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This Month's Scripture Verse:

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
2 Timothy 3:1-5

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Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Perhaps We Need A Return To The 1960s

Ever since 9/11, authoritarianism has been king.  It certainly has been king for those who wish to attack western civilian targets. Most conservative versions of religions lean heavily toward authoritarianism and that even includes Christianity. As for the West, no, it wasn't acting as an adult king in terms of being as authoritarian as it could be. But that authoritarianism is growing. And now, it is starting to show signs that it could, in the near future, exercise the same degree of authoritarianism that we associate with kings and kingdoms.

Our problem with authoritarianism in the U.S. started with George W. Bush's response to 9/11 including his Patriot Act. Then, authoritarianism had a kindlier and gentler facade under Obama but it was still evident. After all, it was Obama who tried to fast-track the TPP, who greatly expanded America's use of drones, and, despite his rhetoric, it was under Obama that the Occupy encampments were dismantled while Wall Street execs escaped accountability for the fraud they practiced.

But authoritarianism has been spiking sharply in the U.S. under the tutelage of President Trump. For it is Trump himself who speaks almost reverently about dictators from other nations while using slander in an effort to discredit his critics from the "failing" New York Times to individuals, like Meryl Streep who took him to task for bullying. And while conservatives complained, and rightly so, about Obama's use of executive orders, Obama's use of executive orders pales in comparison to Trump's use of the same as well as Trump's policies that favor our nation's financial elites.

Further evidence of Trump's authoritarianism is seen in the zero-tolerance immigration policies being implemented by his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions. And what is the defense Trump's White House staff and his Attorney General give for the taking away of around 2,000 children from their parents who themselves are being federally prosecuted for attempting to illegally enter the country? It is an appeal to Romans 13 on how we are commanded to obey the rulers of a given nation.


Though Romans 13 provides some important instructions on how we should respond to our rulers and the laws they've passed, this passage from the Scriptures is used to imply that we must always obey the government despite our nation's history of enacting immoral and unjust laws. For example, both slavery and Jim Crow laws were once legal in this nation and those who resisted them were counted as illegal people. So should people have resisted those laws?

Our nation has already seen at least a partial remedy to runaway authoritarianism. It was called the 1960s. And though that decade was not without serious faults and sins, it did contain the only answers to today's authoritarianism. The cures it contained were that it asked us to both think for ourselves rather than just follow what we were told and persistently protest against what was wrong. Perhaps the 1960s, with all of its turmoil and problems, was the most democratic decade in American history. And being democratic is the problem that authoritarians have with the 1960s. For authoritarians don't want to be questioned; they prefer to be blindly followed and admired.

Yes, we need to avoid the sins of the 1960s while trying to apply what was practiced then today. But the greatest sin we could commit is to refuse to both question authority and be seen and heard. And that is especially true when those with authority are visiting  all sorts of hardships and abuses on both our living generations of today and on those to come.







 

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