Struble’s remarks to accompany the first chapter [4½ minutes] Click Here
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 Chapter One_

Radical Turnabout:
Retaking our Bearings and Recharting our Course

 

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With God all things are possible

State Motto of Ohio (since 1959),
quoting the Gospel[1]

 

The difficult, we do immediately.  The
 impossible takes a little longer

US Marine Corps Motto

 

 

  

══ INTERACTIVE CONTENTS ══

  

National Elections versus a Direct Uprising

 

The Postmodernist Revolution: 1963 to Date

 

Counterrevolutionary Arch-Amendment

 

The Might of Mighty Few

 

Insurrectionary Means: Suede or Sword?

 

The Article V Convention

 

Conclusion

 

  

 Chapter One_

Radical Turnabout

 

 

 Radical: "Of or from the root or roots;
going to the center, foundation, or source
of something; fundamental; basic;
as, a radical principle."[2]

Webster’s Dictionary

 

Turnabout: “A change or
reversal of direction.” 
Webster’s Dictionary 

National Elections Versus a Direct Uprising

The election of November 2008 seemed on the surface to offer dramatic change.  Indeed, Barack Obama’s image and tone made for a dramatic contrast with George W. Bush.  As for real prospects to save our country, however, it was an old story.  The election of 2008 gave us yet another choice between the standard bearers of two fraudulent political parties.

Cheapened and depreciated political choices are so prone to create new problems, and so ineffectual in addressing our existing problems, that the raison d’être of democracy is stifled and repressed, namely self-government by the people.  The people were (and remain) of the opinion, according to all polls, that their country is off course and headed in the wrong direction.  And yet the officeholder class delivers photo opts, lip service for change, and occasional table scraps to placate a concerned citizenry.

Only in matters related to foreign policy do we see anything resembling sharp turnarounds.  To give credit where credit is due, President Barak Obama has ordered torture removed from the repertoire of interrogation techniques for prisoners of war.  But homeland security begins and ends at home, where domestic policy will determine the future of the Republic – not diplomatic or military moves overseas for any sort of imperial purpose.[2a]

Here within our borders, unfortunately, any slackening of the war against America’s Judeo-Christian moral heritage can hardly be anticipated from an Obama Administration.  In this respect, President Obama’s rise to power postpones to the unforeseeable future any hope of our country’s return, as Scripture puts it (Malachi 3:4), to ways that “…will please the Lord, as in the days of old, as in years gone by.”

The last President who could plausibly claim the mantle of such a radical reformer was Ronald Reagan.  Again, foreign policy came to the fore, and under Reagan we did win the Cold War.  Meanwhile, American society itself continued to degenerate morally and spiritually.  Reagan was a cultural conservative who favored a counterrevolution against resurgent paganism within our own culture, but not even his transformational style of leadership made headway against the postmodernist social agenda.  Like a juggernaut it rolled inexorably on, unphased by the Gipper’s great popularity with citizens outside the beltway, or by his charisma as the “great communicator.”

To find radical candidates (other than Reagan) who won a Democratic or Republican Party primary election in one or more states, one has to look to Pat Buchanan’s four primary wins in 1996, to Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy’s primary victories in 1968, or to the melancholy politics of racism in the campaigns of George Wallace.  Of these candidacies only Kennedy's offered a realistic chance to win the Presidency.  Not since Franklin D. Roosevelt have we been able to elect a President capable of pushing revolutionary reforms through the political system.  The system excludes such reformers, almost as if an impenetrable palisade guards the governing oligarchy.

The truth is that the country’s polity, economy and culture are in desperate need of radical change for the better.  Yet none but a moderate, Laodicean reformer has a realistic chance to win the Presidency anymore, or for that matter to win any position that would provide enough leverage to lead the country in a fundamentally different direction.  If a radical reformer did get to the White House somehow — via tragedy, say, as the assassination of President McKinley elevated Teddy Roosevelt — today’s postmodernist system would hamstring the new Administration and prevent any real domestic turnabout.  The USA of the 21st century is far more bureaucratic than during the Presidency of either of the Roosevelts; more machine like and impervious to the people’s will.

In short, my fellow citizens, democracy by gridlock, euphemized as middle-of-the-road moderation, offers us no realistic way to save a nation that is looking more and more like a train that has jumped the track.  Only a radical strategy, acting well outside the box, can offer any prospect of getting a derailed America back on the rails of the Constitution and of a healthy culture.  But such a dual purpose will get no help from the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches as presently constituted.  Nor will electoral spin imposed by media conglomerates be helpful.  Nor will radical reform spring forth from campaign seasons costing five billion dollars (as in 2008), with we the people reduced to the role of crowning winners in brawls between plutocratic political machines.

 

The well known columnist / author, Cal Thomas, has taken this reality to its logical extreme.  After the election of 2008, Thomas argued that political action by Christians in America had proven futile.[2b] Therefore, he said, we need to stop wasting time on attempts to change public policy.  Instead he urges that we turn to works of charity.

Giving up on the regular political system as a way to restore America the Beautiful is in one sense the realistic position.  Indeed as patriots grounded in reality, we are in a situation similar to what patriotic Romans faced twelve years into the 4th century, AD.  Unlike Cal Thomas and his ilk, however, the early 4th century Christians did not abandon political hope.  They fought optimistically and with revolutionary fervor against the ruler of Rome, Maxentius.[2c]

Like our Republic, the roman republic had degenerated.  Only the trappings of democracy remained to the Romans, and their political institutions had become useless for the purpose of radical reform.  But instead of merely offering prayers for the tyrant (as per 1 Timothy 2:1-4), the Romans infused their charity with tough love and then followed Constantine and his sky born vision – including the instruction. “in this sign conquer.”

After the decisive victory at the battle of the Milvian Bridge (312 AD), Christians began using their newfound state power and influence to transform the Roman Empire from within.  By the end of the century their Christian Revolution had advanced to the consolidation phase, remarkably so because at the time Constantine ended state persecution of the Church (Edict of Milan, 313, AD), Christians constituted only about ten percent of the imperial population.

Let us take this illustrious conquest as a historical counterpoise to the “pray, obey and everything will be ok” approach, a strategy advocated by some American moderates.  Instead let us take a page from salvation history, go outside the system, and press for a counterrevolution under the radical half of the fifth Article in the U.S. Constitution.  But if you are unwilling, O fellow citizen, to consider tactics that are radical, then you might as well follow Cal Thomas and give up the fight to direct America’s future.

 

In hoc signo vinces (In this sign, conquer)
	Milvian Bridge, Rome

 

 

For the purpose of redeeming U.S. democracy, the chief lesson to glean from the election of November, 2008 is not the Bush/McCain/GOP defeat, nor Democrat Barak Obama’s spectacular win, but rather the victory by a broad grassroots coalition in California against the powers that be.  In a campaign which saw record spending by the two sides ($73 million in total), citizens seeking to restore traditional marriage faced not only the power of big money, but the united opposition of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the state’s government.  The old media, the entertainment industry, and public education were also arrayed against Proposition 8, the populist measure which sought to overturn the revolutionary judicial edict of a few months earlier.  In June 2008 the California Supreme Court had sullied the state’s constitution, usurpatiously amending it from the bench in order to mandate same-sex marriage.

And yet by going around the system, and legislating directly, the people of the former Bear Flag Republic were able to organize under leadership independent of the government.  On this key issue, the people of California were able to push their Golden State in the direction of counterrevolution.  How heartening that the people exhibited the daring to try an end run!  To overcome a regime adamant for postmodern morals, the people of 21st century America’s largest state won the day against obdurate officialdom and gargantuan institutions.  The people simply circumvented them.

At the state level in California, the people accomplished their end run via the initiative process.  At the national level the closest equivalent is the Article V Convention.  Under the fifth Article of the Constitution, such “a convention for proposing Amendments” is called by application of 34 states.  The convention is elected in the states, and must refer its proposals back to the states for ratification.  A most promising feature is this: it would operate outside the established political structure.  Moreover it would be unicameral, and unencumbered by an anti-democratic procedure known as the filibuster.

The Article V Convention option is like throwing a life preserver to a lady swimming for her life in a shark infested sea.  It’s no good to say that you have no experience with tossing life preservers, that you’ve never tried it before.  To give way to pusillanimity or hesitancy, and afford the swimmer not so much as a good chance to save her life, would amount to murder by omission.

Likewise it is craven or ignorant, or both, to give credence to the anti-convention fear mongers on the claim that something might go wrong.  Given that Article V is the last legal hope of dispatching the postmodern regime and rescuing the republic, forbearance is no virtue at this point in history.  The best expression of patriotism when America the Beautiful is drowning is to act in accordance with first principles, and to intervene without forgetting FDR’s admonition, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” 

Overcautious patriots bemoan the Article V convention as too radical or unlikely a solution – warning that the convention might “runaway.”  Such platitudinous patriots unwittingly seek to guarantee that the republic will sink below the waves of the ongoing crisis.

The loving response cannot be to leave the Article V convention, our country’s life line, coiled on the deck of the ship of state.  Negligence draped in phony patriotism is like iron pyrite.  But genuine gold, the real love of country, is to act courageously so as to rescue the republic from her plight.

 

This book has, then, a prime purpose:  The aim is to describe a course of action whereby we the people might advance to secure a good country for present and future Americans.  The following chapters map out a path along which we might penetrate the postmodern palisade that walls us off, keeping the electorate beyond lest we threaten the corrupted governing regime.  The postmodernist revolution has greatly diminished effective democracy in this republic.  And intentionally so, out of fear that the people might repossess the Constitution and proceed to restore the polity, economy and culture.  The last thing postmodernists want is to see a condition revived like what we enjoyed before the assassination of JFK – prior to their creeping and sordid revolution whose effects we suffer today.

Plotting a course for restoration of U.S. democracy should be limited pretty much to the main arterials or avenues on the map, leaving it to a newly empowered citizenry with a purified political process to fill in the details.  Such a plan should also include the dead ends and detours that would, if taken, waste our time and disperse counterrevolutionary energies.  Mapping out the most promising route must also mark various obstacles that might slow our progress or block the path altogether.  If it turns out that we cannot penetrate the regime’s palisade by any route that is legal, then we will need a plan B – an addendum to the map – that prescribes ways of using force to blast a breach in the bulwark that stands between the people and the postmodernist regime.

If the way through as indicated in this map is ignored, or a cul-de-sac obtusely followed, and if the postmodernist regime is permitted to remain in power and continue its corrupting ways, and if it brings the republic to final ruination; then at least posterity will not blame citizens who paid heed and tried to follow the indicated map.  Your children and grandchildren will have the consolation of knowing that America the Beautiful was not lost without a fight.  If it happens that we do exhaust all our options and the Republic falls; then, at the Last Judgment we can claim to have done our civic best to dethrone those who led the country fatally astray.

And now, what about this postmodern regime which our counterrevolution would target?

 

The Postmodernist Revolution, 1963 to Date

            The first spring of John F. Kennedy's administration, May 1961, saw our elegant young leader announce the goal of putting a man on the moon before the decade was out.[3]   Nine months later America followed the flight of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, as the country aspired upward in the finest tradition of a people rising to challenge.

As the country began the ascent to such spectacular technological heights, enter the woeful year of 1963.   It was a year that marked the onslaught of permanent revolution with a vengeance — a radical transformation that, for want of better words, we term  the postmodernist revolution.

In 1963, John Kennedy’s assassination sent shockwaves of grief around the world.  Many mourned also at the passing of C.S. Lewis, and lamented the loss of everyone's “Good Pope,” John XXIII.  The death of these three leaders in 1963 marked the beginning of a precipitous downturn for the fields they personified – statesmanship, Christendom, and genuine intellectualism. 

Christendom died soon after John XXIII — not Christianity, to be clear, but rather the leavening of the polity, economy and culture by the Gospel.[4]  As Biblical values fell into disfavor in the circles of power and influence, secular mores and worldviews shot to the fore.

After C.S. Lewis, the true intellectual became ever more suspect on a landscape dominated by political correctness.  And the “magic bullet” that struck JFK, dealt a lethal blow also to statesmanship.  The political culture of post-1963 became increasingly unfriendly to people with independent or brilliant ideas.  The ongoing revolution disdained leaders (Reagan and Thatcher bucked the flow) who exhibited personal heroism or envisioned a new frontier that might compete with the agenda set forth by postmodernist bureaucrats.

Among many harbingers of the downturn was an accelerating deterioration in mastery of the English language.  In 1963 America’s foremost professional association of English teachers published an influential summary of research on teaching methods, concluding that to teach grammar in schools had a negligible or even “'harmful effect on the improvement of writing.'”[5] 

After all, good grammar requires an orderly and disciplined mind; but intellectual rigor is suspect in the postmodernist view of things.  Emotion trumps reason with postmodernists, who prefer to make decisions based on what feels right rather than on organized philosophy or religion.  Moreover, there has been distinctly less intellectual rigor for emotion to trump, given the dumbing-down of the American mind that has been perpetrated on the people generally.  University of Wisconsin professor of Linguistics, David Mulroy, has conducted a number of experiments to see if his students could understand the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence.  Only about half of these University students were able to comprehend the meaning.[6]

It serves the postmodernist agenda very well if most citizens are functionally illiterate.  That way the people will be more pliable, being poorly equipped to resist cues fed to them in the form of sound-bites by the media, the entertainment industry, and the government school system.

The year 1963 marked also a turn for the worse for our country’s military.  It began auspiciously enough with an official end to the Cuban missile crisis.[7]  But in April, an advanced design nuclear submarine, USS Thresher, took 129 Americans to a watery grave deep below the surface of the Atlantic.  By year’s end, the number of American military "advisors" in Vietnam had increased to more than 16,000.[8]  Some 3½  times that number would return to the United States in body bags before America extricated herself from the dreadful experience of Vietnam.

The Grim Reaper was also at work on moral consensus in America, as the Warren Court sided with atheist Madelyn Murray O’Hair in Murray v. Curlett (1963), ending the era of public schools as reinforcers and replenishers of Judeo-Christian culture.

Other character builders, like family, church, and reading good books, began giving way to such molders of American youth as the Beatles, whose lyrics hit the adolescent subculture like a tidal wave in 1963.[8A]  For many a young American, the cultural milieu of rock music became the liturgy of a quasi-religion that had precious little to do with God.

That same year, 1963, Betty Friedan published her tragically influential book, The Feminine Mystique.  Before the 1960’s had passed, she had divorced her husband of 22 years.  Many another wife followed the pattern, renouncing marriage vows after embracing the radical feminist philosophy and severing the bond with their husbands.  In formerly traditional families, suddenly reduced to shambles, children’s tears fell like rain.  Now their upbringing took place in single-parent homes and day-care centers.  Their working mother might be seen in the evenings, with visits at dad’s house on certain weekends, as prescribed by a judge.

As society degenerated, this pattern came to be viewed nonchalantly by many Americans.  In 2007, some 4½ decades after 1963, I was teaching Contemporary Issues to high school seniors.  By then some 40% of children nationwide were born out of wedlock, up from five percent in 1960, when I myself was a high school senior.

My students knew something about going with the flow of the adolescent subculture, or (in hopeful cases) about bucking the headwind.  But my pupils would have been hard pressed to explain why in 1960 society had engendered an out-of-wedlock pregnancy rate of one in twenty, as compared to their own times when two in five children were born out of wedlock.  My era saw nothing of birth control pills, nor free condom distribution on campus.  Sex education classes were mild or non-existent.  Planned Parenthood ran no abortion mills.  And yet in my day, the problem we termed “illegitimacy” was eight times less severe.

Most of my students would, I suspect, have found the disparity inexplicable – that is if I had risked my job in order to discuss the issue with candor in the classroom.  These teenagers had hardly an inkling about the postmodernist sandstorm predating their births by a quarter century.  Church/state rulings gagged their teachers, leaving most students clueless about the nature of the abrasive spiritual / cultural gale that swirled incessantly around them.

Their parents were also in the grip of confusion.  To most citizens our problems seemed beyond anyone’s control; as if nothing could slacken the blast which eroded the morals of so many youth, and which pockmarked their cultural inheritance as Americans.

The year 1963 also saw the beginning of the end of what economist, Robert Reich, has termed the “Not Quite Golden Age” (from post-WWII through the Vietnam era).  The "democratic capitalism" of those prosperous three decades faded gradually away however, and a less worker-friendly economic order emerged  – one ably described by Reich in his Supercapitalism:  The Transformation of Business, Democracy and Everyday Life ( Knopf, 2007).  Employees lost what had been widely accepted as an entitlement to a “living wage,” and millions of blue collar workers were displaced by machines.  

Only weeks before the day that the Studebaker automobile plant closed its doors in South Bend, Indiana – putting 7000 factory workers out of jobs – the leader of the AFL-CIO, issued an ominous warning dated November 14, 1963.  American workers faced a “curse,” said George Meany, in the form of uncontrolled automation.  It took a dozen years or so for Meany’s prediction to become a full-blown reality in the labor market. 

 

JFK and LBJ, Oval Office, 1963

           Under supercapitalism, millions of unskilled workers were automated out of jobs.  Where automation was impossible, postmodernist economists touted the merits of outsourcing.  Supply-side global economics became a secular theology, which won converts among Democrats and Republicans alike.  Backed by the WTO treaty in conjunction with other free-trade protocols pushed by the Bill Clinton and G.W. Bush Administrations, and passed by Congress, plutocrats were now free to transfer to China (or wherever a cheap labor force was available) the great bulk of the blue-collar work that automation had not eliminated.[9]

            The most mournful day of 1963, in that year of sorrows, was November 22.  Camelot came crashing down as Oswald the assassin gave the Presidency to a crass and dissimulating politician, Lyndon B. Johnson.

 

 

By hook or by crook the White House he’ll gain.

And greatness he’ll claim with napalm and pain.

Wives and mothers he will bereave,

The “rule of law” will give him leave,

And the Tonkin resolve, his guilt absolve.

 

 

Johnson & Nixon, 1963-1974, the first Presidents of the postmodernist era

The vicious ten-year war in S.W. Asia; under the coarse and overconfident leadership of LBJ, followed by Richard Nixon the prevaricator; simultaneous with a remorseless assault on American manners and morals; marked the onset of what can now be identified as the postmodernist revolution.

 

This revolution raked the culture after 1963, captured the ship of state, and sucked us, her crew, down the postmodernist vortex.  The devolution (retrograde evolution) distances the United States from the ideal cherished by Bobby Kennedy, “to build a community that would be an example to other nations of the best that humanity was capable of accomplishing.”[9a]  Also fading is JFK’s hope,

 

…that this country and this world really should be a better place when we turned it over to the next generation than when we inherited it from the last generation.
     On his brother John’s “idea.”  Speech by Bobby Kennedy,  27 August 1964

 

This country’s transmutation was a process less intense and concentrated than revolution under the swastika as imposed so fiercely in Europe.  The 1940’s saw the Nazi occupiers apply totalitarian techniques and brutal persecution to whole peoples from the Pyrenees to the Urals.  But minds and hearts were mostly un-persuaded.  In America, by contrast, the postmodernist revolution has pervasively taken hold, by means more covert and sophisticated than jackboot repression and overt persecution.

            And so the post-1963 barbarization of what is now the world’s sole cultural and military superpower is perhaps the greater threat.  In Winston Churchill’s wartime phraseology, the danger is…

 

that we will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, 
made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted,
by the lights of perverted science."[10]

 

Pause for a moment to ponder the onset of the medieval Dark Ages.  At mid-fifth century, AD, the West had survived the short-lived onslaught of Attila the Hun, thanks largely to the Romans under Aetius, who  defeated the Hunnish host near Orleans in present-day France.[11]  A quarter century later, however, the lash of northern barbarians — less biting than Attila's scourge but applied over decades — caused the Western Roman Empire to cave in, terminating ancient civilization and ushering in several centuries of Dark Ages. 

By analogy, Attila the Hun, like Adolph Hitler, directed a transitory setback to civilization.  Heroes of centuries ago forced the Hunnish regime into retreat, much as the GI’s of World War II sent the regime of the so-called “master race” into a blessed oblivion.  But the next wave of barbarian invaders – Vandals, Visigoths, Franks, and Ostrogoths – inflicted a lasting defeat on ancient Rome, bringing the long-enduring Dark Ages in their wake.

Similarly, the revolutionary developments since 1963 should be viewed as a threat so grave, that counterrevolution is our last hope of defending modern civilization.  If counterrevolution fails, we will find ourselves in the steel fetters of state-of-the-art barbarism, euphemistically termed, postmodernism.

            For us who love America’s heritage, it is only right and just that we should try to restore what has performed extraordinarily well.  It would be foolish and craven to continue with a worsening nation while the road remains open for restoration of a way that has been proven to work.  It would be wrong and unpatriotic to suffer evils after they have become insufferable, rather than make the effort to right ourselves.[12]  During the decade before the American Revolution Edmund Burke pointed out, “there is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.”

Among history's heartening antecedents, we can hearken back to the French Resistance of 1940-1944.  A few weeks after the collapse of the Maginot Line early in World War II, Captain Henri Frenay of the defeated French Army saw his duty.  It was a personal obligation, he realized, to continue resisting the occupation and to fight for the liberation of his country. 

Captain Henri Frenay 1905-1988

Frenay drew up a manifesto, which he would show to friends:

 

...Our struggle is by no means over.  It is first and foremost the struggle of the human spirit against barbarism and paganism, while we prepare for the day of our armed liberation.[13]

 

Captain Frenay went on to found and head up the largest non-Communist resistance organization in France.   By contrast, in nearby Austria, which Hitler’s armies had occupied two years earlier, there was far less organized resistance than in France or even in Germany itself.

Today Austria is still under suspicion in the European Union.  After the Anschluss (1938) Austrians did little to resist the new European order, unlike Poland (1939) or France (1940).  In the case of the latter country, not only in the north, but also in Vichy to the south — the so called “free zone” because a puppet France was unoccupied by Germany until late in the war — Frenchmen resisted more vehemently by far than did Austrians.  To this day, public opinion in Europe looks askance at Austria's lame excuse for her collective sin of omission, the nation's negligence in failing to resist Hitler's occupation.

 

From generations past; old alibis –

they had not work; no meat; little gruel;

Then with jobs the oppressor did surprise:

Ja, they bowed to his rule though he was cruel.

 

So how can the USA escape a similar condemnation of history, not to mention a cessation in the protection of divine providence, if 21st century Americans fail to rise up against the barbarization of our own homeland?  We will be as worthless as a watchdog who does not bark, or a security guard more interested in the late night movie than his duty.

No such comparison pertained to our Founding Fathers, who embarked on civil insurrection over a principle.  Not that British taxation was exorbitant.  Rather our forefathers anticipated what taxation without representation would mean for them and their posterity long into the future.

            Our illustrious forbearers fought for what Thomas Jefferson called the “most valuable” of all man's possessions, the right to be self-governing.[14]  Alas, like the prodigal son who squandered his patrimony, the American people govern themselves less and less.[15]  With the federal courts blocking boulevards and detouring us down cul-de-sacs, the people cravenly follow the road signs.  We trade genuine liberty for entitlements and diversions comparable to the bread and circuses for which citizens of the ancient roman republic exchanged their own freedom.

In the U.S. the tradeoff is impelled by an oligarchy bedecked in the black robes of the federal judiciary.  These unelected and irremovable attorneys macro-manage the fundamental decisions as to where we are headed as a society, allowing our elected representatives to govern in the realm of foreign policy and domestic micro-management.  With the arrogance of ancient patricians the postmodernist politburo of nine issues edicts and overrules the people's decisions in referendum elections and in their elected legislative bodies. They thwart attempts to counter public and private corruption.  Their judicial coup d’etat has rendered moot the old debate over whether ours is a democracy or a republic.  Under amendment by adjudication, America has in practice become neither, with the written Constitution little more than parchment colored wrapping paper for a regime headed by unelected and irremovable judges.

The U.S. Declaration of Independence mentions usurpation three times as justification for the insurrection of 1776.  Usurpation is a high level crime of great consequence.  In its first reference to this crime, the Declaration states that the right of insurrection kicks in after “a long train of abuses and usurpations…” whereupon “it is (the citizenry’s) right, …

 

it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and
to provide new Guards for their future security.

Declaration of Independence, 1776

 

Signing of the Declaration of Independence , 4th of July, 1776

More than a few Americans reading the foregoing passage from America’s founding document would pay no heed to such militant and (they would argue) antiquated stridency.  They would cite the great commandment of the postmodernist quasi-religion, “thou shalt be tolerant and celebrate diversity.”[16]  Cuddle up to diversity, they would counsel us, rather than embrace counterrevolution.  “It’s a free country,” and tolerance demands (they would say) that if we dislike certain aspects of the country and its culture, we are free to avoid the offending commodity.

Their notion of freedom overlooks the distinction, Liberty vs. License.  For this reason diversity dogma cannot bear close scrutiny – like so much of the bumper sticker mentality that passes for wisdom nowadays.[17]  A great flaw in their appeal to freedom (or the misnomer, liberty) is that it runs afoul of the reality of forced immersion.  A decadent culture like ours no longer affords citizens the liberty to avoid the offending commodity, or to raise children in a morally safe environment.  In many supermarkets, as just one of a host of examples, customers and their kids have to run a gauntlet of hyper-sexual magazines and other forms of maniacal literature just to get through the line at the check-out counter.

The old proverb about one man’s meat being another man’s poison might befit a society that is relatively healthy morally and spiritually.  But more apropos today is that “one man’s hot tub is another man’s cesspool.”  To a great extent we are all immersed together, and the cesspool is insufferable to many individuals and intolerable for many a family, notwithstanding that postmodernists hail wallowing as liberating.

 

Despite our wonders and greatness, we are a nation that has experienced so much social regression, so much decadence, in so short a period of time, that we have become the kind of place to which civilized countries used to send missionaries.  [Bill Bennett, Imprimis, Dec. 1998].

 

Only a relative few Americans are able and willing to flee with their families to another country, to one like say Poland or Portugal, not fully conquered by postmodernist culture.  For the rest of us, it is not enough to hold our nose as the reeking cultural cesspool rises.  If we apply the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, then we must “alter or abolish” the mutated version of America wherein raising kids is like playing Russian roulette with impressionable young souls.  Civic duty obliges us to restore the inalienable right to pursue happiness, by rebuilding a society that reflects the values and beliefs bequeathed to us by more virtuous forbearers.

During my own formative years, mass media and the entertainment industry promoted faith and morals by various means, including a popular television and radio broadcast entitled, Life is Worth Living, aired from 1951-1957.  The program reached an estimated 30 million Americans per week, and featured the eloquent sermons of the Bishop of the airwaves, Fulton J. Sheen.  Bishop Sheen was no devotee of today’s postmodernist shibboleths – tolerance and celebration of diversity.  On the contrary, in a prophetic essay preceding the postmodernist regime by a generation, Sheen had written:

 

“America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance – it is not.  It is suffering from tolerance…. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded…. Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil…, a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment…. Architects are as intolerant about sand as foundations for skyscrapers as doctors are intolerant about germs in the laboratory.  Tolerance does not apply to truth or principles.  About these things we must be intolerant, and for this kind of intolerance, so much needed to rouse us from sentimental gush, I make a plea.  Intolerance of this kind is the foundation of all stability.”[18]

 

Such a view is bashed by postmodernists as hate speech.  They deem it perfectly ok, however, to set Americans adrift at sea, tossed about wildly in a tsunami of manipulation by media, and by perfidious stewards of public mores – like the gargantuan entertainment industry.  It may be that the collective character of our citizenry has been so transfigured in the direction of vulgarity and tolerance for evil, that most Americans are viscerally incapable of a reconquista.  During the Marcos dictatorship, an American Senator described the Philippines as “'peopled by millions of cowards under one son of a bitch.'”[19]  Hopefully the USA breaks that mold beyond having nine dictators rather than one.

            Be that as it may, radical turnabout is not here proposed to the acquiescent, or citizens who have capitulated.  Rather, this book is intended for Americans who cringe at much that is culturally mainstream – who are willing to resist, when and where they can.  A sizeable remnant survives in whom the legacy of the Founders lives on.  Many are in countercultural families who stand as signs of contradiction to postmodern quazi-religion and morals.  And historically it has been people like them, the comparative few, who drive revolutions and counterrevolutions by going against the flow.

Today, moreover, revolt is in the air.  During the twelve decades from the Boston Tea Party (1773) to the official end of the frontier (1893) the rugged and untamed West served young America as a safety valve, and yet the years 1775, 1836, and 1861 gave rise to three armed revolutions.[20]  Since 1893, however, no frontier has existed to function as an outlet for frustrated Americans.  The alienated can no longer answer Horace Greeley’s call, “go west young man.”  Consequently, tension and stress are higher than before 1893.

Perhaps we are not so vigorous and willing to fight back as the average American for whom the frontier was a rugged reality.  But in the 21st century we are more oppressed by the pressure-cooker society — like west Europeans who never enjoyed a frontier to divert the dissatisfied from defiance and uprising.

As anxiety and alienation intensify, revolutionary or insurrectionary impulses grow.  Thus the progressive era, two world wars, the insurgency led by Dr. Martin Luther King, the anti-war revolts of the 1960s, and the term-limits movement, all took place in the space of the 20th century.

Can it be that in the 21st century Americans will launch a new revolt, under God, whose purpose is to restore modern civilization and the supremacy of the written Constitution? 

            A full-fledged revolt would not be lacking raison d’être, as a glance at some of the calamities will testify.  At this writing, Americans no longer enjoy what Abraham Lincoln described as “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”  In many ways Government is out of control, paying little heed to the people, except to build at public expense a formidable “stagecraft” and other tools for the manipulation of public opinion.[21]  Changes foisted upon us include an immense monster of a federal government that gives lip service to liberty and democracy while it delivers mightily on regulation, social engineering and legislation from the bench.

Local governments have become so rapacious for revenues that they impose property taxes as virtual rents on private property – quite in addition to the homeowner’s mortgage.  Even after the house is fully paid for, or is passed on to one’s heirs, the “rents” continue ad infinitum, too often forcing retirees and other citizens on fixed or limited incomes to sell out and leave the family home.  The right to own property has dwindled to a provisional permit, subject to revocation if you are delinquent in paying rent (taxation on your home) to the government.

At the same time, our jobs and livelihoods are largely at the mercy of multi-national enterprises and home based mega-corporations who display little sympathy for our plight.  For working age Americans, private industries prioritize the maximization of profits for owners and management while downplaying or even obstructing a worker-friendly economy.  While offering incense to free trade, plutocratic combinations like the WTO evade the reach of organized labor.  More and more firms outsource work overseas as an end-run around historic protections for workers.  On another front, the high priests of profit maximization combine with anti-family feminism to drive mothers from the home and throw children into day care centers.

Environmental responsibility and stewardship get subordinated to the military-industrial complex, against which President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his 1961 farewell address.[22]  Bobby Kennedy, Jr. accuses corporate plutocrats of  having hijacked our democracy and purchased the people's acquiescence with pollution based prosperity at home.[22a]  

Abroad they have given America a bad reputation, that of warmongering bullies who torture their prisoners.  During the half century, 1953-2003, the United States fought five major Presidential wars – none declared by Congress – more wars than in any 50 year period of American history. 

            This assault on civilization capitalizes on the brutish side of human nature.  Helmuth von Moltke, a martyred leader in the resistance to Hitler from within Germany, the Kreisau Circle, lamented the Nazi’s ability to accomplish release of the “beast in man.”[23]  Among German intellectuals who opposed the regime secretly, (including the Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer) there was concern that “a purely spiritual opposition to National Socialism was not enough.  They became convinced that Nazism had to be rooted out if Christianity was to survive in Germany.”[24]  A like imperative for uprooting pertains to the postmodernist regime that we face today.

The largest city in my home state of Washington provides a case in point.  Consider the conduct of commuters during a Seattle traffic jam, two weeks before the national tragedy of 9/11/2001.  Irate motorists, truckers, and passengers in a Metro bus, including the bus driver, cursed and taunted a distraught 26 year old legislative lobbyist, urging her to stop hesitating and to hurl herself from her perch on the edge of a 160 foot high interstate freeway bridge.  Under such pressure from her fellow citizens she disregarded police counselors and leapt despairingly into the waters below.  A few miles away earlier in the year, crowds in the America’s “best educated city” beat people senseless during a Marti Gras celebration, killing one, while the Seattle Police Department stood by and watched passively as the assaults occurred.

I do not believe that an ill-considered attempt at suicide, or the resulting highway gridlock, or the intoxication of street partying is what reduced Seattleites to brutes and savages.  Before the beast rears his ugly head, he first becomes a beast.

Developing the beast in man, as Moltke saw it in his country, had been the long-term work of the regime.  Unlike Nazi totalitarianism in Germany, the political corner of the regime in the U.S.A. is not yet totalitarian.  Nonetheless, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court in collaboration with the likes of Madelyn Murray O’Hair, we saw cultural commissars — media, the entertainment industry and the educational establishment — displace all that is holy or traditional in molding mores and public opinion.  The resulting seduction of American culture then bore its bitter fruit: a postmodernist parody of a longstanding Judeo-Christian civilization.

Ten Commandments defenders arrested in Alabama State Judicial Bldg., 8/20/2003[25]

This revolution against America’s heritage proceeded like Leninist Marxism – two steps forward, one step back.  They imposed a politically correct damper on public discourse, thus subduing the spirit in education and elsewhere.  Non-conformists were harassed or arrested who dared to “intrude their superstitions” into public life.  They brought machines and police to remove monuments to the Ten Commandments, and hauled away citizen defenders.[26]  Crèches portraying the story of Christmas became taboo.  The revolutionaries propelled the culture of death all the way to infanticide.  They promoted sodomy to the point of besieging the Boy Scouts of America, meanwhile enshrining the sin against nature within the “living, breathing Constitution” as a “full right.”[27]  The postmodernist regime sent young Americans by the tens of thousands off to their deaths on foreign battlefields, to fight without the support of a congressional declaration of war as indicated by the U.S. Constitution.[28]

These evils are enough in themselves to bring anguish and grief to the hearts of many good citizens.  But if the distressing condition of the USA into which the postmodernist revolution has thrust us, does not fill your own soul with fury or at least with anguish, alas you may already have fallen prey.  Or maybe you are like myopic citizens of ancient Carthage who focused merely on the material order of their great city, with its prosperous commerce and the well cultivated orchards (as noticed by Scipio’s invading legions), but who gave little attention to the perfidious practice of child sacrifice which afflicted their culture like a cancer.  God forbid that as a citizen you resemble Austrians under the Anschluss, (the German occupation after 1938) some of whom idolized their golden chains, i.e. prioritized the renewed economic prosperity, vis-à-vis the democratic but unemployment-riven republican era that preceded.  Pity the families of mid-1930’s Germany whose general sense of order — like the crime-free streets and neighborhoods where people thought nothing of leaving their doors unlocked — prompted them to support Hitler.  Their government had beguiled them with promises of an affordable and reliable “people’s car,” the newly developed Volkswagen, soon indeed delivered with autobahns on which to drive their new cars to work and other approved activities.

Whatever motives may drive you as a 21st century American to accept if not salute the postmodernist regime, you are sure to be affirmed and reinforced in such a posture by fellow citizens who range from left to right on the political spectrum:

 

So you lose your perspective after a while. If you don't think, if you just listen to TV and read scholarly things, you actually begin to think that things are not so bad, or that just little things are wrong. But you have to get a little detached, and then come back and look at the world, and you are horrified.  So we have to start from the supposition-that things are really topsy-turvy.
     Howard Zinn, “The Problem is Civil Obedience.”[29]

 

Professor Zinn is a well-known historian whose lectures and prolific writings help to mobilize the left.  Indeed re-awakening of the left got a mighty push from the Invasion of Iraq in 2003.  Four years later, another voice from the left, Naomi Wolf, issued her The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (2007).  Wolf analyzes ten common historical stages in the transition from democracy to fascism, and she sees all ten at work in American politics today.[29a] 

            Warnings are also coming from the political center.  In 2008 the University of Oklahoma hosted a Nonpartisan Appeal to a Nation At Risk.  Attendees included ten present or former U.S. Senators (5 Democrats, and 5 Republicans) and a bipartisan gubernatorial contingent.  Former Senator Sam Nunn (D, Georgia) read their joint statement of concern to the press:

 

America is in danger.  Our ability to meet and solve the problems that face us is seriously compromised….
We are headed in the wrong direction…. Our nation is indeed at risk….[29b]

 

            Warnings of national peril come from across the spectrum – left, center and right.  From Patrick J. Buchanan, a longtime traditional conservative (not in the neo-con mold) we have Day of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart (St. Martin’s Press, 2007).  The premise of Buchanan’s book is that…

 

America is indeed coming apart, decomposing, and that the likelihood of her survival as
one nation through midcentury is improbable – and impossible if America continues
on her current course.  For we are on a path to national suicide. [29c]

 

Echoing the same theme, in his 2008 presidential campaign, was former U.S. ambassador, Alan Keyes:

 

There is one issue (to save our republic, to save our system of self-government), and all these other issues are like the fissures and cracks in the wall that bespeak the collapse of the foundations.  Alan Keyes, 2008 [29d]

 

The late pope, John-Paul II, who defied positioning on the left-right spectrum, could not avoid the reality – optimist though he was – that “the times in which we live are unutterably difficult and disturbed.”[30]  His successor, Benedict XVI, during his last week as a Cardinal, had coined the phrase, “dictatorship of relativism.” This oppression imprisons countless millions who submit uncritically to the fashionable values and the ascendant worldview of the day.  At the inaugural mass, Spring 2005, Pope Benedict delivered this critique on the state of the world:[31]

 

…so many people are living in the desert.  And there are so many kinds of desert.  There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love.  There is the desert of God’s darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life.  The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast. 

 

Judge Robert Bork

Christian, Jewish and Muslim Americans can easily find the cure for complacency by reading the newspaper or channel-surfing for a few minutes, or by juxtaposing what they see in contemporary America with their respective scriptures.[32]  If the church, synagogue or mosque still needs convincing, refer the congregation to one of the following books:[33]  Robert Bork, Slouching Toward Gomorrah (1996); Rabbi Daniel Lapin, America’s Real War (1999); and Patrick J. Buchanan, Death of the West (2002), chapters 3, 4, 8, 9.  Americans who require an emotional jolt to open their eyes to the gravity of our situation might try the provocative style in one of the bestselling books authored by Dr. Michael Savage, the commentator whom Randall Terry calls “the radio samurai.”[34]

During 2004-05 alone, no less than five books were published on the subject of judicial tyranny.[35]  On usurpation by courts I would personally recommend Robert Bork’s 2003 book, Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges.  Its author is one of America’s eminent elder statesmen and a brilliant legal authority.[36]

Environmentalists not just of the left, but of every political complexion, will profit from the work of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., including his, Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush & his Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country & Hijacking our Democracy (2004, 2005).  Note especially chapter eleven where RFK, Jr. analyses the breakdown of a genuine free market economy in a system that provides welfare to corporations and capitalism for the poor.[36a]

These 14 cited books draw a convincing but disheartening picture of how the American dream is already, or is on the verge of becoming, a fearful nightmare.  I myself feel about my native land somewhat like escaped-slave Frederick Douglass felt about America in his day, before the abolition of that “peculiar institution” against which he labored for a quarter century:

 

Frederick Douglass (c. 1817-1895)

 “In thinking of America I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky, her grand old woods, her fertile fields, her beautiful rivers, her mighty lakes and star crowned mountains.  But my rapture is soon checked when I remember that all is cursed with the infernal spirit of slaveholding and wrong, when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers the tears of my brethren are born to the ocean disregarded and forgotten, that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters….”[37]

 

            The primary purpose of this book is not to chronicle betrayals, blunders and baseness; nor to convince fellow citizens that our homeland has been converted into a dark monstrosity.  Bork’s wonderfully insightful books, Slouching Toward Gomorrah and Coercing Virtue, should be more than sufficient to alarm any perceptive reader.  However, in the latter work Bork allocates 137 pages to our predicament, and only two pages to “possible remedies.”[38]

My main objective here is to elucidate means to a radical turnabout that brings apostate America back under the good graces of history’s great Helmsman.  We must change the future – appealing, as did our Founding Fathers, “to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions.” (Declaration of Independence)

 

Nor am I one who wastes the fateful time in useless lamentation; 
but one who bears his life upon his hand, to lose it or to save it, 
as may best serve the design of Him who giveth life.

Longfellow, Judas Maccabaeus 3.1

            Even as Americans mastered space flight, invented computer software, and persevered to victory in the Cold War, the most momentous development of the last third of the 20th century was the political, economic, and cultural revolution described above.  Fidelity to God and country calls for a counterrevolution, just as total as the revolution we must undo, but not so slow.

 Let us disenthrall ourselves and recognize that as a result of a long march through the institutions, postmodernism is now an occupying power – a regime like none other in American history, with hegemony over the polity, economy and society.  Aping their gradualist takeover by adopting an incrementalism of our own is a sure formula for failure.  For one thing, the means employed by the postmodernist revolutionaries are contrary to our principles and our nature.  The postmodernist revolution used methods fundamentally opposed to the integrity of our counterrevolution, namely Herbert Marcuse’s strategy for a “diffuse and dispersed disintegration of the system.’”[39]  A professor at the University of California (UCSD) in my own student days in San Diego, Marcuse was like a cultural terrorist or rapist cloaked in the persona of an impressive intellectual.  In contrast to Marcuse, et. al., we seek to revive and restore America the Beautiful.  Ours is a high and noble purpose and to promote such aims by tactics that are base, dishonest, and sneaky – that is to infiltrate slyly – would contradict our own principles and taint them with ignobility.

Yet another reason that gradualism would not work for us is that the posts of power are mostly unelected, and the postmodernist power brokers screen out traditionalists (i.e. old-fashioned modernists) unless they are impotent or compliant.  The idea that leaders of a victorious postmodernist regime will let down their guard and allow us a long counterrevolutionary march through the very institutions their fresh troops have so recently conquered is wishful thinking.  Perhaps this forlorn hope is like a psychological projection from the dry wood to the green — an expectation that the acquiescence exhibited by the general public during the decades after 1963 will also afflict newly triumphant postmodernism.  Be not naïve!  We can beat the enemy at his own game only if, as Aristotle put it, the regime allows each little change to slip by unnoticed.[40]  Underestimating the foe is usually a formula for losing.

Another fatal flaw in gradualism from our standpoint is that eventually nothing will survive for the rescuing.  The culture of death will have fully consolidated its grip on America before the relief expedition arrives, like the belated attempt to liberate Gen. George Gordon in the Sudan (two days too late).  The British relief march was so slow and riven with hesitation that the British troops and civilians in Khartoum had been killed by the time military forces under Lord Kitchener arrived (1885).

A medical analogy would be brain cancer.  The malignancy advances gradually but inexorably until the host suffers a painful death.  Sometimes, however, a skilled surgeon intervenes before the tumor wraps itself around deep brain tissue, or before the growth engulfs a lobe whose removal would be debilitating or deadly.  Brain cancer calls for quick intervention, not gradualism, just as the excruciating condition of America today is too grievous for a gradualist counterrevolution.

A related fallacy is the idea that the application of patriotic patience will see us through — as if a severely listing ship of state is a pendulum that will soon swing back.  This myth is based on yin-yang mysticism and wishful thinking.  On the contrary, to right the good ship Constitution before she capsizes requires that we activate the pumps forthwith and shift the ballast with all available speed.

When a ship is sinking, rescuers do not employ gradualist methods.  Such tactics are equally unsuitable for the devolution that has pushed the Great Republic down to the Plimsoll line.  America has crossed a threshold that necessitates swift and decisive action — not waiting until our enemy forgets to defend his fortifications, nor toning down our rhetoric to appease the postmodernists, nor wistfully awaiting a cycle of counter-evolution to reorder things for the better.

Indeed the fatal flaw in the Darwinist doctrine on evolution (as opposed to the theistic version) is the idea that out of disorder and anarchy the universe has moved toward perfection and precision, with the only essential inputs being the “Big Bang” and unlimited time.  In reality, nature requires the intervention of a Superintending Intelligence to bring order out of chaos.[41]

It takes only a little time to erode order, like letting students’ desks go uninspected for a semester.  Without intelligent interference, time is the enemy of harmony and the ally of chaos.

So too in politics: The counterrevolution must be preconceived and intelligently applied; deliberated and then carefully activated.  Do not doom counterrevolution with an approach that is creeping, piecemeal and spontaneous.[42]  Instead, let our strategy be thoroughly planned.  Let our tacticians be bold, decisive, and grounded in prayer, trusting that God will not scorn our leap of faith.

St. Joan of Arc, New Orleans, Louisiana

            The American Revolution was just such a leap of faith as articulated in the Declaration of Independence.  Under that founding document of 1776, the fledgling nation dared to challenge the great British Empire.[43]  For much the same reasons, the French had earlier expelled the haughty English in the Hundred Years War.  St. Joan of Arc, who led the crucial counter-offensive of 1429, told her countrymen, “toil and God will toil.”[44]

Our own city of New Orleans has more than one statue depicting the military feats of the shepherd girl turned field general.  A quintessentially American author, who knew New Orleans well, spent twelve years researching his book about the Maid of Orleans and her miraculous exploits:

 

It made me dizzy to think of these things, they were so out of the common order, and seemed so impossible…. Think of it.  Yes, one can do that; but understand it?  Ah, that is another matter; none will ever be able to comprehend that stupefying marvel.

Mark Twain, Joan of Arc, chapters IX, XXXI of part II

At the port city near the mouth of the Mississippi, Americans have accomplished some amazing military marvels of their own.  There we defeated the mighty British in the last battle of the War of 1812.  And in April, 1862, the Union won its first major victory of the Civil War when Admiral David Farragut dared to steer an impassable course up the Mississippi River.  Before hazarding to cross the bar, Admiral Farragut declared:  “God alone decides the contest, but we must put our shoulders to the wheel.”

Farragut then put his 43 wooden ships at risk and moved up the Mississippi.  The fleet fought past powerful Confederate shore batteries, reached New Orleans, and won an immense victory by securing the South’s largest city for the Yankees.

Thus the history of New Orleans should give hope to Americans who shoulder the burden of fighting a powerful postmodernist regime.  Just as Farragut’s fleet pursued an “impassible” route, so too the route that leads to radical turnabout may seem replete with obstacles impossible to pass in today’s world.  And yet if we are to break through, we have no choice but to chart that course.

 

“Perseverance and spirit have
  done wonders in all ages.” 

George Washington, 1775[45]

 

Counterrevolutionary Arch-Amendment

           The USA stands at an epic threshold, much like the roman republic in the late 2nd century, BC.  We can let oligarchs parody democracy, meanwhile consigning reformers like the brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, to the political graveyard.[46]  Or we can overthrow the postmodernist regime, bolster the constitution, and reinvigorate the republic to meet the political, economic and cultural challenges of the 21st century.  The Roman senate chose to kill the Gracchi brothers, and it did not take long for genuine democracy itself to pass from the world scene, never for many centuries to reemerge.

To restore our own republic requires that we unfasten the bonds that bind the majestic version of America.  In sum, our insurrectionary task is to cut the chains and release America the beautiful – i.e. liberate the country to reassume her place of honor under God and the written Constitution.

 

The ancient idol on the island of Rhodes

Stood grimly astride the strait.

But here we suffer a colossus of toads,

Our country to desecrate.

 

Salvage my soiled nation – long uncleaned,

Proudly in thrall to sin and war.

Release her from the postmodern fiend.

Let her radiance shine once more.

 

Rescuing America the beautiful may strike prospective liberators as like storming the fortress of Mordor.  Yet we can be optimistic in that we have a winning heritage to restore, one not mythical but real.  Unshackling the legacy of the past offers much brighter prospects to insurgents here, than in nations whose heritage deserves no resurrection.  Without something good to revive, citizens there see counterrevolution as an unworthy enterprise, and revolution like a leap into the dark.  But in America, as Patrick Henry put it, our past illuminates our path and offers us hope.[47]

Our own insurgents will have two ways to fight – one of them legal.  If we are to reclaim the merit and the majesty of America, we must go outside the established system and undertake insurrection, either by suede or by sword.  Both insurrectionary strategies would build upon “the Miracle at Philadelphia,” i.e. restore the written U.S. Constitution to its rightful throne as lex rex of the American republic, as our one earthly king.

Both forms of insurrection must be on the table, simply because restoration of the written Constitution stands no chance of winning approval in Congress, the chief but much corrupted instrument of republican government.  Since the Convention at Philadelphia in 1787 – the four-month assembly which wrote the Constitution – the U.S. Congress is the only organ of the federal government which has initiated any written (as opposed to adjudicated) constitutional reforms.  All 27 Amendments to the Constitution were of congressional origin.  But today’s Congress, and indeed the congressional system itself, has been diverted to the service of the postmodernist regime.

	Who’s “just doing their job?”   .       Young American citizens – Cameron, Gabriel & Josie Keys (ages 12, 10, 14) – arrested outside Florida nursing home in 2005 for trying to bring Terri  Schindler-Schiavo a glass of water.[48]

In 2005, with the life of an innocent citizen at stake, the best the elected branches, Executive and Legislative, could manage in the effort to rescue Terri Schindler-Schiavo was to extend jurisdiction over the case from the Florida judiciary upward to the Federal courts.  Earlier, the U.S. House of Representatives demurred sheepishly when a Florida circuit judge, George Greer, overruled a House committee’s move to subpoena Schiavo.[49]  The spectacle of the U.S. Congress bowing to an obstinate county judge does at least make it clear what we’re up against.  In contrast to the Keys’ children, brave enough to go to jail (see photo), Congress seems in CS Lewis’ chapter title to consist of  “MEN WITHOUT CHESTS.” [50]

Until we infuse new blood into Congress by means of rotation in office (term-limits), the established democratic system will remain pathetically inadequate for the bold purpose of forcing a U-turn.  Preoccupied as incumbents are with reelection, the Congress will neither lead nor join a counterrevolution.  Nonetheless, we cannot escape the necessity of a radical turnabout.  And so we must proceed by unorthodox means.

            To restore the written Constitution the vital and indispensable element will be a written constitutional amendment – or rather an arch-amendment given the extent to which the written Constitution has been adulterated by adjudication.

            When an old set of verses gets misshapen into slang (like “cool” or “gay,”) it is as good as blotted out; only newer words can restore the meaning originally intended.  Between the lines of the written Constitution the politburo of nine has erected volumes of jurisprudential precedent, some of it no less seditious than high treason.  Therefore, nothing less than freshly written constitutional law, in the form of a counterrevolutionary arch-amendment, can be authoritative enough to do the job, i.e. to re-engrave in stone what postmodernist revolutionaries have effectively effaced.

 

Let legalese soldered in metal,

Yield to wisdom engraved in marble.

 

Before the postmodernist regime can be ousted, we must first liquidate the precedent that obscures and subverts the republic.  We must melt down the jurisprudential oppression which relegates the wisdom of our Framers to an artifact of history.

What form shall this arch-amendment take?  Since the Civil War, most amendments to the Constitution have been subdivided into sections.  The 14th and 20th Amendments have five and six sections respectively; the 25th Amendment has four sections; others have as few as two sections, or only a single sentence in the case of the 16th Amendment.

Particular problems addressed by most Amendments have been far less pervasive than the postmodernist triumph.  Today’s postmodernist regime occupies all the high ground in our national life – political, economic and cultural.  The length of past Amendments tended to be proportional to the seriousness of the Constitutional crisis, whereas slighter, less comprehensive problems saw shorter Amendments.[51]  But the Civil War was no lesser matter, and the immediate postbellum years, 1865-1870, saw the longest modification of the Constitution to date, (Amendment 14).  Counting all three companion amendments (13, 14, & 15), there were nine sections in total.

What we shall consider here is a single amendment in twelve sections, each subdivided into a number of sub-sections.  This arch-amendment has three preambles to introduce each category of reforms – the political, the economic and the cultural.  Thus the arch-reform must be much longer, and more wide-ranging by far, than any form of U.S. constitutional law composed outside the federal courts since 1787.  The arch-amendment’s length is dictated by the vast and all-embracive control enforced by the regime we must bring down.

The remainder of this book is keyed directly to the proposed constitutional amendment as set forth in this book’s final chapter.  The reader is urged to use various hyperlinks to the outline and prototype text of the twelve lights amendment.

	John Adams, 2nd President, 1797-1801

 

            To shore up the Constitution will be to adapt it to the milieu in which constitutionalism must function or falter.  A decade after ratification of the great document, President John Adams warned that the rule of law was liable to penetration by impious citizens of the future, who might breakthrough “as a whale goes through a net.”  Continued Adams, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”[53] 

If he paid the 21st century a visit, Adams would find postmodern America consistent with his dictum.  A largely immoral and irreligious nation honors the Constitution more and more in the breach, less and less in the observance.  Only a remnant mourns the ninth and tenth Amendments, which get trampled underfoot like rags.  We do hear voices lamenting the flagrant and multi-faceted legislating from the federal bench in the guise of interpreting “a living, breathing Constitution.”[54]  Appeals to be more observant of lawfulness have not yet fallen silent.  Yet the US Supreme Court, the politburo of nine, continues unilaterally to amend the constitution, and legislating from the bench remains a linchpin of the elite postmodernist order.

The last thing the governing oligarchy wants is to surrender the stolen scepter and let the written Constitution resume its rightful rule.  The current status quo allows the country’s new lords and masters to govern covertly, with the Constitution as a front whereby to force their agendas down the throats of common citizens.

The written Constitution is under a pall — a little like J.R.R. Tolkien’s king Theoden under the spell of Wormtongue, who manipulated his regal puppet.[55]  Adams would not be surprised that our lex rex has been put under a shadow and subordinated to the rule of temporal, prideful jurists.  When cultural rot is pervasive, preaching about our submission to laws not men, and about adherence to the rule of law, falls on deaf ears of corrupt officials and a jaded populace.

In such an environment, we forfeit the field to the power seekers, especially if we the people adopt a hands-off policy of our own toward the very Constitution that usurpers are dethroning.  Given the prevalence of usurpation by adjudication, trusting the lawyers in the federal judiciary to defend “the highest law of the land” is like entrusting angelfish to a ravenous cat, or the Lindbergh baby to kidnappers.

 

The Framers noble mission and effort has been tarnished and spit upon by jurists who have betrayed their oath to defend the past in favor of personal philosophies and political agendas. Their present assault is nothing less than a brazen hypocrisy, purporting to defend and honor a document whose spirit they ignore and mock everyday. [Gabriel Garnica, 2003][56]

 

Consequently, to save the Constitution from various and sundry vandalism, we need to drive the usurpers from positions of power and bring them to justice (tempered by mercy after they surrender).[57]  Before they or their successors can regroup, let us sheath the noble principles promulgated during the aristocratic 18th century in constitutional armor that can withstand multi-directional onslaughts during a coarse and tumultuous 21st century.  The constitutional armor would include reforms that check corruption, including term limits for officeholders, given the perversion of public officials and citizens alike.  In the healthier culture in which the Constitution was written, rotation in office (term limits) could be and indeed was – until the 20th century – maintained informally. 

In the process of clothing the written Constitution in a suit of mail, we can remove stumbling blocks to the sort of social environment in which cultural cleanness, economic self-sufficiency, and respectable government give rise to law-abiding citizens.  Simultaneously let us reinforce the Constitution against international encroachment on national sovereignty, including our right to act as responsible stewards over the natural blessings of North America which Providence has entrusted first and foremost to the United States.[57a]

 

 

The Might of Mighty Few

            During the War for Independence John Adams estimated that only about a third of the colonists supported the Revolution, and the remaining two-thirds were either loyalists or apolitical neutrals trying to stay out of trouble.[58]  Compare that with the year 2000 when a Reuters / Zogby public opinion survey found only a minority of Americans inclined to resist postmodernist values:  A mere 23% of the electorate opposed the idea of a homosexual as Vice-President; while but 38% would withhold their vote from an atheist.[59]  In other words, most Americans were nonchalant about putting themselves, their families and their friends under the power of these kinds of people.

Judge Roy Bean (c. 1825-1903)

At the same time the American public was expressing confidence in the very oligarchy that was stealing the people’s authority.  In a 1999 survey some 80 percent indicated that they had a "great deal" or "fair" amount of trust in the judicial branch of government, well exceeding figures for the other branches.[60]  Popular regard for this black-robed posse of the postmodernist frontier recalls the high popularity of the Jesse James gang of the post-bellum era.[61] 

Public opinion was then, and is now, predicated largely on myth spun by the media.  The career of popular folk hero, Judge Roy Bean, provides a pertinent historical analogy.  As with Judge Bean, so with the postmodern courts: public enchantment would surely give way to revulsion, were arbitrary judicial rule seen in the light of reality rather than myth.[62] 

During the attempt to end Senate filibusters against judicial nominations (Spring, 2005), Newsweek, the weekly magazine owned by the Washington Post, featured the front page headline, “THE WAR ON JUDGES.”  According to the feature article, debate on the Senate floor featured “railing” speeches against Judges, but Newsweek offered not a single headline on the penchant of the politburo of nine to amend the Constitution by adjudication.[63]  This leading instrument of the mainstream media afforded no focus on the real news – the court’s war on the republic.  Insofar as public opinion is still largely a product of what the media moguls are willing to tell us, it is no surprise that most Americans look kindly on usurpatious courts.

            It may be true that we still have “millions of Americans,” as Dr. James Dobson puts it, “who recognize the threat posed by arrogant and activist judges who would deprive the people of their right to govern themselves.”[64]  But in a country as big as the United States, many millions can still constitute a small minority.  As of 2003, all the residents within the city limits of our five largest cities (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Philadelphia) totaled less than seven percent of the population.

As for the Executive Branch, in 2003 the Commander-in-Chief conducted the fifth major undeclared war in as many decades, bypassing the declaration of war urged upon him by many war supporters.  Did his popularity plummet as a result?  Quite the contrary, for every American who opposed the Presidential war, two supported the President’s conduct of foreign policy, notwithstanding that the rationale for war in the first place was to deal with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, weapons which never materialized.[65]  Public support for the Iraq war only began to waver when our death count during “postwar” occupation exponentially exceeded combat fatalities during the invasion itself.

When American-led forces moved to secure the oil fields of Iraq, but did nothing to protect the museums and libraries housing priceless artifacts and records of the world’s first civilization, most Americans remained unwaveringly supportive of the second undeclared war on Iraq in a dozen years.  Nevertheless, a sizeable remnant of Americans braved minority status, took to the streets in spectacular numbers, and opposed the war.

William Lloyd Garrison

 

It may not be unduly pessimistic to proceed on the assumption that only 20% of the populace is concerned enough about usurpation to oust the usurpers, or about the Constitution to oppose its despoilers.  Possibly less than a quarter of the electorate cares much about faith and morals, or rather cares enough to rise up in defense of religion in public life.[66]  Not the best odds, but even if the postmodernists and their benumbed adherents outnumber us three or four to one, our situation is by no means hopeless.  During the election of 2004 exit polls disclosed that a close election enabled religious principles to decide the contest.  When asked to pick the one issue that mattered most in choosing a president, 22 percent of voters chose "moral values."  This percentage surpassed all other categories, with the economy garnering 20 percent, terrorism 19 percent, and Iraq 15 percent.[67]

In a topsy turvy society, the few or the very few may exercise more sway than they ever could in a stable culture.  Moreover, when storm tossed in a sea of tumult and confusion, public opinion can change.  In the 1830s, the abolition movement started quite small under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison.  Yet within a generation the campaign had swept slavery away.  “The success of any great moral enterprise,” said Garrison, “does not depend upon numbers.”[68] 

As Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower put it, “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”  The American historian, David McCullough, addresses the issue of size and numbers in his fine book, 1776. In that fateful year, said he, our ancestors experienced the darkest  four months in U.S. history, including what came close to utter defeat of a glorious cause.  And yet …

 

suddenly, miraculously it seemed, that had
changed because of a small band of
determined men and their leader. [69]

 

A renowned British historian, referring to the American Revolution, thought it unlikely that “'so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world.'”  In Massachusetts, where the Revolution began, Samuel Adams was the peerless leader of the Sons of Liberty.  Adams was not overly concerned about numbers:[70] 

 

It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an
irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires 
of freedom in the minds of men.

 

For the foreseeable future it may be that we shall remain a minority relative to activist postmodernists and their sympathizers, counting also the neutrals and the apathetic who take refuge in the term “moderate.”  Be that as it may, our minority has but one course of action short of submission.  Our patriotic calling is to take back the political high ground by counterrevolutionary force – by ballots not bullets preferably, but if all else fails by force of arms.  After ousting the postmodernists from the strategic positions they have occupied for nearly half a century, the next stage in effecting a radical turnabout will be to impose a collective about-face upon national policy.

With the postmodernist grip broken, citizens will regain capacity to make astute choices.  As faith in the democratic process revives, the people will eschew the upbeat view of judicial tyranny.  For what surveys are worth, the polling numbers will improve.  Liberation from the postmodernist pall will reawaken the natural and never quite extinguishable tendency to favor virtue and discriminate against vice, an inclination built into that sapient creature made in the image and likeness of God.[71] 

Not even the Nazis could extinguish all goodness in man, albeit initially their “new Dark Age” looked to many observers like a fait accompli.  Yet, well before finishing its first decade, the predicted 1000-year Third Reich ran afoul of the Royal Air Force.  Of the RAF Winston Churchill said, “Never before in the history of human conflict, has so much been owed by so many, to so few.” 

History gives us good cause for hope, though our numbers be relatively few.  In France, 1940, the initial resistance to Nazi occupation saw few resisters and many collaborators.  Captain Henri Frenay, a French soldier whose tireless work did so much to start the resistance, described his shock:  For him it was an appalling eye-opener when he heard a French truck-driver speak optimistically about how the German occupation forces were “helping our people.”  Then, while traveling by rail, Frenay overheard similar sentiments from rank-and-file Frenchmen.

 

A gulf separated me from my fellow travelers....I had not assimilated defeat.... 
I was free but they, my neighbors, were not.  
They were defeated.  I was undefeated.[72]

 

Often in history a country is saved by the few, with the majority either in opposition or on the sidelines.  Witness the brilliant classic, The Anatomy of Revolution, by the late Harvard historian, Crane Brinton – a non-Marxist and president in 1963 of the American Historical Association.  Said Professor Brinton, “the best authorities are agreed” that no more than 10% of the U.S. population “actively engineered, supported, and fought the American Revolution.”[73]  Indeed this fewness can be an advantage.  In Brinton’s words:

 

Great numbers are almost as unwieldy in politics as on the battlefield.  In the politics of revolutions what counts is the ability to move swiftly, to make clear and final decisions, to push through to a goal without regard for injured human dispositions.  For such a purpose the active political group must be small.  You cannot otherwise obtain the single-mindedness and devotion, the energy and the discipline, necessary to defeat the moderates.[74]

 

Menorah for Hanukkah, the festival of lights

U.S. Postage stamp

The Old Testament, according to the canons of both Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, contains two books, 1 & 2 Maccabees, that read like textbooks on how a remnant can overthrow a tyranny.[75]

This epic revolt has given creative stimulus to artists down through history, including classical music composer, George Frederick Handel, (Judas Maccabaeus, 1746) and America's literary luminary, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (Judas Maccabaeus, 1872).  William Shakespeare numbers Judas Maccabeus among the nine worthies.[76]  Each December, observant Jews celebrate a festival of lights (Hanukkah) to preserve the memory of Judas Maccabeus, his victory over the haughty progressives of the day, and his rededication of the Temple in 165, BC.

Taking to the hills with a small force, the Maccabees led what grew from an obscure guerilla insurgency into what is possibly the most celebrated armed counterrevolution of all time.  An objective was to reverse the Hellenization program imposed from on high by the occupying Greek (or Seleucid) regime, spawned by the earlier reign of Alexander the Great.  The insurrection of the Maccabean counterrevolutionaries, “few though they were,” is recorded in both secular history and the Bible:

 

…being but a few, they made themselves masters of the whole country, and put to flight the barbarous multitude, and recovered the most renowned temple in all the world, and delivered the city, and restored the laws that were abolished, the Lord with all clemency showing mercy to them.[77]

 

The postmodernist regime has operated more insidiously and cleverly in the USA than did the Hellenistic revolution against ancient Israel.  Under the Greek occupation Israel saw plenty of bloodshed, or red martyrdom, whereas under the postmodernist regime white martyrdom is the order of the day.[78]  No American mothers are compelled to watch their government torture their sons to death for remaining loyal to religion[79] (though Mrs. Mary Schindler might have an issue).  But many a good mother in America has been grieved to the heart to witness the spiritual demise of her children, perpetrated via the public school curriculum and/or its peer group subculture.  This process employs techniques far more subtle and sophisticated than the blunter methods of the Seleucids.

Neither do Americans witness their priests and pastors roasted alive over flames by sadistic Seleucid officials.[80]  Instead we see men of the cloth caricatured in movies and television as buffoons or perverts.  Ministers of the old time religion in America are forced to endure the ghetto of dishonor and indifference – rather than suffer bloody persecutions like those imposed by the Hellenes, or by 20th century Communists in Russia and China.  Positive portrayals in the films of yesteryear, like Bing Crosby as the priest in The Bells of St. Mary’s or in Going My Way, are at best rare in our postmodernist culture.  Few filmmakers have a personal fortune like Mel Gibson, who was compelled to front $25 million of his own money in order to produce The Passion of the Christ.  No major studio in the United States supported its release, and none accepted his offers.

Americans do not see a citadel occupied by hostile Greek troops in the heart of the country’s capital city.[81]  Instead we see an army of attorneys working fiendishly in Washington, D.C., some of them judges, inspired by the ACLU and speaking an impenetrable argot of jurisprudential jargon, to explain how they enforce the rule of law even as they disown and defy the written version of “the supreme Law of the Land.”

Very much like the Seleucids of old, the postmodernist U.S. regime imposes their agenda by fair means or foul; with a minority of Americans unwilling but effectively disenfranchised.[82]  Like Jews in the days before the Maccabees, some few of us dare to resist what the neo-Seleucids feed us via the media, entertainment industry and educational establishment.[83]  Alas, also in religious Americans we see lukewarmness, as with the "renegades" in the days of Judas Maccabeus.[84]  Rather than stand fast in defense of the Ten Commandments, the “Laodicean” Christians pay homage to idols like consumerism, hedonism, and the secular trinity of tolerance, diversity and choice.[85]

Also, similar to the Seleucid successors of Alexander the Great, our own government is puffed up with pride as they sit astride the world’s most powerful military machine.  But like the “invincible” Phalanx of old, the high-tech weapons fielded by the Pentagon have proven to be vulnerable when pitted against ferocity of heart and determination of soul.  The Maccabees predicated their insurgency on a firm belief that the Phalanx was inferior to the power of God, for…

 

the success of war is not in the multitude of the army, but
strength cometh from heaven.  They come against us
with an insolent multitude and with pride... but
we will fight for our lives and our laws.[86]

 

The prime postmodernist example of flesh and blood prevailing over a supposedly unbeatable military machine is the defeat of the U.S. Armed Forces after ten years of warfare in Vietnam.  As historian Howard Zinn observes:

 

From 1964-1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant county – and failed.  When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.[87]

 

As demonstrated in Vietnam; followed by the insurgency in Afghanistan against occupation by the USSR, 1979-89; and by the recent resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq; it is clear that human beings can mount a credible and sometimes successful challenge to the latest advances in mechanized warfare.  The three key elements of victory are (1) that resistance to the regime is disciplined enough to avoid pitched battles; (2) that the insurgents possess the determination to persevere in the face of setbacks; and (3) that the leadership of the resistance remains steadfast in purpose.  If above and beyond this triple equation, we solicit also the favor of Almighty God in the spirit of the Maccabees, then – well, you, O reader, may decide whether this prospect moves you to optimism.

 

In the 21st century, AD let us look at a fifth, fourth or third of the population as fertile ground out of which may grow our activist five to ten percent.[88]  The more determined our minority – i.e. the more we exhibit fidelity to God and country – the more likely the postmodernists in high places will be compelled to capitulate, and the more likely we and/or our children will live to see a radical restoration and reaffirmation of the U.S. Constitution.

Be hopeful, even at the outset when our numbers are smallest.  “For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever.”  (Thoreau, Civil Disobedience)  Though we start small, let our purpose be large – i.e. an arch-amendment whose reforms impact in turn, section by section, a broad swath of American society.  Though our activists be few, or never more than a minority, let them carry a standard which appeals one section at a time sequentially to a large majority.

 

 

Insurrectionary Means: Suede or Sword?

Regime change?  Yes ma’am, but to the Constitution hold fast. By sword and shield, sir? Take care Ma’am – ballots be first, bullets last.

            We take as our premise the axiom laid down by our philosopher President, John F. Kennedy:  “Those who made peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable .”[89]

 

Camelot’s demise made way for the postmodernist regime

If I understand JFK correctly, the idea is not to moralize about the ethical questions inherent in recourse to the sword (plan B) but rather to preempt its unsheathing by redoubling efforts to accomplish an insurrection of suede (plan A). If JFK's axiom is accurate, then it is pointless and vain to bemoan calls to arms in support of counterrevolutionary solutions. The realistic approach is to acknowledge the likelihood of recourse to violence if we cannot turn the country around peacefully.

Next we must determine what changes are necessary, and pray the requisite means will be bloodless, or failing that, softer in the order of pain. Meanwhile, motivation to accomplish an insurrection of suede (plan A) should intensify as Americans become more aware of the sword of Damocles, namely plan B, hanging overhead. Such a pragmatic antidote to complacency will reinforce issue-based motives for counterrevolution, such as national decadence and political/economic corruption.

And so if we are really in earnest about restoration, we need to spare no effort in pursuing non-violent counterrevolution. However, having finally lost in our last legal recourse, taking up arms as per the Ninth Amendment in the Bill of Rights would unquestionably be preferable to kissing our chains and submissively enduring the consequences (possibly including severe repression or persecution) of having given over power to hellions. The preferential option for peace no longer applies when it amounts to surrender to forces of evil.

…that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico, 1836 [90]

On the individual level, lethal measures in self-defense may be the only option when a strongman hell-bent on destruction has broken into the home and is threatening the children.  On the collective level, insurrection by the sword may not just be the less perfect way, but the only way.  Under certain preconditions recourse to the sword is the patriot’s sacred obligation. 

At that point, the pacifist approach serves not the virtues but the vices – assisting them by omission – and thereby boosting such capitol sins as pride, lust, anger, & etc. into higher places whence to exercise extra leverage.  As in many facets of public and private life, affairs of state can degenerate to the point where, to cite Burke’s axiom as restated in the 1836 constitution of the Texas republic, “forbearance ceases to be a virtue.”

Furthermore, a lot more is currently at stake than our own security and tranquility in this country.  We must consider the global peril that proceeds from America’s political, economic and cultural maladies.  We must take into account the worldwide horrors likely to be imposed in the 21st century if our Republic becomes a technocratic monstrosity akin to pagan Rome, except more powerful.  Taking up the sword is always risky, but risk is morally justifiable in direct proportion to the magnitude of evils sure to multiply should we play it safe.[91]

	Brig. Gen. Thomas Meagher (1823-1867)

 More than seven decades after General Lafayette brought invaluable assistance from France during our first revolution, another “hero of two worlds,” Thomas Francis Meagher, graced our shores.  Founder of the Irish Regiment in the American Civil War, Meagher had led the “Young Ireland” insurgency of the 1840’s against British occupation, for which he was arrested and banished from the British Isles.  In a celebrated oration delivered 1½ decades before the U.S. Civil War, Meagher announced that, “I do not abhor the use of arms in the vindication of national rights.”  He elaborated:

 

There are times when arms will alone suffice, and when political ameliorations call for a drop of blood, and many thousand drops of blood….  Then, my lord, I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do I conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven – the Lord of Hosts! The God of Battles! – bestows His benediction upon those who unsheathe the sword in the hour of a nation’s peril….  Be it in the defense, or be it in the assertion of a people’s liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon….  Abhor the sword – stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for at its blow, a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its crimsoned light, the crippled colony sprang into the attitude of a proud Republic….  [Thomas Meagher, 1846, Dublin][92]

 

            As latter day citizens of what Meagher lauded as the “proud republic,” his sword speech remains relevant in several ways, including the sobering reality that we the people are not without responsibility for our country’s impact upon the 21st century.  If the nation’s condition continues to deteriorate ethically, then evils will multiply faster and spread farther beyond our borders than in Meagher’s day, when America needed assistance from the UK just to enforce the Monroe Doctrine here in the Western Hemisphere.  Today, therefore, given the enormity of our international influence for good or for ill, we the people of the United States have a noblesse oblige to the world.  Tough love here at home, and charity for our fellow inhabitants of the planet, obliges us to take risks – including recourse to the sword if all else fails – for the purpose of forcing a radical turnabout in the world’s one military and cultural superpower.

Before deciding upon such a risky course as insurrection by the sword, we must be wise as serpents and guileless as doves.  And I would dare to add, as courageous as lions.  Since insurrection of the non-violent sort will, if unsuccessful, invite escalation from suede to sword; faint-hearted Americans may tremble at the threshold and instinctively emulate the antelope instead of the lion.  Indeed, all of us embody a little of the antelope that needs to be vanquished.  When we discern danger the cardinal virtue of fortitude helps us, as the Catechism says, to “conquer fear” and surmount the desire to run away.  With the cardinal virtue of prudence “we apply moral principles to particular cases,” and with fortitude we can overcome the craving to seek safety in quiescence.[93]

Given the state of the nation, we can afford neither cowardliness nor lack of candor.  Therefore let us affirm at the outset that an insurrection of suede might prove too soft for the hard realities.  Bloodshed is hard indeed.  The American Revolution took a greater toll in American lives, as a percentage of the population, than any military conflict except the Civil War.[94]

For every Carnation Revolution (Portugal, 1974) the annals of history record a Spanish Civil War, a French Resistance, a Tiananmen Square.  For every Velvet Revolution (Czechoslovakia, 1989) there is a Rumania, 1989, an Irish Revolution, 1919-1921, an English Civil War, 1642-1648.  For every Revolution of the Roses (Georgia, 2003) there is a Warsaw Uprising, a Chechnya, a Kosovo.  For every bloodless revolution against the likes of Ferdinand Marcos, dissuading the tyrant’s troops and tank battalions by means of rosaries, flowers and candy (Philippines, 1986); there are violent Judeo-Christian uprisings such as these:

 

	Flag of Israel

·         The Christian deliverance of 312, AD in the ferocious battle at Rome’s Milvan Bridge.

·         The tens of thousands of dead in the Filipino insurrections against Spanish and US colonialism, 1896-1902, led by heroes like Bonifacio and Aguinaldo.

·         The epic and successful but sanguinary struggle of 1948-49 for Israeli independence.

 

And for every revolutionary leader like Lech Walesa (Poland, 1989) there is a Simon Bolivar, a Michael Collins, a David Ben-Gurion.

 

If indeed armed conflict turns out to be our last recourse, then our patriotic task is to unleash the insurrection as did the minutemen in 1775 at the Concord bridge.  It will be crucial that people of high ethics and moral integrity take leadership in bringing any such civil strife to a successful and salutary conclusion.  The bad application of a good principle is an ever-present danger without prudent and wise leaders to provide forethought and deliberate purpose to an armed insurrection.  To let ad hoc leadership determine the agenda as they go along, conjured it up from who knows what source, would be imprudence and folly.  The aims that emerge from the turmoil of violent insurrection may prove more barbarous than the means – like Leninism / Stalinism after the Bolshevik Revolution, 1917.  Or more brutal than the former regime — for example, the Cuban Revolution, 1959, where totalitarian, Fidel Castro, replaced a petty dictator, Fulgencio Batista.

General Francisco Franco

 Or in the less than reflective milieu of a struggle for survival, revolutionaries may lose sight of the ideals that can make their cause much superior in excellence to a mere “lesser of two evils.”  In the first year of armed insurrection against the Anarcho-Marxist Spanish Republic, 1936, the Christians – reeling from Republican persecution – kowtowed to the caudillo, Francisco Franco.  All factions of the counterrevolutionary alliance accepted servility to General Franco, in the belief “that there were no political aims so important that victory might be jeopardized in obtaining them.”[95]  But after the Spanish celebrated their success in “the last crusade,” Franco continued as dictator.  Indeed he stayed on for decades, stultifying the political culture of Spain until his death in 1975.

The answer to this tendency for unexpected consequences to emerge from turmoil is this – sharpen our focus on the pre-agreed text of one arch amendment, and hold it fast from the outset, resisting all moves to compromise the objective. A prototype text in advance will not only keep the campaign on track, but also it will reassure citizens against the fear that goes with uncertainty. In Thomas Paine’s day, Americans felt the same apprehension:[95a]

If there is any true cause of fear respecting independence, it is because no plan is yet laid down. Men do not see their way out. Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

Single-mindedness of purpose is an enormous plus that would accrue to letting one arch-amendment define our movement throughout the counterrevolutionary clash. The last thing the country needs is a latter-day Fourth Crusade, sidetracked from its projected destination and diverted to the service of selfish leaders.[96]  And so let the counterrevolution be unswerving in loyalty to the preordained constitutional reform, and may we find statesmen who subordinate their ambition to the greater good, like George Monck, Sam Houston and Mikhail Gorbachev; never to self-aggrandizers like Oliver Cromwell, Santa Anna and Joseph Stalin. 

            Another potential diversion is in tactics or methods.  If the postmodernist regime is successful in blocking peaceful implementation of arch-reform, and thereby forcing us to take up arms, let us repudiate any plan that would incorporate terrorist methods.  Terrorists target people who are in no appreciable way aiding and abetting the enemy regime.  The purpose of terrorism is to destabilize the regime by inflicting mayhem and turmoil.  Whether their victims are innocent or guilty, military or civilian, is not for the terrorist a matter of conscience or concern.

Notwithstanding that the methods proposed in this book are quite antithetical to terrorism, it is next to certain that if and when our movement converts into a clash as violent as the American Revolution, or more so, (as per chapter five below) we will find an implacable foe in some such agency as the Bureau of Homeland Security.  The BHS is a Cabinet level Department of the U.S. Government designed by the Bush/Cheney Administration to coordinate the nation’s anti-terrorism campaign. 

The federal legislation of 2001 (the so-called Patriot Act) defines the term “domestic terrorism” to include “activities that appear to be intended to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.”[97]  Under such a wide and all-embracing definition of terrorism, George Washington, had he been captured, would have gone to the gallows as a terrorist, along with many another heroic patriot.

When the BHS and the twisters of public opinion liken counterrevolution to terrorism, we can then parry this poisoned foil by pointing out the regime's tendency to distort.  The postmodernist regime's cultural commissars have managed, for example, to convince a considerable part of the general public that killing babies is the exercise of liberty, and that defending choice, unfettered by responsibility, is America’s main purpose for existing.  The same propaganda machine that spun the murder of Terry Schindler-Schiavo will, we can emphasize, have no qualms about citing terrorism which aims to bring America down and comparing it with a patriotic counterrevolution seeking to build the country back up.  In the effort to equate terrorism and counterrevolution, the spin-masters will seek to paper over the contrast, as it were, between the wrecking ball and restoration, between shooting a sick horse and calling in the vet, between euthanasia and cancer surgery, between hatred of America and abhorrence for national decadence.

Notwithstanding pro-regime propaganda, it is insurrection – whether persuasive or coercive – that is prerequisite to restore what has been lost, or rather stolen from us.  For postmodernist oligarchs will not relinquish their regime until insurrectionists force them to abdicate. 

            The idea of revolt is frightening to most Americans.  In the case of an insurrection of suede, we dread to be ostracized or saddled with various disparaging labels — including such old standbys as “religious extremist,” “political malcontent,” “anti-government fanatic.”  Worse, in the event a radical restoration turns from flowers to firearms, from suede to the sword, from ballots to bullets; we dread becoming lawbreakers in peril of imprisonment, financial ruin, and social stigma.  It is a fearful thing to risk “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”[98]

Fears for personal safety aside, a non-violent uprising, a la Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, is preferable to a shooting insurrection for six reasons: 

 

King and Gandhi

First it would be cheerful news indeed if the process of peaceful reform proves that our regime and its people are not so corrupt as suspected.  Here we refer not to moral vice, but to corruption of the sociological variety.  A country exhibits sociological corruption to the extent that its governing institutions can no longer diagnose and act against the evils undermining the polity, economy and culture.  In such a nation the root cause of a problem never gets admitted into consideration by the powers-that-be.  Since merely to articulate the true problems is politically incorrect, the problems are never on the table, and no viable solutions are possible from within.  Only elements external to the regime can force the requisite changes.

But if sociological corruption is not so pervasive as indicated, then surely a new national holiday will be in order – a democratic reform day.  During such a day off, citizens could celebrate the use of constitutional means to restore the sort of America which Alexis de Tocqueville studied and admired:  “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”[98a]

A second reason for preferring reform by means of suede rather than the sword is that non-violent means are unsullied by the mentality that accompanies military conflict.  In contrast to killing, bloodless reform is less prone to breed a lasting legacy of moral callousness and insensitivity.  As Burke put it in counseling his fellow members of Parliament against a military solution to the American Revolution: “A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by your very endeavors to preserve it.  The thing you fought for is not the thing which you recover; but deprecated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest.”[99] 

In his valuable analysis, The Seizure of Political Power in a Century of Revolutions, Feliks Gross is worried by the Hungarian revolt of 1956, in that some of the atrocities were perpetrated by pro-democratic forces.  “In revolutions, the struggle against an autocracy releases a dangerous by-product: violence, brutality, ruthlessness, even sadism: the struggle against evil releases new, unknown forces of evil.”[100]

In the Philippines' revolution of 1986, however, the overthrow of the Marcos regime left no such legacy to deal with after the victory:  “After violent revolutions there are always scores to settle, grudges to satisfy, revenge to extract, and the cycle of violence continues.  But because the Filipino people created major political change largely without violence, national reconciliation was that much easier.”[101]

 

Dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, in 1976, marking the third anniversary of the imposition of martial law.  Ten years later, a “people power revolution” ousted him.

A third reason for preferring a peaceful counterrevolution is that the thread of legality that stretches from the Constitution as it now stands to the reinforced Constitution would be unbroken under plan A.  But plan B, insurrection by the sword, will have to stretch if not cut the thread, as explained toward the end of chapter five.

A fourth reason to opt for a revolution by suede rather than by sword is that victory in a war of blood and iron may well go to the side that is better armed.  The oligarchy which worked so hard in propelling the country to its present state is shrewd, unscrupulous and resourceful.  Knowing how high the stakes are, the regime would not fail to use its formidable military resources against modern minutemen trying to force a radical turnabout from the postmodernist revolution.

Fifth, if armed civil conflict does eventually ensue, then God, who has long provided for the American experiment, might properly be petitioned to bless the martial underdog who has exhausted non-violent means.  A prime case in point would be the American Revolution, where “surely never in the annals of national controversy was exhibited a triumph so complete of the seemingly weaker party, a rout so disastrous of the stronger.”[101a]  The Almighty blessed our Forefathers abundantly after insurrectionists had tried but failed in pursuing the peaceful avenues that were then available.  The Declaration of Independence describes their frustrated attempts to avoid recourse to the sword:

 

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress 
in the most humble terms; Our repeated Petitions 
have been answered only by repeated injury.

 

George Washington and John Adams were uncertain of victory in a violent struggle, but both statesmen wrote (paraphrasing Addison) they were determined to conduct affairs such that the continental army might deserve to win.[102]

 

Washington’s Cruisers Flag American Revolution

Like the Founding Fathers, 21st century insurrectionaries might issue yet another “appeal to heaven,” in the confident hope that it would indeed be forthcoming – i.e. "with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence.”  But we should not expect providential intervention on our behalf unless (like the continental congress in 1774-1775) we exhaust peaceful channels first.

We speak of no trite and insignificant detail by insisting, put the horse before the cart, rather than visa versa.  The presentation in the temple (Luke 2:22-23) shows how even the infant Messiah Himself had to submit to proper formalities, and to put first things first.  Later before baptizing Jesus, John the Baptist argued that it should be the other way around, but John was instructed (Matthew 3:14-15): "…Let it be so now, for so it becomes us to fulfill all justice."  Any successful insurrection that resorts to force must do so as a last resort, having already fulfilled justice by first pursuing the peaceful means.

Sixth, if peaceful and constitutional means should fall short of essential reform, then it will surely be attributable to resistance by the regime that governs America.  At that stage, it will become easier to recruit adherents to a direct uprising against the regime.  The American public will be more favorably disposed to an insurrection by force after the intransigence of the regime is made manifest.

By first fulfilling all justice with respect to the legal avenues available, we will give credibility to our cause.  In other words, a radical restoration that has recourse to arms will draw support in proportion as taking up the sword is seen as a last resort, employed under necessity as the alternative to abject surrender.  The necessity will convey reality.

G.P. Baker’s dictum distinguishes the real revolution from the fool’s gold version:

 

Revolution, the hardest thing in the world to repress when it is real, is the easiest when unreal.[102a]

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmer stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.”

 

 

The Article V Convention 

            We are not yet at the point of last resort.  We are at least one step short of that.  For there remains one last and final legal weapon with realistic potential to effect the reforms prerequisite to national recovery.  This weapon is sheathed in an original article of the written Constitution.  Although history records a few relevant cases of salutary saber rattling, the American people have never drawn this sword of state fully from its scabbard in Article V.  Today this provision lies so far outside the normal course of American politics that pursuing it would be a virtual revolution in and of itself, albeit lawful.  I refer to the legacy left us by the Founding Fathers — an extraordinary, rarely considered, and in one sense the most radical way to amend the U.S. Constitution under its fifth Article — namely a constitutional convention.

Article V of the Constitution describes specifically a "Convention for proposing Amendments."  The last constitutional convention at the national level took place during the momentous four months of 1787, when the Framers put together their immortal composition.  

At present the Article V convention is to politics what the drop kick is to American football.  Though both are perfectly legal, neither gets used.  Early in the 20th century, the drop kick achieved more consistent results, given the blunter ends of the pigskin in those days – the modern pointy football bounces more erratically.  Since 1937 no National Football League kicker has made a field goal with a drop kick.[103]  In 2006, however, Doug Flutie created a sensation with his extra point conversion, the first in NFL history via the drop kick since 1941.  In American football today the play is hardly ever seen – except in indoor football leagues where rules are designed to revive this simple but elegant play.  Teams earn four points for dropkicking a field goal as opposed to three via the place kick.[104] 

In addition to its crowd appeal, the drop kick offers advantages on the gridiron.  First, it is less complex, with fewer ball handlers and not so many things to go wrong (muffing the snap, misplacing the ball on the tee, etc.)   Likewise, the constitutional convention would be a simpler, unicameral assembly.  Only a simple majority (not two-thirds of both houses as in the usual congressional pattern) would be required to submit proposed amendments to the states for ratification.

Second, the drop kick formation is more versatile than the awkward place-kicking alignment that consigns one player to his knees.  The drop kicker is well positioned to throw, run or punt, and thus keep the defense honest.  Also the drop kick frees up another blocker.  When up against a strong rush one extra lineman could prevent the onrushing wall of defenders from blocking the kick.

By analogy, the US Government has no well-practiced defense which knows how to blitz an Article V convention.  So in attacking the established power structure – or scoring, as it were, points against the postmodernist regime – a constitutional convention will have more potential by far than trying to put together an offense via a corrupt and co-opted Congress.

Thirdly, the drop kick has a bit of bounce or momentum already when the foot impacts the ball, allowing longer kicks.  During an October snowstorm in 1899, the Wisconsin Badgers’ Pat O’Dea, the greatest of the drop kickers, once boomed a field goal from a distance of 72 yards.[105]   Likewise, our counterrevolution will potentially go a lot further by way of a constitutional convention, than it can ever hope to win by working within institutions guarded by postmodernist sentries.

Fourth, despite the forgoing considerations, the drop kick is a last resort, a device born of desperation.  It’s the sort of tactic that becomes viable when the regular place-kickers are injured, time is running out, and the new guy at the end of the bench was seen making drop kicks before practice.  The coach calls for a drop kick when it is the last hope – much like the extremity of our situation today.

As the postmodernist regime consolidates its grip on America, it is futile to look to Congress for solutions, or to the Federal Courts which constitute a major portion of the problem, or to the pulpits which have exhibited an inopportune meekness about the long march through the institutions by postmodern paganism.  Time is short, and one last legal recourse remains.  The Article V convention for proposing amendments has been in the play book for more than two centuries.  It is time to take the convention off the shelf.  It is our last, best hope short of civil disobedience and/or armed insurrection.

Nor should the esthetic implications be scorned.  Like the elegant simplicity of the dropkick, a constitutional convention would exhibit the venerable beauty of real representative democracy.  As former law school dean and chief justice of the Supreme Court of Michigan, Thomas E. Brennan, concludes:

 

In an Article V amendatory convention the people of the states are brought together in
their most sovereign capacity.  Such a convention would be an awesome and august 
assemblage.  It would bring a new, responsible dimension to American politics.[105a]

            The fourth chapter below contains detailed analysis of the Article V convention as a means.   For the agenda of a 21st century constitutional convention, the final chapter of this interactive book sets forth the prototype text of one arch-reform.  This single but substantial constitutional amendment is intended to restore the Constitution to its rightful throne as the supreme law of the land.  A twelve lights amendment would preside over the process and keep it from going astray like some of the revolutions previously cited.  Extrapolating from a thought by Theodore Roosevelt — “keep your eyes on the stars, and keep your feet on the ground" — so likewise, let us keep our eyes on one constellation amendment and keep our feet on the true counterrevolutionary path.[106]

During the pre-postmodern era (pre-1963) the Congress was still a viable avenue for change in a working republic.  However, our nation's regular political process was designed for fine-tuning a polity, economy and culture already more or less on track (as per Adams’ maxim), like the USA into which I was born.  For radical turnabouts as called for by our radical maladies today, Congress and the rest of the federal government are like the French batteries on the Maginot Line.  The artillery was aimed toward Germany and the design prevented the big guns from turning 180 degrees to meet the Nazi blitzkrieg coming from the rear.

Likewise a gridlocked or recalcitrant Congress has been ineffective against the postmodernist revolution perpetrated from within.  After 1963, elected federal officials put up an inept and pathetic defense.  It would be worse than useless to look to the current breed of beltway politicians for a counterattack against the well-entrenched postmodernist regime.  To rely on Congress in this crisis would be throwing our time and energies down the drain.  But Article V offers a way to circumvent the Congress and the whole Federal establishment.  An Article V convention is therefore indicated, given that only a radical turnabout – only a counterrevolution – can restore America to a state of affairs that right-minded people can respect and cherish.  If Article V fails us we will have to look to the ninth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, with its original right of revolution, and to the venerable precedent set by General George Washington and our continental army. 

            To a premeditated resistance to the regime, then, we are compelled by political experience, and driven by religious and historical imperatives. I would remind my fellow citizens that revolution, or in our situation counterrevolution, is caused by the regime not by “we the people.”  It is the oligarchy, not us, who should bear the guilt if blood gets spilled.  They have violated Mayhew’s maxim, “government is sacred, and not to be trifled with.”[107]  Or as Aristotle put it, “those who are responsible for the exercise of power...cause the disturbance that leads to revolution.”[108]

 

Usurpers evoked evil,
And provoked the upheaval.

 

We should remember also that in mercy to the oppressed, the good Lord Himself sometimes opens up a revolutionary alternative to the sort of government personified by king Ahab and his queen, Jezebel:

 

Thus saith the Lord God of Israel: …“You shall
strike down the house of your master, Ahab.”[109]

 

Seven centuries later the ghost of the Prophet Jeremiah appeared in a vision to Judas Maccabeus.  “Jeremiah then stretched out his right hand and presented Judas with a golden sword, saying as he gave it, 'Take this holy sword as a gift from God; with it you shall strike down enemies.'”  Then, faced with the advance of a larger and better-equipped pagan army, Maccabeus raised his hands to heaven in prayer:  “You, Master, sent your angel in the days of Hezekiah king of Judaea, and destroyed no less than 185,000 of Sennacherib’s army; now once again, Sovereign of heaven, send a good angel before us to spread terror and dismay.  May these men be struck down by the might of your arm, since they have come with blasphemy on their lips to attack your holy people.” (2 Maccabees 15: 15-16, 22-24)

Both sacred and secular history prove that God blessed the prayer of Judas Maccabeus.

For One More Chance   Noble heritage, oft sung and taught, Disserted now for dogs and dirt. Where are the guilty to be sought, For postmodern onslaught of sin and hurt?   By one citizen’s head infested, Was John Kennedy’s vision arrested? No!  On Oswald’s ilk the blame’s a sham, 'Twas poor vigilance by Uncle Sam.   T’was you and me – stop and sigh, Citizens blessed who let it die. Founder’s bequest, hardly did we hurry, Levies to raise ‘gainst hellions’ fury.    Who’s to blame?  Not her?  Not him? Then powers and pulpits, be accused! “Home of the brave,” rendered dim, Precious few shall get excused.   Save those who fought but lost, Did stand and cringe and grieve, To see our legacy tossed. They tried in vain to retrieve.   Now punish just whom for one last go? Blame scribe who scouts yon path to hope? For risk of repression by the foe, With stress, arrest, or hangman’s rope?   No!  Broken all’d be for apostasy, Had national sins congealed;[114] Been tallied by God ‘gainst this country, And her entry to mercy sealed.   This book’s a burden, to be sure, For fear and lethargy do allure.  But fright & inertia shan’t bestow To God & country what we owe.

 

 

Conclusion

            If I read correctly the signs of the times, then one or more great national traumas is surely approaching.   Thomas H. Greene prefers the term, “accelerators.”[110]  The Maccabean counterrevolution was provoked by accelerating anti-Jewish policy, imposed forcefully from above by a government determined to social-engineer ancient Israel into apostasy.  Two millennia later, an intensifying tyranny dictated from London provoked George Washington to lead his fellow Americans in revolt.  A generation later (1808) a great counterrevolutionary insurrection broke out in Spain – a revolt against the Napoleonic invasion and the Jacobin worldview being imposed upon that Catholic country.[111]

According to Brinton's The Anatomy of Revolution, revolutions often come during economic depressions, which follow on periods of generally rising standards of living.[112]   Indeed the Great Depression of the 1930’s saw large numbers of Americans support the rise of revolutionary leaders like Sen. Huey Long and Fr. Charles Coughlin.

On the other hand, notes Brinton, even men adequately fed, clothed, housed and entertained will, if inspired with moral indignation, make a revolution.[113]  Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, R.H. Lee and Samuel Adams were well-to-do English gentlemen.  Their indignation over violations of principle led them into insurgency.  “No taxation without representation” was not about taxes per se, nor about taxes being financially burdensome, but about Great Britain’s manner of imposing taxes.

 

In fact, the Americans of 1776 enjoyed a higher standard of living than any people in the world.  Their material wealth was considerably less than it would become in time, still it was a great deal more than others had elsewhere.  How people with so much, living on their own land, would ever choose to rebel against the ruler God had put over them and thereby bring down such devastation upon themselves was for the invaders incomprehensible.  David McCullough, 1776. [114a]

 

Generally an oppressor is blind to the sort of altruistic farsightedness that guided many of the Patriots in 1776.  King George III failed to discern and weigh “their disinterestedness, their heroic forgetfulness of self.”  The leaders of the American Revolution put the future weal foremost and “thought not of shuffling off upon posterity the burden of resistance.”  Statesman, Edward Everett, elaborated the point in his commemorative oration a half-century later:[114b]

 

Not only was the independence for which they struggled a great and arduous adventure, of which they were to encounter the risk and others to enjoy the benefits, but the oppressions which roused them had assumed in their day no worse form than that of a pernicious principle.  No tolerable acts of oppression had ground them to the dust.  They were not slaves rising in desperation from beneath the agonies of the lash, but free men, snuffing from afar “the tainted gale of tyranny.”

 

That revolutions can accompany economic prosperity is by no means unique to America.  Alexis de Tocqueville elaborates at length on how history frequently exhibits the very paradox that preceded the French Revolution: “It was precisely in those parts of France where there had been most improvement that popular discontent ran highest.… For it is not always when things are going from bad to worse that revolutions break out.”[114c]

In Russia about the time of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II (1881), industrial progress was making major strides.  The new Tsar, Alexander III, calculated that more jobs and prosperity would diffuse political insurgency, and that he could get away with repression in the realm of politics.  Quite to the contrary, however, as economic development accelerated, political tension continued to build until it reached the breaking point during the reign of his successor, Nicholas II.  In 1905 a great revolution erupted across Russia that had little to do with economic cycles, and that might have ended the monarchy twelve years prior to the Bolshevik coup d’etat, had not Tsar Nicholas hastily granted concessions, including the institution of a popularly elected parliament, the first Russian duma.[115]

In 1942-43, Nazi Germany saw the rise of the White Rose Society, a small but symbolically powerful resistance which was unrelated to the economic self-interest of the rebels.  Students, German soldiers of conscience, and a college professor put their lives on the line.  University of Munich philosophy professor, Kurt Huber, urged his fellow conspirators to remember that, “we do not want to waste our short life enslaved and in chains, though they be the golden chains of material abundance and prosperity.”  Robert Scholl, the small town mayor who fathered two of the leaders of Die Weisse Rose, argued that economic prosperity does not compensate for tyranny:

 

Surely we are not like cattle, satisfied if we have fodder for our bellies.
Material security alone will never be enough to make us happy.[115a] 

 

Modern Spain has seen two successful counterrevolutions, neither having much to do with economic privation.  During the Napoleonic occupation, repression combined with the anti-Christian policies of Revolutionary France ignited a successful counterrevolution in Spain, led by patriots like Padre Miguel and the Minas.[116]  A century and a third later, notwithstanding the economic upsurge of the years prior to 1936, it was moral, religious, and civic indignation that spurred the Spanish to counterrevolution.  It was in large part moral outrage that led Spaniards to launch what has been called “the last crusade.”[117] 

In postmodernist America, however, we have what William Bennett has called “The Death of Outrage.”[118]  The calamitous revolution in manners and morals has transfigured moral indignation itself from a virtue to a vice in the hearts of many if not most Americans.[119] 

There is, I believe, providential medicine in preparation.  This remedy may take the form of a national trauma or affliction, described most compellingly, perhaps, by contemplating the reflections of a President who was very much familiar with his nation's woes – Abraham Lincoln in 1865:

 

Woe unto the world because of offenses.  The Almighty has His own purposes, and if God allows a mighty scourge until every drop of blood drawn by the bondsman’s lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword; then as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."[120]

 

It may require woeful and heart-rending events to sober and turn the multitude.  If so, the chastisement may be schooling in mental concentration that makes the fall of the Twin Towers look like kindergarten by comparison.  Heaven does have its own purposes, and Providence may indeed drive Americans to the critical mass of exasperation.  Writes George Sawyer Pettee:

 

“it is …possible for conditions to exist in which any well adjusted man must be a revolutionist, and in which it is the comfortable people who feel well adjusted to the existing system who are in fact psychopathic cases.”[121]

 

That extraordinary sign of contradiction, Pope John-Paul II, never fell victim to Pettee’s precept.  It is worth repeating the great Pope’s last testament: “the times in which we live are unutterably difficult and disturbed.”  Unfortunately, however, many American citizens have succumbed; for they do indeed “feel well adjusted to the existing system.”  Although a counterrevolution is already justified by betrayal of our country’s heritage, relatively few take action.  The powers-that-be have manipulated public feelings, spun the legacy of the past as outdated or archaic, and predisposed many of us toward passivity.  In the last few years, polls indicate that most Americans have come to realize that the nation is off track.  But preoccupied with consumerism or drunk on hedonism, a huge minority if not an outright majority are resigned to the country’s plight.  Others look askance at worldviews not portrayed positively on their favorite television programs.

Since the truth about national sins is well beyond the pale of political correctness anyhow, allow me fully to unsheathe the sword of the spirit.  Join me, if you will, in expressing our country's predicament in the form of prayer:

 

O Lord, we know that equal to your majesty is the mercy that you show.  Yet, Holy Scripture says that you rebuke and chastise those whom you love.  For nations, this discipline must be doubly needed.  Our nation cannot be punished in the next world for her sins, and so she must be in this.  If thy will forbids, therefore, that a chastisement pass from a country so unfaithful – one that you have heretofore blessed most generously – do then show forth your compassion, and allow us a cup of correction rather than destruction, one that helps restore America to fidelity toward thee.

 

 In Jesus' precious and powerful name, Amen.  Far better to face fatherly chastisement, than see our children suffer divine ire as “a consuming fire.”[122]  Let believers pray fervently, remembering, however, that petition is not the only form of prayer.  If God is not unwilling to accept as prayer the pious performance of a simple kitchen task, neither will the Lord scorn civic righteousness when prayerfully pursued.  

Meanwhile let us prepare for the day, so that when God and the country are ready we can hit the ground running.  The first step in the process is to TeLL or proclaim.  Accordingly, the next eleven chapters elucidate aims and means to a radical turnabout, presided over by one arch-amendment to the written Constitution.

 The reader will please regard the following terms as interchangeable synonyms,

 

arch-amendment,

arch-reform,

constellation law,

constellation amendment

twelve lights law

twelve lights amendment.
lex XII luminum

 

 

 

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