The Nullification Principle: Nonbelievers Declare War

In arithmetic if you multiply anything by zero, the result is zero. Apparently certain atheist groups believe a similar principle should apply in public life.  If anyone, they argue, who believes in something "religious", crosses paths with someone who believes in nothing, then nothing in the way of belief may be expressed lest he who believes in nothing be offended. Recent lawsuits seem to indicate that offended nonbelievers trump offended believers in the new social order being promoted here.

Actually the Apostle Paul does counsel us to do our best not to offend our "weaker" brethren by the exercise of our beliefs so far as possible. I believe Paul may have anticipated a time when the very sight of the faithful or any symbol of faith would offend those who have no faith, but he writes about it elsewhere. Jesus warned us that if they did it to Him, we should expect that they will do it to us. By they, He referred to any militant religious force with a hunger for power.  From the Sanhedrin, to the god-emperors of Rome to the virulent anti-religion forces in this country, each has declared war on the Christian faith (and all other faiths for that matter at one time or another). They call, not for freedom of religion, but for freedom from religion or at least universal adherence to their brand of religiosity. As in the days of the Roman, German, Chinese, Russian, Cambodian, Rwandan, Sudanese and Serbian genocides, they are in deadly earnest about removing all trace of it from human cultures.

They aren't talking genocide yet, but wait for it.

Religion in militant atheist circles draws the blame for everything bad that has ever happened in the history of the world.  Religion is blamed for wars, for famines, for plagues pestilence and genocide. It matters not that each of these atrocities have been perpetrated almost entirely by governments -- frequently masquerading as acting on religious principles, yes -- but governments nonetheless. Let us remember the 21st century death toll credited to governments who formally proclaimed their atheism.  Between China and the USSR alone, some 200 to 300 million died to feed the paranoia of governments without a God.

Given the vehemence with which they go after even innocuous symbols of faith, one wonders what would happen if we gave them more power - oh, say a formally atheist socialist government.  Socialism/communism does seem to be the government of choice for the majority of the world's atheists these days.



© 2013 by Tom King

Progressive Fantasy - All War Banned

All equal should not be all the same - progressives don't get that.

Got some fake news about ten years ago from one of my Paulista buddies out on the liberal conservative fringe out on the edge of reason.  It was titled "Newsflash:  All War Banned".  It includes this link to a fake news story in which Desmond Tutu becomes UN General Secretary and all the peace-loving countries of the world (like Iran, Russia, Egypt, Libya, Venezuela, Chad, The Sudan, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya, China and Serbia) vote to " declare America and Israel pariah states."  It goes on with this fantasy about accusing Israel and the US of state-sponsored terrorism and prosecuting Obama, Bush, Cheney (the only non-head of state they mention by name for some reason), Clinton and Netanyahu.  That this drivel comes from a Ron Paul fan is not surprising. The radical right has backed so far from the center that they've pretty much backed round the world and bumped butts with the fringe left and they all find themselves humming Kumbaya without knowing exactly why.

If they could dig up Ronald Reagan, I'm sure they would have included him on the extermination list as well.  Now Donald Trump would be their favorite bug bear and, sure enough, they are frantic to take him out too, even to the point of encouraging lunatics to try and assassinate the former president. Of course, this radical approach to creating what would amount to the great socialist utopia, would likely leave the US without leadership since all of the people running things would have to be jailed as unreliable - infected with free market capitalism, imperialism and the heretical idea that government draws its power from the people than the true socialist belief that people only draw their freedoms, rights and lives from the all-powerful state. I'm sure, however, the revolution could find someone like, oh, I don't know, Ron Paul? (Except he's closing in on 90 and they just had the embarrassment of mumbling Joe Biden so Ron is no longer a viable dear leader). The progressives would be thrilled to have a turncoat Republican to kind of cleanse their palates after losing Donald Trump's contributions to the DNC. Whoever they might shoehorn into the White House, they fondly believe could save America from it's imperialist ways by teaching us pure Marxism. The whole thing is a progressive socialist's wet dream and a nightmare for freedom loving people everywhere.

It amazes me that anyone with half a brain could support this horror of an "idea whose time has ostensibly come".  This utterly simplistic idea is based on assumptions built upon utterly naive socialist fairy tales designed to deceive the immensely gullible to trade their birthright for an illusion.

This anti-American, anti-Israeli mess of an idea is little more than an exercise in Progressive Socialist masturbation. What amazes me is that the Ron Paul libertarians once loved this idea. It may have something to do with their plans for abolishing the world bank, destroying evil corporations and ending the war on drugs. Free pot for all seems to be an idea my Paulista buddies can always get behind, which could explain some things. 

If "the world" really tried to do this and, God forbid, succeeded, the vast majority of the human race would be reduced to the status of pod people within a generation (except of course for the "Dear Leader" and his cohorts. This whole Utopian fantasy is based on the repeatedly discredited idea that if we just had the right smart person in charge (in this fantasy it was Desmond Tutu of all people) and we gave him ultimate power, we could create a world government "with teeth" with the power to enforce goodness, prosperity and peace everywhere. That phrase "with teeth" keeps cropping up a lot as it is wont to in socialist planning. Pope Benedict in a Christmas encyclical, used it several years ago when he too called for a world government "with teeth" that could force powerful nations like the US to do its bidding. Pope Francis loves the idea and with his Jesuit background, he knows ways of encouraging the masses to behave. Like so many others these days, even this latest Pope has been caught up with the idea that we could somehow create a benign powerful force in the world that could make us all behave ourselves.

Communism promised a prosperous people's state before murdering
tens of millions of "the people"  - particularly those who found
the Communist state to be less than perfect and said so out loud.

It is a sad little pipe dream that crops up generation after generation once a few years have gone by and the horrors of the last round of socialist bloodshed, murder and genocide has been forgotten and the last "perfect leader", reduced in memory to little more than a nursery room bug-a-boo. How quickly they forget what happens when you set up a man as God. Even the mighty Albert Einstein, who escaped the gas ovens of Auschwitz by but a hair's breadth, himself, fell prey to wondering why we couldn't get a bunch of smart people together and figure out how to make everyone happy, safe, well-fed and productive. The problem is that everyone who embraces the progressive socialist fantasy that some brilliant elite human leader could make the world good for the rest of us is falling for an old lie - one that dates back to a garden and a serpent and a gullible woman.

"You shall be like gods."

That lie has led to almost endless suffering throughout history as one man after another attempts to achieve Earthly godhood. The simple truth, however, is that Man cannot perfect himself, the World Economic Forum's Great Reset notwithstanding. It's sad that we've never learned that from all the failed attempts at a Man-as-God Utopia that so-called civilized man has made over the past 7000 some-odd years. It is interesting that whenever you see a picture of someone's utopia, there's always a high wall around it. It's unclear whether the wall is to keep people out or to keep them in. Either way, I don't like it!

We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic
system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its
unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being
according to wealth and property instead of responsibility
and performance, and we are all determined to destroy
this system under all conditions - Adolph Hitler

They always mean well, the progressives, socialists, utopians and advocates of the new religion - scientism. Every government ever established had the intent of making the world a better place for the people of whatever nation-group, tribe or city-state they created. The God-kings always promised that the lives of the people would be perfected. And the same thing always happens. Creating a government creates power.  Power attracts corrupt men who seize that power and in short order start plundering the citizens, enslaving and abusing them once "the people" realize that the whole thing isn't working like they said it would. To maintain his power, the God-king must then silence any voice that dissents and control the flow of information lest "the people" discover that their human god is a false god and his ideas don't work.

The world's oldest profession isn't what you think. Seizing power and murdering people to maintain it is the real world's oldest profession. The Devil got the ball rolling a long time ago  with Cain and the whole nasty mess keeps rolling on through history, gathering more weight the longer it keeps rolling. Every generation that uplifts a God-king, be it Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Desmund Tutu, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris as the various fantasy scenarios propose, in the end creates a slightly worse monster.  One day we will create a monster who will roll over us completely and in so doing, destroy the Earth. We now have the nuclear weapons to do just that.

Remember, this. The Second Coming is not a pat on the back to mankind for writing laws that ban war and legislate universal peace, prosperity and health care.   The Jewish leadership expected that the first time Jesus came and they were wrong. Christ's coming this second time is also not a conquest. It's a rescue mission designed to pluck the remaining loyal children of God from the Earth before all that's left are the ashes and wreckage that man has made of the Earth in the process of trying to prove on behalf of Lucifer, that he was right all along; that mankind can't be trusted with free will and that we need the firm hand of the former director of the angel choir. Turns out he merely thought that he should be the god of this planet without any help from He who made the Earth in the first place.

Tom King
© 2013, 2024

The Intolerance of the Collective

The key difference between a constitutional republic - one in which individuals have rights and the government has privileges granted by those individuals - and a progressive/socialist/Marxist/communist state - one in which human beings are but cells sublimated to the will of the state - is that the republic can tolerate the existence of the collectivist (Marxist) state but the Marxist state can NEVER tolerate the existence of a free constitutional republic anywhere on the same planet.  It is why Nikita Kruschev pounded on the table at the UN with his shoe and promised to "bury" us all.



It is for the same reason that sinners cannot tolerate saints, that the stupid and brutish cannot tolerate the intelligent and peaceful or that Democrats cannot tolerate Republicans.  I am only half-kidding on that last one.

It is also the fundamental difference between a Christian nation and an Islamic one.  It is no accident that wherever Christian nations spring up, inevitably the idea of the value of the individual over the nation-state becomes the law of the land.  In the early stages the nation accepts that the rights of the individual are granted him by the state or the sovereign.  But soon, it becomes apparent to all that if God so loved us that He gave His son for our salvation, then the individual must be important. If God Himself gives us the right to choose for good or ill and does not lift his hand to force us to do otherwise, then the right of the individual to choose his own destiny must, therefore, be the fundamental principle of the universe.

And before you complain about the ten commandments and all those laws in the Old Testament, let me point out that God tolerates disobedience to His law.  He could well squelch all sin and turn us into obedient robots which have no choice but to obey. He does not. Instead God offers to scrub our souls and help free us of all the negative habits, passions and lusts that hijack our free will and to deliver back to us ourselves - as we choose to be and free from all our demons. We are people of the law because we choose to be, not because we live in terror of the state.  That is an enormous difference.


Heaven will be heaven because it is the land of ultimate liberty, peopled entirely by those who believe utterly in the idea that one should treat his fellows as he himself would want to be treated.  I do not believe God will have to destroy evil men.  I believe that God need only withdraw the good from the Earth and leave them to their own devices.  Evil will destroy itself I believe and needs no help from anyone to do so.    

The progressive/socialist/Marxist/communist believe that man can be perfected by the law and punishment and that there are certain men who are destined to wield great power and to direct the collectivist state because of their talent and ability.  Those who believe in the Golden Rule also believe that no man can be trusted with absolute power or even permanent power of any sort.  Kings and princes, dukes and barons are not trust-worthy because they hold hereditary power and power tends to corrupt.  While I don't believe that power inevitably corrupts, I do believe that power inevitably attracts the corruptible. 

There is a scene in the Lord of the Rings at the edge of the volcano Mt. Doom where Frodo is supposed to complete his mission and throw the "One Ring to Rule Them All" back into the fires.  At the moment of truth, Frodo falters.  The temptation to power is overwhelming. It takes an act of God (in the form of Gollum's attack) to enable Frodo to complete his task. The temptation to power is terrible. Gandalf articulates that when early he says No to the ring when Frodo offers it to him. "Don't... tempt me Frodo! I dare not take it. Not even to keep it safe. Understand, Frodo. I would use this ring from a desire to do good... But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine."

It is why, inevitably, Christianity, despite its emphasis on obedience to God's laws (or more likely because of it), tends to produce the societies with the most personal liberty. The true Children of God do not believe any man can be trusted with power, especially absolute power over his fellows. It follows inevitably from the Golden Rule. Tolkien's life's work was retelling that to a post-modernist world that doesn't believe anything really matters so you might as well grab what you can get. Tolkien says, "Yes. There is something that matters."

Again as throughout history the great battle lines are drawn between Good and Evil.  That doesn't mean evil guys don't fight among themselves. They do.  They constantly vie for power and most wars are ambiguous to that extent.  But the great over-arching conflict in this world turns out to be between those who believe that Might is right and those who believe that Might must only used for the right.  You can always tell the good guys.  They are the ones that didn't choose to fight, but were drawn into it against their will and who do not keep their conquests when the war is over. Sometimes, however, both good and evil are represented within the same army. 

It makes the battle lines a bit muddy sometimes.

Tom King

Supporting the Real Conspiracy

How Conspiracy Theorists Have Made Themselves Tools of the Progressive Statists
by Tom King (c) 2013

Once again, give it up with the conspiracy theories, people!  Yes, I do believe people conspire like Al-Quaeda and Timothy McVeigh and other terrorists.  I also realize Japan conducted a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and that could be considered a conspiracy.  So conspiracies do exist.  That has nothing to do with truther, birther and Illuminati believer conspiracies.  There are just two kinds of conspiracies - at least two kinds that actually work.

1.  The first kind is the small group conspiracy working against a perceived common enemy such as Al Quaeda does regularly and very small group conspiracies such as the Oklahoma City Bombing.

2.  The second kind is the national conspiracy conducted against a neighboring country. These are never quite so secretive as one would have you believe. Thousands of people in Japan knew about Pearl Harbor, but they had a common interest in keeping it a secret. They were soldiers and had very publicly been convinced that America was evil (rather like the Al Quaeda terrorists only on a much larger scale. Hitler's depradations was hardly a conspiracy. WWII was a "surprise" only because people deluded themselves into believing that the Axis nations really were peace-loving like we were - an artifact of using tit for tat or mirroring diplomatic methods. They ignored obvious signs for years because the signs didn't fit their diplomatic model. Japan's attack wasn't all that big a surprise. FDR had already started rebuilding the military years before Pearl Harbor.

What the whole Illuminati type conspiracy asks us to believe is that pretty much everything is manipulated by an evil cabal of evil industrialists, Jews, priests, progressive socialists, communists (whatever the flavor of the month happens to be). Do people conspire to cover up things?  Sure. But it only succeeds if the knowledge of the coverup is limited to a very small group who share the same interests. Nixon couldn't pull it off and down he came.

My criticism of the conspiracy theories is that they suppose the existence of vast numbers of evil minions who refuse to talk.  A successful conspiracy like the supposed 9/11 plot by George Bush and that a media, notorious for jumping on scandals even when the subject is someone they like a lot, will remain silent about the conspiracy. Obama is going to find out soon what happens to your media "puppets" when there's real blood in the water. They'll shred him to ribbons for ratings.

The 9/11 conspiracy was a conspiracy funded by a wealthy Saudi involving a relatively small group of terrorists, most of whom would become martyrs. Those sorts of evil minions are in relatively limited supply or else we'd have seen a lot more of these kinds of attacks.

Conspiracy theorists jump on every single event and start nosing around for supposed anomalies that prove (whoop there it is) that there is a conspiracy going on, usually involving their favorite bunch - the Illuminati. They swallow whole hog made up nonsense like the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" that Hitler used to justify the Jewish genocide, the Zinoviev Letter that brought down the British Labor government and the forged Donation of Constantine used in the 18th century by the Roman Catholic Church to justify it's assumption of rule over the Western Roman Empire.  The Internet is rife with screeds and rants against imaginary bugbears by uncritical researchers who sound like Sgt. Schulz going ,"Hmmmmmm. Verrry interesting."

There are lots of attempts to manipulate things and conspiracies do happen.  Even those conspiracies with relatively few conspirators tend to be found out eventually. Nixon's attempts to cover up his campaign committee's shenanigans cost him his presidency in short order.   Vast conspiracies, on the other hand, never last long. Right now tens of thousands of Americans are working toward a common goal - the change of the American government from a limited power, free market capitalist republic to a huge, powerful behemoth of a socialist state. This is not so much a conspiracy as it is a confluence of like interests. These kinds of movements operate rather like war in their mechanisms, with committed true believer attackers slugging it out wherever opportunity presents itself with committed defenders of the current system.

Fortunately, this type of "conspiracy" is not well organized, difficult to control and everybody knows about it. A high level of plot and secrecy is not possible until the plotters have unlimited power and even then the "plot" is always generally known. Every Russian in the Soviet Union knew they were being lied to by their government. They knew people were disappearing into the gulags for pointing that out.  

Viktor Belenko, a MIG 25 pilot who defected to the US with his plane during the 1970s was blown away the first time he went to an American grocery store. He thought for a time he was being shown a staged setup to convince him American stores were really so full of food. He told this great story about his own experience with the great communist experiment in collectivism.

"Growing up in the Soviet Union," Belenko related," There was no milk to be found anywhere. The official radio station, though, was constantly bragging that milk production was up from last year. So when people heard this they started saying sarcastically, 'If you want milk, take your pail to the radio.'"  No matter how powerful the Soviet Government became, it could not prevent it's vast conspiracy to lie to the Russian people from becoming a public joke.

The US government is so far, not nearly powerful enough to convince thousands of evil minions to set up 3000 of their innocent fellow Americans to be killed and not talk about it.  Not one single person who supposedly set the "demolition charges" in the twin towers come forward and admit it and there would have had to have been hundreds to have pulled it off.

These kinds of wild-haired conspiracy theories are being used by the progressive left to discredit conservative constitutionalists that stand in the way of their idea of how things ought to be. Are there elitists who are trying to bring this about? You bet. They've been working on re-establishing the old idea of a more or less permanent American nobility - a special ruling class that has a "right" to rule because of their superior genetics.

My objections to the uncareful consumption of conspiracy theory material is that most of this stuff is based on heresay and guesswork, disseminated by too many people with obvious mental disorders.  It accomplishes little more than to get us all looking in the wrong direction while the real "plot" happens right in front of our eyes.

An example is the "Veterans for Ron Paul" organizer Adam Kokesh who's trying to organize pro-second amendment supporters into an armed march on Washington on the 4th of July. The guy advertises himself as a "Tea Partier" (sic), but has a long history of working with Marxist groups like Code Pink. That's a conspiracy all right, but like most real conspiracies that involve large groups, it's easy to document from legitimate sources like I did in this blog.

Be wise, Grasshopper.

(c) 2013 by Tom King

  

Karl Marx Meant Well......

He just didn't know his human race very well.

(c) 2012 by Tom King

Got into a debate with an economist the other day over Marxism vs. Communism. He took a swipe at Ronald Reagan for not understanding that Marxism and Communism are two different things (according to economists). No matter that Marx wrote the Communist Manifest (and yes, Engels helped, but he gave all the credit for the ideas to Marx).  Apparently the pure Marxist ideology is that the ideal worker's paradise should be a virtually leaderless society where the collective makes all the decisions and no strong leader exists.  That is actually an idea a died-in-the-wool capitalist could get behind actually. 

Karl Marx's great difficulty was that he looked to create a heaven on Earth. It was an admirable dream, but it does not work here on this planet. Marx's utopia requires a couple of things that Marx never accepted as necessary.  Marx later got involved with communism because he hoped to work out his worker's paradise in the real world and had, I believed, figured out that some system of authority was essential to make it work, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

The truth is, the ideals behind collectivism only work if all the people in the collective are good and altruistic people. There is no such group of people. The progressive movement still believes there is despite abundant evidence to the contrary. 

I'm pro capitalist because it seems the most effective way to create a healthy economy in a world where  the baseline is greed and self-interest.  We live in a sinful world, let's face it. With capitalism, if you over-extend and get piggish, you fail unless some government decides you're too big to fail and protects your depredations upon the system by bailing you out with tax dollars.

Our problem here is that we are trying to blend two system - one that believes that, if you meet a baseline of needs, people will be basically good and another that believes people are basically bad.  As a Christian, for instance, I believe the latter. I also believe that our experiences here and with the help of God, a goodly number of us will one day achieve that altruistic goodness that Marx mistakenly thought he could bring out in people by sharing the wealth around.

What Marx did not understand was that  free will is a wonderful, but double-edged sword. The communists hoped to somehow control free will and negate its effects. At first they tried through providing everybody's baseline needs as equitably as possible.  When that didn't work, they created the KGB and attempted to create altruism through fear and the gulags - Communisms own brand of hell.

It is tempting to intellectuals to believe that smart leaders can somehow create a centrally planned society where everyone is content if not truly happy.  Even Einstein, as smart as he was, wondered why we couldn't manage it.

The problem is in man's nature.  He does have free will (despite BF Skinner's assurances to the contrary).  He is born with two contrary natures.  The new born child knows how to love without reservation - he loves himself.  Sadly, many children never get far beyond that. It is the work of a lifetime to become a selfless person - the kind of people you absolutely must have in order to maintain Marx's leaderless collective. 

To base a political and economic system on the hope that  somehow you can somehow create rules or provide sufficient bread and circuses to cause people to spontaneously become self-less is an exercise in wishful thinking.

Marx had an admirable goal. It's just not achievable without two things.

1. People who want to be good above all things.
2. An all-knowing, all-caring leader to manage the details.

#1 is, I think, what will occur at the  Second Coming.
#2 I believe, requires the existence of God.

If neither of those elements are in place; if God does not exist, if people people who want to be good are not separated from those who choose to be bad, then we're well and truly hopeless because we're trying to make up flocks of sheep that include hungry wolves as members. Inevitably, this takes a terrible toll on the poor sheep as last century's experiment in Marxist sheep herding clearly demonstrates.

Just one man's opinion,

Tom King

How the Devil Corrupted the Progressives

I just finished listening to John Cleese's brilliant rendition of C.S. Lewis' classic "The Screwtape Letters". What a lot of folks don't realize, if they haven't read the book lately, is what a prophetic work it is.  In the last chapter, "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" Lewis explains quite succinctly how the devils went about turning the progressive movement, which had laudible goals and actually did some good at first, into the worst sort of communism and fascism.

Lewis, through Screwtape's speech, gives us a preview of where the progressive movement would be taken under the machinations of Satan. He is frighteningly accurate.  I highly recommend that you read or reread the book.  Even better, find a copy of the Cleese performance of the book. Cleese captures the sneering tone, the arrogance and self-deception of Satan's followers perfectly. He does a blistering condemnation of the education systems in both England and America and described what would be the consequences of what were then the current "cutting edge" practices in education. He particularly condemned the practice then just coming into vogue of creating an everybody succeeds, nobody fails, nobody stands out system of education.

He tells the story of the dictator who took a colleague to a cornfield to teach him how to control his own people.  He went out into the field and clipped the tops off every stalk of corn that stood higher than the rest. The great thing he told his colleague is that after they become accustomed to the practice, they will lop the heads off any tall ones themselves and call it "democracy". 

A perfect description of the insipid, everybody the same socialism that is being foisted on us by our own leaders today. We are seeing the outcome Lewis warned us of when he wrote the piece way back in the early 60's. His clear picture of the real "conspiracy" in this world is not a mere theory, but a living breathing fact and if you're not afraid of the devil now, you will be once you've realized what he's done to us right out in the open, right out in front of our faces with all of us so afraid of not being like everyone else that most of us actually helped bring about this bloody disaster of a society.

Ever tease a nerdy kid that makes good grades?  Every belittle someone's big dreams?  Ever pick on someone simply because everyone else did.  Ever back down from doing what you knew to be right because you didn't want to make a spectacle of yourself? Do you jump on every fad that comes down the pike and call it individualism when all that was really going on was that you wanted to be like everyone else? Did you vote for someone because it was cool and everybody else was voting for him? 

I could go on, but you get the idea.  To have resisted the devil's work would have required a life of constantly not fitting in, of being always out of sync with the rest of the world. It would require courage and a willingness to take the consequences.  It would require living the kind of life that people find odd and naieve, silly and prudish.

And who would want you to do that (besides, Jesus I mean).

I'm just sayin'

Tom King - Flint, TX