Sign The Petition!

I invite all of you to sign a petition protesting the University of Notre Dame inviting President Obama to speak there. When challenged about this, the University uttered platitudes about keeping the lines of ‘dialogue’ open. Steer droppings! Would the University be inviting ‘dialogue’ with Doctor Kevorkian? On the positive side, Bishop D’Arcy of  South Bend has pulled out and given a great statement.

Stop the madness. Sign the petition:

www.NotreDameScandal.com

OBAMA – FOOLISH SOLOMON RETURNS? 

We have probably all heard of WISE Solomon and the many references to the wisdom of the third king of Israel, the son of David. True enough, Solomon began with humility and asked for wisdom to serve his people and we are told that he was given it. There is much evidence given in the First Book of Kings for this wisdom of his. He wrote many proverbs and he promoted knowledge and arts. His shrewd insight into human motivations and character was revealed when he judged the case of the two women and the baby. He did oversee the creation of the First Temple, one of the most beautiful edifices ever created. He did build a seeming political peace with those around him. The Queen of Sheba traveled from far away to see this astounding wisdom for herself and was suitably impressed.

But there is more to the story than that. God warned Solomon ahead of time of TWO main dangers to him and thus to his people. He must avoid IDOLATRY and the immoral practices associated with it; and he must not OPPRESS his people or put unreasonable burdens on them. If he did not heed this warning, his kingdom would be split at his death.

You would think he would have studiously avoided any hint of these two dangers. But human nature being what it is, very gradual change can fool us. If you put a frog into boiling water, it jumps out, but if you simply put up the heat slowly by degrees, the frog will boil to death without realizing it. What was it that fooled Solomon into his fatal errors? Faith in the power of Government!

One way he began to expand his Empire was through the diplomacy of marriage. This meant not only the daughter of the Pharaoh, but the daughters of every small city or state in the area, assuming them into the Empire or making an alliance. We are told he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He brought them all to Jerusalem, built them palaces and temples to worship their own gods. As time went on, he began to join them in their temples ‘for company’s sake’ but, eventually, of course, he began to join in their IDOLATRY and immoral practices. (Now what was it that unified Israel as a nation? It wasn’t an ethnic unity but the uniqueness of their belief in one God and their morality very much like the United States today. What happens when that glue of unity is weakened by becoming “like the nations”? King Solomon was dooming the future identity of the nation.)

We’ve seen he was building many palaces for all those wives; well, he built many more, all with the most expensive materials and needing many servants to support them. He rejected the traditional tribal organization and artificially imposed a massive bureaucracy beholden to his government; this was very troubling to his people but he did not respect their wishes to keep the religiously significant Twelve Tribe pattern. He began to build more and more roads. For the first time, he established a large standing army (including the famed “stables of Solomon”). How was this enormous expansion of government going to be supported? You guessed it: TAXES and FORCED SERVICE! Farmers had to surrender large amounts of their produce and livestock to the government. Their sons and daughters were forced to give long parts of their lives to serve in the palaces, working on the roads or in the army.  He ended by crushing his subjects, something he was specifically warned about.

In I Kings 10:14, the author makes an offhand, seemingly innocuous comment that is actually very significant. He tells us the amount of yearly income that Solomon’s government took in: “SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY SIX gold talents”. (One talent, by the way was an enormous amount of money in itself.) Now, I’m sure that wasn’t the exact amount every year. Why use that number? The perfect number is SEVEN, the number of the Covenant with God, where there is peace and wisdom; in fact, the Hebrew word for making a Covenant with God is literally “to seven”.   Six Hundred and Sixty Six will always fall short of ‘Seven’. This is a way of saying Solomon had fallen short of the Covenant and broken it. He was the very powerful ruler who turned to Apostasy, the seeming peace-maker who brought the dis-ease of massive social injustice.

[No doubt, you may have recognized this number from the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. This verse in First Kings is what John was referring to. When trying to describe the future Antichrist or Man of Sin who will lead all to Apostasy, the seeming peacemaker who will bring Apocalypse, John could think of no one better than Solomon and that evocative number of his. The Antichrist will be very much like Solomon. By the way, I in no way am implying I think Obama or any of these people is the Antichrist! I don’t. I am comparing them to Solomon in what they have done and in their practical results. It’s the pattern I want to underline, not a conspiracy theory.]

After Solomon died, his young, inexperienced and arrogant son, Reheboam, refused to lighten the horrible government load and succeeded in splitting the Kingdom, just as predicted. The resultant fledgling kingdoms were doomed to be swallowed up by the Assyrians and Babylonians in future years.

There are too many parallels between this foreboding example and the present cabal’s behavior to list them all. The seizing of the Census, spending more money than has been spent in the history of the world, the biggest Government power grab in history in the ‘porkulus’ bill, ‘required voluntarism’, the diplomacy of go along to get along with no thought to future consequences, the looming threat of Universal Health Care and domestic militias: all of this points to the same kind of blind grab for power that seduced Solomon. Whatever they think they will get out of this, the power-grabbers should know that history does not lie; they will bring horrible disunity and injustice and suffering, if they do not change. Let us pray that they will be changed or thwarted in their deluded schemes. And let us all do everything we can to avoid these mistakes.

LEZ MIZ: Capitalist Whiz Brings Better Biz 

Here is a thumbnail sketch of this wonderful tale. Jean Valjean, a woodcutter, is imprisoned for stealing a piece of bread. Because of failed escapes he ends up being imprisoned for nineteen years; he reenters the world in a hell of hatred and desperation until the good Bishop of Digne ‘buys his soul’ back for him and commissions him to live for others the rest of his life. Taking a new identity, he becomes a prosperous business man in Montreuil-sur-mer and becomes a pillar of the community through his factories and private charity. Eventually, his secret identity is discovered by the maniacally legalistic public servant Javert. Javert pursues Valjean relentlessly through much of the rest of the story, but Valjean’s mystical moral depth triumphs in the end over the harsh legalism of Javert.

Hugo himself was a ‘liberal’ Bonapartist and that does come out in some places in his novel. However, I think everyone agrees that’s not really what he was pushing or talking about in his classic. Like Dostoevsky and Dickens in that time, he was making a spiritual and cultural point about our need for God in a secular age and how that affects how we treat each other.

As I was recently reading this great work, this was the thing that struck me quite hard. Jean Valjean in his first new incarnation after his escape is a CAPITALIST HERO! He comes up with a great idea. He reworks a marginal process into a truly useful one and sparks the growth of an industry. He provides jobs and prosperity for his town and the entire area. Far from being the stereotypical greedy magnate, he uses his private charity to build a non-governmental framework of community and social support. He promotes a spirit of solidarity while respecting the subsidiarity of all the small groups.  The respect and trust he earns propels him into the office of mayor, where he presents us the ideal ‘public servant’ very much in the traditional American model as opposed to the controlling bureaucrat.

In stark contrast to this is the all-smothering spirit of government control personified in Javert. To Javert, it is government and law which orders all, subsumes all; government is something he BELIEVES in and worships. In one scene he turns himself over to the mayor (Valjean) for dismissal because he feels he has filed a false report on him. He as an individual is unimportant in comparison to the all-wise government regulations and bureaucratic process. If he must be sacrificed for the sake of proper functioning of the controlling rules then ‘so be it’. He is willing to do almost anything in this story as long as it serves the letter of the law and the government; the ends justify the means.

After all, the socialism of the French Revolution was a massive experiment in cultural transformation where the government entered everything, going so far as to change the calendar and attempt to produce social results. The State and Reason became the Gods that were worshipped. (These trends continued even during the short-lived Monarchist ‘restoration’.) Despite the mantra of ‘Liberty’, intrusive control became the by-product of this precursor to Marxism and Communism. Javert’s misplaced ultra-sincere idealism results in oppression and suffering whereas the practical capitalism of Valjean brings concord and community.

[Parenthetically, it should be noted that Hugo believed the overall effect of the Revolution was positive, and I don’t think he’s all wrong. However, we, having the benefit of hindsight, can see things in his own writing that maybe he could not. His brand of ‘liberalism’ perhaps has much more in common with a ‘conservative’ today than the pseudo-socialists who now use the title.]

As we now watch the spectacle of a massive government takeover without any parallel, I see the fanatical stare of Javert fixing upon us all, determined to bring justice and order to us for our own good. His certainty is alluring; he promises high ideals. Misery and ‘les miserables’ is indeed the real result. I choose to look into the warm forgiven eyes of Valjean, shining with the light of the God of agape love. If Javert tries to give me something, I know there are hooks inside. I prefer Liberty in the classical American model. I think I’ll go to Valjean.  He’ll give me a job or help me start a business and he will respect my Liberty.