Total disgust …and new hope

I just sold my cherished tractor.   I hated to do it.  But worse, I asked far too little money, and my greatly underappreciated wife Wendyl bore the burden of endless phone calls and inexcusable idiots while I was in Louisville. 

Watching the selfish, dangerous drivers carom and jockey over the I-65 bridge, and hearing of the lying, cheating fools my wife had to suffer with the sale of my D-15 makes me more fully understand why we’re going to get a ruthless, lawless dictator.  Oh yes.  We’re going to get one good and hard. 

We have corrupt government because we Americans are corrupt.  But there’s more to it than just that.

The saying, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” just doesn’t do justice for we of European descent and/or Judeo-Christian beliefs. 

What do you say to people who’ve been completely self-hoodwinked every election cycle for a hundred years?  What witticism can you impart upon a people that rebuff their traditions and self-professed beliefs to rebuild self-deceptions every day throughout their lives, and defend their foolishness with idols and slogans?  What sooth applies to a culture whose flowering gave freedom and wealth to more people in more ways and to a greater degree than had ever happened before in human history…and then threw it all away?  What do you say to a people that call themselves brilliant and wise, only to then just stop having babies and disappear from the earth leaving behind only their debt and destruction?

By the numbers, fewer than five percent of all Americans (about two percent in most places) vote for Rule Of Law, governed government, sound money, and/or the simple logic that applies to all physical objects and creatures.  I have no figures on how many people have actually read their state and federal constitutions…the contracts that determine their wealth, education, longevity, freedom and security; but I’m guessing far less than one-half of one percent.  It’s my experience that even among those who share my views on most things political, a tiny fraction actually knows their rights as citizens. 

Those who have anything like a Judeo-Christian system of morality have a birthrate of about 1.6 – a dying breed indeed.  We give well over half of everything (time, money, service and debt) to our politicians who we know are full of, well…whatever.

Now, despite the wheezing death-rattle of “liberty movement” energy that I’ve seen lately, I’m afraid we’re just too late and too few to rebuild this nation according to constitutional design.  The USA has been dead for too long to revive it, and most have no interest in it anyway.  At least 98% of your neighbors have chosen your fate. 

I confess it’s hard for me to even look at people knowing that they’ve sold themselves into serfdom, their children into slavery, and their heritage into oblivion.  I am flat disgusted that to most people, those with a record of lies and errors are called “Honorable…” while those who’ve been right all along are called “fringe,” and “losers.”  I’ve met too many people who’ve smugly called me “a dreamer,” while they have personally chosen a slithering, beheading nightmare for us all.

I want a simple thing, but one that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world right now.  I want Rule of Law under existing state and federal constitutions, as written.  That’s all. 

What we have instead is humanity’s ancient default state of political idolatry, authoritarian violence and self-destruction.

Maybe Texas has enough patriots within its borders to effectuate sanity, but probably not.  Maybe China will learn from our mistakes and become the light of the world.  But probably not. 

Liberty is a rare and precious thing.  Historically speaking, it almost never happens.  The liberty enjoyed by Americans 100 years ago never happened before.  It may not happen again.

We will certainly have to live our remaining years in ways quite unlike what we know today.  Political promises have turned to massive corruption and debt, so we’ll have to depend upon each other once again.  We’ll have to learn that caveat emptor never died.  We’ll have to relearn healthcare and how to warmly, sympathetically deal with aging and mortality without the cold, tax-paid/tax-deferred institutions that sweep our family issues under a rug.  And amidst the rising crime of an unjust, insane culture, we’ll have to protect ourselves, because government protects only itself…against you.

So, with such grim prospects determined by my fellow citizens, I need to readjust my thinking.  And I need to readjust it according to my own Christian understanding.  I should walk my talk, in other words.  I’m just a visitor here.  All the madness around me shouldn’t affect me.  I must try harder to do my best and let my heart be untroubled.

And amidst all the ugliness of a people prone to evil and slothful in good, I must recognize and cherish what’s good and wholesome.

My wife, first and foremost, has, through all my political and business sturm und drang, been a hardworking, supportive, loving and noble companion.  I can’t say enough about that woman.  She is certainly my better half, and has made my eccentric family work.

Then there’s my church family.  The Bloomington Reformed Presbyterian Church is a wonderful branch on God’s vine.  I will miss them greatly; but I’ll do my best to support their cause while I’m in Houston.

I’ve lately found another family that I feel like calling my own. 

Some of you may know that I’ve been working in Louisville for the last few months, and that on most weekdays, I’ve crashed at the home of my friend Dr. Eric Schansberg.

Every now and then you meet someone who gives form to the phrase “fruit of the spirit.”  The Schansberg family has been a welcoming, encouraging and strengthening comfort in my life at just the time when I needed them.

The last few months would have been painful indeed, and may not have turned out so well at all if it weren’t for these people that God put in my path.

I have so many good friends.  My friends in the freedom movement are my brothers and sisters.  I’ll not try to name names here; the list would be too long, and I’d feel awful should I offend by omission, or by putting the names in the wrong order.

I love you guys.

This is the perspective I should keep.  It’s certainly the one I prefer. 

I love to know those I love.  I should let evil nonsense fall past me like water off a duck’s back.

I have been Blessed.  I’ve been shepherded through life and I’ve never really wanted for anything.  Not really, anyway.

Yes, it grieves me to see the violence my fellow humans are doing to themselves. 

But I’ve offered to help many, many times in very public ways.  Having two-and-a-half-million people tell you to buzz off on a single day should tell me that they have what they want.

And I have what I want. 

Good friends, and a God who’s smiled on me for over a half century.

Andy goes to the Lone Star State

¡Ya salgo para Houston!

Well, I never wanted to leave my Freedom Farm, but God has other things in mind for me.  As I can no longer stay in Indiana, I’ve flipped a coin (one with a secession-leaning state on either side).  So life is taking me and my little family to Houston, and the thing for me to do, is embrace it.

So, I’m renting the farm out – one trillion-fillion Federal Reserve dollars per month, Or Best Offer.  Actually, it’d be dirt cheap to the right person; I’m just trying to minimize my losses.  We’ll auction off a lot of stuff we’ve accumulated over the years.  We’ll sell all the animals we can sell, and then probably donate Doofus to science.* 

Anyway, we’ll sell down to our clothes and Bibles and head to the land of Ron Paul.

In some ways, nothing will change.  I’ll still be able to walk anywhere without being recognized.  I’ll still be toward the bottom of the peon, political-outsider, tax-serf class. 

Oh, and I’m still not giving up on Rule Of Law under existing constitutions, as written.

But some things will change a great deal.  I will miss all the friends I’ve made in Indiana.  I’ve made some very, very good friendships.  I hope y’all stay in touch.  Or maybe join me for the secession.  I don’t know if we’ll ever find a church like Bloomington RP, but I’m entrusting that one to God. 

I need to make a special thank you and farewell to the Indiana Libertarians.  I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the convention this past weekend to accept the award you’d generously bestowed.  I will miss you all a great deal.  But more importantly, I’m not quitting – I’m only changing tactics and locations in the ongoing quest for Liberty and Justice for All.

While Southern Indiana summers are hot and humid, Houston does get even hotter.  And we’ve had remarkably few hurricanes in Indiana…  Yikes.  I will greatly miss the quiet, verdant beauty of our Freedom Farm…

Of course there’s Dr. No.  And I’ve been very encouraged by what I’ve seen of the Oath Keepers’ Texas connection.  I’m hoping that, while I’ll not run for public office again, I’ll be more effective, and in a better context, in my struggles for right and truth.

Doggone it; I’ve been a Hoosier (whatever that means) for over a half-century.  I don’t know how I’ll do in cowboy boots.

Please pray for me.

Oh, and if you’d like a Doofus, let me know…

 

*About Doofus – My son Hark was the one who first discovered that the so-called “puppy” we saved from destruction was no puppy at all.  He is actually a “pliffle” – a coarse lampoon of the noble canis lupus familiaris known as Man’s Best Friend.  This species of perdition, callus doofus dammitis, may look something like a dog, but unlike any dog that ever lived, he’s completely useless, annoying, unbelievably persistant and …sticky.   Yes, he’s affectionate, but you’d rather the pliffle just go away…

Finally, my last blog. This time I mean it.

Well, I have to hand it to them; they’re clever.  Our opponents know the power of words, and they wield that power ruthlessly.

They rename the cruel, ancient ideology of Nero “progressive,” so we’d seem regressive to oppose it.  They call the entrenchment of concentrated power, privilege, theft and violence “liberal,” when …wait a minute; weren’t the Founding Fathers the liberals of their time? 

Like the serpent to Eve our politicians call left right, and right wrong so that we’re so darned confused we think they must be brilliant.

Well, now Obama has been taking the phrase “Rule of Law” in vain.  A lot.  Obama’s Polo ponies in the mainstream media have gotten themselves all in a lather about this new Rule Of Law direction in justice, equanimity and, of course, freedom. 

“Freedom” was George Bush’s most common Golden Calf incantation:

We pay taxes for freedom.  We spend even more than we tax, for freedom.  We send our children to foreign wars for freedom.  We give up liberties …for freedom.

Sheesh. 

Freedom has become almost as bad as “security” as a hex-word of oppressors.  And now they pervert my “Rule Of Law” too?  It’s too much to bear.

But even the most nefarious word-abusing rulers aren’t our problem.  We liberty-loving patriots are our problem.  We need no others. 

Since my last blog, I’ve heard a resounding “Amen, we’re with you, brother” from several people, only to be told, almost without so much as a comma or parentheses, “but first we ought to do something about this flu scare (…or the supply of ammunition …or wild government spending…or this or that or that or this)”  Or they’d say “Great; let’s start a new political party! (or chat group, or 501c3, or…)”

I know I’ve asked for a paradigm shift of the greatest magnitude.  Consciously or not, we’ve come to idolize the abstraction we call “government.”   We’ve been trained to think of it as a thing, and that’s a hard paradigm to shift.

Government is, in fact, us.  It’s not anybody, or anything else. 

What we’re talking about, no matter how you slice it, is the dynamic of our choices and our consequences.  Yes, we delegate and infuse the political abstraction with our most violent, greedy and horrible choices.  Like an inner demon we want this deadly abstraction to make the choices that we, as individuals, find too abhorrent for us to make alone.

All this violence and terror is ours.  We can say “enough,” and push away from the feeding trough of public money and serf labor.  We can put a leash on the dogs of war and live the way we would, for ourselves, choose to live.

It’s our choice.

But from all but a tiny few I hear that “it’s out of our hands,” or “only a revolution will save us now.”  I hear that we must ignore the root of the problem and nibble at the branches since “we must be pragmatic.  That’s the just the way it is.”

That is self-destructive nonsense.  That is the reality and pragmatism of failure and death.  As a truly progressive liberal (in the most fundamentalist and radical sense), I’m disgusted that we’re pulling ourselves into the slaughterhouse by our own nose-rings.

Anyway, I’ve said my bit about what, I think, we should do.  I’ve said it plenty.  It’s all in the pages that precede this one. 

And I don’t want people to call or email me calling me “negative” or “defeatist” again.  I’m not going to blog anymore, but I’m not giving up.  I’m just giving up on what I can plainly see isn’t working.

To the small band of brothers who’ve replied to my earlier calls, I’ll be in touch shortly.  We have things to do.

There’s only one thing that, I think, needs to be said here:

 

Jeremiah 18

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.”

So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel.  But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

Then the word of the LORD came to me.  He said, “Can I not do with you, house of Israel, as this potter does?” declares the LORD.

“Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, house of Israel.  

…

“Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, ‘This is what the LORD says: Look!  I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’

But they will reply, ‘It’s no use. We will continue with our own plans; we will all follow the stubbornness of our evil hearts.’ ”

 

Get ready.  I don’t know how much time the USA has left, but short of a miracle, it’s not long.  Don’t be fooled by the gambling houses we call the stock market, or by the shamen some call “experts;” this ain’t about “the economy.”  We’ve not seen the real economic conflagration yet, and there are things faaar worse than hyperinflation and just plain broke.

Love your family, cherish your time, and get down on your knees in prayer.  Collectively, we have made our choices, and now it’s coming time for the consequences.