"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."
Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Northeast Portico
“A true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”
Czesław Miłosz
Stocks set new highs, and gold and silver corrected a bit on a quiet Comex option expiration. The charts continue to exhibit interesting patterns and excesses.
The economic news of The Recovery™ meanders along its mediocre path, with a rise in long term unemployment and the sluggish growth in the broader economy driven by an exhausted middle class and staggering working poor.
Several fellows sought to engage me in conversation yesterday, challenging the observation that 23 million people will be denied affordable access to healthcare for themselves and their families by this abomination that has slouched out of our House of Representatives.
Their points, while differently expressed, were that since these unfortunates do not have such access to reliable and affordable healthcare now, it is no great loss for them. It is as if this is the result of the natural order, and not of a damnable system of rationing out the wealth of the country and its benefits in a corrupt and distorted system that is without compassion or mercy.
And therefore it is implied that the fate of the weak, the elderly, the children and the disabled is deserved, because if they are life worthy of life. If not, then they would be rising up in the world on its own terms through their innovation and diligent power as the elect of this world and its favored few.
We all seem to be gifted with a rare talent for knowing the right things to do, and yet rationalizing exceptions to those principles for ourselves, not of any real necessity when you get right down to it, but for our convenience. And we have a remarkable talent for broadly blinding ourselves to the nature and consequences of our own actions.
We are truly masters of deflection and self-deception. We see our elite boldly standing on their vain pedestals of patriotic righteousness and credentialed authority. And can we not help but think that we have learned nothing, both from history and from the words of the prophets.
If our Lord came back, not as we expect in glory as the Son of Man, but as a humble lamb of innocent perfection, there should be little doubt that we would crucify Him again a second time.
And this certainly is not because He deserves it, not in the least. Although there can be no doubt that we would find the fine sounding reasons for it.
It is because by His very nature He is truth, and is therefore inconvenient to the established order of worldly powers, and the gods of the market that seek to measure the value of all in their twisted scales. His casting of a light is the greatest offense of all to the lords of the darkness of this world.
If you ask any of our elite what they intend with their actions, none would say that yes, I set out this morning to damn myself eternally, with lies and profits from the abuse of the innocent.
In their own minds they might even see themselves as serving the order of God, or at least the god that they have erected themselves, and chosen to honor and obey. And yet they do, if not in the rigorous sense, but in all practicality damn themselves in their selfishness and pride, and blind themselves to it.
Most cannot even imagine such a judgement as applying in their own case. We may think that there is no higher power than themselves and, if there is, that it is some immanent and disinterested source of power that is there for us to use, as in every other case, for our own ends. After all, the elite have been able to use their words and their cunning wit to rise to such positions of power, that surely they will not fail them. Even God Himself would not find the ability to best them.
But the simple truth of the matter is that they will not serve any other but themselves.
And before we may cast this blame and judgement on others, especially those who have certainly taken on a higher obligation for justice by striving for power over the well-being of others, we need to look down at ourselves in our own place, and see the lash of vanity and the hammer of greed which we too are holding in own bloody hands at the foot of His cross. Hypocrites and sinners, all.
Forget now and go on, and do not thank or acknowledge Him in any way, or take any obligation or restraint for ourselves that we do not willingly place there. We will decide what is enough for Him. For this is what we do in our foolish blindness.
May God have mercy and forgive us, especially in that moment when we will finally see ourselves as we really are, stripped of all worldly ornaments and illusions, and then know what we have done, and what we have failed to do.
Have a pleasant evening.
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