The Zenzoid Files

 

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This is food; thank you for posting it. This paragraph in particular resonated with me:

There is a relatedness and a deep relationship between us and God in the very act of creation, and in the very gift of freedom. Freedom is an absolute condition of love, because love is the gift of one’s self in perfect freedom, and has no meaning apart from freedom. But there is more to it — the English word ‘freedom’ is rooted in the Old English word that means ‘beloved’; ‘my free’ meant ‘my beloved’. The word Liberty which signifies freedom in other languages defines the status of the child born free in a freeman’s household. The Russian word for freedom indicates that we are called to be our own selves, not to imitate, not to ape, not to resemble, but to be ourselves in the image of the One who is perfect freedom and perfect love-truly himself. In all this the relatedness there exists between us and God is revealed particularly in this final act of solidarity which we call the Incarnation. Not only did God remain concerned with us throughout history, but he became one of us through history, and this not for a moment, but forever; not escaping the heaviness, the limitations and the pain of our human destiny, but in order to carry on his human shoulders the consequences of his divine act of creation and of our human rebellion, our rejection of him, lovelessness, godlessness itself. The Incarnation of the Word of God, the becoming man, meant for him that he entered into the realm of time and of death and of limitation and of all the consequences of human godlessness. This solidarity was not for a moment, it was definitive. He became a man, in human history, and he remains a man for ever because ‘He sitteth on the right hand of the Father’ as a man with hands and feet pierced by the nails, and with his side pierced by the spear. Throughout history and throughout eternity we can see this vision of divine solidarity with us.

Freedom and liberty are issues that have always preoccupied me. My heretofore saints on these topics were the original founders of the American experiment, which ended in abysmal failure at the commencement of the War to Prevent Southern Independence. But Metropolitan Anthony’s essay and some of the other things I’ve been reading during this Lent have made me realize that the “freedom” the American revolutionaries droned on about was just a shadow of the real freedom that Christ came to give us: a freedom that transcends temporal concerns like property and money, and how the government forcibly extracts our property from us for various feel-good and imperial programs.

Personally, I hate, and I mean HATE that we live in a world where we have to expend so much of our creative energy trying to make a buck so we can support our families. I hate that we even have or need money. I understand that money is just a way of metering out finite resources. But, still, it stinks because it creates a strong distraction for us. On the one hand, we’ll be strongly distracted to make as much money as we can to avoid poverty, even to the point of greed. Or, on the other hand, we’ll be distracted to venally envy other’s accumulation of money and property and want to use the force and coercion of temporal government under the banner of “social justice” to extract it from them.

And what is justice, Phaedrus, and what is not? Need we anyone tell us these things? Yes we do! And God Himself has told us these things. Real justice is being reunited with the person of God in Jesus Christ. It is a real relationship with the Living God. It transcends mere intellectualism, rationalism, ecofeminism, gayism, communism, socialism, fascism and all sorts of other boneheadisms. Such a sublime relationship with the Creator of all things visible and invisible, who humbled Himself to become one of us, to be born of a woman, to eat, sleep, and die like one of us… well, it just blows your mind. I mean, why would He do it? Only one reason: He’s crazy in love with us. And I can’t even pretend to understand why.

Anyway: freedom. Christ tells us that if anyone asks of your cloak, give him your underwear, too… er, well, I forget the exact quote but it’s something kinda like that. Well, imagine a world where *everyone* lived like that. There’d be no such thing as property and, here’s the cool part, *there’d be no need for it!*

Wouldn’t be wild if we lived in a world where we didn’t need property or money in order to live? It’d be a world where everyone looked out for everyone else’s well-being. Even if the other person is a weenie, you’re somehow able to look beyond that and you still actively seek their good. Anyway, try imagining it yourself, it’s a neat thought-experiment.

We’ve seen lip-service given to the idea of altruistic societies by various hare-brained political theories of the 19th and 20th Centuries: communism, socialism, fascism and all the other *-isms, all of which fail in precisely the same exact way: they all try to do it without God. And so you’re left with a collectivist system, namely government, based on coercion, not on the presence of Christ. And basing it on love simply isn’t enough. Lots of free-love communes in the 60’s ended in petty jealousy. Why is that we even want to separate the love from He who creates love? But this is exactly what we do when we make governments imbued with the powers of compulsion and death. You could say that government, by its very nature, is an anti-christ because it is based on force and coercion, confusion and beguilement– all the tools of Satan, not of Christ.

So, freedom, *real* freedom, is not something that we find in this world without God. But if each of us had a relationship with the Living God, we would manifest His presence to each other. What kind of a world would that be?

 

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Ron Paul grassroots support proved: “

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) drew a crowd of 150 supporters to Pembroke, N.H., late Saturday night to support his potential bid for the Republican Presidential nomination.

The fundraising reception, organized by a supporter and held at a private home, raised over $14,000 for Paul’s campaign.

Paul, who was originally scheduled to speak from 9 to 10 p.m., stayed late and greeted supporters until almost midnight, as late arrivals streamed in from the nearby New Hampshire Liberty Forum in Concord.

‘He is a living, breathing, elected, example of what our founding fathers had in mind for limited government,’ said Ed Naile, chairman of the Coalition for New Hampshire Taxpayers. ‘You won’t see much in the press about it, but 150 is quite a large crowd for a Congressman this early in the campaign. Enough to make some of his issues part of the debate on the Republican side, I would say.’

‘Paul’s message can unite fiscal conservatives, republicans, libertarians, constitutionalists, and others who are disillusioned with the direction in which the country is headed, in the cause of less government and reasonable spending and on getting the country back on track with regard to foreign policy,’ said CNHT board member Jane Aitken. ‘Finally a candidate we can all get behind.’

CNHT does not endorse candidates for public office but its members do arrange meetings with them and comment on them as individuals, Aitken said.

‘For most of history people have lived under tyranny,’ Paul said. ‘The world still lives under tyranny, and our country is is coming closer to that every day.

‘Our numbers are growing and we’re trying to stop that movement away from liberty.’

Paul received repeated rounds of applause for his limited-government stance, backed by his decades-long voting record in Congress, where he’s known as ‘Dr. No’ for voting against bills he believes are unconstitutional. ‘I give a lot of speeches on the House floor and nobody’s there, nobody claps,’ Paul said of his colleagues. ‘Here, everybody claps.’

Paul also spoke Sunday morning at the closing ceremony of the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, drawing a crowd of nearly 350 attendees and supporters, who also clapped and gave two standing ovations.

‘I believe there is a fertile field out there for our message,’ he said.

‘My goal was not only to run on a serious platform, but to stick to what I said when I got there,’ Paul said of his time in Congress. ‘I had no desire to be in office if I had to cave in and pander and say what each group wants to hear.’

Paul spoke out against the Iraq war, calling for the U.S. to bring the troops home and to revamp foreign policy to emphasize peace and trade rather than nation-building and ‘you do it our way or we’re going to bomb you’ intervention in other countries’ affairs, noting that the Republican Party has historically been the beneficiary of anti-war movements.

‘We need to understand why the terrorists are anxious to come here,’ he said. ‘They came over here because we were over there [before 9/11]. They want to bleed us. They don’t want the war to end. The worst thing that could happen to Al-Qaeda would be for the war to end.’

Paul also called for the abolition of the Federal Reserve System and the return to the gold standard, currency backed by intrinsically valuable precious commodities, accurately noting that the Federal Reserve caused and exacerbated the Great Depression. ‘Money created out of thin air is so evil and wicked,’ he said. ‘This is how big government is financed.’

Few understand this truth about fiat money such as current U.S. dollars, he said. ‘It’s eroding our standard of living today and people don’t know why,’ he said.

He also railed against the expanding nanny state. ‘Freedom works,’ he said. ‘If you don’t have the nanny state, lo and behold, somebody just might get medical care without the government. It’s already been proven that you can get educated without the government. Our best hospitals are usually associated with the name of a church. Never was a patient turned away. Today it’s harder to get medical care than ever before.’

Like John Stossel the night before, Ron Paul emphasized that the free market can solve virtually any societal problem, so long as government keeps its distance and resists the temptation to make matters worse with its attempts to fix things, and that governments which follow such a socialist path always fail.

‘[Economist Ludwig von] Mises told us many years before that it would collapse, that communism would not work because it’s fatally flawed,’ he said. ‘Their philosophy was a failed philosophy and was doomed to fail. It’s softer here, but it’s just as seriously flawed.’

Paul didn’t officially announce his candidacy, but said he would remain ‘engaged’ and sources close to the campaign say that he expects to make an announcement within the next two weeks.

‘We have had presidents who have tried to do too much,’ he said. ‘How can I run for office and say I want to be a weak president? We need a strong president, strong enough to resist the temptation of taking power the President shouldn’t have.’

Michael Badnarik, 2004 Libertarian Party presidential candidate, officially endorsed Ron Paul for President on Friday at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, drawing mostly support from attendees but some ire from within the LP.

Paul will appear in a televised presidential debate April 4 on CNN.

”

(Via Homeland Stupidity.)

 

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