A Short History of Western Civilization

WE CAN’T SOLVE PROBLEMS BY USING THE SAME KIND OF THINKING WE USED WHEN WE CREATED THEM. –
Albert Einstein

A Short History of Western Civilization

Late September 2019 – What an interesting idea! That we sometimes, maybe often, create our own problems. That’s a novel thought in a world which seems always ready to blame someone else, don’t you think?

It seems to me, too, that we can create problems even by not doing something. How can that be? It doesn’t make sense. Well, sit you comfortably . . . I wanna tell you a story (as Max Bygraves used to say).

ONCE UPON A TIME, long ago, the natural social group consisted of father, mother and children. Today we refer to them as the ‘nuclear’ family but the word ‘nuclear’ had no meaning long ago. Quite soon the nuclear family developed with grand-parents and grand-children and cousins. Out of those grew other nuclear families and it was the natural order of things for a while.

There must have come a time when the father of the group was too busy hunting and gathering food and shelter for his family to be able to take time out to make essential new tools and weapons, or pots and pans to put the food in. That’s probably when someone else from a different nuclear family would have said: “Tell you what. I’ll make spears and pots and pans for you if you will give me some of your food in exchange.” The fathers and mothers consented and so barter was born, the original socialist trading idea before capitalist money was invented. And all seemed well for a time.

Then the father and mother of a nuclear family learned that some families who weren’t actively hunting and gathering had learned to read and write (mostly Latin, it seemed), and they decided that they and their children should learn to read and write, too. Magically, another group of people (often church men), said: “Let me teach you and your children.” So the parents consented and gave up much of their power to train and influence their own children. The new persons taught them and their children Latin, which nobody other than church leaders spoke or wrote, plus anything else that seemed to them like a good idea. 

After a while the confused father and mother looked again for someone to explain to them why they had become so confused. Some other people, who could also read and write, offered to explain and set rules for social interaction. 

There were a lot of these people and many were called ‘Ian’. Sadly, they also suffered with ‘ticks’. According to www.medicinenet.com there are over 800 species of ticks throughout the world, but only two families of ticks, Ixodidae (hard ticks) and Argasidae (soft ticks), are known to transmit diseases or illness to humans. Hard ticks have a scutum, or hard plate, on their back while soft ticks do not.

These Ians became known as ‘poly’ or ‘pollies’, from Latin poliō (“polish, smooth”) or, perhaps, from Ancient Greek πολύς (polús, “many, much”). Eventually the word ‘poli-tick-Ian’ came into common use to describe all of them. 

The parents again consented to poli-tick-Ians taking the job of explaining and setting rules for social interaction. Some people loved them, some hated them, but too many blindly trusted them and didn’t realise that, in reality, they were parasites who were stealing the product of their labours (allegedly on behalf of the king). They made such plundering seem routine and normal and, later, called it ‘tax’. They stole the freedoms of the people but didn’t give very much back in return. In some countries they became known as ‘scribes and pharisees’, which implicitly raised them up and tried to pull them down all at the same time. It separated them from family.

The scribes and Pharisees liked to make rules for everyone else. It seemed to be more profitable for them and less laborious than making tools and farming. So, when the working fathers found themselves in dispute with one another and needed to put their arguments before other working fathers to determine who was right and who was wrong, some scribes and Pharisees said: “Let me be the judge of that.” 

Again, it seemed a good idea at the time and the parents gave their consent. But soon the working fathers found that their powers to manage their own lives and train their own children had been reduced to that of obedient servants . . . . obedient to the plunderers and scribes and Pharisees who could read and write and the judges who interpreted the rights and wrongs of complaints rather than allow the common jury of their peers to decide as they had always done. 

The people were no longer free to determine how they lived. There was great wailing and gnashing of teeth at the loss of their essential freedom. The poli-tick-Ians said it was ‘democracy’ but poli-tick-Ians are known to say anything they think will keep them in their job.

Soon, barter became unfit for purpose and another medium of payment or exchange was needed. Scarce gold and silver came to their aid and values of exchange – labour or goods, in return for a measure of gold or silver – became the norm. Opportunists saw a new opportunity for personal benefit without having to be a farmer or a blacksmith. They offered to store the working man’s gold and silver safely and cheaply in a ‘bank’, and even began lending some of it to others in return for payment, which held their interest enormously. The parents consented and their new ‘servants’ became known as ‘bankers’, and other names.

The idea of providing a service rather than goods in exchange for reward wasn’t new, of course. The oldest ‘profession’ in the world is based on that concept. But the combination of all these new service providers allowed them to grow in stature from being ‘servants’ to being masters in their society. They made so many social decisions and kept to a minimum the decisions open to labourers to make for themselves. 

These changes created more confusion; they attacked the very existence of the nuclear family as a result of debt and endless new laws for the labourer either to comply with or to break, which made them law-breakers. They said the laws applied equally to everybody, but they didn’t.

During this time many other services were offered (or imposed) on the producers of wealth. Some people were hired and swore an oath to up hold and ensure the peace and tranquillity of the community and were known as ‘policymen’. Again, they did their work only with the consent of the people. Over time there were many similar social service developments until, eventually, the ordinary man looked about him and wondered if he had done the right thing in giving his consent to strangers as often as he had? Of course, he hadn’t done the right thing.

So ordinary men began to listen to the words of John Smith (and others), who told them of their right to common law which tested everything in front of a random 12-person jury. The jury is also empowered to test the validity of the laws handed to them by their poli-tick-ians, he said, and can nullify unfair/unjust laws. The judges and poli-tick-ians were horrified at this challenge to their dominance and even claimed that parliament is supremely sovereign. What Silly Billies. They couldn’t and cannot see that they are allowed to do what they do solely because the ordinary parents consented. 

The situation can be changed when those ordinary parents realise (begin to think differently) that change will follow when we withhold or withdraw our consent. That is where the change begins. Anything else leaves us living under tyranny and we are not free men at all.

Written and produced by Michael, standing under Common Law Court jurisdiction.

Member of the Democracy Defined campaign

THE FRAUD OF DEMOCRACY

September 2019 – Along with many others these past few days I have watched the pantomime that we used to call “The Mother of Parliaments” become a vague, sad imitation of itself. Along with many others I’m sick to death of what I’m hearing and viewing on voyeur-vision. I’m not at all sure that even George Orwell could have made it up.

Thanks to the A.K. Chesterton Trust and the Candour writings of Ben Greene (1901-1978), as well as a friend in Yorkshire, I was introduced some while ago to one of Greene’s essays: The British Constitution and the Corruption of Parliament. I commend it to you. (www.candour.org.uk).

I’ve written in the past about the apparently casual way we use words. But even the word ‘casual’ is wrongly used. We seem to use words to conceal our thoughts and intentions rather than illuminate them. Lawyers and politicians are particularly good at this. Beware lawyers and politicians; they know their business and your interests are rarely the same as theirs.

Recently I came upon an explanation. “As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.” — Gore Vidal (1925-2012).

Since the dawn of time every empire has come to grief and fulfilled the pragmatic Persian observation: “This too shall pass.” Why should the British Empire (or American Empire) be any different?

The following article is from www.theburningplatform.com  and was written by a guest contributor known as The Zman. I haven’t changed a word.

The Fraud Of Democracy

Guest Post by The Zman

One of the features of the current year is the regular reminder that western style democracy is a complete fraud. According to the political class, democracy allows for public policy to reflect the will of the people. The parties put forward candidates offering various policy proposals and the public signals their preferences by voting for one or the other candidates. The winners then set about trying to implement the policies they proposed. That’s how we’re told representative democracy works.

In reality, nothing like this happens. Instead, the parties put on a show for the voters, rarely intending to actually do what they claim. Instead, they manufacture differences between one another, so they can pretend the choice before the voters is stark. Once the election is over, the politicians go back to living their lives of leisure, waiting for instructions from the people who actually run things. The politicians are like robot actors, brought out for elections, then put back in storage.

The obvious example of this is the most recent American presidential election in which Donald Trump scored a stunning upset on the promise to reduce immigration, crackdown in illegal immigration and address the gross inequality resulting from globalization. So far, none of that has been done. Instead, he spent most of his presidency fighting a seditious coup to get him out of office. In fact, Trump’s three years are pretty much what Jeb Bush promised when he was running in the 2016 primary.

Notice that hardly anyone in either political party is terribly concerned about the FBI plot to overturn the election. Sure, there are a few lonely voices on the Republican side asking questions and demanding transparency. They have no support from leadership. On the Democrat side, they are actively colluding with the plotters to cover up the affair. One would think the people subject to the voters would care about the integrity of the process, but you would be wrong. The revealed preferences are on full display.

An ugly as the Trump era has been, it is civil and decent compared to what is happening in Europe. The Italians are now watching their political class submarine the will of the people in an egregious series of deceits by the Five Star Movement. The Italians voted for a populist, anti-EU coalition. Instead, the Five Star Movement cut a deal with the internationalist, pro-EU party to sabotage the nationalists. The result is the exact opposite of what the people voted for in their last election.

In Britain, the government put a choice before the people back in 2016, as to whether remain in the EU or become an independent nation again. The public chose nationhood by a respectable margin. In any democracy, getting 52% of the vote, particularly in a highly popular election, is a solid majority. Here we are, more than three years on, and the political class is still debating whether to accept the election results. In other words, the elected officials are deciding whether the election results matter.
To make matters worse, you now have members of one party actively colluding with members of other parties to undermine the orderly process in Parliament. Up until this week, the “remainers” could plausibly claim they are operating within the democratic process, despite thwarting the will of the people. Britain is not a pure democracy, so the pols have some leeway. Now, they are in active revolt against the system that they are sworn to uphold, in an effort to upend the result of the Brexit referendum.

In all of these cases, the question that never gets asked in the media is who is bribing these people to carry on this way. The most likely reason Five Star finked on its voters is the leaders took bribes from Brussels. In Britain, the “remainers” are certainly on the payroll of global enterprise. Those paymasters are most likely foreign. In the United States, of course, both political parties are wholly owned by the donor party. No one in the media bothers looking into it, as they are owned by the oligarchs as well.

The tell is that these shenanigans always work one way. You’ll never see the party of the globalist suddenly have a crisis of conscience and defect to the nationalists. It’s always the other way. There are no “remainers” siding with the Brexiteers in order to respect the will of the people, despite their own misgivings. In Washington, no globalists have switched teams to support Trump. In the charade that is democracy, the fink is always played by the same character in exactly the same way.

The reason we never see a politician break ranks in order to support the popular will against his own side is that western democracy is a fraud. Elections are a beard worn by the oligarchy to fool the public. The public space is filled with drama and outrage, drawing in the public. It is the circus half of the bread and circuses. Meanwhile, the oligarchs, most of whom are now foreign to the people over whom they rule, exercise the real power of the supposedly national governments of the West.

In the United States, both political parties are funded by the same people. For example, anyone questioning the endless wars for Israel gets pilloried, because Israel runs a massive lobbying operation to buy off both political parties. They work this racket in other Western countries as well. The tech giants operate in violation of the laws and civil order, because they own the politicians of both parties. Of course, the commentariat is being paid by the same people to maintain the fraud.
Every society has an elite. This is the natural state of mankind. In a democracy, this reality is concealed from the public. Instead, it is one man, one vote. The people decide public policy. In reality, it is a handful of men and your votes mean nothing. Worse yet, those oligarchs pulling the strings are wholly unaccountable. They don’t have to answer to the public. Instead, they pay flunkies and coat holders to do it. Democracy is a fraud to distract the public, while their society is looted by oligarchs.

The worst part of it is the public, instead of peering behind the charade to see the string pullers, vents its anger on the actors. In 2016 the public voted against the status quo in the form of Donald Trump. Angry at that result, they voted for his opposition party in 2018, as a punishment against his party for their intransigence. In 2020, the public will probably throw Trump out for someone promising something different, but the result will be the same. The result is always the same. Democracy (as we accept it – NUB) is a fraud.

_ _ _ _ _

When the Plymouth Brethren fled this country all those years ago they didn’t leave in search of democracy. The word doesn’t appear anywhere in the American Constitution. They sought freedom. Think about it.

Here’s an interesting game to play each day. Whenever you hear a politician use the word ‘democracy’, change it in your own mind for the word ‘freedom’. You will soon come to the same conclusions that I have, I’m sure.  THINK ABOUT IT NEXT TIME YOU ARE CALLED UPON TO VOTE.
(NUB)