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 Chapter Two_

Counterrevolutionary Combination:

Center  – Left –   Right--

 

 

 

Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit
…. many members, yet but one body. 
1 Corinthians 12

 

══ INTERACTIVE CONTENTS ══

 

•  Options for Action •  Counterrevolutionary Combination: An Aquiline Alliance

•  Is Revolt or Insurrection Ethical?

•  Holy Uprising

•  ANTHEM_ and  FLAG

 

 Chapter Two_

Counterrevolutionary Combination:

Center  – Left –   Right--

 

            A radical turnabout in national affairs ought to be the goal of every right-minded American.  Yet to discern the means is intricate and intimidating.

Naturally and of necessity, the means are related closely to the objectives.  A work of advocacy would normally elucidate the agenda in detail before seeking to inform the reader about means to accomplish such a purpose.  Given the demoralization verging on despair, however, that afflicts so many Americans of discernment and good will today, this chapter is offered at the outset.  Two additional chapters, four and five, will elaborate on the forms insurrection can take – legal or not? Non-violent or not?

The consideration of means in this chapter is intended to hearten readers who might otherwise see ratification of one arch-amendment as fanciful.  In thus reversing the order, i.e. here discussing means before ends, my rationale is to build hope; also to surmount the pessimistic presumption that a constellation amendment is unrealistically utopian.  My aim is to bolster the reader’s confidence that means do exist to achieve a radical turnabout leading to restoration of an America that is morally respectable and more conducive to the pursuit of happiness.

Chapter three will then turn to the main objective and elucidate details of the twelve lights law, i.e. the arch-amendment to the U.S. Constitution, whose full prototype text is in chapter twelve.

 

 

Options for Action

            Of course not everyone desires to overthrow the postmodernist regime, or to restore America’s former goodness and greatness.  This attitude is typical in degenerating societies, where a sizeable portion of the populace thinks of tyranny as efficiency and embraces debauchery as liberty.  Even the Chosen People had to deal with such an enemy within.  Scripture excoriates such "renegades," the traitors who cooperated treasonously with a Hellenistic regime imposing despotism and paganism upon the Holy Land.

It was then that there emerged from Israel a set of renegades who led many people astray.  ‘Come,’ they said ‘let us reach an understanding with the pagans surrounding us…. So they … abandoned the holy covenant, submitting to the heathen rule as willing slaves of impiety.
(1 Maccabees 1: 12, 16)

Look for Quisling Jews and Christians to reveal themselves as 21st century renegades.  Federal Judge William Prior – then Alabama’s attorney general – backed by World Magazine, seem to be cases in point.[1]  Americans “having a semblance indeed of piety but disowning its power” (2 Timothy 3:5) will prefer appeasement to resistance; and will write and orate to justify compliance and cooperation.

Other Americans will prove worthy, however, of their political ancestry.  It is for such as these, O offspring of an illustrious heritage, that this chapter is intended.

 

To assist in identifying workable means, the process of elimination can be helpful.  The survey below looks briefly at every plausible way to bring about fundamental reform.  Surveying the possibilities, and separating the wheat from the chaff, will help narrow the field.  We can then weigh the options that remain in order to arrive at a viable strategy.

By way of means, I see but seven general ways to solve our problems as a nation – four highly doubtful and three potentially viable.  The four highly doubtful ones can be summarized as inaction, persuasion, conventional approaches, and withdrawal:

 

[1] Inaction:  We can simply do nothing, i.e. take no concerted action, and let events pursue their own course.  We can pray that God will rescue us; that His power alone will bring about a radical turnabout on our behalf.  Or in a fatalistic variation on this theme, we can go where Thoreau would not:

If I could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my requisitions and expectations of what they and I ought to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the will of God. 

A study of history and Judeo-Christian theology indicates, however, that the inactivity of good men and women is a grave omission that will facilitate victory for the dark side of humanity.  Power abhors a vacuum, and craven silence from the pulpits has helped paganism accrue more power and influence than at any time in the Western world since the Roman Empire prior to Constantine.  The circle back to barbarous antiquity, reinforced by science and technology, is billed by its enthusiasts as humankind's progression into a brave, new, postmodernist world.  Sir Winston Churchill’s description is more on the mark: “a new dark age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.”[2]

Restoration of modern civilization (as opposed to its postmodernist profanation) will not evolve, devolve, or betide us by the unilateral intervention of angels.  Instead, like Judas Maccabaeus, we must take action while passing the watchword, “help from God.”[3]

 

[2] Persuasion:  We can confine action to efforts at persuasion.  We can exhort and encourage the established power-holders to reform the system voluntarily.  Begin by writing letters to the editor and to public officials. 

During more tranquil eras this approach was not necessarily a waste of time.  Now, however, the strategic places are occupied citadels.  The postmodernist regime did not capture the high ground by happenstance, or build their tall palisades without purpose.  Their long march through the institutions was carried on arduously and organized with forethought.  The victorious revolutionaries will not voluntarily give up gains they have won, any more than take a pilgrimage to Oregon to participate in the euthanasia they fought to legalize.

 

[3] Conventional approaches:  We can use the established political system to force reform upon the regime.  Realistically, however, one must recognize that the brilliant work of the Framers was designed to govern a moral and religious people, and none other [President John Adams].   The Framers presupposed a society blessed with a degree of consensus on America's purpose and character as a nation.  Manifestly the Framers did not design the Constitution to govern a country bitterly polarized in manners, morals and ideological bent.

We the people cannot use a government riven by dissention and riddled with defects and corruption to launch basic political, economic and cultural turnabout.  Not only is the government rotten internally, but so are the political parties.  In Washington state, for example, during my three terms as GOP state committeeman, the “accountability” movement persuaded less than 40% of the Republican state committee that it was a good thing to inform the public about the positions of our candidates on the main planks in the GOP platform.[4]  This phenomenon is endemic to party politics, which seeks power over principle and aims to secure the spoils rather than reform the country.[5]

In other words our two party system chooses to keep voters in the dark about which of their own candidates support their own party's positions.  We have a system of democracy that distorts the electoral process by keeping the electorate misinformed and deceived.  Such a system is hardly fit for the purpose of fundamental reform.

Politics in the 1990’s saw a great populist groundswell in favor of term limits.  And yet little changed.  Year after year the power of incumbency decides most congressional races.

In the economic sphere, reforms intended to serve the working class get reduced to dead letters.  Legislation of 1946 and 1978 mandates that Congress work to eradicate unemployment.  And what really happens?  The federal government disregards the law, meanwhile permitting or even encouraging the outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries.

In the cultural sphere, customary approaches that operate independently of the government have been tried and found wanting.  Boycotts of advertisers and corporations that peddle pornography in its various forms have left the porno-industry virtually unscathed.  In the drive to meet and manufacture demand, amoral corporations have no scruples – nor qualms about targeting children.[6]  Laudable attempts, but with limited success at best, would include the Southern Baptist boycott of Disney, or the blacklisting of offending corporations by the American Family Association.  Boycotts in support of the Boy Scouts have left no appreciable impact on anti-scout, pro-gay corporations like Levi-Strauss & Co.

Thanks to intransigent political polarization, the advanced state of moral degeneracy in America, along with a host of fundamental flaws imbedded deeply in the regime, none of the three foregoing options (inaction, persuasion, & conventional approaches) offer us any real measure of hope.  They might make the rate of America's decline a little less steep, but they are worthless for the purpose of reversing the downward trends, i.e. effecting a radical turnabout or U-turn.

 

[4] Withdrawal:  Of the doubtful approaches, a kind of self-exile is at once the most tempting and quite possibly the most imprudent.  The best articulation of such a strategy that I have seen is posted on an extensive and well-designed web page entitled “eXile MM.”  The author proposes a collective retreat by Christians, in which components of the United States secede from the Union politically and/or culturally.  Alas unfortunately this recalls the tragedy of 1 Maccabees 2: 31-41, where a thousand Jews, pacifists on the Sabbath, were destroyed for rejecting Hellenization — men, women, children and cattle liquidated in the “hiding places” to which they had retreated.  There is no way militarily that 39 counties scattered among ten states can be defended against the U.S. Armed Forces by fugitives who congregate there, in order to be “armed with a political agenda of nullifying federal policies by local non-enforcement of those policies.”[7]

If these dispersions obey the law of the land, their county laws will soon be superseded wherever they conflict with the postmodernist revolutionary order.  What will then be the point of taking over the county governments?  The history of Indian reservations in this country is hardly a hopeful precedent.  Even the most sacrosanct treaties have been slender reeds.  Reservation autonomy has proven highly conditional.

If these "exiled" counties resist corrupt federal or state laws, say by defying WTO rulings or closing abortion clinics, the regime will intervene by force, turning our “Prague Spring” into a winter of pain and defeat.  The exile or “Ausonian strategy”, as Judge Robert Bork terms it, would be suppressed:  “…today’s barbarians would impose their entertainments, their laws, their regulations, and their court decrees into whatever sanctuaries we may create” (Robert Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah).[8] 

The family of Judas Maccabaeus had tried the withdrawal strategy and found it wanting.  Residents of Jerusalem when the persecutions began, the family fled hoping to escape the long arm of Antiochus IV, an unscrupulous king determined to Hellenize all Jews in his domain.[9]  Their designated sanctuary was Modein, the ancestral hometown of the Maccabees, about 17 miles to the northwest of Jerusalem.  Soon, however, government agents arrived to enforce Hellenization in Modein as well.[10]  The family found themselves forced to choose between apostasy, martyrdom, or retreat to the wilderness. Led by their patriarch, Mattathias, they elected for the latter, abandoning Modein to the enemy, just as modern day eXiles would have to vacate their 39 county havens.

On the other hand, if their sheriff’s departments refuse to relinquish their counties, and fight bravely in pitched battles, the state and federal forces will bring in air power and tanks.  In return for this opportunity to make an example of what their spin-doctors will term “extremists,” the regime will exhibit their gratitude by offering us arrest and imprisonment.  Be prepared for trials like that of Native American activist, Leonard Peltier (1976) after the resistance at Wounded Knee.  Or perhaps “eXiles” will get the sort of tender-loving-care extended in August, 1992 to Randy Weaver’s wife and son on Ruby Ridge, Idaho; or in April, 1993 to David Koresh and scores of men, women and children at Waco, Texas.

In the event, however, that the insurrection of suede fails and plan B makes headway, there may be places like the “state of Jefferson” (the mountainous region straddling California and Oregon) accessible by so few roads that the regime would have trouble breaking in.  Such defensible areas might work as military sanctuaries equivalent to the winter quarters at Valley Forge or Morristown during the American Revolution.  Then again, maybe not, given the regime’s strength in helicopters and air-power.  If the mountains of Afghanistan couldn’t stop the U.S. military, neither will the Siskiyous.  During the Iraq War cities and urban neighborhoods served the insurgents as safe havens, but not the open countryside.[11]

Be that as it may, short of full-scale insurrection by the sword, the strategy of withdrawal to 39 counties would be ill-conceived and suicidal.

 The remaining three possibilities strike me as viable and worthy of detailed analysis in this and the next chapter.  The three are [5] an Article V constitutional convention, [6] civil disobedience, [7] armed insurrection.  These possibilities arrange naturally in a pattern of escalation according to severity.  Just as no skilled worker starts with a pile driver, falls back on a sledge hammer, and if both methods fail then resorts to a mallet, so it would be senseless to settle the matter of counterrevolution by resort to the sword at once.  Rather we order our strategy inversely to severity, meaning that we try first the peaceful method provided under Article V of the Constitution. 

 

[5] Article V Convention:  Fifth, therefore, is the never fully used component of America’s constitutional system, the constitutional convention.  This is our last legal recourse whereby to accomplish a radical turnabout in the country’s course.  The Article V convention is the only lawful means with the potential to circumvent all the corrupt incumbents and force the political regime to yield the power of the sword.  Via enforcement and administration of justice, we can then deal with the economic and cultural components of the postmodernist regime.

 [6] Civil Disobedience.   Rather than remain within the confines of the legal channels afforded by Article V, we can cross the line of illegality and wage a war of restoration by civil disobedience that eschews bloodshed.  Thoreau, whose 1849 essay brought luster to the term, spent a day in jail for civil disobedience in refusing to pay taxes.  “It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it,” said he, “but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance.”[12]  The problem with such an individualistic refusal to submit to the state is that few people have a friend like Emerson to get them out of jail; or, if they remain behind bars, enough fame that citizens would become aware of the cause for which they are giving up personal freedom.  A thousand political prisoners would be like a needle in a haystack among the 2.2 million inmates of the U.S. prison system.

More promising of collective success would be Gandhi’s passive resistance tactics as employed in Selma and elsewhere by Martin Luther King.  A step further upward in escalation would be variations on tactics used by anti-war protestors during the Vietnam era, and during the “Battle of Seattle” (1999) against the outsourcing of jobs and globalist outflanking of environmental protections.  Like the Sons of Liberty during the Boston Tea Party, protestors used force against property, not against people.  It was the establishment that overreacted, giving the moral high ground to the insurgents.

 

Figure 2.1, U.S. History:
Civil Disobedience Contrary To Man’s Law

 

Boston Tea Party, 16 December 1773	Selma marchers, March 1965
Vietnam war machine kills four young civilians, Kent State U., May 4, 1970		Civil disobedience in action: the Five Day “Battle of Seattle,” late Autumn, 1999

 

For campus activists in the 1960s, their first leader, Mario Savio, described civil disobedience as follows: 

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all![13]  [Mario Savio, leader of the Berkley free-speech movement, December 3, 1964] 

Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

[7] Armed insurrection.  It may be that civil disobedience will prove too weak or unwieldy, or too blunt an instrument to cut through to the heart of the postmodernist regime.  Martin Luther King is often quoted, “If your opponent has a conscience, then follow Gandhi and nonviolence.  But if your enemy has no conscience like Hitler, then follow Bonhoeffer."  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister and leading German theologian during the Nazi era.  Twice he accepted invitations and taught in New York City.  In Germany during the 1930’s he eventually disowned his Gandhian passivism and assisted in the implementation of an abortive counterrevolution whose first objective was to kill the totalitarian tyrant.  Rev. Bonhoeffer concluded that there was simply no moral alternative to the use of violence in the face of such a revolution as Hitler’s.[14]  Several months after the armed coup d’etat went awry, Rev. Bonhoeffer joined the ranks of numerous martyrs in the German resistance movement.  The supreme sacrifice of the resistors did much to atone for the evils committed and the sins of omission by people who let the Nazi regime rise to power.  To learn from German history we must take into account martyrs like Bonhoeffer and von Moltke, with their compatriots in the Kreisau Circle, and in the White Rose Society, who formed a moral counterpoise to Germans who served as active or passive accomplices in ghastly crimes.

            If the level of morality within today’s regime were at all on a level with the British occupiers of India during Gandhi’s day, or with the United States during the lifetime of Rev. King, one might be more optimistic about the prospects for a Gandhian approach to counterrevolution.   During the postmodern period, unfortunately, American morality has taken a precipitous fall.  When the going got tough in Iraq, American soldiers and civilians resorted to unconscionable abuse of war prisoners in order “to loosen them up” for interrogation. 

Base desires did grimly encroach,

A dearth of morals did earn reproach.

At demon depths, they tortured at will.
Lest on our pain, Osama might thrill.
To set Iraq free, to make the oil flow,
Sadists did pose, brazen and low. 

Defenders of the Iraqi occupation tried to paint the torture of helpless captives as the aberrance of a few disordered individuals.  But official reports by the Red Cross, and by U.S. Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba indicated otherwise:  Incidents of torture were “numerous” and “systemic.”[15] Earlier in the postmodern era, U.S. soldiers in Vietnam betrayed symptoms of barbarism on the rise in American culture. 

However seared in conscience or jaded that Americans may be today, still we need to exhaust all available options before anyone can rightfully be asked to follow Bonhoeffer into violent resistance.  Meanwhile, even a failure to oust the regime using the methods of Gandhi and King will be useful in putting the regime to a final test of conscience.  Then, all else having been found insufficient, we can shoulder, as it were, the musket of the minutemen of 1775, and like our forefathers and foremothers support friends and family who don the oft threadbare uniform of the continental army, and who follow the 21st century successors of Gen. George Washington and of “the Swamp Fox,” Brig. Gen. Francis Marion.  Chapter five will deal in detail with this the most violent approach, in the event that Americans of good will do indeed run out of realistic non-violent alternatives.

 

 

            Cold, stark reality tells us that as the 21^st century advances no single reform group can muster the clout to push through sweeping, bedrock improvements, i.e. a counterrevolution against the calamity inflicted on America since 1963.  At the same time the most that the postmodernist regime might allow reformers are some feeble, piecemeal changes – some crumbs from the table – that will never really reverse the country's overall decline.  The central thesis of this chapter, however, is that a fivefold coalition might well accomplish what is politically (or militarily) impossible for reform groups working alone.  A quintuple coalition to address political, economic and social problems in one package offers better prospects and more hope, than expecting any one group singly to overcome the united opposition of the power structure.  A multi-issue alliance for reform has the potential also to serve as a kind of war of unification, diffusing some of the kulturkampf in society by coalescing against a common foe, namely the postmodernist regime.  If such an alliance helps move us away from the cold civil war – or culture war – now carrying over from the 20th century, the armistice within the coalition would be a worthwhile legacy in and of itself.

Fort McHenry, 1814

 The coalition will lose nothing in strength or cohesiveness on account of its quintuple organization.  The pentagon is one of the strongest architectural forms, with sound applications ranging from the geodesic dome to military forts.  Baltimore's Fort McHenry is the five sided fortress that withstood a withering fire from British artillery in 1814, under "the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air," giving Francis Scott Key his inspiration for the National Anthem.

The five corners of this pentagon would be occupied by five diverse kinds of citizen activists — [1] believers, [2] householders, [3] political reformers, i.e. voters [4] workers, and [5] advocates for peace and the environment. 

For believers to fight alone[16] would invite defeat comparable to the Cristero Revolt in Mexico,[17] 1926-1929.  Therefore, four of the five components proposed for the quintuple coalition are secular in nature, i.e. non-religious.  The projected alliance would have the following components:

--ONE—  The first corner of the quintuple coalition would appeal primarily to believers.  Religious citizens should be at the forefront among equals, or primus inter pares, because the postmodernist foe is most militant in the effort to paganize America.  Given that persecution of Biblical morality as intolerance or hate speech may be just over the horizon, God-fearing Americans ought to be the most interested and motivated element in the coalition.  The extent to which the insurrection incorporates the burning zeal of Americans defending their religion will, I expect, be the decisive factor in whether the postmodernist regime persists or perishes.  (More on holy insurrection later in this chapter).

Invited into the coalition against the regime are all believers willing to re-negotiate the church-state relationship along lines more friendly to religion.  Most believers ought to be enthusiastic about restoring religion to its traditional place in public life.  The strategy would be to win a highly motivated and sizable force to the fivefold alliance by re-enfranchising loyalists to America's Judeo-Christian heritage.  The constellation law would reemphasize the legacy of America’s pioneers at Jamestown and Plymouth by measuring out a place for religious principle in education, and reasserting the role of faith and morals in the public square.  The arch-amendment would favor Judeo-Christian standards on life and love – in other words clean up our national act morally – and yet with checks and provisos that are sensitive to secular concerns.

--TWO— The second component of the coalition is reserved for defenders of "domiciliary security."  Here our invitation is first to homeowners [not land developers] who seek refuge from property taxes –– a form of taxation that amounts essentially to rents on domiciles with the government as the landlord.  Legitimate private landlords would also receive property tax exemptions for their rentals.  Insofar as property taxes on rental properties are currently passed on to the renter, so, under the constellation law, property tax reductions would get passed back to apartment dwellers, & etc. who can save on rent.

Another form of domiciliary security as well as property protection will be to reaffirm the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms.  Since colonial times American householders have kept firearms for the purpose of defending the home. 

The common appeal in the second corner of the coalition is the threat to private property.  Both property tax-collectors and the common burglars break and enter; the former has legal backing, the latter lacks the protection of law.  From the standpoint of the victim, however, one gets mugged in either case.

This second component of the quintuple coalition has another common element, in that it promotes twin sorts of sovereignty for the individual.  Empowerment of individuals would apply in two ways: (1) to the pedestrian, motorist and homeowner, armed and able to defend himself or herself, rather than depending solely on a police response that may come too late or not at all; (2) to the homeowner; government ceasing to threaten eviction for failure to fork over the rent, a.k.a. property taxes, on the home he owns.  People with a secure domicile are more independent of the proverbial wolf at the door.  As the individual becomes more sovereign and independent it becomes harder to implement centralism, the prerequisite for domination by global capitalism, world government, or any form of totalitarianism.

--THREE-- To form a third component in a quintuple coalition we invite political reformers –– that is all citizens who favor re-democratizing the U.S. government, cleansing and streamlining it, and substituting efficiency for government by gridlock.  Changes appealing to reform-minded voters would include a nuanced and balanced system of congressional rotation in office (term limits), in order to restore the House of Representatives as the engine of democracy within the framework of a republic.  

Other reforms that would strengthen the Legislative Branch include revamping the congressional committee system and abolishing the filibuster.  Additionally the coalition's agenda would institute more potent checks against judicial usurpation, would establish a system for cuts in the size of government, and would systematize reductions in the mass of federal regulations.  

The general aim and appeal is to restore the country's confidence in government, and to revive high regard for officeholders as helpful public servants.

--FOUR-- A fourth component appeals primarily for support from labor.  In proportion as it moves the economy toward full-employment, a tighter labor market leads by the laws of supply and demand to higher wages and better working conditions.  Therefore, workers, both employed and unemployed, organized and unorganized, blue collar and service workers, and indeed everyone subordinate to exploitative owners and CEO's, have a vital interest in tightening the labor market.  Guaranteeing a tight labor market will improve the bargaining position of the fully employed vis-à-vis their employers, meanwhile enabling today’s vast underclass of jobless and underemployed workers to participate more fully and fairly in their country's economy.  Campaigning for full-employment measures will be a strong invitation into the quintuple coalition for any American who has to make a living by working.  The prospect of full-employment should enthuse organized labor – the heirs of their progenitor, the illustrious Samuel Gompers.  

Another appeal to labor consists of checks against international trade arrangements, whereby globalists are circumventing hard won improvements in wages and working conditions.  A host of pro-labor / pro-consumer laws dating back to the Sherman anti-trust act of 1890 and the Wagner Act of 1935 are being outflanked by internationalists who see federal and state laws as obstacles to economic globalization.[18]  In this respect, national sovereignty is an issue that can unite Americans across the spectrum, left–center–right.

Labor is also in trouble to the extent that capitalists move their firms out of the country, or outsource by subcontracting abroad, in order to take advantage of lower wages overseas.   American labor will surely support the proposed worker friendly stipulations, which give breaks to firms who stay here, and which discourage corporate emigrations.

The idea is not to promote socialism – something Gompers himself opposed – but to humanize capitalism by institutionalizing full employment.  The underlying principle was oft stated by John-Paul II:  “The economy is for people, not people for the economy.”

Insofar as reforms permit millions of jobless Americans to come aboard as producers of GDP [total economic production in the USA], rather than as disgruntled recipients of public alms, the coalition will appeal to Americans right of center on the political spectrum.  Economic conservatives support reforms that would disentangle the economy from the drag of the welfare state, meanwhile diminishing the restiveness of the underclass.

Anti-Iraq war protest, March 20, 2004, Seattle

--FIVE-- Finally, the fifth component will include an appeal to defenders of the peace, i.e. to anti-war Americans — like the protestors who helped turn public opinion against the war in Vietnam, or the millions who took to the streets against the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.  The constellation law, section 5:1, will bolster the present Constitution, Article 1, section 8, which authorizes Congress to issue a formal declaration of war.  Against the bellicosity and hubris of would-be-Napoleons, any mandate in the direction of congressional deliberation will help spare our soldiers the grisly and demeaning task of killing, maiming and destroying.[19]

Again, we have an issue on which significant elements of the political left and right will find common ground.[20]  Conservatives prefer strict interpretation of the Constitution.  Peace activists and liberals deplore presidential wars insofar as such conflicts are easier to initiate than wars declared by Congress.

Just-war doctrine pronounces wars justifiable only if certain pre-conditions are met.  (See chapter three)  America’s four major postmodernist wars have been suspect for several reasons, one of which is their violation of the written Constitution.  Sending troops into harms way in order to inflict harm on others is morally unjustifiable whenever the war is unauthorized, i.e. when the war is unconstitutional.  Wars lacking proper authorization betray our troops by making them parties to grand crimes.  An unconstitutional war puts our troops in a situation almost like lynching, where the posse is loath to await legal authorization from the proper tribunal.  Since World War II, our Commander-in-Chief has ordered the U.S. military into five major wars — Korea, 1950-53; Vietnam, 1965-74; Gulf War I, 1991; Afghanistan, 2002; and Gulf War II (the invasion and occupation of Iraq), 2003-date.  Not one of these wars included the declaration required in Article one, section eight, of the U.S. Constitution.

The arch-amendment will reassert the constitutional role of Congress in the war-making process.  (For a more thorough discussion of amended war powers under section 5:1, see chapter three).  In short, the constellation amendment will restore and strengthen the principle of proper authorization by the Senate and the House before any U.S. President can conduct a war of more than a fortnight's duration.  Thus returning the issue of long-term war or peace to the Legislative Branch will make it more difficult for the Commander-in-Chief to start a war, and harder for the likes of the Bush/Cheney Administration to prolong a war, or to maintain open-ended military occupation of a foreign country.  Let America's wars be fewer and shorter.

Another reason that America’s four postmodernist wars are suspect has to do with America’s moral meltdown.  No nation-building project overseas will be clearly justifiable, or likely to work, unless and until we suppress the wickedness that distorts America’s vision.  “Thou hypocrite, first cast out the plank from thine own eye, and then thou wilt see clearly to cast out the twig from thy brother’s eye.”[21]  Compared to a country that exhibits moral balance (like the USA before 1963), military intervention by a morally degenerate nation will tend to provoke worse disorders than are solved.  Given our corrupt condition domestically, whatever makes foreign wars more difficult to undertake politically, so much the better.  To have an apostate superpower bullying other nations is the last thing the world needs, and is not what most Americans desire.

The restoration of Congress' traditional role on questions of national defense ought therefore to draw many Americans into the quintuple coalition.  The same fifth corner of the proposed coalition appeals also to defenders of the environment.  Here our purpose is to secure for greens some prerogatives at the expense of the WTO [World Trade Organization], NAFTA, FTAA, and other threats by global capitalism to do an end run around environmental protections.  Since issues of sovereignty are at the heart of the anti-globalist movement, the conservation movement will have good reason to ally, shoulder to shoulder, with political conservatives.  Activists on the right despise the prospect of surrendering democratic control of national affairs to world organizations unaccountable to the U.S. Constitution, or to officials unanswerable to an American electorate.  Leftists like Noam Chomsky are worried about the transference of power to a ‘virtual senate’ of investors and lenders, pitting voters in a highly unequal competition with foreign currency and hedge fund managers.[22]

The coalition as proposed here cuts across customary political party boundaries, and across other lines of entrenchment in the ongoing polarization of America.  Many of our longstanding battle-lines have little to do, indeed, with the real interests of anyone.

Take environmentalism and private property rights, for example – where nature and private property are two views of the same soil.  At the ground level there is no intrinsic enmity, and indeed much in common.  No inherent divergence of interests militates against an alliance.  A coalition for the constellation law would help effect reconciliation, as environmentalists who love the land make common cause with householders who beautify homes.  Under the constellation law, section 9:2, householders would be able to tend gardens and yards in a contiguous green zone exempt from property taxes.

The high privilege of possessing family property is weakened, however, when government assumes the role of landlord.  Landowners feel vulnerable, defensive and justifiably suspicious of inspectors.  To some extent, animosity between greens and homeowners is the work of government bureaucrats and others whose jobs may depend on polarizing citizens.

The polarization is partly the work of doctrinaire property rights advocates, who maintain that absolute autonomy accompanies every deed or land title.  Property rights absolutists tend to deny that the multitude of denizens who cherish terra firma have prerogatives, or that the public prerogative overrides private land development.  The idea that corporate ownership grants autonomy from elected representatives of the people, has born a variety of bitter fruits, including the alienation of greens from responsible private property owners.

   To be sure, absolutists on the environmental side do their part in perpetuating polarization.  Uncompromising greens discount, for example, the transformation of the lumber industry from one time despoilers, to reformed re-planters of forests.  Absolutist greens give spotted owl habitats priority over human beings, for whom livelihoods are part of the living environment.  Absolutists of this ilk would have us nationalize the land and gate-off forest roads as the final solution to environmental irresponsibility.

They tend to embrace the “look but don’t touch” attitude toward nature, and have often supported legislation to erect a virtual wall of separation between civilization and the environment.  This approach is opposed by well balanced environments like Bobby Kennedy, Jr., and John Cronin.  

The fifth corner of the proposed coalition will appeal to such moderates, sometimes called “blue-collar environmentalists,” who look more to Teddy Roosevelt's idea of stewardship than to separation.  With the Water Keeper Alliance blue-collar ecologists believe “...that for communities to flourish and human dignity to endure, nature must be much closer at hand.  Regular contact with the land and water plays a vital role in reviving our senses and defining our sense of common purpose.”[22a]  

A purpose of the constellation law is to effect a national reconciliation.  The peacemaking process would address the polarization that pits environmental protections against the historic policy of protecting private property rights.  In reality, moderate greens, who prefer stewardship to separating civilization from the environment, are often quite willing to make concessions to the common interest. Therefore, we can afford to alienate absolutists among the greens who demand unremitting intrusiveness by government, leading to radical limitation or even elimination of the rights that accrue to the ownership of property.   Likewise with their counterparts: the proposed coalition will not need to attract property rights absolutists who are hell bent on abolishing all regulation whatsoever.  The goal in coalition building is to bring cooperative-minded elements – notably here reasonable property rights advocates and blue-collar greens – into the quintuple alliance.

            Consider once again the natural affinity, or at least the lack of intrinsic animosity, between the five components of the proposed counterrevolutionary combination.  Arrayed from right to left on the political spectrum:

 

§         Domiciliary defenders.

§         Believers who embrace Biblical morality

§         Voters willing to champion an uncorrupted Republic

§         Workers advocating full-employment, who therefore look askance at automation and outsourcing.

§         Defenders of (a) peace (b) the environment.

 

To help illustrate the nature of such a league, let us examine the country’s most famous emblem.  The animal kingdom knows no bird on a par with the aquila magna.  Also the American eagle is venerable by virtue of its longstanding status as our national emblem, predating the Constitution itself.

 

The Great Seal of the United States, 1782-present	American Bald Eagle, US Fish & Wildlife Service,  Don Pfitzer

            Looking to the two wings of the great eagle[23] we discover an anthropomorphic metaphor for the left – right – center components of the proposed coalition.  Befeathering the right wing would be advocates of spiritual revival (Judeo-Christian faith and morals), and of property rights (domiciliary security).  The left wing includes advocates for world peace, for the environment, and for labor (full-employment); i.e. the www of real world issues (no virtual problems these) namely war, wildlife and work.  Occupying both the left and the right are various anti-globalists supporting (or at least not militantly quarreling with) national sovereignty.

The head and body, at the eagle’s center, encompass the centrist appeal of governmental cleanup — including rotation in office, recall, and democratizing congressional committees; also streamlining the federal government by trimming the bureaucracy and permeating it with elected ombudsmen.

As evidenced by bipartisan popular support for term-limits, advocates for reforming the U.S. Government are innately neither liberal nor conservative.  Cronies in government corruption do not come from the left or the right per se, but from the regime’s insiders, financiers and courtiers.  In the 1990’s Democrat Party opposition to term limits sprang primarily from the party hierarchy and from the officeholder class, especially incumbent members of Congress and state legislators whose offices were in the crosshairs.  However, rank-and-file Democrats, Independents and Republicans all yielded majorities favoring term limits.

And so the counterrevolutionary combination would be an aquiline coalition with two grand constituencies on the left, two on the right, and in the center, between the two wings, an agenda for political reform that is pretty much independent of party affiliation or position on the political spectrum.

            Obviously quite diverse appeals and purposes would spring from this eagle-like or aquiline alliance.   After a superficial glance, one might suppose mutual antagonism to be the overriding characteristic.  On the two wings, for example, the first and fifth corners [religious conservatives and environmentalists] might seem like bedfellows so utterly strange as to undermine the stability of any coalition, notwithstanding that conserve is the root word for the terms that describe the two – namely conservatives and conservationists.  A closer look will, however, reveal a good deal in common, like the theological basis for environmental stewardship.  As indicated for example in the Roman Catholic Catechism (2415), the seventh of the Ten Commandments requires “religious respect for the integrity of creation.”  Likewise with RFK, Jr.'s speeches and writings:  “My hero is St. Francis of Assisi,” says Bobby Kennedy, “because he understood the connection between spirituality and the environment.”

A few analogies may shed light on the concept of a widely diverse coalition.  Consider classical music:  With the finale to his Jupiter Symphony of 1788, Mozart takes five completely independent themes or voices and in perfect counterpoint brings them together to produce what is still celebrated as “the highest triumph of instrumental composition.”  Also in chamber music, quintets feature a variety of instruments blending a diversity of sounds.

Other instructive analogies might be team chess and basketball, where teams compete as quintets.  Imagine a varsity team composed of teammates speaking five different languages.  Does anyone think that teamwork among five talented players would be impossible on the basketball court, just because the two guards spoke Filipino and Spanish, while the native tongues of the two forwards were Senegalese and Vietnamese, and the center spoke only English?[24]  Team spirit and the common interest in victory can overcome language barriers.  Likewise teamwork is possible in the proposed aquiline coalition, notwithstanding the diversity of ideological bent that would underlie the pentagon of purposes.

Please note that this fivefold purpose would not be like pumpkin pie divided among five branches of a family, where each provides an ingredient (i.e. pumpkin, eggs, milk, sugar, crust).  A better analogy would be a five course meal, or Thanksgiving Day potluck, where the parents provide the turkey, the grandparents the gravy and the dressing, while the aunts, uncles and cousins bring assorted vegetables, fruits, and deserts.  The latter scenario lets each contingent decide the ingredients for its assigned portion of the meal.  Here specialization has the advantage that each of the five contingents may concentrate on what they prepare, and during the eating may savor what they prefer.

Likewise each contingent of the quintuple coalition would campaign for an agenda that is manifestly not a mixture of ingredients for one pie, i.e. not an amalgamation of alloyed expectations.  The compromised concoction is comparable, perhaps, to the crossing of factional lines we witnessed in 2005 during the fatal tragedy involving Terry Schindler-Schiavo in Florida.  People on the left, like Rev. Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader found themselves in an ad hoc alliance with leaders of the pro-life movement.  They stood together on the one issue of saving Terri’s life.  God bless them for that.  However, I believe our own left-right league will be more successful, i.e. more conducive to victory, insofar as the alliance is built on quid pro quos — allowing most Americans to pursue a victory that is right down their line, addressing their strong suit, with old friends for fellow campaigners.  Enthusiasm and zeal will be in proportion as each component of the coalition owns a corner of the overall agenda that is familiar, time-honored territory.

Among more ardent activists, to be sure, some will reject the coalition rather than abide ideas in one of the other corners.  Some anti-war protestors will, for example, eschew anything they perceive as “homophobic.”  Since the constellation law disavows sodomy and favors traditional family values, (section ten) some activists in the anti-Iraq war movement will refuse our invitation to march in the counterrevolution.  

For the sake of argument, imagine that half the natural adherents to a particular corner will reject the coalition, rather than work within an alliance so constituted.  Suppose thus for each potential 100 per corner, 50 defect.  Imagine further that each of the five corners has an equal number of potential recruits.  Under those conditions, the 50% defection rate would still yield 2½ times the number of recruits for the alliance than a single corner might field alone, assuming no defections whatsoever in a corner opting to carry on the contest without any coalition help.

But I believe a 50% defection rate is unrealistically pessimistic.  It is a safe supposition that the combination of forces will draw in far more of the natural adherents to a particular corner that it drives to defect.  This assumption is based on the nature of the constellation law, whose provisions are in accord with what past generations of Americans have embraced by consensus.  A friend told me recently that Treatise on Twelve Lights is a lot like an old textbook on civics.  The postmodernist revolution is a relative novelty that grates against the grain of U.S. history, and the values of pre-1963 America are far from dead – though clearly in retreat and obviously on the defensive.

Presumably, few Americans despise their roots so rabidly as to let the country perish rather than sing an anthem with strangers or relatively recent foes.  In other words, proportionately few will disavow a coalition if one-fifth touches a chord dear to their heart; while 4/5, 3/5, 2/5, or 1/5 of the overall agenda is dissonant to some degree.  The proposed counterrevolutionary combination will embrace enough basic issues that many Americans will find at least one corner where the melody resonates strongly enough to override some difference of opinion on the rest.

The quick and stunning rise of the anti-war coalition in 2003 is a case in point.  An assortment of quite varied groups coalesced to mass against the younger Bush's invasion of Iraq.  In addition to some Vietnam War veterans, these demonstrations included contingents of “college students, middle-aged couples, families with small children, older people who had marched for civil rights, and groups representing labor, the environment and religious, business and civic organizations.”[25] 

Such dissimilar groups proved willing to join forces in opposition to the Iraq war.  Why couldn't a quintet of interests coalesce to champion a fivefold restoration of America the Beautiful? 

At Three Forks, Montana, the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin Rivers converge to form the mighty Missouri, America’s longest river.  It does not require a degree in Hydrology to see that the confluence of three or more rivers results in a more powerful flow than any one of the tributaries singly.  Neither does it take a degree in Political Science to perceive that a fivefold force will pack more power (at least potentially) than any of its components campaigning alone.

Figure 2.2: The Aquiline Coalition or Quintuple Alliance (left to right)

 

LEFT		CENTER	RIGHT
1	2	3	4	5
Labor        Peace & Environment (Workers)        (Anti-war protestors) (Greens) (anti-WTO, etc.)      (anti-corporate globalism)		Governmental Cleanup (Voters)	Domiciliary Security       Religion & Morality (Householders) (Gun owners)              (Believers) (anti-globalism; pro-US sovereignty)

 

F-15 Eagle, the aquiline fighter

 

One factor favorable to formation of such an alliance is that many greens are more comfortable with Judeo-Christian manners and morals than with plutocratic ethics in the establishment.  Indeed the moral sensitivity of conservationists is comparable in intensity to the moral indignation of Americans concerned primarily with pollution of the culture.  Both corners work diligently to purify our surroundings, be it the moral climate or the physical environment.  Though the two forces may have very different targets for their revulsion, i.e. the water keepers vis-à-vis the culture keepers, both sides should recognize the advantages of a combination against the two sets of targeted polluters.  To put such a combination together, we must accentuate the common sense of reverence for God's creation which conservationists share with Christians and other people of faith.

            One of the strengths inherent in a five-cornered counterrevolutionary combination is that its quintet of players would draw support from both ends of the political spectrum as well as from the middle.[26]  Giving priority to full-employment will appeal to citizens from the left to the center, and yet the reform is not so far to the left as to drive most conservatives out of the coalition.  It is not such a leftist plank that it will jeopardize the whole platform.  On the contrary, full-employment is down-home apple pie, agreeable to almost all Americans wherever they reside on the political spectrum.

Indeed, as cultural conservatives reflect maturely on the merits of a full-employment economy, they may well join with the left in a chorus of halleluiahs!  A concerted campaign to tighten the labor market and raise the worth of each worker will help restore the living wage whereby one parent can serve as breadwinner while the spouse raises the family.  The breakdown of the family, combined with juvenile delinquency, are attributable in large part to the absence of a full-time homemaker.  Lower wages are therefore the common foe of both the labor movement and the cultural conservative.  This common foe – underemployment accompanied by a non-living wage – suggests a natural alliance.

As for the cultural planks from the standpoint of the left: they should at least be tolerable.  The reforms are neither puritanical nor theocratic so as to make the package anathema to all liberals, and yet they answer major points of grief and anxiety that cultural conservatives feel about the country's apostasy from God and His commandments.  Also the cleansing and redemocratizing of the Federal government will have an appeal that cuts right across the political spectrum.  These political reforms will appeal to Democrats and Republicans, to liberals, moderates and conservatives, who share a mutual distaste for the spectacle displayed in Washington, D.C.

as separate as the five fingers, and
yet one as the hand in all things
essential to mutual progress.” 
     Booker T. Washington, 1895 

Of course every analogy limps, and to be sure the human hand differs from a multi-faceted constitutional amendment in that the fingers are lined up in more or less the same direction.  Indeed, parties to the quintuple coalition have directions or objectives that may deviate 144 degrees from each other.

A relative I respect argued somewhat forcefully that the proposed coalition is unworkable because, unlike most alliances, he insisted, there is no common goal.  Any constitutional amendment is merely a mechanism or vehicle, not a goal, he said, and most of the parties to the coalition would not share the same objective.  If all they share is a desire to change the constitution to accomplish unrelated goals, he went on, then what is the purpose of the coalition in the first place?  Their only common goal, he concluded, would be to change the constitution, i.e. to participate together in the adventure of a constitutional revolution.

I replied then as I now urge the reader to respond when encountering a similar line of inquiry relative to the idea of a constitutional reform coalition.  A familiar comparison breaks right through the confusion: 

            An arch-amendment with diverse purposes is comparable to the platform of a political party, except that the amendment would have a narrower focus, and little if any focus on electing candidates to political offices.  The comparison holds insofar as a political party is a coalition of citizens with widely varied political interests.  Many of those interests are expressed in various planks that make up the party platform.  The planks are not infrequently as divergent as the four points on a compass.  Yet the tradition of writing platforms has stood the test of time, and platforms continue to help mobilize diverse factions into a more or less unified coalition.

One major difference is that political parties coalesce for the purpose of electing their people to public office, and the platform is subordinate in importance to the party slate of candidates.  By contrast, the counterrevolutionary combination proposed in this chapter should expend no energy on partisan election campaigns.  Our purpose is rather to circumvent a corrupt system, and in the process of restoring law –  i.e. the highest law of the land, the written U.S. Constitution – also to restore America the Beautiful.

            Another major difference is that political party platforms have no force of law behind them, whereas a constitutional amendment is about as forceful as you can get in a republic of laws.  Furthermore, a party’s national platform is not an end in itself, in that it is temporary and passes away every four years, whereas the U.S. Constitution as amended has permanence.  Notwithstanding the relative weakness of platforms, the fact is that at party conventions – county, state, and national – lots of energy and attention is expended on platform writing.

            Among any number of reasons that convention delegates work so hard to influence their party platform is that the platform of a major party is (or is thought to be) a vehicle or mechanism whereby to influence affiliated officeholders once they get power.  Lots of people who do not share the same goals involve themselves in platform committees, or in amending the platform from the floor of a party convention, in order to advance the planks of particular interest to them.  Imagine how much harder they would work for a platform if it were more than just a weak and often disregarded recommendation, but carried all the force of the highest law of the land!

Another inquiry might be posed: why do special interest groups bother to add their planks to one broad and diverse collection of planks known as the platform?  Why not promote each plank independently of the others?  The question turns on (in a word) power.  Several mini-agendas would be much weaker in vying for the attention of a largely apolitical public.  Recruits willing to fight for any one plank will be fewer than the sum total of enthusiasts for the various planks that combine to make a party platform.  The same principle of combination applies to the quintuple coalition (figure 2.2).

            The world of sports suggests another analogy.  American football puts together thousands of teams featuring an exceptionally wide variety of physical talents and body strengths.  Running, throwing, blocking in various ways, tackling, hiking, punting, placekicking, pass defense, defending against the run, skills unique to special teams – and by no means least, coaching, scouting, recruiting and scheduling games.

Moreover, amateur athletes play football for a wide variety of reasons.  Motivation varies from player to player — love of competition, of comradeship with teammates, of physical contact, of connecting with a receiver, of eluding a defender, of showmanship for friends or total strangers.  There are primal instincts too like the opportunity to release violent aggression, and the satisfaction of surviving in a virtual war zone.  Some of the motivation is less than glamorous, like getting in shape or escaping boredom.  Nor is football without ignoble instincts like the sadistic desire to inflict pain, or to see dejection in the face of a defeated opponent – perhaps made more intense by a personal grudge.  Football thrives also on noble instincts like good sportsmanship, chivalry to the vanquished, humility in triumph, and bringing pride to a kid brother or to a Dad in the stands.

The marvel is that American football brings kids and young adults with dozens of divergent motives to work out in fair weather and foul on the same practice field, and to perform (or warm the bench) on one gridiron.  Reasons are many for suffering the pain of grueling exercise, brutal contact, and the risk of heartbreaking disappointment – both personal and collective. 

Yet the desire to play, or just be there, focuses everyone to some extent on the one ultimate purpose of the game, namely to score more points than the opposing team. 

Likewise, though the motives inherent in a quintuple coalition may be many and varied, the ultimate aim of the contest – elevating one’s cause to the highest level – can make a cooperative constitutional enterprise viable.  As per the Twelve Lights Anthem at the end of this chapter,

our single purpose is a twelve lights law,

in common purpose, unity.

If your potential converts are unreceptive to analogies with football teams or party platforms, try Presidential campaigns.  But since the President of the United States is subject to the laws, (unlike a working constitution which is the highest law of the land, and subject only to God) imagine for the sake of a more exact analogy, that every four years we elected an absolute autocrat.  Suppose the office of autocrat made the incumbent equivalent to the "sun king" of the seventeenth century, Louis XIV.  The unelected king of Saudi Arabia provides a more contemporaneous model.

            In either case, elections for autocrat would be virtual constitutional conventions, because the highest law of the state would be at stake, each election deciding who could announce "L'Etat, c'est moi."  This hypothetical election of an absolute autocrat would be at least as high stakes a contest as the process of ratifying an arch-amendment to the Constitution.  Each candidacy would personify all kinds of diverse planks on behalf of which disparate groups would come together for one campaign on behalf of one person.

            But it would be political naiveté to suppose that each special interest could run its own candidate for autocrat personifying only the single issue they support, and still expect to win.  Campaigners would have no choice but to swallow some unsavory aspects of their candidate's personality and program.  Or they could change candidates, and still have to swallow unsavory qualities, though of a different set.

            And so, (back to reality) it would be unrealistic to think that supporters of tax-free domiciles could win a constitutional amendment on that subject alone.  Look at the effort to get a Constitutional Amendment banning “gay marriage.”  On Feb. 24th, 2004 it got the endorsement of the President of the United States.  His political party was then in control of both houses of Congress.  Public opinion surveys showed a substantial margin of opposition to opening up the institution of marriage to same-sex partners.  It was obvious that the traditional family, the first and fundamental unit of society, was under attack.  And yet, defenders of marriage could not on their own muster the political push to get the defense of marriage amendment off the ground.  In the Senate less than half the Senators voted in its favor.

            Likewise the term-limits movement should have taught us by now that the most potent single-issue coalitions cannot by themselves storm the tall palisades of the postmodernist regime:  In the initiative elections, 1990-1994, term limits sprang forth as the first radical institutional reform since the progressive era.  Citizen campaigners devoted millions of man-hours to the electoral sweeps in all 23 initiative states, winning by an average margin of 67%.  It was a magnificent campaign buoyed by a groundswell of support, historic in its proportions.

Alas, all this effort and populist energy went for naught, with the congressional rotation provisions swept aside in 1995 by decree of the Supreme Court!   Subsequently, watered-down constitutional amendment proposals were defeated twice in congressional floor votes, 1995 and 1997.  That was a hard lesson for the term-limits activists (of which I was one), indicating that no one group can do it alone.  To reach the top, to realize our hopes, we need a "counterrevolutionary combination.”

            And so a five corner coalition to promote a package of cultural, political, and economic reforms is, I think, our final hope of turning the USA around with sweeping, basic and lasting improvements.  The principle of bringing many disparate elements together is enshrined in an official symbol of the republic.  The motto, E Pluribus Unum (from many one), dates back to the American Revolution.  The War for Independence brought 13 separate colonies together in one political revolt against the common foe.  Sectional interests, economic and cultural, varied widely – especially between New England and the South.  And yet all thirteen united politically under the continental congress in order to oust the regime of George III, a common cause impossible to any of the colonies had they elected to fight alone.  Likewise today, without a 21st century version of E Pluribus Unum, none of the five corners of the proposed coalition can realistically hope to defeat the postmodernist regime.

Formidably presiding over the regime is a corrupt but encastled oligarchy that prefers elitism to good government.  The walls around these enemies of a viable America are not made of granite, however, and a quintuple coalition might well achieve a breakthrough.  A most welcome impetus will come from the greens and the peace activists.  Their participation in the coalition would provide the militancy of the Viet Nam war era, as resurrected recently in anti-Iraq war protests, and in worldwide anti-globalist demonstrations — such as the “Battle of Seattle” in 1999, and furious resistance since, to globalism and to transnational corporations leagued together in the likes of the WTO, NAFTA, FTAA, et. al.

To the extent that the proposed coalition partners would be extensions of some existing movements in operation today, we can expect that the upper crust of such movements may well oppose the constellation law.  Neither can we count on support from the hierarchy that currently presides over any of the other four corners of our proposed coalition.  Many if not most of the pulpits will be silent lest the IRS withdraw their tax exemptions, or lest compliant parishioners go elsewhere.  Government reform groups will guard their donor lists and stick to the established agendas that give their hierarchy status and salary.  Labor leaders are too often in bed with high level politicians of the left who will insist on solidarity with foes of religion in public life.  Homeowners associations are more inclined to regard environmentalists as enemies than as potential allies.

But the rank and file in the five corners of the coalition will be different breeds of cats than the image-conscious felines who populate the upper strata of tax-exempt institutions.  The best way, therefore, to start a counterrevolution is to begin working at the grass roots.[29]

            A visceral bond calculated to hold such a grass roots coalition together is this:  Greens & peace activists, property owners, organized labor, cultural conservatives, and clean government advocates have in common a kind of innate impetus to revolt.  [1] Cultural conservatives are inclined to revolt against the regime that pushed God out of public life and replaced His revelation with unfettered paganism.  [2] Greens revolt against the globalist plutocracy which treats the environment irreverently as no more than a means to make profit.  Their kith and kin in the peace movement revolt against unconstitutional armed conflicts – wars that demoralize, debase, and de-legitimize our troops.  [3] Workers are driven to revolt against a political / economic establishment that is hell-bent to globalize, and to remove all barriers to free trade, even if the cost is to lower the real wage of the American worker, and to deprive many citizens of a gainful occupation altogether.  [4] Home owners (and renters) have good reason to revolt against government imposed rents euphemized as property taxes.  So too must gun-owners revolt against creeping revocation of their right to defend their families and their homes by means of personal property, namely the firearms the Second Amendment entitles them “to keep and bear.”  [5] Government reformers are impelled to revolt against an entrenched establishment whose first interest is protecting the prerogatives and status of the officeholder class.

 

 

IS REVOLT OR INSURRECTION ETHICAL?

            In any society the people who make natural insurgents against the government and against unjust laws are the dispossessed, the unemployed, the persecuted and the disenfranchised.  Least prone to back insurrection are inherently conformist citizens, some of whom acknowledge a religious obligation to honor and obey established authorities.[30]  In America at this writing – though they represent minorities, albeit growing ones – both conformist and insurgency-prone elements are becoming malcontent and alienated.  They share qualities which Crane Brinton finds characteristic of revolutionaries everywhere: “...a feeling that there is something in all men better than their present fate, and a conviction that what is, not only ought not, but need not, be.  And, one must add, a gut-deep hatred for the way the things are.”[31]

The more religious and/or moralistic, the more reluctant to revolt?  Perhaps, until a threshold is crossed, after which religion can convert otherwise law-abiding citizens into holy terrors to the powers-that-be.  In the 18th century, preachers like George Whitefield,[32] the “lightening rod of the Great Awakening,” raised moral expectations and helped make budding revolutionaries of Americans who had previously been among the most conservative and cautious elements in society.  John Adams referred to a sermon by Rev. Jonathan Mayhew of Boston, delivered two decades before the Boston Massacre and oft reprinted, as “the spark that ignited the American Revolution.”

In those days, as in ours, the regime had stepped well beyond the realm of proper authority.  By 1776, the regime of King George III was employing the power of the sword not against the evil elements in society, but against the good (reversing Romans 13:3).  At that point the maxim of the "angelic doctor," St. Thomas Aquinas, became a pressing reality for religious people: 

Obedience to secular rulers is obligatory insofar as the order of justice requires us to obey.  Consequently, when any governor holds power not justly but rather by means of usurpation, or he issues unjust ordinances, then we have no duty to obey; except perchance to avoid scandal or peril.[33]

In the 16th century the “Huguenot pope” and statesman, Duplessis-Mornay, cited the Bible to show that if the populace does nothing to oppose political evil, then the people themselves share in the guilt.  For Mornay, failure to resist governmental wickedness is itself sinful.[34] 

Two centuries later, as tension began to build between Britain and her thirteen colonies, the famed jurist, Sir William Blackstone, also a practicing Christian,[35] wrote "that protection and subjection are reciprocal."[36]  Rev. Mayhew had preached essentially the same point, that “no government is to be submitted to, at the expense of that which is the sole end of all government, – the common good and safety of society….”[37]

Then, just before Christmas, 1775, King George III issued the Prohibitory Act, officially withdrawing the 13 colonies from the protection of the British government.  Like coal-in-the-sock, the King’s Yuletide present to our forefathers terminated the long-standing relationship of protection from and allegiance to the crown.  From that point on, neither our forefathers nor our foremothers remained conscience bound by the edicts of king and parliament.[38]  Some six months later the Prohibitory Act figured prominently in America’s founding document and in its accusations against King George:

He has abdicated government here,

by declaring us out of his protection

and waging war against us.

Declaration of Independence, 1776

The good news is that King George III was unsuccessful in suppressing our ancestors’ just insurrection against tyranny.  The bad news is that the malevolence proceeds now from our own regime,[39] not from a foreign capitol like London.  And it is of a far more sinister character, making the redcoats of 1773-1781 look like angels of light by comparison.

Today the risk is a reversal of America’s relationship with the great Helmsman of history.  Annuit Coeptis, [He (God) has favored our cause] is the motto written by the continental congress in recognition of Divine Providence, and in gratitude for the assistance of Almighty God in the War for Independence.  Alas, Renuit Coeptis, or Advorsatur Coeptis (He opposes our cause), might be soon become more apropos.  The postmodernist regime has exhibited rank ingratitude and made “under God” the falsest phrase in the flag pledge.

Let us turn America around, lest God continue to withdraw his blessings.  To do otherwise, to eschew the insurrection necessary to restore our best national qualities to preeminence, would be to sin by omission, for a nation's decline is not just about politics.  Our spouses and children will have to suffer through the fall, along with extended family, friends, and fellow citizens.  The trip down to oblivion will be a dreadful ride for most American citizens, while the removal of the Great Republic from the international equation is likely to leave the world a much worse place.  And so it is safe to say that launching the insurrection will indeed be ethical if it is done properly, for the rescue effort will be consistent with the high ethical standards of gratitude to God, duty to country, and service to humanity.  

            

            The American Revolution, with its idealism and patriotic vigor, is now nearly twelve score years distant.  And yet, like an old oracle forgotten but never lost, America’s greatest patriotic poet, Longfellow, assures us in his Paul Revere’s Ride, that the spirit of ‘76 will revive “in the hour of darkness, and peril and need.”

For all Americans who love their country’s heritage, our imperative is to arise and dispel the national stupor, or as Abraham Lincoln put it, to “disenthrall ourselves.”  Until we become discriminating and selective in submission to a government that subordinates the written U.S. Constitution to judicial tyranny we will continue losing the republic.  Until the leading usurpers exchange their black robes for orange overalls we cannot bring closure to the government of men not laws that has altered the nation's fundamental nature.

In short, loyalty to God, love of country, and ethical imperatives all require that we overthrow the postmodernist power structure in accordance with the "alter or abolish" clause of our founding document.  Indeed the Declaration of Independence is sacred and ethical.  It calls us to a holy cause:

Wherever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness…. (And) when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

(Declaration of Independence, 1776, emphasis added) 

Holy Uprising

            Sweeping reform in a huge and complex country like the United States is a formidable agenda. It is formidable from a practical standpoint in that reason and logic can get lost in the heat of contention between factions, or in labyrinthine red tape. Persuading a heavily bureaucratized society to embark upon a radical turnabout is going to be more difficult, I think, than was convincing Ferdinand and Isabella to provide ships for a dreamy mariner.

Not only are we bound up in bureaucracy, but the complex organization of the Federal government, subdivided into so many branches, departments and congressional committees, can be more challenging to reform than autocracy. As described in Tom Paine’s Common Sense, the problems associated with political complexity were more daunting under the English constitution of the day (as also in our USA) than in a government headed by Machiavelli’s Prince:

 

Absolute governments (tho’ the disgrace of human nature) have this advantage with them, that they are simple; if the people suffer,

they know the head from which their suffering springs, know likewise the remedy, and are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures.

But the constitution of England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may suffer for years together without being able to discover in

which part the fault lies; some will say in one and some in another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

 

Furthermore, any fundamental change proposed in America will encounter heavier resistance as it cuts deeper into vested interests.  Indeed in every nation in the annals of history, selfishness and egomania in high places have posed menacing obstacles to improvement.  As Machiavelli put it in the 16th century, [40]

...there is nothing more difficult to plan or more uncertain of success or more dangerous to carry out than an attempt to introduce new institutions, because the introducer has as his enemies all those who profit from the old institutions, and has as lukewarm defenders all those who will profit from the new institutions.  This lukewarmness results partly from fear of their opponents, who have the laws on their side, partly from the incredulity of men, who do not actually believe new things unless they see them yielding solid proof.

One thinks of the Gracchi brothers in the republic of ancient Rome (2nd century, B.C.).  Their reforms encountered fierce opposition from vested interests, especially in the roman senate.  Both brothers died during mob violence stirred up by uncompromising and self-interested senators.  Adherence to popular interest proved too weak to overcome the political prestige and patriotic aura associated with the roman senate.

In general, secular self-interest lacks the magnetism and staying power that springs from religion.  And so, lest our hopes for radical reform go the way of the Gracchian reforms, the religious corner of the pentagon coalition described above as primus inter pares (first among equals) will be the indispensable element, or sine qua non,of the counterrevolution.

To mobilize a country like ours, whether for insurrection by suede or sword, it will be necessary to bring the fervor of religion into play.  For the most part Americans have forgotten or dismissed Thomas Jefferson's secular call, “‘God forbid that America should go twenty years without a revolution.’”[41]  Unlike France, Poland and Ireland, for example – or Latin America – the post-Civil War USA lacks an extensive legacy of armed insurrection.  Americans have no inherited feel for the barricades.  But like Poland and Ireland, religion does enjoy a special place in our national life.  In religion, therefore, a wellspring of zeal and commitment can be tapped at the heart of American society and culture.

The most successful rising against government on this continent is what we celebrate on the 4th of July.  The deep spiritual roots of the American Revolution provide us an encouraging pattern.  On the eve of the war, the committees of correspondence spread the word of resistance throughout the colonies under the following motto:[42]

No king but 

king Jesus! 

Historically one of the great wellsprings of reform has been religion, especially as Christopher Dawson has pointed out, in Western culture.[43]  Where reason is cold, and the popularity of leaders like the Gracchi may be fleeting, religion has spiritual fire and stamina.  Reform movements based on both religion and reason combine to exert formidable power, just as the individual is effective and persuasive when his head and heart fight for a single purpose.[44]  As eminent historian, Lord Acton, observed, “Religion is the key of history.”[45]

The works of Mahatma Gandhi in India and Rev. Martin Luther King in America testify to the potency of reform that has religion as a driving force.  The American Revolution itself owed much to the mid-18th century Great Awakening, during which evangelists like Rev. George Whitfield taught the common man that he was equal in God's sight to any British lord, and that even King George III was subject to a higher ethical order.[46]  Without the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew’s widely circulated sermon with its caveats concerning “Submission and Non-resistance to the Higher Powers,”[47] believers might have taken Tom Payne’s Common Sense (1776) as more disturbing than convincing.

In French Hispaniola, or Haiti, the slaves rose up under a capable leader, and succeeded after twelve years, 1791-1803, in establishing independence.  This was history’s only slave uprising successful in establishing a new national freedom.  By dint of exceptional military gifts, Haiti’s liberator came to be known as the “Black Napoleon.”  He was a devout Roman Catholic, and “throughout his arduous and perilous career, Toussaint L'Ouverture found great support himself, and exerted great influence over others, in virtue of his deep and pervading sense of religion.”  Moreover, Toussaint’s revolt against slavery was inspired by the stark contrast between the softening of slavery as required in the Old Testament, and the French Code Noir as applied to Haiti in the 18th century.[48]  His biographer tells us that from assiduous reading of both the Old and New Testament Toussaint was compelled…

to conclude that on him too had, by the hand of Providence, been devolved a share in the truly religious task of liberating and upraising a cruelly oppressed and deeply injured tribe…. Satisfied by his religious studies that slavery was incompatible with the Gospel, he resolved to do what in him lay to annihilate slavery in his own vicinity.[49]

  In Mexico the first stage of the war for independence was led by a Roman Catholic clergyman, Fr. Miguel Hidalgo.  He is revered today as the father of Mexican independence.  On September 16 the annual Mexican fiesta, El Grito, celebrates Fr. Hidalgo’s revolutionary call of that late Summer day in 1810.

In Europe eleven years later, 1821, a Greek Orthodox cleric, Germanos, Metropolitan of Patras, preached a sermon for insurrection against the Turks.[50]  The date of Archbishop Germanos’ proclamation, the 25th of March, is observed by modern Greeks as their independence day, celebrating their ancestors’ hard-won revolt against the Ottomans.[51]  Such a number of Greek Orthodox priests were involved in the insurrection, even carrying arms, that a British eyewitness, Captain W.H. Humphreys, considered the lower clergy “the principal instigators of the revolution.”[52] 

When the momentum shifted in favor of the Turks, and the Greeks stood on the verge of defeat, it was the clerics who persevered and encouraged their flock not to give up.  After capturing the Greek stronghold of Mesolonghi, April, 1826, Egyptian commander Ibrahim Pasha, in the service of Turkey, marched  to the Morea (Peloponnese).  There his army attacked the monastery of Mega Spileo, [due south of Corinthian Gulf coastal town, Dakofto] where “the warrior-monks, who had played an important part in the war, assisted by a number of chieftains, easily repulsed him.”[53]

From Judeo-Christian ideals, articulated by the likes of William Wilberforce in Great Britain and Harriet Beecher Stowe in the United States, came the impetus for the abolition of slavery in their respective countries.

After more than 1800 years of dispersion among the various Gentile nations, the twentieth century reemergence of Israel as a Jewish state could never have occurred without the religious element in Zionism.

The support of the Roman Catholic Church was crucial to the Filipino insurrection against the Marcos dictatorship in 1986; likewise in the 25 year war in East Timor culminating in 2002 with independence from Indonesia.  See for example the key roles played respectively by Jaime Cardinal Sin and Archbishop Carlos Belos.

The 1989 upheaval that overthrew Communism in Eastern Europe began in Poland where Catholicism was its animating force.  “The revolution of '89” then spread to East Germany through Protestant church meetings.

At this writing the U.S. Armed Forces are on the receiving end of an insurrection in Iraq with Islamic religion as its driving force.  The invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime was a cakewalk, as long as our foe was merely political and military.  Accordingly, Saddam made hypocritical last minute attempts to link his regime to religion.

Not long after George W. Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln to bask in military glory under the banner declaring “mission accomplished,” the fury of jihad hit our troops like a firestorm.  The overwhelming majority of the thousands of casualties and deaths inflicted on American soldiers took place after the fall of Saddam’s secular regime, and after the rise of an insurrection by ardent religionists.  Despite the vast superiority of the United States military in materiel and manpower, the relatively few and lightly armed Iraqi insurgents proved to be a holy terror when armed with the ardor of religious conviction.[54]

            Any astute student of history will have to concede that religion can be a powerful force for revolutionary (or in our case counterrevolutionary) change.  Quite another question, however, is whether it would be fair to force Judeo-Christian ways back to the top.  Insofar as postmodern paganism is imposing a new Babylonian captivity, may we now rightly try to escape the subjection by employing the power in religion to force a turnabout?

In a word, yes – but with one proviso:  If God tells us by sure prophesy that His will for Christians in America is that we endure the yoke patiently and offer no resistance to the new Babylon, then God’s will be done.  So far, however, the Lord has raised up no Jeremiah to denounce American citizens who resist the post-1963 revolution and its postmodernist regime [Jeremiah 27-28].  In the absence of such a divine mandate in the negative, let an Israelite resistance that occurred 4-1/2 centuries after Jeremiah be our Scriptural pattern.  This Biblical counterrevolution took place some twelve dozen years before the birth of Christ; the events are described in the two Old Testament books of Maccabees.  Consider these seven lines from the Eulogy of Judas Maccabeus.

He was like a lion in his exploits,…

turning wrath away from Israel,…

evil-doers were utterly confounded,…

He brought bitterness to many a king

And rejoicing to Jacob by his deeds,

his memory is blessed for ever and ever…

and he rallied those who were on the point of perishing.

1st Maccabees 3: 5-7, 9

To put the “rejoicing” of Israel in American terms, we have from our Creator the inalienable right to pursue happiness, as per the Declaration of Independence.  Accordingly, then, our civic duty is to promote happiness for our nation, for our families, and for our posterity by throwing off the oppression that corrupts our children, that makes their schools killing grounds, that pushes masculine qualities down and raises up perversion, that protects baby killers, that sullies Americanism by making it more tawdry and impious, and that suppresses principles and institutions which promote clean and positive lifestyles.  Undoubtedly such abominations in national policy undermine the national purposes stated in the Preamble to the Constitution, including the call to the American people to “insure domestic Tranquility.”

If we fail to fight the good fight for the purpose of overturning the postmodernist regime, then I believe we will forever lose – and deservedly so – a blessing which Thomas Jefferson described as that greatest and most fundamental of all freedoms, the right to be a self-governing people.  Not only will we the people forfeit the freedom our third President described, but a ghastly parody of a once “sweet land of liberty” will be our legacy to the future.

            Justice and political necessity both require that the content of our proposed reform package reflect the values and views of religious minded people.  An exclusively secular agenda would lead to failure along the lines of the Gracchian reforms.  However if most of the reform package (sections 1-9) appeal primarily to secular interests in the polity and the economy, and the last three sections, 10-12, reassert the historic role of faith and morals in public life, would not that be a fair accommodation in return for an alliance sufficiently broad-based to succeed?  If the surveys are even close to true that 43 percent of Americans attend church regularly, that makes the religious element in the body politic one of the largest potential voting blocks in the country.[55]  Can reformers with secular worldviews afford to pass up such a formidable and promising alliance?  Even ex-Communists and atheists like Boris Yeltsin [later, according to reports, he did convert to Christianity] recognized the essential role of collaboration with the Church in reforming Russia and liquidating the USSR.[56]  We pray that their reformist counterparts in secular America will not balk at the cooperation inherent in the proposed five corner coalition.

Assuming we can convince secular reformers to join forces with America's Judeo-Christian elements, there is no certainty that the believers themselves will be enthused.  American churches and synagogues may prove unwilling to mobilize.  Many believers regard campaigning for sweeping reform as futile, especially when it becomes more generalized and less specific to religious issues.[58]  Moreover many rate the public institutions of the United States as distinctly hostile to religion, and have become embittered and demoralized by the failure of political action to improve things.

Religious Americans may well ask: why intervene on behalf of a nation that greedily embraces consumerism, violence and hedonism?  But in God's eyes the matter may stand as it does in the Biblical book of Jonah, where the Lord puts ordinary Ninevites and their needs far above resentment at the empire, and above one's personal sense of moral indignation.[59]

Hans-Bernd von Haeften, a German foreign service official, active in Christian circles and in the resistance to Hitler, wrote in 1941:

...if in the order or disorder of things, events or conditions occur which endanger the spiritual salvation of man, if politics places citizens in situations which as Christians they cannot accept, we come to the inevitable crossroads of Church and State; inevitable because both deal with the same people, and because these people cannot be split into citizen and Christian.  But at such points of intersection,...the Episcopate does not expect the church to watch in silence without lifting a finger.  This is the time to speak and to admonish.  When the Christian peoples are beset by the madness of political demons, as they are today, the Church must be heard in public and must bear witness before the whole world.[60]

So instead of sitting by in sullen passivity,[61] let believers heed the Scripture (Proverbs 25:21-22; Romans 12:20-21), and do good works even for postmodernists, be they collective or individual.  If the nation is presented with a way to improve and yet the majority scorns that path or proves so ambivalent about religious people that the requisite coalition never forms, then at least believers will have made a civic response to the Great Commandment to love one's neighbor.  If we point them to water which they refuse to drink, then the death of America from self-imposed drought will not be on our conscience.  We will have fulfilled the watchman’s Biblical obligation.[62]

As descendants of the revolutionaries of 1776 our heritage calls us:  Take up the burden of overthrowing the regime that has employed a non-military, judicial/cultural form of blitzkrieg to occupy the control centers that govern American society.  In their de-Christianization of American society we might recall John Pym’s address to the British Parliament in 1640, two years before the English Civil War:  Said Pym who would soon lead Parliament into that war:

The greatest liberty of the kingdom is religion;
thereby we are freed from spiritual evils,
and no impositions are so grievous as
those that are laid upon the soul.

In any case this much is certain.  Without the active participation of both the secular and religious parts of the social spectrum, there will be no major reforms; and without sweeping reform this country is going to get worse as a place to live and to raise children.

 

 

Anthem and Flag

            Every populist cause deserves an inspirational banner, and a song.  Each rank and file member of the resistance will be inspired by more than his or her brain.  Each will also be a human being with spiritual inclinations and heart-felt emotions.  Putting heart into it is the key to success.  As the hymnist, Marty Hangen wrote in “Send Down the Fire,”

 

Give us hearts that sing.

Give us deeds that ring….

 

America’s greatest revolution and second longest war took place at the birth of the Republic.  What better flag to inspire a 21st century rising than the banner that presided over Independence Hall (when it was not occupied by British troops), namely the Betsy Ross flag which flew over the continental army as it fought against overwhelming odds?

 

With cousin Kayleigh, Michael Struble displays the Betsy Ross Flag

If the proverb about putting new wine into old bottles applies to flags, a slight modification might be in order.  One possibility is reducing the 13 stars of the Betsy Ross Flag to twelve, as per the dedication page at the beginning of this book. 

 

In addition, I offer a martial hymn.  Perhaps campaigners will find its strains inspirational.

            You might recognize parts of the melody, for I started with a few measures of old songs and then added new.[63]  The lyrics are largely original.[64]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Twelve Lights Anthem -

 

Adapted by Robert Struble, Jr., 2003

 

Audio performance, sung (in E flat) by Jeryl & Katie Struble, with harmony and base by Terry Enyeart, accompanied on the piano by Robert Struble, Jr.  Recorded by Terry Enyeart, March 2004.
	Instrumental version at conclusion (in G).

 

 
══ Twelve Lights Anthem ══

 

Verse One

Our single focus is a twelve lights law,

In com-mon pur-pose, u-ni-ty.

The Con-sti-tu-tion let us re-in-force,

If we can, not by the gun, may it be!

 

- Chorus -

But though they rake us for the goals we hold,

Do keep us firm lest our country fail,

We can’t be cold, we must be bold,

Be-cause we fight on to vic-to-ry

By Thee we fight on to vic-to-ry

 

Verse two

Remember how with shields of walls and trees

Our minutemen did oust the king,

and how the Greek host fled the Maccabees,

how to slaves, a civil war, let freedom ring.

 

- Chorus -

Verse three

We’re for a U-S-A that we can love,

A land of liberty that’s true

Where kids are free to pray to God above

And to rule, is not mere-ly, for the few.

 

- Chorus -

Verse four

Pro-tec-ting air, land, life, and cul-ture too,

And the old fash-ioned fam-i-ly

To keep our arms, but let our wars be few,

Tax-free homes, ma-ny more jobs, sove-reign-ty

 

-          Chorus –

Lyrics by Robert Struble, 2003

 

 

 

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