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Joel has written 322 articles so far, you can find them below.
The following is some background work on a larger study (to be completed tomorrow) on the “new heavens and new earth” motif in the New Testament. Before getting there, it turned out be necessary for me—psychologically at least, anyway—to lay the preterist foundations of the whole of 2 Peter 3. Tomorrow we will move on [...]
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In light of all these Executive excesses, what can be done to restore the freedom Americans once had? Even better, how can we return to a society even more free than before—something more akin to biblical controls on Executive tyranny? The answer is two-faceted: first, things average people can do now, and second, larger goals toward which we must aim.
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There is certainly no limit to the tyranny of an Executive who has both the ambition and opportunity. There is certainly enough to show how a once freer America has been subdued. This has come primarily through three key Executive powers in this country: the Treaty-making power, the abuse of executive orders, and the ascendancy of government-by-emergency.
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Lord Acton is credited with the famous saying, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” A corollary to this is to say the closer you get to absolute power, the more the potentials and temptations of corruption increase as well. Solutions to the various problems of society appear more within reach when viewed through the scope of a comprehensively armed and funded coercive apparatus. Thus, the larger and more centralized the Executive institution becomes, the more tempting it becomes to bypass clumsy Congress and a lumbering Judiciary and instead administer as extensively as possible via Executive decree alone. And as soon as the Executive tastes the efficiency of government by decree, like sharks with blood, it goes crazy for more.
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Restoring America One County at a Time Chapter 9: National Defense 9.3. How to Get Freedom it Back How can we restore the freedoms we once had, long ago, in the areas of war and the military? It starts with changing our personal views from the celebration of aggression, destruction, death, hell, to the celebration [...]
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The Warfare-Welfare State The curse of the Total State, as we have seen, is something of a package deal. Samuel’s warnings in 1 Samuel 8 were meant to deter the people from breaking God’s laws revealed in Deuteronomy 17—lusting for a “king like other nations.” And just like the king forbidden in those laws—the king [...]
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War and the Military 9.2. How Freedom Was Lost (Cont’d.) Lessons from the Early Conflicts and Beyond Considering what we’ve learned from colonial America’s early world war, the Feds’ response to America’s early tax revolts, and the clash between Lincoln and Taney, just stop momentarily and consider what freedom had been destroyed militarily just to [...]
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Restoring America One County at a Time 9.2. How Freedom Was Lost (Cont’d.) In regard to original intent, a mere Amendment would not be enough to withstand the military powers its larger brother, the Constitution itself, gave to the new central government. This problem is best illustrated with a tale of two rebellions—one taking place [...]
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He Who Has the Guns Thomas Jefferson famously said (I paraphrase), “When the people fear the government, you have tyranny. When the government fears the people, you have liberty.” Whoever has the power to enforce their will is servant to the other. This same point was made by Carroll Quigley, the prolific Georgetown historian of [...]
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War and the military: how freedom was lost (the beginnings)
Filed under American History, Articles, County Rights Project, Ethics, Featured, Government, History, Law, Politicians, Politics, War by Joel McDurmon on December 14, 2011 at 9:50 pm {13 comments}Restoring America One County at a Time 9.2. How Freedom Was Lost The destruction of the early Puritan-American views of the military, of voluntary militias, etc., as described previously, began with the first skirmish of the first world war—not World War I, mind you, but what was perhaps the first truly world war. Here’s the [...]