Tag Archives: gandhi

Patrick Byrne: Walk Past The Barking Dogs…Or Lose

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The former CEO of Overstock.com, more notorious as the publisher of the Deep Capture website, advises the right to be Shaolin Monks:

“The other side will try to provoke us, but we are like Shaolin monks: We “walk on past the barking dogs” (as my martial arts master taught me). As he put it to me so many decades ago:  “When a dog barks at you, you don’t feel a need to bark back at it, or to run over and kick the dog: you walk past the barking dog.” Similarly, in the days ahead as we patriotic Americans gather publicly to make our positions known, when the Goon-Left shows up we do not get in screaming matches with them, we do not let our tempers rise.  We let them bark all they want while we maintain our discipline, poise, and calmness. That is how we show the American people who we are, and who the Goons really are. It is how we win.

Of course, if and only if the dogs actually attack, not just bark but attack,  at that point you have the right of all free men and women to defend yourselves, with whatever minimum of force lets you resolve the situation safely. Just remember, however, the Goons think they win if they can make you go violent in front of the TV cameras. And they are right, they will win….. unless you have shown such a preponderance of control that no reasonable observer could question that they were the aggressors, and you were exercising your right to self-defence.”

How I wish I could agree with Mr. Byrne.

But I cannot.

The truth is most of the conservatives at the Capitol protest did indeed behave like Shaolin monks, as the New York Post reporter’s footage that I posted earlier demonstrates.

A few let loose, but only AFTER the police lobbed smoke bombs, tasered them, and used pepper spray….and after various agents provocateurs instigated brawls and vandalized the building, albeit on a much smaller scale than anything America witnessed through the last two years of inner cities on fire.

The problem is not that the right was tricked into breaking the law.

The problem is they did not break the law….at least, not at first.

It is not trespass if you are invited into a building. The guards let people in and did nothing to discourage what was going on.

Watching from across the world, I believed the guards were sympathetic and eager to let people in.

Point two. Even if they had not been invited in, I would not see anything wrong in people entering the house of the people, something they do routinely during tours.

How much more so during an existential crisis of the republic?

It is the will of the people, tempered by the constitution of the nation, that hallows the halls of government. The Representatives are interlopers if they do not represent the people and the Senators are only hired guns if they do not represent the constitution.

When the people’s will is thwarted for evil ends and the constitution cast aside like a used rag then the halls of government are no longer hallowed but cursed; no more Mount Sinai, but a golden calf consecrated to Libido Dominandi.

That is my first point. Conservatives were a. not really doing anything very bad and b. were quite justified in whatever they did do by the egregious behavior of their targets.

My second argument with Mr. Byrne is that agents provocateurs can act without any assistance from the ordinary citizen.

By this I mean that provocateurs and those they provoke can both be stage managed. Anyone could have a social media account opened in their name and a dozen MAGA rants posted therein. Within the totalitarian spy state in which we live, faking an online persona and then foisting it on some innocent is child’s play. A Shaolin monk, killed by an agent provocateur, can be reborn on the internet as a vile pedophile rapist, on the strength of very little but online rumor. Once that label has taken hold, posthumous rehabilitation is impossible. Once reputation is gone, then who are the good guys and who are the bad? In short, for a man who engaged the media in such hand- to- hand combat and had his own Wikipedia biography targeted, Mr. Byrne seems to have forgotten that it is not who you are, but who people think you are.

To recap my argument, not only does Mr. Byrne, one,  regurgitate the assumptions behind the mainstream narrative about January 6, two,  his advice fails to account for how Shaolin monks avoid being recast as their opposite through the media.

To elaborate. There would have been no Mahatma without Margaret Bourke White and the reverential international press that followed with her. In today’s media ethos, the Mahatma would only be Mohandas, a big- eared, toothless lecher, a pedophile rapist and Luddite, a coward and traitor intent on giving India to Pakistan. Indeed, that is how Gandhi is seen, now that the hagiographers have been succeeded by the debunkers.

My third argument contra Byrne is that violence is only a loser’s game if it is sporadic and individual. Not otherwise.

It goes without saying that John Q Public should not be stocking up on ammo and rifles in the hope of taking out his state representative. In the age of Pegasus, unmanned drones, and AI bots, he is likely to end up in a psychiatric hospital or dead.

However, the idea that wearing buttons and going about our business is going to put an end to the rot is laughable. The boot will not lift from our necks until we join hands and throw it off from us. Concerted public ACTION, not slogans is what will win the day.

Militias could indeed be a part of that action, but not in the way most people think.

I suggest citizen patrols that show up wherever BLM or Antifa threaten people, their homes and businesses. That would be a real start.

But actual physical violence is the smaller part of the problem..

It is the media distortion of reality that is the bigger part.

So another project of resistance should be to target journalists who are especially mendacious about conservatives. We should give them the same relentless public exposure and censure they give others. We could list their failed predictions, their past plagiarisms, their padded resumes, their personal and business fiascos in little biographies that could be inserted below any commentary of theirs wherever it appears and we could do this relentlessly.

Neither of these courses of action is going to win us good press on the left. And that is the final issue I have with Mr. Byrne’s criticism. It is stuck at the level of optics.

Optics is certainly important. Very important. But that doesn’t mean we give up certain options. It means we get smart about our options. It is certainly a bad idea to get caught on camera beating up a leftist goon [and here, I definitely mean a goon, not just some social justice warrior who gets on your nerves.]

The remedy is not to give up beating up on the goons.

It is to make sure the cameras are switched off when you take off your gloves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arvind Kejriwal: Plagiarist?

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[Note to long-suffering readers: I’m too busy to post right now or to respond to comments. I read all of them and greatly appreciate the input. Will be back soon.

POST:

It seems that  Delhi chief and self-styled anti-corruption crusader,  Arvind Kejriwal, might be guilty of some corruption himself – he stands accused of having plagiarized his book, “Swaraj” (- self-rule- a term popularized by Gandhi during India’s independence struggle):

The Facebook page of India Cause has the story:

“” Complainant Ajay Pal Nagar has alleged Kejriwal’s book Swaraj has copied contents in his book titled Bharatiya Raj Vyawastha. Nagar claimed that he had presented the book to Kejriwal in March, 2012 and he was appalled to see its content being copied in ‘Swaraj’ that was published in July 2012. The case has been filed before District Judicial Magistrate of Noida and the case has been accepted.

The author has said that he had released his book through a Delhi-based publication one year before the release of Swaraj and the plagiarism has been done intentionally by Kejriwal. “Kejriwal has illegally published my book in his own name and has added some Government documents to mislead the people,” the complainant.

Nagar, in his complaint before the court, has alleged that 80% content of Swaraj has been copied from his book which is a clear violation of Copy Right Act. Nagar said he wrote the book Bharatiya Raj Vyawastha in year 2011 and book was published in February 2012. Later, he sent a copy of the book to Kejriwal on March 26. In June 2012, when Swaraj was released with author name Arvind Kejriwal, Nagar found that Kejriwal has taken most parts of his book without his consent to do so. He found that many pages, paragraphs and lines of Swaraj are word to word of his book.

Earlier the author lodged a complaint in Badalpur police station in December 2012 but no action was initiated against Kejriwal and the matter was almost closed. Nagar then went to Chief District Magistrate Court of Noida where his application under Section 156 (3) of CrPc was taken up by the Magistrate. Complainant has also claimed that Manish Sisodia, close associate of Kejriwal and a Minister in Delhi Govt, has accepted that ‘the book is written by us but is amalgamation of different articles’. However, contrary to his claim, the book has the name of Arvind Kejriwal as its author.

“I wrote the book, Bharatiya Raj Vyawastha, with 10 years’ experience of my social life. I met eminent lawyers, socialists, constitutional experts and many more before writing the book. As I was impressed with Arvind Kejriwal and his team during Anna movement, I sent a copy of my book to Kejriwal but he took unfair advantage of it. I have moved court for action against him for exclusive theft and a case under Section 200 of CrPc has been registered against Kejriwal. The court could serve notice to him. If required I will move upper courts for justice,” said Nagar.”

Gore Vidal WAS A Pedophile, Says Family

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UPDATE

Further substantiating my accurate analysis that Vidal’s “anti-establishment” stance (including his “antiwar” stance) was not in anyway a principled objection to abusive power, notice from this report that he craved the status granted by elite institutions like Harvard (not having gone to college himself); notice that his hatred of the state was mixed with feelings of thwarted ambition because he’d always wanted to be president; notice that his anti-establishment rants were mingled with constant remembrances of status symbols and the upper-class gilded life to which he belonged and in which he reveled; notice the opulent life-style he lived (not that I have anything against that) and his $37 million estate); notice the deep alcoholism and madness in which he ended his life.

Now put against that the FACTS about Gandhi:

1. Was in excellent physical and mental condition late into life, when he was undergoing month-long fasts.

2. Was repeatedly offered leadership positions in the state and turned them down. Counseled against imitating Western state structures.

3.  Although once prosperous, gave away most of his belongings and was left with nothing more than a watch, his glasses, his loincloth and shawl, and a bowl out of which he ate.

4. Died not from alcoholism and insanity, but from a bullet delivered by an assassin. His last words were “He Ram” (Oh God).

No need to demonize Vidal, of course.

He was a talented, clever, witty man, who said many true things about history and government and he was a prolific, popular novelist of varying ability. He was a fine essayist, no doubt.

But he was also a compulsive  promiscuous pedophile (and most likely a child rapist) who publicly defended  other child rapists (Roman Polansky, Catholic priests).

He was nasty to friends and foes, envied others and relentlessly slandered them. He harbored demons to the end of his life that he was too weak to overcome. He deserved  the prayers and intervention of his friends and family in life, not the mindless adulation of strangers in death. He doubtless victimized scores of children, Thai children, whom we’ll never hear about. Safe Horizon, so exercised about the Indian nanny fake-slaver case should perhaps be called in about this compelling example of real child-sex tourism.

The American media can keep Gore Vidal for a hero. He fits their values.

I’d rather look among hundreds of unsung activists/writers for mine.

ORIGINAL POST

Gore Vidal’s family supports the long-standing rumors of Vidal’s pedophilia that I published here and that I decided, after analysis, were credible.

For that, this blog was hacked, and a week or so later, some spooky electronic harassment took place. I’m not really sure how that happened. I only know it took place.

I think I was alone among antiwar bloggers, most of whom praised Vidal to the skies, ignoring everything except the fact that his position on war was theirs.

I usually wouldn’t criticize a man on his death, but the universal praise of such a deeply flawed man, just after the contemptible and untruthful slurs against Gandhi, cried out to be corrected.

So here’s the post I wrote: Vidal, Polanksy and Kinsey, August 4, 2012.

In contrast, here’s Justin Raimondo’s piece “The Last Jeffersonian,” August 3, 2012

[I have always liked Raimondo’s investigative pieces on the Israeli lobby, one of the more dangerous areas for writers, so this isn’t meant as an attack on him.]

Here’s another libertarian Bill Kauffman on Vidal.

Now for the main points from the Daily Mail piece on Vidal:

“In a feature that appeared in the New York Times, Ms Straight – who had a ‘turbulent though close relationship’ with Vidal – said the openly-gay author had had sex with underage men.

“She described the alleged circumstances as ‘Jerry Sandusky acts’, referring to the former Penn State assistant football coach convicted of child molestation.

“Mr Steers – who directed the Zac Efron film Charlie St Cloud – said that conservative columnist William F. Buckley – who had a long-running public feud with Vidal, which also played out in court – had evidence linking Vidal to the alleged crimes.”

AND

“The New York Times article also says that the ever-opinionated Vidal had a strange and controversial take on the abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests.

“‘He would say that the young guys involved were hustlers who were sending signals,’ Mr Steers said.

[Lila: Based on this statement alone, I would give credibility to the charges against Vidal.]

“However the author of the article, Tim Teeman, wrote that ‘other friends of Mr. Vidal told me they doubted he had sex with underage men’.

“I”Vidal suffered from dementia and alcoholism towards the end of his life.

“Mr Steers said he would drink single male scotch ‘until he collapsed’.

Vidal also had ‘wet brain’ – proper name Wernicke-Korsakoff – a syndrome characterized by a number of symptoms, including confusion and hallucination.”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2496631/Family-Gore-Vidal-allege-pedophile-challenge-writers-37-million-will.html#ixzz2q2g6wNOz
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Vidal was not only a pedophile, it seems he beat up gays, so intense was his own self-loathing.

[Lila: I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not his “pedophilia” but his involvement in even worse – violence against  male child prostitutes that might be the real story and the “yes he was a pedophile” simply a diversion. After all, pedophilia apologias have already appeared in mainstream media, like The Atlantic.]

Consider the reverential treatment given to this insane, addicted, unpleasant man, who was a self-confessed pederast. His well-documented compulsive lifestyle was passed over in silence by the establishment media, since he was “one of them,” from the ruling class.

But of Gandhi, a man who fought his devils all his life bravely, with the utmost candor, and engaged, successfully or not, in one of the biggest social upheavals in modern history,  the same media has recently had nothing but scurrilous and easily discredited innuendo.

Malicious critics called him a bisexual pedophile molester, based on deliberate falsification and exaggeration of historical evidence. They called him a hypocrite, whereas the truth was he was compulsively open to his critics, even begging them to write the worst they knew about him.

Why so much venom? Because Gandhi was Indian and the media in the West has over the last two years been engaged in a systematic campaign of vilification and half-truths against India, along with literal provocations, as I’ve amply documented.

While Vidal,  a hero of  modern liberals, lived in terror of the truth about himself coming out, Gandhi courageously reported every passing sexual feeling in his diaries, urged his critics to say the worst about him that they could, and berated himself endlessly for even mental failures of continence.

Here’s more about  the new claims about Vidal:

“Vidal accused Buckley of being a “crypto-Nazi”; Buckley responded by labelling Vidal a “queer” and telling him to stop his insults or Buckley would “sock [him] in the goddamn face”.

Their argument ended up in the courts, where Buckley first lost an expensive lawsuit against Vidal for libel, before winning a settlement from a magazine that republished Vidal’s written attack years later.

Vidal once estimated he had slept with 1,000 men before he was 25, and boasted of having had sex with Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson and Noel Coward, according to Mr Teeman.

While enjoying a 53-year relationship with his long-term partner, Howard Austen, before Austen’s death in 2003, he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Palimpsest, that he was “attracted to adolescent males”…….

…Buckley’s son, Christopher, has said that while clearing out his late father’s study, he found a file labelled “Vidal Legal”, which he threw into a dumpster…….

An unidentified “longtime friend” of Vidal’s added that the author had once shocked a guest at his home in Ravello, Italy, by announcing: “You know I’m a pederast”.

This friend focused on Vidal’s time spent in Bangkok, Thailand, a city notorious for its sex trade. “He did go to Thailand every year, and he was definitely having sex with male prostitutes there, and they weren’t older male prostitutes,” the friend said.”

Evil people lie about good people for one principal reason – vanity.

They cannot stand being shown up by anything or anyone better than they are.  A couple of years ago, the Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia, wrote about the profound intolerance of sin for anything that rebukes it, in an essay, “Evil preaches tolerance only when it’s weak.”

So also lies cannot tolerate truth.

But  the world is not built on lies.  And man cannot live on lies.

At the end, when the mud and the bile and the envious distortions of petty men have had their day, the truth will be vindicated.

Rousas Rushdoony: What Jesus taught about taxes

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Rousas Rushdoony gives the traditional Christian understanding of the great subversive parable of Jesus, regarding the payment of tribute to Caesar, notwithstanding the attempt by some to use Jesus to support libertarian beliefs.

Rushdoony’s understanding is supported by the readings of others (per Wikipedia):

Mennonite Dale Glass-Hess wrote:

It is inconceivable to me that Jesus would teach that some spheres of human activity lie outside the authority of God. Are we to heed Caesar when he says to go to war or support war-making when Jesus says in other places that we shall not kill? No! My perception of this incident is that Jesus does not answer the question about the morality of paying taxes to Caesar, but that he throws it back on the people to decide. When the Jews produce a denarius at Jesus’ request, they demonstrate that they are already doing business with Caesar on Caesar’s terms. I read Jesus’ statement, “Give to Caesar…” as meaning “Have you incurred a debt in regard to Caesar! Then you better pay it off.” The Jews had already compromised themselves. Likewise for us: we may refuse to serve Caesar as soldiers and even try to resist paying for Caesar’s army. But the fact is that by our lifestyles we’ve run up a debt with Caesar, who has felt constrained to defend the interests that support our lifestyles. Now he wants paid back, and it’s a little late to say that we don’t owe anything. We’ve already compromised ourselves. If we’re going to play Caesar’s games, then we should expect to have to pay for the pleasure of their enjoyment. But if we are determined to avoid those games, then we should be able to avoid paying for them.[13]

Mohandas K. Gandhi shared this perspective. He wrote:

Jesus evaded the direct question put to him because it was a trap. He was in no way bound to answer it. He therefore asked to see the coin for taxes. And then said with withering scorn, “How can you who traffic in Caesar’s coins and thus receive what to you are benefits of Caesar’s rule refuse to pay taxes?”

At the same time, Gandhi, certainly saw that Jesus would have supported non-cooperation and civil resistance through non payment of taxes:

“Jesus’ whole preaching and practice point unmistakably to noncooperation, which necessarily includes nonpayment of taxes.[14]

In Rushdooney’s reading,  Jesus’ teaching is more submissive than it is in Gandhi’s. But it is submissive in a subversive way, similar to the reading of Jacques Ellul:

“Render unto Caesar…” in no way divides the exercise of authority into two realms….They were said in response to another matter: the payment of taxes, and the coin. The mark on the coin is that of Caesar; it is the mark of his property. Therefore give Caesar this money; it is his. It is not a question of legitimizing taxes! It means that Caesar, having created money, is its master. That’s all. Let us not forget that money, for Jesus, is the domain of Mammon, a satanic domain!
My sense is that Jesus’ parables should not be taken out of context to support a dogmatic and anachronistic reading. They should be read in the general spirit of his other teachings.
Elsewhere, Jesus taught that worldly power and wealth were obstacles to the soul. This is hardly the same as libertarian anti-state ideology, but it is subversive and unworldly.
Rousas Rushdoony:

“6. The Tribute Money

One of the best-known stories of the New Testament is the one con­cerning the tribute money question: “Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar or not?” Christ’s answer, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are Gods” (Matt. 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26), is one of the most familiar sentences of Scripture. The general implications have long been recognized; in the specific application, there has been much variation.

The purpose of the Pharisees is again to “entangle him in his talk” (Matt. 22:15); Luke is more specific, “And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor” (Luke 20:20-26). The Roman governor was meant. Apparently the expectation was that Jesus, in faithfulness to the law, would declare that only a theocracy was valid in Israel, not Roman rule and law. Behind this strategy were the Phari­sees and the Herodians (Matt. 22:16; Mark 12:13), a minor, political, non-religious party of the day. The Herodians favored the Roman tax and the Herodian dynasty, which they regarded as preferable to direct Roman rule. The Pharisees were normally hostile to the Herodians, but they joined forces in hostility to Jesus. If Jesus opposed the tax, He could be denounced and delivered to the Roman authorities for arrest and trial.

The question was prefaced with fulsome flattery; the questioners asked as if motivated by a tender conscience rather than a desire to entrap. They attempted to push Jesus into an answer heedless of con­sequences by asserting that “thou art true, and carest for no man; for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth” (Mark 12:14). Such an integrity, they hoped, would compel Him to deny the legitimacy of the Roman tax. “Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no?” (Luke 20:22).

The Greek text makes clear that the tax was a “capitation tax,” not an indirect tax.[1] “Luke uses phoros, the wider word for ‘tribute’ as it is paid by one nation to another; Matthew and Mark use the more specific kenos or poll tax that is levied upon every individual for his own person and is thus especially galling as a mark of servitude to the Roman power.”[2]

Israel already had a poll tax, that required by God’s law in Exodus 30:11-16. Its purpose was to provide for civil atonement, i.e., the covering or protection of civil government. Every male twenty years old or older was required to pay this tax to be protected by God the King in His theocratic government of Israel. This tax was thus a civil and religious duty (but not an ecclesiastical one).

There was thus a particular aggravation in the fact that Rome also required a poll or head tax. The Roman Empire and emperor were progressively assuming divine roles, requiring religious assent, and claiming priority over religion. The poll tax was thus a particularly offensive tax, in that it seemed to require a polytheistic faith, the worship of a god other than the true God. Moreover, the Herodian tax was so heavy that twice the imperial government compelled Herod to reduce his tax demands in order to avoid serious trouble. Judas Galilaeus had earlier presented himself as the messiah and had summoned Israel, in the name of God and Scripture, to refuse to pay the tax. The Romans were merciless in putting down the rebellion (Acts 5:37).

The matter had been aggravated as early as A.D. 29 by Pilate, who for a time issued coinage “bearing the lituus, the priest’s staff, or the patera, the sacrificial bowl-two symbols of the imperial philosophy which were bound to be obnoxious to the people.”[3]These coins were later withdrawn, but they did serve to underscore the fact that their bondage to Rome had religious overtones.

The right to issue coins had religious overtones for Israel as I Maccabees 15:6 implies, and it was thus important to them. “‘Coin’ and ‘power’ were regarded as synonyms, so that the coin was the symbol of the ruler’s dominance.”[4] In the second century A.D., Bar Kochba, the false messiah, replaced Roman coinage with his own coins as a means of asserting his power. To give tribute to Caesar thus meant to acknowledge Caesar’s power; to approve of giving tribute to Caesar was to acknowledge the legitimacy of Caesar’s power. The question implicit, in the Herodian’s statement was whether any government other than God’s has any legitimacy. Christ’s assertion of His messiahship was seen by his accusers as a denial of Caesar’s right to tax (Luke 23:2), since the Messiah as King had to have exclusive sovereignty, in their perspective. For Jesus to have denied Caesar’s right to tax Israel was a mark of insurrection and would make Him liable to arrest. For Jesus to have affirmed Caesar’s right to tax would have been, in the eyes of the people, a denial of His messiahship.

The answer of Jesus was to ask for a denarius; He asked it of His questioners. As Stauffer, whose chapter on “The Story of the Tribute Money” is very important, has written:

Jesus asked for a penny, a denarius. Why? There were a great many coins in the wide Roman empire which passed as legal cur­rency, old and new, large and small, imperial and local, gold, silver, copper, bronze and brass. In no country did so many different kinds of money circulate as in Palestine. But the prescribed coin for taxation purposes throughout the empire was the denarius, a little silver coin of about the worth of a shilling. (It can only be the sil­ver denarius which is intended in Mark 12:16, Luke 20:24 and Matt. 22:19, not a gold coin as Titian supposed, in his representa­tion of the tribute scene, nor a Herodian coin, as is often asserted; for the Herodian coins were not called denarii and were not tribute coins, but were local copper coins.) Jesus knew this, and so He asked for the silver imperial tax coin, using the Latin word, the Roman technical expression, which had become current in Palestine along with the coin itself. Bring me a denarius, He said. He did not produce one from His own pocket. Why not? The point now is not whether Jesus had such a coin in His pocket but whether His opponents had. With Socratic irony, he added: “That I may see it?” Why? He had the maieutic purpose with his questioners, He wanted to deliver them, in the Socratic manner, not a priori, but a posteriori. Not their logical or moral sense, but their historical situation and attitude would bring the truth to light. Something is to be seen, and deduced, from the denarius itself.[5]

When the coin was handed to Jesus, He did not yet answer their question, “Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?” Instead, He asked another question: “Whose is this image and superscription?” (Matt. 22:20; Mark 12:16; Luke 20:24). The answer was, of course, “Cae­sar’s.” According to Geldenhuys,

After their acknowledgment that it is Caesar’s, the following two facts are vividly brought to light through Jesus’ masterly handling of the situation:

(1) Coins with Caesar’s image and superscription are in use among the Jews.
(2) The coins are evidently the property of Caesar, otherwise they would not have borne his image and superscription.
From these two facts it thus follows that the Jews had accepted the imperial rule as a practical reality, for it was the generally current view that a ruler’s power extended as far as his coins were in use.[6]

The practical reality was thus made clear. These men used the coins of Tiberius which carried a “bust of Tiberius in Olympian nakedness, adorned with the laurel wreath, the sign of divinity.” The inscription read, “Emperor Tiberius August Son of the August God,” on the one side, and “Pontifex Maximus” or “High Priest” on the other. The symbols also included the emperor’s mother, Julia Augusta (Livia) sitting on the throne of the gods, holding the Olympian sceptre in her right hand, and, in her left, the olive branch to signify that “she was the earthly incarnation of the heavenly Pax.”[7] The Coins thus had a re­ligious significance. Israel was in a certain sense serving other gods by being subject to Rome and to Roman currency. The point made by implication by His enemies, that tribute to Caesar had religious over­tones, was almost confirmed by Jesus, even as He proved their own submission to Caesar.

Then came His great answer: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars [sic], and to God the things that are God’s (Mark 12:17). Ac­cording to Stauffer, render here means “give back.” “That is the first great surprise in this verse, and its meaning is: the payment of tribute to Caesar is not only your unquestioned obligation; it is also your moral duty.”[8] St. Paul used the same term in Romans 13:7, “Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom. . . .”

Judea was living within the Roman Empire, gaining military and economic benefits from that empire whether it wanted them or not. Even if the benefits of the empire were outweighed by its liabilities, the people were still to render Caesar his due.

The fact still remained that two poll taxes stood in opposition, one paid to the emperor, the other to God. The imperial tax provided “for the daily sacrifice for the welfare of the Roman emperor”; it maintained the empire as a religious entity.[9] The other tax, called then the temple tax, was God’s tax for maintaining His holy order. How could both taxes be paid? According to Stauffer, “He affirmed the symbolism of power, but He rejected the symbolism of worship. But this reservation was not made as a negative statement, but rather as a positive command. ‘Render to God what is God’s’ “[10] Stauffer is right in asserting that, ac­cording to Numbers 8:13 ff., this means that “Everything belongs to God.”[11] At the time that Jesus spoke, the Biblical poll tax was being collected in the spring, in the month of Adar. More specifically, Jesus asked that Caesar’s tax be rendered to Caesar, and God’s tax be rendered to God. The early church was apparently aware of this fact. Jerome, commenting on Matthew 22:21, declared, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, namely, coins, tribute, money; and to God the things that are God’s, namely, tithes, first-fruits, vows, sacrifices.”[12] Israel’s departure from God’s rule and law had placed them under Roman rule and law; they owed to Rome the tribute due to Rome. Rome did not serve God, but neither did Israel. Obedience is due to all authorities under who we find ourselves (Rom. 13:1-7). Rome was now their master, and Rome had to be obeyed. Obedience to God requires obedience to all those whom we find ourselves in subjection to. In the temptation in the wilderness, Satan had tempted Jesus to follow a way of empire: give the people bread and miracles; enable them to walk by sight. Now, through other tempters, the temptation was offered of rejecting all empires, all earthly powers.

Christ conquered this temptation afresh with His words about the double duty of obedience to the way and to the goal of history, to the kingdom of the world and to the kingdom of God. Mark 12:17 is spoken by Christ in conspectu mortis, in the sight of the messianic death. Holy Week is the existential exegesis of His words: submission to the dominion of Caesar, submission to the dominion of God — united in the acceptance of that monstrous judicial murder by which Caesar’s most wretched creature fulfils sub contrario the work of God (Matt. 26:52 ff.; John 19:11)[13]

Let us return to St. Jerome’s words. Two kinds of taxation exist, and Christ requires our obedience to both. The world of Caesar seeks to create a new world without God, and without regeneration; it exacts a heavy tax and accomplishes little or nothing. We are, as sinners, geared by our fallen nature to seeking Caesar’s answer. We pay tribute to Caesar thus, in our faith and with our money. The answer to Caesar’s world is not civil disobedience, the final implication of which is revolution. This is Caesar’s way, the belief that man’s effort by works of law can remake man and the world.

The answer rather is to obey all due authorities and to pay tribute, custom, and honor to whom these things are due. This is the minor aspect of our duty. More important, we must render, give back to God what is His due, our tithes, first-fruits, vows, and sacrifices. The re­generate man begins by acknowledging God, the author and Redeemer of his life, as his lord and savior, his King. At every point in his life, he renders to God His due service, thanksgiving, praise, and tithe. His salvation is God’s gift; the bounty he enjoys is God’s gift and providence; the regenerate man therefore renders, gives back to God, God’s appointed share of all things.

The way of resistance to Rome chosen by Judea led to the world’s worst war and to the death of the nation. Neither the Roman imperial answer nor the Judean revolutionary answer offered anything but death and disaster. Self-consciously, the Christians followed their Lord. Justin Martyr wrote:

And everywhere we, more readily than all men, endeavour to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary, as we have been taught by Him; for at that time some came to Him and asked Him, if one ought to pay tribute to Caesar; and He answered, “Tell me, whose image does this coin bear?” And they said, “Caesar’s”; And again He answered them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Whence to God alone we render worship, but in other things we gladly serve you, acknowledging you as kings and rulers of men, and praying that with your kingly power you be found to possess also sound judgment. But if you pay no regard to our prayers and frank explanations, we shall suffer no loss, since we believe (or rather, indeed, are persuaded) that every man will suffer punishment in eternal fire according to the merit of his deed, and will render account according to the power he has received from God, as Christ intimated when He said, “To whom God has given more, of him shall more be required.”[14]

Christ’s answer did not prevent His enemies from charging Him with “perverting the nation, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar” (Luke 23:2). His answer in reality had demolished all grounds for any accusation against Him.

Their duty, Jesus had declared, was “to render back” “to pay what is owing”[15] to Caesar and to God. What is due to Caesar is due to Caesar only by the providence, purpose, and counsel of God. What is due to God, what all men owe Him, is everything. Jesus set forth “God’s absolute and peculiar right in respect of every man individually and of all men collectively-an exclusive and paramount right possessed by God alone.”[16]

Those who reduce this great sentence of Christ’s to a declaration about church and state have missed the point of the incident.

[1] Plummer, Luke, p.465.[2] Lenski, Luke, p.988.

[3] Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955), p. 119.

[4] Ibid., p. 125.

[5] Ibid., p.122 f

[6] Geldenhuys, Luke, p.504.

[7] Stauffer, op. cit., p. 124f.

[8] Ibid., p. 129.

[9] Ibid., p.131.

[10] Ibid., p.132.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., p. 135.

[14] Justin Martyr, First Apology, chap. XVII.

[15] Geldenhuys, op. cit., p.507.

[16] Ibid., p.508.

Jesus and the Tax Revolt – The Chalcedon Foundation – Faith for All of LifeRender Unto Caesar

Rothbard’s Leninist Attack On Gandhi And Voluntaryists

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George H. Smith in the June 1983 volume of The Voluntaryist gives one more example of  Rothbard’s penchant for manipulating (in this case, manufacturing) evidence whenever he needed it. It is an article deriding the menace of Gandhism.

Smith correctly calls it “Leninist.” ((This, by the way, is Rothbard’s own term.  By it he meant not the substance of what he wrote but the strategy and tactics he used which he admitted he borrowed from Lenin.

Ah. I knew I wasn’t mistaken.  I know the smell of sulphur as well as anyone. …

Anyway, since I’ve read quite a bit on Gandhi (including the multi-volume biography by Pyarelal, Koestler, Chaudhuri, and dozens of others, as well as Gandhi’s own writing), I feel I am on very strong grounds when I say that Rothbard could not have known much about Gandhi at all, if he thought that Gandhi’s habit  of sleeping with some young women of his circle was unknown.  It was not. It was widely known.

To be clear, there was never any sex in these arrangements and the whole thing was highly public and visible to everyone. The young women were around the ages of 18 or 19 (maybe one was 17? I’ll check)   and vied for the honor of sleeping next to him.

This happened when Gandhi was in his eighties, and it happened after the death of his wife of nearly seventy years (he’d had a child marriage, a common practice in those days).

The young women helped him walk (he called them his crutches), bathed him, and often administered the enemas that were routine in his nature cures. Gandhi wrote about all of this at length, because he saw it as part of a spiritual practice testing his celibacy. He derived this apparently from Tantra and berated himself endlessly when he felt he had been aroused subconsciously or in his dreams (!), instead of just feeling like a “mother” to the women.

I’ve written about this at Counterpunch and Dissident Voice and I believe I was among the first to describe Gandhi’s practices as both arising from repressed psychological needs as a widower and from bona-fide Tantric techniques.

I even corresponded for a while with an academic who had written a dissertation to that effect.  Gandhi was a strongly sexed man, who married in childhood (13), fathered several children, and took a vow of celibacy in his forties. There is no evidence that he ever broke his vow, although he enjoyed warm and slightly very flirtatious relationships with several female admirers.

[Correction n July 18: Sorry, I overlooked more recent research since my 2005 piece that shows Gandhi had “spiritual marriages” with a couple of his close women friends and a very close emotional relationship with a male friend.  These were very close but not physical, so far as I know.  His own words certainly show him to be a highly sexed man and reveal what many will insist is a homoerotic tendency. My own conclusions are different, but I can see some one else thinking he was “creepy” or “freaky”.]

Where Rothbard misrepresents is in claiming that this is unknown. Gandhi himself talked incessantly about his sexual feelings in his letters and even in his startlingly honest autobiography, “My Experiments With Truth,” probably the most revelatory autobiography ever written by a man in his position. Also, there is very little traditionally Hindu about Gandhi in any way. He was a Westernized eclectic, most influenced by Jesus, Thoreau, Tolstoi, and Ruskin]

He was strict (even authoritarian) but affectionate with his own wife, and most of what took place after her death was a kind of acting out of  subconscious drama that he never confronted consciously.

What he did was certainly not harmless to the young women, who must have suffered a good deal of psychological damage.

But it was not intentional, and he was no charlatan.

Even Koestler never thought so.

Anyway, whatever you think about Gandhi or mysticism or Tantra, those who met the man were largely captivated.

Except for a few like Churchill who famously dismissed him as a “seditious Middle Temple lawyer,” most people were impressed by Gandhi’s patent sincerity, demanding personal discipline, and complete unwordliness with regard to money or power.

He loved India and he loved her villages and he wanted to free the masses of people from the most grinding poverty and oppression. No one can doubt that.

What is even more remarkable he never expressed hatred for the British and showed sincere affection and respect even for the officers who arrested and beat him.

When he was shot, his last words were “He Ram” (a salutation to God).

Gandhi’s  stature as a political figure and as a man  is probably a bit higher, I’d guess, than Rothbard’s, which makes R’s shoddy scholarship even stranger.

In sum,  Rothbard has no qualms about

1. Attacking major figures (Gandhi, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and others) in vicious and often personal terms.

2. Misrepresenting both what his targets said and what others have said about them.

3. Refitting the facts/history to suit his own ideological goals and individual temperament.

Why am I spending times analyzing Rothbard’s missteps?

Because for some time I have felt something terribly amiss with the Ron Paul movement.

There is more going on there than meets the eye and it is not just picking the right strategy or Rand’s tactics or alleged opportunism (or not).  My misgivings are not confined to Paul. They extend to the people who promote him, many of whom are anarcho-capitalists (if there is such a thing).

Rothbard is the central figure of this group.

That seems to be not just because of his scholarship (there are many Mises scholars) but because of his relative political success and the success of his acolyte Ron Paul.

Paul, Rothbard and Co. have become the mouthpiece of antiwar, antistate libertarianism.  What they say needs to be examined carefully.  It would be smart to give them more than uncritical support.

With all the establishment propaganda and co-optation out there, one can’t be too suspicious. And Rothbard and Paul have given any thoughtful observer plenty to worry over.

Here are some excerpts from the Smith piece.

“THE ROTHBARDIAN FLIP-FLOP

One of the first times I talked to Murray Rothbard was at the 1975 California Libertarian Party Convention. Looking for a conversational topic, and having just read Arthur Koestler’s anthology The Heel of Achilles, I mentioned to Murray one of  the essays, “Mahatma Gandhi: A Re-valuation.” Calling it “Gandhi revisionism,” I related some of Koestler’s debunking, such as Gandhi’s practice of sleeping with young girls to
test his vow of celibacy.

I vividly recall Murray’s reaction. Stating that Gandhi was a “good guy” who was “sound” on British imperialism, Murray emphasized that one’s personal life is irrelevant to one’s political beliefs and accomplishments. A simple point perhaps, but it sunk in.

Considering this background, it is surprising to see the Koestler piece re-emerge. This time, however, the article (reprinted in a recent Koestler anthology) is used by Rothbard to attack Gandhi with surprising vindict¡veness. Calling Koestler’s piece “a superb revisionist article,” Rothbard employs a Classic Comics version to argue that Gandhi was a “little Hindu charlatan.”

Something changed Rothbard’s view of Gandhi. Was it a scholarly assessment of Gandhi’s ideas and influence? The facts suggest otherwise. Rothbard displays little familiarity with Gandhian literature, primary or secondary. He seems to  think that Koestler uncovered obscure information about Gandhi, but Koestler relied on standard biographies and anthologies (as his footnotes reveal). “The time has come,” Rothbard announces, “to rip the veil of sanctity that has been  carefully wrapped around Gandhi by his numerous disciples, that has been stirred anew by the hagiographical movie, and that greatly inspired the new Voluntaryist movement.”
What “veil of sanctity”? Gandhi’s sexual theories and practices,  his dietary habits, his treatment of his children — these and other “revisionist” aspects of Gandhi’s life were extensively discussed by Gandhi himself, and they appear in many  Gandhi biographies. This may be scintillating revisionist fare for Murray Rothbard, but not for people who have read more than a solitary article. (Rothbard apparently hasn’t even seen the movie.)

Has voluntaryism been fueled by a trumped-up, sanctified Gandhi? Not one iota of evidence is given to support this claim. Not one word of voluntaryist writing is quoted to support Rothbard’s contention that we are, in effect, Gandhi disciples…”

And this:

Nonviolent resistance is not just a fallacy or mistake. True, it is “Hindu baloney,” nonsense,” and a “fad,” but it “cuts deeper than that.” It is a “menace,” “a spectre haunting the libertarian movement” which “has been picking off some of the best and most radical Libertarian Party activists [i.e., RC members], ones
which the Libertarian Party can ill afford to lose if it is to retain its thrust and its principles.” (How such a ridiculous fad appeals to the Party’s best and brightest is not explained.)

Here lies the solution to our puzzle. Here lies the difference between the 1975 Gandhi and the 1983 Gandhi: the latter is a threat to the Party, whereas the former was not. The good of the Party required some quick, if inaccurate, revisionism, so Gandhi got the axe. Rothbard assassinated a dead man for “reasons of Party.” (My own keen analyst informs me that Rothbard searched for someone else to do the dirty work; but apparently unable to locate a good hit man, he did the job himself.”

Renouncing America in India (Comment added)

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Jeff Knaebel tore up his US passport out of hatred for the state and became a stateless person wandering through the villages in India. In case you’re thinking he must be some kind of hippy, Knaebel is a former CEO of a company and an engineer trained at Cornell University.

“The one actual, real and direct action that I could take was to break the paper chains that were holding me as a slave to the Empire. I tore up my U.S. passport at the Gandhi Samadhi, Rajghat, New Delhi. Rather than arrest me, the Indian police told me that I was free to roam anywhere in India, and to call them for help if I ran into any trouble.

The great Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, “Man is moral choice.” This is what I have been calling the Law of Moral Causation. By unilateral renunciation of my citizenship, I chose to assert my responsibility by denying that the U.S. government could act in my name and on my behalf.

Here is the quotation of a freedom fighter in Mexico which seems equally relevant to the India of today:

“Why is it necessary to kill and to die so that you should listen to Ramona, seated here beside me, tell you that Indian women want to live, want to study, want hospitals, want medicines, want schools, want food, want respect, want justice, want dignity? ~ Insurgente Marcos to President of Mexico Salinas after the cease fire in Chiapas, San Cristobal de las Casas, February 1994 (Our Word Is Our Weapon, Seven Stories Press).

I plan to continue to present to the State and to humanity the question of whether we are ready to permit a peace-loving man to exist and to move about freely, without tracking tags and permission-to-exist documents. Or have we been so thoroughly conditioned that everyone except third world villagers and tribal people is destined to live in the big surveillance sheep pens constructed by states all over the world.

Hat-tip to Lew Rockwell for running the article on his site.

My Comment

Bravo for the gesture.  But as an Indian by birth I must say I wouldn’t advise any expat Indian to try this. The Indian police will treat you very differently from a vellakara (this is Tamil for ‘white man’ ).  A friend of mine, a graduate of one of the Indian Institutes of Technology, spent the year after his graduation roaming India, minus “English language privilege” – i.e. he pretended he didn’t speak it. He said he saw a side of India he hadn’t experienced until then.

Besides, the cynic in me wants to know –  did Knaebel dispose of his assets before this gesture….or after? And if so, how? I’m sorry if my questions seem derisive. They’re meant respectfully.

I feel the same way about some…some... elements in the “patriot” movement.

Did civil liberties and the police state work them up so much when George Bush was in power? Is it civil liberties or the thought of an African-American president that incenses some people?

I’d say in a few cases it’s the latter….


Ruling Congress Party Wins Big in India

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AP reports:

The ruling Congress party swept to a resounding victory Saturday in India’s mammoth national elections, defying expectations as it brushed aside the Hindu nationalist opposition and a legion of ambitious smaller parties.

The strong showing by the party, which is dominated by the powerful Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, laid to rest fears of an unstable, shaky coalition heading the South Asian giant at a time when many of it neighbors are plagued by instability, civil war and rising extremism.

My Comment

I quoted this news item not so much for its newsworthiness (since that’s not our business here) but because of the language it uses. A coalition or federation of assorted smaller parties representing more interests (and more diverse interests) is assumed to be less reliable than a single strong incumbent party. Why? Because it’s a time of instability and extremism in neighboring states (Pakistan, especially).

I am not going to argue one way or other about the case at hand, India arnd Pakistan. The situation and the players are too complex for that. But the language merits thinking over, since language is at the root of our problems. The reasoning is that looser federations deliberate more, act less cohesively and less effectively and that they can be manipulated or split apart and made ineffective. The inference from this is that a more centralized, more monolithic, more decisive central government is always a better leader in difficult times. From there it’s only a step to arguing for a despotic executive and emergency authority to clamp down.