Beware the Perception
A cautionary tale of the developmental psychology or first 70 years of the USA and resultant contemporary social psychology of the Americans; for my friends in Russia (Western reader short attention span warning, 7,000 words)
In my observations of Russia, I’ve noticed a consistent misapprehension of reality concerning the West. The West, particularly the USA, is a social phenomenon that largely defies self-understanding, let alone understanding from without, even by the titan observer Solzhenitsyn, who lived a number of years in Vermont.
To begin this analysis, we’ll note the USA’s ‘enlightenment’ founders were Deists, and James Madison’s animus to Christianity was not an animus towards a deity per se, but an animus towards political Christianity and the history of the several incarnations of western church meddling in the affairs of men and nations, pointing to a particular arrogance:
“Experience witnesses that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and virtue of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution” -James Madison
This thinking among our brighter founding minds is perhaps best personified in the philosopher of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine:
“The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence? There is a happiness in Deism, when rightly understood, that is not to be found in any other system of religion. All other systems have something in them that either shock our reason, or are repugnant to it, and man, if he thinks at all, must stifle his reason in order to force himself to believe them. But in Deism our reason and our belief become happily united. The wonderful structure of the universe, and everything we behold in the system of the creation, prove to us, far better than books can do, the existence of a God, and at the same time proclaim His attributes. It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God in His works, and imitate Him in His ways. When we see His care and goodness extended over all His creatures, it teaches us our duty toward each other, while it calls forth our gratitude to Him.”
Other than Madison, the author of our constitution, and Paine, another great American ‘enlightenment’ Deist was Benjamin Franklin, considered the greatest scientist of the age in Europe during his own lifetime; and notable in his uppermost thoughts concerning the founding of America’s so-called ‘liberal democracy’ at the time of our Constitutional Convention, were his doubts… when the crowd shouted to him when emerging from the final meeting of the states delegates: “Mr Franklin, Mr Franklin, what form of government have you given us?” Franklin replied “A republic, if you can keep it.” We couldn’t.
To equate secularism with atheism, per the intentions of those American ‘enlightenment’ founders (not all of our founders were enlightenment inspired thinkers, notably John Adams), is a patent mistake; moreover our ‘enlightened’ founders were of an educated class that seriously doubted whether the social experiment would work. And it did not work, largely because of foreseen dangers, whether a lack of social maturity or, alternatively stated, the lower human nature.
When I see the term ‘Cultural Marxism’ trained on the USA’s subsequent-resultant social circumstance in wake of the failed American revolution’s founding ideas and charter, it puts the hair up on this dogs back; as it too often appears a simplistic jingoism little different to liberals assigning a broad neo-nazi paintbrush to the term ‘Alt-Right.’ This is not necessarily a matter of ‘the truth is somewhere in between’, but more a matter of intertwined mosaic of social allergies where several antigens are not stimulating a proper immune response, almost certainly because from this republic’s inception, there was papered over a multiple fracture rather than a coalescence. There is blame aplenty can be assigned to multiple parties in the ensuing history.
I will wander afield here for a moment, for the benefit of my Russian friends, and by way of suggestion; consider the wide gulf of experiential difference between your own experience, that of a more or less consistent or singular Christian experience, that is Orthodoxy, and that of the USA; an un-amalgamated 1,500 or so Christian faith groups that can be sorted by meta-group, wing, denomination, theology, and/or family. Your experience of emancipation from feudalism versus our experience of rapidly subjugating a continent for as many motives as there had been multiple actors; whether Calvinists so intolerant Europe would not tolerate them, too many mercantilists desiring a Baron’s station and privilege to count, tens upon tens of thousands of Europe’s undesirables, whether petty criminals & the mildly retarded or insane, reflected in Europe’s vacated prisons, the inevitable Catholic proselytizing, White slavery euphemistically called ‘indentured servitude’, and finally, Black slavery. This is not a comprehensive list.
As a social psychologist, with an understanding that biographical history underlies socialization, I would not presume an intimate understanding of the Russian mind reflected in that great nation’s national psychology; nor would I expect a Russian should presume an intimate understanding of the many social tensions integral to the multiple personalities of the USA.
Back on topic of the USA and the underpinning of how we became a dissolute, aggressive and sociopathic national POLITIC (not as a people in some comprehensive sense), firstly we must toss out the idea the USA is a ‘liberal democracy’ in the sense of a “godless anti-Christian “humanism”” on account of its Enlightenment founders. Rather the negative American qualities stemming from the lower nature of man markedly & substantially come from the Christian community as much as or more so than anywhere else in American society. At this point I’ll ask my more open-minded conservative friends to swallow hard and keep reading. My liberal friends would not necessarily like what will be coming either.
Recalling Thomas Paine’s “It is by the exercise of our reason that we are enabled to contemplate God in His works, and imitate Him in His ways. When we see His care and goodness extended over all His creatures, it teaches us our duty toward each other, while it calls forth our gratitude to Him” we should understand a close similarity to Solzhenitsyn’s “A return to God, voluntary self-restraint and self-restriction of humankind, emphasizing duties instead of ever-expanding “rights”, prioritizing inner freedom, and rejecting the sacrifice of national life not only to totalitarian utopia but also to the orgy of freedom.” What is that similarity, one might ask?
To begin, the USA’s secular demand mandated in our founding charter was never about shunting God aside in our national life but was a practical recognition of the impossibility of reconciling the numerous competing beliefs in what amounted to a multicultural society with a deep antipathy to central authority; based in political persecutions that cannot be separated from a history of church-state relations in Europe. By the time of the USA’s founding, it was recognized if John Calvin, Marten Luther or The Pope’s adherents were to gain an upper hand in governance of these United States, the presumed result would be antithetical to the long term social maturity and stability of the newly founded nation.
Rather the expectation would be the unique and new secularism of the United States should see sectarianism set aside towards pursuit of the greater good for the whole. It is in this demand we see an implicit but clear parallel to Solzhenitsyn’s “voluntary self-restraint and self-restriction of humankind” that never demanded God be set aside but sectarian self-centeredness set aside instead. This would require a self restraint that was an intended goal but proved an impossible demand; as ‘freedom’ became a practical ‘taking liberties’ or ‘god helps those who help themselves’ in a sense of gross opportunism. Let us not forget where this had evolved to in several short decades with “a sucker is born every minute” ostensibly attributed to circus magnate PT Barnum, but no matter falsely, this had become an indelible folk wisdom equating the by now established legal principle of Caveat Emptor or ‘let the buyer beware.’ Christian principles, that is if Christian principles are embodied in larger concepts or notions like ‘charity’, had been easily cast aside in these largely ‘Christian’ United States, and any principled stance of self restraint stepped on. It is the lower instinct, greed particularly, flourished.
Backing up a bit, it must be noted the United States founding charter had been fatally flawed from inception; where the charter’s underlying ‘bedrock’ or Declaration of Independence stating “All men are created equal” had been discarded in reality when wealthy ‘special interests’ demanded this maxim did not pertain to negroes. Already the pirate culture of America’s eastern seaboard demonstrated a superior model were one to be honest; where Blacks had a vote electing a captain and share in the spoils of those ships taken by crews made up of White and Black escaped slaves. In our charter, White slavery was abolished but Black slavery was not.
This slavery was justified by ‘Christians’ employing biblical references per these examples: Noah’s “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren”, “By this decisive, explicit, irrefragable authority of the written work of God, it is evident that servants… are commanded under the Mosaic law to be bought; and that when so bought of alien sojourners, that they and their issue become inheritable property”, and “Like patriarchs of old, at the head of their children and grandchildren, their flocks and their herds, their bondmen and bond maids [are] to be an inheritance for their children after them to be their bond men forever” [pdf]
If one were to wonder where an individual’s ‘Christian’ conscience might play in the preceding, there needed be none; as Scots Presbyterians, English Baptists and Dutch ‘Reform’ Protestants had introduced what became a peculiar ‘Christian’ sociopathy that became widespread, that is John Calvin’s “predestination” where it is held the individual is born on this Earth preordained to either Heaven or Hell. It followed, whether one owned slaves was of no consequence in any sense of morality or personal ethics. This practical sociopathy, via inter-generational socialization, adequately explains how ‘devout’ American Christians of the 21st Century can feel no compunction whatsoever in relation to the destruction of entire societies; and were one to use the example of inter-generational violence, it should come as no surprise even ‘devout American Christians’ who are Black now can be seen in this mold, example given, fervent Evangelical Christian Condoleezza Rice. This phenomenon is not precisely new, it can be noted, American Black slaves repatriated to Africa set themselves up as ‘masters’ of their now culturally distant cousins in Liberia, and it could also be noted certain Jewish State actors, allied to today’s sociopathic Christianity of the West, somewhat resemble the perpetrators of kristallnacht, only now in relation to their own expansionist ambitions.
But I digress. Once again back to our founding era, there was a certain schizophrenia papered over at our nation’s constitutional convention, reflected in the so-called Federalists and anti-Federalists, shortly described as those American founders who favored a strong central authority, or mercantilist financiers like Alexander Hamilton and his ilk, and those opposed to the same, represented in Thomas Jefferson. The federalists insisted the purpose of the convention was to produce a governing document, maintaining there was no authority in the convention’s mandate to create a bill of rights, whereas the anti-federalists would not sign off on a constitution without this check on central authority over the common citizenry. The compromise reached was the federalists agreed a separate “Bill of Rights” would be drawn up and submitted to the several States for adoption, following the USA’s founding charter coming into force. However upon the ‘first ten amendments’ or ‘Bill of Rights’ having been adopted, future federalist jurists appointed to the United States Supreme Court had, in ensuing decades, set out to undermine the same. These rank political animals ‘interpreting’ our charters first ten amendments decided, despite plain language indicating otherwise, these amendments did not apply except as the court would tightly control via a contrived theory they called ‘incorporation doctrine’ or that is to say a judiciary constituting political appointments would take it upon themselves to tightly control or to decide when, how, and even whether, any of these ‘enumerated’ (spelled out) rights of the citizens should be applied. Nowhere is this more clear than example of roughly 225 years old language of the Seventh Amendment never having been “incorporated” or become binding on the several states…
“In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law”
…despite the Constitutions Article Six or ‘supremacy clause’ language:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding”
This has left the door open to judiciary tampering with jury awards of compensation & damages or, in other words, shielding the wealth of the criminal & corrupt, example given a judge deciding a jury award had been ‘excessive.’
Anticipating this subversion of the American foundational law was the early case in legal controversy where a contractor from South Carolina was owed a war debt by the State of Georgia, which didn’t wish to pay up. The Supreme Court had ruled there was no such thing as State sovereign immunity from suit, in the case of Chisholm v Georgia. Nearly all of the states balked at the prospect of having to pay their war debts and the 11th Amendment to our founding charter was passed, stating:
“The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State”
And just like that, certain remarkable things happened; with the passing of the 11th Amendment by the several states legislators, all of the lawsuits pending in federal court per state war debts had been erased with citizens forced into the jurisprudence of states that did not wish to pay, and half the language of Article One, Section Nine, of the Constitution had been tossed into the ash bin: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” Thomas Jefferson indicated this language had been meant to cover both criminal and civil circumstance of law, and the constitutional language supports this assertion by Jefferson; ‘Bill of Attainder’ should refer to criminal, and ‘ex post facto’ should refer to civil liabilities. In other words, the USA should not have been allowed to make law, criminalizing or creating liability, or excusing crime or liability, after the fact, to get the outcome it wants. The 11th Amendment neither mentions nor lifts this other constitutional provision. But now, civil ex post facto law happens frequently, such as a 21st Century Congress ‘forgiving’ the telecom companies illegally spying on Americans, erasing liability and robbing citizens of their day in court.
Although the 11th Amendment is specific and narrow, and doesn’t so much as mention Sovereign Immunity, the legendary English Common Law expert William Blackstone’s Sovereign Immunity doctrine had been reinstated in the former colonies:
“The King moreover is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong; he can never mean to do an improper thing: in him is no folly or weakness.”
Only now, suddenly it is no longer the ‘King’ can act with impunity, but the institutions of government in the United States per a case as late as 1991, Blatchford v. Native Village of Noatak, where the Supreme Court wrote:
“we have understood the Eleventh Amendment to stand not so much for what it says, but for the presupposition of our constitutional structure which it confirms: that the States entered the federal system with their sovereignty intact, that the judicial authority in Article III is limited by this sovereignty, and that a State will therefore not be subject to suit in federal court unless it has consented to suit, either expressly or in the “plan of the convention”
And there you have it, from the early days of the Supreme Court saying Sovereign Immunity from suit is a non existent thing in immediate post colonial USA law, to the several states’ legislatures passing the 11th Amendment, amending the federal charter, an amendment which doesn’t so much as mention Sovereign Immunity, to escape war debt, to the modern Supreme Court stating the language of our constitution’s 11th Amendment doesn’t mean what it actually says, but instead means what they want it to say, essentially stating ‘we’ll extend ‘the King’s prerogative‘ as far as we please, and we’ll use the 11th Amendment to absurdly assert what amounts to a claim the King’s Sovereign Immunity (impunity) was never a point of the American Revolution.’
Subsequently, the United States federal government adopted sovereign immunity as its own, usurping ‘the people are sovereign’, and has used this doctrine to cancel out the core of the first ten amendments:
The fourth amendment’s “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
The fifth amendments Amendment’s “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation
And the 6th Amendment’s “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence”
These preceding rights have been nullified by the United States claiming sovereign immunity relevant to ‘state secrets’ when citizens have attempted to petition for redress of grievances due to central authority over-reach under the pretext of ‘terror’, as well as the central authority having established a secret court where the accused has no access nor advocate. This ‘coup de grâce’ over the rule of law in the USA had been finally made complete by “National Security Act of 1947” creating the lawless Central Intelligence Agency, and is law which opened the door to FISA secret court. This act enabled the rule of law to be converted to “color of law” or simple pretense of constitutional integrity at the pinnacle of the USA’s institutions of government. But I am getting ahead of myself, let us back up once more.
It does well to recall each of the preceding steps of imperative dishonesty described, in a process of the rule of law’s erosion, had been initiated and largely sustained by so-called ‘Christians.’ If Deism were ostensibly protected in this system, little differently to Islam, Judaism or sundry flavors of heathen belief, these were of little consequence where the overwhelming numbers of the USA’s populace were Christian of the Western stripe. Darwin had not yet arrived with his hypothesis, atheism had yet to discover its ‘manhood’ & elope with science, and it would two hundred and more years in the making before the Western conservative Christianity would finally co-opt Deism’s ‘intelligent design’ and pervert it with an inculcated ignorance resulting in a 21st Century Vice President of the United States’ belief Man had walked the Earth together with dinosaurs. I expect the term ‘believer’, closely examined on both parties part, might be one of vastly different connotation between Western Christianity and the Orthodoxy of Russia.
If, in the Western canon, the most lied about intentions of any individual were the grossly misrepresented thoughts of Jesus, in particular due to the perversion of Christianity by John Calvin, the most lied about intentions of any group of men would be the American founders. When the contemporary American religious fascist claims the USA had been founded as a Christian, not secular, nation, they must ignore history and the USA’s first treaty with Libya…
“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims]; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Islamic] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries”
…noting the preceding language had been drafted by the American republic’s executive and unanimously ratified by the Senate in the early years of our foundational law. When the subsequent American conservative Christian subversion of our charter had been reinforced by religious propaganda via imagined fantasies surrounding America’s founders, those fantasies had been consequently encapsulated by a honest historian with the cynical epithet “Liars for Jesus.” By contrast it should be explained our present national schizophrenia’s ‘liberal’ element had done no better. At last, we shall move forward from the era of our founding.
Recalling the Western liberal poet Oscar Wilde’s “Truth is seldom pure and never simple”, we now shortly examine the fact of the United States tearing itself apart a scant seventy years since its founding. Pertinent to this violence, American sociopathy introduced by Calvinism did not confine itself to the conservative religious community in much the same sense of earlier example, where repatriated American Black slaves became ‘master’ over their African subjects. Restated in a perfect cynicism of American shallowness of character: ‘if one can do so, so can two, never-mind do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks” would be perhaps the best description of today’s liberal ‘humanitarian violence’ rooted in a co-opted Calvinist sociopathy; where one could scarcely find a difference between the justifications of a Hillary Clinton’s rape of Libya or a Nikki Haley’s rape of Syria. These indistinguishable political lies are ‘protected free speech’ of necessity; for if the American sociopath is without empathy, conscience or soul, these pretenders to humanity are not altogether without fear of facing accountability. They are similar to the children who’ve become compulsive liars when caught in proximity to result of a miscreant behavior, perhaps they will be able to lie their way out of punishment as opposed to the idea if they are do not conceal their complicity in certain delinquencies, they must face consequences
It follows, the American ‘free press’ promised to the people as a means to unmask corrupted power has become conflated with ‘free speech’ and turned on its head; where media has become almost wholly owned by a 3rd party that is neither the People nor the State but greed personified in the non-living legal entity of the corporation. It is this press which no longer unmasks the corrupt rather via the corporate veil buys and protects the corrupted politician and a ‘free press’ is become purveyor of political lies construed to be ‘free speech.’ We see this process already well underway in the decades preceding America’s civil war, with the self-justifying (Paine’s aptly described ‘mental lying’) press giving cover to politicians who could never come clean and admit what became the “Manifest Destiny” of the United States via conquest of the western territories was little more than a series of violent robberies. In the process of this virulently criminal expansion, the folk wisdom ‘treaties were made to be broken’ entered into the American lexicon, approximating the actuality; where early example had been the ‘civilized tribes’ sued the United States over the Executive branch of the Federal government’s Indian tribes removal policy and won, whereupon President Andrew Jackson stated “[Chief Justice] John Marshall has stated what the law is, now let him enforce it” and the tribes were pushed out of their ancestral lands across the Mississippi River into an alien wilderness regardless of the rule of law. Or, in the case of stealing the lands of Mexico, what amounted to the prototype ‘color revolution’ was staged by a group of Americans in California. Inasmuch as bringing ‘Christianity’ and ‘civilization’ to the heathen natives was the stated rationale, this could not hold up in the case of the noted ‘civilized tribes’, in actuality it was a violation of Moses ‘thou shall not covet.’ In the case of taking half or more of Mexico, it mattered not one bit Mexico was a Christian nation, only a differing method of lie or sleight of hand recalling color revolution needed applied. Relevant to this immediate preceding, it should be noted although existing populations in the conquered territories were not Black, neither was the majority populace ‘White’, recalling certain justifications for slavery but in this case ‘God’s will’ providing cover via the American press for a class of political suborner’s lies justifying theft of properties belonging those considered lesser to themselves. In this light, it should be known today’s “American Exceptionalism” had come into the lexicon as a synonym to “Manifest Destiny.”
However in the northeast of the United States there were some disgruntled noises made over the barbaric treatment afforded the Native tribes, in what were growing ‘liberal’ circles, from the relative safety of ‘civilized’ New England, this should not be construed to be some societal conviction of conscience; as New England states have been happy to deny its own Native tribes surviving tracts of wilderness, as recently as the late 20th Century, due to treaty violations by the USA having been, in the words of the court, ‘crushed by the burden of history.’ It should be noted the preceding indicates any sincerity of the Northern abolitionist societies agitating for an end to slavery, per the USA’s civil war, might well have been pecuniary as relates to social jealousy. In America, if there is an abundance of anything, it would be hypocrisy.
What became known as “Manifest Destiny” was the core cause which led to civil war, as competing visions of a future for those territories being conquered had raised the ghosts of the USA’s federalist versus anti-federalist divisions, however disingenuously. The North was pointed to an industrial, centralized future, the south was clinging to, and guarding, an agrarian, pastoral lifestyle and resented the north’s coveting the resources of the south. Black slavery was the undoing of the south, not because a majority of the north were unwilling to tolerate this, but because it provided cover for the industrialists (one could these days say oligarchs) of the north to bend the south to its will. With the inevitable loss to the industrialized north, it is noteworthy that great field marshal, Robert E. Lee, had made at least one cynical political maneuver, when he encouraged Christian ‘revivalism’ in the southern armies; as a means of boosting troop morale in the face of what he had to have known were overwhelming odds. ‘God’ were never so abused as in the American tradition; pointing towards a certain faux patriotism of the present day.
Finally, it was the south self-justifying its stance, particularly noting slavery, on the ninth and tenth Amendments or the final two clauses of the so-called ‘Bill of Rights’, handed long term political victory to the Federalists, those longtime sublime liars who’d never contemplated Thomas Paine’s American revolutionary concept of “Common Sense” should be fulfilled, their hypocritical condemnation of slavery not withstanding, for all men should become slaves to mercantilism run amok and the following constitutional language ultimately bowed to central authority:
Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”, the laws of individual states notwithstanding”
Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”
In the Calvinist South, Blacks, of course, weren’t ‘people’ but were property. But let us note this attitude was not geographically limited in some black & white sense (or more cynically, there was no geographic limitation of this attitude in a very Black & White sense!) for it had been a mere seventy years previous, the North had allowed for Black slavery to become integrated to the United States at their formation; where our charter determined enslaved Blacks were to be counted in the federal census as “three fifths of a man.” It required no ‘stretch of the imagination’ to claim the ‘States Sovereignty’ referred to could presume a self-determined future that was decidedly anti-mercantilist, and in its stead a pastoral one, but this could not stand up to the North’s faux morality exploiting the slavery issue, slavery which had been stupendously-stupidly clung to by the South as a ‘State’s Right.’ Here it should be noted not only had one of Abraham Lincoln’s political mentors burned a political treatise authored by Lincoln, defending Thomas Paine’s Deism, to spare Lincoln’s political career from the wrath of the North’s own intolerant ‘Christian’ mob, as well there is likely no political corruption in today’s Russia can come close to matching Abraham Lincoln’s first nomination to run for president of the United States, at Chicago, in 1860.
Concluding this immediate preceding section, it must be noted the mercantilist ‘liberal’ North’s politicians, including Lincoln, were perfectly willing to abide a continuation of slavery where it was already established in the South, were the South to surrender any claim to take its own political vision forward in the conquered western territories. This willingness to ‘compromise’ the freedom of Blacks in America only died with the North’s achieving some military victories, relevant to Abraham Lincoln stated political position:
“If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union…. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free”
Lincoln’s burned apologetic of Paine’s Deism notwithstanding, in this context we see a man perfectly recalling Paine’s maxim…
“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime”
…which cannot come as any surprise where Lincoln had achieved his presidency via as corrupt a process as had ever been witnessed in this leading Western and henceforth ‘liberal’ democracy.
If these ostensibly ‘Christian’ political lies (Calvin’s sociopathy) were not great enough on both parties part, we must further note a liberal-left promotion of a revisionist history undermining what had remained of our core civil liberties, with a smear attacking the conservative historical revisionism with its own historical revisionism. Today’s liberal urban legend claims the anti-federalist philosophy is rooted in setting out to protect slavery by weakening the provisions for an American central government. This argument on the liberal-left is as distorted as the American conservative political revisionism it attacks; the patently false idea The United States was founded as a Christian Nation per se.
Because of confusion of ‘state’ as a larger nation with ‘state’ as a state, in these United States, in the American English dialect, ‘nation’ had come to replace ‘state’ in a sense of federal or national. However this was not yet the case at the time of our founding law being written; and the founding context of the language of the USA charter’s Second Amendment is a singular ‘people’ and refers to a ‘state’ in the sense of the United States as a nation, people of all the states inclusive. Any attempt to conflate the greater ‘state’ in the Second Amendment with the individual ‘states’ comprising our nation is patently dishonest:
Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”
None of our first through eighth amendments protection of the rights of individual citizens had anything to do with Blacks of the founding era, as they were not enfranchised citizens as a class, and the facts are at odds with liberal-left’s popular myth (urban legend) that somehow the anti-federalists got their way with undermining a federalist inspired central government in order to protect slavery.
Simple common sense demands the anti-federalist authored fourth amendment concerning privacy in one’s papers cannot have anything to do with propping up slavery, a given example of motivation in the anti-federalists’ actual intentions. Or other rights, for instance prohibition of a bill of attainder. Or the right to confront your accuser. To name but a few provisions of the first through eighth amendments authored by the anti-federalists.
If our “Bill of Rights” had been insisted upon by anti-federalists, and it most certainly was, the entire world, it would be implied by this specious and twisted revisionism coming from the liberal left, is indebted to American slaveholders for the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights inspired by the American Bill of Rights and certain of its provisions.
Anti-federalism was by no means an exclusive southern phenomena related to a minority of slave owners but was a general angst of the new republic’s citizenry from Georgia to New Hampshire. This angst primarily concerned historic abuses of power by central governments traced in the American tradition to the Magna Charta particularly and the European powers’ abuses of citizenry generally. The right of the ‘people’ (all inclusive) to bear arms was deemed necessary as a check of last resort on a central government. This anti-federalist authored ‘Bill of Rights” specifies core civil liberties of citizens our anti-federalist founders meant to secure us from the tyranny of a police state.
This liberal dishonesty plays into the following circumstance, a practical extending of superior privilege to our returning soldiers, consolidating the central authorities’ gains; when building a symbiotic relationship between the USA’s military and the USA’s police forces where the altogether wrong sort of meme involved with creating a collective mentality, germinated in the American military, is being infused into the American ‘civilian’ police.
When ‘veterans preference’ law creates a privileged class, in violation of our Constitution’s 14th Amendment or “Equal Protection” clause, is imposed on police hiring as a matter of law, and a society such as ours is one recently put through some considerable stresses, economic and social, resulting in both heightened paranoia and less opportunities at well paying jobs, the civilian police forces have become packed with ‘war on terror’ military veterans. These combined phenomena will translate into many veterans who’ve developed an ‘us versus the enemy’ mentality integrated into America’s police forces in relation to community, and this is particularly dangerous when ‘community’ is demographically dissimilar to one’s own, and we see this mindset manifest when Black communities are policed by White officers. The result is Blacks being shot down by White officers with impunity.
Now, we stir into the mix some more unpleasant facts; in today’s America, conservatism has become altogether poisoned by an extreme religious movement, Christian Domionism, asserting ‘God’s Law’ (their own interpretations of scripture) supersedes civil law. A volunteer military is historically attractive to conservative mentality, more so than other outlooks, and this is what will be fed into the police hiring rosters in by far out of proportion (to larger society) numbers. The American religious right is primarily White and we have seen has undeniable racist roots in a large segment or subculture. But there is more than a significant, underlying elements of racism, at issue here.
The soldiers advocate-civil rights group Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has determined that one third (1/3) of the United States military is presently “Christian Dominionist” or that is to say very much on the far right of the conservative right, one could say ‘Christian Taliban.’ These people do not respect the original intention of our secular democracy, they do not respect people holding different viewpoint or opinion, and they most certainly do not respect a civil rights movement traditionally rooted in the left of the political spectrum.
A simple rule of social psychology would be, with an extreme ‘strict father’ model of conservatism’s upbringing, extreme even by traditional conservative standards, the religious extremist desiring to exercise ‘authority’ is the prototype personality that will gravitate to police employ via ‘veterans preference’ … strengthening the hand of those corrupt fascist forces rapidly gaining practical control over every facet of American society as a whole. Christian Dominion sympathetic personalities have already gained control over Congress and the Pentagon and by extension, NATO, and now these patently reactionary, militant forces are taking practical control of America’s streets, the Posse Comitatus Act prohibition of America’s military policing our citizenry notwithstanding.
As a matter of consequence, our rapidly militarizing police have integrated, and continue to integrate, those personalities most inclined to view the public they were intended to serve as an opposing or threatening force .. as ‘the enemy’ .. with all of the attending impunity they experienced in a hyper-religious military environment; whether attitude a woman’s rape ‘must’ve been God’s will’ with little motivation to pursue and solve cases or punish perpetrators (except in case of a Black on White rape, that must be prosecuted in any White supremacist ruled society.) Society is now policed by men whose military background had been poisoned by theological interpretations on the far right of the right; by officers who shoved religious motivation down soldiers throats (officers who believe Muslims are ‘the children of Satan’ as taught by the Assemblies of God, example given.) These soldiers are now moved on to bashing in the heads of civil dissidents because any American refusing to conform to their corrupt religious fascism must be liberal, left, and deviant. This transitions to White officers policing Black neighborhoods seeing themselves in circumstance little different to occupying a hostile neighborhood in a war zone; where everyone, including children, are not only a threat, but are in no uncertain terms viewed as ‘the enemy.’
At the end of the day, ’veterans preference’, favoring tens of thousands of “Christian Dominion” personalities whose primary motive is towards an America to be ruled by those ‘chosen by God’ (their own kind, exclusively, who just happen to be mostly White), in patent violation of our constitution, with attending attitude of our citizens civil rights be damned, is one more large step on the road to societal disintegration; ultimately inviting a severity of control along the lines of Franco’s Spain or Pinochet’s Chile or even so extreme as Nazi Germany. In this latter case, let us not forget the USA’s anti-communist religious fascists had rescued and rehabilitated many of Nazi Germany’s worst war criminals, particularly those intimates of the Nazi intelligence structure experienced in matters of the WWII Eastern front and Soviet affairs, epitomized in Reinhard Gehlen.
A postscript would be, the USA’s constitutional prohibition of any prerequisite ‘religious test’ to serve in government, would appear to have been turned on its head in present circumstance; whereas any applicant for police work in any American force, includes nearly all police in the USA, includes federal police, the several states police, even the police of local communities, could not be questioned or evaluated per an extreme fascist religious belief devoted to the undermining and ultimate overthrow of the secular democratic principle, opening a most unpleasant panorama.
Conclusion
Today’s shameless self indulgences attributed to “Cultural Marxism” in the West are a misapprehension of the reality. Whether a conservative self indulgence of ‘prosperity gospel’ where it matters not what suffering had been inflicted on others in attaining one’s fortune, you are rich because ‘God is blessing you’, or a liberal self indulgence of imposing ‘humanitarian violence’ on other societies to make those societies into a narcissistic image of self because ‘we know better what is good for you’, or an atheist self-indulgence in the idea ‘science cannot prove there exists a god’, or the hedonist self indulgence in sole self-gratification without care or cultivation of that self in sense of possessing a soul and sincere care for another, what we are seeing is the sociopathy of John Calvin; whether that sociopathy had perverted the religious vehicle or had abandoned religion altogether. If the intentions of Jesus had struggled mightily enough trying to survive the neo-Platonic church at Rome, these ideas could never survive John Calvin.
What Johannes Gutenberg had enabled became the spread of ideas that are not necessarily healthy. John Calvin’s ‘predestination’, and resultant spread of a religion sourced sociopathy across the West, freeing Western capitalism from a sense of personal accountability, should be held up as example prima facie of how irresponsible man might confer irreparable damage on mankind. It follows, today’s ‘free press’ of the liberal democracies are little more than purveyor of shameless political lies rooted in the sociopathy of Calvinism. This meme now racing at light speed via fiber optic in the age of internet reminds one of the race of chemotherapy; where the modern medicine can kill the patient more quickly than it kills the cancer. It does seem true there is something missing in the West; a missing culture of natural antibodies in the maintenance of humanity’s spiritual health, things like practical morality and principled ethics, increasingly are becoming memories of a distant past. Recalling Jesus had said “you cannot serve god and money” and today looking only to find “In God We Trust” embossed on every denomination of American currency, I think we know who America’s practical ‘god’ is.
But to make the accusation ‘secular’ democracy in the USA is somehow tied to intention of rejecting God is to miss the mark; the point of the secular demand of the USA’s founding charter had been to provide opportunity to rise above sectarianism. In the end, man proved incapable to achieve this; the lower instincts pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth proved too great.
Lastly, I had read every work of Solzhenitsyn’s I could lay my hands on, Ivan Denisovich, Candle in the Wind, The First Circle, The Cancer Ward, Gulag Archipelago, and finally, some years later, August 1914. There is no question in my mind the man is one of the great observers of our age but I would offer a caveat to Solzhenitsyn’s Russian adherents; do not make the mistake of misapprehension or a belief Solzhenitsyn’s tremendous capacity for understanding Russia and Russians can be somehow translated to a deep understanding of the West or related to American conservatism. It can’t. There is no authentic comparison. The several conservative denominations of Calvinism imported to America birthed the sociopathy we see across the spectrum of American politics and produced conservative and liberal psychopath alike. America’s degeneracy is not a state of ‘Cultural Marxism.’ It is John Calvin. It is not a rational State, rather it is a nuclear armed, collective psychopath’s criminality that has burned its bridges behind, come what may.
This piece is a rebuttal to ‘Alexander Solzhenitsyn – A Russian Prophet’ by Egor Kholmogorov with introduction by Fluctuarius Argenteus & Anatoly Karlin @ http://www.unz.com/akarlin/prophet-solzhenitsyn/
Updated 22 May 2018
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A former Special Forces Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence, Ronald Thomas West is a retired paralegal/investigator (living in exile) whose work focus had been anti-corruption and human rights. Ronald is published in International Law as a layman (The Mueller-Wilson Report, co-authored with Dr Mark D Cole) and has been adjunct professor of American Constitutional Law at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (for English credit, summer semester 2008.) Ronald’s educational background is primarily developmental & social psychology. His therapeutic device is satire –
Ronald Thomas West 