Except for emperors, such as Caligula, and kings like Herod, matricide was frowned upon in Priscilla's and Juvenal's Rome. The penalty for such behavior was suicide, to be sure, but I would not be surprised that a few matricidal maniacs of Roman times (except for the emperors and kings) were bagged on occasion. Today, of course, it is the other way around, where matricidal maniacs are rewarded. This is due to economic reasons, more than any other, because courts are easily bought off through high rolling attorneys.
Feminists of today (in contrast to the Feminists like Priscilla) argue that familial love interferes with careers, and those who opt to whore themselves up our corporate ladders are assured of a greater prize (a new ego) at the top than the embryonic prize they forsook at the bottom of our society. Well, they call it the bottom of our society (because they find themselves demeaned, spread wide-eagle on the bed-sheet beneath their menfolks), but in antiquity this was considered the top of society. Then, males would conquer great nations for the sake of their lady; today, whilst this primal urge affects young males in high school, by the time they reach their mid twenties the primal urge is sublimated to sexual substitutes, either drugs or money. The cocaine rich have achieved the best of both of these worlds, a paradise of sorts for those on Wall Street whose terminal joy is in picking other men's pockets.
Well, you may argue that the Romans were as involved with drugs as Americans. This is simply not true. The principal use of drugs was for homeopathic principles or, in cases of regicide, or parricide, as in the case of the Graccii, there were specialists from the Pontus region, like Locusta mentioned earlier, who were called in to apply their skills. Heirs to fortunes and dynasties, and an occasional philosopher like Socrates, were the users of drugs, unlike our modern society which distributes drugs equitably to all families, rich and poor, philosopher and ignorant, alike, whether to murder them or just to keep them amenable to being lethargic, drudges. This way the average American drudge will not take occasion to notice all the whoring around, lying and cheating, going on in our government offices, we can only presume.
Most favored and adored among American leaders are Statisticians who keep count of the numbers on drugs, food coupon usage, the abortion rate, birth and death rate, divorce rate, out of wedlock birth trends, together with the unemployment rate. Our governors, in order to keep their sultry dealings hidden under the sheets, as it were, rely heavily on the Statisticians to keep the American People if not totally drugged at least totally confused. Because the unemployment rate seems to parallel the other ratings, the statisticians have averaged only those who currently are on the dole (unemployment or welfare) for purposes of assessing the economic health of this nation.
It is unfortunate that American women are producing (maybe some undercover Gene Splicing has been going on here) youth who are perfect losers. The cross section of our society born as losers is also astounding: those born to a living by pandering, pimping, drug pushing, or the unentitled unemployed, including those recently tossed off the rolls and unemployed self-employed-- like off work editorial contributors and truck drivers (both highly respected for their knowledge of our country), so many new categories to track among both the old rich and new poor alike!--are usually not reported among the unemployed, along with the millions of homeless and divorcees. The millions of women who are giving birth to one third of the birth statistics, neither are they counted among the unemployed, since they are numbered among the welfare roles, thus confusing our elite as to who really is a loser and who is not. This should be corrected. In fact our congress should pass a law which requires all identifications and resumes to recite whether a person was born unemployed. This way employers (all of whom normally avoid hiring the unemployed anyway) will not have to bother with interviewing them. The idea here is that anyone unemployed is naturally a loser – meaning untouchable in Hindii – and no doubt should have been aborted anyway. So if one is born unemployed it follows, using Plastic Age logic, that he or she ought to be identified, a natural born Loser, and not covered under the Bill of Rights. So to save these poor creatures from having to suffer through repeated disappointments of being turned down from one opportunity after another, or worse having to endure the ignominy of being among the naturally unemployed – worse, breeding more of them – it would appear that our nation would be far better off to listen to the feminists a bit more and legalize abortions, with an extra house-hold exemption being given for each abortion.
This will save billions in tax dollars (mostly in health services) which can be applied against our $1 Billion a day interest payment. Here can be seen the climax of our nation, as women who claw their way up the ladder, sacrificing their embryonic rights, will achieve higher satisfaction by buying US bonds, not only to help our nation roll over its huge debt, but to realize the double dividend from aborting the poor and increasing profits at the same time. This sounds complicated, I know, but it is really quite simple once you ladies can get the feel for high finance principles. Let's say we spend out of 900 Billion tax dollars $300 Billion for welfare, the bulk of which is to support unwed mothers [actually only $40 Billion goes to welfare; the balance of the $300 Billion covers Social Security; ed. note]; another $30 billion for unemployment, $20 Billion for Veterans and $15 Billion for Abortion clinics. The total here, of $365 Billion, through a diligent administration of abortions to naturally born losers, should eliminate most of the $300 Billion in expenses for unwed mothers, wipe out unemployment problems altogether, and allow women more time to focus on profits.
Since our government has been borrowing the equivalent of the interest on the National Debt each year, which is about $365 Billion and climbing, we can transfer the $350 Billion for welfare and the unemployed losers to the interest payment, leaving at this moment a $15 Billion deficit this year. This in turn will encourage those who are hesitant to buy US bonds, because of the enormous and increasing yearly deficit, and provide for a stronger stock market. Now buying bonds not only helps our nation ease the sense of indebtedness, but also reduces the pressure on interest rates – for those of you buying a second home this should be important – and the interest income realized from buying US bonds will offset the interest on one's mortgage. The higher one's income (including the household exemption for abortions), it is said, the greater the climax for those who manage to sublimate their maternal desires. Statistics show that the brokers in our financial sectors achieve higher climaxes from diffident reports than any other stimulate, cocaine included. So abortions all the way around can be quite profitable for this nation. Just the savings of $350 billions of our $900 billion tax dollars alone can produce good will, because much of that savings will be available for our Congress to use to pay themselves another raise (which will offset the continuing temptations of extortion they face each day) and fund better means of screening losers out of the population as well as other energy saving projects. Finally, following the reasoning of our governments we can see there is no need to help the poor anyway, as verified from Roman history:
Juvenal, Satire III
..The poor man's an eternal butt for bad jokes,
With his torn and dirt-caked top- coat,
His grubby toga, one shoe agape,
Where the leather's slit;
Those clumsy patches,
That course and tell tale stitching,
only a day or two old.
The hardest thing to bear in poverty
Is the fact that it makes men ridiculous.
"Out of those front-row seats," we're told.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves-
Your incomes are far too small,
And the Law's the law.
Make way for some panderer's son,
Spawned in an unknown brothel-
Let your place be occupied
By that natty auctioneer's offspring,
With his high-class companions"..
What poor man ever inherits a Legacy,
Or is granted the meanest of sinecures:
A job with the Office of Works?
All lower-income citizens should
Have marched out of town, in a body, years ago.
Nobody finds it easy to get to the top if meagre resources
cripple his talent.
But in Rome the problem's worse than anywhere else.
Inflation hits the rental of your miserable apartment,
Inflation distends the ravenous maws of your slaves;
Your humble dinner suffers inflation too.
You feel ashamed to eat on earthenware dishes!
Here you have it, right from the horse's mouth: Poverty only increases the wretchedness of an empire. This was further demonstrated when the Romans later passed a law which freed many of their slaves. Millions of slaves descended upon the city and began protesting, eventually causing civil war, because of their lack of jobs and newly won abject poverty (what nation, giving freedom to its slaves [except the Jews or the case of the Mamelukes] has ever allowed them to hold a decent job?). Of recent history Hitler demonstrated that once a slave was no longer useful it was better to first starve him and if this failed, incinerate him. Thus, to avoid the problem of the wretched altogether, needfully avoiding the repetition of Rome's sins, and by side-stepping issues learned from the Nazi era, we are sure that the current estate [we speak of the Elect] will conclude that abortion as a deterrent to murder may be the humane solution to our troubles. If nothing else it will in a matter of a generation free the Elect from having to step around the poor sots begging on our streets.
Abortions were good for Roman society, and it is true that the
Romans aborted on a rather grand scale. But abortion for them
carried a two edged sword (which we should keep in mind). We read
in Priscilla's Roman Review that most of the abortions
were carried out to cover up adulterous relationships or by
whores (which applications really do not apply to our society
since adultery is permitted by law and whores are tolerated).
But there is a small lesson to be learned in the comparison.
Since adultery was frowned upon by the Romans and could easily
upset the government, Senators and other officials had to meet
in secret and this place of meeting--because it had to be close
in proximity where they created their laws of the land--was at
Juno's Temple at the Forum. Juvenal says lovers would meet there,
right at the entry to the Forum, and after their sexual encounter
the two lovers would piss on the base of the columns of the temple.
Juvenal notes that many senators walking to rub shoulders in the
market often unknowingly slopped through their wife's piss. The
gutters at the corner of the Temple of Juno were eternally flowing,
as it were. There was no uxorious obsession here. Today American
women meet in shopping centers, to show you not much has changed,
except our gutters are not quite as colorful as those in Juvenal's
day. A woman's husbands [and lovers] ought to be engraved
on their tombstones , said Juvenal [Satire VI]. For these
times I quite agree, but I would add a similar list on the mens'.
As active as the Temple of Juno was, abortion and sterility philters saved many a romance:
Juvenal Satire VI
How often do gilded beds witness a lying-in
When we've so many sure-fire drugs for inducing sterility
Or killing an embryo child?
Our skilled abortionists know all the answers.
So cheer up, my poor friend,
And give her the dose yourself.
Things might be worse-suppose
She chose to stay pregnant,
To swell her belly with frolicsome
infants:
You might become some piccaninny's papa..
On the opposite side of the coin were maidens laying out a
hundred purificatory eggs [Juvenal, Satire VI] at Easter,
or whenever the need arose, and this also goes to show that nothing
has changed between Juvenal's times and ours, except our maidens
individually lay out fewer eggs at Easter, but the connection
between fertility and the risen Christ is not clear in my mind.
For wives who fail to abstain from sex on the prescribed and ritual
days, which could exact huge penalties (The trails of blood from
one house to another give me the shudders) there were always priests
of Anubis or Oisris running about and giving absolution, to wit:
Juvenal, Satire VI.
Who runs through the streets
With a shaven-pated crew dressed in linen robes,
And mocks the people's grief for Osiris..
His tears and professional mutterings
After Osiris has been bribed with a fat goose and some sacrificial cake
Will guarantee absolution.
No sooner has he pushed off than a palsied Jewess,
Parking her haybox outside,
Comes round soliciting alms.
Jews will sell you whatever dreams you like for a few small coppers..
Then there were the fortune tellers..
Here again we can see little has changed between Juvenal's time and ours, except the name of the God of absolution. And the priests hide in pill-boxes collecting gold and rents now, rather than chasing people in the streets to absolve them of their sins. The sins are more abundant in our day, of this there is no doubt, and this can be ascertained alone by counting the number of pill-boxes.
Juvenal's seventeenth Satire goes on to mention how these illicit
affairs and their abortions were cluttering the gutters of the
Roman Empire. The gutters themselves were being clogged by human
embryos, some of whom were still alive, after having been flushed
down the latrine. Often the drugs which caused the miscarriage
did not kill the child, but the lead in the gutters would poison
them within a day or two. To combat this problem a law was passed
that required that all children which had not drawn their baby
teeth should be buried. The Roman custom for disposing of the
dead was cremation. Well, this alerted the poparatsi, among whom
was Priscilla, who at once began hanging out near the slums of
the Esquiline hill, where many a noble matron could be found burying
her child early in the morning. It was a good place and time to
catch an interview of some famous person, and the Roman Gazette
even opened a branch office there to be the first in the press.
To avoid the press, after awhile the aristocrats began burying
their children in rows on their country estates; and one day,
as the story was reported by Priscilla, who was always on the
watch for miracles, someone saw a child with the face of an old
man sprout up midst a corn field near the suburb of Civivettica,
a few miles from Rome. The boy's name was Tages.
Everyone knew because of his small earthen grave-mound that he
was a blue blood . He instantly spoke and began
reciting Homer like a blue blood, and began to hum Delphian oracles,
but his speech was in Etruscan and those who heard him had trouble
understanding his accent. But fortunately there was an Hauruspice (High Priest) near by – supposed by some to be Juvenal – who recorded Tages' oracles, but stopped when Tages
predicted that after a thousand years Rome would cease to exist.
This caused a big stir because that same Tages had
sprouted from the soil a thousand years earlier and made the same
forecast to the Etruscans. This account not only appears in Juvenal's
seventeenth Satire and part of the sixteenth, but also was reported
in both the Roman Gazette and Priscilla's Roman Review. Sensing Tages' Curse came as a result of the aborted
infants, the Romans for a short moment began to change their ways,
from adultery and abortive practices, the abundant thievery and
murdering going on in their streets, with many turning to Christianity.
But then someone reminded them that the oracles of Tages (called
Sibyls) allowed yet another three to four hundred years before
doomsday! So many began lapsing back towards their old Pagan habits.
For a short time people were actually being charitable and merciful
and living in communes, says Juvenal in the seventeenth satire,
but then by the sound of the wailing dogs in the night, coming
from the Temple of Cybele, and then from the bloody tracks of
dogs running to and from the Forum, it was evident that the period
of Roman peace was over, for the Romans had taken to sacrificing
bitches again.
It was practice to sacrifice dogs, usually a female bitch, to
Cybele, the oriental earth goddess (also called Ishtar) who competed
for Juno's offerings. Fortunately through Priscilla's and other
Christian proselytizing, in time the bloody dog sacrifices were
abandoned. The meetings at night at the temple of Juno continued
however, and under Domitian, because all kinds of plagues and
droughts began affecting the empire, the practice of sacrificing
Christians was reintroduced (Nero had fathered the practice).
Tacitus, writing about the same time as Juvenal and Priscilla,
shows that the Christians were becoming a considerable nuisance,
because they would not worship in the piss of Juno's Temple, nor
sacrifice; and this godless behavior was causing Juno to get
pissed and other gods as well, including leading Senators and
the emperor. Wives of leading men were being lured away from
the temples and the beds of their men; and leading sages of the
day complained that Christians were causing the breakdown of the
Roman family (many of their wives turned to chastity for Jesus)
and were, in fact, the source of all kinds of droughts and plagues
occurring all over the empire. The offerings and sacrifices
being diverted from the temples caused jealousy among the gods
and they in revenge threw plagues upon the empire [re: Tacitus
15.44].
Consequently, to appease the gods and many famished high priests,
the emperor Domitian declared a great sacrifice and ordered the
offering of Christian blood as recompense for the neglect of the
gods. In this way the Romans for awhile redeemed themselves to
Juno, the crewed shaven priests in linen robes could run in the
streets, and the eternal gutter at the Temple of Juno began to
flow again.
The alternatives of abortion may not be as suitable a solution for our society, as a means of absolving our debts, because the conditions of Rome, which set the criteria justifying abortions, do not exactly apply to America, to wit:
Americans have no laws against adultery;
In Rome when a person offered to take a dog out for a walk, particularly near the temples of Cybyle, the dogs often reared back on their haunches and could only be drug out to the street by hauling on the leash and its foreleg. Thus, if there is one thing which is different between our nation and Rome (as we compare the decline and death of the two empires), it is clear, as said, that our nation is quite charitable to dogs and the Romans were not so benevolently disposed for the reasons mentioned. Today every home loves a pet, and among the most favored of pets are dogs. There is no animal on earth today which is more generous with its love – without asking anything in turn (excepting a decent meal) – than a dog. How the Romans could have sacrificed such loving beasts I will never understand. Fortunately in our society (no doubt because of our Christian past of being underdogs ourselves) dogs are highly treasured and loved. Those few who are not wanted and are found alone roaming the streets, not knowing where they might find shelter from the raging elements, are quickly rescued. No one in America could allow the poor things to endure the angers of nature, from the heat of summer to the vengeful spring rains and winter cold. We are a humane society and take our unwanted dogs to public facilities who try to find a new, loving home for them, or, as a last alternative, put them to sleep.
Now the Losers, whom we identified as the natural born unemployed
, ought to be treated this way too, I think. And the poor
orphaned kids who are among the divorced families should be given
equal treatment (for you statisticians we can add a footnote,
how we enjoy a 50% divorce rate, making half of the other two
thirds of our children also fatherless and living in poverty).
These too, a decent economist of the Plastic Age should identify
as Losers-born unemployed, so that our employers need not suffer
the guilt pains of interviewing people who are by nature destined
to fail. Let's see, with the 1/3 who are born out of wedlock,
and another 1/3 who are born into broken homes, we can right from
the outset eliminate 2/3 of our useless, Loser, natural born unemployed population. This will allow the unemployment
statistics to become validated, on the one hand (so our leaders
will not have to continue to strain at falsifying the true numbers
of our unemployed); furthermore, an accurate rendering of our
unemployed will give us stronger confidence in our economy, so
that those who have plastic money will be inspired to use it more,
and this will reinvigorate our financial wizars, and this in turn
will permit them to reassure us with a straight face: that we
truly are the happiest and most blessed nation on earth.
There is a merit to telling the truth: by placing a stigma
on all those who are Losers, the natural born unemployed, we can
not only better manage the welfare dole but also get an easier
grip on exactly who are homeless and where they come from. Through
this kind of identification our Plastic Age aficionados can then,
in clear conscience, force the beggars to return to their own
communities. Why should one community pay for another's bad
genes? Then each community could make an attempt, as they do with
homeless dogs, to find a home for the beggars or, as the final
solution, put those for whom a home could not be found to sleep.
Now there are laws presently on the books against putting people
to sleep; however some states are bending towards this end, particularly
in the case of the aging population who see no more merit in life.
As for the homeless and other disabled among our population, is
it not far more inhumane to prevent them from raising a shelter?
(in San Francisco the actual shelter beds available for the population
of over 7,000 homeless help about 20% or 1,500 beds). In light
of the lack of popular support and tax dollars to fund adequate
shelters, and in view of the fact that our laws do not permit
the homeless to raise tents or other shelters for themselves;
and in Berkeley, for instance, it is against the law to beg, it
is obvious that leaving a multitude homeless on our streets without
the rights to sustain themselves is certain death for them and
their loved ones (many children still in diapers accompany their
parent wandering the streets). Surely the treatment of these people
is inhumane.
It is debatable whether denying a multitude of useless people
the right to live is more inhumane than the Roman solution, of
enslaving them, or sending them to serve in the Coliseum;
and certainly it is not as inhumane as the Nazi solution of slaughtering
them.
In consideration of the foregoing alternatives, putting useless
people to sleep seems to be the most viable and humane solution
for a Plastic Age society. Here again, there are ways of putting people to sleep which can be inhumane and others which can be humane. Putting them to sleep through freezing them while still alive enables them to be awoken during some future age where they may be needed. God forbid – but it could happen – that we might suffer natural disasters and plagues which would destroy the ranks of our worthy elect; but replacements, in the sense of resupplying our elect, could then be resurrected from their icy tombs.
I am not one who would capitalize on a society's failures, but
there are people with the Midas Touch, such as George Soros, and other like entrepreneurial people who may latch onto the idea and invest in premortum freezers. G.E. and some top brands could no doubt make a killing here, selling family premortum freezers which families could use to put asleep and freeze – for a later awakening – the excess drudges in their ranks. In this way the trend, forcing communities to assume responsibility
for their own useless members, may then revert to individual
families of a city. If you produce useless people you must
freeze them, might be a way of writing the law, to promote responsible
family care.
All this, in the face of grim international battles among Multinational
companies (re: Against Leviathan, et al.) and the
reality we stated as a law of the Plastic Age [sic.
that job opportunities decline as the stock market increases],
will keep our unemployment levels down where the statisticians
like them, at about 7% (Can't have too many employed, they
say ; but Switzerland, Germany, and Japan might argue
the case).
You must admit that this is much better than leaving the poor
bastards and drudges which our Plastic Age considers useless
to waste away on our streets. And it certainly saves in the cost
of prisons as well, which we have yet to discuss.
The Romans and even European nations in the recent past threw the poor into debtor's prison, if they were not willing to serve in the arena, and many ended up as Galley Slaves or impressed seamen. This practice happens to be one of those concerns cited in the US Declaration of Independence, so it is not probable that our increasing prison population will be able to serve the Plastic Age in any redeeming sort of way as was the case during recent and ancient times. We have laws against prison labor competing with honest merchants, and these laws, from my point of view, ought not to be changed. Whilst there is a large consensus that we ought to build more prisons to accommodate the ill bred who steal and commit all kinds of mayhem in our society, for tourist states such as California the addition of prisons would only damage their image. The Tourist Information maps already have too many prisons and adding more prisons to the maps will only result in advertising the fact that California is willing to assume responsibility for other states' problems, on the one hand, and attract families to the state seeking their lost members on the other. Other states like New York would no doubt see the problem the same way, and there seems to be something noxious about states whose tourist attractions and fine cities become shaded by the high towers of prisons. There is a truth to Justinus's saying that gold laden tourists avoid prison states. Not very many tourists visited Aüchwitz when it was in operation, for instance, and cities like Rome which were clutterd with prison houses (to feed chattle to the Coliseum's patrons) attracted merely more undesirables, to wit:
Tacitus, Annals 15.44..in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.. Thus, cities whose only claim to fame is in its prison houses only attract the worst kind of riff-raff.
The Romans had another practice which we slightly mentioned above, which addressed the problem that the poor bastards and other undesirables began to weigh upon their conscience. To relieve their conscience the Romans allowed the poor to enlist as gladiators in the arena. This practice later European communities thought was too cruel, however; but since Americans have reverted to old Roman ways – reinstituting them with better skills and technologies – (for America knows best) the option to allow our homeless and other useless unemployed people to serve as gladiators should be considered. In Rome the beggars enlisted for life into the programs of the Coliseum's athletic directors. There was no pay involved, but the food was good and one was well cared for, as Juvenal attests. The physicians of the arena were most experienced and always on hand. The odds of self-destruction were about equal in Rome, whether one might be rolled on the street because of the thugs introduced by Nero, or, alternatively, fed to the lions in the Coliseum. Search the histories on the age and you will discover that many of the poor felt their odds better in the Coliseum. All one need do to serve in the Coliseum was to pledge that he or she would give everything, heart and soul, to their taskmaster. It was something like selling oneself to Mephistopheles, as most Romans then did, and as Americans now do; and in both cases failure in the competition in the arena was rewarded by death. It was a noble death in Rome, however, as opposed to the terms now expressed in American street contests, which do nothing but clog up our courts and waste a lot of tax dollars and certainly offer little redeeming value to our caged and suffering, listless lions.
Juvenal said one can always judge a society by what goes on in its courts. How true! Let us take the example of one of our recently fallen gladiators who, carrying the thoroughly bred instincts of the American arena into his home, murdered his wife and the mother of his children, so the state has argued. Now it looks bad for O. J. at this writing on the fourth of July, and there is a large sympathy which has run through the entire nation how he has fallen from grace. Most pitiful, seen in the cameras showing O. J.'s stressed features, was the scene of his poor dog wailing over the death of its matron. No doubt the murderer of the Simpson children's mother must wish that he had sacrificed the dog along with the woman and her friend, because the wailing dog seems to be an important clue to setting the time of the murder and whether the Simpson children's father could have done it. But we are a charitable nation and have a great deal of love for dogs, as argued earlier; and I doubt there are very many murderers who could be found in this great nation who could stomach murdering a dog, except to save it from unbearable pain.
The media say there has never been such a high-profile case in
our history as this murder of Mrs. Simpson and her friend, Mr.
Goldman. Thus, it makes a good yardstick by which we can measure
our great society over all and against the terms Juvenal suggested.
Americans have a great passion for who done it type mysteries,
probably another legacy inherited out of Rome, and this could
account for the widespread interest in the Simpson case and the
dismay Time Magazine had in having to report O. J.'s
fall. Sex, the violence of murder and rape; these arouse a passion
in the American citizen which can only be compared to the passion
of Rome's aristocracy for the arena and the scandal sheets of
the Roman Gazette . Again, Juvenal and Priscilla's Roman
Review are our original sources for this comparison.
And following the Simpson case we might discover how it is we
Americans have come to love sleazy affairs and violence in our
neighbors more than the Romans loved the same of Nero's House
and the violence in their Coliseum. Why we are more devoted to
these things may be ascertained by studying our Media. And a thorough
comparison of our Media to the Roman Media will demonstrate that
nothing excites passions more than a grissly picture. There is
a direct relationship between the reality of a picture and the
height of a person's climax of passion. This is demonstrated by
comparing the successful box-office hits to those which are losers.
The reality of a picture, particularly of a beast or person struggling
in death, is rewarded with the highest patronage and profits.
Sure, there is some benefit to adding commentary to a scene, but,
as Justinus said, a picure is worth a thousand words, and the
more real the picture with respect to our passions the greater
the patronage was his motto. Thus, many of Jusinus' accounts in
the Roman Gazette and Roman Review are accompanied
with sketches, but for American tastes they are too wordy.
The Roman's had not invented photography and were, because of it, far more barbaric than we. The Roman Gazette narratives on how the victims in the arena suffered, for instance, was in far too great a detail, for our blood, and they could have far more gently covered those sufferings by clicking a decent photo.
Now we are too progressive for lucid reporting or any kind
of enlightened literature for that matter, and believe that one
picture is worth a thousand words. But as mentioned before, many
of those who were found in the marketplace of Rome, who had lost
their fortunes, carried pictures of the disaster on their backs,
drawing more sympathy. This began from a tradition among Greek
sailors, who, suffering the loss of their ship at sea but surviving
none the less, would carry a picture of the sea disaster on their
back. One shipwreck was quite popular, called the Shipwreck of the Medusa, later immortalized by a French painter, and
now hanging in the Louvre in Paris. Anyway, the shipwrecked victim
could sell his picture by giving passer-bys a piece of his miserable
tale, reciting the casks laden with gold, spices, etc., which
he lost, in hope that he might enable a sponsor to come forward
to help him fund another expedition and recover his fortune. This
gave rise to phony legacy hunters who would try to capitalize
on people who had lost their fortunes. Today such people in America
carry on the tradition by stepping in front of on-coming cars-often
driven by a friend-to collect the insurance. Here, again, is another
illustration how American's depend upon photos, as such entrepreneurs
would be sure to have another friend with a camera near by to
capture the full effect of the car accident; whereas the Romans
could only hope on the efficacy of their paintings-which were
often subjected to rigourous interpretation, and they were no
less controversial than modern disputes aroused by cubist displays.
Yesterday (July 3) in the O. J. Simpson trial the defense presented
a large photo of Mrs. Simpson to those witnesses who had discovered
her messy remains. Not showing the photo to the T.V. viewers was
probably a media hype, to keep the viewers turning on and tuning
into the ongoing drama, but I rather suspect some scandal sheet
will get a copy of the photo and have it on the newsstands in
the near future. Americans love to look at corpses. This was evident
in the recent and still on-going purge in Rwanda, where the evening
news shows have regularly revealed photos of the thousands upon
thousands of mangled and butchered corpses laying in the streets
and floating in rivers, as well as the blood soaked bandages on
the still-alive in the refugee camps. If one were in possession
of such a photo in any of our streets and offered a stranger a
look at it, no doubt a crowd would soon accumulate and begin to
fight over it. Of course, our media are careful to note that such
pictures may not be suitable for your children to see, which they
will no doubt say when Mrs. Simpson's photo is revealed to our
death infatuated world.
The ancient world was far more direct and thus more benevolent towards its victims than America. Well, we are benevolent towards those enemy states with whom we engage in battle, just as Rome was-except in a few cases, such as Judaea. But for the most part Rome marched to bring peace to the world; and during the period of Roman dominion, called the Pax Romana, beginning with Caesar Augustus in particular, there was comparatively more peace in the world. Now Augustus's uncle, Julius Caesar, who introduced us to the Roman Empire and the end of the Roman Republic, gives us a superb illustration on the benevolence of the Roman state. The Helvetti (Swiss) were on the move out of their traditional heritage and heading towards an area near Lyon, endangering the peace of Gaul. So Julius Caesar dispatched his army to head off the Helvetti and force them to return to their homeland. There were about 50,000 men plus women and children in the migrating horde, and local leaders of the Gauls were legitimately concerned about them. Cut off at the pass, as it were, the Helvetti were surrounded by the Roman camp and put to siege. Rather than suffer defeat all 50,000 Helvetti murdered their families and then committed suicide. This, of course, struck Caesar right in the heart, as seen in his Gallic Wars.
But much more importantly it takes a bit of knowledge about a
particular people before one engages them is helpful. For you
never know what they might do; but sometimes, seeing a bit of
a pattern in their nature-particularly proud Westerners like the
Helvetti and Gauls, who equate death and honor in the same honorariums-one
may find an alternative which will enable the preservation of
life without shedding blood. Some peoples can come to grips with
life-saving principles more easily than others. Take the Jews,
for instance, who were diverted from sacrificing their children
to Baal through conversion to the Law of Moses.
The Law of Moses was written to honor and preserve all life, as
we have assessed, and we shall explore in more detail later in
this work. We mention this case because it was a simple measure
to persuade the Jews to move their offerings from one temple to
another. Where a temple, such as Baal's, Cybele's, and Juno's,
mostly attended through the sacrifices of prostitutes, may thrive
on struggling tiny children, the God of the Jews thrived on
the sacrifices of a pure heart, who was penitent, humble, charitable,
and merciful.
To get the Jews to adopt this uncommon practice (uncommon then
and now we say) the God of the Jews promised the Jews that
one day He would resurrect them and give them, who had been faithful
to his Merciful and Charitable cause, eternal life. Those
who were not faithful would be thrown to the fiery pit, like the
fiery pit before Baal, or later at Aüchwitz, where their
children were once sacrificed. From this came the idea that what
comes around goest around, the wicked will be rewarded with
the same evil they lay on others, etc. Many Jews took this
promise to heart, being continually reminded by prophets and forsaking
the whorish, money-grubbing way of life, and, like Priscilla and
her husband Aquilla, were even further enticed along the path
of charity and, following Jesus the Messiah, became Christian.
Now this Christianity bears no resemblance to that religion now
practiced under the same name. This is because Priscilla, and
others like her, were able to influence the Roman aristocracy
and even members of Caesar's household to adopt the charitable
and merciful way of God; and their disciples--seeing this as a
realistic solution to converting their wicked age to one of a
higher metal--in only two hundred and some odd years converted
the Emperor Constantine to Christianity (around 304 A.D.) All
this was achieved through nonviolent ministrations, achieved,
we dare to say, mostly through women devoted to a higher and more
noble cause than that to which they were accustomed. This religion
fostered by Priscilla and others became known as the Greek Orthodox
religion, but after Constantine's time a split occurred between
Rome and Constantinople, and the Roman Church began to follow
more pecuniary instincts, giving up the simple communal structure
of the Orthodox disciples.
To avoid being accused of whoredom, the Roman Church, being
already lured to the practice of cohabitating with luxury in Rome
and the princes of the earth, adopted the practice of celibacy
among its priests and threw women out of the priesthood. The trend
was already at work during Priscilla's and Aquilla's time, as
seen in the Roman Review above cited, in the strong attempts
to censor her in Rome. By the time Priscilla joined her heavenly
maker, women could no longer practice the Christian Ministry in
the Roman Church, nor could the ministry be married to anyone
except Jesus. Although agreeing that women could not be priests,
marriage of priests was then, and still is, permitted among the
Orthodox Christians. Why marriage was permitted in the Orthodox
Church is easy to see: because they emphasized poverty and could
easily sustain married ministers; on the other side, in the Roman
Church, where the priesthood was used to luxury, the booty from
the offering baskets could not cover the raising of families in
the opulance to which the Roman priests had gotten accustomed;
so to account for this problem celibacy, to confine the distribution
of the loot to fewer hands, became instituted. Bastards bred in
the Roman Church were turned over to orphanages, and this avoided
the common marital support problems so common today.
Martin Luther nailed the phony mendicants at the door, as it were, and protested the sordid affairs of the Roman Church; and after the Reformation he introduced in the fifteenth century (re: Planks towards Freedom) the Protestant Church had a relapse falling away towards the Orthodox Church, and abandoned the celibacy requirement, forcing their congregations to support their pastors' families. This was not a problem, since the congregations – in a back-lash against Rome – frowned on affluent and lascivious living anyway; but then, through the Plastic Age reformations, Protestants discovered a means by which they could restore themselves to the gilded standards of the Roman Church. This came about through an alliance with the Media and in particular the Prince of the Air as follows: the offerings – the bulk of which are now collected through television – to finance their lust for many mansions and Rolls Royces and the pandering bejeweled ladies they attract – were turned over to Media specialists. The Media specialists created clever ad campaigns showing how a church of the air's offerings could be used to save orphans in the Third World and souls across the T.V. seas, whose numbers are in the billions. Here we find the fifth stage of sorts in the march of Christianity, with the other four stages being: first as nonviolent mercenaries, then a second stage, with the swords of the Popes in alliance with the kings of the earth; a third stage by the swords of Kings and Queens [re: Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand] seeing the golden mean in converting the heathen; a fourth stage through puritanical marchers for Jesus in America, revolting against the third, who inspired us towards the fifth stage, of returning the march of Christianity to commanders situated in the high towers of Mammon. Recalling the panderers in the Roman market with pictures of disasters on their backs; now Evangelical Americans have carried the practice to heights Priscilla and the ancients would not believe!
By the seventh century A.D., no doubt somewhat inspired by the Orthodox Church, a new wave of marchers against evil came on the scene. Being true to the scriptures of the Jews, and resenting the way some Christians were distorting the Jewish Religion, Muhammad was compelled to write his Koran, which [re: On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church ], accepted Jesus as the Messiah, and thus his Gospel, and expounded a profound plea to uphold and defend the Holy Scriptures [Torah] of the Jews. Seeing resistance to the plea, the disciples of Muhammad concluded that their mission could only be achieved through violence (a practice against the desire of the Torah, and Jesus, incidentally), to wit:
Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah [1377 A.D.] III.31 In the Muslim community, the holy war [Jihad] is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force. Therefore the caliphate and royal authority are united in Islam, so that the person in charge can devote the available strength to both of them at the same time.
The other religious groups [i.e. Christian; ed. note] did not
have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious
duty to them, save only for purposes of defence.
The leaders of Islam, who were dedicated to converting the world
to obey the words of the Koran (which invoked the Torah and Gospel
of Jesus) through the Jihad, contradicted their authority, and
this should be corrected. We believe that there is enough blood
being shed on our streets through the common practices noted herein
that there is no need to add to the bloodshed by promoting the
Holy Scriptures and the Gospel of Jesus through violent means.
Both Christians and Moslems have had enough time to demonstrate
the feasibility of converting the world to God through bloodshed,
and their cause-being no more effective now than it was during
the era of the Arab Caliphate and the Crusades-we believe has
demonstrated that bloodshed is no more effective in furthering
the causes of God cited in our works than the high T.V. Towers
which now incite them.
We must always keep the record of history in mind when we make
hasty judgments. Today we have a sure word of truth that the most
abundant disciples of Islam converted through the good examples
of Moslem Merchants moving merchandise between Europe and the
Far East. It is through this manner that Islam prospered, more
than any other. And the same can nearly be said of the Christian
Church, that discipleship in the church continued through the
good examples of their good leaders. But this latter conclusion
may yet be debated, as there seems to be a common notion among
the Judaic based religions that to protect the dignity of their
leaders bloodshed is once again in order. Truth and understanding,
we say, works far better than the sword. When people see that
lying only creates confusion and truth understanding, then our
thesis, that faith without works leads to death, will be verified.
We need only a few short comments here. Khaldûn points out that whilst the spokes of a wheel help it turn, a wheel cannot turn without its center. He used this parable to describe how nations keep out of the pit of destruction. They need a strong center around which their society may revolve. If one does not properly attend to the center, the wheel will fail and the wagon above will collapse. When it collapses it is like a potato wagon turning over; and this, my father used to tell me, as I sat with him and my older brother on the porch steps during a thunderstorm, is what causes thunder. So with this in mind, let us now more directly explore the cause of the death of our republic and any possible hopes or remedies for its renewal. Keep in mind as I relate some fundamental principles: that I have already heard the thunder in the distant cloud coming our way. And I think you will agree, after comparing what we are about to discuss to that upon which we have already labored, your nodding ego might be shaken to hear the thunder of the storm before us.
No doubt you have discovered by now that we are keying off of Priscilla and the ancients, a cheap double entendre of sorts we must admit. But the key which holds a wheel to its axle, no doubt you will agree, is the first thing to fail in an unattended wheel. Keep the wheel lubed and it will turn freely on its bearing; forget the oil and the bearing will fail. If the bearing fails it will break the key which holds the wheel in place.
We oil the wheel of a nation with the knowledge of the ancients. There is nothing new under the sun, and any clever society which thinks it is cleverer than the ancients is bound to lose their bearings; and by this I mean their wheels. Americans, more than any society ever to walk this earth, think they are cleverer in all things. So among the nations of the earth, where the big turnover – or bust – could be first expected, is America.
Having anointed a nation with oil – assuming it is eager enough to take it – then we must deal with the key to the wheel, which, as said, is where all wheels are prone to fail. And this leads us back to Priscilla, the editor of the Roman Review.
If we were to compare her to modern women we would see a striking
anomaly. Priscilla is avant-guard, a woman's woman, as it were,
and a lady to men too. This is not because she came from the Black
Sea area, such as Lydia, but because she instinctively knew what
it was to be a woman, whose first responsibility was to her husband
and the well being of her family; and fulfilling this instinct
she held a community together which eventually went on to converting
the entire Western World through the conversion of Constantine
the Great.
Now Priscilla came from a people who placed a high responsibility
on their women, being not only related to fidelity, but also to
be the source of that stream of embryonic water now known as Judaism.
Witness the origin of this stream, for instance. It began with
Sarah who laughed that God would give her a son at her great age.
To her husband of ninety, who was Abraham, she conceived a son
named Isaac, who almost suffered a child's worst fortune, to lose
his life and inheritance, and then his father arranged a marriage
with a cousin named Rebecca who gave Isaac twins named Jacob and
Esau.
We remind our dear reader that Judaism is a Patriarchal religion
and society, just as was true with most other Western, Semitic
and Indo-European, nations. In Judaism, in particular, however,
there was a law which determined whether one was entitled to be
a Jew through one's mother's lineage. This started with Rebecca,
who, according to the Scriptures, made a Covenant with God, separate
from Abraham, which determined which of the two twins from
her womb should inherit the Blessing of Abraham. It was Jacob,
the younger twin, who got the inheritance; and this tradition
got passed on, particularly where the younger child became the
source of the gene pool of what is now considered an authentic
son of Judah. For Jacob (renamed Israel) had twelve sons, one
of whom was Judah, who bore twins through his widowed daughter-in
-law, Tamar, who came to him as a temple prostitute. He married
her of course, and we need not get into the crusty details why
Tamar wanted to bear Judah, then himself an old man, a child.
In any event the younger twin, Phares, pulled the plug on Zarah,
and managed with the flip of his finger out of the womb to get
the key part of Abraham's Blessing. He would become the father
of the King which was promised to Israel. From him came Ruth,
who was married to Boaz, a foreigner, who gave birth to a poor
shepherd named Jesse. Among the several sons of Jesse, the prophet
Samuel, sent to select the King Promised to the Children of Israel,
chose the youngest and smallest son named David.
Now not all whoring around can spell the end of a dynasty or a
nation, however you might put it, as we can see in the instance
of Tamar and again in the instance of David and Bathsheba, whose
story we need not get into here, as it would side-track us into
again talking about murder and the like, which is not the direction
we are taking here. In any event, out of an adulterous relationship
David and Bathsheba produced two children, the first of which
died soon after it was born. The other, Solomon, whose name means,
Peace, was conceived after David and Bathsheba were properly married,
and to him was given all of David's Kingdom. The Kingdom of David, composed of what we now know as Jordan, the West
Bank, and Israel lasted a full seventy years. We can compare this to the Soviet Union which though a modern empire, saw its demise just recently after seventy years of power. Most Western Dynasties (let's call those who control the power of a nation a dynasty related or not, because governments tend, like families, to preserve their own "family," an elect ), require the members of its core to grease the palms of those which enable it to turn, as it were, keeping the simile of the wheel. The core member of a dynasty was usually in antiquity a Chief or King – often elected by a body of elders, such as the House of Lords in England – but today in America he appears in the guise of a functionary called a President. The difference between our President and a King, who founds a dynasty which generally reigns for the duration of at most five generations, is that our President has limited terms of office but none the less has the ability to found a dynastic family which will continue his programs on for another generation, possibly longer.
Every seventy years, in our system, as well as we saw in the Soviet
Union, and in David's Kingdom, we can expect a change. Out with
the old fuddy-duddy's and in with the new. That sort of thing.
The ancients figured out that although the average life span of
a man is about seventy years the life of a generation is forty
years. Five forty generation administrations is about the extent
of the life of a dynasty, which is two hundred years. Now we can
apply this ancient criteria (see Khaldûn) to the test of
our own nation, founded in 1776 but made a Federal Republic through
the Constitution of 1785.
Most of our modern troubles began, as a side note, in 1975 with
the repulsion of the Nixon Administration and beginning of the
Ford Administration. With Ford came the practice of funding programs
through sultry means. We speak of the custom of running a deficit
(selling bonds) to finance programs to keep the people of this
nation happy. This practice has a life-span itself which is related
to the ability of the tax system to fend off those who finally
decide that their investment in the US is no longer safe. And
they, like the fellows chasing flakes in the Roman Forum, begin
to hang out among the power brokers of government, ever mindful
of the immediate need to collect on their loan. And the power
brokers, like the whores in the Roman Forum, begin to sell themselves
and their nation to wave off the debt as it were. The key to stopping
this practice and the inevitable economic collapse ahead is to
find a Priscilla who is conscious of her responsibility as a woman,
to preserve her family, and who will step forward and march the
bastards destroying this nation into the sea.
There is a precedent for this.
At the source of our troubles and also the salvation of republics
are whores and ladies. A whore is not a lady.
When we refer to the ladies of Paris we call to mind those noble
women who marched to Versaille to save the Virtue of their people
and found a new nation dedicated to the notions of liberty, equality
before the law, and Human Dignity. There was a
precedence here, for the daughters of the American Revolution
had marched for a similar cause in America. Whilst it appears
that our own ladies marched to no avail, based upon the retrograde
to our present state of affairs, we hope, as said, some ladies
may again arise and follow their example. Perhaps you, dear Sir,
may know some ladies of such good breeding.
There was a Danish King named Harold [Harold's Saga
] whose wife accosted him one morning, complaining about
all the rowdy yelling and screaming going on all night long. She
was so pissed she refused him and his smelly gang of ruffians
breakfast and sent them out of the house. Well what had been going
on all night long was a battle between King Herod and some pirates
in long ships from God knows where. No doubt one group egged the
other on and brought about the encounter. Maybe they were fighting
over the rights to plunder Ireland. I don't know. Whatever it
was, the battle didn't accomplish anything but to keep the wife
and kids awake all night long. Don't bring your battles home, was the moral to the story, I suppose. Anyway the
Danes ended up doing all of their fighting in England, Ireland,
Iceland, Sicily, and other remote places where they need not face
an angry wife. Then, after a few years, they could return home,
gold laden with a little trinket for the wife, in triumph and
hit the sack.
The practice caught on... and during the Kennedy/Johnson era was
best put into practice through the conclusion that all of our
wars must be fought on foreign soil. The problem here was setting
boundaries where the battles should be fought, and unluckily Korea
and Vietnam were chosen. The borders of the American Empire, the
wisemen of the Johnson Administration agreed, were just a few
miles south of Hanoi, stretching across the China Sea to the DMZ
in Korea. Going East from that border including most of the Pacific,
across the rocky mountains and to the shores of Tripoli, and then
Lebanon, they set their Eastern border. Not a bad empire, supposing
they could hold it. What was nice about it was the fact that the
wife and family would not get disturbed over any unruly conduct.
So one battle raged after another, but since it could but best
be seen on Television and in photo journals it didn't stir up
any problems among the ladies. Just the typical panderers running around the market with pictures on their backs,
they concluded.
Now the wisemen pulled off a clever thing
Running out of booty by which they could extend their war games,
they decided to legitimize it by calling the Vietnam Act
of War a Resolution. This would not ruffle
any feathers among the ladies. For all the Resolution said was
that their sons were not being sent off to act in War but to act
in a resolution. By then the ladies had been given a birth-control
pill which allowed them to whore around without getting caught.
They ceased to be ladies, and getting stretched out in their whoring
around, together with their confusion over the idea, whether it's
okay to kill their own family, they were found standing in line
for the trinkets and booty wars always bring, when their menfolk
return from war. They got jobs out of it, new freedoms; the Vietnam
War was doing alright for every whore in our nation, including
the one's overseas. While this sounds a bit sinister, there were
a few Priscillas who refused to tolerate the whoring around and
began marching in the streets.
At the same time somebody had told the blacks that they had equal rights and they too began to march, realizing that they had been raped enough. The practice of abusing blacks seemed to have been cultivated through the Judaic based religions, following a logic best summarized by Kaldhûn which applied to both Moslem and Christian perceptions of the black peoples:
Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, II.23 The rule of Islam is known for its justice. Such disintegration is in human nature. It happens when people lose control of their own affairs and become the instrument of someone else.
Therefore, the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because Negroes have little that is essentially human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.
While we see in Khaldûn many great insights, which we shall
yet get into, there are some perceptions he took for granted which
are not in accord with either the Torah or the Gospel of Jesus,
as they were passed through Christianity and into Islam over the
ages.
We can see in our founding fathers the same perception of justice:
as they looked out their windows, one eye reading the proof
of the Declaration of Independence , with the other eye
keeping an eye on their slaves drudging in their fields.
Questioning the validity of this sort of justice, some Priscillas
and blacks began filling up our streets with protest signs and
then one, kneeling beside a friend at Kent State, who
had a pool of blood flowing out of his shredded corpse, screamed
and the entire nation, mind you, for a moment heard her. That
scream, Sir, was a sound which spelled the end of the Vietnam
Era. After the pull-out most of our women relapsed and in and
out of our legislatures continued their whoring around, however.
But some remained chaste. That was about thirty years ago. It's
getting time for another shout, I think, as it appears that the
people of this nation have scheduled for themselves and their
children the payment of a great debt and sacrifice. The light
which was once in their fathers and mothers is nearly gone, and,
using the jargon of technocrats, most of the substance of our
world has now obtained what could be better described as its half
life.
We lament that all of the crusaders for justice seemed to have died out when the marching in the Vietnam era faded. We complained that many of those who marched in the streets for justice in Vietnam, who now beg in our streets, cannot now be motivated to march for justice for themselves!
Now no one is motivated to standards of justice. Most of those who participated in our Great Rage [a greater one is yet ahead!] sold out to the system which now persecutes our poor: they cut their hair, took cushy jobs, wearing pin-stripe double-breasted suits (including both men and women), and got on with making a fortune out of America. For the sell – outs there was no time for family, and married couples trying to keep up with the Jones's (in Rome it was the Graccii ) built houses for postponed kids, and when a babe might free itself from the womb unscathed, it would then be sent off to a kid place where trees were often found in the form of concrete girders. For our rising middle class, the money rolled in, a new order was on the horizon, and then Gloria [#!!#?#] had to complain about the fact that wives weren't being treated fairly. This appealed to a lot of women who had been pissing in the market – as in Rome when people once pissed at the Temple of Juno – and being reminded that the grass might be a bit greener at the Jones' next door (for a good lay in the hay as it were), our women set their family on the move again. Next door that is..
With the family breakups came the sale of the home, since rents and mortgages could not be funded on one income alone. The women, still struggling on lower salaries, were left with the kids and the house and their job, and the husband was usually sent into exile, another town, another job, too far away to see the kids or care for them.
This brings us fully into the Plastic Age noted
for its streets which are fully lined with homeless beggars,
who alone mind our stores while displaying signs usually concluding,
most undeservingly, with the message, God bless you!; and these
include men and women alike, young and old. Millions of homeless
people! their credit cards were ripped up long ago, their furniture
thrown out on the street, and they have been reduced to wandering,
carrying everything they own if they are lucky, in a grocery cart;
if not on their back. Most wear their winter coats and sweaters
winter and summer, so not to have them stolen. Perhaps you didn't
notice, fellow Americans, how much they must suffer (besides the
other cruelties they are subjected to) with so many clothes on
their sweating frames, as you rest by your shaded pool, martini
in one hand and a towel in the other to wipe your dripping brow.
Now this hardship was noticed by a local government funded
laboratory of the Department of Energy who thought it was quite
unusual that a human body could tolerate such layers of clothing
in the summer heat. Some anthropologists got right on it, discovering
that we may have produced a new race, something like the Terra-del-Fuego
people. So they began bringing into their lab a beggar from one
parking meter here and a beggar from another meter, and counted
their calorie intake. The Lab was involved in radiation experiments,
and in the face of diminishing federal grants [because of the
inevitable collapse of our economy] carrying on their dubious
inquiry into the nature of power was being criticized. Some of
us wondered, in fact, why they didn't carry out their energy experiments
using a bread box, as the lines of electro-magnetic energy prefer
right angles and putting them through the paces of a large circular
course only slows a particle's velocity (recognizing this they
sought to make the circles bigger so to make the bends larger
and thus less of a drag on the particles they tried to accelerate
in their atom smashers).
It is doubtful there has been ever a greater congregation of idiots
ever seen in this world as those on that hill. It was in reality
a country club for the rich, anyway--the rich have never been
known to produce much wisdom, said Socrates and others-- and because
of the lab's connections it was able to find many busy-work projects
like investigating the beggars to keep it afloat. How they got
involved with the beggars is after this manner: the government
was sensitive to the increasing numbers of beggars crowding our
city streets, making it difficult for retailers to conduct their
business. These beggars are interfering with capitalism
! the shop keepers all screamed. Hearing the shout from below
men in the lab ran down the hill, with ray guns in hand, to investigate
its source. Seeing the curious beggars they forgot what called
them down the hill and returned up the hill with a few in tow.
Meanwhile beggars began piling up on the streets in Moscow too,
and many on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean began wondering whether
with the demise of Communism in the East capitalism in the West
might also fail. Suddenly it occurred to our magnets of industry
that American prosperity grew when it was dropping bombs and dropped
when the bombing ceased. Then came another scream, that we must
replace the bombs with plowshares. The problem here was that the fields – because of the extraordinary contamination of our Plastic Age – were no longer much use for anything except dropping bombs!
How curious that we should end up in this predicament ! one philosopher muttered. Then, in the distance I heard a woman scream, with her tot clinging to her knee, Who did this ?
About the time when the lab technocrats were running down the
hill with their ray guns I was walking along Shattuck Avenue.
There were the usual count of beggars, constantly moving ahead
of the police, and at an intersection I noticed a young girl on
one corner, a young man on another, a woman with a small child
on the other and an older man on the other. Suddenly a shadow
passed over the intersection and the young girl rose up, looking
at the woman across the street and cried, Mother!, and ran to
her. The young man rose, recognizing the man across from him,
and went over to him, touching his face, exclaiming, Father, is
it really you? Then the girl turned to the young man, seeing that
they were brother and sister. Then the shadow disappeared down
the street and the family returned to its former positions of
begging. The old man and his son were part of the beggar party
drug up the hill by the lab technocrats; and this is the last
I saw of them. The daughter situated herself further down the
street from her mother. After that a Nun coming from the convent
nearby, having heard the shouting, crossed herself, muttering
a formula of types and shadows of things to come. Someone stopped
her and asked, Sister, did you see who it was that caused the
shadow ? She replied, No, I think it could have been St. Peter, however – He was well known for casting shadows . Another
woman recalled a scripture, saying, it might have been Elijah..
Then they all parted.
We've gathered some selections from Khaldûn's work which seem fitting advise considering the complaints listed in this work. As in the case with Luther we assembled them into planks, and – those who have followed our argument in Against Leviathan – the planks are fundamental things which keep ships of state afloat.
1. The impotent person is he who never acts on his own [from 'Umar b. Abî Rabî'ah, 700 A.D.; Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, Intro.]
2. When there is a general change of conditions, it is as if the entire creation had changed and the whole world been altered, as if it were a new and repeated creation, a world brought into existence anew. Therefore, there is need at this time that someone should systematically set down the situation of the world among all regions and races as well as the customs and sectarian beliefs that have changed for their adherents, doing for this age what al-Mas'ûdî did for his [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, Intro.].
3. Admission of one's ignorance is a specific religious duty. He whom God helps finds his way made easy and his efforts and quests successful [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, Intro.].
4. Human souls long for praise, and people pay great attention to this world and the positions and wealth it offers. As a rule, they feel no desire for virtue and have no special interest in virtuous people [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I, Prel. Remarks.].
5. Another reason making untruth unavoidable – and this one is more powerful than all the reasons previously mentioned – is ignorance of the nature of the various conditions arising in civilization [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I, Prel. Remarks].
6. Students often happen to accept and transmit absurd information that, in turn, is believed on their authority [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I, Prel. Remarks; this applies as a general rule to how the population handles information, believing what they want to believe; ed. note].
7 ..politics is concerned with the administration of home or city in accordance with ethical and philosophical requirements, for the purpose of directing the mass toward a behavior that will result in the preservation and permanence of the species [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I, Prel. Remarks].
8. [referring to Aristotle's Book on Politics ; ed. note] 'The world is a garden the fence of which is the dynasty. The dynasty is an authority through which life is given to proper behavior. Proper behavior is a policy directed by the ruler. The ruler is an institution supported by the soldiers. The soldiers are helpers who are maintained by money. Money is sustenance brought together by the subjects. The subjects are servants who are protected by justice. Justice is something familiar and through it, the world persists. The world is a garden...'-and then it begins again from the beginning. These are eight sentences of political wisdom. They are connected with each other, the end of each one leading into the beginning of the next. They are held together in a circle with no definite beginning or end. The author was proud of what he had hit upon and made much of the significance of the sentences.
When our discussion in the section on royal authority and dynasties has been studied and due critical attention given to it, it will be found to constitute an exhaustive, very clear, fully substantiated interpretation and detailed exposition of these sentences [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I, Prel. Remarks].
9. God guides with His light whom He will [re: Koran 24.35; Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I, Prel. Remarks].
10. Through cooperation the needs of a number of persons, many times greater than their own number, can be satisfied. Likewise, each individual needs the help of his fellow beings for his defence [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.1].
11. When..mutual cooperation exists, man obtains food for his nourishment and weapons for his defence. God's wise plan that mankind should subsist and the human species be preserved will be fulfilled.
Consequently, social organization is necessary to the human species. Without it, the existence of human beings would be incomplete. God's desire to settle the world with human beings and to leave them as His representatives on earth [re: Koran 2.30] would not materialize. [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.1].
12. God says in the Koran: 'We shall lay upon you a weighty
message' [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah I.1, Sixth Pref.
Discussion].
13. [concerning the things Muhammad commanded the disciples to
do]..Abû Sufyân's reply was: 'Prayer, almsgiving,
charity, and chastity' ..the chastity to which Heraclius referred
is infallibility. [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.1,
Sixth Pref. Discussion].
14. The number 'seventy' is used by the Arabs to express the idea
of a large number [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.1,
Sixth Pref. Discussion].
15. God guides towards the truth [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.1, Sixth Pref. Discussion].
16. Muhammad said,' Every infant is born in a natural state. It
is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a heathen'
[Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.2.6].
16. Evil is the quality that is closest to man when he fails to
improve his customs and when religion is not used as the model
to improve him. The Great mass of mankind is in that condition
with the exception of those to whom God gives success. Evil qualities
in man are injustice and mutual aggression. He who casts his eye
upon the property of his brother will lay his hand upon it to
take it, unless there is a restraining influence to hold him back.
The poet thus says:
Injustice is a human trait. If you find
A moral man, there is some reason why he is not unjust.
Mutual aggression of people in towns and cities is averted by
the authorities and the government [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.2.7].
17. One feels shame when one's relatives are treated unjustly
or attacked..[a feeling of solidarity {group feeling}] causes
a person to help his relatives for the known motive, in order
to escape the shame he would feel in his soul were a person to
whom he is somehow related treated unjustly [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.2.8].
18. [referring to the Jews] ..their group feeling has disappeared
and that for many long years they have been exposed to humiliation.
Many other inhabitants of cities who hold noble pedigrees but
no longer share in any group feeling are inclined to similar nonsense
[Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.2.12].
19. Prestige is an accident that affects human beings. It comes
into being and decays inevitably. No human being exists who possesses
an unbroken pedigree of nobility from Adam down to himself. The
only exception was made in the case of the Prophet, as a special
act of divine grace to him, and as a measure designed to safeguard
his true character [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.2.14].
20. ..good qualities attest the potential existence of royal
authority in a person who possesses group feeling. Whenever we
observe people who possess group feeling and who have gained control
over many lands and nations, we find in them an eager desire for
goodness and good qualities, such as generosity, the forgiveness
of error, tolerance toward the weak, hospitality toward guests,
the support of dependents, maintenance of the indigent, patience
in adverse circumstances, faithful fulfillment of obligations,
liberality with money for the preservation of honor, respect for
the religious law and for the scholars who are learned in it,
observation of the things to be done or not to be done that those
scholars prescribe for them, thinking highly of religious scholarship,
belief in and veneration for men of religion and a desire to receive
their prayers, great respect for old men and teachers, acceptance
of the truth in response to those who call to it, fairness to
and care for those who are too weak to take care of themselves,
humility toward the poor, attentiveness to the complaints of supplicants,
fulfillment of the duties of the religious law and divine worship
in all details, avoidance of fraud, cunning, deceit, and shirking
of obligations, and similar things. Thus, we know that these are
the qualities of leadership.. [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah
, I.2.19].
21. Time gets the upper hand over the original group in power.
Their prowess disappears as the result of senility. The duties
of the dynasty saps their energy. Time feasts on them..[Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.2.21]
22. ..group feeling is proportionate to the degree of relationship.
Eventually a great change takes place in the world, such as the
transformation of a religion, or the disappearance of a civilization,
or something else willed by the power of God. Then, royal authority
is transferred from one group to another-to the one that God permits
to effect that change [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah,
I.2.21].
23. ..a secret..'The common people follow the religion of the
ruler' [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.2.22].
24...another secret..that a man is a natural leader by virtue
of the fact that he has been made a representative of God on earth
[Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.2.22].
25. The rule of Islam is known for its justice [Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.2.22].
26. ..labor is the real basis of profit. When labor is not appreciated
and is done for nothing, the hope for profit vanishes, and no
productive work is done. The sedentary population disperses, and
civilization decays [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.2.25].
27. Royal leadership and government,..require the leader to
exercise a restraining influence by force. If not, his leadership
would not last [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.2.27].
28. ..group feeling..means affection and willingness to fight
and die for each other [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah,
I.3.1].
29. ..royal authority results from superiority. Superiority results
from group feeling [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.4].
30. ..every mass undertaking by necessity requires group feeling.
This is indicated in Muhammad's saying, 'God sent no prophet who
did not enjoy the protection of his people.' [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.4].
31. A dynasty is stronger at its centre than it is at its border
regions. When it has reached its farthest expansion, it becomes
too weak and incapable to go any farther..when a dynasty is overrun
from the centre, it is of no avail to it that the outlying areas
remain intact. It dissolves at once. The centre is like the heart
from which the vital spirit spreads. Were the heart to be overrun
and captured, all the extremities would be routed. This may be
observed in the Persian dynasty.. [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.7].
32. A dynasty rarely establishes itself firmly in lands with many
different tribes and groups [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.9].
33. On the other hand, it is easy to establish a dynasty in lands
that are free from group feelings. Government there will be a
tranquil affair, because rebellions are few, and the dynasty there
does not need much group feeling. This is the case in contemporary
Egypt and Syria [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.9].
34. By its very nature, royal authority goes in for luxury and
prefers tranquility and peace. As to claiming all glory for itself,
this is because, as we have mentioned before, royal authority
exists through group feeling. Group feeling is something composite
that results from amalgamating many groups, one of which is stronger
than all the others...
In the same way, one of the various tribal group feelings must
be superior to all, in order to be able to bring them together,
to unite them, and to weld them into one group feeling comprising
all the various groups. All the various groups are then under
the influence of the superior group feeling...
As to preferring tranquility and peace, this is because a nation
acquires royal authority only by pressing its claims, having in
mind the purpose of obtaining superiority and royal authority.
When this purpose is accomplished, all efforts cease [Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.3.10].
35. When the natural tendencies of royal authority to claim
all glory for itself and to acquire luxury and tranquility have
been firmly established, the dynasty approaches senility [Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.3.10].
36. ..when one of them claims all glory for himself, he treats
the others severely and holds and appropriates it for himself.
People thus become too lazy to care for fame. They become dispirited
and come to love humbleness and servitude [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.10].
37. ..group feeling decays because the people who represent the
group feeling have lost their energy. As a result, the dynasty
progresses toward weakness and senility [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.10].
38. [luxury increases]. As a result, allowances become larger,
and the militia decreases in number..The result is that the military
defence of the dynasty is weakened and the power of the dynasty
declines [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.10].
39. Furthermore, luxury corrupts the character, through luxury
the soul acquiring diverse kinds of evil and sophisticated customs..[Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.3.10].
40. When people become accustomed to tranquility and rest and
adopt them as character traits, they become part of their nature...The
trait of savagery (that former generations had possessed) undergoes
transformation [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.10].
41. In a dynasty affected by senility as the result of luxury
and rest, it sometimes happens that the ruler chooses helpers
and partisans from groups not related to the ruling dynasty but
used to toughness. He uses them as an army which will be better
able to suffer the hardships of wars, hunger, and privation. This
could prove a cure to the senility of the dynasty when it comes,
but only until God permits His command regarding the dynasty to
be executed.
That was what happened to the Turkish dynasty in the East. Most
members of its army were Turkish clients. The rulers then chose
horsemen and soldiers from among the white slaves (Mamelukes)
who were brought to them. They were more eager to fight and better
as who had grown up in easy circumstances as a ruling class in
the shadow of the government.
The same was the case with the Almohad dynasty in Ifrîqiyah.
Their rulers often selected their armies from the Zanâtah
and the Arabs. They used many of them, and disregarded their own
people who had become used to luxury. Thus, the dynasty obtained
another, new life, unaffected by senility. [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.11].
42. Dynasties have a natural life span like individuals...the
natural life span of individuals is one hundred and twenty years,
that is, the period astrologers call the great lunar year [ [this
was Moses's age when he died; ed. note]..however, as a rule no
dynasty lasts beyond the life span of three generations. A generation
is identical with the average duration of the life of a single
individual, namely, forty years, the time required for growth
to be completed and maturity reached. [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.11].
43. In the course of ..three generations, the dynasty grows senile
and is worn out. Therefore, it is in the fourth generation that
ancestral prestige is destroyed [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.11].
44. If the time is up, the end of the dynasty cannot be put off
for a single hour, nor can it be advanced.
In this way the life span of a dynasty corresponds to the life
span of an individual; it grows up and passes into an age of stagnation
and thence into retrogression. Therefore people commonly say that
the life span of a dynasty is one hundred years..[{ note how reassessment
of dynastic cycles tends one to round out to lower numbers; ed.
note} Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.12].
45. Luxury will at first give additional strength to a dynasty..a
greater number of clients and followers is acquired..When the
first and second generations are gone and the dynasty starts to
become senile, its followers and clients cannot do anything on
their own to put the dynasty and its royal authority on a firmer
basis, because they never had authority of their own but were
dependent on the men of the dynasty and merely supported it. When
the roots are gone the branches cannot be strong on their own,
but disappear completely..[Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah,
I.3.14].
46. The stages of dynasties...
Through the conditions that are peculiar to a particular stage,
the supporters of the dynasty acquire in that stage traits of
character such as do not exist in any other stage. Traits of character
are the natural result of the peculiar situations in which they
are found.
The conditions and stages of a dynasty as a rule no more than
five in number:
47. The monuments of a given dynasty are proportionate to its original power [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.15].
48. ..before people acquire royal authority they are a model in their ways...if they chose followers after they have acquired royal authority, their royal rank causes them to make a distinction between master and client, and another between close relatives and clients or followers...The situation of followers, therefore, is different. They are now on the same level as strangers..
At the end of their power, dynasties eventually resort to employing strangers and accepting them as followers. These people, however, do not acquire any such glory as the men who had become followers of the dynasty before it came to power..their status as followers is too recent in origin. Also, the destruction of the dynasty is imminent. Therefore, they occupy a very low and humble position. In taking them on as followers and replacing his old clients and original followers by them, the ruler is motivated by the fact that (his old clients and followers) have become overbearing. They show little obedience to him...This is why the ruler comes to shun them and uses others in their place. It has been only for a short time that he has come to care for these others and to use them as followers. Therefore, they do not attain positions of glory but retain their position as outsiders . This is the case with dynasties at their end. As a rule, the words 'followers' and 'clients' are used for the first group. The more recent followers are called 'servants' and 'helpers' [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.15].
49. Royal authority implies a form of organization necessary to mankind. It requires superiority and force, which express the wrathfulness and animality of human nature. The decisions of the ruler will therefore, as a rule, deviate from what is right. They will be ruinous to the worldly affairs of the people under his control, since, as a rule, he forces them to execute his intentions and desires, and this may be beyond their ability...[leading] to trouble and bloodshed.
..Therefore, it is necessary to have reference to ordained
political norms, which are accepted by the mass and to whose laws
it submits. The Persians and other nations had such norms..
If these norms are ordained by the intelligent and leading personalities
and minds of the dynasty, the result will be a political institution
with an intellectual, rational basis. If they are ordained by
God through a lawgiver who establishes them as religious laws,
the result will be a political institution with a religious basis
which will be useful for life in both this and the other world
[Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
50. Anything done by royal authority that is dictated by force,
superiority, or the free play of the power of wrathfulness, is
tyranny and injustice and considered reprehensible by religious
law, as it is also considered reprehensible by the requirements
of political wisdom [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
51. At the Resurrection, the actions of human beings, whether
they had to do with royal authority or anything else, will all
come back to them [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
52. Political laws consider only worldly interests. On the other
hand, the intention the Lawgiver has concerning mankind is their
welfare in the other world..[Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
53. This makes it clear what the caliphate means. To exercise
natural royal authority means to cause the masses to act as required
by purpose and desire. To exercise political (royal) authority
means to cause the masses to act as required by intellectual,
rational insight into the means of furthering their worldly interests
and avoiding anything that is harmful in that respect. To exercise
the caliphate means to cause masses to act as required by religious
insight into their interests in the other world as well as in
this world. Worldly interests have bearing upon the interests
in the other world, since according to Muhammad all worldly conditions
are to be considered in their relation to their value for the
other world. Thus, the caliphate in reality is a substitute for
Muhammad in as much as it serves, like him, to protect the religion
and to exercise leadership of the world [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
54. One of the necessary consequences of social organization
is disagreement, because of the pressure of cross-purposes. As
long as there is no ruler who exercises a restraining influence,
this leads to trouble which, in turn, may lead to the destruction
and uprooting of mankind. Now, the preservation of the species
is one of the necessary intentions of the religious law [Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
55. The religious law does not censure royal authority as such
and does not forbid its exercise. It merely censures the evils
resulting from it, such as tyranny, injustice and pleasure-seeking
[Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah , I.3.23].
56. Group feeling, by its very nature, requires royal authority
[Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
57. ..everybody has to obey the imam in accordance with the verse
of the Koran [4.59], 'Obey God, and obey the apostle and the people
in authority among you'..Scholars in general, however, retain
Qurashite descent as a condition of the imamate. [Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
58. ..amassing worldly property is reprehensible.. [Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
59. ..blame attaches only to waste and lack of planning [for those
who amass worldly property]..Since their expenditure followed
a plan and served the truth and its ways, amassing so much property
helped them along on the path of truth and served the purpose
of attaining the other world [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
60. ..deceit is forbidden by Islam [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
61. ..[referring to the decline of the Arabs] The restraining influence of religion had weakened [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
62. Succession to the rule is something that comes from God who
distinguishes by it whomsoever He wishes [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
63. That the men around Muhammad considered the caliphate as something
analogous to prayer and on the strength of that attitude argued
in favor of Abû Bakr's caliphate, is merely another proof
of the fact that no appointment of an heir had taken place. It
also shows that the question of the imamate and succession to
it was not as important then as it is today [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.23].
64. It has become clear that to be caliph in reality means acting
as substitute for the Lawgiver (Muhammad) with regard to the preservation
of the religion and the political leadership of the world [Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.3.29].
65. Understand the depositions that are made before you, for it
is useless to consider a plea that is not valid [Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.3.29].
66. Use your brain about matters that perplex you and to which
neither the Koran nor Sunnah seem to apply. Study similar cases
and evaluate the situation through analogy with them [Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.3.29].
67. ..the religious obligation 'to command to do good and forbid
to do evil', which rests with the person in charge of the affairs
of the Muslims [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.29].
68. ..the Hijâz, the mainspring of the Arabs and Islam [Khaldûn,
The Muqaddimah, I.3.30].
69. It should be known that after the removal of its prophet,
a religious group must have someone to take care of it. Such a
person must cause the people to act according to the religious
laws. In a way he stands to them in the place of their prophet,
inasmuch as he enjoins the obligations which the prophet had imposed
upon them. Furthermore, in accordance with the aforementioned
need for political leadership in social organization, the human
species must have a person who will cause them to act in accordance
with what is good for them and who will prevent them by force
from doing things harmful to them. Such a person is the one who
is called ruler [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.31].
70. In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty,
because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation
to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.
Therefore the caliphate and royal authority are united in Islam,
so that the person in charge can devote the available strength
to both of them at the same time [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.31].
71. The other religious groups did not have a universal mission,
and the holy war was not a religious duty to them, save only for
purposes of defence [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.31].
72. The Israelites dispossessed the Canaanites of the land that
God had given them as their heritage in Jerusalem and the surrounding
region, as it had been explained to them through Moses...After
Saul, David became king, and then Solomon. His kingdom flourished
and extended to the borders of the Hijâz and further to
the borders of the Yemen and to the borders of the land of the
Byzantines [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.31].
73. The Messiah Jesus brought the Jews his religion, as is known.
He abolished some of the laws of the Torah..[Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.31].
74. The apostles divided into different groups...Peter was the
greatest of them. He settled in Rome, the seat of the Roman emperors.
They then wrote down the Gospel that had been revealed to Jesus,
in four recensions according to their different traditions. Matthew
wrote his Gospel in Jerusalem in Hebrew. It was translated into
Latin by John, the son of Zebedee, one of the Apostles. Luke wrote
his Gospel in Latin for a Roman dignitary. John, the son of Zebedee,
wrote his gospel in Rome. Peter wrote his Gospel in Latin and
ascribed it to his pupil Mark.. [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.31].
75. The Apostles came together at that time in Rome and laid
down the rules of the Christian community. They entrusted them
to Clement, a pupil of Peter, noting in them the list of books
that are to be accepted and in accordance which one must act.
The books which belong to the old religious law of the Jews are
the following:
The Torah, which consists of five volumes.
The Book of Joshua.
The Book of Judges.
The Book of Ruth.
The Book of Judith.
The four Books of Kings.
The Book of Chronicles.
The Three Books of Maccabees, by Ibn Gorion.
The Book of Ezra, the religious leader.
The Book of Esther and the story of Haman.
The Book of Job the Righteous.
The Psalms of David.
The five Books of David's son, Solomon.
The sixteen Prophecies of the major and minor prophets.
The Book of Jesus, the son of Sira, the minister of Solomon.
The books of the religious law of Jesus that was received by the Apostles are the following:
The four recensions of the Gospel.
The book of Paul which consists of fourteen epistles.
The Katholika (General Epistles) which consist of seven epistles, the eighth being the Praxeis (Acts), stories of the Apostles.
The Book of Clement which contains the laws.
The book of the Apocalypse (Revelation) which contains the vision of John, the son of Zebedee.
76. The head of the Christian community and the person in charge
of Christian religious institutions is called, Patriarch. He is
their religious head and the representative (caliph) of the Messiah
among them. He sends his delegates and representatives to the
remote Christian nations. They are called 'bishop', that is, delegate
of the Patriarch. The man who leads the prayers and makes decisions
in religious matters is called 'priest'.
..The Apostle Peter, the chief Apostle and oldest of the disciples,
was in Rome and established the Christian religion there. Nero,
the fifth Roman emperor, killed him. Successor to Peter at the
Roman see was Arius.
..the Patriarch was called 'pope', that is, 'Father of fathers'.
The name first appeared in Egypt, according to the theory expressed
by Jirjis b. al-'Amîd in his History. It was then transferred
to the occupant of the most important see, the see of Rome, which
was the see of the Apostle Peter, as we have mentioned before
[Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.31].
77. It is the custom of the Pope with respect to the European
Christians to urge them to submit to the ruler and have recourse
to him in their disagreements and agreements, in order to avoid
the dissolution of the whole thing.. His purpose is to have the
group feeling that is the strongest among them, concentrated upon
one ruler, so that he has power over all of them. The ruler is
called 'Emperor'.
..Pope'.. is pronounced Pappa [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.31]
78. A noble sage has said: 'Moving mountains from their places is easier for me than to influence people psychologically' [Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, I.3.32].
The best of all worlds is ruled by the best of all rulers. There
is no difference between the requirements of being a good mother
and a good ruler. Both must provide loving care to assure the
survival of the species. This includes all of the qualities described
by the planks of good leadership listed in Plank 20 et al.above;
being humble, charitable, and merciful, are foremost among them.
The Koran [and Khaldûn] are correct that the purpose of
God is to assure the survival of mankind and the garden in which
he is formed.
Plank 7, 8, 11 – All the world is a garden..This argument
sourced in Aristotle explains the responsibilities of men to the
garden. American leaders associated with the Reagan-Bush Estate
have shown utter contempt for this simple precept; thus, we previously
listed as a remedy against them Revelation 11.18.
The fifth stage, described by Khaldûn, is a good summary of the stage to which American government has crumbled. The beginning of this descent into corruption began by the American people's indifference towards virtuous conduct, allowing in turn impotent persons to rule over them. We here refer to our entire Legislative and Executive offices, from the local level all the way up to the national. No government has exhibited a greater resemblance to planks 4, 5 and 6 than the current [above noted] Estate.
Plank 9, 15 – The Koran is correct that God guides with His light whom He will. This is also a common interpretation of Saint Peter's statement in Acts, to wit:
Acts 10.35 But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh
righteousness, is accepted with Him.
This follows Deuteronomy:
Deut. 10.17 For the LORD your God is God of gods, and LORD of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward.
11.1 Therefore thou shalt love the LORD thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments alway.
In the current estate those who are rubbing shoulders with whores, liars, and cheats – which are those who have led the abominations of desolation – prefer darkness so to hide their insipid crimes. Many of them think they are God's Elect, pilfering blessings under the pretense of prayer, yet quite afraid of the truth. When God guides with his light they are the first to flinch from the light.
Plank 16, 17 – No people have shown a greater abundance of evil within their ranks than the American people. A witness to this is that there is no man among them who feels shame. Now this goes with the first plank, an impotent person is a man who never acts on his own, and has to do with the complaint, and there was no man which has been substantially elucidated in our previous works. This work plays on that theme a bit more, saying to America [sic. of the Reagan-Bush Estate] that in this place there is no man because it is filled with a bunch of pimps and whores. The evidence to this? There is no man who will come forward to defend the state. A public apology to the Heirs – previously defined – is in order.
Plank 19 – This is incorrect. The son of David, being the
Messiah, is descended from Adam [man]. In relation to the Sons
of Man Jesus stands first among them. Muhammad called himself
the apostle and prophet of God, not the Messiah. As an apostle
and prophet of God he is a servant (caliph) of the Messiah. One
cannot separate the Messiah from God and, therefore, anyone
attempting to elevate himself above the Messiah is the same as
one attempting to elevate himself above God.
Plank 20 – God, through his commandments, forms a group feeling, or family, of Himself. When the group feeling for His Planks wanes he sends forth a prophet; and the first among His Prophets is His Messiah.
Plank 23, 34 – It is God's responsibility to see that good leaders are brought forth. When good leaders are hard to find, the people should cry out to God. For the worst that they could do is not cry out and thus become associated with the abominations against God. We can explain this in terms of the judgment of whores-or adulterers – in the Law of Moses which we have discussed previously, concerning the case of the Virgin Mary. A Virgin violated in a field is judged innocent because, should she cry out, she might not be heard. A Virgin accosted in the City must cry out and she will be heard. As indicated, because we have not heard any cries against the abominations – we know that a Virgin has been violated in the city- we concluded that the current estate of the American people has no shame. It takes a righteous man (we seek ten) or better yet a family's voice to utter a cry; and because we have destroyed our families the judgment is easy: there is no one crying.
Plank 27 – That forced restraint seems to have been the rule of good governments, there is no doubt. A people solidly educated in the Will of God requires the least amount of force. Education is best accomplished through the rod called The Word of God. As Paul said, Wisdom comes by hearing and hearing
by the Word of the LORD. Notwithstanding this, the Word of God
is written so that ye may know for yourself. Often it comes that
God sends forth his prophets to teach men how to read [re: Isaiah
28.9; 29.11]. One recognizes a prophet when one sees God confirming
what His Messenger has said. Sometimes the recognition begs a
bit of coaxing: with fire, floods, plagues of all kinds, as in
the cases with Moses and with Elijah. As in those two cases Prophets
are taught by God and not by man. Now with reference to the Koran
one may note Muhammad's claim that he did not know how to read
or write when he wrote the Koran.
Note these words:
Isaiah 45.7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
44.26 That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel of his messengers..
Thus, we have said that God sends His Word that ye may know and punishes them who fall away from His Commandments: for you are not condemned for what you do not know (See On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church) but what you do know, for the Truth is revealed in its proper time and course. The more one defers exposing the Truth (once revealed) the greater the debt for restitution, for having hidden what ought to have been shown; sic. when God commanded, let their be light.
The prophets explain God's plan-through the Jews-to assure that
all the Gentile of the earth may know [see also Hidden Pavilions ].
Plank 29 – There is no superior group feeling than being one
with God.
Plank 30 – The saying attributed to Muhammad is wrong. Messengers, whether of kings or God, were often threatened and/or killed by the people to whom they were sent. Muhammad's saying follows a similar precept of the Mishna. Most important among God's Messengers are the Two Witnesses who visited Sodom and Gomorrah or the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11 [whose spirits are the same], which pertain to the Two Cherubim set before the Lord
of the whole earth [re: Zechariah 4.14 and Genesis 3.24] of whom
we have adequately discussed.
Plank 31 – If America is to survive its hardened heart must change back to one of flesh. Its heart was overrun and captured by the Reagan-Bush [and Clinton] Estate.
Plank 32 – The more the variety the more plentiful and healthier the fruit, I say. Among men there is a common understanding about Truth, what it represents and how it is revealed [sic. like a great light]. Men of understanding who seek the Truth have a common heritage promised to them, regardless of person; those who prefer darkness shall be utterly cast into it. In America, as in any other nation or with God, the heart is placed in the family. Because the current estate has destroyed its families, there is no heart and little foundation upon which to build. From this it follows that a collapse is imminent.
Plank 35, 36, 37 – The current estate feeds on glory and those who are most respected are those who accumulate the most glory to themselves. Our land has been occupied by the troops of senility.
Plank 38, 39, 48, 49 – True, the allowances for our government officials at all levels have gone out of bounds, as our leaders languor in their luxury, feed on glory, and sustain corruption. To sustain their own bad behavior they are forced to reduce funding of those things which defend the land within-through providing for the common welfare – and from without.
Plank 40 – If Khaldûn is speaking of courage, there is some agreement here. As for savages, there have been no greater savages to desolate the earth than the current [Reagan-Bush-Clinton] Estate.
Plank 41 – As the current estate continues to crumble it betrays those once loyal to it and scrambles for the support of foreigners. This we can see in the President's recent trip to Europe, to boost his image at home, how the foreigners are more impressed with him than his own people. This same phenomena was recently observed in Gorbachev's demise.
We compared Louis XVI's appointment of a "foreign-opposite
camp" minister to Clinton's appointment of Mr. Gergen. A
similar scramble for support was when Nixon's cabinet crumbled.
Planks 42, 43, 44, 45 – All this pertains again to the failure of the "center", that when the roots are gone the branches of a tree die. We could have said to the current estate that you have no roots as easily as saying you have no shame or you have no heart; or, we could just as easily have said, where is thy brother Abel? [re: Hidden Pavilions ]
Planks 46 – As illustrated in this work, for many more reasons than are necessary to establish the relationship, the current Reagan-Bush Estate [in whom we included Clinton] has obtained the Fifth Stage.
Plank 47 – Our greatest monument, the capital building, was finished during Lincoln's administration. Our greatest achievement (if one were to classify it as a monument of our strength) was accomplished under the Kennedy administration, when we, racing all mankind, were the first to put a man on the moon. Since then it has been a downhill ride.
Plank 51 – As said before, you judge yourself.
Plank 52, 53, 54, 55,56, 67, 69, 72, 74-77 – The Lawgiver upon whom the Koran rests is Moses. The plan Moses covenanted to the world provided for a world ruled by YHVH. In that world there is no separation of the worldly from the spiritual, and there never has been a case for separating them from the view of the Scriptures [re: Philistia Triumph thou because of me,
et al.].
As indicated, The Messiah of the New Covenant is both king and
lawgiver. Since the Koran derives its authority from the scriptures
it awaits the Messiah of the New Covenant, who is also called
the Light of the Gentiles of Isaiah 42.
Plank 57, 63, 64, 68 – The plan of Philistia Triumph thou
because of me presumes a merger of the lines of David
with the Qurashite line in restructuring the Holy Land similar
to that expressed by Khaldûn. How that shall be achieved
is a secret.
Plank 58,59,60 – The world is consumed by the drive to amass worldly property and the waste it entails. In so doing it has amassed corruption. But God said to Noah that He would no longer take his wrath out upon the earth or its creatures, but against man and his high towers. Those living in high towers ought to be wary. We repeat one of many passages we have often quoted:
Isaiah 24.21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall punish the host of the high ones that are on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.
From this comes the process noted in Jeremiah 15.18, 18.7, 25.35; Isaiah 59.15-16, 66.22-24; Habakkuk 1.8, 2.12; Zephaniah 1.7-8, 1.16-17, Haggai 2.7, Zechariah 12.2-9, 14; Obadiah 1.15-17; Joel 2.3, 2.32, 3.12-13; Hosea 8.7; Daniel 12.1-3, 7, 10; Ezekiel 36.31, 38; Revelation 19, and Malachi 3.18.
Plank 70 – The power to wage war on behalf of God is removed for the reasons mentioned in On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church, Hidden Pavilions, et al. mentioned above. God is not so feeble that He needs men to destroy the wicked on his behalf. The swords of the wicked are turned back unto themselves.
Plank 71 – Not true. The message given to Abraham first and then to Moses and the House of the Messiah contained a universal mission, upon which the Koran derives its authority.
Plank 73 – A false perception shared (and spawned ) by the Pauline Church [modern Christianity] See Hidden Pavilions,
On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church, et
al. on this.
M/7/17/94
June 27, 1994
There's always someone around to get doctrine wrong, and there's
no reason to suppose that all the Jews who became Christians were
immune; moreover, St. Paul lost his temper about non-Jews' errors
of faith and morals, too. That you happen to prefer your Scripture
temperate doesn't chuck St. Paul out of the canon-any more than
Luther's not liking Last Rites chucked St. James (except, of course,
for Lutherans).
Yours cordially,
Wm. F. Buckley Jr.
July 1, 1994
Dear Mr. Buckley,
My letter of June 29, 1994 had a typo, referring to your letter
as May 27, 1994, when it was June 27, 1994. So I have enclosed
a corrected copy which I hope is now typo free [see Appendix B;
ed. note]. No man has been plagued by typos, I think, more than
I, and you have been a wonderful sport in passing over them; and
I thank you for this. Because of the holiday both this and the
latter letter should arrive together.
This also affords the occasion to say what was really in my heart
apart from the pitiful barrage which was exchanged between our
June letters. For I had not wanted to get side-tracked into
a field which would make canon fodder out of the Catholic Church.
It has enough undermining its foundations. Nine Catholic Churches
in the San Francisco Diocese are closed effective today. Internecine
riff-raff have been attacking the church on all sides, including
now the Pope's Chair. God forbid that I should be counted among
those within and without the Catholic Church who are attempting
to pull it down.
The truth of the matter, for my part, is clear, as I illustrated
in The String of Pearls (p.178), that I have come
only to pull the weeds. Pointing fingers at this unrighteous Jew
or that unrighteous Gentile (as if it would make either of us
feel better) will get us nowhere, whether in the past or now.
What should direct us is a motive to clear the weeds which have
been entangling the church in things with which it ought not to
have been identified. Often it takes a confession to clear them.
The troop which is now in me, which can be seen as Many, existed
long before me; and among them, perhaps closest to my soul and
voice, is that teacher in the Hymns of the Dead Sea Scrolls seen
also in The String of Pearls. This is where my
heart is...
Mr. Buckley, we have to look after the weeds if the Church is
to survive. Paul will come out alright -a little loss of pride
won't hurt either him or Luther. Rather than this last barrage
I had hoped to weave some humor from Juvenal and maybe address
some related issues from Khaldûn which are just as important
to the salvation of this nation and the Church as the other principles
now represented in my troop. The greater the gathering of this
Many the more important in the future they ought to be, we believe.
Many great sages yet await being engaged in our communion.
Before these books emerged, beginning with Hidden Pavilions , one of the first words I was introduced to by my Old Man who guides me is the concept, Many. The word kept appearing, unrelentingly, as I wrote, often even as a typo. Finally the day came when the kinship I bore with the Many I discovered in the teacher among the Dead Sea Scrolls, who also used the term as I had come to know it; and when I saw him I saw someone who shared our common voice.
The voice is not without humor, though the seriousness of our situation calls for men to shave their heads. I watched Carl Sagan's Cosmos last evening, "On Venus," and he again sobered me up – no doubt having some responsibility for this letter.
Although our communion may exchange humor from time to time, never should we get side-tracked from the business at hand, to leave a legacy, God willing, for future readers to take to heart. I lamented "On Venus," Mr. Sagan's soul-searching plea, grasping for some common base upon which we could all cling, to do a good work. I wished he had known that same plea made in Revelation 11.18 et al. long ago. There is a binder which is between us he could use.
The Old Man of the Sea, commenting on my June 29 letter, thought it a bit too hard but said, "Send it," then, being somewhat sceptical, brought up the parable of angels singing and dancing on the head of a pin. I replied that YHVH had a good idea in mind for our future and good criteria how to achieve it. We call men to believe in it for the Work's sake. If men
latch onto the idea and follow the criteria, then God's Will is
done; and this being so, counting angels, as in the parable, is
irrelevant. Let's first get men to sing and dance to the cords
of Angels. And through this, if we focus on Elohim's Desire,
a wonderful army shall be seen who already agrees with Him. Being
agreed, of a common bond, as mine with the Many, of course, is
half the battle to the making of a Holy Communion and a marriage.
This will lead us away from Venus's hellish inferno, I think.
Sincerely yours,
M
July 18, 1994
Bishop Egan has dragged his feet about permitting the old Mass,
but I have a feeling that's not what you mean. Fact is, St. Paul
is part of the Catholic canon, and neither of us can make him
go away. St. Peter affirmed his authority, and nobody's likely
to come along with the authority to revoke what he said.
We can argue for the rest of our lives, to the criminal neglect
of our responsibilities, or we can agree with St. James that faith
without works is dead, and leave the rest for a day of greater
illumination.
Yours cordially,
Wm. F. Buckley Jr.
July 22, 1994
Dear Mr. Buckley,
Thank you for your letter of July 18, 1994. It is not my desire
to change anything in the Catholic Mass except for one small recension:
that when Paul's epistles are taught the people are told the truth,
that they contain antiSemitic doctrine which is not only directed
against the Jews and the Law of Moses, but Christ and God Himself.
We showed in On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church that Paul plainly lied before King Agrippa and before
that misrepresented himself to the eleven apostles seated in Jerusalem,
whereupon they admonished him to purify himself for his sins against
the church. Paul's stand against God and, thus , Christ--that
His Holy Scriptures [sic. Old Testament ] are old
and passed away--indicts Paul and the Church. Is there Virtue
among Christ's pastors to correct this? I asked.
You and your bishop should agree with me and my troop, among whom
is Jesus, that liars do not belong among the prophets of God and
lies have no place in the Word of God.
For my part, referring to the old mass, we draw from the Didaché, to wit:
Didaché, Part 1.1 ..where is the merit in loving only those who return your love?
1.3..Tell no lies, my son, for lying leads to theft, etc.
1.4 ..share all your possessions with your brother, and do not claim that anything is your own..
See that you do not neglect the commandments of the Lord, but keep them just as you received them, without any additions or subtractions of your own.
In church, make confession of your faults, and do not come to your prayers with a bad conscience. That is the Way of Life.
1.5 The Way of Death is this..those who persecuted good men, hold truth in abhorrence, and love falsehood; who do not know of the rewards of righteousness, nor adhere to what is good, nor to just judgment; who lie awake planning wickedness rather than well-doing...
Knowledge of their Creator is not in them; they make away with their infants and deface God's image; they turn away the needy and oppress the afflicted; they aid and abet the rich but arbitrarily condemn the poor; they are utterly and altogether sunk in iniquity.
1.6 ..If you can shoulder the Lord's yoke in its entirety, then you will be perfect; but if that is too much for you, do as much as you can.
2.9, "of the Eucharist"..Then over the particles of bread: We give thanks to thee, our Father, for the life and knowledge thou hast made known to us through thy servant Jesus.
Glory be to thee, world without end.
As this broken bread, once dispersed over the hills, was brought together and became one loaf, so may the Church be brought together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom...
2.11, "Of Missioners and Charismatists", If anyone comes and instructs you on the foregoing lines, make him welcome...If it aims at promoting righteousness and knowledge of the Lord, though, welcome him as you would the Lord...If he asks for money, he is not a genuine missioner..
2.15..Reprove one another, but peaceably and not in hot blood, as you are told in the Gospel...
I believe your bishop will agree that when the fathers spoke of
the knowledge brought by Jesus they spoke of it as Christ's gift
to men [re: John 3.15], and it was their full intention that through
that knowledge a new people should be born in whom the Kingdom
of God would become manifest on earth.
Prayer and the criteria mentioned by David and Isaiah, listed
in Philistia Triumph thou because of me, form the foundation of
this Kingdom.
As for the "old mass" it is clear that Christians today
could not be enticed to give up their fortunes to follow Christ,
or to share all things in common, (except their wives) [Tertulian
Apol . 39.2]. It is also clear that to get Christians
to love the Lord with all thy heart and all thy mind, as per the
commandment, seems infeasible among modern Christians. There is
a connection between loving with all thy heart and a good conscience
and knowledge and loving with thy mind. We, of course, are exploring
to what extent you love God with your mind.
Without knowledge there can be no life, says another
formative message of the church, called The Epistle to Diognetus. The end of all knowledge of God is to promote life.
My reason for writing you was clearly established, having that
end in view. Your desire to postpone the revelation of truth conflicts
with that desire.
We spoke in terms of assuming the point of view of Christ, reciting
him enough (the Epistle to Diognetus said that
the Word made His disclosures [to the apostles] in the plainest
of language) to support our judgment that the things Paul
taught, which we listed, were against Christ's teachings and resulted
in the death of millions of people. These hateful teachings from
church pulpits every Sunday continue to plant the seeds of death.
This is no small matter.
The Epistle to Diognetus gives us more sure words
of advise on the early canon:
"Practical Conclusions"..If you love Him, you will become an imitator of His goodness.. since God has willed it so. But happiness is not to be found in dominating one's fellows, or in wanting to have more than his weaker brethren, or in possessing riches and riding rough-shod over his inferiors. No one can become an imitator of God like that, for such things are wholly alien to His greatness. But if a man will shoulder his neighbor's burden; if he be ready to supply another's need from his own abundance; if, by sharing the blessings he has received from God with those who are in want..such a man is indeed an imitator of God..Then, too, you will see through the deceitfulness and error of this world..
With this is Clement's message:
Seek ye the company of the holy, for they who seek their company shall themselves be made holy. And it says somewhere else, With the innocent you shall be innocent, with the chosen you shall be chosen, with the wayward you shall be wayward..
We are reasoning for the sake of a multitude of lives. Without rehashing the background already established on Wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, I wonder if you can appreciate that Jesus himself is solidly entrenched in the Host which comprises my side of the argument? When you suggested deferring the rest of the argument for a day of greater illumination (which I presume you mean in terms of the Holy Spirit), you lost me. For those who are devoted to truth and defend it each day are illuminating; and who are more brilliant than those in my troop? I can hardly imagine any of them being of the mind to hide a truth once it is revealed, as you and your bishop propose. All of my sources agree that justice delayed is justice denied. Reason confirms this.
Truthfulness is the foundation of justice, among the faithful,
and in laying down evidence of truth we have even Jesus's example
with the Pharisees, of reciting his scriptural authority, to support
the Gospel He represented. We continued the same practice with
you.
One's propensity for truthfulness is directly related to the amount
of faith he has in God. There can be no dignity in deferring an
examination of the Truth when lives hang in the balance waiting
for a wise man's action.
I bear witness to the truth, and the revelation of any truth now
makes the day of greater illumination now. We listed many things
in On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church,
Philistia Triumph thou because of me, and Against
Leviathan which would be enlightening--nay shocking – to the public at large were they to hear of them. At the moment their minds are preoccupied [see Quest for Human Dignity ], but we feel fortunate to have found a man who has shown a willingness to examine our list. I have not done this for my benefit but for multitudes suffering at the gate – I speak of the Heirs.
To lighten things up we composed Quest for Human Dignity, enclosed. It builds on the thesis, to whom much is given
much is required. We lament that those blessed with the most these
days oppress the most. In early Christian life it was the other
way around.
Referring again to the Epistle to Diognetus, we
know that out of Christ came a people whose behavior is more like
that of transients [from which comes the word, parish
]:
They take their full part as citizens, but they also submit to anything and everything as if they were aliens...they obey the prescribed laws, but in their own private lives they transcend the laws...the world similarly hates the Christians without provocation because they are opposed to its pleasures..
In Quest for Human Dignity we explore this world
among which there are many who claim to be Christians but bear
little resemblance to what Jesus taught or the sketch of the early
church traced above. The Quest is an indictment
to which Christians and their bishops in particular will one day
answer. The propositions I have put to you are simple and far
less of an imposition on you than what Jesus might demand.
We ask for justice: stand up, account for your knowledge [re:
Didaché 1.6 above].
We sense doubts in you and your bishop, that Jesus can't judge
what you know, or that there is any relationship between what
you know and what is a responsibility. Christians are not given
a shopping list of responsibilities but rather commandments. At
the top of these is Truthfulness. Those who are given knowledge
[truth] and yet avoid it are of a different body than Christ,
so for the lack of knowledge the people perish..
Your framework seems to be sourced in image and power: i.e.: who has the power to revoke what St. Peter said. St. Peter never gave Paul the authority to deride the Jews or the Law. What Paul took upon himself cannot be justified using St. Peter. By the same token, your quote of St. James, that faith without works is dead, neglects the context in which St. James expressed the matter, as said before. For such a people – whose faith carries no obligations – we call, Oh ye of little faith, we prepared an indictment: Quest for Human Dignity. In this work we show how they will
surely die. Your bishop's wait and see attitude is not what Jesus
taught. Again wondering how you might find Christ in these
times, I remain,
Sincerely yours,
M
June 29, 1994
Dear Mr. Buckley,
I just received your disturbing letter of June 27, 1993 and cannot
help but to rush our reply: Shame on you for implicating Christ
in Paul's and now your bishop's fraud! To think that Jesus would
condone your bishop's failure to answer the Apostles' charge,
to wit:
Acts 21.24..purify thyself ..that they may shave their heads: and all may know that those things, whereof they were informed concerning thee, are nothing; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law.
– is appalling! You very well know the charge the Apostles levied against Paul, and this judgment-of preaching antiSemitic things, against the Jews and the Law-must be answered!
We did not overlook the fact that though Paul was reprimanded,
and he represented he would change his conduct, the record shows
that he didn't. In the books he's a liar and a cheat.
The record shows that in fundamental issues Paul didn't agree with the Apostolic Church. An honest man, true to his own convictions [though wrong], would have openly denounced the Apostolic Doctrine, in the face of the Apostles, and gone on about his own business, separating himself and his deluded disciples from Christ's Body [as did Mani]. But Paul was not that honorable, and rather than settling the matter in front of the Apostolic Court, in the first place, and then before King Agrippa on the second occasion, Paul slithered around the charge against him – which is what his disciples since and including your own bishop are still doing – ; and as all pretenders to the throne tend to do, replaced Christ's and the Apostolic guidance of the Church with his own.
Time Feasts on them. I am temperate in that I am in no
hurry to throttle Paul's Confession out of him and his sneaky
disciples. We can allow time to feast on them for awhile.
When we wrote On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church, we suspected no one in the church would be willing to
remedy Paul's fraud. Once a liar, always a liar, we say.
One not ashamed of lying is also one who is not ashamed of
being lied to. Remember how Satan answered Adam? to wit:
Book of Adam & Eve, 47.5 Then Satan said unto Adam, thinkest thou, that when I have spoken to one about anything, I shall ever bring it to him or fulfill my word? Not so. For I myself have never even thought of obtaining what I asked.
Pity the pastor who heaps another man's crimes on his own head.
Ah! We should shame them! But I do believe that not all men are
liars at heart, (as with Satan, who never expected to be treated
honestly nor expected that anyone would think he would treat them
honestly). Such was Paul.
Paul died a liar – being justified not in faith but rather in lying to King Agrippa; alas! because he did not take the opportunity to redeem himself, as the record shows, we are horrified there is no man willing to correct the record.
But this is again explained in the nature of certain hearts, led by Satan, who are so used to being lied to they see no shame and sweep under the rug any lie which is revealed – even though it would accrue to their account that they had not only shamefully accepted a lie but continued to cover it up. But judgment feasts on
such people, and though the Apostolic Court waits, eventually
the truth will be known. We say this because of the severe
nature of the fraud: that Paul's disciples continue to preach
their anti-Semitic doctrines from Pulpits as high as the Vatican
to those of "mendicant" holy rollers who drag their
gold laden purses from one unsuspecting tent to another. Whilst
they are picking the public's pockets under the guise of preaching
Jesus, they whisper into naive ears the blood-soaked dogma of
frying people for Jesus!
A few days ago a controversy came on the news over a new bronze
statue which would be placed in the city square of San Jose, CA
in honor of the Mexican-American community. The statue is of Quetzalcottel,
the feathered Serpent (who H. Cortes was believed to be). Pious
Christian pastors of all sorts are trying to stop the repulsive
erection, of the statue, because of the many victims who had their
hearts ripped out, sacrificed to the god Quetzalcottel. If the
criteria for not raising an art form is due to the blood which
has been sacrificed under its image, then San Jose should also
pull down every church and image of Paul. Even more so, I say,
should this apply to the disciples of Paul, since under his antiChristian
doctrine so many millions upon millions of people were murdered.
Though Luther, Torquemada, and many others following Paul (how could Paul separate himself from these villains?) justified murdering for Jesus, we know that Jesus would never have cooperated with such bloodshed. We also know that Saints Peter and James would never have cooperated with such bloodshed; and, for the record, neither would I. So this leaves the bloody glove in your bishop's hands-until, of course, the pulpit explains, as required by Acts 21 above, that Paul was in error in leading the people to believe that the Law is old or obsolete and that the Jews are condemned of God. These points we listed, re: On the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church, as being taught in continuum since Paul invented his hate-laden gospel. Sir, reform is in order here, for Paul has sinned against the Apostolic Council, and his disciples continue to carry out the sin.
No, Sir, we cannot allow this fraud to continue. The so-called Christian blood-letting doctors – who even now revel around you-are exposed. Just as dogs turn back to their own vomit, so we find our saintly leaders of all kinds, those who have no shame in lying:
My writings have been quite clear, that the venomous part of Paul's Gospel should be exposed. Rather than chuck Paul out of the canon, in fact, I have argued that his voice should be left in the Bible but with those parts of his scripture which are antiSemitic marked and identified with a Label. I quite agree that I have been a bit too temperate and should call for the consensus that Paul be spewed out of the Bible altogether. Quite frankly-and I know I speak for my entire troop--we have done quite well in representing the desire of the Scripture (which we identified as the Will of God [sic. Jesus included]
without having to quote Paul (except to condemn him). If Paul's
affected rhetoric dies too one hundred years from now who will
miss him?
Those who read us will muse on your comment, that I prefer my
Scripture temperate. Au contraire, Sir, agreeing with Thomas Jefferson I asked whether it is necessary to teach any other Gospel than the Gospel Jesus himself taught. If your bishop were to teach what Jesus said, what he did, and what he still is, my issue would be resolved. What Paul has to do with this gospel – except to confuse and misguide people, you have yet to explain!!
For my part, I don't know how anyone could get Jesus's doctrine
wrong, for it seems to be one of the few doctrines which have
come into this world that can be understood with little pastoring.
His doctrine is sufficient in itself to pastor mankind. More so,
Jesus's Gospel itself is a sufficient basis upon which one may
judge which of the sheep go on the left hand and which on the
right.
You are as good a judge of character as I, and should be far better
because of the age difference between us. Let us begin judgment
where it belongs, in the Christian Church, as Saint Peter said.
I know that Jesus built his church upon the rock of Saint Peter;
therefore, there is no reason why Saint Peter and His Church should
be listed anywhere but to his right. Because Paul surreptitiously
slithered into the Church, undermining Jesus's foundations, I
put Paul and his devious kind on the left. How could one do otherwise?
lest one think I'm so temperate I'd let a liar into Christ's midst??
As for the application of Last Rites, to be truthful, I should
think [for the moment] that we can get off of Luther (and the
mob blessed under his name who thrive no doubt under Luther's
Christian motto of killing Jews for the honor of Jesus) and inquire
whether one should be giving Last Rites to this butchered nation.
We still are pursuing Leviathan, whom I sighted in the trail of
Paul's carnage, and once he is seen with a spear chucked in his
eye many will come to feast on him.
Because you are so close to his mind's eye, as it were, rubbing
shoulders with so many leaders of this nation-religious and political-you
should know exactly where and how to hit Leviathan,
so to stop the damage that he has been inflicting upon us. My
argument began with this observation: a people tend to be like
their leaders, or, as Ibn Khaldûn put it (The Muquaddimah ), leaders set an example for their people. We complained
that our leaders have no knowledge; our nation perishes for the
lack of knowledge. It's the same as saying, we perish for the
lack of leaders.
We are searching for a just leader. All of the troop
in me agree (re: even Khaldûn: on how to revive nations)
that the first place to find a just leader is where truth is upheld
over all other things, a thesis which we poked in many places
in our writings. If you love Truth, we are confident you
will separate yourself from those who prefer to hide it and
cling more to those who wish to put it where everyone can see
it. Let me give you a non nonsectarian example how to change.December
1993 Senator Moynahan [prepared to sing!] brought the Nixon budget
to your Firing Line program and began to explain
why the health program today is like the one Nixon's Administration
considered. The difference between the two proposals is that in
Nixon's day "money" was not an issue; today it is not
the health proposal so much at issue but rather the fact that
we have no money to fund health (because of our strangling debt).
You muffled Senator Moynahan when he began to broach the subject
( explored in depth it would show how corrosive our National Debt
is) ; as offered in my last letter, it is time to release those
reins which restrain the truth, be they against our survival as
a state or our faith!
I wrote you – that you should know – and, seeing your bishop still in check but still awaiting the light, I remain,
Sincerely yours,
M
Beam me back up to Maravot's_Index.html
Send me over to Planks towards Freedom
Send me over to Against Leviathan,
Send me over to The String of Pearls
Send me over to On
the Breakage of the Holy Catholic Church
Send me over to Duty
and Profit
Send me over to
Immoral Coercion
Send me over to investigate the National
Debt Scandal
Please return me to the first part of Quest
for Human Dignity
Updated 5.27.2000; 10.24.04; 2.15.06
Copyright © 1996-2006 Maravot. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1996-2006 Mel Copeland. All rights reserved.