Paul's Passing Thoughts

Dinesh Joseph D’Souza is a political commentator and author who recently produced the movie “America, Imagine the World Without Her.” I saw the movie, and have been viewing YouTube clips of debates he is having with progressives in regard to the movie.

In one particular clip, he worded a theses of the movie in a way that turned on a switch for me, and I have chosen to coin it the D’Souza doctrine. D’Souza acknowledged that American settlers confiscated land from the Indians, who had previously confiscated it from other tribes, but the point is what makes America exceptional (American exceptionalism).

From the cradle of civilization, conquest to obtain the wealth of others was the predominant politic. America was the first nation in human history to focus on wealth creation as an alternative to conquest. Though America’s history originally involved some conquest activity, the primary ideal was wealth creation. This is what makes America exceptional. Progressives attach residual human behavior to the American narrative while ignoring the core ideal that America grows from. This is why freedom and opportunity for minorities in America continues to be a work in progress. What the progressives are doing is accusing America of theft and labeling capitalism as such when the extreme opposite is true. Capitalism tells people to create their own stuff and leave other people’s stuff alone.

And by the way, because we are good at creating wealth, we have a really cool army that will destroy you if you don’t leave us alone. Why didn’t America just take over the whole world after WWII, being the only nation with the A-Bomb? No, instead we rebuilt the nations of our enemies and gave them their land back. Why? The American ideal.

Hence, when you hear someone pontificate on the evils of capitalism, they are really dissing the only alternative that there has ever been to conquest. Moreover, as we shall see, capitalism is the only practical application that opposes a rejection of the 10th commandment: Do not covet your neighbor’s stuff.

But what led the framers of the U.S. Constitution to believe that their free market idea could create abundant wealth? Answer: “We the People.” The framers of the Constitution were children of the Enlightenment era which proffers individualism and individual competence. The European caste that was part of America’s beginning, but not the core idea, migrated south. But, because slaves do not own anything and are robbed of incentive, production and innovation was anemic in the South while the North prospered.

On an individual level, the apostle Paul stated the following:

Ephesians 4:28 – Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

A mentality of covetousness will lead to various and sundry ways of unrightfully taking what others have. Also, Paul’s assumption, generally speaking, is that the individual can not only supply for himself, but have a surplus of which to help others. When the focus is personal wealth creation, the needy are much fewer, but among those able to help. This ideal has made America a strong force for good in the world. Unfortunately, but wisely, America has agreed to be the world’s policeman to protect the historical anomaly known as America.

And let us not forget, the serpent beguiled Eve into coveting something that belonged to God. Adam and Eve were allowed to have all other trees in the garden but the one, and were to “be fruitful and multiply.”  I am not saying that anti-capitalism is the essence of all sin, but covetousness nevertheless is an applicable point here, and covetousness is the antithesis of capitalism. That’s how sin began, and note carefully how the world as we know it will indeed end:

Ezekiel 38: 10 – “Thus says the Lord God: On that day, thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil scheme 11 and say, ‘I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having no bars or gates,’ 12 to seize spoil and carry off plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places that are now inhabited, and the people who were gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock and goods, who dwell at the center of the earth.13 Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish and all its leaders will say to you, ‘Have you come to seize spoil? Have you assembled your hosts to carry off plunder, to carry away silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods, to seize great spoil?’

The Bible is clear on this point: Armageddon will be sparked by an all out invasion on Israel, and underneath all of the ideological posturing will be the real catalyst for the invasion; to take a plunder…to go and get Israel’s stuff. Israel: that would be the only democracy in the Middle East.

A theme that we constantly hear among the Neo-Calvinists of our day is, “God owns everything, what you have belongs to God, it’s not yours to do with according to your own wants.” But wait a minute, the metaphysical math doesn’t end there. They also say that Reformed elders rule on behalf of God, they “stand in the stead.” They are the succession of Christ, the prophets, and the apostles. Let me interpret that for you…

…your stuff really belongs to them. No? Really? Let me remind you that bringing people up on church discipline in Reformed churches for not tithing is now an epidemic. Give them your stuff, or lose your salvation. The institutional church was born in the slough of medieval European socialism and remains there today. The “tithe” has been a Protestant mainstay from the beginning and is nothing more or less than an institutional tax collected on behalf of God. And lest we forget, it is not only the tithe, but “tithes AND offerings.” Ahhmen.

The enemies of the American ideal, a free market driven by individual competence, must destroy from within, and that necessarily requires a false narrative. It is metaphysical caste guided by elitist epistemology resulting in an ethic applied politically by force. The American ideal takes power from the elitists who think they should rule over the great unwashed masses. The progressives tell us that we are unable, that Benjamin Franklin et al perpetrated a most dangerous idea on mankind, that all men are created equal. To a progressive, this is like letting a child play with a loaded gun.

They offer us a solution: let them take care of us while they plunder on our behalf; it’s called wealth redistribution. Yes, a return to the good old medieval days when the the elitists lived in splendor while everyone else lived in “fairness”; i.e., equal squalor. Their wealth is always their just reward for bringing fairness to the masses and eliminating the evils of GREED.

This is why the D’Souza doctrine is also important to Christians. Once again, we see the church trying to reunite with European socialist whoredom. The elder statesman of the Neo-Calvinist movement, John Piper, made it a point to travel to Geneva and announce their agenda; viz, to spread the “light” of Calvin’s total depravity of man doctrine throughout the whole world. We are seeing how this all plays out within the American Neo-Calvinist movement.

In the final analysis, greed will always be a part of man’s fabric, and the poor will always be with us, but American exceptionalism gives us the freedom to be the victim of greed via others or ourselves. Or not. The only alternative is a greedy existence by the end of a gun or the end of a sword. And unfortunately, progressives ALWAYS underestimate the individual principle of “give me liberty or give me death.” Mankind is wired to be free, and progressives will NEVER understand that.

If you learn anything from the 10th commandment, learn this: nothing is for free, and freedom will always cost us dearly because of the progressives. If the war of ideas is lost to the progressives, the shooting will eventually begin, and the D’Souza doctrine is one of the more important weapons of late in that war.

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