The American Crisis: A Time For Choosing
Journal Entry #19
Your wisdom and knowledge mislead you when you say to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides.’ – Isaiah 47:10

Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes… Therefore, O king, be pleased to accept my advice: Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your prosperity will continue…At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. –Daniel 4:25, 27, 34

Watch out that no one deceives you. –Jesus of Nazareth; Olivet Discourse; Matthew 24:4

My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. – Hosea 4:6

Continuing our appraisal of the American Crisis, we should recognize that our national troubles persist due to our reluctance to acknowledge the true source of our Crisis: the collapse of free thought in America. Notwithstanding that I strove from the beginning to alert and warn you, my fellow citizens, by means of the revival of the Colonial-era Committees of Correspondence, we have determined to continue down the road of national peril ever further than when first I put pen to paper.

As in the Autumn of 2008, the midterm election convened in November, 2010 was animated by the hope of retrieving America’s vanishing destiny from the maw of calamity. In this latest election season, widespread public and media opinion once again placed an almost exclusive premium upon the desirability and sufficiency of political "solutions" to ease America’s economic malaise and social decline. Sadly, such "solutions" will serve- as they did two years ago- only to perpetuate the American Crisis, and never to resolve it. And it appears likely the run-up to the 2012 election will see further advocacy for more of the same useless political "solutions".

Already we see the campaign debate once again revolving almost exclusively around the possible political solutions that would best liberate the nation’s economic potential from increasing government encroachment. Historically forgotten however, is the sage counsel of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, in his Capitalism and Freedom (1962), that economic freedom is a necessary condition for political freedom- but not a sufficient condition.

Why are so-called political solutions useless? Because they never- nor will they ever- get to the source of our national Crisis. In other words, we’re trying to solve nonpolitical problems by political means. Say a person develops severe chest pains, would you advise them to go to the dentist? If the roof of your house begins leaking badly during a violent thunderstorm, would you call a plumber? If your car won't go even though you have it in "drive", would you call an electrician? So why should we expect politicians to solve- by political action- the social problems that we ourselves have generated through fuzzy thinking?

It really makes no sense; it’s an exercise in futility. Yet on we go, election after election, calling upon our political class to devise various governmental schemes for more job creation, improved public education, war on drugs, war on poverty, war on terror, lower personal and corporate taxes, less government spending, smaller government bureaucracy, a more pro-business private sector, etc. It's time we stop blaming the "system" or politicians for our troubles and assign the blame where it really belongs: with We The People. How can we ever expect to succeed in our experiment with self-government when we don't even govern ourselves properly?

All the while we fail to recognize our national difficulties are merely the symptoms of a far more basic problem: our popular and institutional hostility to intellectual freedom in America. That is, our prohibition upon the freedom to entertain Truth. A philosophical and empirical necessity, the desire for and acquisition of Truth engenders correct reasoning, correct conclusions, and thus, correct citizenship. Freedom of thought consequently permits We The People to establish a free and stable society which then extends to the political, economic and social. To do otherwise puts the cart before the horse.

Punctuating this ongoing failure to acknowledge the source of our American Crisis, we find two social movements that are as eminently sincere and ennobled as they are misdirected and ineffectual. These social movements are the various Tea Party Organizations and the Ground Zero Mosque demonstrations in New York City; the latter attaining greater organizational coherence through the recent formation of the 911 Hard Hat Pledge response.

As admirable, well-intentioned and patriotic as these organizations truly are, their profound distance from philosophical, historical and spiritual rectitude serves to compound the American Crisis. Far from being practical remedies for our national dilemma, these only amplify our disorientation and disorder. To the extent that the Tea Party and Ground Zero Mosque protests parallel the same faulty reasoning from which our overall Crisis proceeds, they eventually become more a product of our national dysfunction than a natural corrective for it.

In his Give Us Liberty- A Tea Party Manifesto, Dick Armey writes that the “Members of the Tea Party movement are focused on defending individual freedoms and economic liberty…stirred into action [by] what they view as a government that has grown too large, spends too much money, and is interfering with their freedoms.”

In a nutshell these form the Tea Party’s gravamen before the court of public opinion, and represent the substance from which Mr. Armey views the “four recurring themes” of all Tea Party activism: the Constitution is the blueprint for good government; in a free society, actions should have consequences; the Federal Government is addicted to spending; and, our bloated bureaucracy is too big to succeed. To be sure, the Tea Partiers won’t receive an argument from me on its call to action. However, the Tea Party movement fails to recognize a crucial fact, upon which its future effectiveness and success depends.

These four recurring themes are all necessary conditions for the maintenance of democracy and a well-functioning Republic, but none of which- severally or in combination- are sufficient conditions by which democracy must occur. Historically, today’s Tea Party Organizations fail to recall that the original Boston Tea Party in December, 1773 (along with the less well-known Delaware Tea Party nine days later) took place before the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1789, in which the "rights antecedently enjoyed" were thenceforth secured and protected from that “long train of abuses and usurpations” by Crown or Parliament.

As we recall, I put forth in my September 2008 journal entry the essential observation that America is in the midst of a Crisis which goes well beyond economic, social and political spheres- though it exerts overwhelming influence on these. This Crisis represents an insidious threat to our liberty that has gone largely unnoticed by the presidential candidates, to say nothing of America’s numerous opinion makers, scholars, scientists and media leaders. That threat to our liberty is the demise of free thought in America, and in the West generally.

Free thought is the sine qua non (something absolutely indispensable or essential) for the establishment and maintenance of a democratic society. It represents the philosophical threshold beyond which we become unable to ensure free institutions- social, political and economic- and a stable society. Free thought presupposes an appreciation for Truth (that which conforms to objective reality, existing independently of the observer) and a reliable philosophical method by which Truth can be acquired and appraised.

Amazingly, freedom of thought does not now exist in America and is, in fact, actively prohibited! Remember this well, my fellow citizens: Whatever cannot be sustained by Reason, will surely be maintained by Force! This axiom is clearly reflected in the incomprehensible utterances of our Western intelligentsia; those numerous scientists and other intellectuals whom we have given the authority to purify our corpus of knowledge of any "harmful" influences, and who then presume to tell the rest of us what we can and cannot teach or learn. I term this extraordinary and unprecedented tendency the "Tyranny of the Intellect".

In The Devil’s Delusion; Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, the Princeton-trained mathematician David Berlinski quotes the Oxford University scientist Richard Dawkins; “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution that person is ignorant, stupid or insane.” Perhaps Professor Dawkins was absent the day they studied in Logic class the informal fallacy termed Argumentum ad Hominem, or abusing the man.

This erroneous inference occurs when one attacks and discredits another’s reputation, rather than evaluating the soundness or validity of their argument. It is the product of a perverse intellect. In any case, such a pervasive attitude within the academic community would certainly discourage debate on human origins, as well as negate the philosophical impulse to seek truth. It is meant to intimidate and coerce young minds into an intellectual conformity and enforce an overall philosophic orthodoxy- a tactic we noted in an earlier journal entry that is characteristic of totalitarian societies. It is entirely unbecoming of a free people.

It follows that when there is an intellectual imbalance in a democratic society, that is, when our knowledge does not agree with, or even diverges from the actually existing nature of things, there results a corresponding imbalance in every segment of that society- in the economic, political and social (my Disequilibrium Hypothesis). Thus, when a society, like ours in America, is in a state of philosophical imbalance it is ipso facto (by that very fact) unstable.

This demise of free thought has been visited upon us by a direct attack on intellectual freedom in America, ever growing and greatly accelerated in scope and momentum since the end of World War Two. And this attack on intellectual freedom proceeds inexorably from a disastrous decline of spiritual freedom. But what precisely, has spiritual freedom to do with intellectual and, ultimately, political freedom? Everything- according to the Founders of the American Republic.

With reference, appeal and justification to God appearing four times in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and the signers of that American Testament inarguably deferred to the Almighty not only for the legitimacy of their cause, but the justification for their subsequent actions and, indeed, the very bedrock of truth itself. The American philosopher Mortimer Adler teaches us that to hold a “self-evident truth”, is to embrace a proposition the opposite of which is impossible to conceive. Transcending the Declaration then, the only possible source of an independent, objective, absolute Truth must be an objective, absolute, independently existing God. The universe He has created is quite real, specific, definite, and unequivocal, as are all His Truths.

Still, one might nevertheless ask how a diminished intellectual freedom could possibly occur in a democracy otherwise dedicated to freedom of speech, the press, assembly and association, free and regular elections, and religious tolerance. Moreover, given the unprecedented capacity for information exchange in our current digital age, intellectual freedom would certainly be assured. Indeed, one might well conclude that there has never been a society like ours in which its citizens enjoy such extensive freedom to act, associate, speak, write and publish.

This inconsistency between real and apparent freedom is best clarified when we consult that branch of philosophy which studies “the methods and principles used to distinguish good (correct) from bad (incorrect) reasoning.” In his Introduction to Logic, Professor Irving Copi discusses Causal Connections in light of that “fundamental axiom”, which states that “in the study of nature…events do not just happen, but occur only under certain conditions.” This axiom applies not only to geophysical events such as volcanoes, glaciers, plate tectonics, hurricanes, etc., but to man-made phenomena as well; in this case, democratic government.

Of critical relevance when studying causal connections is the distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions, as these invariably coincide to promote an event, effect or result. “A necessary condition for the occurrence of a specified event is a circumstance in whose absence the event cannot occur…A sufficient condition for the occurrence of an event is a circumstance in whose presence the event must occur.” Professor Copi uses the example of fire to illustrate the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions. As we know, fire is produced when oxygen, a flammable material and ignition come together.

“For example, the presence of oxygen is a necessary condition for combustion to occur: if combustion occurs, then oxygen must have been present, for in the absence of oxygen there can be no combustion…The presence of oxygen is not a sufficient condition for combustion because oxygen can be present without combustion occurring.” Given the presence of the necessary conditions of oxygen and a flammable material however, ignition becomes the sufficient condition for combustion because with the introduction of ignition a fire must inevitably result.

When we apply these concepts to the establishment of democracy (government by the people), we soon recognize that freedom of speech, press, elections, assembly, and worship are all of them necessary conditions for the maintenance of democracy, for in the absence of these the latter simply cannot occur; in the absence of the necessary conditions, self-government would very much be an impossible feat.

However, none of these freedoms are sufficient conditions which result in democracy because in their presence other governmental arrangements can conceivably occur. Additionally, these freedoms are ever vulnerable to subtle manipulation and restriction while still conveying their original outward appearances. What preserves the integrity and promotes the usefulness of these necessary conditions for a true democracy can only be the sufficient condition of intellectual freedom.

Freedom of thought remains a sufficient condition (a circumstance in whose presence the event or result must occur) for the establishment and maintenance of democracy, to the extent that it simultaneously assures the mind freedom to act. And, even more importantly, enables the intellect to be free from- free from error and deception, as well as mental confusion- or “trouble in the mind”- as Thomas Sowell quotes Epicurus in Chapter 3, Philosophic Materialism, of his informative and very useful book Marxism; Philosophy and Economics.

The Tea Party Organizations should certainly continue to advocate lower taxes and less government, but we should no longer believe that these will yield more individual freedom. Put another way, the Tea Party movement should no longer advocate the attainment by political means of nonpolitical goals, beginning with individual freedom. Remember, liberty is given by God; it is in no way a function of government! Such advocacy must henceforth proceed in the larger context of the fundamental philosophical differences existing between conservatives and liberals. It is, first and foremost, within the philosophical realm that political, economic and social decisions and policies arise and are resolved.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are both of them philosophic documents first, because human liberty is philosophically derived and justified in accordance with Truth, the source of which is a wise and benevolent Creator. Consequently, any diminution of Truth, properly understood, will inevitably result in a diminution of liberty and individual freedom. Thus, we give particular attention to that most singular difference which dominates the clash of ideas between conservatives and liberals: the existence of God. From this, the identity of Man inexorably follows.

Professor Russell Kirk, writing in The Conservative Mind; From Burke to Eliot, notes a number of distinguishing characteristics existing between conservatives and liberals (or the latter’s earlier equivalent, radicals). The most noteworthy of which finds the conservative believing in “…a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience. Political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems. A narrow rationality, what Coleridge called the Understanding, cannot of itself satisfy human needs.”

The liberal harbors no such notions, but rather believes in the “…perfectibility of man and the illimitable progress of society: meliorism. Radicals believe that education, positive legislation, and alteration of environment can produce men like gods; they deny that humanity has a natural proclivity toward violence and sin.” It is precisely this crucial distinction between God, “a transcendent order”, and the subsequent identity of mankind that makes all the difference in a citizen’s political outlook. Depending upon what distinction one embraces will necessarily determine governmental sovereignty; whether it is the STATE and man as servant.

To the extent many Americans fail to recognize or admit this critical distinction between the conservative and liberal notions of the identity of God, they also fail to see that it lies at the heart of the Ground Zero mosque protest. While I am in complete agreement with those who believe that building a mosque at that site would be improper and insensitive, rather than expedience, my knowledge of the testimony of Jesus Christ and my personal relationship with Him guides my thinking and opinion. Only by expedience can a citizen alternately claim that it would be fine to build the mosque and Islamic cultural center elsewhere.

The reader should know that this testimony of Jesus Christ is not cryptic, obscure, encoded nor exclusive. The understanding thereof is free and available to anyone and everyone who sincerely desires to know it. A wonderful resource to introduce the reader to this illuminating testimony is a DVD entitled The Land of the Seven Churches. Available through Discovery House Publishers, this program examines the seven letters Jesus dictated to the disciple John, who was imprisoned in the first century on the Isle of Patmos, a Roman penal colony in the Aegean Sea.

Because of his public fidelity to the testimony, the heart of which being the Divinity of Jesus Christ, John openly challenged the authority and divinity of Caesar (Roman Emperors finally claimed to be the incarnation of the God Apollo). Roman justice decreed therefore, that John should be sentenced to imprisonment by exile; a first century Gulag, if you will. John’s plight is not unlike what we would find in our modern age, in which the STATE jealously preserves its supremacy against all opposing claims to authority, even that of Jesus in Matthew 28:18.

Comprising the first three chapters of Revelation, the seven letters to the seven churches located in the former Roman province of Asia- known today as the Republic of Turkey- reflect a Father’s love for His children. These letters express Jesus’ heartfelt encouragement and warnings to first century Christians who struggled to maintain a faithful and effective presence amidst great adversity and increasing persecution. However, because these churches permitted themselves to be overcome by the problems enumerated in Jesus’ revelation, what was in the first century a land of firmly established churches, ultimately became a nation of mosques.

In Chapter One of Revelation, John writes to the seven churches located in the enormously important and influential commercial and cultural centers of the eastern Roman Empire: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. Through these letters, Jesus warns each congregation of the various perils that jeopardize and undermine the integrity and effectiveness of any community of believers- then and now. These perils are lost love, fear of persecution, sexual scandal, and tolerance of false teaching, resting on the past, limited resources and the dangers of materialism.

While a treatment of all seven letters exceeds the scope of this particular correspondence, a closer look at the letter to Ephesus will help us to understand how the loss of first love opens the way for further peril. When the believers in Ephesus were told they had forsaken their first love, it meant that Jesus Christ increasingly failed to occupy a central place in their thoughts and lives. The magnitude of such loss is better grasped as we consult a letter to the Ephesians written by Saul of Tarsus, later known as Paul, who wrote from a Roman prison cell some thirty years before John’s letter.

Paul first gained mention in the book of Acts, being present at and “giving approval to” the death of Stephen, an early follower of Jesus who was executed for holding to the testimony of Christ. Interestingly, Paul began his missionary journeys into Asia Minor proclaiming the Gospel of Christ sometime after he was confronted by the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus. Paul was travelling there to arrest in that city any Jews who subscribed to this blasphemous and strange new cult called The Way. It was the church in the Roman city of Ephesus at which the converted Paul stayed three years and helped to nurture, and to which John later sent the Revelation letter.

In Chapter One of Paul’s letter to the believers at Ephesus, he prays that the “God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you…” Paul continues in Chapter Four that “you must no longer live as the Gentiles [the surrounding peoples who worship the Roman pantheon of gods and the Emperor] do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.”

There can be little doubt that Paul was referring to those essential traits of a believer’s character which facilitate the Christian witness amongst an otherwise skeptical and disbelieving community. Of supreme value are the traits of wisdom and enlightenment, received by revelation. When Paul prayed for the Ephesians to receive the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation”, he was making reference to the “Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father”, that would be sent to the disciples by Jesus after His crucifixion and resurrection in the Gospel of John 15:26.

Paul’s prayer for the heart of the Ephesians to receive enlightenment also makes reference to the teaching in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, where Jesus declared that “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden…let your light shine before men…” This returns us to the Revelation letter to the church at Ephesus, in which John quotes Jesus as saying “Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.”

Because Jesus had declared early in his ministry in John 8:12, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life”, the believer who faithfully continues to walk in His ways and remain in Him will always represent a source of light in an otherwise darkened world. Jesus identity with light is more than poetic symbolism. It is a fulfillment of the prophecy found in Isaiah 49:6, written over 700 years before His birth; “I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.” Thus, the image of a lamp stand in John’s Revelation letter to the church at Ephesus is an apt symbol for a group of believers. And if a lamp stand fails to provide illumination to its surroundings, its removal by Jesus is inevitable.

In our program Land Of The Seven Churches, Dr. Bastiaan Van Elderen of Calvin Theological Seminary observes that “When one reflects upon the history of Christianity in what is today modern Turkey and observes how extensive the remains of Christianity are, when you visit archaeological sites and find evidences of Christianity in virtually every village- in terms of artifacts- and then realize that this is now largely non-Christian, one is made aware of the fact that a so-called Christian nation can quickly become a non-Christian nation.”

It is a fact that the Revelation of Jesus Christ did not end with John writing on the Isle of Patmos in the first century A.D. The admonitions and warnings of Revelation are as relevant to the present day as they were then: indeed, the revelation continues with the words you’re now reading. America is quickly becoming a non-Christian nation. Why should that matter? After the fall of the Roman Empire, it was only through Christianity that Western Civilization survived the Dark Ages, until the rebirth of the Renaissance. Then, it was only by means of Christian philosophy that the Reformation, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment came about.

As we extinguish our own spiritual light, we extinguish also the American Torch of Liberty. Without “the way, the truth and the life” there can be neither life nor liberty. As we restore freedom of thought to our nation, we grant our citizens the intellectual capacity to entertain revelation and with it, a true and faithful understanding of the universe- and ourselves. It is by means of this knowledge and wisdom that we are able to constitute proper government, a prosperous economy and a stable and functional society. There is no other way.

Prior to serving as Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, C.S. Lewis was a Fellow and Tutor in English literature at Oxford University; he was also an atheist. At a point early in his adult life he arrived at the conclusion that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was not only reasonable, but was the only logical explanation that made sense of everything, from the universe as a whole to the whole of human history, as well as individual human behavior. His literary work entitled Mere Christianity was the product of a series of radio addresses given to a besieged England- a sorely pressed and bleeding nation- during the darkest hours of World War II after the London Blitz, when the forces of Evil were exalted and it appeared that the entire world had gone insane.

In Chapter 3, The Shocking Alternative, Lewis writes: “What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’- could set up on their own as if they had created themselves- be their own masters- invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history- money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery- the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.”

“God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended- civilizations are built up- excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down. They are trying to run it on the wrong juice. This is what Satan has done to us humans.”

The revelation given me by Jesus (cf. Psalm 25:14; Jeremiah 33:2,3; Proverbs 2:1-6; Galatians 1:11,12) is intended to reestablish intellectual freedom in American civilization by RATIONALLY and EMPIRICALLY disproving the theory of biological evolution. Because Darwin's reasoning was in error, his theory is also in error. Such error in reasoning and theorizing eventually comes to dominate current thinking, and so directly prohibits freedom of thought. Intellectual freedom implies both the desire and capability to entertain truth; if error dominates our thinking, truth cannot be approached or recognized.

By disproving biological evolution, the Creation story of Genesis, written by Moses many generations ago, will be restored. This is in prophetic fulfillment of Isaiah 29:14 and 1 Corinthians 1. It’s also a reaffirmation of the words spoken by the prophet Daniel while exiled in Babylon: “He [the God of Israel] gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him.”

Professor Richard Dawkins proposed in his book The God Delusion that if the empirical evidence which disproves the theory of biological evolution should come to light, he would disown Darwin. The gauntlet is thrown down; the challenge is now issued. Anytime, anywhere- I would be glad to demonstrate that no evolutionary mechanism exists in nature. It is a physical impossibility. If Professor Dawkins feigns deafness or ignores this challenge, then I think we may safely conclude his atheism lacks all credibility.

Listen to me now America: I am one of your Airborne Sons- of a "Band of Brothers". I would not mislead you. Today- right now- is a time for choosing! If your choice is a free, prosperous, cultured, educated and flourishing America once more, then speak, write, text, email- whatever you can devise- to disseminate this correspondence to the media, opinion makers, academicians and political leaders here and abroad. The alternative is already being played out on our television screens- and it is not at all a pleasant alternative. Proclaim this correspondence throughout the land- or prepare for a life of servitude and darkness. These only are the choices left to us.

To be sure, the cruelest Tyrant of all is ourselves, as we Legislate the delusions of an intellect- and a soul- led astray! We shall be the unhappiest of all peoples of the earth, for our Tyranny is self-imposed. It need not have been.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. - 2 Corinthians 3:17

Montag