Covday, Matamín 3rd, 7703 (Monday, 02-07-2011) 3P Post #9: The Culture Of Democracy (Part 1 of a 3-Part Series)

*** Special Three-Part Series: #1 of 3:

"The Culture Of God Versus The Cultures Of Humanity" ***

“And Y’shua was casting out a demon, and it was mute.

When the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed.

However, some of them said,

"He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons."

Others, to test Him, were demanding of Y’shua a sign from heaven, but

He knew their thoughts and said to them,

"Any kingdom divided against itself is laid to waste, and

a house divided against itself falls…”.
(The Gospel of Luke, Chapter 11:14-17)

“In those days there was no king in Israel;

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes…”.

(Judges 21:25)

“The king's heart is like

 channels of water in the hand of the YHWH (Blessed be His Holy Name),

for Adonai turns the king’s heart wherever He wishes.

Every man's way is right in his own eyes, but

YHWH (Blessed be His Holy Name) weighs the hearts.

To do righteousness & justice is

desired by YHWH (Blessed be His Holy Name) more than sacrifice…”.

(Proverbs 21:1-3)

In today’s Philosophy/Politics Post, i want to lay out the beginning of a case that will probably get me hung (figuratively, i hope) in the court of public opinion.  However, i think that it is important that someone articulate what i am going to assert in the hopes that maybe Americans will come to understand both why they should rethink their values and also why that process should not lead them to embrace anti-American values.

i have wanted to write these things for a long time, but the timing has never seemed right to me.  However, with the revolution in Egypt underway, it has brought a context that may make this information a bit more palatable and, perhaps, useful.

i write from the perspective of the Kingdom of God.  Unashamedly, i admit this bias in all of my perspectives.  It is a paradigm that colors all of my thinking.  As an American citizen, i have grown up with three citizenships: 1) Texan (for Texas is still a Republic), 2) American, & 3) Heavenite.  i consider myself to have the Holy Grail of citizenry with these three in my pedigree, but that does not mean they are all perfect.  Only the Heavenly citizenship is perfect; the other two have flaws.

By the way, the heavenly citizenship of which i refer is not a religious citizenship in a church or a denomination or anything like that.  i am not Catholic or protestant or Jewish or Islamic or Satanic or New Age or Hindu or Zoroastrian or a Scientologist.  Those are other kinds of citizenship than heavenly.  However, they are frequently thought of as heavenly — as is sadly portrayed from various points of view in many historical movies such as The Kingdom Of Heaven.

Having laid that foundation, this post will briefly touch on topics relating to the culture of American democracy.  It will not be easy for many Americans to read or accept, and it will not be pleasant for non-Americans to embrace, either.  That is as it should be; my aim is not to please either side, but rather to faithfully represent an alternative viewpoint from one whose citizenship in not in any earthly root.

The arc of this post will be to discuss both contemporary and historical events and catalysts in the context of three kinds of government: Religious, Civic, & Kingdom.  i am part of a kingdom and see it as the only rational form of government.

Revolutions are not just movements that redraw maps; they are wide-reaching, centuries-encompassing events that take generations to play out and shape the political, cultural, financial, etc. landscape for an epoch or beyond.  The West is still reeling from the impact of the American & French revolutions, and those were shaped profoundly by the earlier protestant religious revolt against the Catholic church and the Irish revolt against the English monarchy (just to name a couple of key influences).  Trace back further, and You can unpeel the history of revolutions like an onion.  Indeed, all of Western society is still reeling from the pursuits of the Greeks and the conquering of the Romans, for that matter, but it goes back much further than all of that….

In this context of seeing the history behind the underlying movements, Egypt should not surprise anyone.  Indeed, the more amazing phenomenon is not the political altering of Egypt’s form of government so much as the impact that social media like Facebook and Twitter are playing in that altering.  Only this year, the founder of Facebook was chosen as Time’s Person Of The Year (cf. the article at http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2036683_2037183_2037185,00.html for a fascinating insight into “the Facebook Age”), since he has created the world’s third-largest country by networking a twelfth of all humanity together.  To know that Japan first embraced Twitter and to realize that their culture can say 140 words (since words are denoted by characters in Japanese) instead of a mere 140 characters gives You some idea of the impact that causes Twitter to be much more than just a quip site.  Beyond social networking sights, the emergence of WikiLeaks and the network of sleuths, anonymous hackers, & spies that follow the leadership of founder Julian Assange as an arbiter of transparency has chilling ramifications with humanistically-rooted tendencies.  Then, there is the rise of opinion-journalism from FOX News and MSNBC to Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report that correlates to the fall of “objective” journalism (as if there ever was such a thing in the first place).  The plague in Egypt is not occurring in a vacuum; it is happening in a Petri dish….

Revolutions change things forever — not just for a moment.  We would all do well to understand that at the beginning of this article.

Regarding the more immediate implications of the African revolutions (for example, that of Algeria many years ago in the 1970s, then 1980s, and beyond and that most recently erupted in Tunisia a few weeks ago), Islam has played a central role.  Many people i know in the U.S. are worried about the rise of Islam, but i see that as a distraction from the real issues to be addressed.  From the perspective of a kingdom, Islam is no threat.  Why?  Because Islam is a religious form of government.  It seeks, fundamentally, to govern society from a religious pretext.  The facts are that the religious pretext of “Mohammed” and the myth about him is: 1) religious (i.e., not Truthful and based in Love but rather based in fear — as are all religions by their definition), 2) cultural, and 3) reactionary.  None of these are good bases for a foundation of governing….

Due to this religious pretext and the instability of the foundation of Islam (from being a lie to being untenable), Islam is divided against itself: radical, violent purists & extremists versus “peaceful” interpreters, Sunni versus Shiite, assimilation versus domination, etc.  If You are a citizen of Heaven and if Y’shua is Your Master, then You know that a house divided against itself will not stand and that a kingdom divided against itself will come to ruin.  It is only a matter of time, and the end is not in dispute.  So, Islam is a red herring.  It will fall; indeed, Egypt may be a harbinger of its undoing globally.  Why?  Because, the Egyptian problem is one of secular nationalists versus religious purists, and this is in a country that is neither Arab nor Persian.  The myriad of possibilities is fascinating, but every sign points toward further fracture of Islam instead of some great galvanization….

So, from the view of religious governments (like Islam), one may look back over great rivers of history and see that they do not last in the long term.  Religion indicates fear, by definition, and it is not a basis for a government that will last.  In response to this, humanity developed less religious, more “moral” types of approaches.  The two most common in Your Lifetime would be democracy and socialism (not to be confused with communism; communism is atheistic in its roots, while socialism is “moral” from a belief in a deity in its roots).  These approaches developed in order to try and get away from government by a “mandate of heaven” (as the Chinese used to say).  They wanted to govern based on humanistic compassions instead of heavenly ones…. 

Fox's 2008 Super Bowl Version of The Declaration of Independence

The nature of democracy, for example, is self-determinism.  Democracy is rooted in rebellion from authority.  That is precisely the genesis of the United States of America.  Yesterday, in preface to the Super Bowl, the reading of the Declaration of Independence by famous athletes was championed as a good thing.  The problem is that the Declaration of Independence is a temper tantrum, albeit an understandable one.  The fact that the king of England was a jerk and a terrible ruler does not just excuse the rebellion.  The Truth is that the king was wrong and so were the American colonies.

Despite that Truth, the idea of democracy is that every man should be allowed to determine his own destiny.  Accordingly, freedom is the chief virtue of democracies, because it is the mechanism by which people may most successfully seek out their individual destinies.  That is not a good thing.  i know that Americans believe it is a good thing, but it isn’t.  People should not pursue their own interest without regard to the history of their families traditions or their ancestors giftings or skills or their tribe’s ways.  People should not try and establish their own destinies — for men are not capable of doing so in a beneficial way to their posterity.  To determine Your own way is what the Scripture defines as “sin,” literally, and — yet — it is the chief ambition of Americans and the most cherished use of freedom.

Not only do Americans embrace self-determinism, but they actively try to spread the contagious disease to other parts of the world.  It would be unforgivable to spread a contagious disease in any other context; in fact, we call that biological warfare.  Never has that description been more accurate than with democracy, for with democracy it is a corporeal disease that is carried by people as an idea instead of a viral disease that is carried by people as an illness.  George W. Bush became president, and one of his campaign promises was to not engage in nation-building.  Then, he was elected and burdened with 9/11, and nation-building became, to him, a necessity of war…a supporting of democracy where it had already taken hold, a preaching of it where it had not, and an implanting of it where it was perceived as the antidote to Islam or any other malignant form of government.  Why?  Because, as he said incessantly, people deserve to be free (which they do, by the way) and they yearn to determine their own destinies (which they do, by the way).  i would just like it noted for the record that self-determinism is the root of democracy, and those of You with eyes to see and ears to hear will recognize that self-determinism is — in the most literal and purist form & sense — sin.

Now, communism is even more diabolical than the moral forms of government (like democracy or socialism) or any of the preceding religious forms of government (like primitive cultures embraced in places like China, India, Egypt, the Americas in the native populations and cultures, or basically anywhere else).  Why?  Because communism tries to strip away religion and morality.  Whereas other forms of government are blindly groping in the dark for an ethical compass, communism despises ethics and tries to work strictly off power, productivity, etc.  It is a heartless form of government with no foundation of any kind except random, illegitimate authority….

That is why it is so offensive to the human spirit, because even the human spirit recognizes the need for spiritual grounding in government.  And that leads us to tomorrow’s post: The Culture Of Heaven….