should we cast off, as we move into the next age?
Currency fraud. Debt bondage. The warfare/welfare state.
Undoubtedly.
What should we bring with us? What should we resurrect?
Gratitude for existence and hope for a better future is probably a good place to start, don’t you think?
I believe that one of the great sins of our society is that we now believe that to simply hold the right opinions, is to be good. I think this is a result of the Enlightenment reaction to the excesses of Puritanism, and that we have reached the limits of the utility of this way of thinking.
The fact that actions speak louder than words is a simple, yet fundamental truth, that we have overlooked in our culture. At least that’s what I have seen in my lifetime, as the rise of activism in the social media age has turned virtue and status signalling into a full-time vocation for many.
The excessive veneration of ‘Reason’ itself, has brought us to a point where many of us think that we have won the battle between good and evil, whenever we like or share the ‘right’ Facebook post or article on X. (Please do like share, and subscribe, btw 😉 ).
Real veneration, according to the Orthodox Christians I’ve been reading, like Father Stephen Freeman, is about actions speaking louder than words. It is about bringing our history and God to life, in a way that is viscerally real enough to make it part of our own life. It is about resurrecting the dead and keeping their spirit alive, with our own lives. It differs from idol worship in that it represents relationships that we all have with the past, and with the people and forces that have guided and brought us to this moment in our lives. It is not a ‘quid pro quo’, ritual wishing well, but should be a way to bring the guidance of our betters and forebears into our lives.
Memory, Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom.
Jefferson’s pursuit of happiness assumed the form of happiness – espoused by (presumably among others) the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers – as happiness derived from serving other people. This, the wisdom of our ancestors has shown time and again, is the deepest form of happiness.
Like the idol worshippers of the Bronze Age, or the Roman Empire, modern statists have misplaced their God-given sovereignty. They carve a lesser ‘god’ from ivory or wood, set it on an altar, sacrifice animals and incense to it, and ingest those offerings themselves. When they ask that idol for material gifts in return, they fail to see that they are themselves more powerful than the trinket they have fashioned, because they have created it by their own hand, and given it power by their own belief and action.
This is how the modern citizen treats the state. Worshipping the apparatus of a civil service and forgiving the caprices of corrupt and incompetent social institutions, while failing to realise that these institutions are not the source of the good. The people are.
The idol is the product of one’s handiwork. It belongs to you, not you to it.
The revelation of this relationship is what has led to the understanding of self-ownership that has defeated the idea of slavery and servitude. That promotes consent as the highest virtue. That ultimately ties the concept of property to ideas of sovereignty, virtue, justice, inheritance, liberty and natural law. To the defeat of pagan practices like pederasty, child sacrifice, and infanticide.
Turning away from the correct concept of God, and our relationship to creation is leading to a return of paganism in our societies. To nudge unit ideas of cause and effect. To child sacrifice, and quid pro quo bargains with the gods of GDP, interest rates and growth.
The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not venerated by any population on earth, but the American Constitution and Bill of Rights are.
Why?
When you compare the two texts, you will notice obvious differences. The UN UDHR is a bland assertion, voted on by a democratic majority, which is majority populated by dictatorships and communist states. It does not invoke any higher authority and is merely a tick-box wish list of ‘ideals’, to be granted or denied by said UN corporate agencies. Importantly, it states that ‘security’ is to be valued over ‘the pursuit of happiness’, making it a clear call for a truly communistic police state.
The American Constitution invokes the highest authority, The God of Nature. It is not vague, and it is not a wish list. It is a philosophical statement of universal reality, and its power comes from the total commitment and the blood of martyred patriots. Its majority rule is derived from a constraint on the power of the sovereign mob of the governed, as much as it constrains the power of the government. And it’s success is proven, in the result of the most productive and prosperous society the world has ever seen, and the longest-standing free society in history.
As the current American government festers and founders, by extension, all other relatively free societies that are towed in her orbit founder as well, we should take some time to appreciate, if not venerate, the specific details of these great documents, as much as their general spirit.
Let us begin with the preamble to the contract between traitors and outlaws, to commit a conspiracy, known as the Declaration of Independence:
July 4, 1776. When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
After signing a blood pact, and making themselves outlaws, to be hunted down and executed without trial for uttering these treacherous oaths, the founding fathers of the United States then fought a war with the hegemonic naval superpower of the age, the British Empire.
Despite my anarcho-capitalist libertarian fantasies, the US founding fathers were not dreamers. They were the most realistic and practical of pragmatists. They were this way because they were warriors as much as they were philosophers. True philosopher kings, in the fullest sense. But the remarkable thing about them was that they really believed – in the Judeo-Christian tradition – that all men are created equal, and were therefore also capable of being refined, polished, enlightened, sovereign beings. This also means the opposite possibility needs to be true. People must be free to fail, for their striving toward the Good the True and the Beautiful to mean anything at all.
That is why the US Constitution is thus far, the longest-standing document of its type. Because it made the US Citizen the sovereign, with the God-given right to overthrow their government whenever it fails them in service or conscience.
It doesn’t matter that the Whisky Rebellion, the 1861 income tax, the Federal Reserve, the 16th Amendment, Jim Crow, and other such scandals have violated the fine principles that this country was founded upon. What is important, is that these people have figured out how to be a self-correcting, and self-governing nation, under God. With that in mind, the battle for Good and Evil can be fought here, in perpetuity, to the end. And it will be, without rest, until the end.
So, ladies and gentlemen, when you come to America and see armed men on every road, and flags fling on every porch, or in every shopping mall and public building, fear not. This is not a police state of the kind we have seen in the rest of the world. Their patriotism is not to be feared, like our patriotism may be. Their assertiveness may be misused, but it was not born in ignorance or avarice.
For all their seeming flaws and contradictions, these are the only free people to have ever endured for any length of time on this earth, because these people, American Citizens, are warriors, all. Sovereign, to a man.
That is why vast effort and finance are still put into propagandising and dividing the American population, and the American mind. That is why between now and 2024, the whole world will be sitting with their stomachs churning on the edge of their seat, and shouting at their favourite team as the US election campaign is broadcast worldwide.
The US Citizenry still has the power to throw off this unholy alliance between big government, alphabet agency deep state bureaucracy, debt fraud, currency manipulation, and corporate governance. And they could do it overnight and still exist as a coherent people. They don’t even need to change a single law to do it. Because America is not the government. It is the people.
You can’t say that about Britain, or Australia, or Canada, or any other supposedly ‘free’ people. And frankly, it’s why the propaganda and manipulation in our countries are so half-hearted and transparent. Because we have no teeth. So, ‘they’, don’t have to bother so much.
Personally, I can’t wait to see what the American people do next.
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