The Finkelsteinery: Political Liberty

Showing posts with label Political Liberty. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

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:

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;
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;
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;
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);
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:
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.

Four Boxes of Liberty

THE FOUR BOXES OF LIBERTY

The Soap Box
The Ballot Box
The Jury Box
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.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

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!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

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:

hate

millions

In another conversation, he confessed:

love

everyone

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

that the common sentiment, “From each according his ability, to each according to his need,” is the mantra of Communist collectivism;
that the worker solidarity movements of the late 19^th Century were organized by Marxist agitators seeking a foothold in America;
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;
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
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 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

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

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

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;
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;
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;
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);
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:
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

The Soap Box
The Ballot Box
The Jury Box
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

Monday, November 28, 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.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

"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.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Nopenhagen: Fata Morgana fades in Truth's Brilliant Light

Copenhagen talks in chaos after leak of 'Danish Text'
indicates intent to take gross advantage of developing countries...

Fata Morgana is a shimmering mirage, a term used by C.F.W. Walther in his fourth lecture on Communism and Socialism to describe the aspirations of these social/political/economic ideologies. After setting forth the Classic rebuttal to Communism and Socialism, showing that it is entirely unreasonable on the basis of Natural Law, and further exposing the slander committed by Socialists against the Scriptures, he states:

Their aim is a Fata Morgana, i.e. a brilliant airy appearance, like a fairy castle. The pilgrim makes one more effort to reach this castle. He finally reaches the place where the bewitching atmospheric appearance was seen. And behold, it is gone, and the deceived wanderer is now surrounded with a darkness and trouble all the more dreary.

That the aim of Communism and Socialism is nothing but a shimmering mirage follows from the fundamental fact that these ideologies are contrary to human nature. One man is not equal in capability to another, so enforced equality of outcome is a manifest crime against his nature. One man does not find the same measure of happiness as another in the same external advantages, so the aim of realizing equal happiness by an external equalization fails at the start. Mankind is naturally gregarious, but he is not naturally cooperative; on the contrary, due to innate selfishness, he is naturally competitive. Experience shows that these factors always result in the failure of Communism and Socialism.

Indeed, that the aims of Communism and Socialism are but a shimmering mirage is well known to those among the ruling class, the shimmering allure of sharing in the wealth of the rich and of reducing them to modest station serving to exploit envy and sloth among the servile classes – natural weaknesses of human character that they are – and to fool them into giving up their property, and with it, all incentive to use God-given faculty for their own advantage and that of their fellow man. In my November 27 post, EU President: 2009 to be First Year of Global Governance, I developed this point by emphasizing the Depravity of Man and the Scandal of Enforced Fraternity, and concluded that,

Marxism, in the end, will never lead to a classless society. The upper classes – the ruling class – will never allow it, will never divest themselves of advantage. Rather, as if dangling the carrot of social equity before asses, the ruling class serves their own fantasy of a Utopian Society in order to secure their own advantage, by using their power to regulate the middle class out of existence while otherwise duping the servile classes into relinquishing the only means they have of working themselves into their own relative positions of advantage: the free use of their faculties and ownership of their property. In a Utopian Society, the upper class still needs minions to provide labor -- to grow food, to sweep streets, to weed the flower gardens, and to polish golden toilets. This is a truism: there will never be fewer than two classes of people in any society.

"Climate Change" and the Copenhagen Treaty: Fraud in the Works
How interesting then that today, in Copenhagen, developing nations were exposed to the true motives of Global Socialists – not at all in the interest of equalization, but of domination, using the promise of a big pot of gold to sucker them into agreement. The so-called 'Danish Text' of the Copenhagen Treaty was leaked today, the contents of which infuriated representatives of developing countries. An article published today in U.K.'s The Guardian, entitled Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish Text' leak, details these revelations and their political fallout:

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as "the circle of commitment" – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.

The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol's principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act. The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions; and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.

The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as "a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks".

A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text. In particular, it is understood to:

Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;
Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called "the most vulnerable";
Weaken the UN's role in handling climate finance;
Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

Developing countries that have seen the text are understood to be furious that it is being promoted by rich countries without their knowledge and without discussion in the negotiations.

"It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process," said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.

Here's more from a CNN correspondent in Denmark:

Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text' leak

The aim of Copenhagen has nothing whatsoever to do with mitigating supposed “climate change,” the Guardian article goes on to point out, as the regulation of carbon output comes nowhere near the 40% reduction that “science” supposedly says is needed. The aim of Copenhagen is one thing alone: to set up a Global Socialist government.

As pointed out in my series of posts on this subject beginning in October – Natural Law, Moral Imperative, and Public Policy: Copenhagen Looms Near, An “Inconvenient Truth:” Climate Change and Scientific Fraud, and EU President: 2009 to be First Year of Global Governance – “Climate Change” hysteria is a Scientific Fraud. Actual data entirely contradicts the fantastical prognostications and ideological fabrications of climatologists' “computer models.” The science is detailed in the previous posts just mentioned. Moreover, the scientists themselves have been caught in the act of fraud – conspiring to prevent fellow scientists from publishing contradictory findings in peer reviewed scientific journals, manipulating data to match their theories, permanently disposing of raw data, and illegally interfering with the release of information requested under the Freedom of Information Act. This, too, has been detailed in the previous posts just mentioned. That popular junk-science regarding impending global climate disaster is fraudulent, is underscored by commentary released today by renowned Atmospheric Scientist and Hurricane forecasting specialist, Dr. William Gray, Professor Emeritus at Colorado State University. Writing on ClimateDepot, he states:

Had I not devoted my entire career of over half-a-century to the study and forecasting of meteorological and climate events I would have likely been concerned over the possibility of humans causing serious global climate degradation.

There has been an unrelenting quarter century of one-sided indoctrination of the western world by the media and by various scientists and governments concerning a coming carbon dioxide (CO_2 ) induced global warming disaster. These warming scenarios have been orchestrated by a combination of environmentalists, vested interest scientists wanting larger federal grants and publicity, the media which profits from doomsday scenario reporting, governmental bureaucrats who want more power over our lives, and socialists who want to level-out global living standards. These many alarmist groups appear to have little concern over whether their global warming prognostications are accurate, however. And they most certainly are not. The alarmists believe they will be able to scare enough of our citizens into believing their propaganda that the public will be willing to follow their advice on future energy usage and agree to a lowering of their standard of living in the name of climate salvation.

Rising levels of CO_2 are not near the threat these alarmists have portrayed them to be... The global climate models predicting large amounts of global warming for a doubling of CO_2 are badly flawed. They should never have been used to establish government climate policy.

The last century's global warming of about 1 degree F is not a consequence of human activities. This warming is primarily the result of a multi-century change in the globe's deep ocean circulation. These ocean current changes have lead to a small and gradual increase in the globe's temperature. We are coming out of the Little Ice Age and into a generally warmer climate state. This is akin to the warmer global climate of the Medieval Period. We can do nothing but adapt to such long period natural temperature changes.

The recent 'ClimateGate' revelations coming out of the UK University of East Anglia are but the tip of a giant iceberg of a well organized international climate warming conspiracy that has been gathering momentum for the last 25 years. This conspiracy would become much more manifest if all the e-mails of the publicly funded climate research groups of the US and of foreign governments were ever made public...

As if in coordination Dr. Gray's letter, today, 140 climatologists signed an open letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, stating in part:

We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines, challenge the UNFCCC and supporters of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate. Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.

Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:

Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;
Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;
Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;
Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;
The incidence of malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;
Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;
Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in Polar Regions , is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions;
Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes;
Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency;
Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.

It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do.

The atmosphere has indeed bewitched the masses – it has almost fooled them into giving up their liberty, thinking that by voluntary economic sanction and shared worldwide misery the masses can save the world and make it a better place. What the masses have instead discovered is the depravity of man. There is no scientific basis for "anthropogenic climate change." The hypotheses of CO2 induced "Greenhouse Effect" causing global warming have been falsified by OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE, namely, the recent research of Lindzen and Choi. Claims of dramatic temperature increases have been fabricated by ideological zealots posing as scientists. The political gathering in Copenhagen has been deprived of all basis in scientific fact. Yet it continues. It continues solely to exploit insecurities of man in order to deprive him of his liberty, property and capital, and to globally deprive him of his access to representational governing authority.

Global Warming: What is it all about? -->

<-- EU President: 2009 to be First Year of Global Governance

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE FOUR)

COMMUNISM and SOCIALISM

Minutes of
The First German Evangelical Lutheran Congregation, U.A.C.
at
St. Louis, Missouri

A STENOGRAPHIC REPORT OF FOUR LECTURES
DELIVERED, AND BY RESOLUTION OF THE CONGREGATION,
FIRST PUBLISHED BY
PROFESSOR C.F.W. WALTHER, D. D.

Translated from the German by Rev. D. Simon and published in
1879 by Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis Missouri.

(from the 1947 reprint by The Lutheran Research Society)

FOURTH LECTURE

“Lord to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” Thus Thy disciples once answered Thy question: “Will Ye also go away?” Thus, all, whoever became Thy true disciples, had to exclaim, and thus we too must exclaim. For to whom else in all the world could we go for the truth which we have found with Thee? To whom in all the world could we go for that grace which cancels our debt of sin and which we have found with Thee? And to whom in all the world could we go for that blessed peace which we have found with Thee?—

0 grant then, that no mock wisdom or mock comfort or feigned joy of this world may occasion as ever to become unfaithful to Thee.

Open Thou also the spiritual eyes of those who have as yet no knowledge of the salvation to be found with Thee, that they may know, that with Thee all things are to be found for which the soul of man longs, that they too may come unto Thee and remain with Thee unto death.

We will then praise and bless Thee for, this before Thy throne forevermore. Amen.

We are opposed to the efforts of the socialists:
III. Because the charges of communism against the Church and the Christian religion,
that these rather hinder than promote the material welfare of man, are unfounded and unjust.
There is one point yet which we must consider in our discussion of socialism and communism, if we would proceed with fairness, justice, uprightness and honesty. This is the accusation which socialism and communism make against the Christian religion and the Christian Church.

The first of these accusations is this: “The Church and the Christian religion are in league with capital,” or to say the same thing in other words, “with the rich, the powerful, and consequently also with the oppressors, the tyrants.”

1. the charge that the Church is in league with wealth, oppression and tyranny
“What else compares with the history of the Church,” ask the communists, “than the history of the most atrocious wickedness, of the plundering of the poor, and of bloody persecutions upon those who differed from them?”

And, my brethren, we cannot deny, that in the name and under the covering of the Church and the Christian religion some of the most heinous crimes have been committed, helpless people enslaved, impoverished and plundered, and streams of innocent blood shed. Calling themselves the Christian Church, men have affirmed that, if necessary for the propagation of the Church, fire and the sword should be used. Calling themselves the Christian Church, they claimed that in defense of the Church they had to burn the heretics. Calling themselves the Christian Church, they claimed a full right to demand of the lay members their bodily and earthly treasures brought to them by the Church. Calling themselves the Christian Church, they pretended, that, for the salvation of the world, they had to gain the favor of the wealthy, had to gain riches, honor, respect and power.

That all these abominations were committed by these who call themselves heads of the Christian Church, and that these abominations were committed in league with princes, the great, the powerful, kings and emperors, is a fact which no one can deny. All these things are written on the pages of history in characters of blood, and no one can erase them.

It is not to be denied in this connection either, that even in the so-called Protestant State Church many theologians united with the rich, the honored, the eminent, particularly with the princes, for the purpose of enslaving the common people to rob them as pertains to the body and soul, and to deprive them of all their rights.

But, brethren, what has this to do with the Christian religion and the Christian Church? The dark history of these abominations is not the history of the Christian Church, but rather the history of those TRAITORS AND ENEMIES OF THE CHURCH FOUND IN HER VERY BOSOM.

Or I ask you, when did Christ, or where do the Scriptures command such crimes?

Our Lord Jesus Christ was far from commanding His servants to propagate his kingdom by force with fire and sword as did the lying-prophet Mohammed; on the other hand Christ strictly commanded His disciples: “Go and teach all nations and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned” [Mk. 16:15-16]. Observe then, that Christ did not give the secular sword into His disciples’ hands; His Word is the weapon they were to use, and the means of propagating His kingdom was instruction and conviction; therefore the Lord also told Peter, when he, in his carnal zeal, had drawn his sword in defense of his Lord; “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword, shall perish with the sword” [Mt. 26:47-56].

Our Lord Jesus was also far from requiring of his followers that they should persecute and kill the schismatic and the heretic, but to the contrary He declares that the wheat and the tares shall remain together in the field until the time of harvest [Mt. 13:24-30]. And when those disciples desired that fire should fall from heaven, because the Samaritans would not receive the Lord, the Lord declares unto them: “Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” He accordingly testifies: “It is not the spirit of the gospel, to let fire fall from heaven upon the enemies of the Church” [Lu. 9:51-56].

Christ was also far from commanding His servants to conquer the kingdoms of this world for Him, and to seek after riches, honor and power, but on the contrary he publicly and solemnly declared in the presence of Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence” [Jn. 18:36]. Christ did not, as did the religious leaders of India and Egypt, intend to establish certain castes, as for example the caste of the priesthood and the caste of the laymen: no, the New Testament knows of no privileged priesthood. Christ would have no difference made among the members of His Church. He plainly declares: "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant. One is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren” [Mt. 20:20-28].

Christ did not by any means, either, advise his followers to slight and despise the poor as members of less importance than the rich; but to the contrary, Christ associated mostly with the poor and labored mostly among them. He also says: “The poor have the gospel preached to them” [Mt. 11:2-6], and from among the poor He mostly gathered His Church. Therefore, the holy apostle Paul also says: “Brethren, God hath chosen not many noble after the flesh, but the weak things of the world” [1 Co. 1:18-31].

Christ was also far from requiring His followers to associate particularly with the rich commanding that they should do so because these had the greatest influence; that they should flatter them as those who had been especially preferred of God. There is, to the contrary, no book in all the world that speaks so contemptuously of the rich as the Book of Christ, i.e. the Holy Bible. In our last lecture we already considered the significant words of the Lord: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” [Mt. 19:16-26]. An another place he says: "Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God” [Mt. 5:3]. Again: “But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation” [Lu. 6:24]. And by St. Paul the Holy Spirit warns all Christians: “They that will be rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition; for the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” [1 Ti. 6:6-11]. James also says in the 5th chapter of his epistle: “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall cat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter” [Ja. 5:1-5]. And what is the apostles’ admonition to the master as to his relation to the servant? He says: “Ye masters do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening, knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him” [Ep. 6:9]. Is this flattering the rich? Is this requiring the Christians to associate with the rich, and that because they are rich?

And finally, my brethren, Christ or the Scriptures are far from warning the Christians against losing their respect for tyrants, lest they might fail to have the support of their strong arm; they, to the contrary, inform us that there has been no tyrant who did not come to a dreadful death through the terrible judgments of God. I need only refer you to Pharaoh, to Nebuchadnezzar, to Saul, to Manassa, to Herod. Yes, even more. When Solomon had been led away from the living God by his wives, his fall was also manifest in this, that he fearfully oppressed his people. He repented and died. The people then came to Solomon’s successor, Rehoboam, and demanded of him that he should make the grievous burdens which were oppressing them, lighter. Rehoboam turned a deaf ear, and in his arrogance sent the people away, —and what were the consequences according to the Scriptures? God in his wrath permitted it that ten tribes revolted and thus five-sixths of the kingdom fell away from him.

You see from this, my brethren, that even if men, who are in league with the rich who oppress the poor, who are in league with the tyrants, call themselves Christians and are even found among their number, they are not Christians.

The first accusation of the socialists and communists against the Church and the Christian religion accordingly falls to the ground. For the Christian Church proper is not in league with oppression and tyranny, but is their enemy, and a faithful friend of the poor and oppressed.

2. the charge that the Church is incapable of relieving human suffering.
A second charge which the communists and socialists make against the Church and the Christian religion is this: The Christian Church has proved herself incapable of improving the miserable condition of the poor, incapable of removing the wrong relation which exists between the employer and the employed, and of bringing about such a state of affairs that all men might enjoy themselves in this world.

Brethren, it is even true, that Christianity has in reality not destroyed the old system of oppression. Christianity has not only not destroyed the natural evil of the world, but the world has even continued in her wickedness since Christ came. But could such an effect be expected or required of any religion? Is it not the very object of religion to point out and to bring about the right relation between man and God and to reveal man’s relation to a future life? The Church, by her religion, is to direct our attention to the proper relation which man is to sustain to man, and also to bring about such a relation. But the Church can do this only within her own bounds. Is not the use of physical power in direct conflict with the nature of the Church and the Christian religion? It is therefore a crying injustice to make religion responsible for failing to accomplish what she has no right and power to do.

To this must be added, that where the true Christian religion takes possession of the human heart, there it changes the relation between man and man and actually improves it. It is then that the relation between the rich and poor, between rulers and subjects, between employers and employees, and between the lofty and the low, is really improved. That true faith produces these fruits when it takes possession of the heart, we learned in the last lecture. For when great necessity came upon the Christian congregation at Jerusalem, when the sword hung, as it were, by a hair over the Christian’s head, the Christians had all things common, neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own, and all only provided that none might be in want. And such will be men’s relation to each other, where persons have become true Christians, who do not carry their faith at their tongue’s end, but in whose hearts faith dwells.

Furthermore, everyone will admit, that a final judgment of a matter can be given only after a trial. So then, let the socialists and communists give true Christianity a trial, i.e., let them become true Christians: what will be the consequence? They will acknowledge that Christianity is truly a divine, heavenly power for the conversion of man and for the changing of all the relations of men to each other; then they would see, that if Christianity became universal, the sicknesses and weaknesses of this life, failures of crops, accidents, death and other natural evils, would indeed not be put away; and they would see that it would put an end to the tyranny of tyrants and make of them Just rulers, would take away the covetousness of the rich and make them liberal, would take away the selfishness of the employers, so that they would look more to the common interests, and care more for the welfare of the laborer than for their own, would put an end to the envy of the poor and make them contented.

The socialists and communists will no doubt ridicule this; very few will believe it, and will consequently remain in their misanthropy, i.e. enmity to mankind, and will therefore also continue to consider themselves in an unhappy condition. But, my brethren, we believe it. Why! we have experienced it and experience it daily, that Christianity has such power. It does not only make us blessed for the life to come, but it makes us blessed in this world, as it is written in the 128th Psalm: “Blessed is everyone that feareth the Lord; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands; happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.” This we do not only read in the Scriptures, but we have also experienced it. Yes, we have also experienced what Asaph says in the 73rd Psalm: “Lord whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart faileth, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. But it is good for me to draw near to God; I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all thy works.”

Let then every Christian take warning against the agitations of the socialists and communists. Their aim is a Fata Morgana, i.e. a brilliant airy appearance, like a fairy castle. The pilgrim makes one more effort to reach this castle. He finally reaches the place where the bewitching atmospheric appearance was seen. And behold, it is gone, and the deceived wanderer is now surrounded with a darkness and trouble all the more dreary.

Oh then, my brethren, let us aim for some other object – that object which presents to us our heavenly calling in Christ Jesus. This is no Fata Morgana, this is reality, this is truth! There are indeed many who say: “No one has yet come from the other world to us to let us know that there is another life.” But One has come from the other world to us, namely, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has sundered the bands of death and proclaimed to all of us: “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live! and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die” [Jn. 11:25-27]. Jesus be our guide then, and we will follow Him over mountains and through valleys, through prosperity and misfortune, through darkness and light! Finally, the eternal and blessed light will make its appearance, then all our tears shall be wiped away, our sighings cease, and eternal unchangeable joy shall take possession of our hearts. Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has obtained this for us, help that we may secure it. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

<-- "America's Martin Luther" Lectures on Communism and Socialism (THIRD LECTURE)

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

C.F.W. Walther: Lectures on Communism and Socialism (LECTURE THREE)

THIRD LECTURE

“O Lord, how great and how manifold are Thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made them all, the earth is full of Thy riches.” Such was the language of Thy servant David thousands of years ago, after meditating over the works of Thy creation, preservation and government. We at the present can but repeat this exclamation with Thy servant David, for wherever we turn our eyes, we behold bright and shining traces of Thy endless power, wisdom and goodness.

O preserve Thou us then against that spirit of darkness, which calls itself light, and which is at present poured out upon myriads of unhappy people, which denies Thee the Creator, Preserver and Ruler of all things, or at least maliciously subverts Thy sacred administration and wisely arranged order of things.

Enable us rather, ever more to acknowledge that Thou doest all things well, and that sinful man alone has corrupted Thy work. Grant therefore, that, as often as the troubles- of earth lie heavily upon us, we may reprove ourselves and not Thee. Let us not perish in the rising floods of unbelief, and although thousands and tens of thousands should fall from Thee, help Thou us, that we may continue in the faith to our end, when our faith shall be changed into vision, and our hope into enjoyment. Hear us for the sake of Jesus Christ, Thine only begotten Son, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

All of you here tonight well know the question for our consideration this evening, to wit: Why should and can no reasonable man, much less a Christian, take part in the efforts of communists and socialists?

To this question three answers are given:
Because their efforts are contrary to reason, nature and experience;
because these efforts are contrary to Christianity, and finally
because the charges of communism against the Church and the Christian religion, that they rather hinder than promote the material welfare of man, are confounded and unjust.
The first answer has been considered. We have tested communism by reason, nature, and history, and have seen that it does not stand even these tests. But there have even been Christians, who have claimed that communism and socialism could also be justified by the Holy Scriptures, the only true source of Christianity. Yes, unbelievers have made this claim, some of them communists; of course the latter did so, not because they themselves believed it, but that they might use our own weapons against us Christians.

[And so the second answer shall be now considered:]

We are opposed to the efforts of the socialists:
II. Because these efforts are contrary to Christianity

[firstly because,]

1. What is adduced from the Scriptures in their favor,
either proves nothing, or proves the contrary.
There are particularly four passages of the Holy Scriptures which are adduced to show us, that if we would faithfully adhere to the Bible, we must necessarily also justify the efforts of the communists and socialists. The first passage is found in the first chapter of the Holy Scriptures, where God gives man authority over the earth and all things in the earth. The second [passage] is found in the fourth and fifth chapters of Acts, where the condition of the first Christian congregation at Jerusalem is presented. The third passage is found in the 18th chapter of St. Luke, where an account is given of Christ saying to a rich man: “Sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” The fourth passage is found in the 20th chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew. At this place we have a record of the familiar parable of the laborers in the vineyard.

We will, accordingly, in the first place closely examine these portions of Scripture and become convinced whether these are really for or against communism and socialism, i.e. for or against the community of goods or common labor with a common profit.

[First], we read in the first chapter of Genesis:

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing, that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image..., and said unto them...: replenish the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth... And God said: behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.

From this, it is true, we learn that God has given to the human race the earth, together with all things that live and move on the earth, as their possession. But we do not learn from this, how the possessions of the entire human race are to be used, nor in what manner the earth and all things that live and move upon the earth, shall be used. God must accordingly have left the arrangement of these things to man himself, that is, to his reason. If a rich man would give to a carpenter, who had been unfortunate, and had been sold out, a saw, a plane and other tools, bread, meat, coffee, a sewing-machine, a doll, a hobby-horse, and other lay-things, he would have presented these things to the entire family of the poor carpenter; and if he gave no directions, how these things should be used and appropriated, the carpenter would know that all these things, presented to him and his family, were to be disposed of according to his good judgment. The carpenter would know that the hobby-horse and the other playthings were not intended for him, but for his children, and if he had received a cradle, he would well know that it was not intended for him to lie in. Nor would he think that the sewing machine was for him, but for his wife. In short, these possessions would be for the family, and were to be divided among the members of it. God’s doings have been similar. The whole earth and all things therein he has given to man, but he has not determined how man shall use them. Man is no brute, without reason, and without a knowledge of the aim of life. Man has reason, and this he is to use. It is self-evident that at the beginning, when there were no owners on the whole earth, so far as the individual is concerned, everyone could appropriate to himself whatever he desired. Whatever he appropriated was his own. The same would hold good even at the present day. If, for example, a crew should be ship-wrecked and would be driven to an uninhabited island, owned by no one, the crew would simply cake possession of the island. Everyone would have the right to settle down and appropriate a certain portion of the island to himself.

But what was done after God the Lord had given the earth, and all things on the earth, to the entire human race? Did perhaps the people in the earliest times institute communism, community of goods, or common labor with a common profit? In the fourth chapter of Genesis we read: “And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof.” We see accordingly that Abel was a keeper of sheep and carried on breeding of cattle, and that Cain was a farmer, and that each one offered unto the Lord of that which he possessed. Neither Cain nor Abel considered his own the common property of both, but each one offered that which he could justly call his own personal property. Otherwise he could not have presented it as his offering.

We see accordingly, that reason already taught the first persons living on the earth, that the holding of personal property was a necessity among men, for the [first] reason, that without the holding of personal property, neither peace, nor unity could be preserved. The communist Fourier indeed said that in his communist republic everyone should have whatever he needed, and everyone should engage in that work for which he was particularly inclined. But it must be remembered that enjoyments are so altogether different. There is good wine produced and also poor wine. There are a great many poor fruits and few that are extra good. Now who would say: “I will take the poor wine?” Who would say: “I will ride the poor horse?” Who would say: “I will do the meanest kind of drudgery?” Everyone would want to engage in the best and the easiest and the most honorable work, and peace would soon be at an end. Just as necessary then as concord and peace are to the human race, so necessary is the holding of personal property.

[Secondly,] to this we must yet add: Reason further requires the holding of personal property, because there dwells in the natural man a certain desire for liberty and independence. If man is not in a measure free and independent, he cannot be happy. Take away personal property and you put an end to liberty. Others would then prescribe to him what he should do, how he should live, what he should eat and drink, where he should live, and where he should be employed. Truly, I would not stay in a society where I had not perfect liberty in self-determination. I would as soon live under the Russian knout, under the police of China or the despotism of Turkey. For I would then at least be conscious of the fact, that I was forced to it in opposition to my will — and here shall I willingly subject myself to all this? Never, no, never! For this reason Cain, when society became oppressive to him after he had committed murder, left and went into another land and there built a city for himself and family, and called it Enoch.

A modern writer gives a graphic description of the wretched condition which a communist must realize in a communist state. He says: “'La loi' (i.e. law or command) plans and tells the 50 millions of Icarians all they shall do and all they shall leave undone. La loi fixes the time for labor at so many hours and so many minutes; la loi prescribes to the young ladies and gentlemen when and how long they shall make their toilet; la loi introduces a 'new dish of vegetables' into every Icarian family; la loi provides for cold meat at the Icarian picnics; la loi commands, similar to Babeuf’s communist state, that all literature not officially recognized, shall be burned as worthless literature,” etc. (“Communismus” von W. Schulz in Bd. 2. der Supplemente zu Rotteck’s und Welcker’s Staatslexicon. Altona 1846. S. 67.)

This is no exaggeration. It is indeed true that the communists do not imagine that such would be the state of affairs, if their ideas were realized. They will say: “This is all false, we do not think of establishing such a state. We are free people, and we will provide that in such a communist state we shall not sacrifice our liberty.” But they may say what they please, and they may twist themselves as they please: whoever accepts the principle, must also accept the deduction, and that is, that man loses his personal liberty; for this is based, as stated, above all things, on the holding of personal property; and on this, that in accordance with my ability, I can choose the service that I would perform, as well as the calling in which I would labor. I must have liberty to leave my position again; I must have liberty to do with my own as I see fit. All this is denied to me the moment I enter into a communist society. For just as soon as such liberty is granted, the principle on which communism is based, would be destroyed.

The third reason, why the people of the earliest times already knew from reason that the holding of personal property was essential to earthly happiness, is this: if no one held any personal property, that incentive, which almost everyone needs, if he would exert himself and do his work well, would be wanting. Why do many persons work from morning till night? Because they would gain something by it. This is of course not the right motive. Christians should not be induced to labor diligently by the desire to gain something, but they should labor for God’s sake, because of God’s order and command. But nearly everyone labors exclusively for gain; some perhaps not just for money and goods, but then it is for honor, respect and fame. This incentive is taken from man just as soon as he ceases to hold personal property.

The first generation of men was further induced to assert the claim of personal property by an intuitive perception of equity. This dictates to everyone that the pay shall he according to the work done. Diligent, faithful and successful labor should be more liberally rewarded. But just as soon as men enter into a society in which the profit of united labor belongs to all, that true equality which justice demands, is at an end.

And besides what would become of the arts and sciences in a communist state? If, for example, one would apply himself to astronomy, or philosophy, or even to theology or architecture, or painting, many would look upon him as an idler. And why? Because he would earn no money for the society by his art or science. The arts and sciences would undoubtedly be banished from the truly communist state.

Every man has certain religious wants. While many of them would know nothing of religion, others have a certain impulse to serve God. The communists say “In our communist State no religion shall be found, and above all, we will not tolerate any religious teachers, they will be excluded.” But of what benefit is it to them to pass such resolutions? They will never be able to banish the religious wants from human nature, even if man should hear nothing of God from his youth up, even if in such a state God had never been mentioned. Conscience would wake up at any rate. But the communist state would supply no means for the building of churches and the support of preachers of the gospel.

These then are the various reasons why our first ancestors did not introduce the community of goods, but divided all the property among themselves, and thus introduced the holding of personal property, although God had given the human race the whole earth and all things on the earth.

It is even true that there are great dangers and great evils connected with the holding of personal property, as we are compelled to see it daily displayed. But here the government should take steps to prevent a few from appropriating everything to themselves. This sin is also most earnestly rebuked in the Holy Scriptures. We read for example in the book of Isaiah 5:8, “Woe unto them that join house to house, field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!” It is of course aggravating to see how a few are buying up all the land and thereby increase its value. It is well known, that the railroad companies have received, as a donation, millions of acres of land which belonged to the United States, that they might carry out their projects. This is scandalous. For if a poor man would now buy good land, he can no longer buy it at the low rate for which he could have bought it formerly from the government. This may suffice as regards the first Scripture passage cited to justify communism.

The second [passage] is found, as stated, in Acts 4:32ff. We read: “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart, and of one soul: neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas (which is, being interpreted, the son of consolation), a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, having land, sold it and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” This is certainly a glorious example of the ardent love of the early Christians. It must be remembered that at that time too, only a few rich people accepted Christianity; the greater number of those who became Christians were poor. To this must be added the fact that no Christian’s life was safe even for a single hour. The drawn sword of a blood-thirsty Herod threatened the life of every Christian. During that time of great trouble the Christians bound themselves most intimately together, and so that no one might be in want, those of more means than others sold their real estate and placed the proceeds into a common treasury.

Thus far it seems as if these examples really favored communism. We read, however, of no other Christian congregation of the apostolic age in which such an order of things was instituted. And furthermore we read in Acts 5:1ff, “But a certain man” (Luke thus continues) “named Ananias, with Sapphira, his wife, sold a possession, and kept back part of the price (his wife also being privy to it) and brought a certain part, and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” This Ananias also wanted to be looked upon as a loving benevolent and merciful Christian man. To this end he sold his possessions, but kept back part of the price, and brought the rest to the apostle Peter under the pretense that this was the entire sum that he had realized. “But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? While it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?”

It is particularly worthy of note that Peter here says: “While it remained, was it not thine own?” We see from this that the first Christian congregation at Jerusalem had not instituted such an order of things that each one would have been compelled to give up his possessions, but the Christians did this without restraint, from free choice. For Peter here testifies to Ananias: “It would not have been wrong for you to keep your house and land.” Yes, he even adds: “And after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?” “Thou couldst have said: I will give one-half, and all would have been well; no one could have made it a matter of conscience. The reason why it is such a shameful deed, is because thou wouldst be considered a loving and benevolent Christian, whereas thou hast done secretly just the contrary to what thou pretendest to have done.” We read also that the members of the first Christian congregations had houses and possessions, for example Simon, the tanner in Joppa (Acts 10:6), the wealthy seller of purple, Lydia in Philippi (Acts 16:14-15), then even the deacon or almoner Philip in Jerusalem had a house in Cesarea (Acts 21:8) and even the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, owned a house in Jerusalem (Acts 12:12).

From this we must necessarily conclude that the first congregation at Jerusalem was not organized according to communist principles, but that the described condition of affairs was but an unrestrained manifestation of their love in times of extreme necessity. After this we read Acts 9:31, “Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea, and Galilee, and Samaria, and were edified and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.” From this time forth this arrangement of having in a certain measure all things common ceased in Jerusalem. It continued for a short time only, until after the conversion of Paul about the year 36.

But what we do learn from this example, is this: how a true Christian should be disposed. In his heart, IF RIGHTLY UNDERSTOOD, every Christian should be a communist. In other words, a Christian should always be ready and willing to give up all he has for the benefit of his suffering brethren, whenever their necessity requires it. The apostle John accordingly says: “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1 Jn. 3:17). The Saviour expressly declares: “Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not thou away” (Mt. 5:42). The apostle Paul commands the Christian to “labor working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth” (Ep. 4:28). He does not command him to labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may obtain a capital and become rich, but “That he may have to give to him that needeth.” The apostle Paul further says: “and they that buy, as though they possessed not” (1 Co. 7:30). He that owns property should then be as if he possessed nothing, his heart should not be attached to it, it should create no inward struggle to give up his possessions when his neighbor is in want or the glory of God requires it. That person is no Christian whose heart and money are one. Christ accordingly declares in the very beginning of his sermon on the mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” What does this mean? Blessed are those, whether they have few or many possessions, who are poor in spirit. He is to be poor in his heart and mind. That man who has riches which have really become riches to him, his most precious treasure, which he secures and would not lose for the whole world, that man has not yet learned the first words of Christ’s sermon on the mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” And if you were very rich, you should be poor in spirit, you should be as if you had none of those things which have fallen to your lot. The Psalmist therefore also says: “If riches increase, set not your heart upon them” (Ps. 62:10).

We shall proceed further. A third passage adduced in defense of communism is Mt. 19:16 ff (compare Lu. 18:18ff):

And behold one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good, but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honor thy father and thy mother: and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. The young man said unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?

When the communists hear this passage, they say: “Here you see it, here Christ has plainly told the rich, what they shall do: they are to sell what they have and give to the poor.” They make a logical mistake, as is evident. They make the mistake which in the art of logic is called in Latin: Fallacia a particulari ad universale, i.e. a fallacy from the particular to the universal. It is, for example, stated in Scripture, that Christ Jesus commanded his disciples: “Go ye into all the world and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” [Mt. 28:18-20]. Would it not be folly to conclude: “Here you see it, that Christ commands all Christians to go into the world and to preach the gospel?” Christ says to those who had been healed: “Go show yourself unto the priests” [Mt. 8:4; Mk. 1:44; Lu. 5:14, 17:14]. Would it not be extreme folly to conclude from this that all must show themselves to the priests? But it is just as foolish to attempt to show that it is Christ’s doctrine that all the rich must sell all their possessions and give to the poor, from Christ’s command to the rich young man: “Sell that thou hast.”

Why then did Christ address these words to the rich young man? The answer is at hand. This rich man was a ruler, a counselor, who imagined that he had fulfilled all the commandments of God. But although he had, in a general way, led an upright life, he was a wretched miser at heart. Christ, who knows what is in man, knew this. When this man therefore, declared that he had kept all the commandments of God and desired to know what was yet lacking to complete his perfection, the Lord gives him a good lecture from which he can learn where his corruption is to be found, namely, in his infamous heart. Therefore the Lord tells him: “Sell that thou hast and give to the poor.” But when the counselor hears this, he goes away sorrowful. Christ then adds: “A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven; It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” By these words the disciples were so amazed that they exclaim: “Who then can be saved?” But what is Christ’s answer? He adds: “The things which are impossible with men, are possible with God.” In these words Christ accordingly declares that with men it is impossible to be rich and to be saved, but with God all things are possible, and therefore this also. As soon as a man is converted to the Lord with his whole heart, he not only discards every vice and sin, but also bids farewell to his wealth, saying to it without hypocrisy: “Thou art no longer my treasure; if therefore God again requires my money and goods of me. I will gladly give them back again; my heart is not attached to them.” In a case like this, it is possible with God for a person to be very rich and yet to be saved. An especially beautiful example of this is that of Zaccheus [Lu. 19:1-10]. He had become very rich, partly by cheating others. As soon as he was converted to the Lord Jesus, he was prepared, if he had taken anything from any man by false accusation, to restore it to him fourfold, and to give the half of his goods to the poor. If the communists’ interpretation of the passage under consideration be correct, Christ would have said to Zaccheus: “The half is not enough, thou must sell all that thou hast and give to the poor.” But of this we read nothing. Christ, on the other hand, calls Zaccheus a true Israelite, although he would give only half. Do not think that Zaccheus would not have been ready to give up all that he had; but he knew that God did not require it of him, and that now, after his conversion, he could apply his possessions to a much better advantage than if he had been necessitated to give it all away at once. For if I give all I have to the poor, I can from that time forth extend no helping hand, not would God require it of me.

Finally, the fourth passage adduced to prove that the principles of communism are biblical, is the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. The French communist Proudhon referred to the fact that, according to this parable, those who labored twelve hours received no more than those who labored nine, six and three hours, yes, no more than those who labored but one hour. It is, however, strange, that reference is made to this parable, for there is hardly any passage in the entire Bible more directly in conflict with communism. In the first place we find here a householder who owns a vineyard. In the second place we find laborers who were hired by the householder. In the third place we notice here a contract for wages between the householder and his laborers, to which the householder afterwards refers. In the fourth place we learn that these laborers were hired to labor twelve hours a day. In the fifth place we learn that the master ascribes it all to his mercy and not to justice, that he gave the same wages to those who had labored only one hour as to those who had labored twelve. Every argument adduced in favor of communism on the basis of this parable thus falls to the ground.

These then, are the Scripture passages adduced, in part by believers, and in part by unbelievers, in defense of communism, which, however, either prove nothing or the directly opposite. From this we may know that the efforts of the communists are opposed to Christianity.

But we consider also that
2. The efforts of the communists are in conflict with definite doctrines of Christianity.
We not only do not find anything in the Scriptures in defense of the communist system, but the Scriptures teach directly the opposite.

In the first place, it is in conflict with the scriptural doctrine of personal property, as contained in the seventh commandment. The seventh commandment teaches: “Thou shalt not steal,” and with these words overthrows the entire system of communism. Do not misunderstand me. By this I would by no means say that the communists desire to steal from others. No indeed, they say, on the contrary, that the rich are the thieves, as Proudhon has declared: “Holding possessions is theft.” But this is what I would say: just as certain as the seventh commandment declares “Thou shalt not steal,” so certain it is that everyone should have his own personal property. For, if according to God’s will I should hold no personal property, God would not have forbidden others to take anything away from me. If no one is permitted to take anything from me, it is presupposed that I have something, and that, personal property. Consider this well.

The efforts of the socialists and communists are, in the second place, opposed to the Scriptural doctrine of the fifth commandment and other passages, according to which the government alone has the power of the sword. The communists do indeed preach from the housetops that they would have the new order of things, as suggested by them, introduced peaceably; but if they cannot accomplish it peaceably, they are ready to draw the sword and to fill the world with murder and conflagration, that by this means they may accomplish that upon which they claim the salvation of the world depends. But this conflicts with the Holy Scriptures, in which we have the word of God for these declare: “Thou shalt not ki1l,” and respecting the government alone they say: “He beareth not the sword in vain” [Ro. 13:1-4].

The efforts of the socialists and communists are, in the third place, contrary to the doctrine of the sanctity of the marriage state, as taught in the sixth commandment and elsewhere in the Scriptures. There are indeed many communists and socialists who do not sanction the community of wives; but they must acknowledge that there have been many communists who have taught this doctrine; e.g. Enfantin, Proudhon, Marx and the so-called Egaliteurs. They were only the more consistent; and if the fearful catastrophe of communist rule should come upon us, those opposed to the abrogation of marriage could by no means hold the helm, but the equalization would be rigidly carried out, even to the extremity of introducing the community of wives.

These efforts are, in the fourth place, contrary to the differences between man and man as approved in the Scriptures. These differences pertain not only to parents and children, husband and wife, master and servant, but also to rich and poor. I need but refer to these doctrines and every Christian must say: “Verily, if I will be a Bible Christian, I cannot possibly take part in these movements. The moment I connect myself with such an association, I must cast the Bible into the flames, or I am a wretched hypocrite, who is carrying water on both shoulders, and walks lame on both legs.”

They are, in the fifth place, contrary to the doctrine of the Scriptures, that through all kinds of troubles, God would draw man to Himself, try him and prepare him for Eternity. The communists (when I say "Communists" I refer to their leaders and not to everyone who for want of experience may have strayed into the organization) continually declare and preach it from the house top, that they are sick of having the church hold out to them a prospective eternal life. They ridicule the idea that those who bear the cross with patience in this life can expect the glory of heaven in the life to come. “No,” say they, “we would have our heaven here; in this life we would be happy.” Some say that it is after all very doubtful whether anything will be granted us in the future life; but others say: we are certain that all is a delusion. What Christian then could take part in the efforts of the communists and socialists?

They are, in the sixth place, opposed to the doctrine that man shall eat his bread in the sweat of his face. Those therefore who would make it appear that as soon as the communists have gained the supremacy the golden times will come, that then all will be rich, inasmuch as all will then have access to the great treasury, these would have the people expect times of which there is no mention in the Holy Scriptures. Every Christian is not only to eat his bread here on earth, that is, to have what he needs, but he shall eat it in the sweat of his face.

These efforts are, in the seventh place, contrary to the doctrine of the Scriptures that man shall not seek his happiness in this world, but in God and in the hope of a day of recompense and equalization, and in the hope of eternal life. These, therefore, who say that things shall no longer continue thus, that the human race shall after all finally become happy here below, speak against the Scriptures. God did not promise us happiness in this world. If we have food and raiment, we are to be therewith content. We must know that through many tribulations we enter into the kingdom of God. These are truths which the communists ridicule; however, those who firmly believe in Christ and His word, are fully convinced that they are eternal and blessed truths. This is why we can have nothing to do with a system like that of the communists.

And finally, these efforts of the communists contradict the doctrine of the Scriptures which says that sin is the source of all trouble in this world. For the Scriptures say: “Sin is a reproach to any people” [Pr. 14:34],and at another place: “Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?” (Lamentation 3:39). The new communist movement is based upon this, that it is made to appear that all that is wanting in the world is a proper social organization. Should this once be effected, all trouble would be at an end. It is not so however! The Scriptures tell us that God did indeed create man perfect in the beginning, but that man has fallen, and that all trouble and wretchedness that exist in the world are but the consequence of this fall. Take sin out of the world and you take all trouble and wretchedness out of the world. But as long as sin remains, there will be no heaven on earth.

This would then be the second answer to the question which we are endeavoring to answer in these evening lectures.

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