Either Fear God Or Be Made to Fear Human Rulers
We in the West believe in limited government. We believe in a political system that recognizes the citizen's right to say to the State, "thus far--and no further". In order for that assertion or claim which sets boundaries upon the State's authority to have any warrant whatsoever a higher authority than the State must be acknowledged.
The limit's to State authority have weakened considerably in the past hundred years. The State has progressively claimed more authority and greater competence than was previously the case. Democracy risks becoming once again a "tyranny of the 51 percent". We firmly believe that this is inevitable. When a people set to banish God from their affairs, when there is no fear of God in their hearts, all we are left with is tyranny of one sort or other.
In a Christian system of government, politicians and governors are held to account by the citizens. This was made abundantly clear by the Reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries. Here is a summary of John Calvin's teaching on the subject:
Showing posts with label Rule of Law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rule of Law. Show all posts
Saturday, 13 July 2019
Monday, 17 December 2018
Wheels of Justice Grinding Slowly
Sauce For Both Goose And Gander
One of the most offensive things about Hillary Clinton is her apparent belief that sauce for the goose is definitely not sauce for the gander. In other words, she and her "organization" seem to believe that they are above the rules and regulations to which lesser mortals must adhere. They convey the impression that rules and regulations do not apply to them.
One of the most alarming examples was Clinton's maintaining a private e-mail server whilst Secretary of State. Now a Federal Judge has laid into Clinton and her cabal over the matter.
Judicial Watch--an organization dedicated to keeping the government subject to the rule of law--has won a case in which the Clinton machine (and the State Department) was attempting to "keep things hidden". This, from Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch:
One of the most offensive things about Hillary Clinton is her apparent belief that sauce for the goose is definitely not sauce for the gander. In other words, she and her "organization" seem to believe that they are above the rules and regulations to which lesser mortals must adhere. They convey the impression that rules and regulations do not apply to them.
One of the most alarming examples was Clinton's maintaining a private e-mail server whilst Secretary of State. Now a Federal Judge has laid into Clinton and her cabal over the matter.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered additional fact-finding in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server to probe whether or not Clinton's private email system, which she used during her four-year tenure as secretary of state, was a deliberate attempt to bypass the Freedom of Information Act. [The Blaze]
Judicial Watch--an organization dedicated to keeping the government subject to the rule of law--has won a case in which the Clinton machine (and the State Department) was attempting to "keep things hidden". This, from Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch:
Wednesday, 6 June 2018
Law Over Culture
Forced Marriage Conviction
Awakening UK Courts Returning To The Rule of Law
BreitbartLondon
LONDON (AP) — A British jury has convicted a couple of attempting to force their teenage daughter to marry her first cousin in Bangladesh.
The 19-year-old from Leeds in northern England said her parents used verbal and physical abuse to try to get her to marry the relative. The teenager eventually alerted British consular officials and was rescued days before the wedding.
A jury at Leeds Crown Court found the couple guilty Tuesday of forced marriage and of using violence, threats or coercion. The parents, who can’t be named to protect their daughter’s identity, are due to be sentenced June 18.
Last week, a Birmingham woman was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for forcing her teenage daughter to marry a relative in Pakistan —the first successful prosecution of its type in England.
Awakening UK Courts Returning To The Rule of Law
BreitbartLondon
LONDON (AP) — A British jury has convicted a couple of attempting to force their teenage daughter to marry her first cousin in Bangladesh.
The 19-year-old from Leeds in northern England said her parents used verbal and physical abuse to try to get her to marry the relative. The teenager eventually alerted British consular officials and was rescued days before the wedding.
A jury at Leeds Crown Court found the couple guilty Tuesday of forced marriage and of using violence, threats or coercion. The parents, who can’t be named to protect their daughter’s identity, are due to be sentenced June 18.
Last week, a Birmingham woman was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison for forcing her teenage daughter to marry a relative in Pakistan —the first successful prosecution of its type in England.
Saturday, 9 July 2016
Letter From America (About Lawless Privilege)
Clinton Is Above The Law, So The Law Is Dead
Matt Walsh
The Blaze
Write this down. Record the date. Remember it.
July 5, 2016. 11:15 a.m. One day after America’s 240th birthday.
When historians conduct their autopsy on Lady Justice, that will be the time of death. That is the precise moment when Justice drew her last labored breath, cursed our ridiculous country and our hopelessly corrupt government, and collapsed. Sure, she’d been in bad shape for a while, but there was no surviving the final blow. When it is explicitly announced and made public that the wealthiest and most elite and most liberal are indeed above the law, the charade of “law” cannot continue. There is no law. We are living under the rule of men, not of law. We are subject to the whims of petty tyrants and bureaucrats. They are subject to no one on Earth.
None of that was directly said today when FBI Director James Comey held a press conference recommending no criminal charges be brought against Hillary Clinton, but he may as well have said it.
Matt Walsh
The Blaze
Write this down. Record the date. Remember it.
July 5, 2016. 11:15 a.m. One day after America’s 240th birthday.
When historians conduct their autopsy on Lady Justice, that will be the time of death. That is the precise moment when Justice drew her last labored breath, cursed our ridiculous country and our hopelessly corrupt government, and collapsed. Sure, she’d been in bad shape for a while, but there was no surviving the final blow. When it is explicitly announced and made public that the wealthiest and most elite and most liberal are indeed above the law, the charade of “law” cannot continue. There is no law. We are living under the rule of men, not of law. We are subject to the whims of petty tyrants and bureaucrats. They are subject to no one on Earth.
None of that was directly said today when FBI Director James Comey held a press conference recommending no criminal charges be brought against Hillary Clinton, but he may as well have said it.
Friday, 23 October 2015
Lawful Christian Resistance, Part VIII
Laws To Which Kings Are Held
. . . . Seeing then that kings are ordained by God, and established by the people, to procure and provide for the good of those who are committed unto them, and that this good or profit be principally expressed in two things, to wit, in the administration of justice to their subjects, and in the managing of armies for the repulsing their enemies: certainly, we must infer and conclude from this, that the prince who applied himself to nothing but his peculiar profits and pleasures, or to those ends which most readily conduce thereunto, who contemns and perverts all laws, who uses his subjects more cruelly than the barbarous enemy would do, he may truly and really be called a tyrant, and that those who in this manner govern their kingdoms, be they of never so large an extent, are more properly unjust pillagers and free-booters, than lawful governors. [Junius Brutus, A Defence of Liberty Against Tyrants. A Translation of Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos. With an Historical Introduction by Harold J. Laski. (Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, 1963) p. 143.]
Friday, 17 April 2015
A Vast Menu of Crimes
The Tyrannical Administrative State
According to the national anthem of the United States that country is the "land of the free and the home of the brave". But well over one hundred and fifty years ago, the United States decided that Christendom was dead, and the Age of Man was just beginning. The moot question at the time was whether there could be a secular society (with the odd, occasional reference to a Deity) which would be able to maintain the freedom from that tyranny which was the casus belli of the War of Independence.
Now the question is no longer moot. It has become obvious that when a society believes there is no higher power than man himself, collective man (the state) will construct an elaborate, comprehensive tyranny by which it will crush the citizens. Now, more than ever before, it is apt to call Americans not citizens, but subjects. The United States is no longer the "land of the free".
George Will addresses this reality in a piece published in National Review Online. He calls for the fixing of a tyranny. He has no clear solutions about how to go about dismantling this tyranny, beyond a call for it to be done. Banning the national anthem as a lie might be a startlingly good start.
According to the national anthem of the United States that country is the "land of the free and the home of the brave". But well over one hundred and fifty years ago, the United States decided that Christendom was dead, and the Age of Man was just beginning. The moot question at the time was whether there could be a secular society (with the odd, occasional reference to a Deity) which would be able to maintain the freedom from that tyranny which was the casus belli of the War of Independence.
Now the question is no longer moot. It has become obvious that when a society believes there is no higher power than man himself, collective man (the state) will construct an elaborate, comprehensive tyranny by which it will crush the citizens. Now, more than ever before, it is apt to call Americans not citizens, but subjects. The United States is no longer the "land of the free".
George Will addresses this reality in a piece published in National Review Online. He calls for the fixing of a tyranny. He has no clear solutions about how to go about dismantling this tyranny, beyond a call for it to be done. Banning the national anthem as a lie might be a startlingly good start.
Saturday, 4 April 2015
Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow
Three Senators and a Leper
Douglas Wilson
One of
our great cultural problems today is that Christians do not understand
civics. And by civics, I do not mean the “how a bill becomes a law” kind
of civics, but rather I refer to our very common misunderstanding of
the true nature of our appointed government. We have a particular form
of government de jure, laid out for us in the Constitution, and we have another, very different, form of government, de facto, sitting atop Lady Liberty, strangling her to death.
Actually, it is the reverse. Our responsibility is found in Romans 13, but it requires us to look at this far more closely than we are accustomed to do.
It is not the case that the Federal government simply outranks local officials, the way (we think) a king outranks a duke. In a government of law, the king outranks all others in his appointed duties, and a duke outranks all others in his appointed duties. This is how separation of powers works.
“But when he was strong, his heart was
lifted up to his destruction: for he transgressed against the Lord his
God, and went into the temple of the Lord to burn incense upon the altar
of incense. And Azariah the priest went in after him, and with him
fourscore priests of the Lord, that were valiant men: And they withstood
Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It appertaineth not unto thee,
Uzziah, to burn incense unto the Lord, but to the priests the sons of
Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense: go out of the sanctuary;
for thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be for thine honour from the
Lord God” (2 Chron. 26:16–18).
So, simple question. Does a king outrank a priest?
Monday, 16 March 2015
Soft-Despotism vs The Rule of Law
The Law Under The Tender Caresses of Despots
In a Christian commonwealth the rule of law is a fundamental bulwark against absolutist, tyrannical government. Slogans like, "we are a nation ruled by law, not by men" are meaningful and significant, insofar as no one man or no one authority owns and controls the law.
Laws, historically considered (as least within the Anglo-Saxon tradition), are written and promulgated and enforced by a diversity of powers: popular assemblies, titular assemblies, the courts of justice, and the crown. Once laws are promulgated, the power of everyone, including all authorities and kings, is limited insofar as all kings and authorities are under the law thus made. Their authority and power are necessarily limited thereby.
Now, of course, human laws are not divine. There are just and unjust laws. Laws at times need to be repealed, amended, and replaced. The rule of law on its own is, therefore, no guarantee in and of itself of a just society. Rather, the rule of law helps institutionalise the separation of powers and impedes the development of tyranny. But, when tyrants control the law making and law enforcement processes the law becomes no friend to liberty. The USSR--one of the most egregious dictatorships and tyrannies in recent history--could claim that it was a nation ruled by laws. It's just that the dictators totally controlled the law-making processes.
In the soft-despotic state, such as found now throughout the West, a great deal of time is spent on promulgating, approving, and enforcing laws.
In a Christian commonwealth the rule of law is a fundamental bulwark against absolutist, tyrannical government. Slogans like, "we are a nation ruled by law, not by men" are meaningful and significant, insofar as no one man or no one authority owns and controls the law.
Laws, historically considered (as least within the Anglo-Saxon tradition), are written and promulgated and enforced by a diversity of powers: popular assemblies, titular assemblies, the courts of justice, and the crown. Once laws are promulgated, the power of everyone, including all authorities and kings, is limited insofar as all kings and authorities are under the law thus made. Their authority and power are necessarily limited thereby.
Now, of course, human laws are not divine. There are just and unjust laws. Laws at times need to be repealed, amended, and replaced. The rule of law on its own is, therefore, no guarantee in and of itself of a just society. Rather, the rule of law helps institutionalise the separation of powers and impedes the development of tyranny. But, when tyrants control the law making and law enforcement processes the law becomes no friend to liberty. The USSR--one of the most egregious dictatorships and tyrannies in recent history--could claim that it was a nation ruled by laws. It's just that the dictators totally controlled the law-making processes.
In the soft-despotic state, such as found now throughout the West, a great deal of time is spent on promulgating, approving, and enforcing laws.
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