What is the most listened-to radio show in America?  Rush Limbaugh’s.  Estimates range between 14 and 30 million listeners.  In July of 2008 Limbaugh signed an eight-year, $400 million contract—hardly the kind of money a revolutionary gets for speaking truth to power.

What is the most-watched cable news channel?  Fox News Channel, which regularly has 50% more than, and often twice as many, viewers as #2 CNN.

What is the most-watched cable news show?  Fox News’s The O’Reilly Factor, with its anything-but-journalistic host, regularly pulls in 3.5 to 4 million viewers.  Granted, his viewers are about half of the number watching a broadcast evening news program, but broadcast news viewership has declined by about a million viewers a year since 1980, while FOX News continues to grow.  Moreover, the broadcast channels feature 2-4 hours of news each day while the cable news channels broadcast “news” 24/7.  And let’s not forget that Fox’s broadcast channel shares a lot of personnel and an obvious conservative bent with the cable Fox News Channel.

So they’re huge; so what?

In a recent Pew Research Center survey on perceptions about President Obama’s religious life, they found that seven percent more people in August 2010 (18%) think Obama is a Muslim than did in March of 2009 (11%).  And not coincidentally “When asked how they learned about Obama’s religion in an open-ended question, 60% of those who say Obama is a Muslim cite the media.”  This is why it’s important.  People are outsourcing their thinking to ideologically driven pseudo-journalists—on both sides of the spectrum.  Sean O’Limbeck is more heard than Keith Mahrtthews, but only more problematic because of the size of the audience.

The right-wing is also very adept at defining the language of the debate.  Terms like “death tax,” “socialized medicine,” “death panels,” “welfare queens,” etc. have no counterpart from the left.  The left-wing finds itself in the unappealing position of some of our founding fathers who were, by default, labeled the Anti-Federalists because they didn’t define the language of the debate first.

So why does the right-wing continue to claim oppression by the “main-stream” media?  The right-wing obviously has a very large—and very malleable—audience.  Whence the stance of victimhood?  Because if you’re going to spur a revolution, “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil” (Hoffer).  The MSM is among many devils the right-wing uses to generate fear, anger, and dependency in their faithful listeners.  The left-wing also sets up devils for the same purpose, but I can’t identify one that is  as delusional and self-contradictory as the MSM when the right-wing is such a media juggernaut (comments to the contrary are welcome).  It’s common knowledge that people tend to seek out media that reflect their own values; but the right-wing continues to claim both that 1) America is a center-right nation, and 2) the MSM has a liberal bias.  This is a non-sequitur.  Either the MSM doesn’t have a liberal bias or America is a center-left nation.

Why does the right-wing choose the MSM as a target?  “[L]ike an ideal deity, the ideal devil is omnipotent and omnipresent” (Hoffer).  The MSM is so large and omnipresent, with so much fallibility that it makes an easy target as a menace, and one that’s not going away soon.  If one is looking for bias, the MSM is so huge that one can find bias of any kind—and vilify the whole for the bias of the part.

The right-wing–like the left wing–must be in revolution mode at all times for self-preservation.  Once people become comfortable with the present, they stop listening to dogma, ideology, and fearmongering.  If Limbaugh’s listeners think life’s OK, they’ll stop listening to him.

Americans love an underdog and a revolution.  As long as the right-wing media juggernaut can convince enough people that they are indeed a revolutionary underdog, they will set much of the agenda in American politics.

Rather than the Ten Commandments, let’s erect monuments of the Sermon on the Mount, surely the pithiest expression of Christian ideals.

I hear some hemming and hawing.  Why?  Would it be inconvenient for America and Americans to publicly acknowledge the need to be meek and merciful, to rejoice in persecution, to eschew anger, to be well-disposed to adversaries, to avoid not only immoral acts but immoral thoughts, to turn the other cheek, to give more than what’s asked of us, to carry the equipment of a soldier of an occupying army twice as far as the law requires [or the modern situational equivalent of such an odious act], to love our enemies, to bless them that curse us, to do good to them that hate us, and to pray for them which despitefully use us and persecute us?

I propose that the Christian members of this nation build monuments, not in parks or on buildings, but within ourselves of the Sermon on the Mount.  Christians should be, each of us ourselves, monuments to our faith.

But a plaque of the Ten Commandments is easy.  They are a very low hurdle that one can comply with and feel good about himself.  We can hang a plaque, have a ribbon cutting ceremony, pat ourselves on the back for another anchor to the Christian character of America, and go on living in exactly the same way we did before.

On the other hand inscribing the Sermon on the Mount in our granite hearts is SOOO hard.  There is no ribbon cutting ceremony, because the task is never done.  There are repeated failures and set-backs along the way.  But as we build these monuments, we cannot continue to live the same lives we have.  We must change for the better.  And it is my belief that these internal monuments will do more for reinforcement of the true Christian character (humble, merciful, meek, generous, and foregiving) of our society than a million plaques of the Ten Commandments in government buildings.

The animosity between the two principal political parties in the U.S. is unusually high these days. Doubtless there are many reasons, but I’ve been thinking lately more about the ramifications rather than the reasons. These two parties are a set of Saul and Paul of whom Hoffer spoke. They hate each other, but depend on each other for mutual existence. Without the Saul, or “devil” of an “other,” a political party sits like a child on a see-saw with no partner. The party out of power counts on the unrealistic expectations placed in and the incompetence of the ruling party. The opposition knows it will have its turn when we the people “throw the bums out.” So they sit and criticize, whine and obstruct while the ruling party steamrolls, blunders, and overreaches. If it weren’t for the incompetence of each party, the other may never come to power. And so they are like the moon, needing the sun to go away so it can be seen, but not too far away so it can still reflect the sun’s light.  

This has always been the case, but these day there’s a new twist. The political news pre-packaging industry (Air Amolbermann and Sean O’Limbeck amid others) exaggerate the faults of the other while diminishing those of their own ilk. And too many Americans on both sides are duped into thinking they are really getting “fair and balanced” political news, just because it sits well with their own opinions–after all, I’m Paul. We conveniently don’t have to think, because as long as we only listen to one side of the argument, no one will poke holes or make us ask hard questions.

This disinformation 1) creates more extremism, and thereby 2) generates (not coincidentally) more money for the extremes of each party as Americans are led to believe the other side is made up of Sauls. The results of this are more extreme candidates, leading to more extreme positions, leading to more gridlock in government, leading to an inability for government to function, to effect its goals as outlined in the preamble to the Constitution and similar state and local government constitutions and charters.

What compounds this situation is that the people the parties are putting forward as candidates are not as good as they should be. They are party men and women whose allegiance is to the party’s platform, not the Constitution or its goals. So when they get into office, they don’t look to promote the general welfare, but to promote the party welfare. Rather than provide for the common defense, they provide for the party defense. And this, rather than forming a more perfect union, fractures the union.

Incumbents, pragmatists, independents, and centrists are dropping like flies. Bob Bennett of Utah and Arlen Specter are only the first of many more expected to fall victim to the “you just aren’t extreme enough for me” fervor. Charlie Crist, the moderate and very popular Republican Governor of Florida withdrew from pursuing the Republican nomination for the Senate because a more extreme candidate was going to beat him in the primary. He’s now running as an independent.

Here’s the point of my post. Centrists and moderates from either side of the great dividing line between right and left (there are 300 million opinions as to where that line falls) need to support people like Crist. As much as I hate to say it, we need to send them money. The last thing the Senate in particular and the federal government in general needs is more gridlock—they’re already ineffective enough. It needs moderating voices and people who can reach across the aisle. That act alone is treasonous to party people, and that extremism is ruining our country.

Government only happens through cooperation and log-rolling, not through obstruction and steamrolling. Government should be an action, not an inaction, not an ideology, not a political weapon. We the people need to support people who will represent the people and the goals of the Constitution, not the parties.

The other day I saw a news article that said that Glenn Beck, a nationally-syndicated political talk show host who also has a TV show, a man who has millions of listeners/viewers, told them that if their churches mentioned “social justice” or “economic justice” (what he called political “code words” for communism, etc.), his listeners should leave their churches.  This was shocking to me, first because Beck and I are both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) and I can’t reconcile what he said with the doctrine I know from our church.  Isn’t this a violations of the First of the Ten Commandments?  And secondly, because anyone who actually took his advice widened one of the biggest rips in the fabric of our society.

I’m talking about the fact that all of us are bound together in an eternal family.  In too much of the political discourse lately, there has been demonizing, name-calling, and dehumanizing.  To what end?  To get the trajectory of the country to move a fraction of a degree to the left or the right.  At what cost?  We are sacrificing our kinship with our fellow man to our political objectives.  

We are too willing to create a chasm between “us and them,” refusing to acknowledge that they are us and we are them.  We are encouraged, even commanded by partisan leaders and “men of words” to vilify and hate the others.  As Eric Hoffer observed, “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.”  Partisans are inculcating us with unreasonable fear and then wielding that fear to further their own goals at all costs, not through cooperation and understanding but through accusation and obfuscation, because, in the words of Hoffer, “[the fanatic] fears compromise” and “sees in tolerance a sign of weakness, frivolity and ignorance.”

The partisans prefer that we adopt the thoughts of the group because, as David Brooks wrote in a recent column, “People who are thinking in the group mode are loyal, disciplined and vicious against foes. People in the person-to-person mode are soft, unpredictable and hard to organize.”

Politically the group mode of thinking is valuable, but what is our raison d’être?  God didn’t create us to help our parties win elections or to move the country left or right; we’re here to obey Him.  And we cannot bifurcate our spiritual lives from our political lives.  If we cannot reconcile them, then at least one of them is false, and in trying to maintain them separate and separately, we can find no peace or balance.  Hoffer saw this as an intentional state of mind effected by the men of words: “By kindling and fanning violent passions in the hearts of their followers, mass movements prevent the settling of an inner balance.”  Many of us seek peace and balance in spirituality; in fact for some it is the primary reason for religion.  Why would we surrender that balance to the ideologies of other people whom we don’t really know and whose motivations we can’t fathom?

We Americans have gotten into a habit of checking our spirituality at the door of political discussion (and expecting the same of other cultures).  We shouldn’t do this; we shouldn’t be ABLE to do this because our faith should be so much an integral part of our personal constitution.  It should be the backing of our tapestry, not an accent color on it.

But the “men of words,” who also usually claim to be God-fearing men, want us to follow a different doctrine.  They want us to embrace a political doctrine that is contrary to our spiritual doctrine.  And how can we argue with them when they’re so darn accurate?  George Orwell, in his great essay “Notes on Nationalism” said, “Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties” (he defined “nationalism” as “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit [read political party], placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests”).

Accuracy is not truth.  All half-truths are accurate; that’s the “truth” part.  But they’re not only untrue, but anti-true.  And this is one of the biggest tools the “men of words” use.  They use accurate half-truths to demonize “the others” and make them seem less than human so that we can justify hating them.  Hoffer further noted, “To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred.  Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.”  So if they can get us to do no more than use derogatory nick-names for down-the-political-spectrum people or parties, they have pushed us down the road of hatred to the point where, as Orwell put it, “Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage . . . which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.”

We must change how we each participate in the political debate; not for the nation but for our own souls.  We must acknowledge the humanity of those we do not agree with.  We must take up John Adams’s “pacific and friendly disposition” in negotiation and debate.  But mostly we must remember that every person we’re told we should vilify and hate is a child of God and a heavenly sibling.  And knowing how He loves us, we can assume how He feels when we treat His children the way we sometimes do.  And if we just can’t do it, if we just can’t see the other’s perspective, understand her motives, then it’s time for mom’s advice to come into use.  “If you can’t say something nice (about God’s children), don’t say anything at all.”

Its comments pertain to the Tea Party movement, the Obama campaign, political shock-jocks (Sean O’Limbeck and Air AmOlbermann), party politics and legislative maneuvering, terrorism, nationalism, torture, religion, power, kindness, leadership, creativity, personal fulfillment, and a thousand other topics that occupy our 21^st Century minds, books and airwaves.

His commentary is bare and unapologetic.  He seems to have little patience for those weak-willed enough to be sucked in by a mass movement.  But he also acknowledges that some movements are good, while others are not.  He looks at only the characteristics and tactics, not the morality of the movement.  So he will use an example of the American Revolution alongside the Nazi movement to illustrate the same point.

Hoffer’s writing style is pithy and aphoristic.  Each word is precise; each paragraph is a meal to be digested.  There is no waste.  The author himself went blind at the age of seven but his sight returned at age 15.  “Fearing he would again go blind, he seized upon the opportunity to read as much as he could for as long as he could. His eyesight remained, and Hoffer never abandoned his habit of voracious reading” (the Wikipedia article on him is quite interesting).  He was a gold prospector, a homeless genius, a door-to-door orange salesman, a migrant worker, and finally a longshoreman until he retired at 65.

Below are some (a LOT) of quotes from the book.  The timelessness of the thought demonstrates the soundness of the mind that produced them.  (One small explanation: a “radical” is a left-wing fanatic, while a “reactionary” is a right-wing fanatic.)

The True Believer will change the way you think about almost everything.  And it’s not for the faint of heart, testimony, or personal conviction, because the book itself could become a holy cause to some.

Enjoy!

“[T]hough ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious.”

“Where power is not joined with faith in the future, it is used mainly to ward off the new and preserve the status quo.”

“[A] mass movement, particularly in its active revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self.”

“A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding.  When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.”

“[T]o the frustrated the present is irremediably spoiled.  Comforts and pleasures cannot make it whole.  No real content of comfort can ever arise in their minds but from hope.”

“There is a tendency to judge a race, a nation or any distinct group by its least worthy members.”

“The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.”

“Discontent is likely to be highest when misery is bearable; when conditions have so improved that an ideal state seems almost within reach.”

“We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.”

“Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual. And as freedom encourages a multiplicity of attempts, it unavoidably multiplies failure and frustration.”

“Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden.”

“Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses.  Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority.”

“The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one’s individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.”

“[Armies’] uniforms, flags, emblems, parades, music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death.”

“To lose one’s life is but to lose the present; and, clearly, to lose a defiled, worthless present is not to lose much.”

“There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience—the knowledge that our mighty deeds will come to the ears of our contemporaries or ‘of those who are to be.’”

“[T]here is no more potent dwarfing of the present that by viewing it as a mere link between a glorious past and a glorious future.  Thus, though a mass movement at first turns its back on the past, it eventually develops a vivid awareness, often specious, of a distant glorious past.”

“The conservative doubts that the present can be bettered, and he tries to shape the future in the image of the present.  He goes to the past for reassurance about the present. . . .”

“The reactionary does not believe that man has unfathomed potentialities for good in him.  If a stable and healthy society is to be established, it must be patterned after the proven models of the past.  He sees the future as a glorious restoration rather than an unprecedented innovation.”

“[The reactionary’s] image of the past is based less on what it actually was than on what he wants the future to be.”

“If [the radical] has to employ violence in shaping the new, his view of man’s nature darkens and approaches closer to that of the reactionary.”

“What surprises one, when listening to the frustrated as they decry the present and all its works, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come from the mere venting of a grievance. There must be something more—and there is. By expatiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation.”

“Those who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible.  It is a device to camouflage their shortcomings.”

“Satan did not digress to tell all he knew when he said: ‘All that a man hath will he give for his life.’  All he hath—yes.  But he sooner dies than yield aught of that which he hath not yet.”

“It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.”

“We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.”

“By kindling and fanning violent passions in the hearts of their followers, mass movements prevent the settling of an inner balance.”

“The fanatic is not really a stickler to principle. He embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness and holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold on to. Often, indeed, it is his need for passionate attachment which turns every cause he embraces into a holy cause.”

“[The fanatic] fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause.”

“[The fanatics of various hues] hate each other with the hatred of brothers.  They are as far apart and close together as Saul and Paul.  And it is easier for a fanatic communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism, or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal.”

“[The fanatic] sees in tolerance a sign of weakness, frivolity and ignorance.”

“Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.”

“[L]ike an ideal deity, the ideal devil is omnipotent and omnipresent.”

“To qualify as a devil, a domestic enemy must be given a foreign ancestry.”

“[M]uch of our proselytizing consists perhaps in infecting others not with our brand of faith but with our particular brand of unreasonable hatred.”

“There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.”

“To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred.  Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.”

“There is a deep reassurance for the frustrated in witnessing the downfall of the fortunate and the disgrace of the righteous. They see in a general downfall an approach to the brotherhood of all. Chaos, like the grave, is a haven of equality.”

“[W]hen we renounce the self and become part of a compact whole, we not only renounce personal advantage but are also rid of personal responsibility. There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgment. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom—freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse.”

“Propaganda by itself succeeds mainly with the frustrated. Their throbbing fears, hopes and passions crowd at the portals of their senses and get between them and the outside world. They cannot see but what they have already imagined, and it is the music of their own souls they hear in the impassioned words of the propagandist. Indeed, it is easier for the frustrated to detect their own imaginings and hear the echo of their own musings in impassioned double-talk and sonorous refrains than in precise words joined together with faultless logic.”

“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership.  What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.”

“There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.”

“When the leader in a free society becomes contemptuous of the people, he sooner or later proceeds on the false and fatal theory that all men are fools, and eventually blunders into defeat.”

Quoting Hermann Rauschning: “Marching diverts men’s thoughts.  Marching kills thought.  Marching makes an end of individuality.”

“Suspicion is given a sharp edge by associating all opposition within the ranks with the enemy threatening the movement from without.”

“It is [the chosen devil’s] voice that speaks through the mouth of the dissenter, and the deviationists are his stooges.”

Quoting Montaigne: “Our zeal works wonders when it seconds our propensity to hatred, cruelty, ambition, avarice, detraction, rebellion.”

“By elevating dogma above reason, the individual’s intelligence is prevented from becoming self-reliant.”

“Whenever we find a dispensation enduring beyond its span of competence, there is either an entire absence of an educated class or an intimate alliance between those in power and the men of words.”

“When we debunk a fanatical faith or prejudice, we do not strike at the root of fanaticism.  We merely prevent its leaking out at a certain point, with the likely result that it will leak out at some other point.”

“[The man of action (leader of a mass movement in its post-fanatical phase)] inclines, therefore, to rely mainly on drill and coercion.  He finds the assertion that all men are cowards less debatable than that all men are fools, and, in the words of Sir John Maynard, inclines to found the new order on the necks of the people rather than in their hearts.”

“[A]t the end of its vigorous span, the movement is an instrument of power for the successful and an opiate for the frustrated.”

“Where unity and self-sacrifice are indispensable for the normal functioning of a society, everyday life is likely to be either religiofied (common tasks turned into holy causes) or militarized.”

Why does English have so many cognates with Romance languages if it’s supposed to be Germanic? One of my linguistics professors told our class that 80% of the words we use everyday are Germanic, but 75% of the words in the English dictionary are of French origin, adopted into the language during the centuries-long reign of the French in Britain after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. French became, well, the lingua franca, literally translated as “French language,” but meaning the language generally spoken or the universal language. English is the modern lingua franca, follow closely by Mandarin.

So are we more Germanic or more Romantic because of our language uses? Does language affect society? Yes, but not linguistically, instead semantically. And those who have begun to change American English are not conquerors in the traditional sense, but they are leaving their imprint on the language—and on society. There is a list of words I hate to hear, and I want to change their usage.

Productive - “A productive member of society.” Are we a bunch of bees or ants, killing ourselves for the queen, building a hive or colony for the sole purpose of propagating the species? No. Can someone be helpful to society without “producing” something for future consumption? Yes. Therefore, I propose ditching “productive” and using instead “contributive.” The contemporaries of Socrates, much less himself, would not have called him productive. And yet his contributions are going strong millennia later. Composers, artists, writers all contribute greatly to society, but capitalists would disagree, unless their works could be sold for profit. Think of the greatest thinkers of all time versus the greatest producers of all time. Which has contributed more to society, made us what we are, stood the test of time? Which will be remembered in future millennia?

Bipartisan – This is just the most common of many words that imply the inevitability and irrevocability of the two-party system in the U.S. The plurality of Americans are neither Republicans nor Democrats—they are registered independents. Guess who came up with the phrase “the big-three auto-makers”: Chrysler, of course, because it wanted to be lumped in with its MUCH bigger brothers, GM and Ford. Guess who propagates the implied inevitability of the two-party system through terms such as “bipartisan”: the two parties who don’t want any competition. If Libertarians could ever get a cogent message together or a charismatic leader, they could really upset the apple cart.

A corollary to this is the concept of the “aisle,” as in “both sides of the aisle,” or “the other side of the aisle.” It makes it seem like there is this huge void between right and left, where ne’er the twain shall meet. In fact, the majority of Americans sit in the aisle, between left and right. The aisle deserves to be listened to, not just walked on.

The national interest – Although this term seems innocuous enough—the nation is the whole of its people—it is abused to undermine the interests of the people. National interest usually means one of three things—economic interests, governmental interests, or military interests. This category will include unfair trade relations, pressure to establish military bases (you go, Kyrgyzstan!), torture, war in general, deficit spending, and many others. Citizens must constantly remind their representatives that we make up the nation; not the economy, nor the military, nor the government itself. Otherwise, politicians will continue to believe their own erroneous definitions.

Christian nation – In the movie Cry, the Beloved Country, based on Alan Patton’s book about racism, forgiveness and redemption, the white murder victim, a champion for the poor native South Africans, just before he is shot (ironically by an African youth), pens sardonically something like, “When we say we are Christians, we mean we are white.” We can substitute “American” for “White” and encapsulate the philosophy of too many of our countrymen. For them, the two words are interchangeable in their inherent righteousness. And yet, this “Christian nation” does too many unchristian things, with the knowledge and approval of the self-professed Christians living within it. We do not “turn the other cheek,” “sell that [we have] and give to the poor,” or even try to “[have] all things common.” We, as a nation, ignore the Ten Commandments and the Two Great Commandments. Also from Cry, the Beloved Country (this time the book) comes the following quote: “The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.” If Christian conservatives understood and lived the laws of Christianity, we would indeed be able to shrink the size of government, a favorite rallying cry, because the hated entitlement programs would be moot, because “public assistance would simply be Christians “lift[ing] up the hands which hang down.” We would not fear the terrorists, illegal immigrants, or higher taxes. If Christian liberals lived the laws of Christianity, they would abandon their salvation-by-legislation philosophy and strengthen their stances against abortion and the disintegration of the family.

How many Christians in American do you know who would have a hard time saying, “I am a Christian before I am an American”? All Christians in America should be able to say this freely and with deep sincerity, but it sticks in the throat of too many who believe America to be the true source of salvation, focusing on the temporal—ignorant of the teachings of Christ.

Thinking Americans need to take back our language. We need to be the drivers of politics, government, society, and language. Words should not be misused by our representatives to confuse, control, and hypnotize us. Only when we can use a pen effectively can it be mightier than the sword.

However, in order for conservatives to prove, in the famous words of Saint Ronald that, “Government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem,” small-government types need to unplug the mouths and plug in the helping hands.

Here’s the list of things that must be taken up by the community if the state and local governments are not to do it:
- Higher education
- Public education
- Libraries
- Workforce services
- Prisons and jails
- Courts and Law enforcement (we do have a lot of guns here; hmm. . . )
- Healthcare
- Public health and safety
- Fire departments
- Zoos and parks
- Care for the elderly, disabled, poor, homeless, abused, orphans, etc.
- Infrastructure (roads, mass transit, communications, etc.)
- The National Guard
- Policing and regulation of whatever government functions are left
- Natural resource protection and/or development
- Ad infinitum

That’s quite a to-do list, and it won’t be done with tax-deductible donations or by Filling The Boot with loose change. It will take actual physical participation in all of these endeavors.

So, are you with me? Are we gonna do it?! Are we going to take back our government?!?! I have a feeling there’s a lot of hemming and hawing going on; why? Because we’re too busy with other stuff. Socrates’s model of specialization is as valid today as it was then. “We are not all alike; there are diversities of natures among us which are adapted to different occupations. . . . And will you have a work better done when the workman has many occupations, or when he has only one?” Or written by Thomas Gordon in Cato’s Letters No. 38, “What is Government, but a Trust committed by All, or the Most, to One, or a Few, who are to attend upon the Affairs of All, that every one may, with the more Security, attend upon his own?” This is the concept that the “consent of the governed” is based on. But as Mr. Gordon points out, “A great and honourable Trust; but too seldom honourably executed; those who possess it having it often more at Heart to encrease their Power, than to make it useful; and to be terrible, rather than beneficent. It is therefore a Trust, which ought to be bounded with many and strong Restraints, because Power renders Men wanton, insolent to others, and fond of themselves.“

Can we have hobbyist public works crews, police, judges, librarians, prison guards, or bus drivers, people who only do these jobs when they get around to it? No. This is why we have government. Because it provides that same specialization that too many of us spit out as “bureaucracy.”

Why do we expect the product of our imperfect Constitution to be perfect? Why would we expect the execution of that Constitution to be any less difficult than the establishment of it, where some of the greatest of the Founding generation walked out of the Convention, refusing to sign? Government has two strikes against it: 1) it is created by man, therefore deficient in its design; and 2) it is run by man, therefore deficient in its execution. A third strike in modern America is that most of us don’t know anything about it, but that doesn’t stop us from criticizing like a bunch of Pointy-Haired Bosses. I’m not saying we shouldn’t criticize the government; in fact I think it’s our duty to watch every move it makes. But in the end I think we need to acknowledge the good it does. Gandhi said “History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love or of the soul.” The picture we get of government is the same: we are never told of how much good it does, but only of how it screws up. We need to accept that a human-built and human-run system is going to have failures. The other option is no government at all—I think I’m a lot closer to that than most, and it still scares me.

Two things the government has going for it are 1) its specialization, and 2) its economies of scale; nobody can negotiate, buy, spend, help, hurt, save, or kill on the scale the government can. Who else could have built an interstate freeway system, saved the world from Nazism, and put a man on the moon? I know what you’re thinking (to quote Magnum): the markets could have done it if given the chance. No, they couldn’t. Because the market would have to raise the capital to start, and would have to prove that its plan would pay off in order to do so. Who would have invested in a man on the moon? (Actually, what good has it brought us besides Tang?) The smart money was on the Nazis in WWII. Sometimes the market is actually slower than the government, because the market has to obey the laws of fear and greed, where governments can do things for simple necessity and altruism.

So, let’s see what happens as our governments shrink. Will there be a groundswell of “conservatives” striding forth to take up the banner government has let fall? I’ve got a bowl of popcorn and a comfy recliner because I think it will be that interesting.

The vessel for this criticism is a story about Nekhlyudov, a child of privilege who falls to the temptations of his society. He seduces a peasant girl on his aunts’ farm and never looks back. He recognizes her years later as he sits on a jury trying her for murder. He finds out that he had left the girl pregnant, and that she has eventually become a prostitute. This shakes him so deeply that he decides to reform and do what is right. He slips a few times, but does not fall, in his resolve to do right by the girl. He eventually follows her to Siberia, intending to live at least close to her throughout her sentence. I won’t give away any more of the plot than that.

There were many great quotes from the book. Believe it or not, I did exclude some of them from the list below:

On Prisons
“Terrible were the brutalized jailers, whose occupation is to torment their brothers, and who were certain that they were fulfilling an important and useful duty.”

“[The prisoners] were deprived of the chief motives that induce weak people to live good lives—regard for public opinion, a sense of shame, and the consciousness of human dignity.”

“The only explanation of what was being done was that it aimed at the prevention of crime, at inspiring awe, at correcting offenders, and at dealing out to them ‘lawful justice’ as the books said. But in reality, nothing in the least resembling these results came to pass. Instead of vice being put to a stop, it only spread farther; instead of being frightened, the criminals were encouraged (many a tramp returned to prison of his own free will); instead of correction, every kind of vice was systematically instilled; while the desire for vengeance, far from being weakened by the measures of the government, was instilled into the people, to whom it was not natural.”

“[T]he only certain means of salvation from the terrible evil from which men are suffering is that they should always acknowledge themselves to be guilty before God, and therefore unable to punish or reform others. . . .”

“Vicious men were trying to reform other vicious men, and thought they could do it by mechanical means.”

On High Society
“[S]he thought more of him that anybody else and therefore evidently understood him. This understanding of him, that is, the recognition of his superior worth, was a proof to Nekhlyudov of her good sense and correct judgment.”

“Nekhlyudov . . . felt with his whole being a loathing for the society in which he had lived till then: that society which so carefully hides the sufferings borne by millions to assure ease and pleasure to a small minority, that the people comprising it do not and cannot see these sufferings nor the cruelty and wickedness of their own lives.”

“’But they suffer. You are a Christian and believe in the Gospel teaching and yet you are so pitiless.’
’That has nothing to do with it. The Gospels are the Gospels, but what is disgusting remains disgusting.’”

“It was clear that everything considered important and good was insignificant and repulsive, and that all this glamour and luxury hid the old well-known crimes, which not only remained unpunished but were adorned with all the splendor men can devise.”

“The law . . . is only an instrument for upholding the existing order of things to the advantage of [the ruling] class.”

On Law
“[T]hese people acknowledge as law what is not law, and do not acknowledge as law at all, the eternal, immutable law written by God in the hearts of men.”

On the Carnal Man vs. the Spiritual Man
“[A]ll this terrible change had come about because he had ceased to believe himself and had taken to believing others. This he had done because it was too difficult to live believing one’s self: believing one’s self, one had to decide every question, not in favor of one’s animal I, which is always seeking for easy gratification, but in almost every case against it. Believing others, there was nothing to decide; everything had been decided already, and always in favor of the animal I and against the spiritual. Nor was this all. Believing in his own self, he was always exposing himself to the censure of those around him; believing others, he had their approval.”

“All men live and act partly according to their own, partly according to other people’s ideas. The extent to which they do the one or the other is one of the chief things that differentiate men.”

“The tempter that had been speaking to him in the night again raised his voice, trying to lead him out of the realm of his inner life into the realm of his outer life, away from the question of what he should do, to the question of what the consequences would be and what would be practical.”

“In Nekhlyudov, as in every man, there were two beings; one the spiritual, seeking only that kind of happiness for himself which tends towards the happiness of all; the other, the animal man, seeking only his own happiness, and ready to sacrifice to it the happiness of the rest of the world.”

On Man’s Stewardship for his Fellowman
“It was simple because he was thinking now, not of what would be the results for him, but only of what he ought to do. And, strange to say, what he ought to do for himself he could not decide, but what he ought to do for others he knew indubitably.”

“The earth cannot be anyone’s property; it cannot be bought or sold anymore than water, air, or sunshine. All have an equal right to the advantages it gives to men.”

“If once we admit—be it only for an hour or in some exceptional case—that anything can be more important that a feeling of love for our fellows, then there is no crime which we may not commit with easy minds, free from feelings of guilt.”

On the Military
“Military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of complete idleness, that is, absence of all rational and useful work; frees them from their common human duties, which it replaces by merely conventional duties to the honor of the regiment, the uniform, the flag; and while giving them on the one hand absolute power over other men, also puts them into conditions of servile obedience to those of higher ranks than themselves.”

“[The General] had received [the Order of the White Cross], which he greatly prized, while serving in the Caucasus, because a number of Russian peasants, with cropped hair, dressed in uniforms and armed with guns and bayonets, had killed at his command more than a thousand men who were defending their liberty, their homes, and their families.”

“These regulations had inevitably to be fulfilled, and hence it was absolutely useless to think of the consequences of that fulfillment. The old General did not even allow himself to think of such things, counting it his patriotic duty as a soldier not to think of them for fear of becoming weak in the execution of the obligations that seemed to him so very important.”

On Society Generally
“[T]he opinion of the [jury] foreman began to gain ground, chiefly because all the jurymen were getting tired, and preferred to take up the view that would bring them sooner to a decision and thus liberate them.”

“People whom fate and their sin-mistakes have placed in a certain position, however false that position may be, form a view of life in general which makes their position seem good and admissible. In order to keep up their view of life, these people instinctively keep to the circle of those who share their views of life and of their own place in it.”

“It was clear that she considered herself a heroine ready to lay down her life for the success of her cause; yet she could hardly have explained what that cause was, or in what its success consisted.”

“[A]ll sorts of violence, cruelty, and inhumanity, are not only tolerated but even sanctioned by Government when it suits its purpose.”

Until 2003, the U.S. Army had the following “Soldier’s Creed”:

I am an American Soldier.
I am a member of the United States Army — a protector of the greatest nation on earth.
Because I am proud of the uniform I wear, I will always act in ways creditable to the military service and the nation it is sworn to guard.
I am proud of my own organization. I will do all I can to make it the finest unit in the Army.
I will be loyal to those under whom I serve. I will do my full part to carry out orders and instructions given to me or my unit.
As a soldier, I realize that I am a member of a time-honored profession–that I am doing my share to keep alive the principles of freedom for which my country stands.
No matter what the situation I am in, I will never do anything, for pleasure, profit, or personal safety, which will disgrace my uniform, my unit, or my country.
I will use every means I have, even beyond the line of duty, to restrain my Army comrades from actions disgraceful to themselves and to the uniform.
I am proud of my country and its flag.
I will try to make the people of this nation proud of the service I represent, for I am an American Soldier.

In 2003 a new “Warrior’s Creed” was adopted to replace the old “Soldier’s Creed”:

I am an American Soldier.
I am a Warrior and a member of a team.
I serve the people of the United States, and live the Army Values.
I will always place the mission first.
I will never accept defeat.
I will never quit.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough,
Trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills.
I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself.
I am an expert and I am a professional.
I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy, the enemies of the United States of America in close combat.
I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life.
I am an American Soldier.

I see a not-so-subtle shift in the desired mindset of Army personnel. The Army calls it a “Warrior Ethos” which is represented by the lines “I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade.”

I see a problem with this, encapsulated in the transition from the word “soldier” to the word “warrior.” To me a solider is a duty-bound citizen, reluctantly defending his people (perhaps a romanticized view). A warrior is a killing-machine, a mercenary.

I don’t know what demanded this official change in the Army. I don’t know if the Army saw too many soldiers thinking for themselves and questioning superiors and their motives. But it’s disturbing to me that the people who are risking the most to defend the principles for which America stands are having those same principles denied them to an inordinate degree. I know that a military must be organized and disciplined, otherwise it would not be as effective in killing and destroying as it must be to fulfill its raison d’être. But there must be other ways to command discipline.

I think the new warrior ethos in the military repudiates humility and moral purpose, a consciousness that must accompany a soldier if he is not to go crazy as his conscience rebels against his duty. I think this is part of the reason we see more depression, suicides, PTSD, etc. in soldiers returning from Iraq than we did in those who returned from WWII.

I’m not a very good Christian Anarchist in that I think that war is occasionally (rarely) justifiable. But if my sons have to go to war some day, I want them to go as soldiers, not as warriors.

The first concerning point is whether the school system should be where children should “learn to be responsible citizens.” Citizenship is learned at the feet of parents through discussion, everyday choices, and exposure to influences. This can often give a very bad result. The school system may serve as a stopgap against crummy home environments, but this highlights the other problem with Mr. Bush’s comment: the system is too focused on “skills necessary to take advantage of our fantastic opportun[ity-abundant] society.” Citizenship should be taught in the home, but isn’t because the responsibility has been abdicated to the schools that are too concerned with job training. So where is the citizenship education happening? It’s not.

And the result? “A major study by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University of the 2000 election asked respondents about six key positions held by Bush or Gore. Most Americans questioned could correctly identify only one of the candidates’ positions. In the average answer, 46 percent of those surveyed said they did not know and 16 percent got it wrong.

“Three fourths of U.S. citizens queried in another survey about key aspects of democracy could answer only 13 percent of the questions correctly, though many of the facts known by relatively small percentages of the public seem critical to understanding—let alone effectively acting in the political world: fundamental rules of the game; classic civil liberties . . . the names of representatives; many important policy positions of Presidential candidates or the political parties; and significant public policies’” (Give Me Liberty, Naomi Wolf, p. 177).

John Adams said, “The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks, is of more importance to the public, than all the property of all the rich men in the country.” But we have abdicated our citizenship to those rich men. We don’t discuss politics and we don’t write to or otherwise pressure our representatives to do what we want them to. We don’t study or even read the Constitution or the writings of the founders. As long as we can get a tee-time and a hair appointment, we figure our country is being well-managed. Well, in a sense it is—being managed, that is. It’s being managed by an oligarchy, an aristocracy, because the rest of us either feel we have no say or don’t care.

“We the people” was a very profound statement in its time. Never before had a government been established by planters and printers. Even in previous attempts at democracy, successful to some degree, the governments were established by (and maintained for) an aristocratic elite.

We are letting our legacy be gently wrested from us by power- and money-hungry elites. And as long as we don’t throw up a stink about it, they’ll keep tugging. If it were a purse or wallet, we would scream, “STOP IT! THIEF!”

So how do we scream at these thieves? Our representatives aren’t as insulated as a lot of us think. Most of our state representatives have their cell phone numbers published (at least in their campaign literature). All of them, state and federal, will respond to a constituent’s message. And if you have a dozen signatures on a letter, you become a special interest group, a voting block, something to be attended to. Why? Because 1) you’re organized, and 2) you understand your role as a citizen, and they know you’re watching your legacy wallet.