Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dies Unexpectedly: No Foul Play Suspected? REALLY??

What Really May Have Happened?


Americans ought to view with skeptical incredulity the sudden death of a prominent Supreme Court Justice, who was not only a key intellectual in the Constitutional movement, but a formidable opponent of and barrier to the efforts of New World Order Marxists which have been aggressively employed to test and rupture the foundations of our Republic, of fundamental human rights and of individual liberty – especially when, from the start, reports of his death were accompanied by unprompted denials of foul play, followed by a quick decision to forego an autopsy or any kind of investigation. A vitally important political figure dies unexpectedly (arguably among the most influential political and juridical figures of the Twentieth Century), first reports of which declare emphatically “No, he wasn't murdered; no, really, he wasn't!” – and no one finds that suspicious, especially given the fact that in most populated areas of our country, one could probably throw a stone in any direction and stand a good chance of hitting someone with a motive to kill the man? No one wants to even check, via autopsy, whether there might be suspicious marks on his body or something suspiciously wrong with his blood chemistry? REALLY?? Something is rotten in Denmark, and I can smell it all the way over here in Wisconsin...

This video mentions Dr. Carroll Quigley, who was Chair of the Political Science department at Georgetown University in the 1960s. Read his book, which reveals more about clandestine efforts involving Western governments and global business interests, free online in .pdf form, at Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. It is also available from Amazon, here.

Then, to illuminate Quigley's work and the impact of what it reveals, also read W. Cleon Skousen's, The Naked Capitalist: a Review and Commentary on Dr. Carroll Quigley's Book Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time.

 

Support Impeachment of President Barack Hussein Obama!

I was sent an email last night, by an Anonymous sender, regarding the Articles of Impeachment against President Barack Hussein Obama, that will be considered by the Republican National Committee (RNC) on January 13, 2016. The email encouraged its recipients to spread the news of these Articles as widely as possible, and urged them to also notify their local RNC delegates and legislators of their support for his Impeachment. I have done, and am doing, these things.

I agree with and support an effort to impeach President Obama, for the reasons stated in the Anonymous letter, and more. Yes, even though it is only months before the end of President Obama’s second term and the Constitutional end of his Presidency, and even though the effort to impeach him, if successful in the House will most likely fail to result in conviction in the Senate, and even though the impact will likely be no more than symbolic and serve to generate alot of negative press, we are, in fact, duty-bound to pursue this course of action. President Obama is not just guilty of forty-eight infractions against the U.S. Constitution, as if they were single acts committed in a point of time somewhere in the past, but, being guilty of these infractions, he remains in continuous violation of the U.S. Constitution. What’s more, these violations, if they are not undone by the President or the People, will carry into the next administration. That is, the violations will continue, unless we act. Moreover, every single one of the forty-eight infractions is, itself, an impeachable act. If we do not act to impeach President Obama, we are defaulting on our obligations as citizens of the United States, and will lose our Republic.

The email that I was sent included two links. One link was to an interview of Stephen Pidgeon, who is a primary contributor to the drafting of the Articles of Impeachment against President Obama. The second link was to the Articles themselves. I have included both the video and the Articles, below. I have also included a copy of the letter I was Anonymously sent. Please note the tone of urgency in that letter. It was written by an evidently intelligent person, who, on the basis of President Obama’s ongoing violations of the Constitution, is afraid to reveal his identity.

May God Bless America ...even though we don’t deserve it.

Interview with Stephen Pidgeon of the
North American Law Center


Click Here to Read the Articles of Impeachment of Barack Hussein Obama


An ANONYMOUS LETTER Urgently Encouraging Support for
The Impeachment of President Obama
Dear Friend and Fellow Sovereign Citizen,

This is a serious message. Though I (the sender) know you personally, or am at least acquainted with you, please pardon my use of Anonymous email -- just as Publius wrote anonymously just prior to the American Revolution, so do I for my own protection, as I no longer have confidence that our political establishment is any more inclined to protect the People by vigorously acting against government infractions of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, than they are by acting against ongoing rampant infractions of the Second, Fourth and Tenth Amendments. I am sending this note to you, as I have to about a thousand others, in hopes that you can help draw public attention to what is clearly now our Civic Duty: the Impeachment of President Obama.

As you may well know, with the assistance of the North American Law Center (http://www.northamericanlawcenter.org/), Articles of Impeachment against President Obama have been recently drafted, and are scheduled for consideration by the Republican National Committee (RNC) at their meeting this week, on January 13, 2016. Despite support for his impeachment among average Americans (who have for years been calling for it), the leadership of the RNC, along with prominent career politicians, are far from enthusiastic about the idea. A link to the Articles is provided below. In addition, a link to an interview with a key contributor to those Articles is also provided. The links are listed in the open, so that you can see they are legitimate. Please visit those links (you may have to copy and paste the links into your browser) and give strong consideration to their content. After viewing/reading those links, I ask you to please contact your local RNC delegate, and your legislators, to urge support for the Impeachment of President Obama. Please also forward this email to everyone you know, or post it on your Blog or Facebook page, encouraging them to do the same.

Please understand the urgency behind this. President Obama, as an open enemy of our Republic, and of the very ideals of Liberty (which for centuries since the Renaissance and Enlightenment have everywhere served to equip the common man with education, given him promise, endowed him with purpose, lifted him out of poverty and beknighted him with dignity), has been in continuous violation of the Constitution -- the world's sole bearer of those ideals -- in at least forty-eight instances according to the Articles of Impeachment that have been drafted against him; he has used these violations to commit fraud against the People of the United States, to abuse the Power of the Executive Office, and to aid and abet our Nation's enemies, making us vulnerable to those who hate us; thus he has, in the final words of the Articles of Impeachment, "acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States."

We, the People, must act swiftly. President Obama has deliberately acted to weaken and demoralize our Nation, and appears now to be poised to unleash bloody mayhem across our Country, and, in coordination with other world leaders, throughout Europe as well, in order to justify a declaration of Martial Law -- ushering in the establishment of a dictatorship to restore and maintain order, and affecting the permanent collapse of Western Civilization. A classic recipe for coup d'etat, it has been prepared to serve the West in its entirety. If the People will not act to stop him now, it is likely that we will not make it to the elections in November. We have simply run out of time. We must act, NOW!

But even if this were not the case, even if this were mere "conspiracy theory" -- as President Obama has been forced to publicly refer to it in defense of his recent attacks against the Second Amendment -- even if he has not deliberately invited civil unrest and swung open the doors of our nation to wanton terrorists and criminals that they may generate fear and ignite violence in our country... consider this: it is now public knowledge that President Obama -- winner of the Nobel Peace Prize -- is intent upon leading the world as U.N. Secretary General, the spectre of which has our only friend and trusted ally in the Middle East, Israel, quivering with fear. President Obama, a narcissistic prima donna, has ambitions of being President of the World. President Bill Clinton entertained the same notions, but the public indictment of the People against him -- his Impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1998 -- made that politically impossible. If we have any concern for the people of the world, we must act to Impeach President Obama, we must act to preserve them from the kind of disaster wrought by him in our own Country.

Again, after giving strong consideration to the content in the links below, please contact your local RNC delegate, and your legislators, to urge support for the Impeachment of President Obama. Please also forward this email to everyone you know, or post it on your Blog or Facebook page, encouraging them to do the same.

Time is short. Don't hesitate to act. Your country, and the future of the free world, depend on you.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

(You may need to copy and paste the links listed below)

Interview with Contributor to Impeachment Articles: Obama is Establishing a Dictatorship
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1yVXkwcZ4A

The Articles of Impeachment -- enumerating 48 violations of the U.S. Constitution committed by President Obama
http://www.northamericanlawcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Articles-of-Impeachment-of-Barack-Hussein-Obama-3.2-41.pdf

 

NSA Bluffdale facility to store over 5 zetabytes of surveilance data on sovereign American citizens

Back in the 1990's, patriotic citizens already knew that Americans were the most surveiled and dossiered people in the history of the world – more so than citizens under the Fascist or Communist regimes of Hitler or Stalin. Of great concern at that time was the liberty destroying implications of RICO, FINCEN, "Know Your Customer" and other similar interdiction philosophies, legislation and law enforcement policies and programs. The philosophy of the most former of these, RICO, threatened to invert one of the fundamentals of American liberty – the presumption of innocence until proof of guilt has been unanimously ratified by a jury of one's peers – by designating everyone as a potential suspect of criminal activity except those who could be positively ruled out as such. This philosophy represented a complete reversal of investigation policies which, prior to RICO, respected the presumption of innocence (and the Eighth Commandment) by requiring evidence of a crime having actually been committed BEFORE investigation could justifiably begin, and by limiting potential suspects to those who could be positively connected to the alleged crime. Instead, RICO legitimized the legal philosophy that everyone is a potential criminal and justified the indiscriminate, unwarranted and perpetual collection of data on all persons in a search for activity fitting various criminal profiles. FINCEN and "Know Your Customer" were two such data collection programs.

Sovereign citizens of the united States, concerned that such philosophies, policies and programs represented a threat to fundamental human rights that are enumerated in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, were assured that FINCEN was only regional and targeted only interbank transactions already under reasonable suspicion of illegal activity, while "Know Your Customer" bank procedures were only the recommendations of the World Bank and were thus voluntary and not required. Most concerned citizens outside of the East Coast ignored FINCEN, while throughout the Nation, "Know Your Customer" was vigorously opposed by customers who urged their banks to decline participation in this program. By the close of the 1990's, "Know Your Customer" had been defeated in the marketplace, as banks which were known to implement it suffered a measurable loss of patronage as a result. Then came September 11, 2001, and soon after came the Patriot Act, an essentially unreviewed and significantly under-debated piece of legislation which nationalized FINCEN-types of data collection on all persons, mandated "Know Your Customer," and expanded the indiscriminate collection of data on all sovereign citizens, regardless of any fundamental human rights enumerated in the Constitution. Today, all non-cash transactions are tracked and recorded along with all banking activity. All online activity is recorded – all websites accessed, all emails sent. Everything.

These are violations of fundamental and necessary human rights, violations which rise to the vaulting heights of malicious aggression against sovereign citizens of the united States. Those who ignore or dismiss such violations and the dire consequences which necessarily descend from them are blathering fools. "I'm not doing anything wrong, so what do I care," is their first response. These are intellectual incompetents, who, like nothing more than animals, merely exist from one impulse to the next, with little capacity for contemplating the meaning of their own existence much less considering the benefit of others. Narrow, thoughtless "in-the-moment" pragmatists, they concern themselves only with filling their own bellies. Today. Only with securing their own comfort. Today. Only with the swiftest course of relieving themselves the pain of thinking and working. Today. They do not have the capacity or foresight to see, understand or appreciate that, once they abdicate their obligations in a system of self-government, what is "right" or what is "wrong" is entirely outside their control – is determined solely by an independent central authority who owes no person an explanation for what criteria constitutes right or wrong or suspicious activity, why or when those criteria change, or whether any of it really matters once political interests presume to interfere. The second response of these incompetents is to suggest that, "We need to make certain sacrifices to enjoy peace and security." And here is more evidence of the same, and so I repeat: Narrow, thoughtless "in-the-moment" pragmatists, they concern themselves only with filling their own bellies. Today. Only with securing their own comfort. Today. Only with the swiftest course of relieving themselves of the pain of thinking and of working. Today. No sovereign citizen, nor collection of such citizens, has the authority or can assume the prerogative to suspend the fundamental and enumerated human rights of any other sovereign citizen for any reason. Period. That is what it means to be a Sovereign. And that is what it means to be an American citizen: not a follower of so-called "leaders" in government (a Sovereign has no leaders in government), not a subordinate to the arbitrary rule of greater men (a collection of Sovereigns recognize no one "greater" among themselves), but a a Sovereign who voluntarily submits along with his fellow Sovereigns to the Rule of Law, which they collaboratively establish in the halls of representative government. Fools can voluntarily suspend their own rights, and abdicate their sovereignty for the supposed benefits their stupidity justifies, but they cannot suspend the fundamental enumerated human rights of others or force them from the privilege of sovereignty into serfdom. And what benefit could they derive from it anyway? Benjamin Franklin suggests, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Those lacking the personal capacity and grit for the intellectual and physical struggle to acquire and maintain liberty, even at the cost of temporary safety, get exactly what they deserve. When liberty is turned over to the State, it is never peacefully returned; such fools would trade liberty for safety, and embrace slavery in return – would gladly trade everyone's liberty for the promise of their own temporary safety, and consign the whole of society to a fearfully wretched state of servitude under the tyranny of arbitrary and ruthless State power.

In the wake of the Generals Allen and Petraeus scandals, William Binney, whistleblower and former NSA crypto-mathematician who served in the agency for decades, very simply and straightforwardly describes the magnitude of the government's data collection program. It started in the 1990's, accelerated swiftly under Bush following the Patriot Act, has continued to see considerable growth under Obama, and today, as Binney reports, the NSA is constructing a data center in Bluffdale, UT, capable of storing and managing over five zetabytes of data collected on sovereign American citizens.


Given that all data is simply stored, regardless of whether such activity is legal or even suspicious today, the reader should ask himself if the variety of data he accesses, uses and shares over a given period of time could be construed to suggest the profile of a criminal, or of someone harboring criminal sentiments? What kind of eBooks does he access, download and read, and what do they suggest regarding his psychological profile? What about twenty years from now? Is it possible that "hate speech" laws may be expanded by then to include the expression of religious conviction or the exercise or advocacy of Christian church practice – as it has already in Canada with respect to sexual orientation or in certain European countries fearful of fallout from criticism of Islam? Is it possible that certain political or economic philosophies, like democracy or capitalism, may be regarded as seditious in the near future and be punishable by imprisonment or execution – as in the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba and many other countries across the world through most of the 20^th Century? In these or any other circumstances, is it possible that the data one accesses, uses or shares today could be construed in the future as evidence of a psychological profile characteristic of what is thought to be a criminal, or a political enemy? The answer is most assuredly and emphatically, Yes!.

The proper response to impending and tragic loss of individual sovereignty and liberty in this Nation, is not that of Lutheran Quietism, is not the political action taken by the passive citizen of fascist Germany who may have had his opinion but remained demonstrably impotent as Hitler engaged in wanton and maniacal policies of the Final Solution. The answer is not that of the witless, careless and lazy leach who floats through life singing, "Que Sira Sira, I have my faith, I know I'm going to heaven, everything is in God's hands, nothing else matters, Que Sira Sira." These are not the answers of a Sovereign who bears not only the right but the authority and obligation to make himself heard, especially in matters pertaining to his liberty as a Sovereign and thus also his ability to freely carry out his rights and responsibilities as such. Shame on the American citizen, and especially the Christian, who would take no notice of nor have any care over the dissipation of fundamental enumerated human rights, who would rather submit to unwarranted and continuous surveillance and psychological profiling by the governing authorities than trouble himself to be concerned, and who would gladly force his countrymen to do the same.

Good citizenship requires that one stay informed, remain concerned, and be active. And the best way to be active is to remember Congressman Larry McDonald and the Four Boxes of Liberty:

If a Free Society is also a Civilized Society, we citizen-sovereigns are obligated
1. first to discuss such issues amongst ourselves, to utilize our freedom of speech to persuasively urge our neighbors and countrymen to abandon trust in the despotic machinations of freedom’s enemies and in those who work their engines;
2. to then exercise our right as citizen-sovereigns to remove those from political office who misunderstand their limited roles, who disrespect the autonomy of citizen-sovereigns, and who work either deliberately or from profound ignorance and carelessness to deprive those whom they represent of their liberty, and to replace them with representatives who will not;
3. to then exercise our obligation as citizen-sovereigns to challenge unjust laws in the courts, even if we must first suffer the indignity and expense of suffering unjustly for disobeying such laws in order that material cause and legal standing can be established before the court;
4. to then exercise our right as citizen-sovereigns, in our capacity as jurors who determine fact from evidence presented in the courts, and in agreement with fellow jurors, to nullify unjust laws when fellow citizen-sovereigns stand to suffer as victims of those laws (this is called jury-nullification);
5. and finally, when all else fails, we are obligated, as our Declaration of Independence clearly and directly states, to dismantle a government which cannot or will not be reformed, by force if necessary, and build a new one in its place, as is the right of all sovereigns who stand to be deprived of their sovereignty by others. From the Declaration:
   
   
   “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
   
   “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to 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.”
   
   It is in the defense of the individual citizen-sovereign’s liberty, as a sovereign, that alteration or abolishment of a government which is “destructive of the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is justified.

Congressman Larry McDonald is the one who is most often credited with a meme which capsulizes these four steps to preserving liberty. It is called the Four Boxes of Liberty, and it is a fitting place to end this post:


THE FOUR BOXES OF LIBERTY

1. The Soap Box
2. The Ballot Box
3. The Jury Box
4. The Ammo Box

William Binney, in his idealistic struggle for the cause of liberty, has taken his civic obligations as a citizen-sovereign all the way to McDonald's THIRD BOX of Liberty. He is a true example of personal sacrifice and dedication to protect against violations of the fundamental enumerated rights that are necessary to the character and continuation of our Nation. For more information, follow developments in the struggle to defend liberty in a digital world on the pages of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

 

Victim of Hungarian Socialism airs Political ad against rising tide of Socialism in the USA

The blog Intrepid Lutherans recently ran a series originally posted on The Finkelsteinery in 2009. That Intrepid Lutherans series was entitled, C.F.W Walther and the Two Kingdoms in Action: "No reasonable man, much less a Christian, can or should take part in the efforts of Communists and Socialists".

This same thorough, and thoroughly Biblical, historical and Christian refutation of the claims of Communism and Socialism, can be found on The Finkelsteinery in the following series of posts:

"America's Martin Luther" Lectures on Communism and Socialism - INTRODUCTION
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (Contents and Prefaces)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE ONE)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE TWO)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE THREE)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE FOUR)

Also to be found on The Finkelsteinery are two politically oriented Fourth of July postings, one addressing political Liberty in our Democratic Republic as a form of “confessional unity” in the Political Estate which makes a positive appeal to the reality of Divine Providence to justify its existence, and the second addressing the certain threat our Democratic Republic now faces of Communist overthrow.

We are the Sons of Liberty
The Communist Revolution in America: Thoughts & Warnings on the Eve of July 4, 2012

Finally, to see how, in 2009, the creation of a worldwide Socialist government was very narrowly averted at Copenhagen, thanks in part to Wikileaks, see the following series of articles also published on The Finkelsteinery:

Natural Law, Moral Imperative, and Public Policy: Copenhagen Looms Near
An “Inconvenient Truth:” Climate Change and Scientific Fraud
EU President: 2009 to be First Year of Global Governance
Nopenhagen: Fata Morgana fades in Truth's Brilliant Light

In coming days, another series of posts will be featured on The Finkelsteinery from the writings of a conservative mid-19^th Century Frenchman who wrote in years leading up to the Third French Revolution (1848) (to which C.F.W. Walther refers, along with the Second Revolution of 1796, in his SECOND LECTURE) until his death in 1850 – writings which he submitted to his countrymen in favor of true economic and social Liberty, in order to combat the rising tide of Revolutionary Communist and Socialist sentiment. Though this writer failed to avert the Revolution instigated by Communist and Socialist agitation, and failed to avert the institution of Socialism as the form of government in France, the work which I intend to feature is one which is recognized as a continuation of the economic theory of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, and as foundational to later celebrated economists such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, and which, very interestingly and helpfully, sets limits on the very concept of Law itself, as employed by the State, by appeal to Natural Law and Divine Providence.

Stay Tuned!

 

Obama Supporters Become Romney Supporters -or- Youth Turn Against Obama...

This has been my experience with recent high-school/college graduates, as well (that's right, there is no distinction in my mind anymore). This is the result of what American society has spent twelve to sixteen, even twenty years, preparing for the leadership of the next generation. When I am 70+ years old, and have largely turned over the course of politics and religion to the next generation, I am confident that this is all that I will have to depend upon. That being the case, I expect that I will labour for my own survival until the day I die. The prospect of suffering under the failures of my own wit and health is far less frightening than suffering under the wisdom of today's youth.

As for Romney, yeah, he'll get the youth vote. He's better looking than his opponent.

 

The Communist Revolution in America: Thoughts & Warnings on the Eve of July 4, 2012

Given the state of affairs in the United States, while others are celebrating liberty, I thought it more appropriate to lament the withering assault liberty has suffered in the United States in the past 150 years, beginning with a short video recently released by Lt. Gen. Ret. W.G. Jerry Boykin, an original member of the U.S. Army’s Delta Force, ultimately commanding the elite team in combat operations, who later led the Army’s Green Berets as well as the Special Warfare Center and School, and in the final four years of his 36 year career in the Army, served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence:

Lieutenant General (Ret.) W. G. Jerry Boykin,
decorated former Delta Force commander and U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence,
discusses the infiltration of Marxism in American politics and culture.

I was an undergraduate when the Iron Curtain fell. The year was 1989. I was too immature at the time to appreciate the gravity of the event, other than having a naïve feeling of relief that America and the West would soon be rid of the threat of thermonuclear war. The immediate impact was the rush of Eastern Europeans to the West, many of them excited to discover what they had only heard stories of: freedom and opportunity. Many Westerners were glad to receive them socially, and to create opportunities for them economically. For example, at that time, a close family member of mine, with contacts in State government, had swiftly developed business contacts in Russia, and as a result sponsored two families for an extended visit in America, so that they could learn our language, customs and business practices, and carrying this knowledge back to Russia with them, use it to broker relationships between local small businesses in America and Russia.

I was fortunate to spend a lot of time with the leaders of these families. Though these men had never seen a microwave oven before, they were nevertheless well-educated, refined and articulate. Both of them denied membership in the Communist Party, both served in the Soviet War in Afghanistan as non-commissioned officers (sergeants), both served in Soviet special forces. They were both excited to be in America, and both appreciated the opportunity to learn about us and share their experiences and perspectives. As they grew more familiar with America, however, their excitement waned, turning to caution and concern. They recognized the language of Communism in regular use in our society, and saw the prominent role of the Federal Government in the regulation of local matters as a hallmark of “bloodless revolution.”

This type of experience replayed itself over and over, as opportunities in the West resulted in a flood of Eastern European university students. After becoming politically aware, I began to seek these people out, to learn from them. As a result, I befriended a young man from the Czech Republic (who later naturalized and is still living in America) who came from a family of vintners. I apparently roused him out of a mild depression with some intelligent political discourse – I happened to know the name of his President and could pronounce his name properly. It was a little thing that made him very happy. Over several years in college, we had many good conversations. One I recall was his love for America and his desire to be a citizen – which he accomplished without having to get married to an American (he said, “I’m not about to trade one form of freedom for another...”). Another conversation I will never forget, was one in which he expressed vile hatred for Communism and the Soviets:

“I hate the Communists. They killed millions of my people. Over decades, the people just disappeared. The Communist authorities would come through every now and then to intimidate the people. They would randomly collect some of them. Sometimes we found the graves, usually we wouldn't, but no one would ever see these missing people again. If you were a teacher or an artist or a leader of some sort – if you were smart – it seemed like you were more likely to disappear. The masses were to be laborers, nothing more.”

In another conversation, he confessed:

“I love America, but for the first two years I lived here, I thought everyone wanted to be a Socialist! They keep using socialist words, like ‘the masses,’ or ‘the government,’ as if government is going to make them prosperous. I couldn’t believe it! I would tell them, ‘That is Socialism! Why do you want Socialism?’ It didn't take too long before I realized, Americans don’t really want Socialism, they’re just stupid and don’t realize that’s what is coming right around the corner.”

This was the time of the unelected co-president Hillary Clinton’s village-building-through-socialized-medicine escapade, which positioned a monolithic “national” government directly in relation to the “mass of individuals.” Rather than respecting the limited role of the Federal government, which positions it in relation to the governments of the States of our union, and in relation to the governments of foreign nations, “socialized medicine” placed the Federal government in direct relation to the individual, disrupting and interfering with the governing authority of the State, County and local governments whose functions include individual concerns (unlike that of the Federal Government).

I could go on... There were the Hungarian and Polish students, who seemed to get along with each other fairly well, but who were so full of national pride that it was nearly impossible to have a productive discussion with them... Then there was the Russian physics student – an admitted Party member – who was a lot of fun to argue the merits of Capitalism with. There were the Slovakians, the Estonians, Latvians and even a few Bulgarians. All expressed similar sentiments regarding their former years under Communism (“I remember those days in black and white, there are no color images in my memory... everything was so uncertain, there was no hope,” one acquaintance reminisced) and their concern for the future of America as they recognized the encroachment of the same political ideas they thought they had left behind in Eastern Europe.

The Communist Manifesto and the Ten Planks of Communism
Their outlook on America and the dangers of Communism left an impression on me. I read the Communist Manifesto and other historical sources, and came to understand

1. that the common sentiment, “From each according his ability, to each according to his need,” is the mantra of Communist collectivism;
2. that the worker solidarity movements of the late 19^th Century were organized by Marxist agitators seeking a foothold in America;
3. that 19^th Century Industrialists, in response to the rise of Communism in Europe and its presence among the labor unions in America, sought to exploit labour solidarity for the purposes of their bourgeois Utopian ideals by financing John Dewey’s Education Revolution in America, proliferating his pragmatic ideologies of education (i.e. “Progressivism”), to create, not educated people (artes liberalis), but trained people (artes servilis), and even sponsoring Dewey’s residency in Russia shortly after the Bolshevic Revolution, to consult with the Soviets as they developed their system of education;
4. that Marxism, while being both a political and an economic theory, is also a social theory which relies upon the assumption that the world’s economy is a “closed system,” and that social groups must therefore compete for economic resources which are, in principle, limited
   
   • that the reason why the solidarity movements in America went no further politically than the creation of labour unions was that immigrants were predisposed to giving up their identity as unique social groups, rather than clinging to them, and that they endeavored instead to assimilate with the culture of their new home (the “melting pot”),
   • and, thus, that the following eighty year period was devoted to the legislative creation of such groups, in order to pit them against one another in American society and force them to clamor before the Federal government for limited economic resources (the “salad bowl”), and in this way create the condition of social conflict that Marxist social theory was invented to solve – such groups include
     - various “protected class citizens,” which pit employees against employers and employees against one another, and subordinates them to a government before which they must compete for increasing “protection” and “accommodation,”
     - various “classes of social need,” advocacy for and alleviation of which require a multitude of government agencies, all of which compete for limited economic resources,
     - various classes of “economic privilege,” created through complex tax policies granting increasing “tax advantages” as a function of a citizen’s productivity, breeding jealousy and discontent among the less productive who consequently appeal to government for greater economic benefits.
5. that all of these developments, and more, were quite consistent with the Ten Planks of Communism clearly laid out by Marx and Engels toward the end of Chapter II of the Communist Manifesto, which reads:
   
   
   “The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs. But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms
   
   “The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.
   
   “But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.
   
   “We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
   
   “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
   
   “Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
   
   “These measures will, of course, be different in different countries. Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
   
   
   1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
   2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
   3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
   4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
   5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
   6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
   7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
   8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
   9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
   10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.
   
   “When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

The Communist Rules for Revolution
It is interesting, and rather alarming, to compare the comments of Lt. General Boykin from the video, above, and the Ten Planks of Communism found in the Communist Manifesto, with a Communist document that is said to have been captured in Dusseldorf, DE, in 1919, by Allied Forces: the Communist Rules for Revolution. Though there is some question as to the authenticity of the claim that it originated in Germany, or that it was even written anytime before the 1930’s, it is said to have been published in a local Oklahoma newspaper in 1919 (the “Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise”), it is known to have been published in a magazine in 1946 (“Moral Re-Armament”), and was endorsed as authentic by Florida state attorney George Brautigam in 1954. Since then, it has been entered into the Congressional Record no less than three times.

COMMUNIST RULES FOR REVOLUTION
In May 1919 at Dusseldorf, Germany, the allied forces discovered a copy of these 'Rules.' They were first printed in the United States in the 'Bartlesville (Oklahoma) Examiner-Enterprise' the same year, 1919.

Almost 20 years later, in 1946, a state attorney of Florida (George A. Brautigam) obtained them from a known member of the Communist Party, who acknowledged that the 'Rules' were then still a part of the Communist program for the United States.


1. Corrupt the young, get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial, destroy their ruggedness.
2. Get control of all means of publicity and thereby:
   1. Get people's minds off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books and plays and other trivialities.
   2. Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance.
   3. Destroy the people's faith in their natural leaders by holding the latter up to contempt, ridicule and obloquy.
   4. Always preach true democracy but seize power as fast and as ruthlessly as possible.
   5. By encouraging government extravagance, destroy its credit, produce fear of inflation with rising prices and general discontent.
   6. Foment unnecessary strikes in vital industries, encourage civil disorders, and foster a lenient and soft attitude on the part of government toward such disorders.
   7. By specious argument cause the breakdown of the old moral virtues: Honesty, Sobriety, Continence, faith in the pledged word, ruggedness.
3. Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with a view to confiscating them and leaving the population helpless.

Congressman Larry McDonald and the Four Boxes of Liberty
One of those entering the Communist Rules for Revolution into the Congressional Record was none other than Congressman Larry McDonald. A cousin of General George S. Patton, he was a conservative Democrat during the 1970’s, an ardent foe of Communism, and president of the John Birch Society. He was aboard Korean Air Lines Flight 007 when it was shot down by the Soviets in 1983. He was known to be considering a run for the Office of United States President at the time.

Congressman Larry McDonald defended the authenticity of the Communist Rules for Revolution, which were suspected of spurious origin at the time he submitted them to the Record for publication, in a 1975 editorial he published in the Rome News-Tribune, as follows:

“The U.S. Army officer present when the document was first noted by Allied authorities was Captain Thomas H. Barber, Aide to the officer in charge of Civil Affairs in the American-occupied zone headquarters, Coblenz, Germany. The communist organization raided was the German Spartacist League.

“A controversy has raged as to whether or not ‘The Rules’ are authentic. In 1969 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was unable to give substantiation and the Library of Congress was of no help either.

“The problem was increased when the New York Times writer wrote in July 10, 1970, that ‘The Rules’ were a hoax, but of course he offered no proof – merely the failure to substantiate as ‘his proof.’

“Fortunately the organization Moral Re-Armament in 1970 resolved the confusion when a search in their files produced a copy hand written by Captain Barber. Furthermore, a letter dated January, 1962, revealed that the Library of Congress had indeed been sent this information and its source.

Given such evidences, the questions for us center on how we ought to respond. In a Free Society, where each citizen is sovereign (defined by his right to ownership of property), not the government, and where the government is servant to its sovereigns, not the citizen servant to his government, how does a conscientious citizen deal with growing threats against his liberty? How does he deal with encroaching tyranny? If a Free Society is also a Civilized Society, we citizen-sovereigns are obligated

1. first to discuss such issues amongst ourselves, to utilize our freedom of speech to persuasively urge our neighbors and countrymen to abandon trust in the despotic machinations of freedom’s enemies and in those who work their engines;
2. to then exercise our right as citizen-sovereigns to remove those from political office who misunderstand their limited roles, who disrespect the autonomy of citizen-sovereigns, and who work either deliberately or from profound ignorance and carelessness to deprive those whom they represent of their liberty, and to replace them with representatives who will not;
3. to then exercise our obligation as citizen-sovereigns to challenge unjust laws in the courts, even if we must first suffer the indignity and expense of suffering unjustly for disobeying such laws in order that material cause and legal standing can be established before the court;
4. to then exercise our right as citizen-sovereigns, in our capacity as jurors who determine fact from evidence presented in the courts, and in agreement with fellow jurors, to nullify unjust laws when fellow citizen-sovereigns stand to suffer as victims of those laws (this is called jury-nullification);
5. and finally, when all else fails, we are obligated, as our Declaration of Independence clearly and directly states, to dismantle a government which cannot or will not be reformed, by force if necessary, and build a new one in its place, as is the right of all sovereigns who stand to be deprived of their sovereignty by others. From the Declaration:
   
   
   “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
   
   “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to 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.”
   
   It is in the defense of the individual citizen-sovereign’s liberty, as a sovereign, that alteration or abolishment of a government which is “destructive of the unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is justified.

Congressman Larry McDonald is the one who is most often credited with a meme which capsulizes these four steps to preserving liberty. It is called the Four Boxes of Liberty, and it is a fitting place to end this post:

THE FOUR BOXES OF LIBERTY


1. The Soap Box
2. The Ballot Box
3. The Jury Box
4. The Ammo Box

Wishing what few and infrequent readers I have an introspective Fourth of July, 2012.

Freddy Finkelstein



P.S.: For a thorough, and thoroughly Biblical, historical and Christian refutation of the claims of Communism and Socialism, see this series of Lectures published on The Finkelsteinery in 2009, by 19^th Century Lutheran theologian Dr. C.F.W. Walther:

"America's Martin Luther" Lectures on Communism and Socialism - INTRODUCTION
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (Contents and Prefaces)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE ONE)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE TWO)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE THREE)
C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE FOUR)

Also, to see how, in 2009, the creation of a worldwide Socialist government was very narrowly averted at Copenhagen, thanks in part to Wikileaks, see the following series of articles also published on The Finkelsteinery:

Natural Law, Moral Imperative, and Public Policy: Copenhagen Looms Near
An “Inconvenient Truth:” Climate Change and Scientific Fraud
EU President: 2009 to be First Year of Global Governance
Nopenhagen: Fata Morgana fades in Truth's Brilliant Light

 

Newt Gingrich controls debate on energy policy

Even though he is currently running third in the Republican Primaries, with approximately only half of the delegates won so far by Rick Santorum, who is running second, and one-third the delegates of the current leader in the Primaries, Mitt Romney, it is the ideas proposed by Newt Gingrich, not Mitt Romney, and not Rick Santorum, which are drawing fire from the current Democrat-controlled White House. Neither Romney nor Santorum have revealed a platform that is compelling enough to draw commentary from our current President, Barack Obama; but Newt Gingrich's energy proposals, being simple to communicate and easy to defend given the abundance of facts supporting them, clearly represent an early threat to the President's re-election, so much so that he is already actively campaigning against those ideas. Neither Romney nor Santorum can boast the honor of having such compelling and broadly appealing ideas that the President has singled out those ideas for rebuttal.

Even the analogies used by Newt Gingrich, being powerfully descriptive and meaningful to Americans, are being absconded and repeated by the President as his own.

Newt Gingrich: It's kind of strange to have an American president who favors Saudi oil over American oil. Saudi jobs over American jobs. I frankly want an energy policy so no president ever again bows to a Saudi King...

Brian Kilmeade: Mr. Speaker, you are clearly on the President's mind. The $2.50 [per gallon]... and he used your example that you've been using, because you wanted talk about space exploration, you said, "they would have said that about Christopher Columbus" -- he's even using your phrases.


Newt Gingrich: Well, imitation is a high form of flattery... It is the President who is refusing to recognize the modern world. In the modern world, the amount of oil we have in North Dakota because of new drilling technology has jumped from 150 million barrels to 24 billion barrels in the last decade. We have more oil in North Dakota than we ever dreamed possible, and some poeple think that with another generation of new technology, we'll have 500 billion barrels in North Dakota. It's the President who is sort of a -- he used the term "flat-earth society" [in reference to Newt's energy proposals], I would say that he belongs to the "Sierra Club Flat-Earth Society," he can't believe anything new that would improve energy because then it takes away his desire for government to control our lives... Look, I'm for biological research, I'm for developing algea over time, but with the current algea technologies you'd have to have over $850 per barrel oil to make them economically competitive. The President just lives in this fantasy land where he goes around -- it's like Solyndra -- he imagines these things up. It's like shovel-ready jobs. Remember he finally admitted two years later that there were no shovel-ready jobs in his shovel-ready jobs program? Well, we're back to the same fantasy life. The American people deserve inexpensive oil and gas, if it's possible, they deserve it from American sources, to keep the money in America to create American jobs. The President is doing just the opposite. He's asking the Saudi's to bail us out, which means that he'll have to bow even more deeply the next time he sees a Saudi King. I'm deeply opposed to that kind of foreign policy.

Notice how throughout his conversation, Newt effortlessly weaves the health of the American economy with foreign policy and national security. It's all connected, and this connectedness is easy to manage in the course of discussion for someone like Newt, who has command of the ideas and the facts. His main competitors, on the other hand, compartmentalize topics and limit themselves to pragmatics that spin well as marketing slogans and commercials. Romney and Santorum come off as traveling salesmen, selling themselves for President. Newt, on the other hand, is an intellectual with ideas, who's task is earning the Presidency through informed and persuasive argument.

We Conservatives got snookered by a "traveling salesman" in 2000, and held our nose in 2004 when we knew what we were voting for. But we couldn't do it in 2008. I'm not sure I can force myself do it in 2012, either. As I stated in February, the more I listen and watch, the more I am convinced that Newt is the only candidate on the field today with the experience and the intellectual horsepower to lead our nation back to its founding principles in the Great Ideas of Western Civilization, having a clear view of our nation’s unique position in the Arc of History and our vital importance to the continuation of Liberty and Human Rights in the World. With these Great Ideas as foundation, I am further convinced that Newt's leadership will be essential to returning America to a position of economic and political respect and dominance in the World.

Newt Gingrich 2012

 

Who is Newt Gingrich?

"I'm running for President because I think we are in enormous danger of losing America as a country that is exceptional. I think we are in enormous danger of losing our economic vitality, losing our national security, and ultimately losing our freedom. And I think we need a leader who understands what has made America great, and who is prepared to unleash the American people to go back to rebuilding the country that we love."

I think Newt is correct. As I stated in my previous post, not only is America is great peril, not only is liberty and our economy at risk, but, in my opinion, the trajectory of Western Civilization hinges on the 2012 Presidential election. The Great Ideas of Western Civilization coalesced in the Declaration of Independance and the Constitution of the united States; in this Great Experiment, the torch of Liberty was passed to us to carry forward. While it flickered out nearly everywhere else, America had remained a shining beacon, the last best hope of Liberty for the common man -- if he could only get here, he could shed the burden of tyranny which oppressed him and freely apply his God-given faculties to the opportunites that his own land, labour and capital presented him with. Today, that torch appears to be spent and nearly extinguished, as the Ideas which fuel it disappear through ignorance and/or wanton disregard.

Newt Gingrich 2012

 

Dissecting the deliberately misleading discourse of a committed Liberal, requires intelligence and thorough articulation.

Newt Gingrich Responds to President Obama’s Energy Speech
in a speech before the California GOP in San Fransisco, February 2012

The Candidate for the Republican Nomination for President of the United States who has, in my mind, emerged with the strongest platform for righting our listing ship of State, is Newt Gingrich. I'll admit, I've always liked Newt as a Conservative political leader and intellectual, and remember with fondness his leadership in the House during the 1990's. Though troubled by his ignominious departure from politics, and the content of media reports regarding the way he handled his second disintegrating marriage, after watching him through the debates, I am convinced that Newt is the only candidate on the field today with the experience and the intellectual horsepower to lead our nation back to its founding principles in the Great Ideas of Western Civilization, having a clear view of our nation’s unique position in the Arc of History and our vital importance to the continuation of Liberty and Human Rights in the World.

The challenges hurled at us by Socialists and post-Structuralists on the left, and by narrow-minded pragmatists and vulture-capitalists on the right, are destructively dismissive of what it is that we ought to be conserving in our Nation, and in the West; as I listen to Newt and compare him with his fellow contenders, I have become convinced that Newt has a clear understanding of how to meet those challenges in a way that not only preserves but propels our American values and way of life into the future. The other Candidates for the Republican Nomination today, however, give no indication that they see these matters as clearly as Newt Gingrich or understand them as deeply, nor do they seem to be able to articulate sound solutions to the dire and very complex circumstances we now face in ways which effectively marshal the fundamental ideologies of America's founding and which are necessary to the perpetuation of the West. Newt can, and he demonstrates this every time he is given an opportunity to speak. The fact is, two of his opponents in the race for Republican Nomination are sputtering pragmatists who, following the old worn-out formula for political campaigns, are running on issues, not on principles which reach to the foundations of America's social and political institutions, and not on ideas which will propel our Nation through the next generation. His third opponent is an unrepentant ideologue with no realistic plan of action whatsoever. We don’t need another narrow Republican issues-pragmatist for President. Not fully understanding or appreciating the root of our problems, they have a sad history of advocating quick fixes, rather than structural changes, that are easy to communicate and politically expedient, rather than necessarily complex and requiring the focused participation and dialogue of all representatives in the Legislature. In this way they are ruining our nation with their short-sightedness, their alienation of opposing parties, and their shallow understanding of and seemingly limited regard for America’s greatness and importance in the history, and to the future, of Human Rights and Liberty. In my opinion, the trajectory of Western Civilization hinges on the 2012 Presidential election.

In the clip above, Newt demonstrates exactly what will be necessary not only to defeat Barack Obama in the next election, but to contend with adversaries throughout a Presidency which has as its purpose the implementation of structural changes in the way government runs: careful, point-by-point dissection of his adversaries – even though it results in longer and more complex speeches. Newt here demonstrates that he is intelligent and articulate enough to make his case, and to hold the attention of his audience even though it requires lengthy explanation. And this is what we need. We need an intellectual in office for a change, not a pragmatist, not a person who stammers at the limits of his knowledge every time he's called upon to defend his proposals from both fact and principle.


Newt Gingrich 2012

In case you haven't heard other of his speeches, here are a couple of the more compelling speeches he has given during this Primary season:


Newt Gingrich's Speech at CPAC 2012






"A Better Approach to Deficit Reduction"
A public policy speach delivered by Newt Gingrich
at the Heritage Foundation, August 2011

 

Shall we Recognize the Rights of Parents?

Those of us who are Home Educators know very well the threats against parenthood and parental rights -- they have loomed over our heads like a darkening shadow since at least the early 1990's. Our nation's disastrous flirtation at that time with "Outcome Based Education" (OBE) was intended to produce "International Children." There were open battles against this form of education in many states, like Tennessee, where relatives of mine had involved themselves in the fight directly. In the interest of producing "international children," it was proposed that the implementation of OBE would include batteries of psychiatric examinations for children entering Kindergarten, and periodically throughout their educational careers, to determine whether bias was being picked up in the home or from some other environment that would militate against the educational objectives of the government. If such bias was detected, so the plan proposed, children would be removed from the home and subjected to deprogramming before being permitted to return to school.

I was a young man at that time, but through the experience of my relatives, who lived in Tennessee and were active in the fight against these proposals, which were eventually defeated by active parents and Home Educators there, I became sensitized to the evil of an overreaching government, particularly as it invades the sanctity of home and family. The true face of government was revealed to me then, and as I have remained alert to it over the years, I have observed the threat to have only grown worse.

The video above was produced by ParentalRights.org, in conjunction with the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), in an attempt to raise support for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would recognize the rights of parents. I heartily support such an amendment.

 

"Fair Use" for non-commercial purposes "broadened" by Federal Judge

For those who have not noticed, there has been strong advocacy, lately, for a loosening or elimination of US intellectual property laws. These laws impact conditions -- like who, how, when and why -- under which copyrighted materials, like music, art, literature, etc., and patented processes and goods can be obtained, used, sold and/or distributed. While some sort of protection for the individual creator of such products, processes, and published works seems to be fair in my opinion, the real question is whether current laws exist more to protect the artist/author/engineer or to grant long-term quasi-monopoly to the publisher/manufacturer. Copyright laws, for example, which hold for 90 years (far outside the lifespan of the average creator of a given copyrighted work), do nothing but grant monopoly to the publisher and limit access to relevant art and knowledge. This latter result is exacerbated by the practice of ceasing publication of works on which publishers claim copyright, for profit considerations. If publication of a work is not economically viable, then whose financial interest is served by continuing to retain copyright to it? None, in my opinion. Under these conditions, copyright laws succeed far more at impeding the important exchange of knowledge that procede in society as a matter of course -- without reference to profit motive, but which result from a perpetual exchange of ideas which must pervade in a living culture.

Thus, such laws impact not only the interests of copyright/patent holders and their patrons, but also the free and open dissemination of knowledge in society. And this idea -- the idea that knowledge ought to be freely available to the members of society -- is at the core of very important movements within technology (the chief disseminator of knowledge in our era), such as keeping government out of the regulation of the internet, and especially the OpenSource (or "Free Software") movement -- a world-wide community of technology experts sharing this ideology, who have loosely collaborated in the development of the highly stable and "freely" available Linux Operating System platform.

I personally am an advocate of these ideals -- of the free and open dissemination of knowledge in society -- which is why I found the following blog entry from the Mises Economics Blog to be quite interesting.

---

Copying, Not Trolling, Is “Fair Use”

Yesterday a federal judge in Las Vegas held that reproducing an entire article online can fall within the “fair use” exception to copyright law. In dismissing a copyright infringement case brought by a company called Righthaven, LLC — described by Wired as a “newspaper copyright troll” — Judge Philp M. Pro made two important findings. First, he rejected the standing of a third-party to bring an infringement suit based solely on acquiring the “right to sue” from the copyright owner, and second, he found that there was a strong presumption of fair use when materials are reproduced online for “noncommercial” purposes.

Righthaven, owned by attorney Steven Gibson, acquires newspaper copyrights for the express purpose of suing websites that reproduce the original newspaper’s material. As Judge Pro explained, the newspaper, in this case the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “assigned” its right to sue for infringement to Righthaven, subject to the newspaper’s right to revoke the assignment or direct Righthaven not to pursue a particular case:

Stephens Media [the Journal's owner] has the unilateral right, at any time, to terminate the Copyright Assignment and enjoy a complete right of reversion. These carveouts deprive Righthaven of any of the rights normally associated with ownership of an exclusive right necessary to bring suit for copyright infringement and leave Righthaven no rights except to pursue infringement actions, a right which itself is subject to Stephens Media’s veto.

Furthermore, Righthaven had no right to “exploit” the Journal’s copyrighted material except for bringing infringement lawsuits. Accordingly, Judge Pro said Righthaven could not maintain a copyright infringement lawsuit, since it was not the legitimate owner of the material at issue.

That said, Judge Pro further explained why, even if Righthaven had standing, this particular complaint must be dismissed. The defendant, Wayne Hoehn, had posted the entire text of a Journal article, with attribution, on the website madjacksports.com, a forum for people interested in sports handicapping. Hoehn was not the website’s owner, just a user. “It is undisputed that Hoehn did not and could not profit from posting” the Journal’s article, Judge Pro noted. Hoehn said he posted the article “to foster discussion…regarding the recent budget shortfalls facing state governments.” That alone suggests fair use, Judge Pro said.

Additionally, Judge Pro considered three other factors. First, the nature of the work suggested a broad allowance for fair use:

The Work is a combination of an informational piece with some creative elements. Roughly eight of the nineteen paragraphs of the Work provide purely factual data, about five are purely creative opinions of the author, and the rest are a mix of factual and creative elements. While the Work does have some creative or editorial elements, these elements are not enough to consider the Work a purely “creative work” in the realm of fictional stories, song lyrics, or Barbie dolls. Accordingly, the Work is not within “the core of intended copyright protection.”

Second, Judge Pro looked at the fact Hoehn reproduced the entire work rather than just part of it. The judge concluded, “[W]hile wholesale copying of the Work shifts this factor against finding fair use, wholesale copying does not preclude a finding of fair use.”

Finally, Judge Pro examined Righthaven’s argument that Hoehn’s posting the article online somehow “damaged” the commercial market for the Journal’s original article:

Righthaven argues that the market for the Work was impacted negatively because potential readers are able to read the Work on the Website and would have no reason to view the Work at its original source of publication. However, Righthaven has not presented any evidence of harm or negative impact from Hoehn’s use of the Work on the Website between November 29, 2010 and January 6, 2011. Merely arguing that because Hoehn replicated the entirety of the Work the market for the Work was diminished is not sufficient to show harm.

This last point may prove to be the most helpful in combatting future copyright trolling cases. The copyright lobby expends a great deal of energy maintaining, without evidence, that copying “diminishes” the market for a given work. In most cases just the opposite is true. The free movement of information allows for the near-limitless expansion of interest in a particular work or author. This is not a zero-sum game. And it’s good that some judges recognize as much.

(Copied "wholesale" from the following Mises Economics Blog article: Copying, Not Trolling, Is “Fair Use” [which is published under Creative Commons license, CC BY 3.0].)

---

For those interested in OpenSource technology and the "Free Software Movement," the ideology behind this movement has been defined as follows:

“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it means that the program's users have the four essential freedoms:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

A program is free software if users have all of these freedoms. Thus, you should be free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission to do so.

You should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way.

(GNU General Public License: The Free Software Definition)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a user's rights group I have followed since its inception in the early 1990's, describes today's issues as follows:

While early threats to our right to communicate came from the government, current threats come also from industry, as it seeks to control and expand current revenue sources at the expense of traditional fair use. The trend has been for industry to use a combination of law and technology to suppress the rights of people using technology. Nowhere is this more evident than in the world of copyright law, where the movie and recording studios are trying to dumb down technology to serve their "bottom lines" and manipulate copyright laws to tip the delicate balance toward intellectual property ownership and away from the right to think and speak freely.

(A History of Protecting Freedom Where Law and Technology Collide)

Both of these groups (EFF and GNU), and many others, including the Ludwig von Mises Institute, are worth the interested reader's time investigating these important economic and civil rights issues.

 

"To the Victor go the Spoils" ...or... "Trump for President?"

He's a Conservative. He says he's Prolife. He's against gun control. He's in favor of "concise borders." It sounds like he's in favor of domestic drilling. He has a birth certificate. He's America's prime example of a supreme capitalist. He considers Obama to be the worst President in American history. He declare's "Obamacare" to be a "total disaster" for our country. He's against raising taxes, but is in favor of taking in "vast numbers of dollars" from foreign countries, instead.

He's a Patriot.

We're at war. Economic war. He knows how to fight that kind of war.

For this conservative, he's beginning to look very interesting.

We'll see...

 

Heralding the Gospel: The Evangelical Function of the Church Steeple

The Golden Steeple of St. John Lutheran Church (LCMS), Hermansfort, WI. Drawing all eyes to the Cross of Christ.

 

The Steeple and the Cross
The church steeple is that part of the Romanesque and Gothic church architectures which include the tower – often housing bells for announcing Liturgical Hours, the Divine Service, and various other aspects of church life to the countryside – atop of which was often mounted the spire. In congregations not suffering from the poison of iconoclasm, the spire would support a large Cross, visible from the ground and all over the countryside. Here is a technical description from one of my favorite authors, Dr. P.E. Kretzmann:

Église Saint-Paul de Strasbourg Originally, a Prussian military church, built during their last occupation of France in 1897.

A tower should never be omitted in building a Lutheran church. And if this is crowned with a spire, the symbolism of which has always been recognized, the effect will be all the greater. There is a certain factor of incompleteness about a mere tower, even if surmounted by slender turrets, which somehow renders it incongruous. The battlemented towers of many churches with Norman characteristics remind one more strongly of a castle or of a fortress than of a church. A graceful spire rising from a strongly-built tower is always a pleasing, and often an inspiring sight. The tower will, of course, be an integral part of the church, although it will not be built flush with the facade, but stand out one-fourth to one-half its width. "The tower, as a sign and summons, stands properly over the chief entrance, at the west..." (Mothes, quoted in Horn, 112). ...In larger churches, two towers of equal height and identical construction are erected at the two western corners. If the work is properly done, the effect is most imposing. The cost, however, is an item which is apt to discourage many congregations, for towers and spires are very expensive. The entire tower must be buttressed very firmly, since in most cases it is intended to include the belfry and must bear the weight of the bells as well as that of the spire. The careful anchoring of the spire in the walls of the tower is an essential point, since the stress to which it is exposed, even in a mild wind, is one whose force is generally underestimated. The belfry of the tower, if it is to serve the purpose well, should be situated above the roof, in order that the sound of the pealing bell or bells may travel without hindrance in every direction. It is hardly necessary to add that the architecture of the tower must harmonize perfectly with that of the rest of the building. It will usually be a strong test of the architect's ability to plan the tower in such a way as to give it the appearance of an integral part of the church and also preserve its solidity and beauty.

The Cross of Christ and the Harvest of Souls
Who is it that Christ has sent us to harvest? Answer: those whom the Holy Spirit has prepared for harvest.

Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true,

One soweth, and another reapeth
.
I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour; other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours (Jn. 4:35b-38).

Those who have laboured before us, making public use of God’s Word to communicate the Gospel’s message to “gather fruit unto life eternal,” have employed the Means through which the Holy Spirit has also begun the work of drawing the unregenerate unto Himself and into fellowship with other Christians in the Body of Christ – that is, in the Church. “He that reapeth” is merely “entering into the labours” of many Christians who have gone before, some whose use of Law & Gospel has served to plant, others whose use of Scripture has served to tend budding faith, until the soul has been fully prepared by the Holy Spirit for harvest. This does not mean that some go planting, some go tending, and some go harvesting. All go harvesting, but such use of the Means of Grace serves to plant and tend as well.

St. John Lutheran Church (WELS) Popple Creek, WI Still heralding the Cross of Christ.

The Cross is the single perfect heraldic icon for the purpose of evangelism, for in the Cross is simultaneously the message of the Law – symbolizing the punishment of death and separation from God that we deserve on account of our sin – and the message of the Gospel – symbolizing Christ’s innocent suffering and death on our behalf and on behalf of all sinners. Mounted high atop the steeple spire for every eye to see, and for every soul to consider, such a location is the perfect place from which to herald the cross of Christ. Mounted upon the highest point in the local landscape, the Cross is seen to cover all. Just as the life and work of Jesus Christ was done on behalf of all, the Cross and its full meaning is for all. The repentant sinner, including the soul ready for harvest, is drawn to the Cross, and entrance to the Church of Christ. Those who come to the cross, have been compelled to do so, drawn to it by the work of the Holy Spirit who has worked in them by Means of the Message of Good News. They are His work, through the simple message of Law & Gospel. Over the years, the steeple and Cross has fallen out of favour, ridiculed for being passe, and it seems to me that the decline of Christianity in America has accompanied these opinions. Perhaps truly evangelical churches should once again consider returning the Cross of Christ to a place of prominence in America’s landscape? Using the building as a herald of the Gospel is good evangelical stewardship.



“Programs” in Place of the Cross: Harvesting Green Tomatoes?
Yet, these days, many people fret that the simple heraldic preaching of the Cross fails to produce a harvest of souls, fails to adequately “build the Church,” in their opinion. Assuming faithful and rightly divided preaching of the pure Word, why would this be the case? The answer has already been provided above, but is worth repeating: the souls to whom the message is preached in these cases are simply not ready for harvest. We are equipped with tools of harvest, to reap that which has been prepared by the working of the Holy Spirit. But, if such preaching fails to reap, then, is this preaching in vain? Hardly! Similar to Christ, in the words of John 3, above, Paul explains in his first letter to the Corinthians:

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon (1 Co. 3:5-10).

Paul is here speaking to the congregation of building the Church. Planting in this reference can be considered roughly equivalent to both sowing and reaping in the analogy used by Jesus in John 3, above. Watering, in Paul’s use refers to keeping the fruit after the harvest Christ spoke of in His analogy. One man plants, another waters, and God uses this labour to grant the increase. Jesus indicates likewise: one man sows, another reaps. The one who realizes numeric increase has no basis for pointing to something he has done – he has entered into the labour of many labourers who have preceded him, and together they rejoice in God’s work of increasing his Church, Who uses such labour merely as an instrument of the Means of Grace, through which God works to give, and keep, increase. The tools for planting and watering in the example of Paul are the same as they are for sowing and reaping in the analogy used by Jesus: faithful and rightly divided preaching of the pure Word.

The dual spires of the Cathedral in Cologne rise to 515 feet.

In the reference just cited, however, it is interesting to note that Paul transitions from the picture of the evangelist as gardener, to the evangelist as builder. Emphasizing in the first picture that those who come to faith and stay in faith are God’s work not man’s, he shifts in the second picture to give dire warning: how the evangelist and preacher participates in the work of God is no trivial matter. Paul continues:

For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid in Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. (1 Co. 3:11-13)

When Christians get impatient with the Holy Spirit, lose trust in the Means of Grace, and begin to doubt the efficacy of the Word, they resort to laying a foundation other than that which is laid in the simple preaching of the Cross, other than the foundation laid in Jesus Christ. In their impatience for the Lord to prepare His harvest, and “grant them their wages,” they exclaim:

– Merely preaching the pure Word does not work!
– Merely telling the message of Law & Gospel to our neighbors does not work!
– Articulating and holding dogmatically to true Scripture teaching does not work!
– Maintaining an orderly, reverent, christocentric liturgy which shows forth the Marks of the Church and elevates the Means of Grace, doesn’t work!
– We must do something different!
– We must do something more!
– We must do something more exciting!
– We must do something more meaningful!
– We must do something more real, more relevant, and more relational!

And so these impetuous Christians busy themselves with laying a foundation other than Jesus Christ, as He is found in the faithful preaching of the pure Word in Law and Gospel. They really have no choice: those not prepared by the Holy Spirit for harvest will not be harvested by these reaper’s tools. To harvest souls not yet prepared for harvest, the reaper must use tools not given him by God for this purpose. He must use his own tools. He must lay a foundation other than Jesus Christ, alone. In doing so, he picks fruit otherwise not intended for harvest. He’s intent upon plucking Green Tomatoes. These unripened fruit don’t care about the preaching of the Cross or pure doctrine, nor would they respond to it; they respond to programs for the family and children. They are not drawn as a matter of conscience, by the Holy Spirit’s working, to the Church of Christ; they are drawn by titullating Sunday morning entertainment. The foundation laid by such approaches makes use of man’s tools: popular and common devices used by commercial enterprise to stimulate consumer patronage. But the structure built on this foundation does not look like the Church.


The Place of the Cross in Western Society
In a recent lecture I attended, the Rev. Dr. Frederic Baue (LCMS) commented rather poignantly (and I summarize from memory):

The monuments erected by man are an indication of his culture’s priorities.

Lecturing from aspects of his book¹, The Spiritual Society: What Lurks Beyond Postmodernism?, he was drawing from the recently “rediscovered” writings of Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin and highlighting the nature of cultural transition as cultures oscillate from Ideational to Sensate to Ideational modalities. According to Sorokin, transitional periods between these modalities are marked by cultural upheaval of various sorts. For example, the First Advent of Christ occurred deep in the sensate Roman Era. As happens in Sensate cultures, over time, they become more sensate as they progress toward their demise, making way for Ideational change. With the fall of Rome, the Roman Era gave way to the Mediaeval Era – the most previous era of Ideational modality, an era dominated by Christian thought. Following this, the Renaissance – a “rebirth” of ancient cultural priorities – was a transitional period back to an era of Sensate modality, an era known as the Modern Era. ²

The Rise and Fall of Modernism
Christian influence from the previous era dominating this transition and leaving the distinct mark of Christian thought upon the foundations of Modernism, the Visible church largely oversaw and was an influential participant and contributor to this cultural change; and in nearly every quarter her theology followed suit – with one peculiar exception: the Lutheran Reformation in Germany. While the Roman Church was the primary sponsor of the Renaissance transition, and the forward looking Swiss Reformation under Zwingli, Calvin, Beza and others was responsible for developing distinctly Modern theological systems, the Lutheran Church looked back. The Lutheran Church preserved the teaching of the apostles, which teaching preceded and prepared for the rise of the Mediaeval Era. Resting in conscience, standing on Confession, embracing the mysteries of the Sacraments, the hypostatic union of natures in Christ, and the Holy Spirit’s work through the Means of Grace, the Lutheran Church, in her theology, remained distinctly Mediaeval, distinctly “Ideational,” and preserved this character over following generations, though in ever diminishing influence as the withering onslaught of heterodoxy and pragmatic political machinations worked against her. By the time of the Prussian Union and Evangelical mergers of the early 19^th Century, true Confessional Lutheranism, and the mediaeval theological perspectives she preserved, had nearly been extinguished.

The Strasbourg Cathedral was the tallest structure in the world, from 1647-1874, during which time Strasbourg was also at the center of European commerce. Lutheran during the Reformation, it see-sawed over the centuries, between Roman and Lutheran control, as the Alsace was exchanged by successive military conquest between France and Germany.

The late 19^th Century, however marked the beginning of a transition to a New Ideational Era – and the beginning of the end of Modernism. We see this in the dramatic changes that occurred in the arts, and in political ideology beginning at about this time. We see this in the political and social upheaval that resulted and intensified into the 20^th Century, and in the increasing diffusion of academic focus through this time. The Holocost, while horrifying solely for the sake of the peoples involved, was particularly galvanizing for a larger reason, also: it permanently extinguished any optimism for Modernism, and marked the end of the Modern Era.

We see the result of this upheaval in greater Christianity today. As Christian perspectives based on Modernistic, “sensate-oriented” cultural modalities slink into irrelevancy, we witness among them the marks of flailing confusion. Modern Evangelicalism is one example. The pragmatic clarion call of the pop-church Evangelical, “We must be Real, Relevant, and Relational,” is incoherent nonsense when placed next to the clear teachings of Scripture, and is itself a recipe for failure. And fail it has. Barna Research – a Christian research firm formerly dedicated to the theories of the Church Growth Movement (CGM), whose mission it was to provide Evangelicals with marketing data and analysis to assist congregations in their implementation of CGM – declared in 2005, after a string of very shrill warnings regarding the demise of the American Church over previous years, that the theories of the Church Growth Movement are a statistical failure. Having invested over $500 billion dollars implementing the methods of CGM over the course of 30 years, no evidence of growth was discernible in American Christianity. None. Denominational shift is all that can be observed or attributed to these methods. In an effort to understand and pragmatically react to cultural change, Modern Christians, still stuck in the previous cultural era, reveal that they are oblivious to the real and monumental changes that have occurred in the past century, and are continuing to occur right now.


Confessional Lutheranism, Liturgical Expression, and the Rise of the New Cultural Era
We see the beginning of the end of Modernism in the late 19^th Century in two other respects. One is the collection and emergence of organized efforts among Christian remnants of the previous Ideational Era – that is, the return of a forceful and learned articulation of Confessional Lutheranism. The Confessional and Liturgical movements we observe today, which, more and more, we Christians are attaching ourselves to, didn’t just begin a few years ago. They are an extension of what was begun by the Henkel’s (Tennessee Synod), Walther’s (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod), Preuses (Norwegian Synod), Krauth’s (General Council), Bading’s and Hoenecke’s (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) and the Pieper’s (WELS & LCMS) of the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries. In point of fact, “relevant” Christianity in our new Ideational cultural era will be informed by and take its direction from the perspectives of the previous such era, of Mediaeval Christianity, while Modernist systems, outside of the most resilient and tenacious of the Reformed confessions, will mostly just go away. Adopting and incorporating their increasingly irrelevant perspectives into Lutheran teaching and practice is, more than it ever was before, theological suicide.

Cultural Change marked in the Monuments of Man
A second respect in which we can see the beginning of the end of Modernism, is revealed in the increasingly “sensate” nature of the most prominent monuments of Modernism. From the late Mediaeval Era forward until the beginning of the close of the Modern Era, the largest, tallest and most impressive structures built by man were monuments to God: Christian Churches, with steeples reaching as high as 525 ft, atop of which were mounted the Cross of Christ, as a herald of Law & Gospel to the entire countryside, and an announcement that the Word of Peace and Reconciliation with God could be received, along with all of its eternal benefits, in His Church.

But what happened in the late 19^th Century? The most impressive of man’s monuments, far from being reserved for the special honor of God, were instead directed to man himself, boasting of his achievements, and proclaiming that his priorities were no longer his faith in God and his acknowledgment of gratitude toward God, but of accumulating wealth and honor for himself. From 1311 to 1884 AD, the tallest, most adorned, and most impressive structures in the Western world were churches. In 1884, the Washington Monument became the tallest structure, and then in 1889 the Eiffel Tower was built to kick-off the World’s Fair in Paris, completely dwarfing all other structures in the Western world. From 1930 onward, the worlds tallest and most impressive structures have been office buildings – monuments of man to the priority of commercial enterprise and the accumulation of wealth and power³. Accompanying the dramatic decline of Modernism in the 20^th Century, we see that man’s priorities became dramatically more “sensate.”

Today, throwback modernistic Christians consider the church steeple to be passe, impractical, and more expense than it is worth -- and then boast of their stewardship. Yet these same Christians will line up to throw away $500 billion dollars over thirty years on worthless entertainments and other human inventions, to build anthropocentric organizations on the foundation of hedonism. They call it “church” but what is it really? Emptied of Scripture teaching, shunting aside the Marks of the Church, rejecting the straightforward preaching of Law & Gospel and reliance on the Means of Grace, removing Christ from His central position and replacing him with the priorities of man, these organizations look and sound nothing like “the Church.” Their work is being tried, and revealed for what sort it is: after a generation of trying to pluck Green Tomatoes using tools contrived by man, and succeeding mostly in just robbing "harvest fruit" from other church bodies, while little by little depriving it of preservative preaching of Law & Gospel, Christians find they have indigestion. Thus, these church-like organizations are now in dramatic decline -- precipitous decline -- as spoiled fruit oozes out from the organizational structures they have built.

And yet the old stone church buildings remain. Even though some are emptied of people, and others are emptied of sound teaching, these monuments to God continue to herald the Cross of Christ, to focus the eyes of all on Him and His Gospel message, and to draw people to Christ and His Church. The people may be mute, but the stones still conspicuously cry out, publicly assigning worth to God.

A 19th Century church of Gothic Revival4 architecture, St. Nikolai Kirche in Hamburg, Germany was destroyed in the bombings of WWII. Yet, the steeple remains, elevating the Cross of Christ 483 feet above the landscape.

Built on the Rock the Church doth stand,
Even when steeples are falling.
Crumbled have spires in every land,
Bells still are chiming and calling
Calling the old and young to rest,
But above all the soul distressed
Longing for rest everlasting.

Grant then, O God, wher’er men roam,
That, when the church bells are ringing
Many in Jesus’ faith may come
Where He His message is bringing
“I know mine own, mine own know me,
Ye, not the world, my face shall see:
My peace I leave with you, Amen”

Built on the Rock, v1&7
TLH 467, ELH 211, CW 529




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Endnotes:

1. This book is necessary reading for any Christian who would be a student of culture.
   
2. This is, of course, Sociological theory, which, in the end, probably holds about as much water as Psychological theories. There are so many different theories because of the difficulty in testing hypothesis, each theory one is found wanting by observation. Nevertheless, the recent “rediscovery of Sorokin’s writings has generated much interest in his ideas, and given a boost to Social Dynamic theories, which for the most part have been based on demographic rather than cultural/ideological criteria. He is considered a “giant” of 20^th Century sociological research.
   
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_tallest_structures#History_of_record_holders_in_each_CTBUH_category
   
4. All of the structures featured on this page were constructed either in the late Mediaeval Era, or are structures built in the late 19^th Century during the later Gothic Revival, coinciding with “Ideational” influences as they are thought to have been showing their influence.