Sunday, September 22, 2019

Saturday, September 21, 2019

Facebook Thread on Biblical Forms of Government

The thread comes from a religious discussion group. If Facebook lets you view it, the thread is found here. It's useful, in my opinion, on the issue of Americanism and the universality of liberal democracy (that is the notion that it is the only viable form of government).

  • Patrik Fridén Why is liberal democracy preferable? Monarchy is the only divinely inspired governmental model.
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  • Jon Rowe Patrik Fridén: You are probably right. It's just I am a liberal democrat (small l and d).
  • Patrik Fridén Jon Rowe Monarchy just didn't reform itself enough and in time to keep the liberal masonic revolutionaries at bay.
    It should have become more Meritocratic and Technocratic and less Dynastic.
  • Jon Rowe Patrik Fridén: If we established the kind of monarchy that you desire, who would the monarch(s) be?
  • Patrik Fridén Jon Rowe It's impossible to tell at this moment. There are more factors involved, like who would lead such a revolt against the modern world? Initially it would be the leaders of such a movement that would take the helm, in order to establish the system of succession after their passing. Loyalty and morals somehow needs to be possible to measure as well, with the state-of-the-art scientific methods available. To me it would just be very important that such a regime would have councils of clergy and STEM-scientists as the highest bodies of power to appoint the Monarch. And that the Monarch is Catholic, or at least Christian.
  • Jon Rowe So I take it the Trump family would not do, unless they converted to a kind of Catholic Christianity?
  • Máire McGoldrick Patrik Fridén Is it? The Israelites were only given a king because they insisted on one, the government given to them by God was judges, not kings, and time and again in the bible the Kinds muck things up.
  • Patrik Fridén Jon Rowe Trump is very unsuitable for multiple reasons. Also, I am not American, nor am I in favor of continuing that republican experiment.
    If such a government comes it would be as the head of a Christian Imperium that spans many Western and Latin countries.


    Máire McGoldrick, God's Kingdom is still a Kingdom. Because it is the divine model of government.
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  • Máire McGoldrick Patrik Fridén It is the model for God not for humankind, God is the king and there was and is nothing divine about us setting up kings.
  • Patrik Fridén Máire McGoldrick Yet, Jesus came from the line of David...
  • Máire McGoldrick Patrik Fridén He did, and he is the King but that doesn't mean that having kinds is the governance that God intended for humans, as I've pointed out they were only appointed because the Israelites wanted to copy all the local groups around them.
  • Patrik Fridén Máire McGoldrick And the Temple was not ordained by God, yet Jesus respected it as the House of His Father, even though it was an invention of David.
    Your point being?


    What makes liberal democracy or republics more godly? They are completely pagan inventions and the masons set them up as carbon copies of the pagan originals, which is why Washington DC is filled with pagan aesthetics.

    The only example of democracy in the Bible was when the Jews shouted "Barabbas!"
  • Máire McGoldrick Patrik Fridén The Temple was ordained by God - which is why it was respected by our Lord but then he became the living temple and the Veil of the Temple was rent asunder showing that God was no longer there - and your point was?

    You may be enamoured 
    by kingship, I am not, but please don't try to pretend that kingship is the only form that God has commanded, as I have pointed out the Israelites were NOT given kings until they wanted to copy the nations living around them - it was not God's divine plan for them to have kings.
  • Patrik Fridén It was David who wanted to build the Temple.
    And even if you go by the system of Judges, Prophets and Priests, it was not a republic or a liberal democracy. It was a Theocracy, which I am also in favor of.
  • Patrik Fridén The first Kings were anointed and appointed by clergy, just like I described how I want it.
  • Jon Rowe Patrik if you want an honest opinion from a classically liberal democrat (I'm a libertarian), your case would be stronger if you dropped the freemason part. Yes, of course you can demonstrate a connection between the freemasons and liberal democracy. But anything that ranks of conspiracy theory makes your case appear weaker.
  • Patrik Fridén Jon Rowe As a Catholic interested in history, it would be dishonest of me to leave out the Masonic element and hidden hand behind the "enlightenment" and the liberal revolutions. Even the Bolsheviks had that connection.
  • Jon Rowe "They are completely pagan inventions and the masons set them up as carbon copies of the pagan originals, which is why Washington DC is filled with pagan aesthetics."

    It's true they are pagan inventions. And yes, the architecture of DC is filled with 
    pagan aesthetics. They did not however, set the republics up as "carbon copies" of the originals. There were meaningful differences that accumulated in the 1800 years since antiquity.

    There is also the concept of noble paganism. If you are a Catholic, Aristotle's teachings were incorporated into the Church's.

    It's true many key Founders were Freemasons. But they were not all Freemasons. And I think the important thing is they saw masonry as benign and consistent with Christianity.

    There is little evidence of a nefarious freemasonic conspiracy behind the American founding.
On the last point I made let me note here: yes, America's founders thought something like the freemasonry with which some of them were involved was consistent and compatible with the "Christianity" they supported (or otherwise believed in). I don't make a judgment one way or the other. The "Whig history" that they promoted held that all of these various ideological sources which influenced them were consistent with one another. As Bernard Bailyn and others have shown, that might not be the case.