The following article is by author Reed Camacho Kinney.
Christian Values and Society
We know Christian values well enough, because they reflect the truths of
our corporal condition in nature.
Christianity is symbiosis in relation to both human interaction and human
interaction with nature, or life in general.
The gladiatorial coliseum of ancient Rome is a microcosmic representation
of the societal conditions imposed on people through the centralization of
power. A modern version of that is the back stabbing television game
called Survivor. In neither case, can Christian values flourish in either of
those arenas.
In capitalistic society, people are trapped by forcing their dependence on
the impersonal conglomerates of centralized mass production and
distribution systems. The executive branch of the American government
is either the “lap dog” of the monopolized, impersonal mega-consortiums
of capital interests, or it is their unwilling “valet.” The American Federal
Government levies tax, in part, to keep abreast of interest laden loan
payments.
I need not predict what the imminent outcomes of this “house of cards”
will be, which are self-evident. The toll in human suffering is building.
Christianity is about people and their well being. The Christian challenge is
to build a Christian society.
The way to those ends is through a participatory, structured, dialogical based,
consensus-based civil society.
Decentralization
Participatory, DECENTRALIZED appropriate-industry, agricultural
production, consensus-based civic organization, education, health care,
and community fiscal organization are the components of Christian society!
Christianity is contingent on the actualization of maximum community
with maximum individuation; survival with growth. The vehicle of growth
is art in genuine community, and art is the source of science and the
scientific method.
Genuine, participatory community is structured so that each member
receives community support for all of her productive endeavourers;
particularly, each and every child who expands her knowledge and skills
with community support. There are no grade levels, nor demotions in
community education, and no tests, per se. An ongoing record of
attainment, a résumé of sorts, is kept by each learner, and an abbreviated,
updated copy is maintained in the education department. The education
department, education through art, is participatory, and is managed by
adult, teacher learners and by learner teachers. And, when children reach
the stage of ego stability somewhere between the ages of twelve through
fifteen, perhaps younger in some cases, at their discretion, they can
participate in the community’s civil culture, and in its civic-economic
organizations (more on that below).
Genuine community has core Public Productive Enterprises, which provide
members with gainful occupations and, at once, provide members with
their minimum guaranteed standard of service. It is a generative circle.
HUMAN DIGNITY is structured into its civil culture. And, each community
Public Productive Enterprise contains an office of the community
educational department, which is itself included among the public
productive enterprises, as is the community health department,
community agricultural and related industries department, community
intermediate industrial department, the water and sanitation department,
the community construction company, the community renewable energy
department, the community department of public safety, the community
personnel office, the community mutual community bank, the community
coordinating committee, the community mutualistic family groups –
mutual voting blocks – which are the smallest voting units, and so on. The
community’s civil culture and its civic-economic organization “dovetail”
with and are fully integrated with, are interdependent with, the
community’s educational department. (1)
In decentralized economic social organization the cultural metaphor has
shifted from, “Society is composed of winners and losers,” the cultural
metaphor of mass centralized society, to that of decentralized society’s
cultural metaphor, “No one is less important than the group.”
And, that “No one is less important than the group.” is Christian!
It is a structural proposition!
CHRISTIANITY IS A STRUCTURAL PROPOSITION!
1. The concepts of education in community developed in my mind from
when I attended the talks we had with John Holt, Paul Goodman, and Ivan
Illich …when I attended Ivan Illiche’s CIDOC, International Center of
Documentation, in Cuernavaca, Mexico in the summer of 1969.
See: http://reedckinney.com/ AND
http://decentralizationblog.wordpress.com
“Society” is based on family.
What we have today is a total corruption of that.
And religion is even worse, having created a faux imitation ersazt family.
And cults like Armstrongism are even worse than that in creating a “society” of sociopaths, often engaged in criminal activities, like the mafia.
States Rights are being taken away piece by piece. This allows for a even more powerful and corrupt centralized government.
You can find a reflection of centralization within the churches here in America.
Churches are now corporations registered with, and defined by the State. Whatever happened to “My Kingdom is not of this world”?
According to the U.S. Supreme Court:
1. “A corporation is a creature of the state. It is presumed to be incorporated for the benefit of the public. It receives certain special privileges and franchises and holds them subject to the laws of the state and the limitation of its charter. Its powers are limited by law. It can make no contract not authorized by its charter. Its rights to act as a corporation are only preserved to it so long as it obeys the laws of its creation. There is a reserved right in the legislature to investigate its contracts and ascertain if it has exceeded its powers” (Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43).
2. “[A corporation is] an artificial person or legal entity created by or under the authority of the laws of a state. An association of persons created by statute as a legal entity…. The corporation is distinct from the individuals who comprise it (shareholders)…. Such an entity subsists as a body politic under a special denomination, which is regarded in law as having a personality and existence distinct from that of its several members.” Black’s Law Dictionary West Publishing Company, 1991; 6th Edition, page 340.
3. “A corporation derives its existence and all of its powers from the State and, therefore, has only such powers as the State has conferred upon it. Power is used here to mean the legal capacity to execute and fulfill the objects and purposes for which the corporation was created, and the source of this power is the charter and the statute under which the corporation was organized.” Len Young Smith and G. Gale Roberson, Smith and Roberson’s Business Law, West Publishing Company, 1966, page 796.
A far cry from say a century ago when America had a population which participated within the confines of the local community in religion and agriculture.
Jefferson:
“OBJECTIONS TO THE CONSTITUTION
To James Madison Paris, Dec. 20, 1787
DEAR SIR, — My last to you was of Oct. 8 by the Count de Moustier. Yours of July 18. Sep. 6. & Oct. 24. have been successively received, yesterday, the day before & three or four days before that….
…. I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe. Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty. I have tired you by this time with my disquisitions & will therefore only add assurances of the sincerity of those sentiments of esteem & attachment with which I am Dear Sir your affectionate friend & servant.”
More on this subject: http://atheism.about.com/b/2005/12/25/american-churches-and-corporations-how-churches-are-going-corporate.htm
Now, for those who would like to continue on with this, I present Jefferson again as he writes about a decentralized America and how it is benefited by such an arrangement.
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QUERY XIX The present state of manufactures, commerce, interior and exterior trade
Manufactures:
“We never had an interior trade of any importance. Our exterior commerce has suffered very much from the beginning of the present contest. During this time we have manufactured within our families the most necessary articles of cloathing. Those of cotton will bear some comparison with the same kinds of manufacture in Europe; but those of wool, flax and hemp are very coarse, unsightly, and unpleasant: and such is our attachment to agriculture, and such our preference for foreign manufactures, that be it wise or unwise, our people will certainly return as soon as they can, to the raising raw materials, and exchanging them for finer manufactures than they are able to execute themselves.
The political oeconomists of Europe have established it as a principle that every state should endeavour to manufacture for itself: and this principle, like many others, we transfer to America, without calculating the difference of circumstance which should often produce a difference of result. In Europe the lands are either cultivated, or locked up against the cultivator. Manufacture must therefore be resorted to of necessity not of choice, to support the surplus of their people. But we have an immensity of land courting the industry of the husbandman. Is it best then that all our citizens should be employed in its improvement, or that one half should be called off from that to exercise manufactures and handicraft arts for the other? Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a phaenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an example. It is the mark set on those, who not looking up to heaven, to their own soil and industry, as does the husbandman, for their subsistance, depend for it on the casualties and caprice of customers. Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. This, the natural progress and consequence of the arts, has sometimes perhaps been retarded by accidental circumstances: but, generally speaking, the proportion which the aggregate of the other classes of citizens bears in any state to that of its husbandmen, is the proportion of its unsound to its healthy parts, and is a good-enough barometer whereby to measure its degree of corruption. While we have land to labour then, let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a work-bench, or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry: but, for the general operations of manufacture, let our work-shops remain in Europe. It is better to carry provisions and materials to workmen there, than bring them to the provisions and materials, and with them their manners and principles. The loss by the transportation of commodities across the Atlantic will be made up in happiness and permanence of government. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.”
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This is not America going backwards, this was the intent of the founders.
“A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1787
Carpenters, masons, smiths, are wanting in husbandry: but, for the general operations of manufacture, let our work-shops remain in Europe.
Jefferson was THE pillar of American values of the day, values that are still valid for today. The core values can remain the same, but technology has changed the way these function, and the above statement would be very dangerous. We see Jefferson’s wish manifest today, and China is her name rather than Europe. I know I would not leave critical manufacturing in alien hands, loss of jobs at home, loss of control of technologies, that are here to stay forever. Soon the nation would lose skills, and become dependant on importation of other peoples abroad, just like we have for example.
I largely agree with the core values, but they need to adjust to the day to remain vibrant.
Jefferson never trusted corporations. They will take everything from you in the end. That and private banks are the enemy of free people and who wish to remain free.
That was the issue in “McCulloch vs Maryland”. Not only was a central bank at issue, and the right of states to tax bank activities, but whether or not banks as federal corporations could actually exist. Franlin, Wilson, and Madison had introduced the idea of corporations at the federal level for “internal improvements” when the constitution was undergoing ratification, but it was quickly rejected. John Marshall got the corporation’s nose in the tent with his decision, and freedom has been backing up ever since then.
James, that’s good stuff. Also, corporations were ONLY intended to be under the states, not federal government. The reason being that state gover nmentts retained control of the common law(see St George Tucker’s commentaries, or United States v Aaron Burr)
Even assuming that “due process” was applicable to corporations as persons, due process itself was ommon law which remained under state control(commentaries of Justice Joseph Story).
The problem with that, however is that, as Blackstone points out, corporations were persons ONLY by permissio n by the king, and US government recognizes no king. Therefore, corporations exist O NLY by permission of the people, and “due process” remains as judgement by the people, not a king, and not federal law.
Christianity as we generally recognize it today is a fraud, which is no surprise to most COG members and ex-members. But Jesus was opposed to centralization and control of knowledge by “authorities” in his day, as you see from Luke 11:52 and Matt 23:13. “Woe unto you lawyers, for ye have taken away the key of knowledge, ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered”.
That control of knowledge centered around Hillel’s “seven laws” of thought, and rabbinical cotrol of Torah. It was intended to be open for study and application by all, niot the monopoly of an elite. That is essentially what Jefferson defended, the right of the people to decide for themselves.
In a nutshell this says it all:
“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”
-Thomas Jefferson
An important word there: let US(every person, We the People)…