I'm attaching one article for encouragement to my brethren who believe that our place as God's people are not in politics and affairs of the corrupted wordily systems, democratic, republican, communist, or whatever system.
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Why I do not support Ron Paul for President
Special Edition
There are a wonderful variety of opinions in the Agrarian movement, and this is how it ought to be. Of course, just because there are multitudes of opinions does not mean that all (or any) of them are correct and have merit.
Agrarianism is not all Christian (it never was and neither will be before the Lord returns - Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian), and even among professing Christian agrarians there will be a wide expanse of ideas and positions. There were Yankee agrarians on the wrong side of the war of Northern Industrial Aggression, and I suppose there were a few Christians on the wrong side of that conflict as well. Such is the way things are, and I suppose if everyone agreed with me... well, it would be a better world but it might not be as interesting. That isn't to say that we're all right, because we are not... I am, but that shouldn't blunt the impact of what I am saying, which is that there are quite a few men who I like and respect and admire who are really phenomenally wrong on this particular subject.
By way of full disclosure, I must say that at one time I was an avid Reagan Republican and activist. My wife and I worked in politics as volunteers, I had dinner and conversation with Pat Buchanan in '92, I served as a County Precinct election judge in the '96 election - appointed by the Republican County Clerk. After that I was deeply involved in the Patriot movement (a ridiculously misnamed movement if ever there was one) and spoke all around the country at Patriot and Militia meetings, Preparedness Expos, etc. I have received standing ovations from large crowds for fiery patriotic speeches, and my flesh loved every minute of it. The problem is that I was fabulously wrong then, and I am mature enough now to admit it. I do not apologize for my zeal or for my love of freedom. I do, however, apologize for my blindness and errors that likely caused (and may still cause, since many of my writings are still out there) others to stumble.
When I was a young man, I was involved in many unsavory and un-Christian behaviors. Older folks would warn me, but I wouldn't listen. They just didn't understand... of course. That is the way of immaturity. When you have bought a false premise, and when you build your structure from the bottom up on a shaky foundation, then you will always think you are right because a cursory inspection shows the structure to be sound. Unhappily, when pressure is applied, the structure will collapse. When I was a firebrand in the Patriot circus there was one guy who would always burn me up. He was many men, but he was one guy. That guy was the guy who refused to be moved by my rhetoric, or to be inspired by my zeal. That guy would shake his head and walk away - muttering that one day I would probably "get it", and hopefully not too late. That guy had lived through the wars, fought the battles, and learned enough to know better. It is too simplistic and unfair to call the guy "cynical", "negative", "jaded", or "a pessimist".. being right about a situation doesn't make you cynical or a pessimist. It makes you a pragmatist, and truth ought not to be belittled just because it is unpopular and sometimes sad. That guy would email me and point out the fallacies in my logic, and the weakness in my foundation. He would always point out some blatant, obvious truths (the ones I didn't want to face because it would mean the death of my delusions and an end to the fantasy world I had believed since I was a child) and he would seriously burn me up. I would rant and rave against cynical "do-nothings" who always chide and snear, but never fight. I felt superior to that guy, because at least I was "doing something". Yeah. I was fooling myself, lying to my audience, and ignorantly supporting the system that was intent on killing my hopes of a better way of life. I was Otis, the town drunk from Mayberry, who always had a key to his own cell, and could let himself in and out whenever he pleased. I convinced myself that, so long as I could rant and rave, then I was free - and I never paused to focus on the velvet bars and chains in my heart and thinking, which were the love of the world, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life that kept me from obeying God regardless of what men do or who they elect. I forgot that I am a pilgrim and a wanderer, an ambassador for an absentee King, and a gazingstock and hateful thorn in the side of a nation and world that hates God.
In my hatred of Socialism and Communism, I became a fascist - a statist just the same.
In my hatred of Statism and Authoritarianism, I became a worshipper of the Goddess Libertas - an idolater just the same.
In my hatred of idolatry, theft, graft, murder, and greed, I became a supporter of a system where these sins are intrinsic and even necessary.
In my sheer hatred, I hated everything but the country, society, social structures, morals, culture, and religious system that hates God.
I am guilty, but I was conned...
I was conned into forgetting history, first - that my people have always been strangers, separate from the greed and avarice of the bloodthirsty nations around them. They have always been persecuted for their separatism and their unique and solitary devotion to God above earthly and worldly politics. I was conned into being ignorant of my own history as well. I was never taught, and I was too lazy to learn the history of God's people and heritage. When Rome became corrupted and evil beyond belief in the early centuries of the past millennium, my people didn't hang around and vote for the lesser of two (or three) evils. They fled to the valleys of the Alps and became the Valley people (the Vadois or the Waldenses). When they were invaded by the Romish armies of conquest, they didn't sit around and vote their way to happiness. They fled, or they fought, or they died saying NO to Rome. When many of them fled Europe for the Americas, they didn't start political action committees, or voting blocks. They worked the land as agrarians and worshiped God according to their consciences until they were restricted from doing so by the "Protestants" of New England. Then they went south. The true Baptists spread out across the south and became the bedrock of Southern Agrarianism. I was conned into being ignorant and lazy and into not caring about God's heritage. I was conned into forgetting that, because of the peculiar successes of southern agrarianism, the south was invaded, my people were killed, the political institutions were placed in the hands of military governors and the people were disenfranchised and FORCED to vote for one or more of their invaders, or not vote at all. The people who did these deeds are the ones who now require that I joyfully support their system of empire and conquest, which continues even today. They have not stopped killing and they have not stopped "democratizing" and they have not stopped pillaging, raping, looting, stealing, or colonizing - all in the name of freedom. I forgot that God taught his people how to live in foreign bondage and occupation, and at no time did that mean that they were to be assimilated completely into the worldly culture and society around them.
Now, I hate election years as much as I hate the wordly "holiday season" and for the same reasons. Because the same people, nice as they may be - but ignorant of the truth and of God's opinion on the subject, dance and flit around forcing their foreign practices and cultures on everyone else around them. Four years ago (and four years before that, and four years before that... and so on) I was inundated with emails and messages from do-gooding "christians" who were adamant that I pray... PRAY, PRAY, PRAY!!!! that God would not judge this country, and that He would give us a good, Christian leader. Hmm.... yeah right. The people are ignorant of God's pattern of justice, adjudication, and punishment. I received another one of these emails the other day from a good Christian man, who still somehow believes that there is still time to intercede on behalf of Judas Ameriot and his system of Baal. It's time for Isaiah 58, they say... Pray, Pray, Pray... Where in all of the Bible are we encouraged to pray for the support, succor, and success of the wicked or of a wicked system? Does not the Bible say, "Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies"? Is there any question that the Amerikan system hates God? While we are encouraged to pray for our enemies (Matt. 5:44), we are taught by Christ Himself what that prayer is supposed to entail (Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do). God does not overthrow wicked systems and nations by the electoral system, He overthrows them by 1st - giving them over to a wicked mind to do that which is inconvenient and wicked in His sight, then 2nd - by causing them to crumble from within due to sloth, greed, lust, and blatant sin, and 3rd - by bringing the enemy in like a storm to overthrow them and to destroy them. That is the history of God and nations.
But, but, but... 2 Chronicles! God promises to heal our land if we repent! Uh...
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (2Ch 7:14)
How many ways can modernists be wrong? Let me count the ways...
1. If my people... not secular, greedy, imperial powers, but MY PEOPLE. In the Old Testament this referred to physical Israel, the nation who He chose out of the world. This was TYPE, fulfilled by the anti-type in the NT, not "Amerika", but the children and people of Jesus Christ, God of very God, the Son of God, the Messiah and head of the elect body.
2. which are called by my name... Called by His name... CHRISTians, not those called by the name of Amerigo Vespucci, which "Amerika" is. (An aside... Vespucci was a Roman Catholic son of the notary of the Money Changer's Guild of Venice - imagine that!). The people which are called by His name are the true Body and Bride of Jesus Christ, everywhere in the world, they are not Amerikans.
3. shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; not "continue in them", or "vote to prolong them", or "vote to defend them", but TURN FROM THEM, cease from them in humility and prayer. A vote in Amerika today is a vote to sustain the status quo, and the vote only is for the DEGREE of the status quo. One candidate is 100% for the status quo, and another is 75% for the status quo... The anti-establishment candidate is only 55% for the status quo.
4. then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin... until then I do not hear or forgive. Until then, the nation (professing Christianity) will continue in apostasy and heresy, and will continue in their love of the world, and will continue to be given over to the heathen, and be tramped underfoot. I WILL NOT HEAR THEM, says God.
5. and will heal their land. Not "Amerika", but the Church of Jesus Christ, the Body of Christ. Those who repent and abandon idolatry, wickedness, and every evil and crooked way - these are the nation of God, and the land of the truly free.
And he spake unto the congregation, saying, Depart, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest ye be consumed in all their sins. (Num. 16:26)
The Part that hurts...
This is the part that hurts, so gird up your loins. Think of this as me evaluating the old me, back when I was a red-blooded Amerikan and hip to install righteousness in her institutions. If the dart hits you too, then so be it - but, like I said, it will hurt...
The reason that people want to "fix" Amerika, is not because they want a righteous nation, or because they want righteous government and institutions. If they truly wanted that, then they would obey the scripture which commands that they flee iniquity, "come out from among her and be ye separate", and they put their hands not in with the wicked. People want Amerika fixed because it means a continuance of the status quo, and of the wicked ways, and of comfort and relative prosperity, and of 401k's, Monday Night Football, home mortgages, vacations, Google and YouTube. People want Amerika fixed because they love their dainty lives, and they cannot separate from worldliness or hate it. They like comfortable couches and 300 channels and on-demand video and the Paris Hilton/Wal-Mart culture of get it now, but get it.
Now, I have just become "that guy" and I shake my head at people who ought to know better. My love of this world has faded and has grown dim as God has revealed more and more of Himself to me. I do not seek peace and comfort in this world, because I do not plan to be long in it, and this is not my country. All political bluster, patriotic polemics, and flag-waving idolatry aside - I do not train my children to be participants in the great Amerikan experiment, or cogs in the great Amerikan machine. I train them to be lovers of God, and worshipers of Him, and to see duty in a far greater and deeper way than merely the pulling of a lever or the punching out of a "chad". Our God can cause us (Christians - not Amerikans) to persevere and succeed while we are hidden in the wilderness and in the palm of His hand. The storms that gather around us can pass over us while we are hidden in Him. Our God can sell us into slavery for our sins, He can punish us for our iniquities, or He can cause the waters from the mouth of His enemies which pursue us and our lives to be swallowed up by the earth. In any case, He is righteous and good and right. He does not need Ron Paul and neither do I. Though I have a carnal heart which is inclined towards the rhetoric of freedom and the machinations of political Liberty, it is just the carnal heart and not the mind of Christ that inclines me so. Amerika has a building that identifies its heart and symbolizes its mind; that building is the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. Atop that building is an idol made with hands, a statue of the Goddess Libertas (Persephone), called Lady Liberty to Amerikan idolaters. Her feet stand on her sacred ground, and I for one have nothing to do with her. She is the "goddess" of the underworld, and has her roots in paganism. From her went forth the decrees that crushed freedom and liberty in the Agrarian south, and from her went forth the laws that subjugated and destroyed the Agrarian cause. The passage of time does not make right of wrong, nor does it cleanse the blood of God's people, philosophy, and worldview from the land. I cannot support what God hates, and I cannot believe that fixing Amerika will satiate a just and righteous God. Ron Paul may be a "good man" (if there were such a thing), but He loves the wrong country, and His idolatry is no different from that of those who built the molten calf to worship.
Our greatest and most inalienable right is not the right to profit, land, travel, "freedom", or the right to keep the fruit of our labors. Our greatest and most inalienable right is the right to say no, and to not participate in the follies of the world. If God allows (and only if He allows) they can kill me and take my land. They can imprison me and chain me to a wall. They can waterboard me, or torture me to death. They can take my children and train them in their schools. They can rape the land for corn for the masses, or they can scrape it and put up a mall. They can burn it and make it a perpetual hissing , or they can sell it off to a people more inclined to bow to their will. What they cannot do is make me agree to it and participate in it. They cannot and they will not.
I've become the old guy in the corner - "that guy" who shakes my head at those who say the same things I once said, and fight for the things for which I once fought. I can't make anyone listen, but I can still say "no". They call Dr. Ron Paul "Dr. NO" since he votes no on almost everything. Good for him. He and his supporters, of all people, should understand why I will say no to him. My conscience doesn't allow any other position. If Ron Paul is the man they claim he is - then he will applaud that.
"No"... think about it.
Your servant in Christ Jesus,
Michael Bunker
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