Uniformed thug as "political prisoner": Maricopa County Deputy Sheriff Adam Stoddard strikes a martyr's pose for the camera after a few days in "jail." Stoddard was found in contempt after stealing a document from the table of a defense attorney during a court hearing.
To his comrades in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO), Adam Stoddard is a martyr to principle and an innocent victim of injustice -- a heroic figure unjustly consigned to prison by petty, power-hungry figures. His boss, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, went so far as to describe Stoddard as a "political prisoner" during his brief and uncommonly comfortable incarceration.
All of this, predictably enough, is nothing but several acres of stockyard carpeting.
Stoddard, a member of the MCSO's correctional unit, was videotaped stealing a document from the desk of a defense attorney. As a result he spent several days in the custody of his co-workers after being cited for contempt of court by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe for refusing to apologize for his offense.
It's important to recognize that Stoddard -- unlike many others who have been cited for contempt -- actually committed an offense against an individual's rights.
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Stoddard claimed to have seen something on the handwritten documents that constituted a threat to “court security" -- some cryptic conjunction of the words "going to" "steal" and "money," which apparently weren't part of the same sentence.
In addition to his unusual ability to divine the concealed intentions of criminal defendants from words randomly scattered across a page of notes hand-written by somebody else, Deputy Stoddard apparently possesses some form of X-ray vision, since the document he stole was concealed by several on top of it.
Obviously, Stoddard is no ordinary deputy; he must be the Last Son of Krypton, concealing his true identity in the guise of a mild-mannered bailiff.
Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe wasn’t buying Stoddard's explanations, and was offended Stoddard was trying to sell it.
In his ruling he correctly observed that Stoddard's actions were "unreasonable and unlawful" and resulted in a breach of attorney-client privilege, and that Stoddard's facially ridiculous explanation -- which implicitly accused defense counsel Joanne Cuccia of collaboration in a crime -- injured the attorney's professional reputation.
Had a mere mundane committed an offense similar to Stoddard's, the penalty would have involved some combination of a fine and mandatory jail time. However, Judge Donahoe -- perhaps mindful of the need to maintain cordial relations with the brown-shirted paladins of public order who carry out his decrees -- didn’t send Stoddard immediately to jail, or slap him with a fine. Instead, he ordered Stoddard to apologize, in public, to defense attorney Cuccia.
While there were problems with this proposed compromise, it would have spared Stoddard from spending time behind bars by treating his offense as a mistake, rather than a crime. One could round down to "never" the frequency that common people are offered such consideration by the courts.
But Stoddard's actions weren't a mistake. They were the predictable product of the institutional culture of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. Under the reign of the oleaginous proto-fascist Joe Arpaio, the MCSO has mutated into a lawless armed clique suitable to a third world dictatorship. Indeed, Arpaio and his minions -- including a contingent called the "Special Enforcement Unit" -- have conducted late-night or early-morning raids to intimidate and imprison people who have criticized the Dear Leader.
The controversy involving Adam Stoddard came amid an escalating conflict between Arpaio and his critics in Maricopa County.
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With the support of his Dear Leader -- who insisted that his deputies only follow his orders, not those of a mere judge --Stoddard defied the court order, telling a press conferece that he wouldn’t apologize “for doing my job,” and that saying he is sorry would be a “lie.”
In this case, of course, Stoddard had neither facts nor the law on his side -- just a sense of limitless privilege and a petulant frustration that Judge Donahoe refused to accept his puerile fictions. Following his Drama Queen turn in front of the press, Stoddard checked in to the Maricopa County Jail system.
With a finely tuned sense of self-promotion and unhindered by even a rudimentary sense of decency, Arpaio has used his jail system to build a reputation as "America's Toughest Sheriff" by subjecting those incarcerated therein -- most of whom have never been convicted of an actual offense -- to a steady stream of petty indignities.
Male prisoners are required to wear pink underwear; until a lawsuit ended the practice, female detainees were under constant video surveillance, including hidden cameras in the toilet facilities. Inmates are fed green bologna and forced to work in chain gangs. Many are housed in surplus military tents that offer little effective shelter from the elements. After several people charged with non-violent offenses died of culpable abuse or neglect while in Arpaio's custody, the county was forced to pay millions of dollars in legal settlements.
As one of Arpaio's brown-shirted cadres, Adam Stoddard endured none of those indignities. Citing supposed "security" concerns -- "security" being the familiar, all-purpose defense of dictators everywhere -- Arpaio refused to say exactly where Stoddard was being held. If he actually spent time behind bars it was most likely as a guest in a special, detainee-friendly facility referred to as the “Mesa Hilton." Another possibility is that Stoddard simply enjoyed a paid vacation under "house arrest" or in similarly comfortable circumstances.
To hear Stoddard's brown-shirted comrades tell the story, however, the deputy was the a modern Sir Walter Raleigh, unjustly immured in the Tower of London awaiting his grim appointment with the Headsman. Accordingly, on the morning after Stoddard was taken to "jail," twenty intrepid, public-spirited MCSO deputies suddenly called in “sick," thereby throwing the Superior Court into disarray.
Things got even nastier when an anonymous bomb threat was called in -- the first of two that would occur, along with an incident of vandalism involving pepper-spray, during Stoddard's detention. Significantly, no similar acts occurred after Stoddard's vacation-cum-jail sentence ended.
This illegal work stoppage (assuming we can torture the word "work" into describing what the MSCO does) amounted to a criminal conspiracy against the rights of those whose legal hearings were delayed. The bomb threats and pepper spray attack would be investigated as acts of terrorism had they been carried out by common citizens in support of a detainee. But the police union thugs who demanded that Stoddard be released from jail and have his record cleared acted in the serene confidence that they confronted neither personal nor professional consequences.
Tax-feeder tantrum: Maricopa County deputies stage a rally on behalf of their comrade Adam "Sticky-Fingers" Stoddard.
Maricopa County Deputy Sean Pearce, speaking on behalf of the Deputies Law Enforcement Association, didn’t flinch from describing the "sick-out" as a show of support for Stoddard: “I think it sends out a message that this officer has integrity,” Pearce insisted. “Why should he apologize for doing his job?”
The “job” in question, as defined by Pearce and his colleagues, includes stealing proprietary information, violating attorney-client confidentiality, lying about one’s actions, and defying an order to make restitution to the victim.
But Deputy Stoddard is one of the sacred personages who wear a government-issued costume and is invested with the supposed authority to kill other human beings. It’s just not right for members of that privileged elite to be treated like mere mundanes. Hence the collective tantrum thrown by Stoddard’s fellow tax-feeders -- and a serious escalation in Arpaio's unprecedented war on his critics.
As the Los Angeles Times summarizes:
"[Arpaio] recently filed a racketeering lawsuit against the entire Maricopa County power structure.... Last year, when Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon called for a federal investigation of Arpaio's immigration enforcement, the Sheriff's Office demanded to see Gordon's e-mails, phone logs and appointment calendars. When the police chief in one suburb complained about the [immigration] sweeps [carried out by Arpaio's office], Arpaio's deputies raided that town's City Hall. [There have been] two dozen instances of the sheriff launching investigations of critics, none of which led to convictions. The most notorious case involves county Supervisor Don Stapley, a Republican who has sometimes disagreed with Arpaio's immigration tactics. Last December, deputies arrested Stapley on charges of failing to disclose business interests properly on his statement of economic interest."
In filing that charge against Stapley, Arpaio -- motes-and-beams fashion -- was using the power of his office to misdirect attention from his own misrepresentations in financial disclosure reports, which -- if he and Stapley were treated alike -- would result in more than a dozen criminal counts against the sheriff.
Instead of facing an investigation for his own irregularities, Arpaio -- with the aid of the similarly megalomaniacal Maricopa County prosecutor, Andrew Thomas -- attempted to prosecute and imprison the people who had brought those irregularities to light: The reporters and editorial staff of the independent Phoenix New Times newspaper.
In August 2007, the Maricopa County Prosecutor's Office hit the Phoenix New Times with a grand jury subpoena demanding detailed information, including "Every note, tape, and record from every story written about Sheriff Arpaio by every reporter over a period of years" as well as "detailed information on anyone who has looked at the New Times Web site since 2004" as well as every individual "individual who looked at any story, review, listing, classified, or retail ad [in the publication] over a period of years."
The pretext for that act of official harassment was that the New Times, in investigating Arpaio's conflicts of interest regarding ownership of commercial properties, had violated state law by disclosing the valiant sheriff's home address.
To their credit, the editorial staff of the New Times went public with the details of that Grand Jury subpoena. That prompted Arpaio to send his Selective Enforcement Unit to arrest Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, the owners of the Phoenix New Times on a spurious charge of interfering with the deliberations of a grand jury.
The joint assault by Arpaio and Thomas on freedom of speech and the press provoked a nation-wide paroxysm of outrage that forced Thomas to free Lacey and Larkin and withdraw the charges against them. (It was later revealed that no grand jury had actually been empaneled.)
Chillin' with his homeboys: Sheriff Joe poses for a photo-op with neo-Nazi agitator Vito Lombardi. Following Stoddard's "incarceration," Arpaio's Enemies List expanded to include Judge Gary Donahoe. County Prosecutor Thomas filed a criminal complaint against Donahoe accusing him of three felonies: Hindering prosecution, obstruction of a criminal investigation, and bribery. In a press conference called to elucidate the charges against Donahoe, Thomas found it impossible to describe a coherent theory of the case. But building a prosecutable case isn't the point in what is a transparent act of retaliation against the judge who sent one of Arpaio's Brownshirts to jail.
With Arpaio dispatching heavily armed jackboots to intimidate and arrest his critics, and Thomas at his back prepared to mount spurious prosecutions when necessary, Maricopa County has descended into what the Goldwater Institute calls a state of "open warfare" among elected officials.
Arpaio is clearly willing to see the entire county government demolished, as long as he can erect a throne on the rubble.
"It's just extraordinary, the kind of thing that takes place in Third World dictatorships," observes former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, who is representing Donald Stapley. "So many people are of one mind on a single issue -- illegal immigration -- that they are willing to ignore [Arpaio's] misdeeds."
The face of "immigration enforcement" in Maricopa County: How would you like to see this guy busting down your door at the break of dawn? Arpaio was actually seen by some as a liberal regarding illegal immigration prior to 2005. That year saw two critical changes: First, Arpaio re-cast himself as a crusader for border security, and second, he received a federal 287(g) waiver empowering his deputies to enforce federal immigration laws.
Since then, Arpaio has turned Maricopa County into a literal police state in which anybody who "looks" or "sounds" like an illegal immigrant -- including U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents of Mexican ancestry -- can be summarily arrested and detained. While Arpaio's deputies -- who often conduct their raids wearing ski masks -- are focusing their attention on people whose sole offense is to work in Arizona without official permission, more than 70,000 criminal warrants, many of which deal with actual offenses against persons and property, have been left unenforced.
Maricopa County under the reign of Arpaio has become a community in which a mother can be seized from her car at gunpoint by goons in ski masks while her children shriek in terror. In Arpaio's realm, a woman nine months pregnant can be hauled away to jail in handcuffs and leg irons on minor, non-violent charges, forced to deliver her child while chained to a hospital bed, and then kept separated from her newborn for more than two months -- because she is suspected of being an illegal immigrant.
Earlier this year the federal government formally revoked the "authority" provided by the 287(g) waiver and instructed Arpaio that he could no longer use his personnel to enforce federal immigration laws.
The following day, Arpaio conducted one of his notorious "immigration sweeps," an exercise in which deputies "descend on heavily Latino neighborhoods, arrest hundreds of people for violations as minor as a busted headlight and ask them whether they are in the country legally," reported the Los Angeles Times.
"I wanted to show everybody it didn't make a difference," explained Arpaio -- quite redundantly, as it happened, for those who have come to understand that the superannuated dictator of Maricopa County answers only to himself.
A few years ago, in an essay that eventually cost me my job, I warned that the issue of illegal immigration was being exploited by the Regime to consolidate police state powers at both the federal and local levels. My colleagues at the time were of the opinion (candidly expressed by one of them in an e-mail) that it would be acceptable for the U.S. to become a police state within "secure" borders. I wasn't willing to settle for that arrangement, a microcosm of which is being created in Maricopa County under Arpaio.
The slice of the public most obsessed over the issue of illegal immigration -- what I've referred to as the "punitive populist" element of the Republican coalition -- seemed to think it would be possible to expand federal police power selectively: The Regime would build a border fence, dispatch armed enforcement agents to roust people from workplaces, impose new bureaucratic impositions on struggling businesses and new restrictions on travel -- but all of this would target only the "illegals" without threatening the rights of the rest of us.
But to paraphrase Edmund Burke, police-state methods, once tolerated, are soon institutionalized. What do we gain if every illegal immigrant is sent home -- and we end up living under a near-replica of the third world dictatorships those people had fled?
Joe Arpaio is the law enforcement equivalent of the geologic formation called a "terminal moraine" -- a huge mound of accreted debris piled up through the advance of a glacier. A core sample of Arpaio's decades-long long enforcement career would reveal layer upon layer of thuggish presumption, facile corruption, contempt for the Constitution, and indifference to any consideration other than his privileged status.
Arpaio is chiefly a problem for the county that has repeatedly voted him into office since 1992. But the tactics he is employing to retain his position might well engender mimicry in other counties as budgets tighten and political conflicts over dwindling tax revenues grow acute.
With the Feds pouring money and military equipment into "local" law enforcement departments nation-wide, Arpaio's literal war against Maricopa County's political leadership may eventually provide a template for similar putsches elsewhere.
This rip-and-read regurgitation of Arpaio's talking points comes amid news that 77-year-old Arpaio is the preferred choice of Arizona Republicans to run for governor. So it appears that TNA and the management of its sponsoring organization, the John Birch Society, are once again trying to ride a Red State Fascist "wave."
I use the term "fascist" here not as a lazy pejorative, but in a specific sense. Arpaio is literally waging war on the rule of law on the assumption that he and his armed minions are the law in Maricopa County. The sloppy French kiss of a "news" item run in TNA promotes the notion that Arpaio must be a good guy, because leftists hate him so passionately -- a trope very closely related to the Dear Leader/Great Man school of authoritarian collectivism.
If The New American were still in the business of investigative journalism -- or critical opinion journalism of any kind -- they would have examined Arpaio's record just a little more carefully, rather than retailing his self-serving bromides. If they were committed to individual liberty protected by law, they would be joining Arpaio's critics, rather than carrying a banner in his torchlight parade.
In a post at the end of the thread dangling from The New American's borderline Brokeback Mountain embrace of Joe Arpaio, a fellow named J.E. Andreasen provides the following invaluable perspective:
"I have been a resident of Maricopa County since 1959, and a freedom activist since 1974. I have taken college instruction under MCSO [Maricopa County Sheriff's Office] senior management personnel. I have had superb personal assistance from MCSO officials [who] later were viciously destroyed for their decency and honor.
Simply put, Joe Arpaio is the worst nightmare for those ancestors who established the office of Sheriff as the top law enforcement official in a given county.
He has used his experience in federal law enforcement to create a private army, answerable to no one, egged on by every Nativist drone and `C-minus' LEO butt-licker in metropolitan Phoenix.
Be sure to tune in for Pro Libertate Radio each weeknight from 6:00-7:00 Mountain Time (7:00-8:00 central) on the Liberty News Radio Network. Dum spiro, pugno!
49 comments:
Take note Arizona.
I will never ever visit your state. When you allow this bullshit to go on it is clear to me that this is no place my wife and I want any part of. I might also add that my wife and I love to travel and when we do we tend to spend quite a bit of money.
I'll have to say that this kind of thoroughly institutionalized corruption that Will writes in excruciating detail about is what causes ones blood pressure to blow an arterial gasket. I have to disconnect from reading or even hearing and/or viewing videos relating to this kind of stuff from various sites on the 'net for a time so that my blood pressure has time to normalize.
And yet, like clockwork, when the smoke all clears, most folk will simply ask for more of the same and parrot what they see/hear on the contemptible idiot tube and blame their emasculated state and local economies on capitalism or the private sector in general. Despite all the blatant evidence of Arpaio's corruption, the hapless folk of Maricopa County continue to support the man.
Sadly, but predictably, this is par for the course, especially in today's thoroughly and totally secularized Ami culture. Pelosi, Spector, the late Ted Kennedy, Arpaio, et al, are (or were while alive) repeatedly "reinstalled" into their respective powerful positions by the self-governing, morally astute people within their respective districts.
I agree with your general mindset about Leviathan and its jackboots, Will, but when I look at the overall big picture, I can't be totally aligned with it. What do I mean by big picture in this context? I mean the relationship that exists between Leviathan and the common folk in the street. Simply put, people's walk hardly ever matches their talk in the slightest. IOW, folk will state oh how tireeeeeedddddd they are of "government," yet they are actively, or inactively as the case may be, supporting the status quo every day, in every way.
In addition, a core problem that no one of a libertarian or constitutionalist bent ever seems to want to address, when they yak incessantly about f-r-e-e-d-o-m, is that while this segment (most of the folk who come here and Will, presumably) supposedly believe generally in total freedom with responsibility (again, I presume) for everyone, the ironic stickler is that everyone doesn't share that belief. Why is this critical reality not ever addressed from a core human nature standpoint by the libertarians and constitutionalists, rather than merely a vague political/ideological standpoint (i.e. "government" vs. "the people"), which is vague and meaningless. I mean, let's face facts, folk generally don't care for or like other folk (usually "stated" through their clear associations [actions], rather than from their bell clappers[words]) who don't think like them, look like them, act like them, etc., etc. That's human nature and that's life in a fallen world.
Ergo, when a certain given societal segment obtains the reins of a prominent power position, freedom inevitably and gradually morphs into a form of regimentation - believing, behaving, and acting by that particular segment's, i.e. their, approved regimen. Otherwise, the recalcitrant folk risk "enjoying" a possibly life-extinguishing confrontation with the jackboots now employed at that segment's, i.e. their, beck and call. To be blunt, there is no such thing as a cauldron full of wildly disparate peoples (ethnically, philosophically, ideologically) playin' at being a feasible political entity (i.e. nation) - one, that is, that will honor and respect true freedom for everyone. Why is this so difficult for folk to grok? It seems like common sense to me. It should be self-evident that ethnically and/or culturally homogeneous peoples generally are more successful at being a nation long term as they think and act, in general, on common ground.
I'm all for respecting all people's inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property and responsibility thereto and based on a firm moral foundation, but everyone has to agree to this mindset for it to work out in the long run. These precepts have to be duly honored and respected across the culture by everyone, or perhaps I should say at least the vast majority, within the political entity in question, which ensures that anyone can accept or reject people, things, behavior, conduct or a combination thereof that we, individually, find acceptable or contemptible as it pertains to our personal property, liberty, and space without Leviathan's jackboot enforcers compelling us to collectively do otherwise.
But, alas, the world at large simply doesn't work that way....................sigh.
The bottom line is that many cultures and mindsets are alien to the Anglo-Saxon common law customs and traditions or, even more significantly, the Christian-based morality that the U.S. originally inherited. Second, true genuine freedom has never been a trait common to us mere mortals throughout history. That this nation had made a go of it for as long it did, is stunningly amazing. Only by God's hand could it have even made it a mere 50 years, never mind 200 years, albeit by the 1960s already in a cultural meltdown. But still, it's been amazing to me.
On an unrelated side note, we'll soon see if Houston's new lavender mayor will keep her bedroom proclivities to herself or whether she'll wield her new "powa" on behalf of the now empowered lavender segment, forcing their way upon everyone else in that hapless urban jungle. It already looks to be the latter, no surprise there.
Then again, with only a ~16% turnout, they get what they got. All urban jungles will eventually devolve culturally to this sooner or later. It's why I won't ever live in one, but do have to work within them sometimes, unfortunately.
Want to stop "illegal" immigration? Simply stop giving away goodies. There is no mystery to it and by cutting the flow of stolen and redirected "funds" or "services" to said individuals there is then no incentive for them to come or even remain. No need to browbeat anyone. How much simpler does it have to be? That in turn reduces the need for "law enforcement" but therein lies the rub. Just like the war on drugs there is institutionalized resistance towards reform.
Want to stop "illegal" immigration? Simply stop giving away goodies. There is no mystery to it and by cutting the flow of stolen and redirected "funds" or "services" to said individuals there is then no incentive for them to come or even remain. No need to browbeat anyone.
I think you're exactly right. The most recent immigration "crisis" was almost entirely a product of the Fed's most recent speculative bubble; now that the bubble has burst, immigration (legal and illegal) is tapering off. And recent studies suggest that Mexicans residing in the U.S.(who represent, of course, the largest immigrant group) are receiving "reverse remittances" from Mexico, rather than sending money to Mexico.
There will always be the power mongers among us who will use any idea or event to garner power. This is true from the local to the national level with the only real differences at these respective levels being in the SIZE of the response.
It is my belief that the problem with immigration is NOT people coming here to work, a good thing that speaks of an advancing economy and, secondarily, an advancing lifestyle. A vibrant economy supporting many is a very good thing, as is the advancing lifestyle it helps afford, and such things draw people to participate.
The REAL PROBLEM with people immigrating to this nation is the nanny state that has been created to "help people" which, in reality, only helps the power structure remain in power. Virtually all the "problems" of immigration can be laid at the feet of those who have built the nanny state by decreeing all manner of responsibility for those paying and virtually no responsibility on the part of the recipients of the mandated largesse.
Finally, the quickest way to avert the anger of the crowd is to give them a convenient common "enemy". In this case, our economic woes can be cast as due to unfettered immigration, captitalism, etc., ie, everything except the real cause: govt meddling in all things it is not supposed to while doing nothing it is charged with doing.
We have what we have for tolerating what we tolerate.
Dixiedog, you must be exhausted after writing that screed. What you fail to realize is the reason we find ourselves in this predicament is our public school system. Of course all humans are born with the innate desire to be free, it is the public school system that washes it out of them. If, and a big IF, we actually had schools that educated and encouraged critical thought, these snake oil salesmen of various stripes would be laughed out of town, or run out on a rail. So, I totally disagree with your analysis. 90+% of people do want to be free, your confusion notwithstanding.
Dixiedog raises a good point, that freedom is meaningless without morality. This is the point where politics end and religion comes to the forefront. The ultimate truth is that Christ is King above all powers and principalities. Until people acknowledge that, there is no freedom.
Then I guess you'll be boycotting every other locality in the nation, including your own home state and town. Joke Arpiggo, while a particularly odious and egregious example of the police state in action, is not at all unique to Arizona, nor is he the last of the breed. He is in fact merely a prototype, the vanguard of what's coming soon in massive numbers to a locality near you - or more accurately, YOUR locality and every other one in the nation.
Sheesh...
Maybe soon USans will stop their silliness - for a start they ought to stop indoctrinating kiddies by making the swear allegiance to a piece of cloth (which keeps them infantilised while adolescents in developed countries are becoming young adults).
It is not remotely surprising that the US is now a country where physics texts become popular anly when photographed in the car of a famous golfer... where people care that theie cheif tax-eater (Obama) wore a watch that 'only' cost $500... where the nation's women have a switch in their brain that makes them shriek whenever there is a chance of being on television...
For humans with half a brain, the Pavlovian response exhibited by USans in mundane situations has its root in your state-required child abuse (which would be perfectly at home in Nazi Germans, North Korea or the old Soviet union, but is entirely inimcal with liberty).
In short: grow up, America - and take care of knuckle-dragging tax parasites like Arpaio by whatever means presents itself in the market (OrgA pool, anyone?).
These plonkers don't wear kevlar at home (or balaclavas... what bravery!).
Woof woof,
Diogenes
I have to disagree with the libertarian consensus on Joe Arpaio. The police and sheriff departments of most large cities are basically governed by the principle of anarcho-tyranny, where they are powerless to stop real criminals due to the pressures of the liberal media and race hustlers, so instead they arrest people for victimless crimes - drug use, gun law violations, etc. Joe Arpaio is hated by the same groups that tie the hands of virutally every other law enforcement agency in a large city because he is not afraid to go after criminals.
Additionally, Arizona has a large number of illegal and legal immigrants from a country where the mean IQ is 87, leading to more crime. Libertarianism might work in Vermont, but libertarian and diversity do not work very well together.
Joe Arpaio is no friend of liberty, but I'll take a plain old tyrant over an anarcho-tyrant.
I wholeheartedly agree with Dixiedog's comment that he is "all for respecting all people's inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property and responsibility thereto and based on a firm moral foundation, but everyone has to agree to this mindset for it to work out in the long run."
We must then ask by what standard we establish our laws? If we use the Christian Law Code, people of other religions would have to agree to live by that Christian code and not be allowed to get on a soapbox in the public square to promote their religion, or have public worship of their gods. Otherwise, our society would tear itself apart. Of course, this is exactly what has already happened here in the U.S. with all the diversity, tolerance, and politically correct mindset that permeates our country these days.
And as much as I would like to put the ultimate blame on government schools, the only society that can possibly prosper and survive is one which is based on the Christian Law Code, and that prohibits the worship and promotion of all other gods.
This is another reason why the U.S. Constitution has failed us so miserably. Unlike the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution basically stripped away the Christian requirements found in the Articles, and opened the door wide for multiculturalism and humanism to thrive.
I have to disagree with the libertarian consensus on Joe Arpaio. The police and sheriff departments of most large cities are basically governed by the principle of anarcho-tyranny, where they are powerless to stop real criminals due to the pressures of the liberal media and race hustlers, so instead they arrest people for victimless crimes - drug use, gun law violations, etc.[...]
Joe Arpaio is no friend of liberty, but I'll take a plain old tyrant over an anarcho-tyrant.
I understand your point, but I don't think it vindicates Arpaio. This is a guy whose chief preoccupation is PR, not protection of life/liberty/property.
Witness the fact that while Arpaio was conducting immigrant sweeps, preening on TV, and even producing a reality show (no kidding), 70,000 criminal warrants -- many dealing with actual crimes against persons and property -- went unenforced. That strikes me as a very good example of anarcho-tyranny.
Sure, Arpaio has the right enemies. But it's not enough to be hated by the right people.
Dixiedog, you must be exhausted after writing that screed.
Well, I only write a long screed or two once in awhile. Like I said, my blood pressure can't handle the "booming" mindless noise about the economy, economy, police, police, ad nauseam, as if those symptoms are the source of our disease that's so prevalent in the blogosphere and the 'net in general for extended periods. So, I disconnect and exercise my mind in other avenues. Topics such as military history or computer programming are of interest to me so I focus my mind, accordingly. Thus, fatigue is minimized.
What you fail to realize is the reason we find ourselves in this predicament is our public school system.
I'm aware of the Prussian system from which our modern public sewer system was hatched. Nevertheless, one of my late grandmothers was a 4th grade public school teacher (1934-1970) and during her tenure as she remembered it, they taught the basics - reading, writing, and arithmetic along with basic history, literature, geography and civics. There was none of this sex education business and the multicultural nonsense that I've been told is so prevalent today. This crap was only in the larval stage when I reached junior high. Indeed, I'd HATE to be a kid today in the public system.
That said, I'm also a product of that same public sewer system, albeit before mindless depravity and total control took over, and even though my parents were divorced when I was seven I had a family, as a whole, thankfully, that did manage to instill some truth into my mind about God, the work ethic, absolute right and wrong, and so on that probably helped me immensely growing up to avoid troublesome situations and to ignore my biology teacher concerning evolution. I also never was a follower type and staunchly independent in my thinking so I never was attracted to charismatics of whatever persuasion. I also read voraciously as a child, although not so much in the realm of philosophy and political science (until I was in junior-high), but rather classic literary works by Dickens, et al, mathematics, how-to books, how-does-that-work books, and military history. Mathematics, military history, and in the last 20 years books on computer-related topics, are what still pique my interest.
PS: BTW, Will, I must confess that I didn't graduate (officially) from HS, but rather obtained a GED the same year, which you were lamenting (rightly I suppose in today's occupational environment, of course) on your radio prog the other night ;). School got boring and I wanted to work to make my own way. Insane to youngsters today, no doubt, but OJT and trade schools were not pilloried back then, unlike today where it seems every youngster is a college student.
Yeah, another screed, Bill, sorry.
Of course all humans are born with the innate desire to be free, it is the public school system that washes it out of them. If, and a big IF, we actually had schools that educated and encouraged critical thought, these snake oil salesmen of various stripes would be laughed out of town, or run out on a rail. So, I totally disagree with your analysis. 90+% of people do want to be free, your confusion notwithstanding.
No, what's innate in folk is evil, not good. Have you never noticed that a babe has an innate desire to do wrong and has to be taught what's right? Good (righteousness) has to be taught to folk, evil (unrighteousness) is innate, so true freedom is in no way innate to humans.
Once again, what is claimed by their clapper is irrelevant.
Also, an innate desire and proper discernment are two totally different, but equally important, qualities. A desire for something good (freedom, a marriage partner, etc.) and discerning the right way to go about achieving that desire are critical, otherwise it's an unbridled and potentially harmful desire.
The public school system is a symptom not a root cause of the love of big government and collectivism in general. The question that should be asked is what were the parents, or the parent, infusing into their child's mind that the public sewer system would even have to bother washing out of their mind to begin with? Most start school already in a "mindless" state, taught nothing relevant by parents or the parent.
If they're not already inculcated from toddlerhood onwards, even as they are moving through their school years, some basic foundational truths about life to help seed and ground them at the very least, there is nothing to bother washing out. From the get-go, they only have to infuse the collectivist mindset over the course of their schooling.
Again, I said above that folk may talk about loathing government, but their actions, behavior, conduct, dependency, votes, etc. say otherwise. Ergo, they LOVE Leviathan, regardless of what their lips would tend to indicate. Capisce?
Has the lack of a moral compass, a sense of responsibility, and the lack of self-control never entered your mind as to why folk are not free, Bill? Freedom is not free, nor easy; it requires discipline, self-control, and a sense of what's right and wrong provided by your parents from childhood, or with the help of the One as an adult who seeks His Divine guidance.
Otherwise, an external authority (government) will make that choice for you and it, naturally, will make a flawed choice since Leviathan's composed of the same people around about you who just happen to be employed by Leviathan in an authority position.
A given government's attributes and character tend to reflect the aggregate people's attributes and character, not the converse.
( PS: I promise ya Bill, no more screeds from me on this post. ;)
Dixie... gotta love it when you sail into harbor and open up with full broadsides! LOL! No "plinking" for ye! Aaaarrrr! (pirate laugh) Glad to see you again.
And history would bear me out that the church has by and large abdicated its heavenly responsibility by shoveling young people into Moloch's educational maw. Not only that they, these hardliners with a hard on, then stand "praising" these gods and godlings of "order" (police and military) and "education" with flag festooned stages. A veritable fascists wet dream! From the pulpit they hammer their fist on the podium and bellow about heathens and those oh-so-bad "terr-ists" (wonder if they mean Terriers). So while churches take their tax breaks they're willingly muzzled by their own hand. The hypocrisy is damning.
Ooops! I pressed RETURN too quickly. My apologies for a part 2. While on the road this weekend, in pursuit of employment, I spent a night in Albuquerque and flipped on the idiot box to see if there was anything worth watching. There wasn't. No surprise there. But while channel surfing I stumbled upon a "snooze/news" channel with the "huckster" Huckabee pontificating about peace makers and took biblical passages, like the masterful political "magician" that he is, and bent them all out of shape in real time to justify going overseas and engaging in war with people who have never done anything to us! My blood pressure popped at these idiotic comments by the very man Home School Legal Defense supported as a presidential candidate!!! It was this goose stepping hypocrisy on the part of the HSLDA that pushed me over the edge and as a result I wrote a very lengthy letter to them pointing out the lying hypocrisy being spewed citing quotes from the hucksters own web site. No response... no comments... nothing! So I gather they needn't my money any longer and initiated a divorce from that organization. It is this sort of blind obedience to authoritarianism of all stripes ,with a religious veneer, I so despise and yet am surrounded by.
many thanks as always for keeping the truth before our eyes.
I have always been a supporter of the Sheriff because of the 'tough' tactics that he used against thugs and criminal elememts of our society. Frankly, I thought that the pink underwear treatment and such was not enough. I have become sickened by the degenerate scum that constatnly get away because we are too afraid that one good guy might get prosecuted. it seems a price of Justice that some will lie and that this will make us untrustworthy and that some innocents will be caught by our suspicion and relegated to the gallows. but who will have final judgement for THIS crime? Certainly not the innocent man! But, neither will the suspicious prosecutor though. Rather, the judgement will be double upon the cretin, who once caught, still refused to confess and accept his punitive due. For he has not only, subjected society to his original crime, but has further abused and weakened us by his feigned innocence which has resulted in the hardening of our hearts against the criminal element. This leads to good folk like, the Dear leader's followers who say "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out', in effect. The blame is STILL on the criminal who we do catch red-handed and who still plays the part of victim to justice. He is guilty of defrauding our sense of decency and should be especially punished.
Even so, here I am looking out of this portal at the twisted beast that our former heroes have become and I am loathe to say it...You are right. Absolutely right, my dear friend. We are in danger of being swallowed whole by the very machine of Statism that we enshrined as good patriots of the yesteryear. Still the response must be careful and factual as you point out...
"I understand your point, but I don't think it vindicates Arpaio. This is a guy whose chief preoccupation is PR, not protection of life/liberty/property.
Witness the fact that while Arpaio was conducting immigrant sweeps, preening on TV, and even producing a reality show (no kidding), 70,000 criminal warrants -- many dealing with actual crimes against persons and property -- went unenforced. That strikes me as a very good example of anarcho-tyranny.
Sure, Arpaio has the right enemies. But it's not enough to be hated by the right people"
The fact is, this man also has violated our sense of decency and trust. And he also should pay a double duty for his crimes. Even more so, because of the trust we gave him before he turned us to the doubt we now live in.
I hear ya, MoT. I've previously posted something along those lines about the faithful, or the church, having been the ones long ago asleep at the wheel as the ship was flailing about in the cultural storms, yet still recoverable, but have since wrecked us.
Or, as you allude to in your post above, I reckon that could also be viewed OTOH as the church rather than being passively "asleep" at the wheel during the cultural storms, instead actively assisting the captain run the ship aground.
Sure, as you can see, I'm not naïve. I never was a fan of Huckabee. He's a religious tentacle -- just like Warren, Olstein, et al -- of the NWO caste. The NWO elitists have their reliable plants in every cultural and societal venue. Am I surprised? NO!
No more screeds..lol. Peace.
Jeebus, Grieg. reading the comments here I begin to understand why so many in the freedom movement are giving up. Why bother to fight for freedom when all I can look forward too is some Christer trying to shoot me in back.
"No, what's innate in folk is evil, not good. Have you never noticed that a babe has an innate desire to do wrong and has to be taught what's right? Good (righteousness) has to be taught to folk, evil (unrighteousness) is innate, so true freedom is in no way innate to humans."
Dixiedog,
Good is not an absence of evil. Evil is a privation, a lack of a good that should be there. Human nature is mostly good. Evil is not a thing in itself, any more than a shadow is a thing in itself.
If people were mostly evil, you would see constant violence and chaos. Neighbors would be at the throat of neighbors 20 hours out of the day. We would live in concrete bunkers.
As it is, human nature is good. God created it as good. It is fallen now, but even so, a lack of good has not trumped our inherent human nature. The fact that you have to teach virtue to children does not mean that it is contrary to their nature, any more than teaching them to brush their teeth and saying their prayers is contrary to their nature.
People always choose an evil under the aspect of a good. Nobody can choose an evil because it is an evil. It is ontologically impossible.
-Sans Authoritas
Put yourself in the jackboots of a thug, for a moment.
You really like power. And how did George Orwell say one person exercises power over another?
As a toddler, you kicked the family dog or cat. In 7th grade, you beat up 3rd graders and stole their lunch money. In high school, you shoved freshmen half your size into lockers, with your football-team buddies backing you up, just in case. As a young adult, you found fewer opportunities to exercise power over others...until you got a girlfriend. It's been said that the man who beats his dog is usually the same man who beats his wife and kids...a little later in life, maybe you worked your way into a supervisory position, a boss, foreman, manager, or the like. Sure, you made the workdays of those under you hell, and you liked it, but there were limits to what you could get away with, and those under you could get away from you. In school you could beat them up, but now, it's called assault and battery, and you could go to prison. You come home from work, intimidate the kids, kick the cat, slap the little lady around, but it's just not enough anymore. Those rules of civilized society sure take a lot of the fun out of being a power-tripping thug, don't they? And you're not smart enough to become one of those elites above the law; you're no Rockefeller. What's a bully to do?
Wouldn't it be great if you could not only bully others to your rotten heart's content, and get away with it---but get praised and paid for it, too!
And that's how you became sheriff of Maricopa County.
Arpaio doesn't make his captives wear pink underwear and eat rotten food and make them work in chain gangs and subject them to countless other indignities and humiliations because he thinks that he's making the world a better place by doing so, any more than the school bully thinks he's making the school a better place by giving 2nd graders wedgies, or the creep thinks he's making society better by beating his girlfriend. He does it because he gets off on it in a big, big way. He does it because it gives him pleasure and satisfaction. He does what he does because he can.
Only the naive believe Arpaio doesn't walk around his prisons pitching a tiny little pup tent in his cop-khakis while exercising his authoritah.
Sans Authoritas -
The Doctrine of Common Grace is the key to the good/evil debate. Common Grace tames the totally depravity of man.
The TNA was given to me, yet again, this year as a gift. I am half tempted to sent that fuckn rag of a magazine back and ask that it be canceled. But alas instead it will be used to probably line our cockatiel's cage.
While I agree with DD that humanity has an imperfect moral (fallen) nature, this in no way invalidates or otherwise negates mankind's two greatest thirsts: Humanity's desire for self-autonomy and transcendent meaning. People desire to be their own king or queen -the quest for self autonomy and freedom- yet humans also desire to seek the ultimate transcendent Object -the quest for ultimate meaning to human existence. The problem is that people will replace the proper Object, i.e. the personal theistic God, with a god substitute, which often is the State itself. They will sacrifice their innate drive for self-autonomy to propitiate the State. Even American Christians themselves are all to eager to bow before it, thereby committing the grave sin of statolatry. So many Americans, Christian and non-Christian, have undercut their innate desire for freedom by yielding to an unhealthy desire to seek a proxy transcendent object. State authority is revocable, the Moral Law is not, but too many professing Christians have placed a reverence upon the State that only God rightfully deserves. It's true that one can swing too far the other way by focusing too much on our drive for human autonomy, thereby denying our thirst for God, and I also realize that pantheists and atheists will have different concepts of the transcendental object, but my point still stands. Americans of various worldviews have chosen the State as their transcendental object, rather than God, and it is this desire that suppresses our innate desire for liberty. -RW
When police act like thieves and thugs, they should be treated as thieves and thugs - especially so if we are to remain a society free of tyranny.
I'm not sure what I find more disturbing -- the machinations of Emperor Arpaio or the flatulent apologetics of the Christian Totalitarians and their racist brethren. Yeesh.
When discussing the state of mankind it is necessary to have a basis to work from. My basis is the Bible as the inspired word of God. If you don’t believe that then none of the rest of my argument will mean anything to you.
Romans 3: 10-18
“There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”
“Their throat is an open tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Destruction and misery are in their ways;
And the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Paul is pretty clear on this point, he’s talking about everyone; you and me. Everyone is completely rotten to the core.
John 15:5
“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.”
Without Christ we can do nothing. Without Him, none of us can be righteous. The basic idea behind big government is that we need someone (i.e. government) to make sure everything runs smoothly. But Biblically we see that man is completely corrupt. We need to let God do His thing and keep government in its rightful place: Under God.
PS. A note on the Home School Legal Defense Association. Michal Farris’s opinions are by no means representative of the opinions of all Home Schoolers or Christians. Farris tends to support centralized government (see his magnum opus “From Tyndale to Madison”). For an understanding of true Christian political thought, see Patrick Henry; you won’t be disappointed.
Mr. Grigg,
Where is Mr. Jasper and what is he doing? I'm truly shocked at some of the pieces that TNA has published in the last year.
Scott,
I'm a Catholic anarchist. Somewhat the polar opposite of a totalitarian.
Neither do I have a racist counterpart.
-Sans Authoritas
I've said this for years, "the folks who run AZ and FL are artist at knowing how to scare old people into voting for them". That's where the real problem is in both of those states.
.
Sans A.: Good is not an absence of evil. Evil is a privation, a lack of a good that should be there. Human nature is mostly good. Evil is not a thing in itself, any more than a shadow is a thing in itself.
As for me, I look at good and evil differently. Evil is rather an absence of good, as Burke also alluded to.
From where do you distill that human nature is "mostly good?" Remember, good and evil ain't simply defined on the basis of extremes (as humans are wont to portray it). For example, would you suppose those who don't murder (by Leviathan's contemporary legal and always malleable definition), rape, and steal (grand larceny scale), yet would do such things as abort an innocent unborn child, steal their employer's pens and other miscellaneous doodads, etc. are good by the objective? Anyway, I think Sam C. adequately refutes your amusing assertion that human nature is mostly good, Sans A.
If people were mostly evil, you would see constant violence and chaos. Neighbors would be at the throat of neighbors 20 hours out of the day. We would live in concrete bunkers.
I posted a comment some time ago addressing that very thought as I see it. No need to waste space repeating it here.
As it is, human nature is good. God created it as good.
Then why would the Father send His Son to die as our Redeemer?
It is fallen now, but even so, a lack of good has not trumped our inherent human nature.
This is illogical. How could something be now fallen or lack good, yet supposedly be inherently good? Again, if that's so, why would the only perfect Being, Jesus Christ, allow Himself to be crucified?
The fact that you have to teach virtue to children does not mean that it is contrary to their nature, any more than teaching them to brush their teeth and saying their prayers is contrary to their nature.
The fact that you have to teach virtue (and not vice) to children is precisely because virtue is not inherent in their nature.
People always choose an evil under the aspect of a good.
Not always, but I would agree that it's often. It's called deception.
Nobody can choose an evil because it is an evil. It is ontologically impossible.
Your ontological foundation is a fallacy to begin with. Then why hold anyone to account for choosing an evil? From another angle, why would someone not choose a good when it is good, especially if they are inherently good by your own accounting? Could it be the person doesn't realize it's a good? OTOH, could it also be that someone could choose an evil because they view (feel) it as a good?
And the one who is/was deluded - whether by self and/or by other unscrupulous folk - into making wrong and/or unwise decisions is not excused and will nevertheless reap the bountiful harvest. Been there, done that, so I'm not just blowin' hot air.
Mr Jasper has been relegated to janitorial duties. We feel that is the best use of his investigative journalistic skills
Signed
The Boyz in Appleton
Much as I enjoyed the memo from The Boyz in Appleton, I have to point out that Bill is actually in Copenhagen right now covering the UN's eco-socialism summit. That's a worthwhile use of his incomparable talents, albeit an increasingly rare one.
Kirk @ 9:01 am:
You said: "Virtually all the "problems" of immigration can be laid at the feet of those who have built the nanny state by decreeing all manner of responsibility for those paying and virtually no responsibility on the part of the recipients of the mandated largesse."
I take it by "recipients of largesse" you are referring to the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Citibank, as well as GM and Chrysler, Exxon-Mobil, Halliburton, etc, etc? In other words the great corporate warthogs sucking at the tits of we the taxpayers?
Take a step back, brother, close your ears to the corporate propaganda in the corporate media, including Fox News, and look at the big picture. They want you to hate your unemployed, destitute, exploited brothers as leeches taking your taxes. No, brother, it is not the little guy sucking your blood, it is the fat cats and the trough feeders, those vampires who run the country. Most of them in the Republican Party, the party of big business and exploitation of the working assholes, (those who believe in working instead of stealing for a living.)
They will happily destroy this country and plunge it into civil war and class war and race war and religious war (helped along by people like Sherriff Arpaio) just so long as they can continue to rape and plunder its wealth and bugger its citizens - without lubricant.
They will rouse you up to hate the nigger in the White House and the greaseballs in the barrios and the ragheads in the mosques, so that while you are busy doing that, they can insert themsleves into your business and take their pleasure in your discomfort.
Wake up, brother. The pain you feel in your private parts comes not from your fellow peasants, but from the pleasure-taking of the corporate oligarchs and their political whores, hiding at your back where you can't see them and don't realize what they are doing to you.
Helped along by Sherriff Arpaio.
Pilgrim Pundit,
You say: "I have become sickened by the degenerate scum that constatnly get away because we are too afraid that one good guy might get prosecuted."
Unfortunately, an all too common sentiment - until the one good guy turns out to be you.
You say: "It seems a price of Justice that....some innocents will be caught by our suspicion and relegated to the gallows."
Again, this is a price we are too easily willing to pay. Not only does it mean the victimization of an innocent person, but it also means that the real guilty one goes unpunished. Is that "Justice?"
It certainly IS justice in the mind of Sheriff Arpaio, who will arrest and torment someone just because they have the wrong skin color, or speak with the wrong accent, while 70,000 real criminals go unpunished.
No, frustrating as it might be, it is much better that the "degenerate scum" should get away with their crimes, rather than that the wrong, innocent person should go to the gallows for them. That makes the whole of our society guilty of the crime of murder.
If you believe in the moral code that Dixiedog proposes we are lacking, it is better for society as a whole to be victims rather than criminals or murderers.
If you believe in the foundational Christianity of our culture, then you believe that: "Be of good cheer, for God is not mocked." If our Justice fails, His Justice will prevail.
To Tom Joad:
ANYONE receiving largesse from govt is part of the problem. Would you please point out where I said that it was only the little people receiving largesse that was the problem? You read into my words ideas not stated and not there. The specific issue of the piece by Mr. Grigg is immigration, not corporate welfare.
Goldman-Sucks and others of similar make up? Of course they are a big part of the problem. They enjoy privatized profits and socialized losses. Who can lose under such a system? We, the People, is who. Not them. Do you think I do not know, understand and are angered by this? Again, the topic is not PLUTOCRACY, but immigration.
The able bodied who can work, but dodges the work and yet is paid? Of course they are part of the problem. Their life is made easy by the labor of someone else, whose life is then made poorer by the parasite they carry. Do you think they are not part of the problem, as well?
My belief: if someone is down on their luck, it should be their fellow citizens or churches VOLUNTARILY helping them. Taxation, ie. theft by government is not compassion, it is theft. To believe govt is to help all is to deny the history and the reality of what actually takes place under such circumstances as well as to sanction massive theft.
Specifically to your note, Mr. Joad: do you mean to indicate that all the able bodied on one form of welfare or another are NOT a part of the problem? Do you mean to indicate that the only problems we have as a nation are the favored trading/banking houses?
As I stated, people wanting to come to a nation to work is a very good thing, indicating a growing economy and standard of living. To me, immigration reveals a good thing.
If it were up to me, ALL SOCIAL WELFARE, CORPORATE INCLUDED, would end today, the borders between Canada and the U. S. and between the U. S. and Mexico would be erased and the economic free-for-all would begin. In my estimation, this would be good for all, as well.
Mr. Grigg,
It should come as no surprise to you as to the reason the JBS would be giving cover to the likes of Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sherrifs office. It is a simple case of "brothers" protecting "brothers" as both organizations are heavily influenced by Judeao-Freemasonry.
Also, since you were a longtime member of the JBS who was literally thrown to the wolves upon disagreement with the direction the organization was heading, why not expose the real founding and machinations therein, such as the facts of a large part of the founding members being high degree Freemasons and, more interestingly, some even being members of the CFR along with directors of the dreaded Federal Reserve Bank system?
I believe when one studies the plans of the Synagogue Of Satan, laid out in their Protocols of the Learned Elders of Sion, they will come to realize the true function of people such as Arpiao and most law enforcement in this country today, as it relates to world conquest under the cover of Judeao-Freemasonry
Thank You
Ray Anderson
We blame Arpaio for only one thing: still breathing. We direct our reproofs to his victims, the Catholic peasantry of Phoenix. The Church has always supported just wars, and the long-overdue war against Arpaio is clearly just. Have you no men of violence? We hear each day of the violence your gangs direct against each other. Is there not a single bullet left over for this man? Remember that we cannot begin his rehabilitation—which features an eternity of breaking rock in a pink tutu, chained to The Night Stalker–until you send him to us. Surely, of the thousands of killers among you, there is one with a few spare hours. The saddest aspect of the case, for us, is that to date the only plot against Arpaio’s life to be uncovered was a false one, a classic case of entrapment, in which a vengeful inmate’s empty talk of killing the judge who sentenced him was steered, by Arpaio’s agents, toward killing Arpaio instead. What a bitter indictment of your community, O Mexicans of Arizona, that the one plot against this man should have to be generated by his own minions! We do not blame the monster for being a monster. We merely ask the monster’s victims, why does this monster still breathe? To be persecuted is no disgrace. The disgrace is that your tormentor still draws breath.
DixieD wrote: "As for me, I look at good and evil differently. Evil is rather an absence of good, as Burke also alluded to."
Which is precisely what I said.
But there is not pure evil, there can only be pure good. Insofar as something has existence, it has goodness. Even Satan has some goodness. God keeps everything in existence.
DixieD wrote:[i]From where do you distill that human nature is "mostly good?" Remember, good and evil ain't simply defined on the basis of extremes (as humans are wont to portray it). For example, would you suppose those who don't murder (by Leviathan's contemporary legal and always malleable definition), rape, and steal (grand larceny scale), yet would do such things as abort an innocent unborn child, steal their employer's pens and other miscellaneous doodads, etc. are good by the objective? Anyway, I think Sam C. adequately refutes your amusing assertion that human nature is mostly good, Sans A. [/quote]
The majority of humans do not rape. The majority of humans do not murder. The majority of humans do not rob. If they did, I might believe that "fallen human nature is more evil than good."
If human nature is rotten to the core, then there is nothing for Jesus to work with. There is no "humanity," only corruption. Humanity is good. God created it. Our fall corrupted it. But there are varying degrees of corruption. We need Jesus Christ to be who we are supposed to be, but that is not to say that human nature itself is wholly corrupt/destroyed. Only fallen. God works with our human nature. He works according to our human nature, and with his grace.
All apples have the tendency to rot. Does that mean that the nature of apples [i]is[/i] rottenness? No. It means that intelligent action from above must be taken to preserve the sweetness, the texture and flavor of the apple, so it does not rot. That is as far as that analogy can go, because human nature is already fallen, but is fortified by God's saving grace, not merely preserved. The human soul, through God's grace, is taken to a [i]super[/i]natural level. Beyond what we are capable of through our own human nature. That is not the same as saying "human nature is completely rotten."
-Sans Authoritas
Sans A wrote: "People always choose an evil under the aspect of a good."
DixieD wrote: "[i]Not always, but I would agree that it's often. It's called deception.[/i]"
Always. You perform an evil action (an act which has less goodness than it ought) because you think it would be good in some reason. You may steal $500 because while you know it would be wrong, you perceive it would be good for you to have it. Even if you try to choose to do evil for the sake of evil, you are doing it because you perceive that it would be good to do. You cannot choose evil for its own sake, because evil isn't a thing in itself. It only has its being in relation to the [i]good.[/i]
DixieD wrote: [i]Then why hold anyone to account for choosing an evil? From another angle, why would someone not choose a good when it is good, especially if they are inherently good by your own accounting? Could it be the person doesn't realize it's a good? OTOH, could it also be that someone could choose an evil because they view (feel) it as a good?[/i]
Why would you hold someone accountable for choosing an evil? Because sin causes harm to others, and it causes harm to himself. (Only certain kinds of sin (the actions, not the sin itself) should be suppressed with physical violence, of course: those that actually cause physical harm to others.)
The etymology of the word "sin" is "falling short of the mark." We have a goal. We are supposed to be particular people. What we do is who we are, and we are called to be good people, and thus, in every situation, we are called to do the greatest good. Our wills (that which chooses the good) and intellects (what which rationally identifies the good) should be honed to recognize and choose what is good.
Anyone who thinks certain actions are moral, when they rationally cause harm to others and themselves, are called "insane." Those who are not able to perceive reality as it is. All sin is insane. Quite literally, we are all acting insanely when we sin.
I might ask you: if human nature is completely rotten, how can [i]you[/i] claim to hold anyone accountable? It's not their fault: their nature is completely corrupt. Can you blame something for acting according to its nature? Can you blame a tiger for killing a lamb?
-Sans Authoritas
Sans Authorita,
If you think Satan has good in him , you are way off the mark. He is the epitome of evil who lives, until the Final Judgement, in direct war against God. There is no godd in him whatsoever. Scripture makes this quite clear.
Anon @2:46,
Are you saying that Lucifer is "pure evil?" If that were true, he wouldn't exist, because as we discussed before, evil can only exist in relation to a good. You would be attempting to have Satan exist in and through himself, in the way that God does. A heresy.
Satan is the father of lies, he is the most evil (least good, more properly) being in the universe, but he is not pure evil. That would reify evil, and evil is not a thing in itself.
-Sans Authoritas
Ray Anderson, in commenting further on what you wrote, I hope this won't be straying too far off-topic, but since Will added that update about the JBS publishing a pro-Arpaio piece, I felt this was in keeping with the subject at hand, so here goes ...
Even though the Brotherhood of Belmont information that you asked about in a previous comment does seem to have some legitimate nuggets of truth, it appears to me to also make some fairly large leaps of logic, and it's doubtful that Robert Welch set up the JBS as a CFR front organization. But the fact that Welch was reportedly a Unitarian, as well as a transcendentalist (in other words, Welch wanted to believe in God, but only on his own terms, with passages in the Blue Book as proof), along with the fact that the JBS refuses to use Christian standards for its organizational guidelines (although they could easily do this and still allow non-Christians to join as long as those unbelievers didn't get on their soapboxes!) all adds up as a huge condemnation of the organization.
Right now, the JBS's so-called "leadership" is so consumed with pleasing the war-mongering evangelicals who signed this document -
http://clnfi.org/
- that they have actually become more irrelevant than before, if that is even possible!
On Will's blog that discusses just the JBS -
http://jbsrip.blogspot.com/
- he linked once to some of former JBS employee Erik Jay's writings, that contained this priceless jewel by Jay:
"... The John Birch Society -- always small but getting ever smaller, always wanting for funds but now verging on bankruptcy, always on the fringe but now poised on the brink of lasting obscurity -- is nothing more than a small, shadowy assemblage of hypocritical moralists who don't want Americans to be free so much as they want them to behave."
That pretty much sums it up!
Sans Authoritas, God changes the hearts of those He saves and brings them into His kingdom. This is how the Christian is changed and starts wanting to do good, instead of evil. Making a 'decision' for Christ is only possible after our hearts are changed by God, since we do not even seek after God until we have a 'change of heart'.
The unsaved, however, are held back in varying degrees from their total depravity by Common Grace. As we are told, the rain falls on the just and the unjust.
Ex-JBS,
With all due respect, what other explaination could there be with regards to the early JBS council members being members of the very same liberal Establishment which they were supposedly opposed to.
Also, why is it so doubful that Mr. Welch would set up the JBS as a CFR front? It would seem this would provided a most valuable service to the Conspiracy by founding an organization to prevent millions of Americans from discovering the true power behind the Illuminati. That being, organized Freemasonry.
This was the conclusion of the producers of "The Belmont Brotherhood" who were all, in fact, former high ranking members of the JBS.
In my own opinion, this conclusion does fit in quiet nicely with the diabolical Protocols of Sion.
Thank You
Ray Anderson
Tom Joad,
Please forgive~
I was speaking as a juvenile trying to explain the frustration of the system.
The real answer is not able to be written in the space of this blog. It is a compilatation of hard work and much thought to remedy our system.
Certainly, we agree that the answer is not for an innocent man to be 'waived off' as the inevitable price of blind justice. But neither is it correct to state that the guilty should get away, or that society is better of in anarchy as you seemed to elucidate.
My point was only to show that this situation will never be solved by a humanist system because we as men are fallible.
I belive that the only real answer is the one that seems so repugnant to many on this forum. The Old Testament Law of God has been rejected by the Christendom of America and we are seeing the results in the need for this blog. Statism is going to continue to be the prevalent religion until we repent of false liberty and submit to the authority of Christ as King. Only then will we begin to stop the abuses we see in our justice system.
Ex-JBS, do you believe in "Once saved, always saved?"
And that all we have to do to be always saved is say (with all our heart, etc.) "I accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior?"
Do you believe that all sin is the same in gravity?
I'd rather not engage in these discussions on here, so please shoot me an email. hansunddans at aol dotcom
-Sans Authoritas
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