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Historical
See other Historical Articles

Title: 25 Years Ago, the Federal Govt Changed its Rules to Launch a Sniper Attack on Off-Grid Family
Source: Free Thought Project
URL Source: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/25-years-ruby-ridge/
Published: Aug 21, 2017
Author: Claire Bernish
Post Date: 2017-08-22 09:40:21 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 9455
Comments: 44

Randall and Vicki Weaver and their children wanted nothing more than to be left to live an isolated life in peace in their cabin enclave on a northern Idaho mountaintop called Ruby Ridge. Untrusting of the federal government and of the belief society had taken an insurmountable turn for the worse, the Weavers — as many residents in the remote and breathtaking area — taught their children to be self-sufficient and defend themselves with firearms from unwanted intrusions onto the family’s property.

But the Weaver’s seemingly idyllic life came to an appallingly violent end over several hours from August 21 to 22, 1992, in a horrendously botched federal raid that would also profoundly alter perceptions about the U.S. government in the minds of even ordinary Americans.

Often afterward reported to be white supremacists, the Weavers considered themselves race “separatists” only — and intended no harm against others beyond that belief — though their stance often included the company of people with a more vehement ideology.

Regardless of the Weavers’ beliefs, the account of what federal agents perpetrated against the family under the premise of affecting law enforcement action implores Americans of every race to consider the telling outcome of untrammeled government power run amok.

In 1989, Randall “Randy” Weaver came under the scrutiny of federal agents intent on infiltrating sometimes-violent white supremacist organizations like the Aryan Nations — and eventually wound up charged for selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns to an undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms [now, also, explosives] (ATF).

Weaver, notably, claimed he had been set up — thus flatly refusing the government’s offer to drop the charges if he would turn informant, feeding the feds information about various Aryan Nations members — and was indicted in December the following year.

Though Weaver’s insistence about the set-up leaves his failure to show up for a scheduled court date in February 1991 an altogether open question, a clerical error marking that court date for March didn’t prevent authorities from issuing a warrant for his arrest.

Knowing the Weavers possessed a relative arsenal — which Randall, Vicki, and their children were well-trained how to use — agents weren’t entirely sure how to carry out the warrant and so began intense surveillance of the family’s mountain home while carefully formulating a plan of action.

During this period, Vicki reportedly penned several darkly but vaguely threatening letters to federal agents, containing phrases such as “the tyrant’s blood will flow.”

Considering the family originally relocated to their outpost over mistrust of the government coupled with Randall’s claims concerning the charges which ultimately generated the warrant, Vicki’s language is understandable.

Remember, whatever narrative about dangerous white separatists federal officials proffered about the Weaver family, Randall had only sold — under questionable circumstances — two sawed-off shotguns to a federal agent, and his failure to appear in court, for all intents and purposes, was the fault of the court clerk’s ultimately egregious error.

All in all, an isolationist family on a remote mountain hardly posed an imminent threat to anyone.

Nonetheless, federal marshals set in motion a plan in August 1992 that would send shockwaves across the country and around the world for its deadly ineptitude and wholly disproportionate use of force.

On August 21, marshals surprised Randall, his 14-year-old son Sammy, friend of the family Kevin Harrison, and the Weaver’s family dog, Striker, on a road near the family’s property. Though some of what happened next remains a matter of conjecture, the events mark a disturbing turn in the use of force for the purposes of an otherwise relatively innocuous warrant.

A fully camouflage-clad marshal shot and killed Striker — prompting Sammy to return fire at the group of marshals. Shots then rang out from both sides — in the end, both Sammy and U.S. Marshal Michael Degan lay dead. After the brief gun battle, Weaver and Harrison retreated to Ruby Ridge and marshals regrouped, bringing in FBI agents and setting up a sniper to watch movements on the property.

One of the most contentious aspects of following events concerned an abhorrently arbitrary relaxing of the FBI’s rules of engagement to handle the case.

Larry Potts headed the FBI’s criminal division and oversaw the deployment of the agency’s Hostage Rescue Team to break the standoff at Ruby Ridge — but in doing so, loosely nullified longstanding rules of engagement preventing agents from firing in anything other than self-defense. In doing so, Potts created a monstrously rogue agency capable of firing at will — and the results were expectedly disastrous.

Agents were ordered to shoot any armed man on sight — on the Weaver’s private property — and when Randall appeared with a weapon alongside his 16-year-ol daughter Sara and Harris, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi opened fire, hitting Weaver in the arm.

Weaver, Harris, and Sara sprinted back to the safety of the cabin, but another shot from Horiuchi hit Vicki in the head, killing her as she clutched the couple’s 10-month-old daughter in her arms — but the bullet passed through her and also wounded Harris.

An incredibly tense 11-day standoff ensued, as the terrified survivors holed up in the Ruby Ridge home, but ended when mediators convinced Randall to turn himself in.

Horiuchi later claimed he had not been aware Vicki stood in the doorway when he fired the fatal shot. Though he was charged in 1997 with involuntary manslaughter for the killing of Vicki Weaver, a federal judge dismissed the charges the following year under the controversial alleged immunity of federal officers from state prosecution.

In 2001, a federal appeals court overruled that claim to immunity, stating federal officials who violate the U.S. Constitution can, indeed, be held accountable at the state level — but the Idaho prosecutor never pursued the manslaughter charge.

Randall and Harris both faced murder charges for the death of the federal marshall — but in a surprising move by an Idaho jury, all charges against them were dropped, save the original failure to appear charge against Weaver that generated the fateful warrant.

Surviving members of the Weaver family filed a wrongful death lawsuit, and in 1995, the patriarch received $100,000 and three of his daughters, $1 million each.

To this day, the grievous abuse of power fuels doubt in segments of the public about federal agencies’ ability to restrain itself in the use of unnecessary force disproportionate to putative threats.

Though the enormity of consequences of Ruby Ridge certainly echoed far into the future, the events have unfortunately sometimes been clouded by the Weaver family’s controversial ideologies. But those beliefs — as the families of countless other victims of a growing epidemic of state violence can attest — are of little consequence when the government acts with reckless impunity against a wide range of people from grossly different backgrounds.

Agents participating in and overseeing the siege of Ruby Ridge forced a sweeping internal investigation and concurrent reevaluation of policy — particularly due to the removal of imperative rules of engagement meant to protect civilians from the exact massacre that took place there.

And as is widely known, when the government receives the green light to abandon strictures protecting the public one time, it’s virtually guaranteed to happen again. As testament to this, the deadly and terroristic siege in Waco, Texas, by federal agents occurred shortly after the incident at Ruby Ridge.

On the 20th anniversary of her mother’s and brother’s murder by agents of the government, Sara Weaver poignantly recalled the harrowing details of her experience in an interview with the Associated Press — though she noted her father refuses to do the same. Losing her mother, who was indeed unarmed when she was killed, has been the most difficult aspect for Sara to come to terms with.

“We miss her terribly,” Sara lamented. “It never goes away.”

Despite the unprecedented mishandling, the payout to the surviving Weaver family, and the sh*tstorm of debate and controversy ensuing from the incident at Ruby Ridge, the government has never fully admitted any wrongdoing in the case.

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#1. To: Deckard (#0)

taught their children to be self-sufficient and defend themselves with firearms from unwanted intrusions onto the family’s property.

That's the problem right there. You do not have the right to shoot people who walk on your land. No matter how much you assert that you do, you do not. If you insist you do and start acting on it, society will shoot you dead.

Lather, rinse, repeat until either the lesson is learned or the gene defect that leads people to believe that they can shoot people just for coming onto their land is eliminated.

Huff and puff and be angry about it all you like: you DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO SHOOT PEOPLE FOR WALKING ON YOUR PROPERTY.

If you think you do, you're wrong. If you act on it, you're dead.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-22   9:56:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Deckard (#0) (Edited)

There is a lesson here and it is brutal: you are not an army. You are not equal to the government when it comes to using armed force. You do not have the right to ultimately get your way, because you do not have the POWER to enforce your will. You can bitch and moan about it all day until your face turns purple, but nobody cares, and nobody will care.

If you arm yourself to the teeth and try to separate from society, you're going into a weird and dangerous orbit. When you take your wife and kids out there with you, what you are doing is exposing them to death and destruction because of your pathological weirdness.

What happened here, really? A government agent shot a dog - that's bad. But a guy's poorly educated teenage son replied by shooting at the federal agent. THAT is where everything comes off the rails. THAT is the problem with being a secessionist, going and living in a shack in the hills, and believing that they're your hills, that you have the right to shoot people in them if they violate your standards. Sorry, but those hills are part of the United States, and there is NO PLACE in the United States where YOUR law supersedes the national law.

You are always and forever subordinated to the law of the land in this land. If you cannot handle that, leave. Going and living in a shack in this land is not leaving. You're still here, and you will still obey the laws.

The whole South doesn't get to decide to leave, and you don't get to take your family and secede in the American hills. Nor do you get to stop paying taxes. If having to obey the laws everywhere and pay your taxes is too damned much of an imposition, emigrate. In THIS land you SHALL obey the law and you SHALL pay the taxes, or you will die. Period.

Right? Wrong? Not relevant: REALITY. Might makes right, and you are not, and never will be, powerful enough to take on the government in armed combat. If you're too stubborn, too stupid and too pathological to understand those realities, you're going to end up dead at the hands of the government sooner or later. Worse, you're going to get your wife and kids killed to.

A pair of separatist parents armed themselves to the teeth and filled a 14 year old boy's head with crazy ideas. His dog got shot so he took on the government itself. So he got shot and died. And it all spun out of control after that.

Randy Weaver and his wife brought death upon themselves and their family by being crackpots who decided that guns would let them secede. Nobody gets to secede. You will bend the knee to the law of the land, or you will die.

Fascism! Communism! Naziism! Whatever. REALITY. The South learned that reality. The Weavers learned that reality. Everybody who decides to take on the authorities gun in hand will learn that reality. Shot down like dogs: that's the way it was. That's the way it is. That's the way it will be.

If you want to die on that hill, then fine, go die on that hill. Because you WILL DIE on that hill, and if you go there with your family, you'll probably end up killing them too.

Mourn the Weavers all you like. Ultimately they brought it on themselves.

No, you really don't have the right to go and be a racist separatist living in the American hills with a big pile of guns. You can try, but when the government agents come by, you will remember that you are still on American soil, you are still subject in every respect to the law of the land, and that your shack and your arsenal do not make you an independent nation in any sense. You are as fully answerable to the law and the taxman as anybody living in an apartment in New York City. You may not LIKE it, but if you want to live, you'll remember that.

If you forget it and present force to the government in opposition, then you shall die, probably with your loved ones also.

Ruby Ridge, Waco, all over the land.

Is it good? Doesn't matter if it's good or not. It is what it is. And if you want to live you will bend the knee to that reality.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-22   10:12:34 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Vicomte13 (#1)

taught their children to be self-sufficient and defend themselves with firearms from unwanted intrusions onto the family’s property.

That's the problem right there. You do not have the right to shoot people who walk on your land.

Being prepared and trained to "defend themselves with firearms from unwanted intrusions onto the family’s property" does not necessarily equate to shooting such intruders on sight.

Pinguinite  posted on  2017-08-22   10:19:29 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Deckard (#0)

Does anyone know if Weaver is still alive and doing ok today?

I'm curious if the feral goobermint waited a few years and then got payback.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

sneakypete  posted on  2017-08-22   12:32:51 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: Vicomte13 (#2)

Randy Weaver and his wife brought death upon themselves and their family by being crackpots who decided that guns would let them secede. Nobody gets to secede. You will bend the knee to the law of the land, or you will die.

I hope you think that applies to traitors who put their first loyalty to a foreign power called The Catholic Church.

Not surprised to see you take the government's side in this. After all,you are nothing more than a statist yourself who loves the idea of being a member of the Borg because you don't have the balls to face life on your own.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

sneakypete  posted on  2017-08-22   12:35:33 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: Pinguinite (#3)

That's the problem right there. You do not have the right to shoot people who walk on your land.

He didn't shoot anybody because they walked on his land,you freaking idiot! He shot them because they laid in ambush and opened fire on his dog,and by extension himself and the rest of his family.

I would do the same myself,and so would anyone else with even a shred of self-respect.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

sneakypete  posted on  2017-08-22   12:37:13 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: sneakypete, Vicomte13 (#6)

Your comment was obviously directed to Vicomte13. Pinging...

Pinguinite  posted on  2017-08-22   13:16:43 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: Pinguinite (#3)

Being prepared and trained to "defend themselves with firearms from unwanted intrusions onto the family’s property" does not necessarily equate to shooting such intruders on sight.

But it DID. The teenage boy got into a gun duel with the federal agent, leaving them both dead.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-22   14:18:48 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: sneakypete (#5)

I hope you think that applies to traitors who put their first loyalty to a foreign power called The Catholic Church.

Not surprised to see you take the government's side in this. After all,you are nothing more than a statist yourself who loves the idea of being a member of the Borg because you don't have the balls to face life on your own.

My first loyalty is to God. My second loyalty is to my family.

The country is below those two, yes. Always will be. Always should be. Think about all of those Confederates whose monuments are being pulled down. They died for their stupid cause. The names of all but a handful are forgotten, and everything they stood and died for is gone with the wind. The only thing anybody remembers, when they see a monument, is that they went out there and died - and because the living write the history, they are remembered for having gone out and thrown their lives away and bereaved their families all for an evil cause and a country that lasted five years. Heroes? Idiots who traded their lives for a stupid idol.

The same can be said of the Japanese who charged the guns. The Germans who charged across Europe. The crusaders who rode by the Cross to die. Lost causes that mean nothing now. They died. The living inherited the world.

To go and die in somebody else's cause is not glorious. It's stupid.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-22   14:23:54 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: Vicomte13 (#8)

But it DID. The teenage boy got into a gun duel with the federal agent, leaving them both dead.

The exact circumstances are not known. It's not known whether the feds merely "intruded" onto the property or whether they did far more than that. What we do know is that they did come armed, and possessed some degree of harmful intent and a certain amount of "fear for their lives" (in spite of being there uninvited) which all combined make for very dangerous intruders. Perhaps Sammy would be alive today if he was not armed. Or perhaps he would have died alone but without taking the life of the marshall (assuming the marshall wasn't killed by "friendly fire"). Certainly being unarmed is no guarantee one won't be killed by law enforcement.

In any event, if you maintain the moral of the story should be that it's always wrong to be prepared to defend your life and property with deadly force, then you are certainly at odds with me and most posters here.

Pinguinite  posted on  2017-08-22   15:51:50 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: Vicomte13 (#9)

To go and die in somebody else's cause is not glorious. It's stupid.

Would you include those who died in the Revolutionary War in this characterization?

Many revolts have failed. Many have succeeded. (The difference between a revolt and a revolutions is that a revolution succeeds). It's easy to sit back 150 years after the fact and quarterback the civil war in hindsight, but not so easy to divine the outcome in advance. Though the odds were stacked against them, the south could have won the war. They didn't really even want war. They just wanted independence. It was the North that wanted war to prevent them from doing what he colonies did some 80 years prior, which is universally considered a justified act. So if they declare independence and the North attacks, is it really any more stupid for the south to take up arms in defense than it was for the colonies to take up arms after King George attacked?

Pinguinite  posted on  2017-08-22   16:05:06 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: Pinguinite (#10) (Edited)

In any event, if you maintain the moral of the story should be that it's always wrong to be prepared to defend your life and property with deadly force, then you are certainly at odds with me and most posters here.

If you go out to the American hills with the purpose of seceding from the society and 'defending your land with guns' - the proposal of the article, not me, you're going to end up fertilizing the land with your remains.

My statement is descriptive, not normative.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-22   16:24:51 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: Pinguinite (#11)

Would you include those who died in the Revolutionary War in this characterization?

The Revolutionary War was unjustified.

So yes.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-22   16:25:34 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#14. To: Vicomte13 (#13)

Fair enough.

Pinguinite  posted on  2017-08-22   22:41:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#15. To: Vicomte13 (#9)

Think about all of those Confederates whose monuments are being pulled down. They died for their stupid cause.

How many Catholics and non-Catholics have died for the Catholic Church profits and power plays?

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

sneakypete  posted on  2017-08-23   10:40:00 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: Vicomte13 (#12)

If you go out to the American hills with the purpose of seceding from the society and 'defending your land with guns' - the proposal of the article, not me, you're going to end up fertilizing the land with your remains.

It's only natural you would think that way. You are a dedicated statist. Your first loyalty will always go to Vatican City,and whatever fairy happens to be "heading up" the joint,pun intended.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

sneakypete  posted on  2017-08-23   10:42:24 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#17. To: Vicomte13 (#13)

The Revolutionary War was unjustified.

I suppose you never read the Declaration of Independence. I am fairly sure you can find a copy somewhere on the Internet to read and understand a number of justifiable reasons.

buckeroo  posted on  2017-08-23   10:55:56 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#18. To: sneakypete (#16)

You are a dedicated statist. Your first loyalty will always go to Vatican City,

Really, my first loyalty is to my family.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-23   12:39:11 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#19. To: buckeroo (#17)

I suppose you never read the Declaration of Independence.

I've read it, thanks.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-23   12:39:30 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#20. To: buckeroo (#17)

I am fairly sure you can find a copy somewhere on the Internet to read and understand a number of justifiable reasons.

I've read it, and I see a self-serving political document full of exaggerated and hypocritical claims. I am unpersuaded by its arguments that the American colonists were justified in murdering the authorities.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-23   12:42:17 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#21. To: Vicomte13 (#20)

The "authorities" as you put it, were murderous English bastards controlled by England. There was no representation for and about the colonists, at all in any legal matter.

And you remain "unpersuaded" ... why is that?

buckeroo  posted on  2017-08-23   13:08:10 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#22. To: buckeroo (#21)

The "authorities" as you put it, were murderous English bastards controlled by England. There was no representation for and about the colonists, at all in any legal matter.

And you remain "unpersuaded" ... why is that?

"Controlled by England". So what?

The American colonies were settled by England. The French-armed Indian enemy on land frontiers had been fought off, sometimes barely, on every landward frontier by the English Army, at great cost in blood and treasure, and the French Navy had been prevented from sweeping up the coast and blasting every colonial city into a pile of driftwood time and again for a hundred and sixty years. America WAS England. It was filled with English people, and Scotch- Irish.

In the late war that ended in 1763, the French had finally been driven off the frontier and the Indian threat quelled - by English arms and English blood, and English navies.

The colonies were not divided in two by a Dutch realm running from Greenwich to Cape May because the English had sailed in and taken New York and environs from the Dutch. The American colonists didn't do it.

America was preserved from French conquest, and made a continuous set of English-speaking colonies, by the British Crown and the English army. It was English blood and English treasure that won the American continent for the Americans. The colonists didn't defeat the French or the Indians or the Dutch. They were not capable of it. It was England - jolly old England - that bore the brunt of battle, and the expense.

The English crown went deeply into debt winning America for the Americans, and the French were not gone. They still had a magnificent navy and the world's finest army. The people living in Canada and the Great Lakes were French, not English. They had settled those lands at the same time the English settled the Eastern Seaboard. Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan was settled by the French in 1660, before Connecticut, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina or Georgia existed, and while New York, New Jersey and Delaware were still Dutch colonies.

French America was as old as English America, and its people were more deeply intermarried with, and shared a religion with, the Indians than the English ever did. The French could always come back, and if they did, the American colonists alone would never be able to face them. It would take England to fend them off, if England could.

As it happened, actually, the French DID come back, in 1778, on the side of the Americans against the English. And this time, the English could not fend them off. The English Navy was defeated by the French Navy and driven off, and the English Army was captured by a combined French-American Army.

America NEEDED England during all of those long decades and decades. And England bled for America. The Americans owed a debt of allegiance to their Mother Country and to their King. They also owed their fair share of taxes to pay for the great expense of the war that drove the French off.

But once the American rebels felt the French threat recede, they did not feel a debt of gratitude. Rather, they saw an opportunity. The taxes imposed on America were small compared to the taxes paid by the English and Scots and Irish in the British Isles.

The American colonists did not want to pay ANYTHING AT ALL. What's more, the American colonists did not want to respect British trade restrictions, which were designed to disfavor the adversaries of the British. It was profitable for Americans to trade with the French and Spanish enemies, so they did, and to hell with the law.

Americans who import illegals and contraband from Mexico today have the same attitude. Do they have a legitimate grievance against the federal government for making that difficult? No. Neither did the American colonists who made large profits trading with the enemy, and who resented the government's efforts to curtail that in the overall national interest.

The Americans had self-government. They had always had it, all the way back to the settlement of Virginia. The law in the Colonies was colonial law, the general assemblies in the colonies were elected by the locals, always had been, and they ruled for the locals. The judges and courts were local. Only the Royal Governors were sent from England (as American territories, to this day, had governors sent from the capital), but the governors' salaries were paid by the local assemblies, who could - and did - cut governors' salaries at various times over the years, in the event of disagreements.

Once the Americans engaged in wholesale smuggling and would not obey the law or convict the smugglers, the government resorted to offshore admiralty courts to try to bring this behavior under control. That is complained about in the Declaration of Independence. Essentially, the colonists claimed the right to trade with the enemy as they pleased, and considered it an affront to their "rights" that the government took steps to stop that or punish it.

In a similar vein, once the English army had captured Quebec City, the whole of French Canada, a region vaster than the American colonies, and settled for just as long by the French (and forever by the Indians), fell into their hands. What was to be done with these vast territories of new subjects? The French- Canadians, for their part, were willing to live under the rule of the English King as opposed to their own King as long as the basics were respected: they were allowed to govern themselves locally as they always had (same as the American colonies), and they were allowed to practice their native religion, as they always had (same as the American colonies).

But the French and Indians were, of course, Catholic. Catholic France had settled and converted Catholic French Canada and the Great Lakes since 1608, same as the English had settled the Eastern Seaboard since 1607.

The English Crown, wishing to have peace in these new vast Canadian lands, chose very wisely and very reasonably to leave the French Canadians to their local customs and not molest them in their practice of their religion - same deal they gave to the American colonies. Pennsylvania was not Church of England. Neither was New England. The Crown understood that people in the Americas had their own customs and religions, and as long as they kept the peace and paid their taxes they were content to let them be.

It was the American colonies, full of Protestant bigots, who could not tolerate the mere THOUGHT that the English Crown did not oppress the French in their Catholicism, that the English crown tolerated Catholicism among the French and Indians of Canada just the same as the King tolerated Congregationalism among the New Englanders, and Quakerism and Presbyterianism among the Pennsylvanians. Read that Declaration of Independence and its fulminations against that complaint: " For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies".

What an utter load of steaming bullshit! Quebec had been French and Catholic for as long as Virginia had existed, and was there a decade and a half before the first Pilgrim set foot on Plymouth Rock. The "System of English Laws" had NEVER at any SECOND in all of history EVER governed Quebec, Canada, New France, or any arpent of it. Not ever. The Colonists, who did not capture Quebec, did not defeat the French and Indians, did not lose so many ships and thousands of men in a world war against France, are whingeing here that the French Canadian Catholics are being allowed to live unmolested under their own religion and local laws JUST EXACTLY AS THE AMERICAN COLONISTS claim the right to do.

A more preposterous and hypocritical position is not possible. As it happens, the French Canadians themselves had no love at all for the English and their King, but they understood that the American colonists hated them and wanted to oppress them and destroy their villages and crush out their religion just as the English had tried to do in little Ireland. THAT is why the French- Canadians had no interest at all in helping the Americans. There was a sliver of a chance in 1775, that they might have been willing to throw off English rule in favor of home rule under the wider American model - IF (and ONLY if) the new American republic was willing to acknowledge the French right to govern themselves under their own laws and be as Catholic as New England was Puritan.

What realistic chance of that was there, given that the year AFTER the Americans were bitching - sotto voce - about French Canadian Catholicism in the very Declaration of Independence?

In any event, the first Americans up into French Canada in 1775 were Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain boys, and they were quite hostile to the French Canadians they were supposedly there to liberate, resulting in a gunfight with some French militia and the closing of the fort walls to the Americans up and down the St. Lawrence. And that, as they say, was that: Quebec and French Canada would remain, reluctantly, under British rule. That it turned out that was is directly on account of the attitude and the behavior of the Americans. The French were as eager to preserve THEIR ancestral rights and faith as the American colonists were, and the English Crown was protecting them, while the American colonists made clear their hostility from the moment they set foot in the territory.

The Americans are sometimes said to have said that taxation without representation was wrong, but in the Petition of Right sent to the King in 1774, the American colonists complained not simply that they were not represented in Parliament, but that they were much too far away to BE represented in Parliament, and that therefore their OWN legislatures must be the final deciders of laws. Well, the colonial legislatures could have ALWAYS taken up the cause of reasonable taxation and voted locally to provide some sort of reasonable tax payments to the Crown to defray the costs the English had borne securing American territory from the French. It was perfectly obvious all along that the Americans never intended to pay ANY TAXES WHATEVER, that the Americans intended to be free riders, obtaining the benefits of English power without, however, bearing any of the financial burdens of it.

They complained about the English Parliament taxing them, and they complained about English rules against trading with the enemy, but in their OWN legislatures they never took up the cause of voluntarily paying as much as a FARTHING to England for military preparation, and they never intended to do anything BUT trade with the enemy on whatever terms the Yankee merchants thought were profitable to THEM - and to hell with the best interests of the whole English Commonwealth.

Properly understood, the Declaration of Independence lists a bunch of "grievances" that amount to these five things:

(1) We do not intend to pay any taxes to England. (2) We intend to trade with the enemy as we please. (3) The French Canadians have no right to maintain their legal customs or religion, and (4) England has no right to enforce any laws, or punish anybody for breaking them. And (5) And we have the right to kill English soldiers at will in order to do it our way.

It is completely self-serving and unpersuasive.

Now, of course, the Americans had help. There were plenty of rivals eager to see England brought down. The War of the American Revolution saw the Dutch, the Spanish and the French all go to war, openly or clandestinely, against the British all over the world, and British power was broken. The French Navy emerged dominant in the Americas, and the French Navy stripped the then-British empire in India from the British (Pondicherry), which the British never recovered.

The impressive gains of the Seven Years War were largely reversed, and the British lost their Empire. The Americans got their independence, and the French-Canadians kept their own culture and religion intact despite the American efforts to the contrary.

The American front of operations was a magnificent quagmire into which British arms and British treasure was poured, allowing the French to crush a divided England in America AND in India and establish French naval parity (and local superiority) that would last until the French had their own revolution, which took the expressed (but never really implemented) ideals of the American Revolution and made them the banner on which the French Revolution began (it devolved into something altogether different).

So, the American Revolution certainly had its reverberations, and ended up, on balance, being a beneficial thing for the Americans and the French.

However, none of that was foreseeable in 1776, and what the Americans did - claim the right to murder the police because they didn't want to pay taxes or tolerate their neighbor's religion, but wanted to trade with the enemy - was not justification for killing people any more than the South's desire to preserve slavery justified secession and mass death in the American Civil War.

I am unpersuaded by the American arguments in the Declaration of Independence because they are patently self-serving exaggerations and half-truths, and because the only one that justifies actually shooting at the police was the unleashing of Indians on the frontier, which did not happen until the Americans had started shooting.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-23   17:54:15 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#23. To: buckeroo (#21)

The "authorities" as you put it, were murderous English bastards controlled by England. There was no representation for and about the colonists, at all in any legal matter.

So, did the American slaves have the right to revolt and butcher their white masters?

They had neither representation nor legal rights, and were held in slavery by murderous American bastards, and treated far more callously than the English authorities ever treated the American colonists before the war.

Did that give Nat Turner and his followers the right to rebel and massacre as many slaveowners as they could get their hands on?

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-24   9:04:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#24. To: Vicomte13 (#20)

I am unpersuaded by its arguments that the American colonists were justified in murdering the authorities.

Of course you are. You see self-defense as murder.

When you start off with faulty information,you always end up with faulty conclusions.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

sneakypete  posted on  2017-08-24   9:14:25 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#25. To: Vicomte13 (#23)

So, did the American slaves have the right to revolt and butcher their white masters?

Did Martin Luther and his followers have the right to revolt and break away from the tyranny and slavery of the Catholic Church?

So, did the American slaves have the right to revolt and butcher their white masters?

Did the American slaves owned by black masters have the right to revolt and butcher their white masters?

Did the Caribbean slaves and the African slaves imported there and to South America have the right to revolt and murder their Spanish Catholic Priest slave masters?

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

sneakypete  posted on  2017-08-24   9:19:18 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#26. To: sneakypete (#24)

You see self-defense as murder.

If you provoke a riot and start breaking the law, and the police come to shut you down, and you won't be shut down, and you get shot trying to fight the police, what you did is not self defense.

The British didn't come in and start shooting up Americans.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-24   16:03:16 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#27. To: sneakypete (#25)

Did Martin Luther and his followers have the right to revolt and break away from the tyranny and slavery of the Catholic Church?

They had the right to state their objections strongly and depart from the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church had no right to go after them with violence. They, in turn, had no right to go after dissenters in their own ranks with violence, and they had no right to burn witches all over Protestant Europe. Essentially, religious people have no right to hurt people over religion.

So, did the American slaves have the right to revolt and butcher their white masters?

Of course. But they had no right to kill their children.

Did the American slaves owned by black masters have the right to revolt and butcher their black masters?

Of course, in the few instances that happened. But they had no right to kill their children.

Did the Caribbean slaves and the African slaves imported there and to South America have the right to revolt and murder their Spanish Catholic Priest slave masters?

Of course.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-24   16:06:07 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#28. To: Deckard (#0)

People died, it happens to everyone on a long enough time frame our life expectancy is zero. Shooting at intruders and dying for it, is a helluva way to go out. A lot better than living with cancer, or holed up in an apartment building surrounded by drug addicts ruled over by Commie tyrants. After a person dies and looks back, what will they be most proud of? Living a long time? Or living as they believed? In a Universe where time has no meaning, death is nothing but a "pulling off of a band-aid from a childs owie." Does anyone remember that traumatic event of Mom removing a bandage from a scrape? It sure hurt....you think.

Exercising rights is only radical to two people, Tyrants and Slaves. Which are YOU? Our ignorance has driven us into slavery and we do not recognize it.

jeremiad  posted on  2017-08-24   17:31:52 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#29. To: jeremiad (#28)

People died, it happens to everyone on a long enough time frame our life expectancy is zero. Shooting at intruders and dying for it, is a helluva way to go out. A lot better than living with cancer, or holed up in an apartment building surrounded by drug addicts ruled over by Commie tyrants. After a person dies and looks back, what will they be most proud of? Living a long time? Or living as they believed? In a Universe where time has no meaning, death is nothing but a "pulling off of a band-aid from a childs owie." Does anyone remember that traumatic event of Mom removing a bandage from a scrape? It sure hurt....you think.

If it were as simple as that, sure. But it's not. Yes, we do indeed go on after death, but we are not the prince of this world (if we were, we would not die), and we're neither prince nor judge in the afterlife either. Our Creator is there, and he is opinionated.

So, while WE may feel as though going out in a blaze of glory is the best thing of all - given that we are about to end - truth is, we are NOT about to end at all, and when we step through the other side, we're accountable for how we went out and what we did on the way out. And that changes the equation.

We will be judged, there, by whether what we did was justified, not by OUR standards, but by the judge's standards. So if we, with terminal cancer, work ourselves into a froth and decide to go strike at somebody political, because we have decided in our own self-righteousness that he is a "tyrant", and then we go act as judge, jury and executioner, we had better hope that the judge who awaits us on the other side agrees that tyrants should die by the hands of men, and even if that is the standard of the judge, mthat the particular man you killed really was a tyrant - not in your opinion, but the opinion of the judge.

In other words, for our own sake we had best tread very lightly on matters of death and judgment.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-24   18:17:02 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#30. To: Vicomte13 (#27)

Did Martin Luther and his followers have the right to revolt and break away from the tyranny and slavery of the Catholic Church?

They had the right to state their objections strongly and depart from the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church had no right to go after them with violence. They, in turn, had no right to go after dissenters in their own ranks with violence, and they had no right to burn witches all over Protestant Europe. Essentially, religious people have no right to hurt people over religion.

So, did the American slaves have the right to revolt and butcher their white masters?

Of course. But they had no right to kill their children.

Did the American slaves owned by black masters have the right to revolt and butcher their black masters?

Of course, in the few instances that happened. But they had no right to kill their children.

Did the Caribbean slaves and the African slaves imported there and to South America have the right to revolt and murder their Spanish Catholic Priest slave masters?

Of course.

I have to admit it,you surprised me,

Careful,or you will be defrocked,defragged,disembodied,and deprogrammed.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

sneakypete  posted on  2017-08-24   22:01:41 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#31. To: jeremiad (#28)

Shooting at intruders and dying for it, is a helluva way to go out

We should all be so lucky,and have it happen in our mid-80's. Preferably intruders who are the grandfathers,fathers,and brothers of the young woman in bed with you when the door comes crashing down.

In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.

sneakypete  posted on  2017-08-24   22:03:32 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#32. To: sneakypete (#31)

Preferably intruders who are the grandfathers,fathers,and brothers of the young woman in bed with you when the door comes crashing down.

Heh heh.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-25   7:57:43 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#33. To: Vicomte13 (#29)

I agree, if we go looking for a tyrant to "take care of".

When the tyrant comes to you looking to destroy the quiet life you have built....... Quite frankly that is the problem, not enough "revenue agents" buried in the back yards of citizens for "overstepping" their power.

The quandary we now face is how do we roll back the tyrants power without committing acts of violence or murder.

Who else can decide if a tyrant is a tyrant but someone under his boot? Another riddle.

There is no Justice, anyone with a scintilla of brain power can cite chapter and verse how the courts have become something that is more akin to a Casino with hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of dollars needed to enter the door and have a chance at a fair and equitable outcome.

Again, what do you do? Say it is a State agent telling you that to take your child who is seriously ill, out of the care of a hospital, and move her to another in hopes of solutions instead of treatment?

There are simply times when there is no doubt that God himself would look kindly on action, or neutrality. Men do have Natural rights. Just because courts have forgotten where the law comes from, does not mean The Almighty has.

Exercising rights is only radical to two people, Tyrants and Slaves. Which are YOU? Our ignorance has driven us into slavery and we do not recognize it.

jeremiad  posted on  2017-08-27   13:03:05 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#34. To: jeremiad (#33)

I agree, if we go looking for a tyrant to "take care of".

When the tyrant comes to you looking to destroy the quiet life you have built....... Quite frankly that is the problem, not enough "revenue agents" buried in the back yards of citizens for "overstepping" their power.

The quandary we now face is how do we roll back the tyrants power without committing acts of violence or murder.

Who else can decide if a tyrant is a tyrant but someone under his boot? Another riddle.

There is no Justice, anyone with a scintilla of brain power can cite chapter and verse how the courts have become something that is more akin to a Casino with hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of dollars needed to enter the door and have a chance at a fair and equitable outcome.

Again, what do you do? Say it is a State agent telling you that to take your child who is seriously ill, out of the care of a hospital, and move her to another in hopes of solutions instead of treatment?

There are simply times when there is no doubt that God himself would look kindly on action, or neutrality. Men do have Natural rights. Just because courts have forgotten where the law comes from, does not mean The Almighty has.

You will get scant comfort in this life if you look for justification - let alone actual justice - from the real God.

Consider, the real God only fathered one human son, and that son was totally innocent, and God knew it. Yet he made his own son go through two mockeries of a trial, a night of ridicule, and a day of torture and horror - there was no justice at all for his own son on this side of the grave. We have no grounds to expect better treatment (and if we DO expect better treatment, we're fools because God - through his Son - TOLD US that we will be hated and treated terrible and abused by authorities. Indeed, that was an important part of the Son's advice to us to not bother trying to accumulate wealth, status and power on earth, because they will be stolen, taken, ripped away - and Jesus essentially promised that God will do NOTHING AT ALL about ANY of that in THIS life. Indeed, Jesus said to simply ENDURE the injustice of this life, which is very real and bears down on everybody, that you will get no justice here, not from men, and not from God either. Endure it HERE, follow HIS example and be stripped of everything including dignity and life itself, and then, THERE, on the OTHER SIDE of death, you will be rewarded on God. The only thing that God promised THIS world is that it will eventually get its justice by being burnt to a crisp, because NOTHING is just here, NOTHING is without sin.

As if to underline the point, Jesus picked Twelve Apostles. Twelve men who knew him to be the Son of God, who saw his miracles, who believed in him and followed him. They killed nobody, nor did any harm, and did only good to mankind while they lived.

Jesus himself was disgraced, stripped of everything, tried and convicted, though innocent, and then tortured to death. He promised nothing less and nothing more for his followers. His twelve closest, most faithful, and most holy - specially selected by God - friends, the Apostles...what happened to THEM?

Remember, God controls everything, and so God always had the ability to stop all of this.

So let's consider.

Judas: He betrayed Jesus to the Romans, and hanged himself from the guilt.

Peter: Designated leader of the Apostles. Like Jesus, he was crucified by the Romans.

Philip: Like Jesus, he was whipped and then crucified.

Bartholemew: Preached in India. Was skinned alive, then beheaded.

Thomas: Run through with a spear.

Matthew: Stabbed through the back with a sword.

James the Less: Beaten to death with a club

Jude: Crucified.

Simon the Zealot: Crucified.

John: Poisoned but lived, exiled to Patmos, where he died of old age.

God let the apostles be slaughtered, for doing good.

So, have the courts in America become a casino? Yes. The outcomes are often unfair. The police are brutal. The authorities are callous.

To this, I expect Jesus and the Apostles would say: So what? Anybody being crucified? Anybody being whipped, nearly to death, and THEN crucified? Anybody being skinned alive? No? Well, then America's system of justice is not nearly as brutal or unjust or horrific as the Roman system that Jesus and his Apostles faced. God let Rome devour Jesus and the Apostles in an unjust system, and Jesus told people to pay their taxes...to Rome!

So no, I don't think that God will look with any favor upon Americans who, unjustly treated in property, taxes and revolution, decide they may attack and kill their unjust authorities. Here is not as bad as Rome was, and Jesus and the Apostles said to obey Rome and pay the taxes...and lost their lives at the hands of Rome (and others).

So I think that, really, God's view is just exactly what he said: Life is short and wicked - don't even try to save up money or look for justice from men. They money will be taken, men are wicked. See to it that YOU don't steal or act unjustly or kill, and God will reward YOU in the afterlife for your trust and patience and doing what he said. Take up arms HERE and you face the same fate as the rest of the violent and unjust: God will throw them into the Lake of Fire, where they belong, because they were murderers, liars, cruel and unjust.

God said that the cruelty and injustice of others is to be patiently borne, even expected, and looked at with joy, for it is in enduring that that one experiences the same thing that Jesus and the Apostles suffered, and one shares in their glory in the Afterlife.

Obviously, nobody who doesn't believe in an Afterlife will do this - and that's why the trust - the faith - is required. There are signs in this life that there IS an afterlife and a real reward for doing what Jesus and the Apostles said EVEN THOUGH it is costly in THIS life and there is no reward for it but pain and loss. Those are downpayments on the next life.

That's the deal. It was the deal for Jesus and the Apostles, and there's no reason to believe that God is going to give a BETTER DEAL to other people, all of whom are absolute nobodies and nothings to God when compared to Jesus and his handpicked friends. God saw too it that his own son and all of his friends were physically tortured, all but one to death and all treated with great injustice. The one who hanged himself to avoid the pain of guilt faces suffering without end on the other side. The ones who bore the injustice to the end were rewarded by God. All of those faithful salaried servants of Caesar and the kings who carried out the unjust sentences for pay face the same fate as Judas.

Everybody is given choices. If you choose to take up arms and attack the authorities over money or pride or injustice, then you are taking the path that neither Jesus nor any of his 12 friends did, and you're doing things the opposite of what he said to do. They followed what he said. You'll be striking out on your own and doing what he said not to do.

I would say, in truth, that the things of this world: money, status, privilege and human justice are not durable, and that the individual can easily lose himself trying to pursue them. Essentially, rebellion means bloodshed over money, and God never authorized it and Jesus warned against it so decisively, I would say that rebellion is really a statement that one does not really believe in Jesus and the Apostles, or anything they said. One doesn't really believe in an afterlife and is firmly rooted in the present, believing that this life is all we have, and so that it's best, right and proper to fight here, and now, understanding that the violence and death that must inevitably come ARE justice, and the only kind of justice we are ever likely to see.

The atheist ought to fight and fight hard. The Christian ought to meekly and passively accept.

The straddle is not useful - indulging in only a little bit of killing over money and justice is likely to get one just as rejected as indulging in a lot of it. While meekly enduring it all is a waste of the chance to be happy if there is no God at all and Jesus and the Apostles are just another Santa Claus fairy tale myth.

As for me? Well, I know from personal experience that God exists, so when I get angry and murderous (as I do), I recognize that if I follow my instincts and impulses I will essentially be doing what Judas did: betraying what I know to be true and, thereby, committing suicide.

I don't find my fellow men to be as certain as I am, and I don't blame people for acting on their incertitude. But I'm afraid that God does blame them.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-28   10:45:04 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#35. To: Vicomte13 (#34)

I don't find my fellow men to be as certain as I am, and I don't blame people for acting on their incertitude. But I'm afraid that God does blame them.

Given that normal, average parents would not condemn their child to death for failing a science exam, I find it enormously less likely that God would condemn one of His kids to an eternity of torture for failing a theology final.

God is not so petty.

Pinguinite  posted on  2017-08-28   10:56:04 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#36. To: Pinguinite (#35)

Given that normal, average parents would not condemn their child to death for failing a science exam, I find it enormously less likely that God would condemn one of His kids to an eternity of torture for failing a theology final.

God is not so petty.

No. But God does condemn them to death for killing other people. That's the crux of it.

God forbade men to kill men. The only time he authorized them to do it - indeed he COMMANDED that they do it - was when men kill other men. Kill a man, and men are to kill you.

God did not carve out any exceptions. Most specifically, God never authorized men "in authority" to kill other men in order to maintain authority. He ONLY authorized it as punishment for killing other men.

Think about what THAT means for statecraft, for taxation, for property rights, for "the rule of law".

Yes, God isn't going to condemn his children for failing a theology exam. But for killing another man? Look at all of the huge efforts men expend to create phony philosophical arguments as to WHY it's ok for some men to kill other men ("Well, it was WAR" - so that justifies it, does it? Who started the war? Why?)("It was "LAW ENFORCEMENT". Really. And where did God say that some men could kill other men for breaking a man-made law? Crickets (He didn't.))

"Well, look at all of those death penalities in the Old Testament!" Oh yes. But now look and read what it says who they were FOR, and WHERE. And note that nobody could be executed without the testimony of TWO witnesses, and that every witness and judge had to face the same penalty - death - for perjury, and that the witnesses had to THEMSELVES carry out the execution (making them murderers if perjurers).

God is not petty. But when he said not to kill other men except as punishment for killing, he did not make a bunch of convenient excuses. He set a rule that makes human statecraft unsustainable on the traditional path we have followed. Rulers and their police who kill people who are not themselves killers, in order to maintain obedience, are murderers.

Traditional statecraft is contrary to the law of God.

That's the problem, not a theology exam. Those who lust for power won't give up on their powerlust simply because God removed from their toolbox the only effective way to obtain strong dominance over other men.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-28   11:33:27 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#37. To: Vicomte13 (#34)

Good perspective, but I expect better from a country that was founded on such promise. Simply, equal treatment under the law is all that is asked.

Yes, bitching and whining is a waste of time because we will be trodden under foot until "The Good King" takes over. There are multiple stage plays, books and movies that point to the same situation over and over from a secular POV. One that does it quite well from a Christian POV.

The majority of Americans look for that elected official to be "The One". Believers in the Gospel know he will be unmistakable, and not so nice to his opponents.

I enjoy your perspectives, thanks.

Exercising rights is only radical to two people, Tyrants and Slaves. Which are YOU? Our ignorance has driven us into slavery and we do not recognize it.

jeremiad  posted on  2017-08-28   18:33:35 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#38. To: jeremiad (#37)

Truth is, God waited nearly 2000 years to even give humans the right to kill ANIMALS to eat them. And even then he forbade us from eating them alive, and made the shedding of animal blood an important enough thing that it gave forgiveness from sin in Israel!

Just the killing of animals, to eat, is a BIG DEAL, a grant to human weakness.

God NEVER granted men the right to kill other men in order to enforce law or government, NOT EVER. He had a special set of contractual terms wITH ISRAEL ALONE, but to Israel he gave an ORACLE - the Urim and Thummim - by which the High Priest could always DIRECTLY CONSULT GOD for judgment. God gave the Israelites, and them alone, a telephone to him by which they could be absolutely certain to NEVER execute an innocent man, if they chose to avail themselves of the technique.

Likewise, in the case of adultery in Israel - and only in Israel - God did prescribe a death penalty, but he also gave a technique whereby God himself would demonstrate, through a miraculous intervention, whether or not a woman believed to be an adulteress was actually an adulteress.

God set terms of trial involving the death penalty so very high that it could only be used, effectively, in the case of public crimes with multiple witnesses.

And that was only in Israel, where there was also the Urim and the Thummim. The general law for mankind was, and is: DO NOT KILL. A man is allowed to defend his life, and men may (indeed, must) shed the blood of the man who sheds blood (unless they turn the other cheek and forgive him), BUT even then the man who sheds another man's blood must not himself carry the burden of mortal sin, for the man who judges will be judged by the standard by which he judged. So, if a man judges another worthy of death for, say, disoloyalty to a country, that man has set himself up for death - permanent death - at the hands of God at final judgment because of that man's inevitable disloyalty to God - for all men are sinners.

Men try to spin fantasies about how God forgives them their treasons against him - EVEN IF they do not forgive other men their treasons over things that are lesser and trivial in the face of God, such as nations and governments and human laws.

That's the problem: when you kill a man in service of a state, or in a war, or in law enforcement, you have shed the blood of man, without a trial. You had better hope that he himself shed blood and that your justice was true. Because if you killed a man simply for talking, or for threatening, or for some offense that is NOT a death penalty before God, then you are a murderer.

That you were hired by some men - "the state" - to do it eliminates culpability for your act before other men ("I was a soldier in war!"), but it does not change God's absolute and categorical prohibition against shedding the blood of other men, except in punishment for their bloodshed, or in self-defense.

God never authorized anybody other than the Israelites to engage in a war of conquest against any other people. He never did it, not once. So EVERY ruler who initiated war against any other people, and EVERY soldier who killed in that war following the orders of that ruler, are ALL murderers, and ALL damned. That's God's law, and it is brutally reductionist.

Likewise, the professional executioner. If he is putting to death those tried and convicted - but the victim facing death was not in fact guilty, and was found guilty by a trial that did not have all of the procedural safeguards that God put into place - then the execution is simply a murderer. The fact that some state of men pay him and cobble together a whole set of rules and regulations, and immunities from the law, does not save him from God. He chose to earn his living by killing men - if those men were not actually guilty, he chose to be a murderer and to throw himself into judgment as a murderer once he dies, for some money in this life.

Killing people for a living is glorified by our states, but it is in fact a very good way to virtually ensure damnation by God at the end of it all. If you choose to earn your keep by shedding men's blood, you're not the sort of person God wants to live with in his City at the end of it all. You would not obey the Law - HIS Law - and you committed the most heinous acts for hire. You're a murderer and you will be thrown into the fire.

But what if you ALREADY WERE a killer in your life - a soldier, a pilot, an executioner? Is there no hope? There is still hope. God WILL FORGIVE IT, but to be forgiven, you must first admit that what you did was totally, absolutely and categorically wrong. You cannot DEFEND the evil. You have to turn your back on it, and turn on those you formerly served, and say that their cause is evil BECAUSE they kill men. You cannot try to DEFEND what you did - killing for hire in "the national interest", because if the national interest is killing those who are not murderers, then the nation itself is evil, and you cannot serve both God and evil. You have to CHOOSE, and CHOOSING God means rejecting the bloody nation you used to serve. You can't have it both ways.

You can continue to dwell in an evil country - for all countries are sustained by the unlimited use of force and threat of death - ALL are evil - but you must not SUPPORT that aspect of it, or defend it, or justify it. Because if you do, you are not repentant. And if you are an unrepentant killer, you will be damned by God at final judgment, and you will be thrown into the fire to be burnt up, as promised.

In the end, none of us gets to have it the way we want it, and the sooner we figure that out and submit to the highest authority, the better the outcome for us.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-08-29   10:43:17 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#39. To: Vicomte13 (#38)

How do you study? I really appreciate the depth of your answers.

Exercising rights is only radical to two people, Tyrants and Slaves. Which are YOU? Our ignorance has driven us into slavery and we do not recognize it.

jeremiad  posted on  2017-08-31   23:29:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#40. To: jeremiad (#39)

How do you study? I really appreciate the depth of your answers.

I'm not sure what you mean by "How do you study", but I'm glad to try to answer if you explain a little bit what you want to know.

If you mean "How do you learn this stuff" in general, I would say that I was blessed with a phenomenal education - "the education of kings" so to speak, that I have a reasonably acute mind, but most particularly I have a tremendous gift of memory. I remember stuff in detail, and the way that memories like mine work is that facts are fit into an overall structure and pattern of things. In school, we learn asserted principles, rules and concepts, but we are to just accept them as given - nobody PROVES to us the laws of mathematics or the laws of physics or the laws of economics, for example. We are simply TOLD what they are, and then given sets of exercises that test our memorized knowledge.

Some of the things we are taught - or at any rate some of the things I was taught - conflict with other things I was taught. This sets up a real irritation in my mind, because it makes it difficult to store that information. I was very impressed by the counterexample principle in geometry - that any proof is destroyed by a single counterexample.

So, it's fair to say that when a "law", "principle", "precept" or "rule" is presented to me, I don't necessarily just accept it and go with it. I may provisionally accept it, but then future experience (and all related past experiences) are correlated to the proposed rule. If I don't like the rule (and in general I don't like rules) I look like a hawk for contradictions - a single counterexample destroys a proof.

The capstone knowledge is theology, because the existence or non-existence of consciousness in God determines whether or not nature is a machine or a thought, whether or not it has discretion. This was the BIG question, and thanks to empirical experience, I know the answer to that question.

Trouble is, it is so much simpler and more comforting to think of the universe as a machine, than to realize that the physics are an opinion, and that sometimes the opinion CHANGES.

I seem to be going mystical here, so I'll stop...given that I don't really know for sure what you mean by "How do you study?"

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-09-01   14:16:58 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#41. To: Vicomte13 (#40) (Edited)

Your response in #38 reads like knowledge acquired and stored over time. When new information comes in it is sorted and stored like pages in a book. It is how I teach myself. I have a lot of information, but it is useless to try and relay it until I get what I call a "download". The download is that moment when enough pieces of a puzzle make it obvious what the picture is.

What you wrote read like the studies of a scholar, but I am thinking it is the result of collating information studied with an eye toward trivial or not well covered subject matter, until the whole becomes visible. In short, it made me want to figure out how to KNOW if what you said is correct. This fits with your relating the "counterexample principle" and leads me to ask if you are a teacher?

Anyway, I am rambling and really have never seen the words Urim and Thummim. Maybe you are a practicing Hebrew scholar?

Exercising rights is only radical to two people, Tyrants and Slaves. Which are YOU? Our ignorance has driven us into slavery and we do not recognize it.

jeremiad  posted on  2017-09-01   22:25:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#42. To: All (#41)

Your response in #38 reads like knowledge acquired and stored over time. When new information comes in it is sorted and stored like pages in a book. It is how I teach myself. I have a lot of information, but it is useless to try and relay it until I get what I call a "download". The download is that moment when enough pieces of a puzzle make it obvious what the picture is.

What you wrote read like the studies of a scholar, but I am thinking it is the result of collating information studied with an eye toward trivial or not well covered subject matter. In short, it made me want to figure out how to KNOW if what you said is correct. This fits with your relating the "counterexample principle" and leads me to ask if you are a teacher?

Anyway, I am rambling and really have never seen the words Urim and Thummim. Maybe you are a practicing Hebrew scholar?

My granddaughter hit send and this is a better edited version....

Exercising rights is only radical to two people, Tyrants and Slaves. Which are YOU? Our ignorance has driven us into slavery and we do not recognize it.

jeremiad  posted on  2017-09-01   23:10:20 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#43. To: jeremiad (#41)

I am not a teacher. I'm a lawyer. Before I was a lawyer I was a navy pilot. Before that, I was a navy surface ship officer. Before that, I was a midshipman. And before that, I was a kid in school in Michigan. Along the way, during two transition periods, I prepared myself for veterinary school, went through pre-med and did two stints as a veterinary technician in veterinary hospitals, one in California, and one in Connecticut.

I've had a tremendous amount of schooling, but I would not really describe myself as a scholar, partly because I am more a man of action than of passive study, but moreso because I consider empirical experience to be superior to book knowledge.

Theology, for me, is a very special case owing to empirical personal experience by which God has revealed himself to me directly, concretely, unequivocally and indisputably. This knowledge is not easily shared, in part because of lack of common reference point with others to relate the experience, and in part because of the experience of inveterate hostility of others when I have attempted to relay it in the past. I no longer try, because I don't care for others enough to put up with their shit. Could my knowledge of such things help them? Yes, it could help everybody. But to try to convey it requires me to put up with a lot of crap from other human beings, and I don't like other people enough to do that.

Because of my experiences, I have spent an inordinate amount of time looking at the human record of knowledge about God. Not just oceans of time on Christian theology and the history of churches, scripture, doctrines, canon law and the like, but also on Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and polytheist Greco-Roman, Scandinavian and Amerindian beliefs. I have scoured the world for empirical evidence of miracle, concrete, forensically examinable miracle, miracles that have left physical traces. I have found several, and when placed side by side they tell a tale that corresponds to my own experience.

I have read the Jewish and Christian Scriptures from a particular vantage point, and have focused explicitly on the words written in the Scriptures that were spoken directly by God - where the Scripture indicates that "God said..." these SPECIFIC words. This is not the same thing as pretending that every word in Scripture was dictated by God. Rather, it looks at those words in which Scripture specifically tells you "God said..." and focusing on just those words.

The words spoken by God constitute about 7% of the written text. Many of them are repeated three or more times, so when they are deduplicated they come to fewer than 100 pages of the 2000+ page Bible.

I have highlighted and separated out those particular words, and made a point of getting the direct literal Hebrew, Greek and Latin meanings of the words, mechanically translated.

I have done the same with the creation story in Genesis, through Genesis 4, and looked very carefully at the pictographic letters and their meanings in Genesis 1.

There is much there, and it is all of a piece. It would take pages and pages and pages of writing to explain it, and because literally nobody else in the world has done it this way, there's nowhere somebody can turn to to verify what I say...and then once again I am in the world of having to put up with shit from other ignorant human beings to "prove" things I know and they don't. And once again, I just don't like other people enough to be willing to spend the time to prove anything to them. It detracts from the time I spend on things that interest me.

Urim and Thummim are the names in Exodus given by God for the two oracles that were to be placed in the ephod worn on the torso of the high priest. Essentially, they seem to have been lots that were cast by which God was consulted. Think divine dice.

Vicomte13  posted on  2017-09-02   13:11:36 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#44. To: Vicomte13 (#43)

Thank you.

As for " Yes, it could help everybody. But to try to convey it requires me to put up with a lot of crap from other human beings, and I don't like other people enough to do that. " That is funny and a perfect response. I share with my children and my Sister who has recently passed. Pretty much everyone else I don't like enough to bother with either.

Your path is interesting and thanks for sharing.

Exercising rights is only radical to two people, Tyrants and Slaves. Which are YOU? Our ignorance has driven us into slavery and we do not recognize it.

jeremiad  posted on  2017-09-03   17:40:11 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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