[Vision2020] To Whom Do We Owe Our Allegiance?

[keely emerinemix]

You owe your primary allegiance, as a Christian, to God, not to your family 
as "a sovereign entity."  Period.

Further, if anything asks of you the allegiance (worship, submission, 
acknowledgement of power) due only to your Lord and Savior, you are to deny 
it.  Within that God-allegiance, though, is the freedom to acknowledge 
support or affection for anything else in many different ways -- in ways 
that, I hope, are more meaningful than simply raising the flag.  Nothing, 
however, ought to be exalted over your God.

There is much to commend in the article you posted -- loved the "Bush stole 
the election" part -- but it's difficult to understand why a professing 
believer would not see that the biggest argument against exalting the 
American flag is because of the offense against God, not against the family. 
  Of course, this could be one of those places where I find the libertarian 
conservative take on things to be anathema to the Gospel . . .

keely


From: heirdoug at netscape.net
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] To Whom Do We Owe Our Allegiance?
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:02:34 -0500

To Whom Do We Owe Our Allegiance?
by Allen D. MacNeill
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands:
one nation indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
~ Francis Bellamy (1892)
Our family has a flag. It's a variation of the flag of Robert the
Bruce, king of Scotland. His was a red lion rampant on a field of gold.
Ours is a golden lioness rampant on a field of purple. The problem is,
to fly it correctly would require us to decide which flag should be
flown higher – our family's flag or the star-spangled banner?
This is not a trivial problem. In fact, it goes to the heart of what is
wrong with America today. To fly our family's flag correctly (even
lawfully, in many jurisdictions), we should fly it in such a way as to
make it clear to anyone seeing it that our family's flag – and
therefore, by implication, our family – is subordinate to that of the
United States government (and to the republic for which it stands). And
therein lies the problem.
It is a basic tenet of libertarian conservatism that one's highest
allegiance is to one's self and one's family. This principle is
enshrined in the founding document of the United States of America.
According to the Declaration of Independence, "[A]ll Men are created
equal, [and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
– That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it
is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and
organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Safety and Happiness."
According to this viewpoint, individual people are sovereign entities,
and governments are clearly subordinate to "the will of the people."
Far from altering this relationship, the Constitution of the United
States codifies these principles into law. It enumerates the very
limited powers of the federal government, and then in the ninth and
tenth amendments declares that "The enumeration in the Constitution of
certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
retained by the people" and "The powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
What this means is that, except for the powers and responsibilities
enumerated in the Constitution, the United States government has no
power or sovereignty over the lives of its citizens. In brief, we own
ourselves and the government is, at most, our servant.
Today, however, it is clear that to the government and an increasing
number of the citizens of the United States this situation is reversed.
The government believes (and, more importantly, acts as if) it owns us
and we are its servants. This is why the symbolism of the flag is so
important: the flag of the United States takes precedence over all
others, including the flag of the family of Lyonesse. In other words,
in the view of those who would presume to rule us, the president of the
United States is our lord and sovereign and we are merely his vassals.
He may take from us and from our families anything he desires: our
land, our property, our children, even our very lives (via the death
penalty and the military draft), and the only justification he needs to
do this is the exercise of pure, naked, overwhelming force.
This is not the way it was supposed to be, friends. There was a time in
America when the president viewed himself as a servant of the people
and abjured all signs and symbols of sovereignty. Grover Cleveland
refused to be treated any differently than ordinary citizens at state
occasions and is remembered for vetoing a bill providing emergency
relief to farmers following a natural disaster, on the grounds that to
do so would legitimize the forcible taking of some citizen's money (via
taxes) to benefit others. It may come as a surprise to some (especially
today's Democrats, and most Republicans) that Cleveland was a
Democrat...and moreover, by his behavior, a true democrat.
Now, however, the candidates from both parties freely and openly state
their wholehearted support for a government and a presidency that
clearly recognizes no restraint or challenge to its power except the
use of violent force. Furthermore, the majority of the voting citizenry
agrees, and supports those candidates for public office who most
vigorously propound the doctrine of unlimited force.
For itself, the government asserts a sole monopoly on the use of force
and recognizes no limits to its use. Every president since Lincoln has,
in the context of war or the threat of war, justified the unilateral
and unlimited use of military force and the suspension of individual
sovereignty (in the context of the military draft) with sole reference
to the supreme sovereignty of the president and the federal government.
Nowhere in the Constitution nor any of its amendments is it stated or
even implied that the States may not secede from the union, nor govern
their own affairs, nor respect and protect the rights to private
property of individual citizens. Yet ever since the administration of
Lincoln, the federal government has unilaterally arrogated to itself
all of these, and has enforced this usurpation through the use of
deadly force.
In a world dominated by force alone, only force matters, and the only
law is the law of force majeure: "might makes right." The founders of
the American republic believed otherwise, and tried to structure the
Constitution and the government it created so that there would be
built-in limits to the unilateral use and abuse of power. They did so
because they realized that a government founded on force, rather than
the fully informed consent of the governed, is not a government at all.
It is tyranny, pure and simple.
To our increasing sorrow, it is clear that tyranny is what we are
rapidly approaching. To state the case succinctly, the recent history
of the presidency, congress, the supreme court, many state governments,
and both major political parties has been a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment
of an absolute tyranny over the individual states and ourselves, the
citizens of those states. Sound familiar?
But, if you've been paying attention recently, you already know most of
this. The question is, what can we do about the accelerating slide
toward tyranny? The first and most powerful thing we can do is to
remember that crucial phrase in the Declaration: that governments,
including ours, derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed. So, as many did during the last election, we can withhold our
consent: we can refuse to vote for those aspiring to be tyrants. We can
also assert our personal and familial sovereignty over that of the
tyrannical state by refusing to yield up to it that which it most
desires: our land, our property, our children, and our lives.
In many cases, we can do this by simply ignoring Leviathan. Ever since
George Bush stole the presidency in 2000, I've repeatedly found myself
comforting my friends by pointing out to them that the party in power
generally has little or no affect on our daily lives, especially out
here in the hinterlands. So long as you pay as little taxes as you can
legally get away with (yes, even the IRS has been forced repeatedly to
admit that this is your constitutional prerogative), the dragon will
pass you by, unseeing.
However, the time may come – indeed, it may soon be upon us – when the
dragon will thirst for new blood. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and
Iran, and Syria, and North Korea, and – who knows – maybe northern
Virginia) will necessitate the reinstatement of draft slavery. Then we
must do what we did a generation ago, and the generation before that,
and the generation before that, but this time in overwhelming numbers:
we must march on Washington and speak truth to power. And that truth
will be, as it was then, Hell no, we won't go!
And we can fly our families' flags: proudly, fearlessly, and freely,
secure in the knowledge that there is where our highest and truest
allegiance lies.


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