The Butcher's Herd

"The art of government is the organization of idolatry." ~ George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

"To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice." ~ Confucius (ca 551–479? B.C.)

"The only man who makes slavery possible is the slave." ~ John W. Campbell, Jr. (1910–1971)

Every preamble to the establishment of any government should begin; "In the beginning man created god…"

Now if you think this statement is more polemic than factual then ask yourself this question: "What is the fundamental promise behind the institution of government?" If we are to believe those government-think sluggards who profess judicial enlightenment, it is to end tyranny and return freedom to the masses of people. At least that is the selling point, whether those who will assume the mantel of power believe it or not.

No matter where we go in history we find the same maudlin pabulum being thrust upon people concerning the changing or instituting of government. Consider our own Revolution against the English, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution of 1918, the present excuse for the invasion of Iraq and our continuing debacle; the war on terrorism, or the great conquerors in history.

They all emulate Alexander the Great, who after leaving Egypt in 331 BC pursued Darius and the Persian army to the plain of Gaugamela where the next morning Alexander's army swept through the Persian army and slaughtered them. After this decisive victory, Alexander was named King of Asia, and he sent letters to all of the Greek cities proclaiming that he had rid Asia of tyranny and freed the people.

However, the peoples of Asia had a far different view of Alexander's proclamation, for they never did come to the realization that a foreign power had rid them of tyranny, nor did they think of themselves as being free.

Why then does this ideal, of destroying the fetters of a people's tyranny and giving them the blessings of a state sponsored Panglossian freedom, continue to induce tender the emotions of a benevolent state, regardless of the brutality inherent in the state's actions in implementing the supposed "freedom"?

The answer lays, in part, in man's inherent longing for emancipation from fear, which is a very powerful emotion when the daily condition is beset by an unjust and excessive exercise of power. However, the fallacy associated with this desire is that the vast majority of people never see that it is incumbent upon them to change their social and economic conditions; rather they seek a dynamic leader who will bring them out from under any unlawful, corrupt exercise of authority and lead them to the "promised land."

Probably the starkest example of this remains Israel's acceptance of Jesus as the "promised king" who would throw off the shackles of Roman oppression, restore Israel's independence, and "rule from Jerusalem." This led to Jesus' "triumphant entry" into Jerusalem just before His crucifixion. However, neither Scripture nor the historical record point to any reason for the people's exuberant acceptance of Christ, on that day, other than their hope that He was the promised King.

Sadly, this can also be accredited, in part, to man's longing to be saved by that which he has created with his own hands, but which also destroys his very soul. This has led the mass of mankind to prove correct the apologists for the state.

One such apologist was the American nephew and disciple of Sigmund Freud, Edward L. Bernays. Bernays was an elitist, who despised people he regarded as inferior, especially because of social or intellectual claims. Bernays would have made Socrates proud, and he felt the mass of people could and should be controlled.

Bernays' first principle was the modernization of the ancient teaching attributed to the god Pan. Bernays' taught that the bulk of humans were to be controlled by the chaos that accompanies mob violence and the passions which escort the panic of the herd.

His second principle taught that there is a portion of man's mind which cannot be affected by logic, thus mankind can be prevented from acting out of experience and thought. This enabled him to conclude that man would react in terms of a group long before they would as individuals.

Bernays determined that it was therefore the obligation and duty of an elite circle of individuals to control the human masses, the same group that Plato referred to as a herd of ravenous wild beasts and I alternately call "the majority of the people."

Some may think it extraordinary, but Bernays even went so far as to proclaim that not only will the majority of the people NOT think but that, in all reality, the majority CANNOT think for themselves. Therefore, it became incumbent upon the elite of any society to save the masses from themselves by controlling and regimenting that society.

Thus Bernays' felt the control of society could be accomplished by injecting the elite's ideas of morality and spirituality, regardless of outside religious influences, into daily life and over their objections. This was to be accomplished by the elite of any society creating god-men to assert their control over the people and bring society out of its chaos.

This was not just idle conjecture for one doesn't have to look hard into recent events to prove Bernays' thesis workable. Although there are many illustrations of this occurring within Roman society, history has a far more glaring precedent for Bernays' thesis.

Consider the events which occurred in the ancient North African city of Carthage which was facing defeat by the Indo-Greek king Agathocles, known as the tyrant of Syracuse, during the Third Sicilian War (ca 315 B.C.).

The chief god of Carthage was worshipped under the name of Bau2018al Hammon, which answers to the Latin god Saturn or Cronus (Kronos). The Carthaginian people believed that Bau2018al Hammon could only be satisfied and kept on their side in the war by means of a blood sacrifice.

This sacrifice took an unusual form in the ancient world. Paul G. Mosca, translating Cleitarchus’ paraphrase of a scholia to Plato’s Republic, gives us an idea of what occurred during this particularly terrifying rite directed at soothing the anger of the god; Bau2018al Hammon.

Mr. Mosca's translation states: "There stands in their midst a bronze statue of Kronos (Cronus or Saturn), its hands extended over a bronze brazier, the flames of which engulf the child. When the flames fall upon the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seems almost to be laughing until the contracted body slips quietly into the brazier. Thus it is that the ‘grin’ is known as ‘sardonic laughter,’ since they die laughing."

Diodorus Siculus relates that relatives of the children were forbidden to weep and that when Agathocles finally defeated Carthage, the Carthaginian nobles believed they had fallen into disfavor with Bau2018al Hammon because they sacrificed low-born children instead of their own children. In a desperate attempt to make amends and regain favor with their aggrieved god they decided to sacrifice 200 children from the elite families of Carthage. However in their enthusiasm they actually sacrificed 300 children.

This should stand as a stark monument to what lengths an oligarchy of god-men, or the insanity of a charismatic individual, will go in their messianic reasoning, in foisting their will on the biddable masses, under the fallacy of remaining "free."

So then the question follows; can the institution of government and these inner circles of elitists either give or guarantee our freedom?

I would answer an emphatic; NO! The simple reason being, that a continuance of arbitrary law which emanates from those who flaunt the malapropos mantel of "the government" can never be a source of freedom.

Furthermore, these laws spring not from any source of altruism on the part of government officialdom, but from the unrelenting fact that government in and of itself is incapable of creating wealth. Thus, any government must, by its nature, continue to indenture its population to accumulate the capital it needs to continue its own existence. This then is the reason for so many capricious laws.

We should be constantly reminded that any economic, social, or moral freedom must stand as the antitheses to the state's force of arms. Therefore, when the state relinquishes any property or authority, by allowing the citizens more freedom, the act must be viewed with suspicion, if not dread.

We have conformation of this in chapter 8 of The Prince by Niccol Machiavelli, who writes: “For injuries ought to be done all at one time, so that, being tasted less, they offend less; benefits ought to be given little by little, so that the flavor of them may last longer.”

Again in chapter 15 Machiavelli pens: “A man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil."

“Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity."

In chapter 16 Machiavelli admonishes the prince; “We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed."

We should not be surprised, then, when we hear President Clinton in his 1993 speech of August 12th, declare: "If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees."

Nor should it be shocking to hear that George Bush stated: "There aught to be limits to freedom" in a speech he delivered on May 22nd, 1999.

It becomes axiomatic then that as long as man continues in his adoration of and subjection to a governmental enterprise he will never find a means of obtaining manumission from the force exerted by the greed of those in power.

However, this was not always so; the ancients fully understood and practiced the law of manumission.

Manumission, after all, is that rara avis which is entirely dependant upon the individual and independent of the state.

The cannon of manumission was much older than even the Hellenistic Kingdom and had been in effect, with records kept among the priests of different pantheons, as far back as the priests of Delphi in the seventh century B.C., and the oracle of Apollo.

There existed various ways in which the manumission of a slave could take place in the ancient law, but the ancient records show that the solemn rite of a fictitious purchase of the slave by some divinity stood as the most common. Thus the slave owner goes with his slave to the temple, selling him there to the god. The slave owner then receives the purchase money from the temple treasury since the slave has previously paid it in there out of his savings. The slave then becomes the property of the god; not a slave of the temple, but a protégé of the god. The slave then stands before the entire world, and especially his former master, as a completely free man; at the very worst the former slave will have imposed on him a few pious obligations toward his old master.

Adolf Deissmann, in his brilliant work, Light from the Ancient East describes how this rite was preformed.

"This rite takes place before witnesses; a record is taken, and often perpetuated on stone."

The following stone inscription from 200 B.C., on the polygonal wall at Delphi, will serve as an example:

"Date. Apollo the Pythian bought from Sosibius of Amphissa, for freedom, a female slave, whose name is Nicaea, by race a Roman, with a price of three minae of silver and a half-mina. Former seller according to the law: Eumnastus of Amphissa. The price he hath received. The purchase, however, Nicaea hath committed unto Apollo, for freedom."

The price of freedom was everything to the ancient slave. He/she may be destitute, due to the purchase price, but they were FREE and totally responsible for their continued freedom.

So powerful and common was this idea of freedom being granted by divine authority among those of the ancient world that edicts issued from the imperial throne in Roman were called "divine commandments," "divine writings," and if one was pardoned by the emperor, the freed individual would say his freedom came by "divine grace."

Is freedom an act of "divine grace?" Some Christians (I among them) would answer with a resounding; Yes. However, that is not the point here. The point is that freedom always has been and always will be an act of an individual's volition, yearning, courage, burden, and resolve while remaining, ultimately, the central characteristic along with the sole responsibility of each person.

What is truly amazing is not the number of people who are given their freedom but rather the number who are willing to give it up on the first pretence of danger.

To stand silently and wait for another messiah to lead us to the "promised land" is a pipe dream. To wait for the masses of peoples to rise up and "put the government back into its Constitutional cage" is equally delusional. To assume that the masses will "revolt" in righteous indignation when "things get worse" is barely intelligible, as recent events during the collapse of the Soviet Union affirm.

Freedom only exists as a cumulative action by a select group of individuals, (the "Remnant" of Albert Jay Nock's, Isaiah's Job), who refusing the servility foisted on them, compel change by refusing to be obedient to odious ordinances of man's worst creation.

There are only two states to which the human condition consistently and truly aspires.

The first is the state of action in which there are those who, against all odds, take it upon themselves to reject and work around or in contradiction to the fiats of the present and reoccurring nightmarish governmental cabal.

The other is the state of inaction, which is the state of the majorities, who do nothing but wish, hope and lie to each other about the better world to come. Being left enervated, they continue to stand passively on the butcher's ramp, nose to tail with the rest of the herd, awaiting their turn before the butcher and his death blow.

July 14, 2005