Tag: Octavio Paz

Why Have We Forgotten?

Richard Barnes

The prior post (Look There For A Sign) quoted Octavio Paz’s maxim, “Every time a society finds itself in crisis it instinctively turns its eyes towards its origins and looks there for a sign.”

The post also observed, “I see precious few folks today turning their eyes to our origins in order to seek answers….”

In other words, either Paz was in error, or our society does not consider our current conundrum to rise to the level of crisis.

Current polling suggests that most Americans, of all persuasions, do believe we are in crisis; if so, then Paz is in error, at least with regards to America. Which, as with most things in life, is nothing new. Jeremiah urged the people of his day, who knew they were behind the proverbial eight ball, to “…ask for the old paths, where is the good way and walk therein ….” Their reply? “We will not walk therein” (Jer. 6:16).

And they catastrophically lost their country.

Our colonial era was fundamental to the United States Constitution which was truly unique in the annals of history. For the first time ever a government was formed on the basis of limiting the scope of that government to few and limited powers; with all other powers retained by the states and the people.

This unleashed a very free and supremely productive populace which very quickly ascended to leadership and a shining example on the world’s stage.

However, from the late 19th Century, but especially since the New Deal, that paradigm of liberty has been distorted to the point where, today, the Constitution is not even considered by the many; and when it is, it is seen as a document which gives unlimited powers to the central governmental unit which treats the states and the people as sort of its “subdivisions” or subsidiaries or somehow subservient to its whims.

In other words, a complete and utter inversion of the original intent of our founding.

This has resulted in Americans today being among the most regulated, taxed, and controlled people on earth.

To take just one example: The Affordable Care Act, known as “Obamacare” was signed into law at 2,800 pages, which was considered ridiculous at the time, given that there was no possible way Congress could have read it in time for their Christmas Eve vote.

But the real outrage are the 10,000 closely printed pages of Obamacare’s regulations printed in the Federal Register. 

Ten Thousand closely printed pages.

Americans are not being governed by the 2,800 pages voted on by our representatives and senators and signed into law by our president.

Americans are being governed by the 10,000 closely printed pages in the Federal Register.

Not our president, not our senators, not our representatives wrote those 10,000 pages. 

Such were written by unelected, invisible bureaucrats and staffers in the countless offices, nooks, and crannies of the central government.

But that is not all: the agencies charged with implementing Obamacare are also empowered to promulgate more regulations, to prosecute citizens for violating such regulations, and to act as judge and jury in the prosecutions that they bring. In other words, these agencies combine the legislative, executive, and judicial functions in the same body.

That’s just Obamacare.

Congress and the president have passed and signed over 4,200 laws since 2001 alone.

And each one of those comes with agencies, bureaucrats, official enforcers, and hundreds and thousands of pages of regulations, which are the only “laws” most of us ever see.

One of the grievances cited by our founders to justify our Declaration of Independence was this:

“He [King George] has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”

Our founders intended this would never be the case here by erecting a system of checks and balances whereby the legislative, executive, and judicial would be separate. However, for well over a century now, and especially since the mid-20th Century, we have submitted to governance that neatly eviscerates that system.

So, does that mean that the solution to our crisis is a “return to the Constitution”?

No.

The solution to our crisis is a return to the “old paths”, which led to our Constitution.

It is a return to faith in God and His law.

That return begins in our homes and in our churches.

Judgement begins with us.

We are the ones who have permitted our children to be taught and indoctrinated by atheistic, socialistic professors who outnumber their conservative counterparts by 17 to 1. In 1968 that ratio was 2.7 to 1. These ratios are not only representative of college faculty but also of elementary and secondary schooling.

That means that two generations, at least, have been subjected to unending socialist, atheistic indoctrination and revisionist “American history”, which teaches us to hate our country and to cut off its roots.

The above ratios are also representative of our media and our “entertainment” industries.

In other words, we are under an unremitting barrage of propaganda which will take its toll unless we are clothed with Truth and teach our children and grandchildren that Truth.

One of the reasons we forget — perhaps the primary reason — is that we believe or assume that our prosperity came from the power of our own hand. We believe “naturalistically”.

However, it was not for nothing that our founders began our Declaration with the presupposition of our being created in God’s image: “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….”

We live in a personal universe because it was created by a personal Creator God, Who tells us, “Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God….”

A return to the Constitution requires a return to God.

Look There For A Sign

Richard Barnes

“Without the fear of hell and the hope of the Last Judgment, the Western legal tradition could not have come into being.”– Harold J. Berman

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams

“Communism begins where atheism begins.” — Karl Marx

“Every time a society finds itself in crisis it instinctively turns its eyes towards its origins and looks there for a sign.” — Octavio Paz

My boyhood years in El Pao, which I still regard as a paradisiacal jungle location in Venezuela, gifted me with wonderful, cherished moments and memories. 

One of those remembrances is sitting at the bar in the club and listening to the rambunctious, freewheeling, carefree, and often loud conversations of the men who assembled there after the 4 O’clock whistle. These men spoke of the news, of events back home in the states, of the prior night’s movie, of anything that occurred to them. And they did so without inhibitions and certainly with no concern about being “censored” or “cancelled”.

One thing that I never thought about was bad language — four-letter-words. I never thought about it because I never — not once — heard one uttered in those conversations.

This became a wonder to me as I looked back, especially after seeing the movie, The French Connection, in 1971. That was the first time I heard so much foul language in a film, in particular, the bar scene where Popeye crashes a drug scene fingered by an informant.

The wonder to me was that I had not heard such words from the rough and tough men — several of them combat veterans — who talked loudly with one another in that bar in El Pao. They knew I was there. And they checked their profanity accordingly. And this also applied when ladies were present.

Parenthetically, there were no laws then against children being in the bar in El Pao. And I never saw a single drunkard there — man or child.

How did the American men in El Pao know that profanity was not to be uttered in front of children? Undeniably this hearkens back to the colonial era, a strong echo of which is seen in George Washington’s strict orders to the Continental Army forbidding profanity — especially taking the Lord’s Name in vain — and enjoining attendance at Sunday worship services.

Any cursory reading of the era’s primary sources will readily establish that the basis for such proscriptions and prescriptions was not “custom” or “tradition” or “squeamishness”. It was the love of God and the fear of God. And that love and fear is abundantly in evidence throughout the colonial era and well into the mid 19th Century.

No doubt that genuine devotion eventually did indeed devolve into custom and tradition; so much so that European intellectuals in the 20th Century mocked the “prudish” and “Puritanical” Americans, many of whom in turn would not know how to explain the moral foundations for their behavior other than by appealing to custom and culture, not to Christianity or the Bible.

Octavio Paz’s reference above is a statement of which I am not so sure. I see precious few folks today turning their eyes to our origins in order to seek answers to the current lawlessness in our cities or to the haphazard enforcement of laws in our politics. I hear or read precious few allusions to the Mayflower Compact, John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, or John Witherspoon, let alone to the Book of books, The Bible.

All of the above, and much more, would comprise a major part of our “origins”. If we are to seek a sign there, we’ve barely begun to look.

But begin to look, we must.

John Winthrop — 1587-1649

Some of the men of El Pao