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This article was excerpted from Godvernment: Government as God
Tom Sheppard
9/4/2020
The unfortunate truth is that the
French Revolution was a foreshadowing of the coming conflict between religion
and politics.
When Robespierre and his associates
moved to take control of the government in France and vanquish the despots of their
day, they included the clergy in the same bucket as the royalty. They were not wrong on that score.
Since about 300 AD, Christianity and
the Christian church, be it Protestant or Catholic, had been taken over and made
into an arm of the government. By the way,
this is no singular event in world history.
Religion has been used by government, particularly by monarchies, as a subtle
means to control the population for millennia.
In ancient Egypt, the pharaoh was considered
a god incarnate. He had the power to condemn
his enemies not only to prison or death in this world, but to consign their eternal
souls to endless torment.
In the majority of ancient monarchies,
the Priest-King, where the King was also the high priest of the prevailing religion,
was the norm. The Priest-King was responsible
for standing, as the Israelites asked Moses to do, between god and his people. He was to supplicate god on their behalf and instruct
them on his divine will for them.
If things went well, the Priest-King
was inviolate. However, if drought prevailed,
or warfare went badly, the Priest-King was often, if not the first, then at least
the most prominent sacrifice made to divert the anger of the heavens and return
favor to his people.
The reason the revolutionaries of France
targeted the clergy along with the nobility is for the simple fact that not only
were they often one and the same, with lesser sons of noble houses being given plum
positions in the clergy, but they also worked closely together in their efforts
to oppress the people and to keep them in line.
After all, if your cleric tells you that disloyalty to the king is a mortal
sin which can condemn you to Hell, what god-fearing person in his or her right mind
would entertain thoughts of abolishing the monarchy for even a minute?
Even today, the monarch of England is
recognized as the head of the Anglican Church.
In effect, the English monarch is the high priest(ess) of Anglicanism.
When Henry the Eighth split with the
Roman Catholic Church, he made sure he provided himself a means to keep the religion
of the land as much under his control as possible, under the circumstances. He also did not hesitate to let his clergy be
as zealous in defending his throne as any of his other vassals.
In fact, religion or churches as arms
of the state were the prevailing forms of government the world over until the Founding
Fathers of the United States of America succeeded in establishing the Constitution
of the United States and the Bill of Rights as the governing framework for this
country. With the lessons of history staring
them in the face, it is no accident that the very First Amendment to the Constitution
addresses the need to protect religion from usurpation by the state, to prevent
it from becoming an arm and tool of the government.
“Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
There are many in this country who take
up the cry of “separation of church and state” to rally people to their cause of
pushing religion from the public square.
How shocked would their adherents be to realize that they have actually turned
the intent of the First Amendment totally on its head?
The First Amendment doesn’t say anything
at all about prohibiting religion from influencing government. Rather, it says that government has no right to
infringe on the free exercise of religion.
And, it follows immediately by adding that freedom of speech, press, assembly
and petition are to be equally protected from the predations of government oppression,
regardless of the intentions of the governing.
A website on preserving religious freedom
established by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints succinctly lists
seven distinct implications of the First Amendment.
- Government
can’t establish an official church or favor one church over another.
- Government cannot discriminate against
religious believers.
- All people have a fundamental right to
believe, worship, and exercise their religious beliefs as they wish, so long
as it doesn’t harm the health and safety of others.
- Individuals can gather together with
other believers to form churches.
- Churches have a right to conduct their
internal affairs without government interference.
- Government must sometimes provide special
accommodations to religion.
- Government can listen to all voices—including
religious voices—when making policy.
https://www.lds.org/religious-freedom/faq/protected-in-the-first-amendment
Today, there are many who are pushing
not only to silence religious voices in the public square, but to silence religion
altogether.
I stated early in this chapter that
this conflict is looking more and more like a cage match to the death. I was not over-dramatizing the situation.
The reality is that this death match is exactly what Marx was aiming to provoke, and it is not a matter of chance that the strongest persecutors of organized religion, and Christianity in particular, are coming from the ranks of those who have embraced one of the modern faces of Marxism.
The Union of Church and State
Today, there are legions of organizations
purporting to be pushing for social justice.
I could easily fill page after page of this book with just the names of such
organizations without any explanation of the stated goals of these groups, their
charters, or their leadership.
All these social justice groups believe
that humanity is defective. They are in good
company with that belief because all the religions of the world and countless self-help
authors agree that, individually and collectively, the human race is defective in
ways that risk self-extermination.
The social justice groups also believe
that our current governments are defective.
It is hard to contend that a defective human race can, on its own, come up
with a perfect form of government.
Both the religionists and the social
justice organizations make much of their appeals for people to do right by each
other, to liberate the oppressed, and to protect the downtrodden.
These social justice groups, regardless
of whether they sprout from religious or secular sources, fall into two broad categories. On one hand, you have groups that are advocating
that government non-involvement is a primary cause of social injustice. They argue that government must get more involved
to solve these difficult problems of societal inequity. Programs must be established, taxes must be levied,
laws must be put in place and enforced, and dissenters must be forced into line
and penalized or jailed if they fail to comply.
The second group advocates that government
interference is making a bad situation worse.
They argue that the result of government intervention is a consistent worsening
of any problem the government seeks to solve.
Their prescription is greater personal and private efforts with a primary
focus on helping people change themselves as the means to resolve social inequities
one person at a time.
The first group wants to use the coercive
power of organized government, the power of the gun that ultimately backs all laws
and regulations promulgated by government, to force us all to become better human
beings and to treat each other as we should.
The second group wants to give us the
freedom as individuals to choose on our own to associate with people and efforts
that are designed to encourage us all to become better human beings by helping us
to see the intrinsic benefits of choosing to treat people properly. Sometimes they have tightly focused programs to
achieve this end, but more often they have broad, generalized structures called
churches whose avowed purpose is to bring together groups of like-minded people
and enable them to achieve a change of heart on the individual level, however that
might occur.
Both groups have the same ultimate goal:
to save humanity from its own worst instincts, but each group has embraced a radically
different approach.
I hope to show in this book that, in this case, it is all about the approach.
Machiavelli Was Wrong
Nicolo Machiavelli is credited with
asserting that “the end justifies the means.”
Although I haven’t found that phrase in his seminal book, The Prince, the sentiment is present.
Moreover, in the actions of
all men, and most of all of Princes, where there is no tribunal to which we can
appeal, we look to results. Wherefore if a Prince succeeds in establishing and maintaining
his authority, the means will always be judged honourable and be approved by every
one.
Nicoló Machiavelli, The Prince
I am told that the actual quote of “the
ends justify the means” is from Ovid.
Regardless of the exact source of the
quote, there are a great many people who believe that the principle expressed is
true, and base their actions and plans on that premise.
I believe that the ends will never justify
the means, because an evil means will never produce a good end.
Trying to force people to be better
human beings is evil and will never produce the stated objective. The end result of trying to force people to behave
well at best will produce a society of pious predators—legal-minded hypocrites that
will “strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.”
It will be a society where on the outside, people appear polite and kind,
noble, and good, while in fact their actions will result in the oppression and depredation
of nearly everyone. But the depredations
and oppressions will be wrapped in the altruistic mantle that it is being done “for
the benefit of everyone,” or “for the greater good.”
Perhaps the worst part of this lie will
be that those who benefit will be far less than the 1% of the population today whom
the liberal elites excoriate for their wealth.
At the height of the existence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
and its affiliates in the Warsaw Pact, far more than 99% of the people lived in
utter poverty and scarcity compared to the average citizen of the NATO nations. Far less than 1% of the people in these socialist
nations enjoyed anything like the abundance available in a typical U.S. supermarket. And the less-than-1% who enjoyed this wealth were
all either government bureaucrats at the top of the hierarchy of an unelected government,
or violent criminals—and sometimes those were exactly the same people.
What makes this so bitterly ironic is that the anti-1%ers, if they get what they are asking for, will still remain in the lower 99%, while just facilitating the shift of the 1% from one group to another. And the second group will be far more villainous than the current 1%, because the current 1% needs to provide the masses with something of value to them to attain their wealth, while the regime that waits in the wings will just have to pass a law to line their pockets. They won’t add any value at all to anyone but themselves and their henchmen.
Lessons from Collectivist History
The acolytes of collectivism almost
uniformly sneer at fascism as something evil.
Apparently they are unaware that Nationalsozialismus, is
the German word for Nazi or National Socialism. Before Hitler initiated his infamous “Final Solution”
in an attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe, he executed more than 100,000 homosexuals,
handicapped, elderly, and infirm “for the good of society.” These unfortunates were considered a drain on
society, and it was the civic duty of all good Germans to embrace a healthy lifestyle
and keep themselves fit and healthy.
Like Mussolini, Hitler made many private
companies, especially large ones, into state-run organizations. The socialist governments of Italy and Germany
ran every aspect of the economy. They controlled
who could get a job, and noted that people who didn’t hold a job outside the home
were drains on society, just like the other “undesirables” they had already shipped
off to death camps.
In addition to the horrors enacted by
the Nazi party on Europe, we can easily see the lessons of socialism that emerge
from both the USSR and China.
In the USSR, Lenin and Stalin “re-educated”
tens of millions of their citizens to encourage the desired kind of “right thinking.”
Lenin is credited with being directly
responsible for the deaths of 5 million citizens. Stalin is credited with killing more than 20 million
of his own people, and that is not counting the more than 20 million Russians who
died during combat in World War II.
In China, Mao Zedong (AKA Mao Tse Tung)
initiated “the Great Leap Forward” to convert China from an agrarian country to
an industrial one, obviously for the good of the people. This resulted directly in famines that killed
between 15 and 45 million citizens. Add to
this staggering amount the number of people he “re-educated” to death or executed
outright because they didn’t agree with his means, and he is credited will killing
40 to 70 million of his own people.
Between the great socialist leaders
Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, discounting war deaths, their push for socialism
and enforced social justice resulted in the deaths of more than 100 million people.
In more recent times, Pol Pot, after
succeeding in overthrowing the government of Cambodia, used his Khmer Rouge child
soldiers to brutally slaughter about 6 million of his own citizens, focusing especially
on those who were college-educated. He recognized
that those people with a good education were unlikely to accept whatever he said
as truth and as right when they had the lessons of world history already in their
heads.
If you add in the war-related deaths
that came from efforts to force people to accept socialism, you immediately get
another 20 million Russians who died trying to stay out of the German version of
socialism and 9 million Russians who died in the Russian Civil War to implement
socialism in that country. Add in tens of
millions of civilians and soldiers from the battlefields of Europe to Southeast
Asia, and you get a horrifying picture of the blood and horror that prevails whenever
and wherever socialism gains control and begins its efforts to force people to behave
in the ways its leaders dictate.
Conclusions
When government replaces God as the
vehicle for the best hopes of humanity, the inevitable, historically proven
result is widespread death, destruction, and unrelenting misery for the vast majority
of people.
Follow Tom on Twitter: @ThomasKSheppard
Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).
The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.
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