Virtue, and Freedom: You can’t have one without the other (part 2)

Demoralization: The foundation of our prison

So what happened? What went wrong? Since America’s declaration of independence in 1776, Our government has grown to a size way beyond the intention of our founding fathers. Income Taxes, Federal sovereignty, socialized health care, welfare, bailouts which monopolize private sectors. We are way passed “a necessary evil” and getting dangerously close to, “an intolerable one”. But, to point at our current state of government which in so many ways has become tyrannical, with frustration and blame toward it’s residing members , is to continue to be ignorant of the source of such evil. The necessary size of our government is always a parallel of the “necessity to be governed”. I placed quotes over this phrase because that is the variable which is debatable and we will discuss further a bit later. I don’t believe the reduction of freedom is justified but is the result of evil taking advantage of a generation’s transgression against the law.

This reminds me of what Paul wrote in his letter to the Roman Church:

“For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.”

Paul here is referring to God’s law and not mans law, but with this verse we get to the real root of the problem and the source of man’s government. Sin. Thomas Paine speaks of government being instituted due to man’s vices, but that is about as far back that Paine goes. Paul here is referring to the vices themselves. Webster’s dictionary defines a vice as: frailty: moral weakness or a specific form of evildoing. Sin. Sin results in Laws. The original sin of man, resulted in Laws from God, and sin continues to provide the opportunity for more laws. So if freedom is the lack of laws and laws are the result of sin, we could conclude that where sin is absent, freedom is found.

Paul wrote to Timothy in this regard as well…

We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful”

Paine continues regarding the suffering due to government…

“when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer! Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least”

Paine recognizes that if man were to always submit to a God given conscience, laws to restrain man would not be necessary, and freedom would be complete.

An Ex KGB officer named Bezmenov once spoke regarding the communistic approach to take over a society through a brain washing process they called ‘Ideological subversion’. Bezmenov said the following:

“It’s a great brain washing process which goes very slow, its divided into 4 basic stages. The first one being ‘demoralization’. It takes from fifteen to twenty years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years to educate one generation of students of your enemies and expose the ideology without being challenged by the basic values of America. The result? The result you can see, most of the people that graduated in the 60’s, are now occupying the positions of power: Government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system you are stuck with them you can not get rid of them, they are contaminated, they are programmed to react to certain stimuli… The process of demoralization is complete and irreversible.”

Man’s lusts and vices have become the foundation and catalyst for a prison. When we look at the world we see an evil machine designed to enslave people. This system appeals to every aspect of a persons flesh and ego provoking them into transactions of sin which eventually result in lawlessness thus provoking the system to add additional layers of bondage through legislation. Then the process is repeated until a people are completely enslaved.

Bezmenov goes on to say the solution to this problem and only solution is a new generation of people with new values, with virtue.

Virtue, and Freedom: You can’t have one without the other (part 1)

The Original Design

A truly free society would not have a government, but our founding fathers, were forced to settle necessarily for a government which protects inalienable rights so an individual can be as free as is possible in a fallen world. This was the original design. The most limited government possible to protect the rights God has given to every man. The minimal amount of laws so that the individuals inalienable rights are protected.

Thomas Paine Wrote:

“Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.“

The republic founded by our fathers of old had minimal laws toward the individual which would restrain the vices that represent a threat to said rights. But even this form of government was as Paine puts it “in its best state a necessary evil in its worst state an intolerable one”.

According to Paine, governments are instituted to restrain vices. The implication in this statement is that there exist vices to be restrained. Transgressing against a law results in new layers of law which further restrict ones freedom . This example can be seen clearly in the life of a criminal who eventually breaks laws, until he is imprisoned by them. Even in prison, were freedom is so limited, further law breaking will eventuate in isolation, an even smaller cell with zero freedom. In the natural world, the size of our prison is determined by our submission to the existing law. The general idea however, was minimal government, maximum freedom. But, there is always a catch. There exists a requisite for such a free society. This requisite, was virtue. This I believe is what Benjamin Frankly meant when he said “We have founded for you a republic, if you can keep it”