I had a weird, lucid dream last night. I do not remember all of it other than one segment where I met a slimy character named Warren. The next scene I remember was passing a parking lot in a car only to see a woman pointing a revolver at Warren as she said "John 3:3" before she shot him - six times.
Where that came from, I have NO idea but something happened this morning that made it even weirder. As I pulled out my Bible from the bookshelf, another book fell out and opened up. I ignored the fallen book for a moment and thumbed to John, Chapter 3, Verse 3:
"Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born [a]again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Pondering that for a minute, I picked up the other book - it was my copy of a collection of writings of Thomas Paine and was open to a page of "Common Sense". On that page, the first thing I read was this quote:
“…our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer…”
What follows is the result of my mind trying to synthesize those two bits of inspiration and realization.
Looking back over history, I think there are basically two types of societies – there are those where life is relatively good for a few and not so good for most (i.e., monarchies and dictatorships) and those where life is relatively good for most but not so good for a few (democracies and constitutional and representative republics). Regardless of ideological perspectives or political gamesmanship, this seems to be the rule, and for thousands of years the quest has been to find some point on the continuum between these two, some equilibrium point, where a peaceful and civil society can exist.
So, man created government as a mechanism to find that equilibrium point and then preserve it.
America began as the latter, a constitutional and representative republic with, as Lincoln famously stated, “a government of the people, by the people and for the people”, one designed to do the most good for the most people by keeping the power in the hands of the individual and only ceding power to an extremely limited collective that has power over an absolute minimum of collectively agreed upon roles and responsibilities. In America’s case, to do five things: “…establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”
I cannot quite put my finger on it, and maybe it is that humans tend to be herd animals that crave social interaction, but the human tendency any time it is aggregated into a larger collection almost always tends toward the centralization of power, and the centralization of power ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS, trends toward the latter societal model where a few have it really good (and that good is protected by government), and most, not so much.
Communist government (and the socioeconomic systems that evolve in response) are designed that way – to vest the power in a few - but if you honestly look at representative republics, they trend toward that model over time as well – especially if the members of those republics become apathetic enough to allow “scope creep” (when the demands of a design or project begin to increase way beyond the initial definition, sometimes to the point the finished product bears little resemblance to the initial vision).
While being at different points on the line of force and coercion, they are similar in realization. Unlike a hereditary monarchy, these two are not exclusively based on royal DNA – the right of a single king or queen to rule by birth, but they do thrive on a form of ideological heredity, a right to rule based on influence and status within the systems of governance. In such perversions, people are ruled not by kings and queens, rather they are ruled by a partisan mini government in Congress and the heads of various committees, federal agencies and departments.
If you consider the number of powerful people in Washington (or even your state) who have virtually lived lifelong sinecures in Congress or the bureaucracy, other than their position on the continuum, there is not much functional difference between Capitol Hill in D.C. and the Duma in Moscow.
The governmental bureaucracy thrives longevity as an avenue for advancement and they view loyalty and chronology of service over performance. The political parties revere the Illuminati and elitists, giving us candidates that are “establishment approved”. Such a “monarchical” perspective leads to governmental interference and manipulation of society to achieve outcomes the ruling class deems appropriate and necessary – while being neither appropriate nor necessary.
In “Common Sense”, Thomas Paine detailed of the evils of a hereditary monarchy and they are eerily like the modern incarnation of that form, our modern bureaucracy combined with the Illuminati and elitists who presume to be our American royalty. Paine wrote:
“MANKIND being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance: the distinctions of rich and poor may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice. Oppression is often the CONSEQUENCE, but seldom or never the MEANS of riches; and tho’ avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.
But there is another and great distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is the distinction of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and bad the distinctions of Heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.”
Paine captures the eventual outcome of having such a government of lords and kings and what that means in relation to the freedom of the greater society:
“SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐠𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐛𝐲 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐝𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬; 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐛𝐲 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐍𝐄𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐘 𝐛𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐚 𝐩𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐫.
𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐆𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞, 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.”
Focusing on the highlighted text above, I cannot but conclude that we have all the tools to avoid calamity, if we only choose to re-discover and use them. In a sense, we must be born again.