Warning. This article contains religious and moral overtones. So if you are a left wing heathen who projectile vomits across the room if you hear the word “God,” you may want go vandalize your neighborhood pregnancy center instead. Now before I get going, let me state that I am a woeful and lowly sinner, completely undeserving of God’s grace. However, I don’t think my unimpressive status within the celestial heavens precludes me from opining on personal revelations. Hell, if crooked FBI agents James Comey and Peter Strzok can be “corruption” experts on CNN, then a pettifoggering miscreant such as myself should be able to opine on spiritual matters. If you disagree, well bite me. I am speaking my peace anyway.
The genesis of this article occurred this morning. I had an almost subconscious, but still real thought in my head where it appeared I was wishing someone I didn’t even know would not recover from an illness. It was as if some stealthy provocateur snuck into brain and left this thought in my consciousness. Suddenly, I had a revelation, I knew who that provocateur was, and I strongly rebuked him. The guilt lifted immediately.
Remember the scene in Animal House when Larry Kroger contemplated boinking Mayor DePasto’s daughter? Suddenly, an angel appears on one shoulder and a devil on the other, both of whom pled their case. In the end, Larry listened to the angel. We are living in a post-Judea-Christian and post Constitutional world. The two are very much inter-related. The demise of the former has led to the demise of the latter.
Bob Dylan recognized this when he stated “you’re going to have to serve somebody.” We live in a busy world, bombarded by so many messages that we gloss over the absolute most important task we have in our human existence. WHO ARE WE TO SERVE? There are two combatants in the ring. In one corner is Truth ( I imagine a Hulk Hogan looking fella with a white beard) and He is armed with weapons of righteousness. The formidable foe in the other corner is Beelzebub. His primary weapon of war is the clever lie. He is a master of manipulation and of human psychology. Unlike Truth, who often tells you what you likely don’t want to hear, Beelzebub tells you exactly what you want to hear and gives you license and encouragement to follow your most depraved desires.
By now, some of you are upset at my proselytizing (as stated above, bite me), but before you get your panties in a wad, I am just acknowledging what virtually every world religion already acknowledges. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. They all acknowledge a dark force, a powerfully persuasive manipulator and liar. What’s more, before there were major world religions, ancient pagan religions acknowledged the same. The Sumerians had a dark god of evil, Hanbi. The Greeks had at least 6 evil gods. The Norse recognized a dark god of the underworld. The ancient Celts had Balor, the demonic god of death. My point, there is almost universal agreement among every age that there is a spiritual force of evil in the world. The most productive use of this force’s time is to whisper into the ears of those who lust for power. The most pernicious manifestation of evil is always within princes and principalities. Nowhere can evil achieve such a return on its investment as the death and destruction caused by the kings of kingdoms and their underlings. Our Founders designed our Constitution to protect us from the inevitable triumphs of evil affecting the hearts of these men. Indeed, the chief purpose of the Constitution is to protect us from our own corruptibility.
All law comes from a source. There can be no law without a source. When my father was a law student at the University of Virginia, “natural law” was taught and was an integral part of the curriculum. In essence, natural law is the law revealed to us by God. It is not chiseled in marble on a neoclassical public edifice. It doesn’t need to be, because we already know all the tenets of these legal principles. They are stamped into our consciousness. With the secularization of our culture, most prominently beginning with the Engel v. Vitale (1962) and Abington School District (1963) Supreme Court cases, by the time I was in law school 36 years after my father, natural law was no longer being taught. In fact, it wasn’t even discussed, which by the way is a major reason why lawyers suck.
So where am I going with this? Our Constitution is merely ink on parchment. It means nothing without adherence to natural law, the natural law of right and wrong. The Soviet Union had a constitution. It bestowed many human and civil rights on the Soviet peoples, some were the same rights listed in the US Constitution. Stalin killed 20 million of his own people. Mao killed 50 million. By converting just two people, Beezlebub gets 70 million deaths. That’s a hell of a return on investment for the Dark Prince. He’s a clever competitor. He knows where to find the low hanging fruit: the orchards of men growing in government groves. Constitutions only work in a culture where convention acknowledges the natural law and thus honestly respects the precepts under which such governing documents are to be nurtured. Today we have cancel culture, unchecked crime, blind ignorance, outrageous corruption and political tyranny. What happened?
It’s been awhile in the making, but I think the watershed moment was the riots of 2020. The Apostle Paul’s visual imagery of employing a shield to protect us from evil forces is not only beautiful literature, but I think spot on in preventing us from sliding into the dark abyss. We have to recognize who is whispering in our ears. How can a mob of young people, the most privileged and entitled generation in the world’s history think it is ok to tear down statues, burn police stations, destroy buildings, burn cars and buses, attack and assault those trying to keep order and cause such mayhem? Here in Richmond, I watched this mob in action. What is the oldest sin of mankind? Hatred and jealousy. Hate others because they have more than you. More money, better looks, more friends, etc. This is what I witnessed, and who do you think was whispering in their ear; “go ahead, you deserve it, go ahead and destroy!” I feel sorry for many of these people. Their ignorance allowed them to be captured by dark forces. But there are others, who knew better, and they seemed to have consciously made a pact with the dark side. They bought into evil because it served their avaricious appetite for power and domain over others. Mayors of cities, district attorneys, politicians, media personalities and even clerics cheered on the destruction. They spread deceit, lying about “facts and figures” to justify the lawless mayhem. They used the discontented mob to accumulate power through anti-democratic and violent means.
They let the genie out of the bottle. What message does this lawlessness send to other government officials? I will tell you: “it is ok to listen to dark forces, my hatred and lust for power outweighs my duty to do what my conscience knows is right.” Natural law is ignored. Lavenity Beria, head of the NKVD under Stalin famously said “show me the man and I will show you the crime.” Our own FBI repeatedly planted evidence to stage a coup against a sitting president. This man’s anti-constitutional persecution continues, as a militarized armed force just invaded his house with machine guns. This same FBI harassed mothers who complained at local school board meetings about their daughters being raped. It labels them domestic terrorists. The FBI recruited lowlifes to kidnap Michigan Governor Whitmer so they could arrest them and use the make believe plot to crack down on the regime’s political opposition. We have local prosecutors like Letisha James (NY) and Fani Willis (GA) using the power of the state to “Beria-ize” a potential presidential candidate. There is a Stalinist show trial going on in Washington where extreme partisans of the political class have dispensed with cross-examination, executive privilege, 4th Amendment rights and attorney client privileges. They have obliterated the Constitution where if one even mentions the overwhelming evidence of fraud during the 2020 election, he is arrested. His property is seized, and he is reduced to a penury existence, having to hire lawyers to protect his rights. These government sponsored armed thugs intentionally humiliate their victims to send a message to others: don’t speak out or we will crush you. The Department of Homeland Security created an Orwellian Disinformation Department to prosecute speech critical of the government. We now know for certain that the Biden Administration has conspired with “Big Tech” to de-platform, i.e., extinguish speech it doesn’t like. The ruling class openly passes gargantuan spending bills that do nothing but serve the political class. Their disingenuous ridiculously named recent theft is the Inflation Reduction Act. Hiring 87,000 IRS agents is a show of blunt force to intimidate the citizenry. The IRS is an armed police force. It can level criminal charges where the citizen has the burden of proof and not the government. It can seize your property without due process. It can invade your home without a warrant. The IRS collected more tax revenue than it ever has in the past year, but our corrupt political class wants to double its size?
These are gestapo tactics. Weaponizing the tools of the state to destroy honest dissenters opposed to state sponsored thuggery is evil. Just like old people with comorbidities are especially susceptible to Covid, the political class is especially vulnerable to a different virus, one of the soul. I have no doubt that we will one day have a spiritual revival or new Great Awakening, but these things often happen upon the smoldering ashes of a ruined civilization, when the people return to what works as they say unto themselves “how did we let this happen?”
Evil exists. It only takes a few malevolent hearts to ruin a county, but as Edmund Burke stated, it can only triumph when good men do nothing.
