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Posts Tagged ‘evangelical Christians’

Christian Worship of the False God of Politics

Posted by M. C. on May 16, 2024

What exactly are evangelical Christians worshipping when they so slavishly worship the government of Israel? They are not worshipping God or Godliness – just the opposite. They are worshipping the kind of people described by George Washington in his Farewell Address as “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men.” Ordinary politicians, in other words.

https://mises.org/mises-wire/christian-worship-false-god-politics

Mises Wire • Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Millions of American “evangelical” Christians have been indoctrinated in the idea that they must be worshipful of Israeli politicians and bureaucrats. This is so because they are taught by preachers like John Hagee that the Bible says that God will bless those who bless the nation of Abraham. The absurdity of it all is that pop religionists like Hagee falsely conflate the Israel of the Bible with today’s politicians and bureaucrats of the seventy-six-year-old government of the country of Israel. The two have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. Israel’s politicians can be just as sleazy, immoral, corrupt, criminal, and murderous as any politicians anywhere. Hence the spectacle of American evangelical Christians cheerleading the killing of fellow Christians in Gaza by the Israeli military (and of the killing of even more fellow Christians from Russia by supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia).

What exactly are evangelical Christians worshipping when they so slavishly worship the government of Israel? They are not worshipping God or Godliness – just the opposite. They are worshipping the kind of people described by George Washington in his Farewell Address as “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men.” Ordinary politicians, in other words.

When politicians of any country use the coercive powers of the state to confiscate one person’s property, give some of it to political supporters, and keep some for themselves they are engaging in theft. Calling it “democracy,” “majority rule,” or “the only democracy in the Middle East” does not make it any less sinful. 

In order to get elected all politicians everywhere must promise to steal money from those who have earned it and give it to others (and themselves) who have no moral right to it. Calling it “progressive taxation” does not make it any less sinful.

All politicians make promises to allocate other people’s stolen property to their political supporters, most of which they know they cannot keep. They lie, in other words. As Murray Rothbard once wrote, a master politician is a masterful liar, conniver, and manipulator. That is why so few moral people are ever elected to political office. And if they are they are usually quickly beaten down by harsh criticisms and condemnations, or ignored and marginalized. 

When F.A. Hayek titled one of the chapters of The Road to Serfdom “Why the Worst Get on Top” he was referring to totalitarian socialist societies, but the same thing is true of any democracy anywhere. Just look at the current makeup of the U.S. House and Senate “leadership.” 

To a large extent politicians become politicians because they can enrich themselves by soliciting and taking bribes. The late Yuri Maltsev, who defected from the Soviet Union to the United States after working for Mikhail Gorbachev, once remarked about how similar the U.S. government was to the Soviet government because, in his words, “government is all about taking bribes.”

It is a common practice of politicians in Washington to propose onerous taxes or regulations on an industry, then sit back and collect millions of dollars in bribes, euphemistically called “campaign donations,” and then once sufficient loot is collected, call the whole thing off. They call such proposed legislation “milking bills” because they milk “campaign donations.” Legal scholar Fred McChesney even wrote a whole Harvard University Press book about this phenomenon entitled Money for Nothing. 

All politicians everywhere, including Israel, are showcases of the Seven Deadly Sins. Self-pride trumps humility for starters. What member of Congress is not an egomaniac? Envy poisons the heart of every proponent of “income redistribution” schemes, the cornerstone of welfarism everywhere. 

See the rest here

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Tulsi Gabbard: Don’t Bring the ‘War on Terror’ Home | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on January 30, 2021

A letter signed by 10 progressive House Democrats, including Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Ro Khanna, calls on leadership to “reject reactionary demands to further erode the rights and liberties of the American people.”

“So, when you look at their process as they’re building this profile of a potential ‘extremist,’ what are we talking about?” she asked. “Are we talking about evangelical Christians? Somebody who is pro-life? Libertarians? People who attended a Trump rally?”

The answer is YES.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/tulsi-gabbard-dont-bring-the-war-on-terror-home/

by Brad Polumbo

The January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol shocked the nation. Now, as so often occurs in the wake of tragedy, some Washington politicians are using the opportunity to push for an expansion of their power—hoping Americans are too shell-shocked to object.

A bipartisan group in Congress has introduced the so-called “Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act Of 2021.” It would expand the surveillance and police powers of the national security state in the name of combatting dangerous extremism.

“America must be vigilant to combat those radicalized to violence, and the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act gives our government the tools to identify, monitor and thwart their illegal activities,” Congressman Brad Schneider, one of the bill’s lead sponsors, said. “Combatting the threat of domestic terrorism and white supremacy is not a Democratic or Republican issue, not left versus right or urban versus rural. Domestic Terrorism is an American issue, a serious threat that we can and must address together.”

We all surely agree that true domestic terrorism is reprehensible. But many progressive lawmakers are speaking out against the hasty push to expand government power and warning of the threat it poses to civil liberties. They warn these powers will undoubtedly be used against many more people and disfavored groups than just violent radicals like those who attacked the Capitol.

Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a progressive Democrat, called this push “so dangerous” in a Fox News interview.

“We don’t have to guess about where this goes or where it ends,” Gabbard argues, “When you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements… that in his words make up this ‘unholy alliance’ of ‘religious extremists,’ ‘racists,’ ‘bigots’ … even ‘libertarians.’”

.@joebiden Your leadership is needed now to denounce those like John Brennan & Rep Schiff who are advocating for targeting half the country as potential domestic terrorists. Truly unite the American people around our Constitution & the rights that are endowed to us by our Creator pic.twitter.com/OpemBm4biS

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) January 24, 2021

.@JohnBrennan: Biden intel community “are moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about” the pro-Trump “insurgency” that harbors “religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians” pic.twitter.com/SjVXWhPhR8

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 20, 2021

“So, when you look at their process as they’re building this profile of a potential ‘extremist,’ what are we talking about?” she asked. “Are we talking about evangelical Christians? Somebody who is pro-life? Libertarians? People who attended a Trump rally?”

“[This would] lead to a very dangerous undermining of our civil liberties… and a targeting of almost half the country,” Gabbard concluded.

The concern is that government powers authorized ostensibly for use against “domestic terrorists” would wind up being wielded against much broader swaths of society.

A letter signed by 10 progressive House Democrats, including Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Ro Khanna, calls on leadership to “reject reactionary demands to further erode the rights and liberties of the American people.”

I’m leading the call for national security powers to not be expanded in light of the attack on our nation’s Capitol that occurred two weeks ago, as such measures often lead to the erosion of Americans’ civil liberties. pic.twitter.com/K6IHTPQzne

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) January 19, 2021

“History is littered with examples of initiatives sold as being necessary to fight extremism that quickly devolve into tools used for the mass violation of the human and civil rights of the American people,” the letter warns.

There is simply no need to expand the government’s police powers. According to New York University’s law school, “existing statutes have long provided substantial authority for the federal government to investigate and prosecute acts of domestic terrorism.”

Indeed, at least 150 people have been charged with crimes related to the attack on the Capitol. The government already has vast powers to surveil, pursue, and prosecute Americans who commit crimes or plot violence. After all, law enforcement already knew from intelligence that the planned demonstration at the Capitol could turn violent. Their failure to adequately prepare for it was not due to a lack of information or authority.

Some might wonder, well, how could it hurt to give them more tools? Better safe than sorry, right?

This is an understandable impulse but deeply naive as a permanent conclusion. There’s good reason to think that “domestic terrorism” government powers would wind up targeting many Americans—because we’ve seen the same dynamic play out before, time and time again.

Passed in the wake of the tragic 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Patriot Act gave the federal government enormous surveillance powers.

For example, it authorized “sneak and peek” searches, allowing government officials to search someone’s home or office, take pictures, and even sometimes confiscate property, yet only inform them after-the-fact. According to the ACLU, 76 percent of sneak-and-peak searches have occurred in drug enforcement cases, with less than 1 percent actually happening in terrorism-related-cases.

The Patriot Act also created a new pathway for FBI agents to access Americans’ personal information, such as phone records, computer records, credit history, and banking information. Per the ACLU, of the 192,500 such records examinations the FBI made from 2003 to 2006, only one led to a terrorism conviction. (And the ACLU says that conviction would have been obtained without Patriot Act.)

All of this doesn’t even touch on the way post-Patriot-Act mass surveillance caught up millions of innocent Americans, as exposed by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

There’s plenty of precedent that suggests these abuses can be explicitly political, too.

“Government agencies—including the FBI and the Department of Defense—have conducted their own spying on innocent and law-abiding Americans,” the ACLU reports. “Through the Freedom of Information Act, the ACLU learned the FBI had been consistently monitoring peaceful groups such Quakers, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Greenpeace, the Arab American Anti-Defamation Committee and, indeed, the ACLU itself.”

We might give the government vast new powers to fight “domestic terrorism.” But it’s inevitable that these same powers will eventually be used against millions of Americans who have nothing to do with such extremism.

There’s a lesson here that extends beyond the specific debate over surveillance powers and the War on Terror. In times of crisis and emergency, enterprising politicians will always seek to exploit the situation to expand their own power. Too often, scared citizens go along with these power grabs.

This is the danger economist Robert Higgs identified in his seminal work Crisis and Leviathan as “the Ratchet Effect.”

Higgs showed how throughout history, crises have been used to excuse government power grabs. After each crisis, the government lets go of some of the power, but never all of it. As a result, the federal government’s power (the Leviathan) has “ratcheted up,” crisis after crisis, throughout the last hundred years.

Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians alike must stand firm against the latest push to infringe on civil liberties in the name of combating “domestic terror.” Otherwise, sweeping powers granted amid crisis will undoubtedly be used against millions of Americans who did nothing wrong on January 6.

This article was originally featured at the Foundation for Economic Education

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