The Offices of Christ and the Question of
a "Pax Americana"
From: eyecueco
Date: Sun Dec 21, 2003 1:16 pm
Subject: The Offices of Christ and the Question of a "Pax
Americana"
Dear A_Ters,
This is my last post to this list for the
year. A Holy Day is coming up and I need to prepare for this
important event, and at this time I do not feel the list is helping
me to focus on this event.
I'll have to decide after the 12 holy Nights
if I am able to make a postive contribution here or am just adding
to unnecessary chaos. I told Tarjei when he asked me to join
that I did not stand where he and the majority stood. He knew
I was pro-war, and in terms of the war, that I am pro-Bush, (although
beyond the war on terrorism I have many questions about some
administrative policies.) I did not misrepresent myself.
I am very sympathetic to the emotions everyone
is feeling around the issues of the curent world situation, whether
they align with my own or not. We are all struggling
toward understanding and resolution. We all want a world where
the lion lays down with the lamb, we all care, no one here is
a suicide bomber, and I doubt that most of us can feel good when
swatting a fly. Times such as these do, in deed try the souls
of men.
It is the time of the yearly cycle to think
of peace and good-will, while also remaining sober and realistic
about the spiritual challenge the world is faced with now that
the sun demon is active. Toward this sobering reality I am going
to do some that I have never done before on any list. I am going
to send in a rather long paper.
The reason I am doing so is that this paper,
written by a scholar of another faith than my own, is an article
that I am very confident will address the thinking and feeling
of _everyone_ here. I am also confident that at the conclusion
of this paper everyone here will find that this paper provides
a place of consensus and accord. This paper is neither pro-war
nor anti-war, pro-administration, nor anti-administration.
It seemed to me when reading it that Walter
Johannes Stein, or Steiner himself could be speaking the warning
given in this paper, a warning that if the West cannot rise to
it's spritual obligation to offer to the East a spiritual and
moral impulse that it is crying out for then the East will not
come to the Son,and, the West will be pulled back into the dark
ages.
I will send this paper/article out in several
parts. I send it in good-will and with all good wishes to each
and everyone of you for a blessed 12 Holy Nights.
I give you now Max L. Stackhouse and his paper
read at the Conference on Ethical Issues
Raised by Pre-Emptive War at The Churches' Center for Theology
and Public Policy, Wesley Theological
Seminary, Washington, D.C., May 1, 2003
The Offices of Christ and
the Question of a "Pax Americana"
It has been as I expected.
Gerald Powers, Elizabeth Bounds and Beverly Mitchell have already
offered substantial comments in presentations to this forum on
"Christians and War in the 21st Century," the careful
background report of the Churches' Center for Theology and Public
Policy.1 Further, you will shortly hear from James Childress,
one of the premier scholars of just war theory, whose views on
preemption I tend to endorse. The previous speakers have not
only laid out many of the critical issues about just and unjust
wars, with specific reference to this presumed "new"
doctrine of preemption, they have offered supplementary perspectives
and some reservations about the report in general. Dr. Powers'
observation that it makes a substantive
difference whether the
basic presumption of just war theory is peace or justice. It
seems to me to be a weighty consideration, especially if, as
I believe, God wants us to live in peace but not at the cost
of justice. Thus, justice may trump peace at times, if it brings
about a more just peace. Indeed, force is a necessary ingredient
of politics when exercised by legitimate authority in a just
cause and in a constrained manner against unjust violence, and
those who deny this cannot be taken as serious voices in political
debate. Dr. Bounds' stress on the fact that many people live
with a deep sense of insecurity, and that this reinforces a profound
anxiety that presses this nation toward more of a "national
security state" than is necessary, seems compelling to me;
and it is necessary to develop at the grass-roots level more
refined methods of dealing with this compassionately. And Prof.
Mitchell is surely correct that we must also challenge the arrogance
of power that all too often neglects the direct needs of the
powerless at home.
In view of these presentations,
I have decided to offer certain theological background considerations
that bring me to the issues from another angle of vision. It
may enrich our discussion and perhaps increase the depth and
width of our ecumenical vision in ways that could help pastors
and churches see the connection of the report to the biblical
and doctrinal focus on faith in Jesus Christ that they properly
cultivate in most of their work. Moreover, my effort rests on
the assumption that it is not the first job of churches to make
political policy. That leads to theocracy, or turns the church
into a party. Instead, the best forms of theology shape the moral
and spiritual ethos and invite indirect forms influence. To be
sure, the theologies of the mainline traditions are full of political
implications, and they contain principles and purposes that are
valid for everyone. But the path to the churches' influence is
through forming the general ethos and the consciences of the
laity, a path that will filter what we say and assures that it
connects with what the people experience in their lives. Thus
what we say should first of all seek to shape the convictions
of the people and the fabric of civil society so that political
authority will be held accountable to a morally and spiritually
formed, informed and organized constituency. That will make power
more responsible to the first principles and ultimate goods that
God intends.
In this context and in accord
with several major traditions of faith, it is one of the chief
tasks of the churches to equip and commission the people of God
to live their lives as agents of the various offices of Christ
in the midst of the common life. We are not only to be a "priesthood
of all believers," as Luther said, but to become a "prophethood
of all believers" as the Puritans had it. And all, not only
emperors and princes, are to exercise the "royal" office
of Christ the King as citizen-magistrates, not only as subjects.
Believers will assume the roles of Christ's ambassadors, governors
and agents in all the sectors of the civil society. That shapes
politics, and implies a social theory of politics rather than
a political theory of society. The common life does not always
work from the bottom up, but also not only from the top down.
It essentially works from the center out; from conviction to
behavior, from community of faith to society. Many Ecumenical
Christians since the Social Gospel and Liberation Movement periods
in our history are already familiar with what the prophetic task
implies. Every believer must be enabled to speak truth to power,
reminding the rulers that they are under a law that they did
not construct and dare not violate, demanding that they develop
policies that empower but do not dominate the other institutions
and spheres of society - families, schools, hospitals, businesses,
centers of artistic creativity and religious communities, and
calling upon them to establish and maintain a just peace, so
far as it is possible in a sinful world. This prophetic awareness
gives a new sense of authority to believers and ultimately to
all citizens in pluralistic, representative, constitutional democracies.
...................................................................................................................................
From: eyecueco
Date: Sun Dec 21, 2003 1:21 pm
Subject: The Offices of Christ and the Question of a "Pax
Americana" Part II
Message-ID: <bs52sl+rumm@eGroups.com>
User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Length: 6653
X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster
X-Originating-IP: 64.151.39.235
X-Yahoo-GPoster: eaTVsJNcypwgVaQh
But other offices are also
anointed in the Old Testament and recognized in the New as key
to understanding and serving the work of Christ. As recognized
by several early Fathers of the church such as Eusebius, and
major Reformers such as Calvin, the triplex offices of Christ
mean that leaders in the church, and Christian laity whose vocations
are to the service of God and humanity through their callings
in "secular" positions. Each must be a priest to the
other; each ministers to the neighbors' insecurities and anxieties,
partakes of the sacraments in communion with Christ and others,
manifests the willingness to go to the cross for others, and
performs the fitting rites and rituals for the times and seasons
of life. This ministry includes speaking a word of courage and
comfort to those who are in command or under command, caring
for their anxious families and honoring the chaplains who carry
out their callings in dangerous situations.
The triplex offices also involve
the recognition of what those in kingly positions know, that
the organization, threat and sometime use of coercive force is
ever necessary in society. What ancient cultures called "Mars,"
the personified ancient symbol of the disciplined use of force,
and what the biblical tradition calls "the power of the
sword," is a perennial factor in human history until the
Kingdom finally comes.2 We may hope for and work toward that
time when this "power" (and other "principalities
and authorities") will be brought fully under the rule of
the Lamb on the Throne, but it is not yet. It is this recognition
that makes it very difficult for those in the mainstream of the
Christian faith to be absolute pacifists or to proclaim a holy
war. As believers, and as citizens in a representative constitutional
democracy that has its roots in the covenantal tradition of the
biblical heritage, all mature members of the church are called
to number themselves among the magistrates, as the tradition
has it, as well as among the prophets and priests to their neighbors.
All are to accept part of the weight that those with high political
responsibilities must bear. We must recognize that there will
always be "wars and rumors of war." These are of proximate
but not of ultimate importance, they have to be put in perspective,
and real threats have to be met. In the face of this, we are
not to be alarmed, they do not signal the end of history or negate
the possibility of some gains in what is good by the use of power.
A government that refuses to wield the sword when they should
wield it under the constraint of moral law and to protect those
institutions in society that contribute to the well-being of
the neighbor near or far is not a viable or legitimate government.
And since those governments that are a terror to evil are instituted
by God, as the scriptures tell us, the church must also assume
some portion of the burden of realistic analysis in a world marked
by sin, deception and violence that is the duty of every ruler
to constrain.
With these three offices of
Christ in mind, we turn to some implications of the first of
them, that of prophecy. To act prophetically in our environment,
we will have to recall those first principles of ethics that
stand behind moral policy, and indeed much of international law.
Of great importance, as already extensively discussed in this
forum, is the doctrine of just and unjust wars. I would like
to point out, in addition to what has been said, that increasingly
this doctrine has become linked to two other doctrines: the doctrine
of human rights, until recently associated with the Protestant
tradition, and the rebirth of the idea of civil society as it
is definitive for understanding the common good, until recently
associated with the Catholic tradition, and both now undergoing
refinement especially as we must now recognize that, due to the
globalization of civil society, both universalistic principles
and multiple goods have to be recognized in a much expanded vision
of what is common and what is good. Although it is seldom said in just
this way, a survey of the pronouncements of the Ecumenical churches
and councils of churches on a number of issues suggests that,
whatever disagreements, sometimes sharp, divide people on policy
issues, these overarching principles are now among the key teachings
of most churches. Indeed, they correlate in large measure with
other religious as well as some philosophical and political traditions.
They do so not only because they are basically reasonable, but
because the churches have been direct or indirect advocates of
these ideas on a world scale for two millennia. Thus, even if
people are not Christian, many recognize the validity of these
ethical principles as advanced by Christians. Indeed, we properly
do not trust Christians any more than others who deny or flaunt
these two doctrines. At the heart of these doctrines is the conviction
that civil society, centered in ultimate, finally religious commitments,
needs a political order willing and able to facilitate the rights
of persons and protect the good of the diverse institutions of
the society itself. The "public," in other words, is
prior to the republic, and gives it legitimacy and shape. In
our global context, a wider civil society is now under construction,
a new expanded public that has escaped the control of any particular
nation-state and its definitions of civil liberties and national
well-being. A decisive indicator of a just civil society is that
it will form a legitimate authority willing and able use coercive
force in a morally constrained way to defend human rights and
to extend the possibility of public participation in the kind
of civil society that can operate in many and varied cultural
contexts.3 In this regard, it could well be, as James T. Johnson,
one of the leading scholars of the just war tradition, has argued
that one feature of the doctrine of the just war in its long
heritage was its claim that when and if the common good of society
and the rights of people are at stake, pre-emptive or preventative
action may be employed by legitimate authority.4 The residue
of this older tradition may be found in the criteria that "more
good than harm" must be shown to be likely, a criterion
notoriously difficult to adjudicate before we see the consequences.
(This raises the question as to whether our present situation
is, on this point, like the answer that Chou En Lai gave to a
question about whether the French Revolution was on the whole
a good thing - "Too soon to say." he replied.)
...................................................................................................................................
From: eyecueco
Date: Sun Dec 21, 2003 1:25 pm
Subject: The Offices of Christ and the Question of a "Pax
Americana" Part III
Message-ID: <bs534f+h28l@eGroups.com>
User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Length: 6897
X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster
X-Originating-IP: 64.151.39.235
X-Yahoo-GPoster: y6A5GE3eX2nLbDPZ
These doctrines - just war,
human rights, the common good of a differentiated and expansive
civil society - are not dogmatic markers of the orthodoxy of
the faith so much as they are justifiable implications of the
faith as it bears on the ethical fabric of human life under present
conditions. These are matters of "public theology"
in the sense that they are theologically rooted, but can inform
public affairs and forge a universalistic ethic that can be shared
with and defended in dialogue with people of other faiths and
philosophies. However, we must admit that these doctrines are,
in themselves, ever incomplete. That is, they involve assumptions,
limits and principles that serve as moral maps by which we can
find our way through the thicket of claims about what is right
and wrong, good and evil; but they do not, by themselves, offer
an account of the empirical and socio-historical conditions that
always must be considered as realistically as possible, then
related to the first principles. These doctrines do not, unlike
some dogmatic approaches, tell people what they should think
or how they should act. They differ in this from pacifism, from
holy war and from most cultural values - including "support
our troops." Rather they remind us of what has to be taken
into account at arriving at what are inevitably complex moral
judgments on which people of conscience may vary.
These moral maps, grounded
in a public theology, drive us to consider the evidence and point
us toward the kind of evidence that is most ethically weighty.
Thus, to speak of the doctrine of just war means that some use
of coercive force is not just or justifiable, and that the case
to engage in it must include a compelling account of the evidence
of its necessity as well as of the principles. To speak of human
rights means, as Michael Perry has argued, that "some
things ought never to be done to anyone; and some things ought
to be done for everyone."5 Thus, some sins of commission
and some sins of omission must be overcome, sometimes by coercive
means. And to know when that point is, we have to engage in a
process of discernment as to how, when and where those things
are going on and whether they can be effectively stopped by this
or that particular means. And to speak of the good of a pluralistic,
trans-national civil society in a complex world means that we
have to discern what limits can be put on what major institutions
do - states, armies, cultures and religions - even within their
own boundaries. In a new age of interdependence that challenges
the very notion of theocratic monoliths, cultural hegemony, militarist
domination, the era of Westphalian national sovereignty is drawing
to a conclusion in ways that even supporters of the United Nations
may not yet have realized.
The principles of just war,
human rights and the good of a global but diverse civil society
are, to put this another way, properly abstract norms that also
require attention to the actual contexts in which people live.
They require us to seek in the messy factuality of historical
existence, certain qualities, motives, and patterns of behavior
that allow humanity, over time, to come to the judgment as to
whether this or that regime or policy is, on the whole, just
or unjust. All prophets, priests and kings now live as if in
a perpetual trial, where it is always necessary to find both
the spirit of the first principles behind the law (the duties
of the judges) and to discern the pertinent facts of the case
and the parties to it (the duty of the jury). But here appears
a complicating factor: the data of history does not interpret
itself. A wider view of what really counts and what counts less
is needed. While God is the ultimate lawgiver and source of the
first principles, and God is the only one who can know all the
pertinent facts, everyone else now must be both proximate judge
and jury. That is, we must come to an awareness of the spirit
of the first principles of the moral law and decide which account
of the realities of the situation is most valid. Such doctrines
as these invite mainline Christianity to develop a more accurate
and more faithful assessment of human nature and of the possibilities
in social history than is available to the ideologies of the
doves, the hawks, the anti-normative empiricists, the nationalists,
and, indeed, the fundamentalists of all stripes. This demands
that we not only draw on the theology of the offices of Christ,
but we also develop a theology of humanity, a theology of history
and a theological ethic for society to guide us in the process
of discernment. This, we must candidly admit, the churches have
not done. How, after all, does social history work in God providence?
I stress this, because the
pacifists, who oppose all use of force, the militarists, who
want to solve every problem with blazing guns, the empiricists,
who deny all first principles and ultimate ends, the nationalists,
who cannot see beyond our borders unless it is to our advantage,
and the fundamentalists provide no basis on which to build a
just peace or discern a just war. The fundamentalists - Islamic,
Hindu, Buddhist or Christian - pose a special problem, for they
are all willing to confront any and all of the others in this
list with a pre-packaged conclusion to every question. And in
the world context today, we have seen the resurgence of such
voices. But they cannot be met with a non-theological point of
view, as many in the "liberal" wings of various religions
have tried. Every civilization rests on a foundation of ultimate
convictions, and no civilization can endure without a guiding
consciousness of these convictions as they give shape to the
morality of the people and to just and viable institutions in
civil society.
Besides, it is not true that
contemporary pluralism make the situation entirely different
from the past, and that we should thus hide our own claims about
what is true for the whole world for the sake of tolerance or
because of the separation of church and state. The world has
always been highly pluralistic, probably more pluralistic in
the past than in the present. Many gods have died. And the decisive
principle of separation of church and state does not mean that
religiously-grounded ethics must not influence the introduction
of moral considerations into politics. Nor is it clear that the
Christian fundamentalists have a theology able to meet the challenge
of non-Christian faiths and cultures. It is only by a better
theology that a worse theology can be exposed and corrected,
and a deeper ethic established, although this will involve new
levels of encounter beyond the "clash of civilizations."
The question is whether some theologies have a serious place
for pluralism and can still give guidance to the common life.
...................................................................................................................................
From: eyecueco
Date: Sun Dec 21, 2003 1:27 pm
Subject: The Offices of Christ and the Question of a "Pax
Americana" Part IV
Message-ID: <bs537v+u4ah@eGroups.com>
User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Length: 8980
X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster
X-Originating-IP: 64.151.39.235
X-Yahoo-GPoster: zRl_HGrnhRhBl=qJ
With these points in mind,
it is fair to say that the churches could justly claim to be
in the authentic prophetic tradition if they said that neither
the case for the Iraq war as a just war, nor a compelling vision
of where we should try to move history has been made by this
administration. This is not to say that the case could not be
made. In fact, when the Security Council passed Resolution 1441
unanimously, it seemed that the violation by Iraq of the first
principles behind international law was clear to all, and that
we could inspect and pressure a rogue nation to rejoin the community
of nations. Moreover, the evidence of the violation of
human rights by the Iraqi government reinforced the case for
increased pressure, even if it is also true that violations occur
elsewhere without intervention from the US or the UN, and some
on the Security Council were party to the violations. Further,
the vision remains vague of how it is possible to develop a viable
democratic regime with an open civil society in a context where
the power of anti-democratic traditions and highly theocratic
religious orientations seem pronounced. The evidence about the
theories of society and of history that led to serious violations
by and in Iraq are less well known and yet rather fateful. The
Baathist ideology which governed Iraq is directly traceable to
fascist ideas of the state, and the socialism to which the "Baathist
Socialist Party" refers was attached not only to the "national
socialism" of the Nazis, but became linked ideologically
to the totalitarian regime of Stalin. The bastard combination
of these "secular" ideologies imposed by Saddam and
his junta were also functionally tied to nepotistic and tribalistic
loyalties, and to romantic dreams of re-establishing the imperium
of the Tigres-Euphrates past, and then opportunistically sanctified
by appealing to Arabic resentments of the West and Islamist doctrines
of the inevitable spread of theocratic Islam, by conquest if
necessary. Every shred of ideological solidarity that could be
used to legitimate a corrupt, tyrannical regime was employed.
It is not only that Saddam was not a good person, it was that
the views of society, of humanity and of God that brought him
to initiate unjust wars against his own citizens and neighboring
states, allowed him to violate basic human rights with impunity
and prompted him to destroy the relative independence of the
various spheres of civil society. This synthetic ideology was
rooted in profoundly corrupt ideas of human nature, theology
of history and conception of the common good. It is one of the
failures of the churches who have the resources for a deeper
public theology that we did not vigorously and overtly preach
and teach against these savage falsehoods, for those of deep
faith should know above all others that ideas have power and consequences,
and we struggle not first against flesh and blood. We did not
call evil "evil."
Having said this, it is nevertheless
clear that, unlike the case that was made by Bush the Elder for
the Gulf War in 1991 that formed the world's largest consensus
about a just war since World War II, and the relative clarity
of the Afghanistan action, few efforts to make the case that
this is a just war or to clarify a vision of a new future have
laid before the American public or before America's long-term
allies in anything like compelling terms. Senator John McCain
and Prime Minister Tony Blair, scholars Michael Walzer and Jean
Bethke Elshtain, and journalists George Weigel and Thomas Friedman
have, in various ways and with differing degrees of nuance, taken
stabs at it; but no leading administration figure in this land
has, to my knowledge, done so or attempted to clarify what the
shape of things should be after victory, and what theories of
civil society or historical development they have in mind. It
is true that they speak of forming a democracy with a free market
and religious freedom; but one does not simply impose these in
a simple way. Such efforts failed in Somalia, Haiti and El Salvador;
although they seem to have succeeded in Germany, Japan and S.
Korea - although our troops are still there. It is not clear
that the USA is committed, and that the world would approve,
of an enduring presence of troops in Iraq (or Afghanistan). Thus,
we have the widespread suspicion that the motives for the war
are based on entirely other grounds - the desire for oil or neo-imperialist
designs, and thus that the public has been lied to, as columnist
Paul Krugman and others have claimed. Even if these are not the
case, it is the ignoring of the effort to set forth the ethical
and philosophical-historical case that is most troubling! What,
exactly, are we up to?
It may be, of course, that
for large portions of the population, the recognition of the
fact that Saddam was an unjust ruler, tyrannically governing
an unjust regime, is all that is needed, and that the residual
anger at the bombing of the Twin Towers and Pentagon plus the
fact of victory will be all that will be remembered over time
in the American political landscape. If this is so, we must ask
whether we, as ecumenically-oriented church leaders, should take
part of the blame for the relatively low level of ethical discourse
about these matters on ourselves and the sad state of teaching
and preaching about public moral issues in recent years. Perhaps
we must question whether the current postmodern presumptions
that there are no ethical absolutes and no master narrative,
and that moral perspective is utterly dependent on social location,
made it less likely that anyone would think of having to give
an account of their moral grounds for their actions: if one has
the social location of power, why not use it for whatever one
feels comfortable with? Who has the right to be judgmental about
that? Moreover, it is possible that some theologies that have
identified "prophetic" witness with the ideology of
"liberation" from oppression as if that were enough,
have now here been turned to unintended uses. We have liberated
Iraq. Is freedom not enough? And to a generation that is doubtful
about institutions governed by first principles or a sense of
a rightly-ordered polity that can enhance a complex common good,
why should we expect the general population to demand an account
of a policy and what can form a viable and just polity in these
terms? And even the tendency of many clergy today to reject the
doctrine of just and unjust war and to voluntarily adopt sectarian
stands on all such matters in the name of Jesus suggests that
policy makers can ignore the witness of those who are, ordinarily, expected
to bear the moral witness to society. Indeed, the poll conducted
by the Pew Center, to which others have also referred, reports
that only eighteen percent of American church-going population
have heard their clergy preach on topics related to this war,
and only eleven percent of these said they paid attention to
clergy views on the matter, for they did not think the clergy
knew what they were talking about.
Of course, it is possible
that the clergy do not know what they were talking about, but
it is also possible that if they do, they do not know how to
preach and teach on such matters. It is probably a failure of
the seminaries that many theologians, pastors, church leaders
and seminarians who speak out most vocally against the evils
of our time rarely integrate the prophetic word with the priestly
care of those who have served in other wars, who are in the service
now, or who have relatives, friends or neighbors in the mid-East,
some of whom may have paid a price for their service.
Moreover, seldom have they
taught, by their theologies, sermons, education programs or Bible-study
sessions, the church-members to think that the biblical and theological
traditions had anything weighty to say on public and international
issues except to oppose war, exploitation and poverty - much
of which is said to be America's fault. The fact that people
do not believe this is not only a matter of American chauvinism,
of which there is no small amount; but also because many know
enough about world history, exploitation by indigenous leaders,
and centuries of poverty due to cultural beliefs and social practices
that inhibit development, to know that all fault cannot be laid
at the feet of the US or of colonialism. In fact, they believe,
not without reason, that the vocation of America is to bring,
with God's blessing, a kind of ordered freedom in politics, economics,
religion, and individual opportunity to the world that little
of it yet knows. If this is valid, we must give these ideas some
ethical and spiritual amplitude; if they are mere chauvinism
and a licence for our cultural neo-colonialism that are not universally
valid, we must show how those who hold to them are mistaken.
...................................................................................................................................
From: eyecueco
Date: Sun Dec 21, 2003 1:29 pm
Subject: The Offices of Christ and the Question of a "Pax
Americana" Part V
Message-ID: <bs53ci+95e7@eGroups.com>
User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Length: 6467
X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster
X-Originating-IP: 64.151.39.235
X-Yahoo-GPoster: iJDgurdv2iyzKd8=
A willingness to acknowledge
a failure on the part of the seminaries and the ecumenical churches
and pastors on this front, or to confess the partial culpability
of the West for its own contributions to the suffering of others
and its moral pretenses, however, does not cancel the need for
a critique of the present US government for having failed to
make a compelling case for its policies. It simply is not clear
where we are leading the world as we employ our unmatched power.
Here the church and its leaders have a special gift that it must
prompt others also to exercise: the power of the word, the power
of persuasive argumentation. We should both demand it and offer
it to the people. A government without a respect for the power
of the persuasive word, not only in popular appeal but also in
moral substance, could the more easily become a government by
naked force, eroding the principles of human rights, corroding
the prospect of a vision of the greater common good and conducting
war without making the full case for its justice. People
- allies, international diplomats, serious citizens, morally-concerned
intellectuals and the clergy who take their duties seriously
as officers in Christ will no longer expect the government to
give good reasons for what they do. That leads to a bleak future.
We can speculate as to why
they have not. On the one hand, the population formed in faith
by the church has not called upon the administration to make
such a case, as I have just hinted; but it is also likely the
case that the kind of Christianity held by those in power does
not incline them to do so. I have no doubt about the fact that
the president and many of his advisors earnestly pray that they
can carry out the duties of their high offices in a way that
protects the people for whom they are most responsible and advances
the interests of the nation. They may well have internalized
a sense of character and duty of office. On these points a valid
ministry may well have been carried out by the traditions to
which they have turned. They may have fostered personal discipline
and empowered persons to face their individual temptations; they
may also have given them courage and comfort in the face of hard
decisions. But the personal pietism of these traditions, which
the ecumenical churches too often ignore but which attracts these
leaders and larger and larger numbers of laity, has no visible
theology of the kingly role and no overt theology of social history
that can shape the world as it plunges inevitably toward a global
civilization. It simply is not clear what the Anglo-American
alliance will bring, or seek to bring, as a new Pax Americana.
This is the reason that many see this war as merely another imperialism.
It is, in my view, actually a deep contest as to whether it will
be one or the other, a genuine Pax Americana or a new imperialism,
and the outcome will depend on whether America can use its power
to bring a period of history that points in some clear way toward
the shalom, salem, Freide, paix and mir, the just peace with
shared opportunities for participation and well-being to which
the world aspires, or imposes another rule that will go the way
of the Roman, Ottoman, Spanish and British empires. The problem
is that a merely personal piety, however virtuous, necessary
and honorable, does not and cannot by itself give full guidance
to a superpower willing and able to attempt to fix the problems
of the world, especially if the understanding the duties of that
superpower does not go beyond the enhancement of power and the
protection of interests. The best evidence known to me is that
the tough-minded wise men behind the throne have a dedication
to a democratic order, a free market, and technological progress
that they are bringing about by their political-economic strategy.
But the philosophical, religious and ultimately theological bases
for their actions are opaque, unless it is a sense of an inevitable
"clash of civilizations" proposed by Huntington.6 It
is, I think, one of the great faults of contemporary thought,
that philosophical and political analysis is seen to be more
universal than religious and theological thought, whereas in
fact philosophies and political ideologies come and go much faster
than religious and theological understandings and are more culturally
bound. some religions and most theologies are in principle more
universalistic, and without them neither liberals nor conservatives
historically have developed a worldview that can guide us in
interpreting the principles of just and unjust war in regard
to the global issues of our time, the propriety and limits of
human rights thinking, and the shape of a wider common good.
Thus, we do not know how to be prophets, priests or kings.
But the outlines of such guiding
worldviews, deeply rooted in our theological history, have been
developed further in contemporary thought, although just below
the radar of much theology and more public discussion. I refer
to the two most important theologically-shaped views of how history
should be sculptured in ways that can support human rights, cultivate
a diverse civil society, and employ just war, where necessary,
to preserve them and humanity until the Kingdom comes. They are
the "hierarchical-subsidiarity" and a "federal-covenantal"
views. These are the two great theories that, I believe, can
give conceptual, ethical, and organizational coherence to the
debates around globalization.7 Both are pluralistic, although
the former tends toward a vertically layered order and the latter
towards a horizontal multiversity; both recognize that there
are many goods that have to be pursued to sustain life and meaning
in history, both have a profound place for the dignity of persons
and communities, and both are aware that they cannot resolve
the tensions between the many goods entirely within history.
Both know that a "transcendental" frame of reference
is required and that a patient theory of historical expectation
is demanded. The hierarchical-subsidiary view is primarily articulated
in the Roman Catholic tradition, although it has parallels in
both Indian and Confucian societal theories. The federal-covenantal
view has been developed primarily in Jewish and Protestant circles,
although it has parallels in some features of primal religions,
as well as in parts of Buddhism and Islam.8
...................................................................................................................................
From: eyecueco
Date: Sun Dec 21, 2003 1:32 pm
Subject: The Offices of Christ and the Question of a "Pax
Americana" VI ( & Final)
Message-ID: <bs53hd+l86k@eGroups.com>
User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Length: 4034
X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster
X-Originating-IP: 64.151.39.235
X-Yahoo-GPoster: =0Ujh9kVcSNfgwTz
These views offer, I think,
the most viable visions as to what the world's only superpower
should be seeking to establish. It could give structure to a
polity that would allow the prophetic, priestly, and kingly roles
that people must play in civil society as they work out various
policies. It is also not far from what the UN should seek as
it reforms itself in several ways. On the whole I think the federal-covenantal
model could best give coherence also to the new "regencies"
of the world - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, the WHO, and
possibly NATO, each one of which will have its internal hierarchical
and subsidiary patterns of authority, but all of which would
operate within a federal-covenantal system. If the United States
seeks to move the world in such a direction, what now appears
to be a new imperialism could become a Pax Americana, a temporary
anticipation of a shared, more universal and simultaneously more
pluralistic and principled Pax Humana. Today, no genuine Pax can
be only by or for Americana, and American efforts toward peace
can only represent peace if it bears those just principles, purposes,
and polities that allow the peoples of the world to participate
in a global civil society that has a place for them to flourish.
Such a polity would set the contours for the more just use of
force, and provide both the bases and vision for a more just
peace, one that presently passes understanding.
What I offer here is only
a sketch, but (I hope) a helpful contribution to the theological
background issues that I think could and should frame the discussion
that is in the statement on "Christians and War in the 21st
Century." It represents the kind of
thinking that, in my view,
is critical for how the church may speak on fateful public issues
without usurping the role of politicians and soldiers. It is
intended to suggest the ways in which a public theology can also
contribute to a vision for the future, after a war that is only
ambiguously just.
Notes
1. In Shalom Papers: A Journal
of Theology and Public Policy, 5/1 (2003).
2. See Donald W. Shriver, Jr., "The Taming of Mars: Can
Humans of the Twenty-first Century Contain Their Propensity for
Violence?" in Religion and the Powers of the Common Life,
vol. 1 of God and Globalization (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press
International, 2000).
3. A project profoundly related to this theme has just been completed
at the Center of Theological Inquiry. See Patrick Miller and
Dennis McCann, eds. Theology and the Common Good (Harrisburg,
PA: Trinity Press International, forthcoming, 2004).
4. I became convinced of this point in conversation with him
on March 29, 2003, in discussion of his books, including Morality
and Contemporary War (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1999).
5. See his The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries (New York:
Oxford U. Press, 1998), and the symposium on his work in the
Journal of Law and Religion, XIV/1 (1999-2000).
6. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking
of the World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). Several
journalists have argued that, more than Huntington, it is the
ghost of political philosopher Leo Strauss that stands behind
the throne. If so, it involves a more penetrating criticism of
"liberalism" than any ecumenical theologian has yet
mastered.
7. See M. L. Stackhouse, et al., God and Globalization, 3 vols.:
God and the Principalities of the Common Life; The Spirit and
the Authorities of Modern Life; and Christ and the Dominions
of Civilization. (Fourth volume in preparation.) Cf. also the
very important resource by James Skillen and R. M. McCarthy,
eds., Political Order and the Plural Structure of Society (Atlanta,
GA: Scholars Press, 1991).
8. See Nancy Rosenblum and R. Post, Civil Society and Government;
The Ethikon Series, Vol 5, (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton
U. Press, 2002); and David Mapel and T. Nardin, International
Society: Diverse Ethical Perspectives (Princeton: Princeton U.
Press, 2001).
...................................................................................................................................
From: dottie zold
Date: Sun Dec 21, 2003 5:55 pm
Subject: Re: [anthroposophy_tomorrow] The Offices of Christ and
the Question of a "Pax Americana"
Paulina wrote:
I told Tarjei when he asked me to join that I did not stand
where he and the majority stood. He knew I was pro-war, and in
terms of the war, that I am pro-Bush, (although beyond the war
on terrorism I have many questions about some administrative
policies.) I did not misrepresent myself.
Dear Paulina,
Thank you for reminding us of the call for
the 12 Holy Nights. It's easy sometimes to get involved and not
be aware at various moments what is coming upon us in a sense.
Thank you.
In regards to being pro Bush and also pro
war I think thats your personal intuition and I have a different
intuition of the war and Mr. Bush and I hope for the best for
all of us. I pray that God will help him make good decisions.
I have no issues with those who are pro war personally and it
is hard to have the conversation without getting feelings hurt
all across the board. In regular everyday settings I do not know
that we would allow ourselves to be so deeply involved and most
likely unless with very very good friends forego the conversation
completely.
Thank you once again for the paper you have
shared that may help pull all sides to a place where we may find
common ground.
Merry Christmas,
Dottie
...................................................................................................................................
From: golden3000997
Date: Sun Dec 21, 2003 2:15 pm
Subject: Re: [anthroposophy_tomorrow] The Offices of Christ and
the Question of a "Pax...
Freedom and Pax Americana
Nelson Hultberg
Jul 07, 2003
"Whom the gods wish to
destroy, they first make mad," goes the ancient saying.
If this is true, then our leaders in Washington are headed straight
for the cuckoo's nest. There is a virulent, hubristic madness
consuming our political elites in this first decade of the 21st
century. It manifests in the intrusiveness of the Nanny State,
in the relentless debasement of our currency, in the manipulation
of our markets, and in the outrageous taxes that sap the entrepreneurial
vigor from our lives. But scariest of all, it manifests in the
employment of unbridled power to remake the world's divergent
cultures, religions, and systems into American democracy clones.
Power, our Federal Government has -- political, bureaucratic,
police, military, monetary, and taxing power. It has had such
power in excessive amounts for over a century now, and it has
grown quite ruthless in wielding it in order to pursue its goals.
Its primary goal is HEGEMONY over other regions and countries,
as well as over American citizens themselves. This should not
be surprising. This is what tyrannical governments have been
doing for thousands of years. Since the days of the ancient Pharaohs,
they have sought to control their neighbors as well as their
own citizens, and they have justified their behavior by insisting
that "peace and stability" were their aims. But power
is their real aim. And sadly, individuals become ciphers in the
process. This is what is unfolding once again, as it has countless
times in the past. Study the annals of man from the Sumerian
kings, to Alexander the Great, to Frederick Barbarossa, to Napoleon,
Stalin and the modern despots, and the major leitmotif of the
entire panorama is PURSUIT OF POWER by governments over individual
citizens.
Beginning of the Madness
With the onset of the War
on Terrorism, our Federal Government has now ratcheted up its
drive for hegemony both domestically and worldwide. In September
2002, the Bush administration released its new National Security
Strategy, which was a sweeping agenda to mount a retaliation against
the terrorist threat from Islam. But it was also something else;
it was the first implementation step
for the vision of Pax
Americana. This vision has its origin in the controversial 1992
Pentagon report by former under secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz
titled, "Defense Planning Guidance." In it, he called
on America in the post Cold War era to alter its foreign policy
aims from merely defense of our nation to actively pursue a reshaping
of the world -- in short, get involved in nation building whenever
and wherever it would appear to benefit us. Now that we are the
only superpower in the world, we must seize the opportunity to
bend as many nations as possible to our will, to our values,
to our form of democracy. Only in this way, can we truly promote
"peace and stability" for ourselves and our allies.
Only in this way can America heed the call to national greatness
that falls on the shoulders of singular superpowers.
The Wolfowitz doctrine has
been refined and sophisticated during the past ten years by high
level pundits of Washington such as Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan
of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). The refined
version now has numerous aggressive foreign policy goals for
America to pursue. Reduced to its fundamentals, this doctrine
is meant to make America into an imperialistic power and to be
proud of it. It is defined by Kristol and Kagan as "benevolent
global hegemony." One of the most important of the PNAC
goals is the imposition of democracy upon as many nations as possible
-- especially nations of the Middle East -- through both stick
and carrot methodologies. If a nation can be bribed into democracy,
all well and good; but if it can't be bribed, then it is to be
bludgeoned. Democracy has become our new god, the raison d'etre,
the salvation of our lives. It is now the curative for all the
world's ills from war, to poverty, to cultural primitiveness.
Spread its healing principles to mankind, and we can build a
heaven on earth. Such is the madness that now consumes our Federal
Government.
"Washington today is
trying to turn everyone into Americans," writes Richard
Maybury in his July issue of Early Warning Report. "No one
makes any secret of the fact that Washington sees Iraq as a test
case for [its imposition of democracy] plan. George Bush boasted
about it in his February 26th speech. He intends to spread the
American Way throughout Arab lands, to 'transform that vital
region.'"
Because the heathens lack
democracy, they are prone to breed extremism and hatred, they
war on their neighbors, and most importantly they wish to blow
up people and buildings in America. According to the Kristol-Wolfowitz
PNAC model, terrorism has its roots in the non-democratic political
ideologies of the Third World, especially in the theocracies
of the Middle East. Thus, the first order of the new Pax Americana
is to bring those we deem as heathens to democracy, to modernize
the poor devils, and while we're at it teach them the beauties
of a more materialistic culture. Since democracy is the summum
bonum of our day, we have the duty to impose it upon those who
are backward. The fact that the British felt the same call to
duty in their imperialistic dreams of the 19th century goes ominously
unnoticed by our punditry. What is the difference between the
Kristol-Wolfowitz vision and the expansionist policies of Benjamin
Disraeli and Queen Victoria in England of the 1870's that promoted
war against the Afghans and the Zulus? British style colonization
may not be the goal of the PNAC vision, but the curse of world
hegemony is, just as it was in the days of Pax Britainia.
History does not repeat precisely,
but it does in general principle. And Washington is repeating
the sins of the past while our pundits pusillanimously blank
out. Our Federal Government has divorced itself from the true
meaning and purpose of America in both its domestic and its foreign
policies. It is to be feared as a despoiler among nations and
men. It has crossed the Rubicon into imperial overreach.
In an article in January of
this year, I wrote that I saw the coming Iraqi war, whether it
was to unfold horrifically or painlessly, as just the beginning
of a whole series of Islamic-Washington clashes over the next
10 to 20 years. I stated that genuinely healthy economies are
not spawned from protracted periods of war. And that this is
what lies on America's horizon for a long time to come. So better
load up on gold and silver in whatever manner your risk tolerance
allows. And spread the word about the hubris that is causing
it all. That is what sane men do in times of upheaval. If the
world wants to go insane, it has that prerogative. But the wiser
heads of history always refuse to take part, and they always
look to protect themselves from the insanity.
I see no reason to change
that view. In fact, the events unfolding since then have only
reinforced my conviction that there is so much ignorance and
arrogance ruling Washington today that only a catastrophic denouement
that extends for years can rouse the intelligentsia from their
madness. Only through a cathartic crash of historic proportion
can the necessary changes be brought about in our national perspective
to restore freedom, sound money, and proper foreign policy.
The Costs of Empire
Trade and fiscal deficits
are now exploding like Krakatoa and St Helens to pay for the
delusions of our leaders. Years of prodigality that would make
Louis XIV blush have gutted our national savings and sanity.
Washington's welfare bureaucracy is today's Versailles Palace.
Gold leases, swaps, deceit, and MANIPULATION are now the tools
of Greenspan's Fed -- so terrified are his governors of the unmitigated
horror awaiting the nation because of their 90-year experiment
in dollar alchemy. Greenspan has become nothing but a gussied
up Keynesian medicine man -- mixing interest rate tonics, Forex
cathartics, bond purchase elixirs, and snake oil monetization
into a putrid witch's brew to try and cast just the right spell
over the economy to somehow turn fractional reserve dross into
gold. But the laws of nature are not to be conned. The Fed's
credit money is still debt, and it will not move an economy already
suffocating in debt. 'Sir' Alan sold out his youthful principles
to ride around in the black limousines, and now he has only a
shaman's bogus remedies with which to try and salvage his place
in the history books. He gave up, with the sale of his principles,
the only instrument that could save the nation -- gold. His recondite
speeches, so popular among the sycophants of Washington during
the go-go nineties, are now seen for what they always were --
self-serving gobbledygook and mystification to further perpetrate
the power of the Federal Government in our economic lives.
The Federal Government's fiscal
deficit will come in somewhere between $300 and $400 billion
this year, while the trade deficit will exceed $500 billion.
According to Bill Bonner, the estimates on what the Iraqi regime
change will ultimately cost range anywhere from $27 billion to
$1.92 trillion. With the Federal Government's track record for
"honest statistical evaluation," what are the chances
that its final bill is closer to the $1.92 trillion figure than
the $27 billion figure? Pretty damn good, I would say. Does anyone
with a semblence of a brain still think such gross fiscal insanity
can be rectified with "monetary policy," that such
debt will not have to be purged through an excruciating economic
collapse? Sadly yes, there are those that do. They ride around
Washington in black limousines and pour forth, to media lackeys
and talk show barkers, the most disingenuous fallacies of our
age.
To compound the problem of
trade and fiscal deficits that Demopublican statism has brought
us via its 30 year orgy of buying votes with paper dollars, we
now add the cost of empire. Heathens are not converted cheaply.
Our Iraqi venture is beginning to settle into the morass of guerrilla
resistance a little more each week. And guerrilla resistance,
as the Russians found out in Afghanistan, can go on indefinitely.
Its like the irrationality of the stock market; it can stay predominate
far longer than a nation's treasury can stay solvent. What glee
our enemies must be experiencing at sight of obtuse Americans
trying to fathom why the Shiites do not care to adopt our democracy
and our Constitution. As Maybury points out, they have their
own Constitution. It's the Koran, and it has ruled them for over
a thousand years. Yet Kristol-Wolfowitz, et al imagine that they
can overturn 1400 years of metaphysical tradition with gung-ho
American lectures. I have
a bit of bad news for Kristol-Wolfowitz, et al. Change in a culture's
metaphysical views takes place over centuries, not months and
years. It moves like a glacier sliding across a continent. And
it does not respond to the butt end of a rifle. Yet the madness
has already been launched and cannot be retracted now. So America
will have to play this game out. It will be, in my opinion, a
game that will cost us hundreds of billions of dollars and
many lives lost literally on the battlefield of the Mideast cauldron,
as well as untold lives lost morale-wise on the home front as
our economy slouches toward bankruptcy and an Argentine future
because of our government's ever-extending reach beyond its financial
and spiritual supply lines. Because Keynes mesmerized our leaders
in college, they do not grasp the critical role that savings
play in creating productivity in a healthy society. They believe
that consumption is the engine of economic growth, and that paper
money can ignite it forever. They thus do not understand why
military expansion, such as we are now embarking upon,
must ravage a nation whose people are in debt up to their eyebrows
in the domestic arena. They do not understand that a nation devoid
of savings (as America is now) has extended itself beyond its
capacity to finance "global hegemony." They believe
in the power of printed money as if it is actual wealth. The
Keynesian virus has done this to them.
Washington's original estimate
was that a successful regime change would require the stationing
of our troops in Iraq for 1-2 years. Then the estimate gradually
became 4-5 years. Now President Bush merely tells us that Americans
face a "massive and long-term undertaking" in rebuilding
Iraq. Has anybody in the media noticed how specific the estimates
were to sell the Iraqi venture, and now how vague the estimates
are to sell the idea of a protracted American occupation? Does
anybody remember LBJ and Vietnam, Clinton and Bosnia? For god's sake,
they're all the same -- these despicable Demopublicans!
What is so aggravating today
is to have to endure the dupes who buy into the establishment
fiction that America has a "two-party" political system.
Wake up Americans! We as a country are slowly evolving into a
dictatorship. Both political parties -- Democrats and Republicans
-- are at fault here. Both parties have abandoned the principles
of a free society, and have adopted the collectivist-arbitrary
law approach that undergirds all the tyrannies of history. It
matters not whether it's LBJ or Nixon, Carter or Reagan, Clinton
or Bush. Both parties have become merely subdivisions of one
party because they are the same in principle. They both promote
a subtle brand of economic fascism -- equivalent to Mussolini's
corporate-statism. The difference is that Republicans emphasize
the foreign policy arena, while Democrats revel in the domestic
arena.
But they both spread Big
Brother omnipresence once in power.
This is what we in the libertarian/conservative
movement (now led by Ron Paul and the Liberty Committee in Congress)
have been preaching for 30 years, that both parties have been
taken over by collectivism and arbitrary law. But America was
founded upon individualism and objective law -- in other words
law that is the same for everyone, that is Constitutionally limited
in its scope, that requires self-reliance. Yet we have slowly
throughout the 20th century evolved into our present Demopublican
system of law that is different for different people, i.e., arbitrary,
and which foments ever-increasing dependence upon government.
It is a political system that is based totally upon the conveyance
of privileges to special groups. Once such a system of law is
taught by the intellectuals in the schools, and accepted by those
who are subservient among the populace, then the rest is only
a matter of time. A dictatorship will develop where once there
was freedom throughout the land.
It is this unleashing of "arbitrary
law" that has led us to centralized government and rampant
power lust, which has now led us to compulsive hegemony and Pax
Americana. This is what has created the chutzpah to imagine that
those we deem as heathens should be purified with "democracy,"
despite the fact that both their rights and the rights of American
citizens are usurped in the process. Our establishment pundits,
of course, are busy defaulting on their responsibility to remind
the American people about such truths. This is their nature --
to blank out on all hard truths so as to continue to feed at
the trough of Power. Attending palace dinners and courting the
favor of Washington bigwigs is what excites our establishment
media.
This obsession with hegemony
is why we are still in Korea 50 years later. It is why we are
still in Okinawa, still in Taiwan, still in Bosnia, still in
Germany, still in NATO. It is why, as Richard Russell points
out, we have major foreign bases in 36 countries and more than
260,000 troops stationed overseas with 50,000 military personnel
on carriers constantly prowling the oceans. [With the Iraqi occupation,
the 260,000 troops overseas are now in the neighborhood of 400,000.]
All told, Russell reports, our military has more than 800 bases
of various sizes around the world, including 60 major ones. There
are 189 nations in the UN, and we have our military in 140 of
them! [January 15, 2003].
A military presence of 400,000
troops dispersed to 140 of the 189 member nations of the UN!
This certainly has to be defined as imperial overreach! This
may not be the pursuit of empire in the conventional sense because
we claim no territorial ambitions as Rome and England before
us. But it is an insane over-extension beyond our supply lines;
it is pure madness. We are now the world's Imperial Super Cop.
The implementation of such a role in the Middle East will require
decades of occupation. Just think of that prospect -- our troops
stationed in Iraq for decades! It cannot help but create virulent
enmity among the rest of the Islamic world and spawn even more
terrorist attacks upon our shores! Millions of Muslims throughout
the Middle East will simply solidify further their conception
of us as vile Crusaders come to dominate them once again. Over
time, we will be seen as modern day Roman legions hanging around
afterwards to subjugate them. We will become as popular with
the Arab street as the presence of toxic waste is in a community's
water supply. All this to get rid of
one tin-pot dictator?
Great nations fall precisely because of this kind of blindness,
this kind of ivory tower imbecility that the Kristols and Wolfowitzs
of history always feel so eager to heap upon their fellow men.
What Is to Come Because
of This?
Edward Gibbon wrote his History
of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire over two hundred
years ago. At the end, he concluded that modern civilization
was too complex to fall. He was most indubitably wrong. All civilizations
are prone to falling because they are comprised of flawed humans
who, because they possess but a tiny flash of existence, are
driven to seek all manner of aberrancies to gratify their desires
-- to live, drink and be merry for tomorrow
brings one's demise. Power
lust is the most lethal of the aberrancies because it so often
involves masses of humans, giant bureaucracies, wars, and warped
visions. Will we in America be able to avoid Rome's path? Viewing
the world from today's perspective, one would have to say the chances
are not good that we will. Of course, this could change. History
is not set in stone; it is the result of men's choices. If we
were to experience a return to reason in the aftermath of the
upcoming world breakdown, it is quite conceivable that out of
the wreckage there would come a rebirth of freedom and sound
money again. It won't be the result of our establishment thinkers,
however. It will come from the contrarians of the world -- thinkers
such as Ludwig von Mises, Richard Weaver, Thomas Sowell, Murray
Rothbard, Ayn Rand, Rose Wilder Lane, etc.
One thing is certain; the
new policy of Pax Americana will bring all Americans less and
less freedom. This is already manifest in such legislative monstrosities
as the USA Patriot Act. What an insult to name a legislative
bill that opens the door for Big Brother with a term immortalized
by the Founding Fathers. But this is the pathological nature
of our government in Washington. It must now use tyrannical "newspeak"
to pass its bills.
The USA Patriot Act is a giant
step toward that Orwellian world awaiting us in the future. As
Nancy Chang, Senior Litigation Attorney at the Center for Constitutional
Rights, describes it, "the Act sacrifices our political
freedoms in the name of national security...by consolidating
vast new powers in the executive branch of government."
1) "The Act grants the
executive branch unprecedented, and largely unchecked, surveillance
powers, including the enhanced ability to track email and Internet
usage, conduct sneak-and-peak searches, obtain sensitive personal
records, monitor financial transactions, and conduct nationwide
roving wiretaps."
2) "The Act permits law
enforcement agencies to circumvent the Fourth Amendment's requirement
of probable cause when conducting wiretaps and searches that
have, as a 'significant purpose,' the gathering of foreign intelligence."
3) "The Act allows for
the sharing of information between criminal and intelligence
operations and thereby opens the door to resurgence of domestic
spying by the Central Intelligence Agency." [cited by Jennifer
Van Bergen, "What the Patriot Act Means for Americans,"
-- April 4, 2002]
Big Brother is coming! And
his omnipresence is being promoted by both Republicans and Democrats.
Pax Americana is the straw that will break our economy's back.
The debt load it heaps upon our already sated budgets will have
to be monetized. Interest rates will reverse their present trend
and begin a long-term rise. Large holdings of foreign capital
will be repatriated. The Dow and the S&P will drift southward
toward 3000 and 300 on the charts, even though the PPT will be
hard at work trying to shore them up. Competitive currency devaluations
will begin to spread around the world, as each nation scrambles
to keep pace with America's weak dollar policy. Arabs will relentlessly
dump dollars to counter American hegemony in their back yard,
which will steadily drain foreign capital and cap any and all
equity rallies. Greenspan will be faced with the dreaded "deflation
of assets" that he is so fervently trying to avoid with
his bubble creation policies. The Fed will then have to face
the rock-and-a-hard-spot choice that they have been avoiding
for two years. They will have to resort to actually printing
up money, rather than just jawboning about it. They will have
to ignite inflationary prices. They will do this because it will
be their only option.
Will such Fed capitulation
then bring on hyperinflation? According to Kondratieff theory,
it would be almost inescapable. But this writer is just skeptical
enough of formal theories about the future in a messy world to
entertain doubts. There are far too many variables that flow
in and out of the arena, that cannot be totally comprehended as
to their impact, to state with certainty that deflation must
result, and that hyperinflation must follow. All we can say is
that the future will be one of SEVERE CRISIS. Whether that crisis
is deflationary or inflationary, or a combine of both, depends
upon how Washington's cornered rats react to the dilemmas of
the upcoming years, and what measures of response come from other
nations. Men and nations have free will, and history has a way
of interminably fooling its prophets. It's as inscrutable as
a cat.
One thing we can probably
predict is that China will patiently sit in its cat bird seat
and gladly accumulate all the gold that our bullion bank ignoramuses
in New York keep dumping onto the market. China's historical
respect for the metal was never quite obliterated by Keynesian
doctrine as ours was here in the West. The rulers in Beijing
wish to be a premier regional power at the very least, and perhaps
even assume America's place as the world's reigning superpower.
They know that such dreams will come about only if they attain
economic dynamism, and economic dynamism is tied irrevocably
to a strong currency backed by gold. So they patiently accumulate,
and watch with appreciation the American death dance on Wall
Street and in Washington.
Pax Americana is now official.
It is openly proclaimed by powerful intellectuals and scholars
in the establishment circles of Washington. It will guide both
Republicans and Democrats alike in the upcoming years. It will
result in monstrous debt burdens and the gradual erosion of America
as a superpower. It will bring us $1,000 gold, and maybe much
higher. A great nation has taken a step toward historical oblivion.
The path is not irreversible, but it will take a great awakening
in this next decade to avert America's fall. The Keynesian chickens
that FDR set loose are finally coming home to roost. The laws
of nature that Jefferson and Madison so wisely built upon, and
which we so ignorantly scorn, are still there behind the scenes
working their magnetic hold over our decisions. They are eternal.
If an American renaissance is to take place, it will come only
from a restored respect for those immutable laws that the Founding
Fathers understood so well.
© 2003 Nelson Hultberg
http://www.afr.org./Hultberg/paxamericana.html
...................................................................................................................................
From: Tarjei Straume
Date: Mon Dec 22, 2003 4:33 am
Subject: Homage to Paulina
Dear Paulina,
You wrote:
This is my last post to this list for the
year. A Holy Day is coming up and I need to prepare for this
important event, and at this time I do not feel the list is helping
me to focus on this event.
Enjoy yourself, Paulina. Your input on anthroposophical
lists are always very valuable. You see through bullshit and
cut to the bone; you know your Christology, you have a great,
great sense of humor, and you're always an asset to have around.
Please don't be too shy or sensitive about
being a minority on certain political issues. That's what makes
list discussions fun, that we can collide and slug it out once
in a while. So I hope you'll return and be a good sport about
that. Enlist reinforcements if you like; tell them that anti-Bushers
from the left are beating up on you here and that you need help.
That would boost our membership, help the list grow, and liven
up the place. We're in agreement on the most essential spiritual
matters, and ten such agreements are worth more than one in the
Bush :)
Incidentally, Larry King on CNN comes on in
an awful hour in this corner of the planet - at 3 AM! - but I
did get his chat with Laura Bush in the White House (taped December
8), when she showed Larry around her Christmas decorations with
dolls from fairy tales and other favorite books, and George W
came in at the end of the interview, and it was so charming and
cosy my heart melted. Yea, I kind of love them Bushes and forget
the politics; George W. is a kind of guy it would be fun to get
drunk with and share a joint with while sweet, sweet Laura is
busy doing something else like decorating Christmas trees and
chatting with Larry King.
And George W. obviously believes sincerely
in what he is doing, making America and the world safer and all
that by being at war and sending his boys around. And our boys
(from Norway) are in action too, in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
And the U.S. government is very very fond of the Norwegian government
for that very reason, saying that this country is showing responsibility
and taking a stand and all that sweet sweet stuff. More about
that later, please bring in the troops - I mean your troops to
Anthroposophy Tomorrow.
It's my calling so to speak to be in opposition
to all this, to the war on drugs and the war on terror and so
on. There's too much of Lucifer in me to succumb to that rhetoric.
So I'm rebelling, I can't help it. I think Norway has always
been America's canary number one, the superloyal little birdie
that never speaks up. I think speaking up, in strong words if
necessary, commands more respect than bowing and agreeing to
everything with hat in hand.
Merry Christmas and happy new year, Paulina!
Tarjei
http://uncletaz.com/
...................................................................................................................................
From: golden3000997
Date: Mon Dec 22, 2003 5:15 am
Subject: Dear Paulina
Dear Paulina,
You may not see this until after the Christmas
tide, but it will be waiting for you when you "get back".
I want you to know that I see our disagreements as threads in
a tapestry, ideas crossing back and forth, over and under. Our
threads may not always weave in the same direction. Sometimes
they may not even intersect for a while. But there is definitely
a karma here. We have conflicted before, even if you might not
realize it. Yet, we share so much on a heart level with art,
education, animals and more. We don't have to agree in order
to love.
Christmas is a time for families and it usually
makes us confront the reality of our family in ways that we can
more easily avoid the rest of the year. Some families suppress
their conflicts and are quiet and polite when together, but there
is an underlying strain of unresolved issues. Other families
engage in vicious power struggles that end in abused souls and
egos, bitterness and depression. Some families are fortunate
enough to have incarnated as a "gift" of karma, perhaps
as a reward for having gone through some sort of battle together
in another life. There is little or no negative karma or antipathy
between them and their life together is a refuge and haven from
the world.
Others there are who argue at the top of their
lungs and laugh from the bottom of their bellies. They allow
their conflicts to surface and then get them out and fight about
them. But afterward, they can re-affirm the love and caring and
move on. These, I think are the luckiest of all. I have known
one or two like this, but not many.
We live in times when the families of the
bloodline are being disintegrated and family bonds must be forged
from the spirit whose material is thought, not DNA. So let us
have our fights and bring our conflicts to light, not hide them
under a bushel of artificial politeness. But afterward, we must
re-affirm one another and express gratitude that we have found
one another and the link between us.
You and I are not really in opposition in
essentials. I shall make this quite clear - I am NOT a Pacifist!!!.
I myself was a little bit shocked to realize this at one point.
I could see myself literally ripping the head off someone who
tried to hurt an animal or child or anyone near me who was not
in a position to defend themselves. I might not succeed, but
I would sure try!! I LOVED Eowyn in ROTK, as she rides underneath
the "Oliphant" and slashes at its legs with a sword
in either hand and then drives a sword into the face of the Witch
King. Read again my story "The Golden Soldier."
Even though we live in a more complex world
than Middle Earth, or even our own Middle Ages, there is still
a need to at least be ready to fight when called upon. My problem
is that I don't want to be on the side of Mordor!!! And the delineations
are not as clear as in a "fairy tale." The Black Riders
aren't so black. The Elves are not necessarily dressed in white.
Great is the Wizardry needed today to discern them all. We must
take care who we fight against and who we fight with! And we
must take great care what weapons we use and I mean this literally!
We possess armaments that, if used will destroy us all. Just
like in the Trilogy - no one can use the Ring, not even for good.
The nature of the Ring is such as to destroy everyone in the
process. Isn't this like nuclear and biological weaponry? Who
can wield these for the good? No one. So we must do everything
that we can to destroy these weapons and not think that we or
our leaders have the strength to use them.
Yes, Paulina - if we as a nation agreed that
we would take up arms and truly fight for liberation whereever
people are being oppressed, I would join the army tomorrow! My
sorrow and fear is that this is not our purpose and that we are
being deceived by our leaders who use this idealism that burns
in the American heart to lead us and most of the world to the
brink of enslavement and doom. Always Evil uses the phrases of
Good to mislead. We have to fine tune our hearing to hear the
whispers of the Enemy carried underneath.
So I salute you, my Sister Warrior as one
to another. I would have you at my back in any battle! Let us
lift our swords in a promise and a pledge to fight for one another
and to fight with one another against the Darkness.
A Once and Future Shieldmaiden of Rohan,
Christine
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click to subscribe to anthroposophy_tomorrow
December 2003/January
2004
The Uncle
Taz "Anthroposophy Tomorrow" Files
Anthroposophy & Anarchism
Anthroposophy & Scientology
Anthroposophical
Morsels
Anthroposophy,
Critics, and Controversy
