How to Worship the State
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It is the most destructive, dangerous, bloody and virulent mind disease in history. In the 20th century alone, 200 million people were sacrificed at its altar. And almost everyone on the planet is a member. Join James as he tears up the rules on the cult of statism in this edition of Thought For The Day.
SHOW NOTES:
Rules for Flying the Flag of Canada
A Single Exposure to the American Flag Shifts Support Toward Republicanism up to 8 Months Later
The Great Canadian Flag Debate
Sowing Patriotism, But Reaping Nationalism? Consequences of Exposure to the American Flag
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The Bill of Rights and the Constitution have been and will probably remain the greatest gift to society that we could hope to have.
Flawed? Probably. Adhered to? Less and less with every administration. But what a grand chance at a society which you and I could both enjoy.
That’s the bait.
Any takers?
🙂
Oh, OK. I’ll bite:
-Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority
a few peppered insults do little to dissuade my upholding of the bill of rights and the constitution. put those documents in the hands of a judge andrew napolitano or ron paul and we’d think a lot differently about our country and our place in it. and i think it’d be a greater step toward self rule than starting from scratch and hoping your neighbor follows the NAP as well. i deplore what has become of my country but i put the blame squarely on those who have twisted the rule of law. and i too recognize the right to revolt. but when i think about those that are making noise and stirring the pot here in the usa, they use the american flag as their banner too for all the right reasons. as a symbol it once did and still can mean life, liberty, due process, and give all the allowances that would make even a riot tolerable.
“unlike some who call themselves no-government men, i ask for, not at once no state government, but at once a better government. let every man make known what kind of government that would command his respect and that will be one step towards attaining it.”
-henry david thoreau, civil disobedience
i guess what concerns me about the rhetoric of smashing the state is that we’ll never know what the outcome of revolution is going to be. in the case of the usa, restoration of constitutional government seems like a much safer and reasonable means to achieving a vibrant society than denouncing everything the flag ever stood for. again, i really do believe that the bill of rights is a great starting point towards a better world and american tradition, as tarnished as it is, can still be rebranded in a way that nearly all of us would see fit. this would be abolishing the nsa spying, civil forfeiture, the police state, cia, political correctness, etc. these are things we could certainly all agree on and i think it could invigorate american pride again. frankly, hating the flag won’t make a better society. a game plan based one principals and decency will. changing the flags meaning back to one that could be admired seems like the most reasonable step forward towards a society that we can all live in.
if we were to hang the flag at half-mast every time someone was locked up for marijuana possession or every day that passed that the nsa continued to read our emails and listen to our calls that american flag would be a mighty fine and effective symbol. just saying.
have a good weekend. and god bless america! 🙂
The EU is a special case, but I must say that here most politician puppets agree on your analysis James, here the reaction of Angela Merkel when a German flag is handed to her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3PKjk9gdZ8
I understand your point, mammique, but your reasoning is an example of a variant of the Genetic Fallacy.
1. If Merkel does it, it’s bad.
2. Merkel breathes air.
Thus, breathing air is bad.
The question is not whether or not the oligarchs want to eliminate nation-states and national symbols (they obviously do), it’s whether or not we should be nationalists or venerate national symbols. I do not, because the globalists don’t want to eliminate the fundamental tendencies of nationalism (irrational allegiance to centralized bureaucratic systems of control) they simply want to take those same tendencies and expand them globally. I want to deconstruct the underlying basis for these systems by getting people to realize that free humanity can interact with each other without subsuming our identities to any oligarchical control structure, national or global.
I think that it depends of which step is being implemented in your continental block at the time you resist, being anti-nationalist in a oppressive-nation-state is resisting, but being nationalist in a supra-national block is resisting as well. What I wonder is which way is the more relevant to take control back, making the big jump from the NWO to voluntarism, or smooth landing by deconstructing globalism, going back to nation-state, then independent provinces, etc.?
Being feminist before CIA and the Rockefellers funded the movement was genuine resistance, then it became collaboration. Being anti-nationalist in nowadays China is resistance, but being anti-nationalist along with Merkel in the European Union is collaboration IMHO, it serves more their agenda than ours.
Fantastic video James,one of my new favorites of yours and there are several of your presentations that I deeply appreciate.
Please accept my heartfelt thanks.
GJH
Thanks for the kind words, GJH. I appreciate them.
Hi James
My people, the Syrians, are under attack by the same people you oppose. We are fighting the aggression of your enemies, and in our fight, we use some very strong symbols. The Syrian Flag is one of them.
The first thing our invaders tried to change is the flag, Now you are suggesting to us to throw the flag and the state itself. This is the same message of “topple the regime” that chaos agents tried to propagate in our society.
After listening to your thought, I wonder what do you suggest we do with our invaders? Should we surrender to them, just accept that slaughter is our destiny? what are your thoughts on resistance to large scale military oppression like the one we are facing?
I know that many people in the west look down to us, we are just a small nation that might eventually fall and be slaughtered like many others in the past. However, Now, and for the past 40 years, we stand for the entire humanity in our fight against the tyrant states that your criticize, and if our organization (represented in the state) is dismantled, the only winner will be the enemies of humanity. You better wish we stay united and keep our resistance, and maintain the Syrian flag as our symbol of resistance.
Thanks for the comment, Al Saleh. You seem to offer a false dichotomy. The choice as I see it is not one between nation states and the people we oppose, it is between free humanity and the people we oppose. I fight for human freedom; I do not and never would fight, kill or die for “the nation,” “the state,” “a flag” or “the leader.” If they get us fighting in the wrong paradigm then it doesn’t matter who wins; free humanity loses.
Thank you for the response, I understand what you say, and as a Syrian, I know how free people like yourself view Human Freedom, and what they face to maintain their freedom.
Our (mine and yours) enemies are well organized, and to fight them effectively we need some type of organization. Organization is not slavery or worshiping. It is just organization.
I admire your thoughts and your experience, and I hope you would think about solution to fight a military invasion, and share your thoughts in a podcast.
As someone born and raised in the U.S., it’s heart-shattering to realize what is being done by “my” government. If the symbol of the Syrian flag can help Al Saleh and his fellow Syrians resist American hegemony, then I am all for it. Of course state-ism, nationalism, jingoism has been THE death cult of all death cults, but given the agenda of the American and NATO powers, that of destabilization and the ruination of all sovereign countries for the sake of the NWO, nation states such as Syria, IMO, should defend themselves. Given a choice between the NWO in which the world is divided into five or so regions and nation states, I will take the latter. From the little bit I know about Syria, they have a country to be proud of, whereas I have a country to be completely and utterly ashamed of, and I am.
Thank you very much. In Syria we know that our fight is not with the American people, nor with the Saudi or Turkish people. It is with the rulers of these states.
Although I don’t worship Assad or his government or his state, I frequently quote the following passage from his speech:
“The aggression we face is not aimed at individuals or governments – as it appeared to some in the beginning, but rather at the structure of the country and its role, and conditioning the way people think in the long-term, to mere cattle driven by remote control.”
http://www.sana.sy/en/?p=6859
(the official translation does not convey the exact meaning of what he said)
James we are soul mates. I live in Australia and on the 25th April it is Anzac day here (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) the day commemorates troops landing in Turkey in 1915. Back in the 1930s it was a day of quiet remembrance but now it is a drum banging celebration of nationalism, I hate it. There are street parades where very young children are encouraged to wave flags to the greater glory of militarism.
I, too, loathe the flag waving. I talked with a guy last summer at a coffee shop who was quite proud of the fact that an organization he belongs to gave out 5,000 flags to young people for Flag Day in a city I live in. Absurd to say the least, and yes, it is all part of the many-layered matrix, as James says.
Back in 1971, I was the only student in my high school class of 720 students who remained seated during the national anthem and pledge of allegiance. It was a feeble and ineffective attempt to protest the Viet Nam War. I did go to one professional basketball game about five years ago in which a few returning veterans (from Iraq/Afghanistan) were honored at halftime. The crowd gave them a standing ovation, though perhaps the majority in that crowd would do everything in their power to keep their own kids out of the military, but mindlessly cheered the returning “heroes” (i.e., kids) of other parents who were involved at some level or another in the maiming, murdering, traumatizing, and senseless wars. Flags and states and militarism seem to arouse the most passionate and mindless group-think responses in people, and it all begins at an early age.
Obviously, I am completely on board with what James said in this short podcast, yet Al Saleh’s comments muddy the waters when people of a country are simply living their lives and along comes American empire.
Since the Syrians are victims of American hegemony and are a vast underdog against a militaristic bully that can and does use its military power to kill, maim, and traumatize people throughout the world, rallying around the flag of Syria, though not ideal, is certainly an understandable response at this point in time. I really don’t know what else they can do, and I can certainly see myself responding similarly if I were in their situation. Sometimes the ideal is not possible when encountering the real.
I realize that the NWO is group-think and state-think amplified exponentially. I suspect that when the SHTF here in the U.S. and Americans are traumatized to an unprecedented degree, the great majority will succumb to “correct” beliefs, thoughts, speech, and actions so that the trauma is mitigated and some form of normalcy can re-emerge from the chaos. NO dissent will be allowed and, sadly, citizens will gladly rat each other out in order to keep whatever the new state allows them to have. And the new state, the NWO, will be worshipped as zealously, if not more so, than any country’s flags and other symbols ever have.
Finally, the symbols run so incredibly deep in the blood of people that it truly is religion at its worst. One is really not allowed to question the symbols or protest against what they stand for. I once read that people do not come to their religious beliefs rationally nor do most set aside their religious beliefs rationally. This begs the question: How, then, can people be set free from the religious beliefs of state-ism if they/we cannot be approached rationally? The powers most definitely known what they are doing!
From what James and the commenters have said, I get the sense they’ve individually internalized “the Flag”, whichever flag, as a symbol of oppression or liberty or hope.
National flags have certainly been dragged through mud and blood by psychopaths in positions of power. However, I would maintain that no matter how much TPTSB trample on any flag while making a pretense of revering “what it stands for”, they and their governments nonetheless do not acquire the right or power to define it for everyone else, for all time.
Such symbols are powerful in the human mind because they can encode a sense of identity and a set of ideals which each individual has independently assigned over the course of a lifetime.
When I see the American flag, what comes to my mind is a set of ideals which so far have NEVER been realized. I could, I suppose, see it as a symbol all that’s wicked about the government which waves it around and uses it as a war banner. I choose not to, but that’s just me.