Freedom Requires Slavery

Definitions:

"Freedom" is the absence of "archists."

"Archists" are those who believe they have a right to impose their own will on others by force or threats of violence.

When one man ("mono+archist") or a small group of men ("olig+archy") have solidified their ability to impose their will on others by force, you have

depending on the mythology used to justify the imposition of force. If the recipients of violence do not consent to the acts of the archists, the situation is called "slavery" by those who object. If the recipients of violence accept their condition, it's called "the rule of law."

Acceptance of the moral legitimacy of archists is sometimes called "patriotism."

Thesis:

If you want to live in a society free from "archists," you must "serve" God and obey His Commandments. The Bible frequently describes Christians as "servants" of God, and the word "servant" is "slave."

Christians are prohibited from being "archists." We are to be slaves instead.

But Jesus called them to Himself and said to them, "You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. {43} Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. {44} And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. {45} "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."

The word translated "rulers" comes from the Greek word from which we derive our English word "anarchist."

"Lords," "rulers" and "great ones" are "archists."

Jesus clearly says His followers are not to be "archists." They are to be "servants."

Those who are literally, legally enslaved, are commanded to serve their masters as they would serve Christ Himself (Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 3:22-25; 1 Corinthians 4:2; 7:21-24; 1 Timothy 6:1-2; Titus 2:9-10; 1 Peter 2:18-20).

Those who wish to be like Christ must become the slaves of others, in the sense of putting the welfare of others ahead of our own personal convenience.

This spiritual "slavery" brings freedom. Refusal to serve brings political slavery.

Leviticus 26

3 ‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them,
4 then I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
5 Your threshing shall last till the time of vintage, and the vintage shall last till the time of sowing;
you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.
6 I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid;
I will rid the land of evil beasts,
and the sword will not go through your land.
7 You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you.
8 Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight;
your enemies shall fall by the sword before you.
9 ‘For I will look on you favorably and make you fruitful, multiply you and confirm My covenant with you.
10 You shall eat the old harvest, and clear out the old because of the new.
11 I will set My tabernacle among you, and My soul shall not abhor you.
12 I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people.
13 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves;
I have broken the bands of your yoke and made you walk upright.
14 ‘But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments,
15 and if you despise My statutes, or if your soul abhors My judgments, so that you do not perform all My commandments, but break My covenant,
16 I also will do this to you:
I will even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart.
And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.
17 I will set My face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies.
Those who hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you.
18 ‘And after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.
19 I will break the pride of your power;

The "capitalist" (who believes in a pure laissez-faire market freed from regulation and interference by archists, as opposed to "crony capitalists") believes "The Customer is King." In order to make profits (without government bailouts and subsidies), capitalists must "serve" the consumers.

Christians are also characterized by "the Protestant Work Ethic." Working and being productive are core Christian values because this is one way we serve others. The poor benefit from the work of rich capitalists like Rockefeller.

If we refuse to become the servants of God, and the servants of others, God will send archists to "eat out our substance."
If we consent to serve God and others, God will not send "the sword" or archism, and we will enjoy peace/freedom (Leviticus 26).

If Americans would be even more willing to serve communists, Muslims, and other "bad guys," and if Americans would place a high value on continuing lifelong learning and increasing job skills, America would lead the world in productivity and invention, the "bad guys" would be hooked on our consumer goods and the rising standard of living we provide, and would be less inclined to invade, conquer, and destroy the goose that lays the golden eggs. Free trade prevents war. But we must have something to trade, and that means work, and that means serving consumers around the world, and that means "slavery."

Accepting this kind of "slavery" results in freedom from archists.

I'm an old geezer, born in the year of Sputnik, which inaugurated "The Space Race," which was part of "The Cold War." After that war became unjustifiable*, "my" government embarked on "The War on Terror." During my lifetime, thousands of people have served 28,275 terms in the House of Representatives, approximately. The House debates and approves all government spending bills. Have those legislative labors moved the world one inch closer to world peace? Or have we moved successively away from that goal? I would say peace has only been made more unlikely. During my lifetime, the U.S. government has killed, crippled, or made homeless TENS OF MILLIONS of innocent, non-combatant, non-white civilians around the world. The U.S. drops a bomb on someone's home or jobsite every 12 minutes on average. In the last year, "my" government has given Ukraine a hundred billion dollars to make killing and destruction easier, and peace less likely.

* By "unjustifiable," I mean "unmarketable." Americans were no longer "buying it." Does anyone still believe that the Vietnam War was justifiable? Does anyone still believe that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a good and Christian idea? Has any war in U.S. history been justifiable in retrospect? What would Jesus say? Looking forward, can a Christian have any rational basis for thinking that the next war will be morally justified on Christian grounds? Why don't we just stop "buying it?" Why don't we become the despised "pacifist?"

I'm not a prophet. I'm not "predicting" that we will have world peace in 2023.

I'm just saying that pursuing that goal in concrete ways (not just slogans and speeches and trendy avatars) is a moral obligation. If you don't take some concrete steps that increase the risk of your being called a pacifist -- or more likely, "You . . . you . . . PACIFIST you! " -- then you are less than a moral person.

And I would go even further and question whether you are actually a Christian.

My concrete plan of action is based on the Bible.

Micah 4:2-4
2 He will teach us of His ways,
and we will walk in His paths:
for the Law shall go forth of Zion,
and the Word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
3 and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruninghooks:
nation shall not lift up a sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
4 But they shall sit every man under
his vine and under his fig tree;
and none shall make them afraid:

What does it mean to beat "swords into plowshares?"

How about "Cut the Defense Budget by ten percent."

No, I don't mean "Increase the Defense Budget by ten percent less than the increase called for by the War Party."

I mean

"Actually spend fewer taxpayer dollars next year
on killing people, blowing stuff up, and making the lives of the living more harsh and traumatic
than we spent last year."

Well, of course, that's "unrealistic," "impractical," or even "utopian."

And cutting "defense" spending by 10% -- $900 Billion on killing people and blowing things up instead of $1,000 Billion (a "trillion") (which is about what we're spending this year, including "the Dept. of [Nuclear Bombs and] Energy" and the "intelligence community") -- isn't going to bring "world peace" anyway.

We are morally obligated to be "radical" in our pursuit of peace. That word "radical" comes from the same Latin word as "radish." Get to the ROOT. Don't just cover the cancer with cosmetics: dig it out completely. By the root.

I suggest that beating "swords into plowshares" means Congress defunds the military. Congress holds the purse strings. The next defense budget is ZERO.

We bring all U.S. troops home . . . but first, we send the troops door-to-door passing out a trillion Federal Reserve Notes ("dollars") to the poorest 50% of the Chinese population. I went to a "public" school (run by the government) so I can't do math, but I believe passing out next year's defense budget to the poor of China would double the annual income of 700 million human beings in China. Along with the cash, the Chinese are given a book explaining:

What? You say the poorest 700 million Chinese can't read a little booklet? Why haven't America's Christians addressed this problem? Prof. Ronald J. Sider notes;

“If American Christians simply gave a tithe rather than the current one-quarter of a tithe, there would be enough private Christian dollars to provide basic health care and education to all the poor of the earth. And we would still have an extra $60-70 billion left over for evangelism around the world.”
Book Review: The Scandal Of The Evangelical Conscience - Acton Institute PowerBlog

In the meantime, we'll give the Chinese poor all this valuable information on a portable MP3 player.

And why not help the poorest 50% of the people in North Korea while we're at it?

How about including the poorest 50% of the people in Muslim nations? Muslims are among the poorest of the poor in the world. Around 40% of the Muslim population languishes in abject poverty, with nearly 350 million living under $1.25 a day. [source]

Consider this letter, which the American people could have sent on September 10, 2001, the day before 9/11:

Letter from America to the Muslim World

Sent to two billion Muslims one day before 9-11

  
To: The Muslim World
From: 290 Million Americans
Re: "Terrorism" and "The War on Terror"
Date: September 10, 2001

The Lord God Almighty, the God of the Bible, has given us a revelation of the future.

Tomorrow, 9-11, the "Deep State" will allow a rag-tag band of "Islamic terrorists" -- who spent previous nights with prostitutes and cocaine -- to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center and other monuments of the U.S.  corporate-state.

The Deep State hopes that this can be used to avoid downsizing the military in light of the fall of the Soviet Union and end of the "Cold War." They hope this act of "terrorism" will be a shot-in-the-arm of the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex, by initiating a decades-long "war on terror" that will transfer trillions of dollars from the 290 million authors of this letter to the 40 million employees and contractors of the government.

As followers of the executed Christ, we believe we are called to be servants, not "archists" (Mark 10:42-45). Slavery is an inescapable concept. As one of our philosophers put it, "You're gonna have to serve somebody." So we have decided to become your slaves, slaves of the Muslim world, rather than the slaves of the Deep State and Military-Industrial Complex.

We are going to cut the Defense Budget to Zero.
We are going to spend that trillion-dollar-a-year budget on you, the Muslim world.

God has revealed to us that the total cost of the "War on Terror" will be $8 trillion. Since our "leaders" think we have $8 trillion lying around, we are going to send this money to every Muslim man, woman, and small child on planet earth -- approximately two billion human beings -- a check for three thousand dollars. Each. This check will be accompanied by an attractive Hallmark Card™ reminding you that your Islamic Caliphate has never given you a check for three thousand dollars for every person in your household. The check will also be accompanied by a small book or MP3 player which lays out the process for converting your family to Christianity, and your nation to a Christian/Capitalist economy, so that you too can be a blessing to others.

Further, we, 290 million Americans, promise to get rid of government welfare and unemployment checks for Americans, and add this total to our gift to the Muslim world. We will then get this "Protestant Work Ethic" thing nailed, increase our creativity, inventiveness, job skills, and productivity by 2x or 3x, and begin exporting goods and services which will vastly increase your standard of living. (Which won't be that hard, seeing as how the standard of living in the Muslim world is so much lower than that of the Christian-Capitalist west. [Except for your Sheiks and Princes, who live in opulence while you eat dirt.]) These goods and services will be of the highest quality and lowest prices. You're going to love your new Made-in-America life.

We are no longer going to be ersatz-Christian deists. We are going to put our faith in the "Invisible Hand" of "Divine Providence." We are no longer going to fall for the empty promises of "democratic socialism." We are embracing 100% pure Laissez-Faire Capitalism, or "anarcho-capitalism." The Bible says that if we become a Christian Theocracy, and obey God's commandments, God will protect and bless us:

Leviticus 26
3 ‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them,
4 then I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
5 you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely.
6 I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid;
I will rid the land of evil beasts,
and the sword will not go through your land.

Proverbs 16:7
When a man’s ways please the LORD,
He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.

We believe in the active God of the Bible, not the deist god of "civil religion." We are confident that God will change your hearts so you will not be motivated to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

Sincerely,

290 million Hard-working Christian Americans.
 

Some will say pacifism is reckless, dangerous, even un-Christian.

They would say that what I propose will lead to America being invaded, conquered, and enslaved.

Maybe that's because they don't believe what the Bible says:

When a man's ways please the LORD,
He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.
Proverbs 16:7

If transferring the Swords Budget into the Plowshares Budget for the poor
results in Americans being enslaved, then I would say we deserve it.
And the longer we put off repentance, the more problematic our inevitable enslavement-judgment will be.
We might as well get it over with. Then our children and grandchildren can enjoy world peace.

More controversial reading:

Let's apply these principles to the Fourth of July, "Independence Day."

In this column is Patrick Henry's Famous Address - Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death from the Yale Law School's Avalon Project. In this column is a reply to Patrick Henry, from the perspective of Micah's vision of a “Vine & Fig Tree” society.

Patrick Henry is one of my favorite Founding Fathers. He was a Bible-thumping Christian. He addressed his remarks to Christians in a Christian nation. He opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. He said it could not prevent tyranny. "I smell a rat in Philadelphia." He was right.

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death

Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.

 His speech in the left-hand column is more properly entitled,

"A Call to Arms"

He was wrong. Taking up arms was wrong. It was the end of America as a Christian nation.
No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. It is certainly a good thing to revere the Majesty of Heaven above all earthly kings.
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.  
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us! "the last ten years"
John Adams said the American Revolution really began in 1761 when James Otis opposed the British "Writs of Assistance" before the Superior Court in Massachusetts. "American Independence was then and there born," Adams wrote nearly sixty years later, in a letter to William Tudor, 29 March 1817.

“Otis was a flame of Fire! With the promptitude of Clasical Allusions, a depth of Research, a rapid Summary of Historical Events and dates, a profusion of legal Authorities, a prophetic glare of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid Torrent of impetuous Eloquence, he hurried away all before him; American Independance was then and there born. The seeds of Patriots and Heroes to defend the non sine Diis animosus infans, to defend the vigorous Youth, were then and there sown. Every man of an [immense] crowded Audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take up Arms against Writts of Assistants. Then and there was the first scene of the first Act of Opposition to the arbitrary Claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independance was born. In fifteen years, i.e. in 1776, he grew up to manhood, declared himself free.”

It has been said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." "Eternal" is a long time. Perhaps someone should have told Patrick Henry that "entreaty and humble supplication" might have to go on longer than ten years. It is, in fact, the obligation of humanity, generation after generation, to confront archism with the truths of Scripture and the life of Christ. There is no end to this obligation. But if we accept this duty, we will enjoy peace and freedom on a scale the Old Testament prophets could hardly imagine.

Jesus was mocked and tortured, but He did not return evil for evil. He suffered a whole lot more than the American colonists did under the "Writs of Assistance" and other British abuses. The Pacifist Christ is our model. Read 1 Peter 2.

21 For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps:
22 “Who committed no sin,
Nor was deceit found in His mouth”;
23 who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously;
"If we wish to be free...we must fight."
This is Patrick Henry's thesis.
When he says "we must fight," he means "we must kill."
The "call to arms" is a call to murder another human being created in the Image of God.
If you feel called to get out your musket to kill an archist because he seeks to govern you, you are not free. You are a slave to sins of anger and covetousness. You serve an idol.
If you refuse to follow in the steps of the Pacifist Christ, God will continue to send archists until you repent.
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. The Third Amendment to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights is a forgotten Amendment. It bars the "quartering of troops." Many Christians say they just don't have time to got out and do any evangelizing. Well how about if the government sends someone out to your home for you to evangelize? Will you have the self-discipline to turn off the TV and talk to the guy? Can you communicate your reasons for the hope within you? (1 Peter 3:15)  No sane archist should ever send one of his soldiers to spend the night in a Christian home with a vibrant faith. The archist should fear that his soldiers will defect. Are you equipped to be able to persuade a soldier to go AWOL and become a Christian?

The enemies of Christ not only bound Him hand and foot, they nailed Him to a cross. He told His followers to take up their own cross and follow Him. He did not command them to take up their musket, or take up the sword.

Patrick Henry erroneously appeals to "a just God" who will (apparently) cause the French and the Indians to take up their muskets and join the Americans in killing British Christians.

Is War Inevitable?

Patrick Henry said it was. I think he was wrong. Among the British were men like Edmund Burke, sympathetic to the American point of view, who well could have helped avoid an escalation of archism by the British. The cause of liberty is civilizational -- a word which I just made up but discovered it's in the dictionary. What I mean by the word is that civilization is the expansion of the reign of Jesus the Messiah over the ages. It's not something that we need only struggle for ten years to achieve, and failing that, to start killing people. The willingness of the American colonists to kill British Christians has been "civilizational" in that it set in motion a civilization of death which we see now two hundred years later.

Even if Henry was right, and the British were irrevocably set on tyranny in the colonies, the tyranny may have only lasted a few decades before men like Burke prevailed, especially in the face of the Christ-like demeanor of the colonists, and the mass defection of Red Coats to the American/Christian cause of liberty. As it turned out, however, America abandoned the quest to be a Christian City upon a Hill, took up arms, and has instead now become an empire of global atheistic violence.
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! Patrick Henry concludes with words which in effect mean this:

I would rather die than follow in the steps of Jesus.

And the words "I would rather die" really mean "I would rather kill."

It is a completely un-Christian thing to say "Don't ask me to serve anyone, as if I were serving the Lord Jesus Himself. I would rather be dead."

It is the supreme irony of post-reformation history that a great Christian, Patrick Henry, in a speech laden with Biblical references, brings an end to a Christian nation based on the Bible. America as a Christian nation ended "then and there," to quote John Adams and his "Clasical Allusions."

To take up arms is to reject Christ. It is to become the slave of an idol.

In March of 2008 I published an article on my campaign blog about Patrick Henry. Fifteen years later Google censored the post, claiming it violated "community guidelines." I am trying to figure this out. Perhaps you can tell me which "community guideline" this post violated:

On March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia, Patrick Henry delivered a powerful speech that is credited with having swung the balance in convincing the Virginia House of Burgesses to pass a resolution calling the Virginia troops into the service of the Revolutionary War.

"We must fight!" he said. "I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!"

We would consider Patrick Henry to be aligned with the "Religious Right." Perhaps the British thought of him as a left-wing radical:

Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.

His final line is so famous that it may even be known by several recent graduates of government-run schools:

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

The actual meaning of this call to arms, of course, is "Give me liberty or give THEM death." Or as General George S. Patton, Jr., put it in June, 1944,

Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

George Washington phrased it this way:

Unhappy it is though to reflect, that a Brother's Sword has been sheathed in a Brother's breast, and that, the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with Blood, or Inhabited by Slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous Man hesitate in his choice?

Nobody in America today believes that Patrick Henry was justified in calling for a War for Independence. Nobody today would sign the Declaration of Independence. Americans love their taxes. Economic historians have quantified the "chains and slavery" that Patrick Henry denounced.

The total tax burden imposed by the British Empire on the colonies in 1775, as distinguished from the taxes imposed by colonial legislatures, was approximately 1% of national income in the North, and about 2.5% in the South. The main burden was from customs duties placed on non-British imports into the colonies. These were tariffs, i.e., sales taxes on imports.

If we were to experience this rate of taxation today, Henry's "slavery" would be considered a "libertarian utopia." Political polls are considered accurate within 3-5%. If this economist's estimate of the colonial tax burden is off by 100%, we are still paying ten times more in taxes than Patrick Henry called "slavery."

But Americans today pay these exorbitant taxes because they labor under a delusion that they're getting more in government benefits than they pay. "Something for nothing." Americans accept slavery because they have larcenous hearts.

America's Founding Fathers would undoubtedly call today's Americans a bunch of slaves, unworthy of the name "American."

And they would probably be correct.

But to advocate the taking up of arms -- of muskets and cannons against brothers -- was unChristian. The Bible clearly commands the paying of taxes and prohibits the violent overthrow of the government. Our job is to live to witness to our captors, not to kill them.

Patrick Henry was known for putting evangelistic tracts in the jurors chairs in every trial he argued. It was certainly not his goal to replace the colonial Theocracies with a secular government. Patrick Henry's speech invoked the blessing of God, and frequently cites the Bible. But Jesus said, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." Matthew 26:52

Patrick Henry's America has indeed perished.

Patrick Henry by David Dieteman

Mourn on the 4th of July.

In 1978 our government said (in effect) we have $40 trillion lying around (inflation-adjusted). How should we spend it over the next 50 years? I know -- let's build a big army and blow things up all over the world! Let's murder, maim, and make homeless tens of millions of people. Let's spread misery and suffering through sanctions designed to get people to overthrow governments we don't like. Let's waste billions of man-hours by making travelers take their shoes off at the airport!

1978 Alternative: Let's apologize to the people of Iran for overthrowing the government they elected in 1953. We'll tell the Shah to abdicate, let Iran pick their own leader, and we'll give $8000 to every man, woman, and small child in Iran along with a home-study course on Christianity.
Let's also give $8000 to every man, woman, and small child in China and a note that says "Communism never gave you anything," along with that home-study course on Christianity and Capitalism.
Duplicate that strategy for every human being on planet earth living in poverty. We could have Christianized the world.
Then pass out the $1trillion military budget every year. Who would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? Even today, in 2026, no nation can invade the U.S. and replace "our" government with theirs. Yet our trillion-dollar/year military cannot protect the nation against two dozen Arabs with box-cutters on 9/11

They say mutually-consensual trade prevents war. What about trade and unilateral disarmament and global bribery?

"The natural effect of trade is to bring about peace. Two nations which trade together, render themselves reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and all unions are based upon mutual needs."
(Montesquieu, On the Spirit of the Laws, 1758).

"I will never falter in my belief that enduring peace and the welfare of nations are indissolubly connected with friendliness, fairness, equality, and the maximum practicable degree of freedom in international trade.”
(Cordell Hull, U.S. secretary of state, 1933–1944).

"Trade" = willingness to be a slave of others.