Welcome to BOOK READERS HEAVEN! Books, Reviews, Short Stories, Authors, Publicity, a little poetry, music to complement...and other stuff including politics, about life... "Books, Cats: Life is Sweet..."
I've had Mary Anne Franks' book, The Cult of the Constitution, for quite some time and had already started and highlighting it. As most of you know, I read non-fiction books on an ongoing basis. But this time, it was as if I was reading for the first time, perhaps because it had been so long. I immediately turned to the beginning and started reading anew... I'm so glad I did. This is another book that I needed to fill in the many blanks I have been finding based upon my turn to politics in 2015. I verified the date of publishing for this book and determined it was 2019--also after 2015, the beginning of the assault, in my opinion, on the United States of America. I'm claiming this unexpected return as a God Incident, so plan on this being one of the books I'll be discussing on an ongoing basis... This is Part 1.
As soon as I came to my computer this morning, I worked to learn more about this writer and have sought out a connection on LinkedIn. I hope she has time to work with me, but as you can see by the videos, she is a very active, informed woman who is working diligently in her professional fields of expertise. I am just happy to have found her first book, which in my opinion, should be her first book that you read. It is a foundational book that I found myself responding to as being one with answers...
Dare I say, especially for women and non-white people? Yes--I Dare!
She is an author that has delved into the connection between her early religious experiences so much so that it guided her in pursuing further study. As you all know, I didn't realize that I needed further information until the last decade or so of my life... So I consider myself still learning. And, in doing so, I want to ensure that my time reading is a beneficial addition to my own personal goals of spotlighting God's Truth and His Love for ALL!
Realize that I will be meeting her in the following videos just as you... So I will be commenting on anything that strikes me along the way... except for the first one on her second book... I don't want to mix up my thinking on this book yet with what I'm now reading... Hope that makes sense--I just know how my mind remembers information in pieces as opposed to specific books...
By the way, I had another dream as I woke up this morning... Literally, I was hearing Snippets, yes, pieces of issues that I'd gathered and formed into a realization... I've started a post on my sister blog on that for later, jotting down the issues that I could remember as I woke up... That was about 5AM by the way... And I didn't turn over and go back to sleep because I was shaking... I knew I was to write about those snippets pulled from years past into what is happening right now...
Anyway, I've included the first video simply because it was the first I found, and because it was about her second book. Some of you may be more interested in the second book, so I wanted to spotlight Free Speech, also, at this important time when it seems that free speech is actually being attacked more than I have ever heard of--and as some of you know, I was greatly involved in Freedom of Speech on the West Virginia University campus, as both working in the provosts' offices and later in Facilities Management responsibilities...
By the way, I'm not a fan of the new "shorts" being used so often. Many of them are poorly done, I have found; e.g., ending before they should cutting off info to restart. But the more important aspect is what was done in the following short... I could easily guess why it was created and posted, as I hope all of you can see as well... Therefore, I will proceed to the following, full video to comment...
I already left a message that I thought this video showed Bias on YouTube
I wanted to use a non-government site to discover what Protected Political Speech is...
I tried to sign up and they mandated a mobile number in order to be accepted as a member...
Supposedly this site is for the individual, yet they refuse to realize that some people cannot use mobiles for messages!!! I didn't bother to read much... but linked it for your use...
However, I did read that this phrase, according to the Supreme Court, is the basis for Free Speech... Ahhhhh, I don't think so, but if this is true, it makes absolutely no sense! Is the Supreme Court saying that it is only the government who can lie and say anything they want? I cannot accept that this is the case just through logic! So, does that mean that is why every republican is called on to believe everything that DJT claims? What about the fact that he changes what he says each time he speaks without a teleprompter? But I digress...
I am so happy that I saw the "short" first. To me, it was already clear that this man was a republican misogynist. His clear disrespect of Dr. Franks is indicative of the type of problem all women are now facing under the imperialistic government we now have.
As an aside, my best friend once introduced me as a "women's libber." She was the first and only one who'd ever said that... I didn't think I was--until 2015! And it's become even more so, against this present group of men who are in office from the republican party... At the same time, I want to quickly also point out that my opinions do not include ALL men--mostly just white male supremacists, as defined in this book...
Ok, we have all become used to the republican party acting belligerent every time some professional speaks against their opinions... It has become outright rudeness during this administration, no matter who is being addressed! I am saddened by this man's vulgar display--I am not surprised...
What I do want to point out is that I listened clearly to both speakers. This speaker purposely led a disagreeable process in talking with each of the speakers... What I heard from the second speaker had little to do with what Dr. Franks was discussing. Yet, this speaker attempted to create a situation where one disagreed with the other--on purpose! He did not succeed and therefore chose to use the final speaker, a male republican, to close out the panel discussion. At which time, he claimed that the 1st Amendment was only for political speech and they would lose MUCH if anything changed... Meaning Dr. Franks' presentation... I give my first KUDOS to Dr. Franks for the manner in which she was able to address this rude man who purposely chose to ridicule her after the clarification that she had a doctorate degree. Boo His to the male speaker!
Now, based upon my understanding of Free Speech, I believe that what the white male supremacist was trying to do was to get Dr. Franks to say that the government was allowing bias to be shown toward conservative companies... And she justly sent him right back to the conservative business owners...
AND, the first one that popped into my mind as I write is the "conservative" baker who didn't want to make a cake for a gay couple because of her personal beliefs... Ok, let's take an aside on that too... First of all, is the attempt to divide Christians into Christians Nationalists simply in order to gain acceptance via complaints or personal faith... In my opinion, she loses--even if some cases have been accepted in the last decade...
First of all, let's deal with the logic. A Corporation or business is created to do business... They get a license to sell...serve the public... To me, it's already too late to ever decide that your own personal prejudices supersede that business organizational activity already entered into...
Using free speech itself as an example... On campus, we verified that free speech was permitted under the First Amendment, but that we had the right to restrict that activity to certain places on our campus. We were able to routinely deal with requesters wanting to use our space on potential controversial issues, by establishing our processes right from the beginning. Additionally, when we wanted to serve the community, such as the local groups needing larger spaces, it was I who coordinated/connected use with the programs within the University, and sought budget officer authority to "sponsor" that event... Just to clarify, those facilities such as the student union which was organized to sell for profit was routinely the site where most facilities were used...
Now getting back to the fact that those companies blacklisted being discriminated against, well, let me tell you that I have blacklisted a number of companies in my own life due to their service... If some were republican owned, that is not my problem, nor should it be... By establishing a business open to the public, in my opinion, your personal issues are just that--personal, and have no relationship to the economic activities we use OUR own money to buy... In other words, in my opinion, that baker, no matter her reason, was WRONG in demanding approval for prejudice against another citizen... If that company would up on the blacklist, so...be...it... and in my opinion, that was the beginning when the Supreme Court no longer acted on a sound legal basis to agree to religious exceptions being permitted. The Bible is NOT the Constitution... There WAS a separation of state and religion once...
As I may have said before, Velshi is one of my favorite moderators on MSNOW, especially related to books and professional expertise... I have found him effective in using content, for instance, he did the Project 2025 entire book in a series. I believe this entire session will be a valuable piece of information on our own rights!
Switching Gears...
I'm switching gears--sorta... I've been interacting with an author about how AI--and criminals--may decide to use YOUR expertise... as writers--as authors...
You see, I was planning on providing an excerpt of Dr. Franks book to allow potential readers to determine if they liked the author's writing... Then I started to learn more about how AI can be used by those who have no concern about right and wrong...
I'm a Trekkie--have been since Spock was introduced as a different kind of personality... I loved all the Trek movies, and even identified a book based upon the series, and included it in my review... The author told me I was the only one who saw the connection (which had not mentioned the television program AT ALL)...
I simply recognized the content connection of her books...
I have been opposed to people like Gates above who have already talked about using AI to write poems, etc... But I never had "connected" it to what I personally do here on Book Readers Heaven. As many of you probably know, I push the copyright privileges to the limit as the book publisher allows. That is simply because I know that many across the world cannot get access to what I read without significant cost, so I want/wanted to give the "flavor" of the writing of the author as well as my personal regurgitation of the story... Until I started a discussion about the use of some additional material presented in the back of the books I was reading, which started me responding/thinking about what was said to me... BTW, I still do not know what this means for the blog presentations...
BUT, as soon as the discussion started, I became mad at myself for not seeing this connection, even though I closed out hundreds of videos about using AI for school work and being disgusted... I can see the pros and cons, of course...
BUT, I had not merged the connection with what we are all seeing about the criminal element gaining control in the United States... Meaning... How are criminals already thinking about the use of AI for illegal purposes!
I was given the example...
If AI is fed entire books from say, J.D.Robb, a favorite author, in essence, AI could be used to generate a illegal story plotted and published under the author's name and be sold... It obviously could be easily done by purchasing ebooks, which has the electronic version already on computers! What a mess!
I remember when the government first took notice of the reviews being "paid for" on online sites, the one I was on as an example... They immediately established a process by which assurance was made for our "income" being collected and providing their share. At the time, I decided I would no longer charge for reviews, even though we knew that many self-published authors had been coming to us because they didn't have access for reviews by papers or other media... I have not charged for at least 15 years. Now, I buy my own copy as a verified purchase for records.
How to solve both sides of my blog activities is at the forefront right now... It seems to me it's a damned if you do and a damned if you don't situation... Books are often shared by word of mouth/social networks. For fear of plagiarism, we choose not to share much about our books, does that mean sales will go down. From my own experience interacting with writers, I think so... On the other hand, I can perfectly accept that anything good can also be used criminally. By chance, this author has expertise in this area as well, so maybe...maybe...she might help us know more about options for the future...
I have seen how much has changed since the government/Supreme Court is being used and abused for greed... I no longer feel that the majority of people even understand how they are being cheated in one way or another...
My first thought is to continue to do what I do now. Contact the author, but allowing them to know about the AI potential harm to writers' works... This topic will not go away--Trust Me!
Re this book, as I said, I have already sought a connection to this author... I will postpone the next part, based upon that, hopeful, discussion... or experiment with options...
God Bless
Gabby
News
I couldn't find the entire program yesterday with Katy Tur... This is one interview that was relevant about the acts by ICE... The last one that closed the two-hour show was heartbreaking, so maybe that's why I couldn't find... It was a Minnesota pastor that talked about diverting to see what was happening during the period in which Citizen Good was murdered... He was informative and talked about how neighbors helped neighbors in Minnesota... I hope you can find it... Because at the end, the emotional impact of the discussion finally broke the minister and he started and couldn't stop crying as the camera was still on...
I cried with him...
Father, I pray for this pastor--his love for his state, his community and his church was seen by all of us. And, as we who are Christians watch the violence being brought to American citizens with lies following, and government control of the investigation, now excluding the State, we have no idea what justice will be brought to all of us... Because we know that the lies from Noam started immediately after the incident, calling the woman a domestic terrorist... simply because she was trying to support her community people facing masked and armed violence creators...known for kidnapping people off the streets, whether citizens or who are legally here. You can bet that the majority now being taken are not all illegals!
BTW, just learned that two other people were hurt by ICE in a different state... Injured, they drove two miles before they sought help, for fear that they would not be allowed to get medical help...
Evil is alive and well in the present government administration...
Note: I have not watched this movie series. These are selected based upon relevancy
There is no world in which America will become the “Christian nation” that it never actually was; there is only a world in which a theocratic oligarchy imposes a corrupt and despotic order in the name of sectarian values. These visions turn out to be thin cover for an unfocused rage against the diverse and unequal America that actually exists. They are the means whereby one type of underclass can be falsely convinced that its disempowerment is the work of another kind of underclass. They are expressions of pain, not plans for the future. Perhaps for the same reason, some of the movement’s political projects often have a strangely performative character. Fantasy, cosplay, snark, the validation of heroic self-images, and the ritual infliction of pain on their political opponents—not changes in policy or material conditions—seem to be the point. The best label I can find for the phenomenon—and I do not pretend it is a fully satisfactory label—is “reactionary nihilism.” It is reactionary in the sense that it expresses itself as mortal opposition to a perceived catastrophic change in the political order; it is nihilistic because its deepest premise is that the actual world is devoid of value, impervious to reason, and governable only through brutal acts of will. It stands for a kind of unraveling of the American political mind—a madness that now afflicts one side of nearly every political debate.
~~~
If it has not yet sunk into your thinking, the above is a great way to start thinking clearly... Which political party is ALWAYS voting against issues that concern the majority of us? Gun laws immediately come to mind!
Abraham Lincoln had it right when he said that the United States is dedicated to a proposition. The American idea, as he saw it, is the familiar one articulated in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. It says that all people are created equal; that a free people in a pluralistic society may govern themselves; that they do so through laws deliberated in public, grounded in appeals to reason, and applied equally to all; and that they establish these laws through democratic representation in government. In the centuries after 1776, in its better moments, the United States exported this revolutionary creed and inspired people around the world to embrace their freedom. But in recent years a political movement has emerged that fundamentally does not believe in the American idea. It claims that America is dedicated not to a proposition but to a particular religion and culture. It asserts that an insidious and alien elite has betrayed and abandoned the nation’s sacred heritage. It proposes to “redeem” America, and it acts on the extreme conviction that any means are justified in such a momentous project. It takes for granted that certain kinds of Americans have a right to rule, and that the rest have a duty to obey. No longer casting the United States as a beacon of freedom, it exports this counterrevolutionary creed through alliances with leaders and activists who are themselves hostile to democracy. This movement has captured one of the nation’s two major political parties, and some of its leading thinkers explicitly model their ambitions on corrupt and illiberal regimes abroad that render education, the media, and the corporate sector subservient to a one-party authoritarian state. How did such an anti-American movement take root in America? That is the question I aim to address in this book. As a reporter, I like to look first and theorize later. I am interested in facts, not polemics—though I won’t stand in the way of facts when they lead to pointed conclusions. This book is therefore a collection of dispatches from the front lines of the current assault on American democracy. My goal has been to record what I have seen and heard from the leaders and supporters of the antidemocratic movement in the auditoriums and breakout rooms at national conferences, around the table at informal gatherings of activists, in the living rooms of the rank and file, and in the pews of hard-line churches. The story features a rowdy mix of personalities: “apostles” of Jesus, atheistic billionaires, reactionary Catholic theologians, pseudo-Platonic intellectuals, woman-hating opponents of “the gynocracy,” high-powered evangelical networkers, Jewish devotees of Ayn Rand, pronatalists preoccupied with a dearth of (white) babies, COVID truthers, and battalions of “spirit warriors” who appear to be inventing a new style of religion even as they set about undermining democracy at its foundations. I don’t pretend to cover all the angles. Others have found new and important ways to report on the subject, and I reference or cite the work of as many as I can throughout the book in the hopes that it will inspire further study. Even so, I think I have scouted enough of the territory to say something about the origins and nature of the antidemocratic movement in America. In this preface—the last of the pages to be written for this book—I will offer a handful of principal findings. Let me begin by repeating the obvious: this movement represents a serious threat to the survival of American democracy. Even at this late date, I continue to hear feel-good suggestions that the political conflicts of the moment are the result of incivility, tribalism, “affective partisanship,” or some other unfortunate trend in manners that affects every side of the political debates equally. All will be well, the thinking goes, if the red people and the blue people would just sit down for some talk therapy and give a little to the other side. In earlier times this may have been sage advice. Today it is a delusion. American democracy is failing because it is under direct attack, and the attack is not coming equally from both sides. The movement described in this book isn’t looking for a seat at the noisy table of American democracy; it wants to burn down the house. It isn’t the product of misunderstandings; it advances its antidemocratic agenda by actively promoting division and disinformation. In the pages that follow, I will bring the receipts to support these uncomfortable facts. For now, I will venture that few who have familiarized themselves with this movement will be tempted to minimize the danger it represents to our collective well-being. What are the root causes of this development? There is no simple answer. But I will get the ball rolling with an observation about time frames. It can sometimes seem that the antidemocratic reaction snuck up on us and suddenly exploded in our living rooms. I confess that when I look back over the decade and a half that I have spent reporting on the subject, the escalation of the threat appears breathtaking. In 2009, I was reporting on an antidemocratic ideology focused on hostility to public education that appeared to be gaining influence on the right. By 2021, I was writing about an antidemocratic movement whose members had stormed the Capitol—and about a Republican Party whose leadership disgracefully acquiesced in the attempted overthrow of American democracy. In the 2024 election, that party was rewarded for its betrayal of American values. Yet the swiftness of the fall should not distract from the long duration of the underlying causes. The present crisis is deeply rooted in material changes in American life over the past half century. The antidemocratic movement came together long before Donald Trump descended on a golden escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy for president. The outcome of the 2024 election only confirms the fundamental calculus described in this book. The forces hurling against American democracy will long outlive the current political moment, and they will continue to feast on the carcass of the Republican Party. Their various elements have emerged along the fissures in American society, and they continue to thrive on our growing educational, cultural, regional, racial, religious, and informational divides. Of particular note, the antidemocratic reaction draws much of its energy from the massive increase in economic inequality and resulting economic dislocations over the past five decades. In the middle of the twentieth century, capitalist America was home to the most powerful and prosperous middle class the world had hitherto seen. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, capitalism had yielded in many respects to a form of oligarchy, and the nation had been divided into very different strata. At the very top of the wealth distribution arose a sector whose aggregate net worth makes the rich men of earlier decades look like amateurs. Between 1970 and 2020, the top 0.1 percent doubled its share of the nation’s wealth. The bottom 90 percent, meanwhile, lost a corresponding share.3 For the large majority of Americans, the new era brought wage stagnation and even, within certain groups in recent years, declining life expectancy. In the happy handful of percentiles located just beneath the 0.1 percent, on the other hand, a hyper-competitive group has managed to hold on to its share of the pie even as it remains fearful of falling behind. I do not mean to suggest that the political conflicts of the present can be easily reduced to economic conflicts. Far from it. My point is that the great disparity in wealth distribution is a significant contributor to the wave of unreason that has swept our politics and our culture. It has fractured our faith in the common good, unleased an epidemic of status anxiety, and made a significant subset of the population susceptible to conspiracism and disinformation. Different groups, of course, have responded differently. The antidemocratic movement is not the work of any one social group but of several working together. It relies in part on the narcissism and paranoia of the subset of the super-rich who fund this movement, having decided to invest their fortunes in the destruction of democracy. They appear to operate on the cynical belief that manipulation of the masses through disinformation will enhance their own prosperity. The movement also draws in a sector of the professional class that has largely abdicated its social responsibility. Much of the energy of the movement, too, comes from below, from the anger and resentment that characterizes life among those who perceive, more or less accurately, that they are falling behind. As these groups jockey for status in a fast-changing world, they give rise to a politics of rage and grievance. The reaction may be understandable. But it is not, on that account, reasonable or constructive. Although the antidemocratic movement emerged, in part, out of massive structural conflicts in the American political economy, along with investment, by antidemocratic forces, in the infrastructure of their movement, it does not represent a genuine attempt to address the problems from which it arose. The new politics aims for results that few people actually want and that ultimately harm everybody. Grounded in resentment and unreason, the new American fascism is more a political pathology than a political program. What are the main features of this pathology? In America, just as in unstable political economies of the past, the grievances to which the daily injustices of an unequal system give rise inevitably vent on some putatively alien “other” supposedly responsible for all our ills. America’s demagogues, however, have a special advantage. They can draw on the nation’s barbarous history of racism and the fear that the “American way of life” is slipping away, abetted by an out-of-touch elite. The story of this movement cannot be told apart from the racial and ethnic divisions that it continuously exploits and exacerbates. The psychic payoff that the new, antidemocratic religious and right-wing nationalism offers its adherents is the promise of membership in a privileged “in-group” previously associated with being a white Christian conservative, a supposed “real American,” with the twist that those privileges may now be claimed even by those who are not white, provided they worship and vote the “right” way. At the same time, I will also show the movement is the result of the concerted cultivation of a range of anxieties that draw from deep and wide roots. Another glaring and related attribute of this pathology is perhaps already in evidence in the description above of the man with the SIZE MATTERS T-shirt. Anxiety about traditional gender roles and hierarchies is the rocket fuel of the new American authoritarianism. Among the bearded young men of the New Right, it shows up in social media feeds bursting with rank misogyny. In the theocratic wing of the movement, it puts on the tattered robes of patriarchy, with calls for “male headship” and female subordination, and relentlessly demonizes LGBT people. On the political stage, it has centered around the long-running effort to strip women of their reproductive health rights and, in essence, make their bodies the property of the state. That effort has had significant consequences at the ballot box—which is why a sector of movement leadership is starting to speak openly about stripping women of the right to vote. The tragedy of American politics is that the same forces that have damaged so many personal lives have been weaponized and enlisted in the service of a political movement that is sure to make the situation worse. This movement rejects the primacy of reason in the modern world at the same time that it rejects democracy. This is the darkest aspect of the phenomenon, and I describe it only after having grimly ruled out more charitable explanations. The bulk of this movement is best understood in terms of what it wishes to destroy rather than what it proposes to create. Fear and grievance, not hope, are the moving parts of its story. Its members resemble the revolutionaries of the past in their drive to overthrow “the regime”—but many are revolutionaries without a cause. To be sure, movement leaders do float visions of what they take to be a better future, which typically aims for a fictitious version of the past: a nation united under “biblical law”; a people liberated from the tyranny of the “administrative state”; or just a place somehow made “great again.” But in conversations with movement participants, I have found, these visions quickly dissipate into insubstantial generalizations or unrealizable fantasy. There is no world in which America will become the “Christian nation” that it never actually was; there is only a world in which a theocratic oligarchy imposes a corrupt and despotic order in the name of sectarian values. These visions turn out to be thin cover for an unfocused rage against the diverse and unequal America that actually exists. They are the means whereby one type of underclass can be falsely convinced that its disempowerment is the work of another kind of underclass. They are expressions of pain, not plans for the future. Perhaps for the same reason, some of the movement’s political projects often have a strangely performative character. Fantasy, cosplay, snark, the validation of heroic self-images, and the ritual infliction of pain on their political opponents—not changes in policy or material conditions—seem to be the point. The best label I can find for the phenomenon—and I do not pretend it is a fully satisfactory label—is “reactionary nihilism.” It is reactionary in the sense that it expresses itself as mortal opposition to a perceived catastrophic change in the political order; it is nihilistic because its deepest premise is that the actual world is devoid of value, impervious to reason, and governable only through brutal acts of will. It stands for a kind of unraveling of the American political mind—a madness that now afflicts one side of nearly every political debate. Though this be madness, to borrow from Shakespeare, yet there is method in it. Too often, the analysis of the antidemocratic movement comes to an end with psychological and sociological observations about the voters who lend support to it. But what I have found in my reporting is that this is a leadership-driven movement, not merely a social phenomenon. A central finding in this book is that the direction and success of the antidemocratic movement depends on its access to immense resources, a powerful web of organizations, and a highly self-interested group of movers and backers. It has bank accounts that are always thirsty for more money, networks that hunger for ever more connections, religious demagogues intent on exploiting the faithful, communicators eager to spread propaganda and disinformation, and powerful leaders who want more power. It takes time, organizational energy, and above all, money to weaponize grievances and hurl them against an established democracy—and this movement has it all. To be clear, there is no single headquarters for the reaction. There are, however, powerful networks of leaders, strategists, and donors, as well as interlocking organizations, fellow travelers, and affirmative action programs for the ideologically pure. That matrix is far more densely connected, well-financed, and influential at all levels of government and society than most Americans appreciate. History shows, however, that better organization does not always flatten the contradictions. On the contrary, it can sometimes amplify the conflicts. This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the antidemocratic movement to appreciate and the source of both its weakness and its strength. This movement is at war with itself even as it wages war on the rest of us. It consists of a variety of groups and organizations, each pursing its own agendas, each in thrall to a distinct set of assumptions. Viewed as a whole, it seems to want things that cannot go together—like “small government” and also a government big enough to control the most private acts in which people engage; like the total deregulation of corporate monopolies and also a better deal for the workforce; like “the rule of law” and also the lawlessness of a dictator and his cronies who may pilfer the public treasury; like a “Christian nation” that excludes many American Christians from the ranks of the supposedly righteous. It pursues this bundle of contradictions not merely out of hypocrisy and cynicism but because the task of tearing down the status quo brings together groups that want very different things and are even at odds with one another. To sort a complex grouping of people into admittedly simplistic categories in the interest of making this project manageable, I have divided the principal actors of the antidemocratic reaction into five main categories: the Funders, the Thinkers, the Sergeants, the Infantry, and the Power Players. It is the interactions and tensions among these groups, I have come to think, that are key to understanding the origins and evolutions of the American crisis. Before getting on with the reporting I will therefore say a few more things about each of these groups. The Funders come from the minute ranks of beneficiaries of the massive concentration in wealth over the past five decades. Some of the Funders you will meet here are already quite famous: former secretary of education Betsy DeVos, the Wilks brothers, Rebekah Mercer, Tim Dunn, and the Koch brothers among them. Others are less well known, and quite a few make a point of hiding in the rooms where dark money lives. There you will find the secretive Chicago billionaire who likes to go by the pseudonym Elbert Howell (a mash-up of references to the Midwestern anarchist Elbert Hubbard and the millionaire from Gilligan’s Island?); a minor-league California real estate scion who has taken it upon himself to join in the destruction of the system of public education in the name of Jesus; his neighbor, the wife of a Pepsi heir, who helps fund election disinformation operations; a Wall Street hedge funder whose think tank sustains ideological extremists caught up in the January 6 coup attempt; a number of energy tycoons; some tech bros; and a surprisingly diverse cast of eccentrics that are transforming our country in ways you likely never thought possible. The distinguishing feature of the Funders is that they have chosen to invest their fortunes in the subversion of democracy. Given their successes in business and the cultural power of money in America, they are often pictured, even by their critics, as masterminds overseeing an intricate and well-conceived plan to rule the world. I regret to report that they do not appear to be, on balance, geniuses. Too often, they operate on the basis of remarkably simplistic, reactionary ideas about politics and society. And they are dangerously wrong in their biggest idea—that destroying democracy is a means of creating wealth. Apart from the cognitive and emotional limitations that at times accumulate alongside unmerited wealth, the main reason why the Funders are confused about their own genuine interests is that they have outsourced much of their thinking—just as they have outsourced so much else—to other people. The Thinkers are a subset of the increasingly insular professional elite that has emerged in the modern American economy. They spend much of their time shuttling around a number of densely connected institutions with anodyne names, often drawn from grand figures or moments in history: the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, the James Madison Center, and so on. Many of the Thinkers can boast of credentials from the nation’s elite educational institutions, though they may consciously have set themselves against their former teachers. They are the “anti-intellectual intellectuals,” as it were. Quite a few are amphibious; they travel freely between the genteel world of reactionary think tanks and the alt-right spaces where young men who deploy the “Pepe the Frog” emoji in their social media monikers trade misogynist, racist, and anti-Semitic aperçus. In revealing moments—like when the academically well-polished leader of the Heritage Foundation declared that the “second American Revolution” that he and his fellow Trump supporters are leading “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be”4—it becomes clear that the Thinkers’ credentials are often thin cover for ferocious levels of aggression and insecurity. I will pay special attention here to the men of the Claremont Institute—they are almost all men—whose erstwhile reverence for America’s founders has been transfigured, with the help of political theorists purloined from Germany’s fascist period, into material support for Donald Trump’s attempted coup against the United States. Many of the Thinkers subscribe to an ideology that now fits mainly under the label of “the New Right”—even though it is neither new nor conservative. Their core doctrine isn’t so much a political theory as an unwavering conviction about the root of all evil in modern society. That root, they say, is a supposedly all-controlling “woke” elite that cancels right-wing speakers at campus events and controls the rest of the nation from the back rooms of diversity offices. In the real world, the Thinkers themselves represent a far more powerful professional elite, sustained in a lavish welfare system at a network of think tanks and advocacy groups, and serving at the pleasure of the billionaires who pay their salaries. When you peel back their intellectual claims and political programs, or so I have found, it becomes clear that many of these Thinkers are primarily engaged in an intra-elite struggle with their real nemesis: the group at the other end of the faculty lounge. The Funders and Infantry are, for them, useful fodder in a psychic conflict driven by a highbrow form of reactionary nihilism. The Infantry are drawn mostly from the millions of Americans in the middle and lower-middle sections of the nation’s widening economic, educational, and regional divides. This group is large and diverse, and includes many different identities, ideas, and agendas. You will meet some of the Infantry in these pages at school board meetings, where they hope to save the nation by banning books with LGBT or sex-related themes from school libraries (even when such books are nowhere to be found), or by suppressing instruction on the brutal history of slavery and segregation in America. You’ll come across others on the ReAwaken America Tour—a traveling Christian nationalist series of events that offers to prepare American patriots in “fifth generation warfare” so that they can take on an ever-rotating cycle of conspiracies. You will find many of them in the pews of America’s hard-line churches, where radicalized pastors nurture a cohort of “spirit warriors” intent on waging battle with the moderate-liberal-left “demons” that have purportedly commandeered the culture. The Infantry includes many of those that the knowledge economy left behind, the people who get riled up with rhetoric about “elites.” Satisfying the economic and emotional needs of this group is always the ostensible source of legitimacy of the antidemocratic movement, but it is never the actual goal. The real role is to supply the Funders, Thinkers, and key players with enough votes to win (or, as we saw in 2020, enough to pretend to win) power. Within the Infantry there’s a special group of unit leaders, or “Sergeants,” that turn the movement’s money and messages into votes and political action at the local level. This group includes culture warriors moonlighting as school board members and “moms” who think “liberty” means banning books they don’t like. But the least appreciated subset consists of the tens of thousands of pastors at America’s conservative churches. Many belong to groups with militant names like the Black Robe Regiment, Watchmen on the Wall, Faith Wins, and Pastors for Trump, and some number encouraged or defended the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. But not all Sergeants are evangelical. Indeed, they are not all Christian; among the Sergeant cohort you will find some people who are not religious at all. Stitching the movement together is a tiny elite I will call the Power Players—leaders of the Christian nationalist movement’s policy and networking groups, legal advocacy organizations, messaging initiatives, and other features—who amass tremendous personal power by mobilizing others around their agendas. Some are celebrity preachers that outgrew their local congregations and took on a national profile, on the model of Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority or D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries. Others are super-lobbyists with tremendous influence on elections and elected politicians, like Ralph Reed of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Many of them get together at Council for National Policy or Ziklag gatherings, or at the National Prayer Breakfast, where they trade favors on the path to still greater power. Most sit astride organizations with budgets in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, command media and pastoral ministries that reach tens or hundreds of millions of Infantry, and have the ear of presidents and other political leaders. They are the operational masterminds of the antidemocratic movement, and their organizations turn the Funders’ money and the Infantry’s votes into political power. The dominant ideology they cultivate among the rank and file of America’s antidemocratic movement is Christian nationalism. But this label can be misleading. Christian nationalism is not a religion. It is not Christianity. It is a political identity with a corresponding political ideology, and the ideology in question doesn’t have a lot to do with the way many if not most Americans understand Christianity. You don’t have to be a Christian to be a Christian nationalist, and plenty of patriotic Christians want nothing to do with Christian nationalism. “White evangelical,” as I will show, should no longer be regarded as interchangeable with “Christian nationalist.” Sectors of other varieties of Christianity and other religions, along with members of other racial and ethnic groups, are moving in, while at least some of the old members are moving out. More importantly, what matters is not formal or denominational religious identity but partisan political identity—and this partisan identity has in turn become something like a substitute religion. Christian nationalism does not just draw on old strands of a diverse religion but has also fabricated a radically new, intensely politicized religion centered on a newly concocted “pro-life” theology and—among a large number—the idea of “spiritual warfare.” Although it is at bottom a political ideology, moreover, Christian nationalism is not merely a policy program; it is perhaps best understood as a political mindset. That mindset, as I explain in further detail below, includes four basic dispositions: catastrophism; a persecution complex; identitarianism; and an authoritarian reflex. Catastrophism in this context is the foreboding conviction that the nation is doomed and that the blame falls squarely on the faithless. The persecution complex rests on the belief that conservative Christians are the principal victims of discrimination in America. Identitarianism is the belief that a “real” or “authentic” subset of Americans are entitled to rule over the rest. And the authoritarian reflex always calls for a strongman savior, on the grim assumption that only the cruel and lawless survive in a cruel and lawless world. The chief limitation of the label “Christian nationalism,” however is that it represents only one end of the antidemocratic movement. It is a tool for mobilizing the grievances of the people; but a stadium crowded with resentments would not add up to a political program without a tremendous amount of financial and organizational support. This is where the Funders and the Thinkers come in. The Funders might share the Christian nationalist mindset with their followers but they certainly don’t have to, and many do not. Some identify with other religious traditions, and some appear to have confessed to no religion more than the worship of money. The core of their belief system is that democracy in its current configuration threatens their power and privilege—as well as freedom and prosperity for all, or so they like to add. Some of the Thinkers are even less committed to specific faith traditions than their rich patrons. One branch is essentially atheistic, another espouses hard-line Catholicism; some are Jewish, and many don’t appear to have much personal interest in religion. They leave the Christian nationalism and all that for the little people whom they half-heartedly pretend to care about. They may be against the “woke” elite, but they aren’t against elites as such. Indeed they see themselves as members of a new elite, destined to rule over a population that can never be brought to virtue on its own. In brief, what the Funders are buying is not always what the Thinkers and Sergeants are selling or what the Infantry is hearing. Each gains power by deceiving the others. Inevitably, they attempt to deceive the rest of us, too, and then they begin to deceive themselves. The interactions among the elements of the antidemocratic reaction bring out the worst in each, as it were, and ensure that the whole will be worse than the sum of its parts. It would be nice to think that the movement will crumble under the weight of its internal contradictions, but that may be wishful thinking. Many such movements throughout history have destroyed the nations from which they arise before getting around to destroying themselves. The chief threat to American democracy comes from a kind of collective psychosis. The age of economic and cultural fracture has yielded a politics of unreason. But the politics of unreason is not a random walk. It unravels in a particular direction. Unreason is the first and last resort of the enemies of democracy. In the final analysis, the antidemocratic movement is a symptom, not a cause, of the American crises. This fact, as I will lay out in a brief afterword, can be a source of hope for the future. It can serve as a guidepost for the deep structural and organizational solutions that this crisis demands. In the meantime, I invite you to leave behind the land of political theory, buckle up, and join me on a journey through the madness and the beauty of the American political landscape.
I know there are a lot of non-biblical arguments for the separation of church and state. Some Christians also support it on biblical grounds, but I've never looked into the matter myself. Which passages of the Bible support the idea? (if you need more info, click over to Wiki link!
Many people cite the phrase as if it was included in the founding documents of the United States (Declaration of Independence or Constitution or Bill of Rights), when in fact as your link shows, it comes from Thomas Jefferson's personal correspondence. It is also not intended to keep religious faith and civic involvement completely separate (as some suggest), but to insure that government does not interfere with religious worship. In this light, the question can be read "what is the biblical basis for making sure government does not interfere with religious worship?
@DanielStandage I disagree. The separation of church and state goes far beyond the de-regulation of worship. Many of our forefathers came from societies that used protection of religious values as a mask for political and economic oppression, even war. For example, while England and its neighbors worshiped the same God, they warred for centuries because the monarchs of England (recognized as the religious as well as political authority there) sought to prevent Catholics from recognizing the Pope.
@HedgeMage Are you implying that religion itself is not used as a mask for political and economic oppression and even war? The majority of the founding fathers were deists. Who didn't want to be forced into a specific religious dogma. It is one of the big differences between America and other countries - that you can be the religion of your choice and practice it as long as you do not harm or impede others. If we force people into a religion or dogma, we're doing a disservice to America and the religion which we are pushing AKA tyranny of the majority
17 And Jesus answering said unto them, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." And they marvelled at him. This has always been the easiest clarification for me...
The argument goes something like this: The government is here to govern the society here on Earth. God give to us Spirit to govern our hearts, minds, and souls. So, we should allow the government to do what it does best and allow God to be in control of all the other things.
The argument is generally followed with the idea that we need to elect Christians into government and pray for our government officials, but that religion should be separate from the state.
Personally, I think this is a bit of a stretch. The more solid arguments are the non-biblical ones (prevention of the majority overriding the minority, insuring freedom of religion, etc.)
!!!
I don't know about you, but I've reached my "Too Much Information" (TMI) Point... In fact I feel totally saturated and drowning... I have to assume that this is just what is intended by the present presidential administration as they act first and then get hauled into court afterward, much to the detriment (and financial costs) of the fears and frustration of most Americans. Let's face it, when the republican legislators are being told not to talk to their constituents or face hatred and derision...
Soooo, I decided that I would have to take a hard look at what I was reading, including emails, and/or newscasts. I'm limiting time for TV news to no more than 2 hours daily and being very selective who/what I tune into. I'm deleting all political emails, most of the substacks who have found their way to my email address, along with all the crappy ads that are run/allowed...And, still, I feel overwhelmed!
I have recently purchased two books, one of which is Money, lies and God by American Journalist, Katherine Stewart. Many of you will already know that I picked up on the "God" issue during the 2016 election and have read a number of books, as well as shared many videos about those who have either left religion, altogether, or who have written books and/or developed a YouTube Station to discuss the part of the political crisis which is rarely actually spotlighted, even by the political parties. Could it be because more and more is being found out that what many (Christians) were told has since been proven to be lies?
Well, if you have a similar interest in the role God actually does or doesn't play in politics, I highly recommend you get this book if you can. What I have read so far is much more devastating than I ever could have imagined! For me, it is both fascinating reading as well as quite, frankly, disgusting... The book is thoroughly researched with a ongoing reference listings. The presentation is logically presented, so that you learn about the structure, as identified by the author, but which are totally understandable even with any level of political knowledge you may possess. And, most importantly, provides the basic answers that you've been possibly searching for, but not able to find, as to why the body of Christians has become divided over political objectives related to American Democracy.
Unlike the recent serialized activities for Fantasy Five by Harold Michael Harvey, which included authority to include as many excerpts as I felt important, I will be limited for this book. So, I will be reading and regurgitating through discussion what was important to me, which, in turn, may be responsive to those you may have. If you have specific questions, just leave them on below comments and I will do a search in the book to see if I can find a response and how it fits into your concerns... Hopefully, we can work together to dig deep into three of the primary issues for me that has been so frustrating...
The Total Lack of Truth in the present (and 2016) administration and the subsequent abuse of the legal system and its officials...
The use of big, possibly dirty, money to have resulted in the re-election of a convicted felon, as well as an impeached (twice) and insurrectionist who incited the attack on our Nation's Capitol... Plus the total acceptance (forced) of all new cabinet members and more...
And, most importantly for all of us, the falsification and creation of disinformation of what God/Jesus says about the role of religion within a nation...
To begin her presentation, Stewart identifies the groups of characters which will be discussed:
As he prepares me a cup of tea, he relates a story from his childhood. “I shared a bedroom with my older brother who loved to terrorize me with stories about ‘the bogeyman’ who would attack me in the middle of the night.” He laughs at the memory. “And I think it’s very interesting that there are political and religious forces in America that want to make this debate about religious freedom or religious liberty the new bogeyman in American politics. What they are trying to do with their scare tactics is create a myth they can hold up and say, ‘This bogeyman is coming after your religious freedoms, and pretty soon we’re going to be communist Russia or communist China or communist Cuba, where faith is exiled.’ ” We bundle into Baines’s car, and after a short drive we arrive at the sanctuary of the Community Baptist Church. We pick up our Chick-Fil-A breakfast sandwiches and take our seats. I am one of only four or five women in the room, and I feel relieved to be Baines’s plus-one. He is the official attendee; I am just there to smile and nod affirmatively. While I am putting on my best smile, however, he is fidgeting. He seemed comfortable enough on the ride over, but this setting seems to trigger something in him. “Just a little PTSD,” he whispers. He grins bravely, but I can see that the wounds from a childhood lived in shame for who he is are still tender. Then the meeting comes to order, and an organizer calls on the first speaker. Chad Connelly bounds onto the stage bursting with energy.
“We are in the middle of doing over forty cities, just like this, in sixteen states between Labor Day and Thanksgiving,” he says breathlessly. He rattles off some statistics from an earlier leg of his “American Restoration Tour”: eighty-nine meetings with 2,965 pastors across the country who command flocks totaling 741,000 potential voters. A former chair of the South Carolina Republican Party and director of faith engagement under Reince Priebus at the Republican National Committee for four years, Connelly is both a political veteran and a key player in the Christian nationalist movement. In 2017 he appeared on a membership list of the United States Coalition of Apostolic Leaders (USCAL), a group associated with a religious movement that argues that conservative Christians should control all aspects of government and society.13 Notably, Connelly serves on the CNP, where he sits on the board of governors. (Joan Lindsey, presumably by virtue of her open pocketbook, is a Gold Circle Member.)14 The council was founded by Paul Weyrich, Tim LaHaye, and others at the dawn of the Reagan era. Today it is one of the movement’s key networking operations, the apparatus that connects the “doers and the donors,” as Rich DeVos, Betsy DeVos’s father-in-law, put it, of Christian nationalism and the conservative political machine.15 “You’re about to hear a presentation that’s going to elevate your ability to understand what’s going on, and it’s also going to inspire you to say, ‘I’m not doing enough,’ ” Connelly says, his voice cheerful but firm. “Everybody you know needs to have voted. Everybody you know needs to go vote early. Every church you know needs to do voter registration. Every pastor you know needs to make sure one hundred percent of the people in their pews are voting, and voting biblical values.” As in most Christian nationalist gatherings, “voting biblical values” is a transparent euphemism for voting Republican. Connelly happily makes clear that his work owes everything to the generosity of Joan Lindsey and her family foundation. “Joan Lindsey just started talking to me about this,” Connelly tells the crowd. “So a couple years ago we really started this thing called The Church Finds Its Voice.” He nods. “If y’all have ever seen Christian leaders on television, Joan Lindsey’s likely trained ’em. She’s a media guru. An expert.” There is a part of Connelly’s message, both here and in his social media presence, that will be familiar to anyone who has taken in a minimum dose of Christian nationalist rhetoric. But it’s worth paying attention to the language because it reveals something about what Christian nationalism is and is not. There is a tendency on the outside to characterize the movement in terms of faith identities (“the evangelicals”), political doctrines (“America is a Christian nation”), and policies (like abortion bans). But on the inside, it looks more like a specific collection of feelings. What unites its varied constituencies is a certain mindset, or a common way of reacting to specific features of the outside world. And the first element of this mindset, as Connelly understands intuitively, is that America is going to hell real fast. A refrain heard across the movement, in various forms, is a hyped-up fear of the modern world meant to get people to the barricades, even if the enemy is illusory. “This is a crucial time in our nation’s history,” Connelly says. “Is this our 1776 moment? Or is it 1944?” He adds, “I’ve never voted for a pro-death person. Never voted for anybody of any stripe that was okay with killing a baby in a mommy’s tummy.” In Christian nationalist circles today, every election is a contest against absolute evil, and the consequences of failure almost too dire to imagine. Only radical action can stop the apocalypse just around the corner. A second element of the mindset is the conviction that we face the immediate reality of persecution. The “we” here refers to conservative Christians—and mostly to white conservative Christians. A 2023 survey, conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), which conducts research at the intersection of faith, culture, and public policy, shows that 85 percent of people who subscribe to Christian nationalist ideas also agree with the proposition that “discrimination against white people is at least as big a problem as discrimination against minorities.”16 An earlier report, this one a partnership between PRRI and the Brookings Institution, shows that three-quarters of Republicans and Trump supporters and nearly eight in ten white evangelical Protestants believe that discrimination against Christians is as big of a problem as discrimination against other groups.17 Indeed, as PRRI founder Robert P. Jones, author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future (Simon & Schuster, 2023), tells me, “The protection of white Christian dominance, rather than the advancement of policy priorities, is the animating force among the political conservative movement today.” In essence, as he notes, it’s identity and not policy that drives divisions—and creates opportunities for movement funders and strategists to curate identitarian grievance and then exploit it on a wave of cash! It is important to add that, whatever their ultimate causes, both the catastrophism and the persecution complex find expressions more frequently in status or cultural anxieties than in economic anxieties. “Compared to cultural factors, economic factors were significantly less strong predictors of support for Trump” in 2016, according to Jones. “Trump’s ‘Make American Great Again!’ slogan tapped anxieties that were less about jobs and economic mobility but more about a deep sense of protecting a white Christian America from what they perceive to be a foreign and corrupting influence.”18 A 2018 study from the National Academy of Sciences agreed that fear of status loss was a major driver of support for Trump. “It’s not a threat to their own economic well-being; it’s a threat to their group’s dominance in our country overall,” said Diana C. Mutz, the author of the study and a political science and communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania.19 While political uprisings are often about downtrodden groups rising up to assert their right to better treatment and more equal life conditions relative to high-status groups, she said, “the 2016 election, in contrast, was an effort by members of already dominant groups to assure their continued dominance and by those in an already powerful and wealthy country to assure its continued dominance … Those who felt that the hierarchy was being upended—with whites discriminated against more than blacks, Christians discriminated against more than Muslims, and men discriminated against more than women—were most likely to support Trump.”20 Connelly certainly appears to feel the threat. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he wrote that “government leaders decided—in their flawed wisdom—that church gatherings were not ‘essential’ to society. You heard that right.”21 In religious right circles, the pandemic was a radicalizing event. It confirmed many Christian conservatives in their conviction that they are the most persecuted group in American society. It made many feel that they would soon be arrested, injected, and/or poisoned on account of their beliefs—that the tyrannical, Orwellian government long familiar to them from their bedtime stories suddenly had a very real face, and it looked a lot like Dr. Fauci. A third element of the Christian nationalist mindset is the conviction that “we” have a unique and privileged connection to this land. The “we” here, again, is not “the people” mentioned in the Constitution; “we” are conservative Christians, mostly white, the supposedly original and authentic population of the land. (Wrong) It all starts, as Connelly understands, with the belief in a golden age of yore. “This place has been ordained by God,” he said in a September 2020 podcast episode. “When the founders determined that, of course they were reading the Bible, and they were believers of the word of God," (doubtful given the final document on freedom of religion) he explained. “And so America became unique and special because the founders understood that the founding had to tie in to God.” (Really?Why does it say that ALL men are created equal, not just white people?) 22 The idea that conservative Christians therefore have the right and the duty to rule the nation and impose their values on others, by force if necessary—all this follows closely upon this mindset.(Keep saying a lie and somebody's going to believe you.) A fourth and final piece of the mindset of Christian nationalism involves a rather dark picture of the nature of the world: Jesus may have great plans for us, but the reality is that this is a cruel place in which only the cruel survive. In the more self-conscious exercises of Christian nationalist thought, this perspective expresses itself in explicit critiques of the social gospel, or the idea that Christianity has something to do with cultivating empathy, loving thy neighbor, and caring for the least of these.Each of us has a part of God within us and were asked to love our neighbors; this totally contradicts Jesus who Lives Today Within Us!)Nineteenth-century versions of populism sometimes made use of social gospel Christianity, typically as a prelude to wealth redistribution programs, and progressive Christians today continue to draw on scripture in their pursuit of a more just society. But today’s Christian nationalists have no time for the Jesus-is-love crowd. They want their Jesus to lift weights and carry a sword, and they are counting on Him to come down hard on the moochers and layabouts and those who challenge supposedly righteous hierarchies. The belief in cruelty in a cruel world finds expression in radical economic doctrines that embody a cold and punitive spirit, favoring total deregulation of exploitative monopolies and the elimination of the social safety net. (A Lie of the Worst Kind!) As Connelly puts it, the other reason for America’s uniqueness and specialness—apart from the fact that it was ordained by God—“is the free-market system, which of course is God’s biblical economy.”(Didn't Jesus say that a rich man must give up his wealth and help the poor to enter God's Kingdom...Definitely a Lie) Exactly where in Deuteronomy one is to find the commandments of hyper-capitalist orthodoxy, he does not say. No matter—next comes the fear and loathing. Connelly says on the podcast. “It’s actually a godless, communistic, Marxist style of government.”23 It would be hard to find a mindset more at odds with the spirit of the American founding and the actual foundations of the American republic.Have you noticed that republicans choose lies about democrats that exactly or nearly represent what the party is actually doing? Nobody should be fooled by their lies) Andrew Seidel, a constitutional attorney and author whose books include The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American (Sterling, 2019), told me bluntly: “America was not built on the Bible, and that book had little to no influence on the creation of the American Constitution. The framers almost never referenced the Bible when they were debating the Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787. The separation of church and state, on the other hand, is an American original—that idea was born in the Enlightenment and first implemented in the American experiment. That separation ensures that we all have freedom without favor, and equality without exception.” There is no room in Christian nationalism for the separation of church and state encoded in the Constitution, however, no recognition of the pluralism that characterized the American experiment from the start, no interest in the rationalist, scientific spirit of America’s founders. But there is also relatively little self-awareness, and if there is a heavy irony hanging over Connelly’s bombastic claims about America’s uniqueness and specialness and his defense of Donald Trump’s effort to subvert the “sacred” Constitution, no one in Chantilly—perhaps with the exception of Steve Baines—appears to detect it. The bottom line for Connelly—hardly surprising, given his past as a Republican Party operative—is to harvest votes. More precisely, his goal is to get the pastors present to harvest the votes. The Faith Wins website encourages event attendees to help lead voter registration in their churches with the help of a “Pastors Tool Kit,” become poll watchers, and assist “with Voter Integrity Efforts” and other actions. “Every Christian in every church in America needs to be registered to vote—and then needs to SHOW UP and vote Biblical values on Election day,”(Folks, you know what this reminds me of? The story of when Jesus threw out the money people in front of the temple, to me, meant that a church was the sacred place to worship our God and NOT to deal with earthly things, like elections... (all highlights, italics, responses are mine...)
~~~
Finally, here are the groups of characters in the plan to destroy Democracy in America:
I have divided the principal actors of the antidemocratic reaction into five main categories: the Funders, the Thinkers, the Sergeants, the Infantry, and the Power Players. It is the interactions and tensions among these groups, I have come to think, that are key to understanding the origins and evolutions of the American crisis.
Think about where you think you fit in this list and we'll start discussing Part 2 next time!
(This author uses “Joshua” instead of the popular “Jesus” in order to refer to the person who is the subject of the first four books of what is referred to as the “new testament.” I do this because Joshua is a better translation of His name, and because of all the religious junk associated with the name “Jesus” or “Jesus Christ” or “Christ”.)
Have you ever heard somebody in the crowd around you say, "Jesus Christ!" loudly, as a curse word? I have... And I've cringed inside each time. It bothers me that so much has been lost in the centuries since God Sent His Son to All of Us...
Even His Birthday has been captured by Santa Claus and an entirely different type of holiday that, yes, includes gifts such as what The Three Kings brought at the time of His birth,
But for many, they have no idea that there is a different
Reason for the Season!
Let's face it--acknowledge it...
We've lost the Holiness of His Coming!
By merging a secular holiday
with the birthday of Our Lord
to me, is just wrong...
but that's me...if you can bring Christ into the Season and not spend much money buying, buying, buying gifts for anybody and everybody, but have not loved as Jesus asked of us...by giving to those in need...
then you have placed money above our Lord...
just my opinion...of course...
Above a month ago, I awoke and heard just two words: Tim Spiess
I knew exactly what I was to do...
I was to start reading diligently and reviewing this book...
Now is the time to rethink your thoughts about...God...
Right now in America, there are those that are using religion as a political tool, even calling themselves Christian Nationalists and claiming that religion (or their religion)
is above government and our constitution...
Comparing religion versus the Constitution is like saying
1 person equals one flea, or worse,
one man's sperm is more important than one female's life
In other words, it is not comparable!
And should not be compared!
Tim Spiess has, throughout all of this, been speaking about
and conducting a quiet revolution that has nothing to do with America
I have found the title The Peaceful Revolution quite extraordinary. How many times we learn that Jesus, in performing miracles, would tell those he healed not to tell anybody else. But they would be so excited and, since they were healed, would receive questions about what happened... It was a quiet revolution, then, as well... By word of mouth, each individual who was touched by Jesus/Joshua would spread the word about His Love. They would speak His Truth and share about the man who had been there to touch each of those who were, in some way, in need of help... All they did was ask... And, sometimes, based upon faith of the requesting person, they would be automatically healed by their faith... If trouble was heard about, He and His disciples would leave that area and move on to another. There was no attempt to convince anybody of Who He Was... It was, instead, a Quiet Revolution that has spread further and further across the world over thousands of years... In fact, Christ knew He was to die and when. He was on a Mission which ended at The Cross
I believe that, like me--and you(?), many, who are individuals who had been exposed to religion and found they had many questions, Tim Spiess was selected by God to take on a monumental task... much more of an ongoing movement that would lead people back to
The Son of God...
What you will be reading is not new...
What you will be reading forces you to recognize...
What you will be reading allows you to immediately recognize...
What you will be reading is exactly why The Son of God was Born...
What you will be reading, at the same time, is very simple to understand...
What you will be reading is that This Book does nothing but Place the Light of the World's Words Exactly Where
They were always meant to be...
Above All Other Words that were Ever Said
The Words of the Son of God...
Which Said, for instance, that all rules be set aside...
That we were to Follow The Son of Man...
Who Died for Us...
Soon you will realize that the book(s) that have been read for thousands of years, were important, but they were not The Words of Joshua...
Which provided The Truth as to how we should Live...
And we are being told that These Words Were Ours
Because God Loves Each of Us Through His
Amazing Grace...
The purpose of this presentation of the first four books of the New Testament is to try to assist in recovering something extremely valuable that has been lost. What extremely valuable thing has been lost? Before we investigate what extremely valuable thing has been lost, let us first take a small but important digression. Most people are familiar with the expression, “you should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.” It is an effective saying to teach the principle of not dismissing a true or valuable or important thing (the baby) that might be surrounded by, or associated with, false or valueless or unimportant things (the dirty bath water). I would ask the reader to please apply this principle to the person of Jesus (or Joshua) of Nazareth. In other words, before you throw the baby (Jesus of Nazareth) away with the bathwater (bible-christian-messianic beliefs and religion in his name), you ought to take a careful look at the Baby. After all, what do you have to lose by reading Joshua’s words, teaching and life story? It won’t take you long to read, and you will be one of an increasingly few number of people on the earth who actually read his words and teachings.
This author would suggest that it is unfair to throw away ‘the whole jesus religious thing’ as irrelevant to your life or as ‘a bunch of silly or hypocritical rubbish’ without first giving his words and teachings a honest and fair read. It is also irrational to deny that the person known as “jesus christ” has had a very significant impact on both human history as well as countless millions of individuals. You should be curious as to why, and as a person that might be seeking truth, it would be unreasonable to avoid his own words in order to understand the very important ‘why’ question. Even if you are a skeptic or critic, if you don’t read Jesus’ own teachings, then at best you are a lazy and poor quality skeptic or critic who doesn’t bother to go to the source of the object of your skepticism or criticism.
Please, be a diligent skeptic or critic and search Jesus’ teachings YOURSELF for the faults and errors in his person or teachings that you assume account for the mess that covers much of the planet and is known as ‘christianity’ or bible-based religious groups call ‘the church.’ OK, let’s end the first digression.
So, what extremely valuable thing has been lost? Please allow me digress again before answering that question in order to briefly address those reading who have not seriously looked into the life and teachings of Jesus (or Joshua) of Nazareth. (This author will use “Joshua” instead of the popular “Jesus” in order to refer to the person who is the subject of the first four books of what is referred to as the “new testament.” I do this because Joshua is a better translation of his name, and because of all the religious junk associated with the name “Jesus” or “Jesus Christ” or “Christ”.)
Every Person’s Basic Need Every living person has hope in something because it has been proven time and time again that a person without any hope (some self-perceived purpose for their life-existence) will seek to destroy themselves through suicide or other destructive behavior in order to try and end the inner emptiness of life-level hopelessness. The reader should ask why that is. Why is it that human’s alone (not animals) need a future reason for living (known as hope or purpose) or else they seek to dull or to end their existence?
What is your hope in dear reader? Some ‘better’ material tomorrow…a better house, car, or vacation…a more ‘successful’ career? Is your hope in a better education and thus more opportunity to accumulate wealth or influence over other people? Is your hope in some better form of pleasing yourself or entertainment? Is it in the next movie or the newest electronic device that you believe is somehow going to make your life more meaningful? Is it in sporting events, challenges, vacations, hobbies or activities yet to come? Do you find your purpose in life through the primary work that you do? Is your hope in a person, like yourself, or a spouse, friend or partner? Is your hope in your family or children? Is your hope in religious beliefs or practices? Has having your hope in any of these things ever satisfied your soul in a deeply meaningful and permanent way? Or does the pleasure of the pursuit or aurora of the lesser-hope fade as it passes, and you find yourself dissatisfied or somewhat empty until the next time? When you largely accomplish your goals associated with your hope or purpose, what happens then? Do you just pick up a new temporary one without thought to the fact that it too will end? Do you ever take the time to just sit back and ask the import questions of life like why am I here? What is the purpose of my life? What does my existence mean? If you don’t, why do you think that is so? Are those not really important matters that deserve attention? Looking at this important topic from another perspective, have you come to the sad place of believing you are nothing more than a random accumulation of molecules with no soul and little or no meaningful purpose? Or do you realize something fundamental is missing from your life? Have you come to the place of acknowledging that your own efforts to run your life are not working well? Have you come to the place of understanding that what is most important in life is relationships with other people? That whatever pain or stress or anxiety or conflict or frustration or failure you are experiencing normally has to do with how you are relating to other people or even how you are relating to yourself? Is there a right way and a wrong way to relate to people, and if so, where can I find that way or standard? Can I be rightly related to all the people that I know and thus be a nearly perfect person and have a justifiably clear conscience? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Everyone has beliefs about what the purpose of their life is, including atheists (those who believe there is no God) and agnostics (those who believe one cannot know if God exists). Many atheists and agnostics are physicalists, meaning they believe a person’s self-expression (or personality) can be accounted for by physics-chemical reactions alone – this author believes that is an unreasonable belief. By definition, however, a physicalists purpose for their life must end when their life ends, and thus their hope can only be in temporary things listed previously which will undeniably end. They (and we) will die. Their body will decay and return to dust. In their belief, all the events, emotions, friendships, relationships, expressions of love and good in their life, all the special experiences they had and all the good things they accomplished – all will be gone forever, and perish with their death and the death of those who knew them…there will be nothing but the black, dark, void of existential destruction…for to lose something valuable is just like having it destroyed. This is hopelessness – a meaningless-ness to life that is typically denied and buried under daily busyness, noise, entertainment and a denial of most things important – never peering over the edge of the approaching and undeniable event called death.
Most physicalists are relativists, meaning they believe there is no absolute truth. They say each person makes up their own reality. Is that true? No, because the relativist’s clearest statement, like, “No absolute truth exists” is a self-defeating statement. That means that the laws of logic demonstrate that statement to be false. Can you see it? For if the relativist makes the statement, “no absolute truth exists,” one only need ask them, ‘is that statement absolutely true’? If they answer, ‘yes’, then at least one absolute truth exists and thus their statement is false. And if they answer, ‘no’, then they acknowledge the statement to be false. It is undeniable that absolute truths exist, and it is reasonable to deduce that someone (a master Programmer?) created reason and logic to be based on absolute truth. The fact that it is undeniable that absolute truth exists - that everything is not relative according to a person’s (or even a collective culture’s) perspective or experiences - has a very significant implication. That implication is that it is possible (even reasonable) that a Creator of that absolute truth has an absolute standard of truth which human’s will be held accountable to…or from another perspective, will set their after-death destiny by. For if we do have a metaphysical part (beyond being able to sense with our five senses) to our person (often referred to as a soul, spirit or personality), and that part does survive physical death, then what becomes of us?
Dear reader, if you lost both your arms and legs and had your face badly disfigured, would that change who you really are? With medical sciences advancing, it is reasonably conceivable that if all that was left of you was your head, you could be kept alive. Would that change who you are? The reasonable answer is no, it would not. This is yet another proof that humans are more than just our physical bodies.
Is religion the place where I will find answers to these things, or can I find those answers somewhere else? What is the truth regarding these matters? To ignore those critical life questions and not seek answers is to live less than a full life…it is to refuse to take life’s most important journey. And this brings us to a person, not a religion, who said, “I am the Truth.”
No matter what you think about that claim, it is a very important claim that warrants investigation. While anyone (and many have) can make that claim, the same one who said that also defeated death, at least according to the four accounts of his life, and that makes his claim worthy of sincere investigation. No one else in human history defeated death in as genuine, authentic and validated way.
Religion in a general sense is humans attempt to understand the purpose of their existence – the whys of life. More specifically, religion is often people’s attempt to be accepted by their God or god(s) so that when they die, their existence will continue typically in a more favorable manner than their existence has been on the earth. From the student of Joshua’s viewpoint, religion is the things that people believe and do in order to answer the why questions of life or to be accepted by their god(s), by means other than what Joshua has taught. Please re-read that carefully. There are many religions and many people who hold to their religion’s beliefs and practices. But there is only one person who--in a genuine, authentic way--defeated death to prove all He said and did is true, and He is not a religion! While this person has been wrongfully used to create religion, He not only does not support that religion, but he rebukes it and its practices time and time again in His teachings. No, he doesn’t rebuke bible-based christian religion’s failures, hypocrisies, faults and abuses, but rather He rebukes the very essence, beliefs and practices which the religious leaders of the bible-based religious system build their kingdoms (or denominations or churches) on. If this is true, this should impact the reader. You have no doubt heard of the person of Jesus of Nazareth (Joshua is a more accurate translation of his name than “Jesus”), the person that the christian religions claim as their figurehead. But of all the hundreds of millions of people claiming to be some type of ‘christian’ or somehow claiming that ‘Jesus Christ’ is important to them, probably less than two percent have taken seriously the reading of his life and teachings, let alone trying to understand him or do what he says. If this is true, this should also peak your curiosity, for it certainly doesn’t make sense. And perhaps this is one of the reasons for the obvious failures and powerlessness of bible or christian or church religion to change people towards the Standard of Perfection that God has given mankind--the person of Joshua of Nazareth?
So, in your hands you have the Words of Joshua of Nazareth, the one who said, “I am the Way (Home to your Father), I am the (absolute) Truth (that eternally matters), and I am Life (Everlasting).” He not only said that (for anyone can say that), but He performed many miracles, including defeating death, to prove that all He said and did was true, including what was just quoted. No one else in history has done that. Joshua addresses the most important questions of life, directly, head on, and gives clear answers. Can I have a Hope that will last? What is the purpose to my life? If I have a soul and it survives death, what becomes of me? What is true love, and can I experience that and live that out? Can I have proper relationships with all the people in my life? Can I have inner peace and joy in my life on the earth? Where can I get the power to change myself to be the way I know I ought to be? Is there a superior form of love, and if so, how can I experience it? Joshua answers all these questions and point’s people to the source of power to change.
This author can testify to this truth. I was once chasing the American dream and all it entails, and to a large measure, I had attained it. However, that pursuit and it’s ‘success’ only left me more empty, selfish and hopeless. People viewing my life from the outside would say how successful I was, but I knew the truth. One beautiful day, however, as my life was spiraling downward (even while people said I was climbing the ladder of success), I met the Person Joshua of Nazareth. I testify that He has changed my life in a way I could never have done myself, for I had not the wisdom nor the power to fix my broken and hopeless life. Empty and circular psychological beliefs or legally prescribed emotion controlling drugs are not the answer to your problems. Alcohol, drugs, busyness, materialism, entertainment-ism or other means to try and dull or hide the hopelessness are not the answer either. So, dear reader, please don’t be afraid to read and seek to understand Joshua of Nazareth…He is NOT a religion, but rather a person like no other. And the chances are very good that the real Joshua of Nazareth is nothing like you have experienced through most christian or bible religious people…He is not the “Jesus Christ” of the christians/biblians or church people. He is not someone handing out free passes to ‘heaven’ to those who believe certain facts about him. Nor is he the God of wrath eager to punish the imperfect. Rather, he has the solution to your deepest need and is eager to provide it to you…he can clean your soul and bring your spirit alive!
Does YOUR life need fixing? What have you got to lose, and perhaps, you’ve got everything to gain? Do you want true freedom? You can have it, but it does cost something. To gain the Life which you really need, you must be willing to forsake the temporary and that which this world (and yourself) considers valuable. "He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.” "If you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." May the Words of the Rescuer, the Freedom and Life Giver in the pages to come do their beautiful work in your life!
I believe this is exactly the time to reconsider our relationship to our god... Is it God Almighty? Do you get excited about Our Awesome God? Or do you get more excited by earthly things such as a job, a football game, a song, a Million Dollars? Consider this question... If you had the chance to go to one of two concerts: Jesus Christ's Sermon on the Mount or Taylor Swift's latest? Which would you consider the highest priority... And if you had $100, would you buy a lottery ticket for a prize of $10M or give the $100 to a homeless man or women? Ponder this overnight...
