Peering Ahead

The Curmudgeon over at Eternity Road today has an excellent post up, the third of three parts End Times for Freedom, Part 3, Peering Ahead. Your Curmudgeon details what I glossed over in
this post, and points out that at heart, all governments are essentially a criminal organization. To see the truth of this fact, just imagine all the things that the state does, for which you would be arrested and imprisoned, if not killed for doing. Can you legally run a lottery, even if it is for charity? But that is not the point of the article, that is just the lead in to explain what he is really getting at:

Your Curmudgeon's point here is twofold:

For some to possess power over the rest of us endangers us all;
The maintenance and increase of that power depends upon making us fear to oppose or ignore our rulers.

It's no longer possible, no matter what Saint Paul might think, to persuade private persons that submission to the State is morally obligatory. Nor does it take much thought or knowledge to realize that, whatever some might pretend, "our" State is a far greater threat to us than anything it purports to "protect" us from, including other States. What fear the State can engender in us must arise from other sources: its own power, and ominous but ill-defined forces of economics or meteorology against which free individuals and voluntary associations are supposedly helpless.

Our ruling class, as voracious a group as has ever afflicted any nation, knows this quite as well as your Curmudgeon.

Therefore, expect America's 88,000 governments, especially the one in Washington, to labor mightily to increase their power over us, and to fabricate additional spectres for us to fear. Watch for fresh assaults on the right to keep and bear arms. Watch for unprecedented exercises of police power, especially from federal agents. Watch for additional restrictions on the movement of money and the use of credit. Listen for indications that some new bug-bear, some chimera out of an apocalyptic fantasy, is being puffed up into a threat with which to justify the further expansion of State power. Each of these is a warning sign; each implies the necessary countermeasure.

Watch, listen, and prepare.

And pray.

And like St. Paul, you will probably have to show courage in the face of threats, and may have to sustain some abuse. Be prepared, and pray.