Tips For Defending America From Corporatism

Here is my list of ways to DO something to prevent the complete pharmaceutical and chemical monopoly that is currently being instituted in the United States of America in an attempt to make the country the new home of IG Farbenindustries which attempted a takeover of Europe with the help of Hitler and the people of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s:

*Watch the documentary film Food, Inc.

*Read History. Go to Dr. Rath's Health Foundation site and read the historic books and documents posted there, especially those pertaining to IG Farben. Then, ask yourself, objectively, do you see any eery similarities to our time? Have we been experimenting upon silent minorities and outcasts of society--prison inmates, alcoholics, children of unwed/poor mothers, the military, veterans, tobacco users, the elderly, illegal immigrants, etc. Do you care, or are these human "burdens" useful only as guinea pigs?

*Splurge One Meal A Week Or More On Grass-fed, Locally Raised Meat, Poultry, and Dairy. Each time you buy this food you are increasing demand, supporting a smaller, non monopoly person like yourself who cares about the community and puts money back into it. Grass fed, and free-range meat is happy meat, and humanely butchered. After watching Food, Inc. you will see how beautiful happy meat is, and you'll be glad to know that the steak or ground beef you're eating had a good life for you.

After watching Food, Inc. you will also feel proud of buying grass-fed and local because you are supporting FREE SPEECH! That's right, the one or two corporations that own nearly all of the patented corn and soybeans in the U.S. go after the farmers who dare to speak up, destroying their lives with military-like midnight raids, and lawsuits.

Buying local free-range inhibits the abusive employment of Mexican illegals who are shipped in to work the large corporate plants that process our meat, and pick our produce because they have no voice. These corporate operations don't want American citizens working these jobs because we have rights and can speak up without fear of deportation, changing the system, not working under abusive and inhumane conditions. Buy local, save American dignity, force Mexico and the corporations to clean up their act. Make a local farmer or rancher rich!

*Forget Your Political Or Religious Preferences. You may find that you have a lot in common with a "liberal" or a "conservative" person. If you dislike tobacco smoke but find that a tobacco smoker or group is working against corporate controls of the country or community, put your bias aside and love them as human. The objective is not to agree on much, except that you each are fighting for the right NOT to agree or be alike. The objective is to stand up for people's God-given right to NOT agree with each other.
If you are a Christian judge an individual of another religion separately from that religion.

If you are Black, White, or Hispanic judge each individual of other colors or backgrounds individually. Discriminating is not bad. Wine tasters are said to be "discriminating" in their taste. Discriminate based upon the individual, never the color, neighborhood, educational status, etc. Remember, the corporations want us to be separated, not to mix, to believe stereotypes, never be friends, because then we can be used against each other.

*Stop Keeping Up With The Joneses. No one likes them anyway.

*Never Vote For More Law Enforcement Or Bigger Jails, Or For School Bonds no matter how legitimate the reasoning behind their desires appears. The public school system is a monopoly and gets billions of our money. Let them whine. We do without all the time. We're not stopping them from making a budget or cutting the salaries of the overpaid bureaucrats. Small business owners do without to make payroll, so can the public school system. And the bigger the jail, the more police enforcement the more arrests for petty offenses, the more helpless the citizenry. We each have, arms, legs, and brains. If you see a crime, stop it!

*Don't Believe The Doctor Is A God. You don't know everything and neither do they. They know what you know and wear white coats and are allowed to cut people with fancy knives. The doctor is often a high-paid drug dealer and nothing more. Some are good, but usually as mystified about what ails a patient as the patient is. A doctor is useful in the way an auto mechanic is useful--for repairing broken bones, pipes, hearts/motors and such, but not much more.

Afraid of appearing like a nature nut and appearing "alternative" with dred locks and sandals? Stop worrying and change the stereotype. If you must go into the local food co-op to buy the local goat cheese and granola, so be it. Let everyone know who you are and what you're doing and why. Go shopping where you haven't before, let the business know there's a new kind of customer on the horizon.

*Support legal marijuana even if you don't believe in using it. Why? Because when marijuana is legalized it drives the state crazy because they stop receiving federal funding. Less federal funding means more freedom in all aspects of life. I only recently figured this out, and am now a supporter of legalized marijuana. Not to mention, if we allow the current corporate monopoly control of our governments we all may have to smoke it to ease our pain and poverty.

*Fight Tobacco Control And Codex Alimintarius. Summer's warming up. The pharma-backed anti-tobacco movements power up in summer because no one cares and doesn't show up for the meetings. Summer is when they implement all action.

*Fight Tobacco Bans. Why should you fight tobacco control? Go read up on pellagra and niacin and nicotinic receptors. The pharma monopoly wants our access to niacin through supplements and food cut dramatically. You think those pictures of lung cancer look bad, look at the photos of pellagra, which is associated with a corn-fed diet. And we are corn-fed people. You may need a cigarette, cigar, or pipe when you're done finding out the strange truth about how important niacin/nicotinic acid and tobacco are. Ask yourself is it really withdrawal when one quits tobacco, or is it deficiency of nicotinic acid? Is a tobacco ban really Pharma monopoly and control of our access to nicotinic acid? Yes. There is nothing moral or healthy about smoking bans.

*Join Toast Masters. This group of diverse people will help in a fun way to teach public speaking and in mastery of one's self even when nervous.

*Use the Written Word. All of the great pamphleteers of the past have written, usually anonymously. There is a growing movement against anonymity, claims that it is dishonest and a sign of fear in the author. This is a lie. Anonymous authors are difficult to catch and shut up. Daniel Defoe wrote anonymously and when found out he was put in the stocks. The citizens had loved what he wrote and showered him in flowers instead of refuse while he was displayed in the stocks. America's founding fathers wrote anonymously, as well as a few brave souls during IG Farben/Hitler's reign.

*Beware the Temptation to Join Mass Movements. Throughout history these mass groups of people have been used for bad purposes, thinking it was for good. A mass of people are easy to herd, easy to use, easy to blame, easy to catch. Mass movements distract from the real issues and solutions. If the individuals in mass movements would disperse back to their homes and towns and act there they would accomplish more and be more of a threat to corporate monopoly. A mass movement is a flood.

*Be A Spark. A raindrop cannot drown the land, but a spark can set a fire. A pebble dropped in the pond sends out wider and wider waves. Go be a spark at your local church potluck, shock a few people. Go sit down at the local bar and talk to the person next to you. The great movers and shakers of history have gone amongst the people living and working in the community, getting to know them, showing them they care. Every single day, be interested and interesting to those around you.

*Be Not Be Consumed With Hate. You lose and the enemy wins if one becomes bitter. Love is not wimpy and spineless. Let the love of freedom and mankind fuel all work, not hate. Love works harder than hate. Love is tougher and more resilient than hate. Love and compassion look really good when combating evil, which always pretends it acts in love; but tries to create emotional, hateful, frustrated outbursts from those it seeks to paint as "terrorists."

*Be Creative and Keep A Sense of Humor. Give those prudes funded by Pharmaceutical grants the other cheek, the full moon.

*Support the Local Rebellious Business Owner. Are they breaking the tobacco ban or other ban? Have they been fined by the local Pharma/Health Department? Go patronize them even if you'd rather stay home and aren't allowed to smoke indoors. If you don't drink, buy a couple drinks for someone else and tip the bartender. Conversely, was there a bar or business owner who supported the tobacco ban, and mysteriously happened to come across enough money for a high class renovation while campaigning for a smoke-free environment? Boycott that business and tell everyone why. Make new friends if your friends snub you for not joining them in patronizing that business.

*Support An Indian Casino, Hotel, or Tobacco Manufacturer. If we're not allowed to do these things off the reservation, then we need to show that off-reservation bans increase business on them. Show the State what they're losing. Indian tobacco manufacturers represent that smaller, more accountable, local, less monopoly business. Big Business doesn't mean corporate/state monopoly. It means success and quality. Also, the Tobacco Settlement gag order on defending tobacco doesn't apply to First Peoples. Their voice may defend those off the reservation and income derived from those off the reservation. If we belatedly defend the First People's rights, not by pushing for federal welfare, but by encouraging and requesting tobacco, grass-fed meat, non-patented produce, and so forth, we will boost their economy (which the State is afraid of) and preserve important sources of nicotinic acid which are primarily supplied by good meat and tobacco.

*Recharge. We are not machines. Go fishing, take a walk, work in the garden, stare at clouds, play the guitar, find a lover, eat a pleasurable food, build something, have a barbecue, read a work of fiction, enjoy silence. These are moments of being human and often when wonderful and unexpected knowledge is gained. It's not wrong, it's not lazy to enjoy life and have pleasures.

*Buckle Down And Remember Freedom Is MORE Important Than Money. There is no money without freedom. Freedom is not freedom if the rights of certain groups are trampled upon for the despotic "rights" of another group. Freedom is not free. It's priceless. The only monopoly America should strive for is a monopoly of liberty for all. Slavery to the State and to "Health Care" is not liberty or freedom to be born, live, or die as one chooses.

Why Taverns Are Dangerous To The United States of Pharma

If I had a church it would be Sheila Martin's Top Hat Tavern in Hutchinson, Kansas. And I'd get something in return for my tithes: Holy Communion with my brothers and sisters.

"Well, I'll tell you what you need to do if you think something's everywhere: start on your block. Start at your house. And spread out and get it stopped" (Sheila Martin).

Proving Citizenship In America

"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.... He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands" (The Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776).

Would you be able to prove that you are a legal citizen of the United States of America if asked to prove so while questioned by a police officer? Are you sure? Do you carry a birth certificate and a passport in your car or on your person?

Sure, you could pull out your driver's license, latest pay stub, show that you've paid taxes, served in the military, own a house, and countless other pieces of paper, but none of these would be sufficient.

Are you so very sure you have a birth certificate in the file cabinet? And even if you do, will you be allowed to go home and get it, or will you be locked up in the local jail? How long will you have to sit in jail, waiting for a birth certificate to arrive from the Vital Statistics office of the county you were born in?

Is that birth certificate any good? Most of us don't give this much thought.

I have a grandmother who could not receive social security benefits because her birth certificate didn't have her first name on it, only listing her as "Baby." It took quite awhile to prove she was that particular baby.

I haven't the foggiest idea where my birth certificate is. I hear rumours that it, along with the birth certificates of my siblings may have been tossed away with the turmoil and selfishness that occurs in family ruptures, not to mention a transient lifestyle.

And take a look at your child's birth certificate. Notice the past few years that, for some reason, the copy obtained these days is not always a certified birth certificate.

Really, it's amazing how much of life can be lived without ever having to think about one's birth certificate or the authenticity of it, although the latest presidential election and the anti-Mexican law recently passed in Arizona should cause us a bit more personal paper searching before we point fingers at others.

It would take quite awhile to prove myself a bona fide citizen. I have a family tree that goes back to Adam and Eve and dirt, but that wouldn't prove anything in front of a judge.

I wonder where I'd be deported to? Hopefully, New Zealand or Panama City, Panama.

Before one gets excited about Arizona's tough anti-immigration law, ask if it's a foot in the door to your house, under the guise of a boot to foreigners. Then, go look in the mirror, pull the log out of your eye, and use it to bare the door.

Does Eating Genetically Engineered Food Make One A Cannibal?

I've been musing a bit, wondering.

Does eating food genetically engineered with human proteins/genes make one a cannibal?

Who did the proteins in genetically engineered plants with human proteins come from?

Does eating food genetically engineered with insect or animal genes mean that a vegetarian may be eating animal or insect?

Is it wrong for a Jew or Muslim to eat food with porcine or insect proteins engineered into it?

Should vegetarians and/or those of certain religions be given the freedom of choice over their bodies and what they put into them, or is patented genetic food more important than this individual right?

Hmm. This gives an interesting new meaning to that proverbial "abomination of desolation" people speak of, often meaning swine in the temple. Our body is a temple too. Perhaps, the abomination is within us, not in a building of stone. We are what we eat--corn-fed, processed, pink, and shot full of preservatives. Mmm mmm.

"Soylent Green is people!"

Tobacco Bans, Genetics, Big Pharma, Religion, and Native Peoples

Think a smoking ban is about health? Think again. It's all about genetic cleansing and Big Pharma monopoly and federal control. If it were really about health the Food and Drug Administration, a State agency, would not be mandating that manufactured cigarettes be coated in a toxic carcinogen under the guise of "fire safe." This is purposeful poisoning of those who smoke tobacco and those who choose to love and befriend them.

The U.S. government deliberately poisoned alcohol used for bootleg production during Prohibition, causing the deaths of tens of thousands. This poisoning was intended to frighten people from drinking. What it really accomplished was the killing off of those in the lower socioeconomic strata, those who could not afford to purchase high quality alcohol. And no one cares about this group, unless there is profit to be made off of them in the name of philanthropy and special interests.

What Prohibition accomplished was the eradicating of countless small and local breweries, taverns, and other businesses that worked in a symbiotic relationship. These were local citizens, families that worked and lived in their local community. Prohibition accomplished the establishment of monopoly over alcohol production and distribution (Mafia). Those who knew that Prohibition would one day end swooped in and bought the bankrupt family breweries for small change, then made out like bandits when Prohibition was lifted. There is even growing speculation that Prohibition may have helped lead to the Great Depression by putting many out of home and business, thus causing less tax revenue and consumer activity amongst this silent group of new poor.

The past few years have seen a dramatic reduction in tobacco farms, and tobacco use as a result of the federal and Big Pharma-backed war on tobacco use (even the CIA/Battelle Memorial Institute are funding the anti-tobacco movement!). Like many of the family operated breweries before Prohibition, many of these tobacco farmers have been operating for several generations and proud of their product. But with tobacco prohibition rising, the State is paying them to quit in the U.S. and Canada. Now the State is ramping up its attack on Indian reservations, many of whom produce and/or sell tobacco products. The tribes of the north east in Canada and the U.S. are seeing an increase in restrictions, freedoms, and even troops threatening them.

Quite a few of the Indian reservations have been infiltrated by Marxist/Socialist ideologies, racism, and New Age corruptions of their spiritual beliefs, and elected officials more beholden to special interest money than to the people. There is also an influx of gang recruiting occurring upon the reservations. These are all purposeful strategies for weakening what may actually turn out to be the last stand against complete State and Big Pharma/Chemical control of the entire North American continent. (Note: Philip Morris, now Altria, is part of this attack on small tobacco producers, conducting a campaign against the tobacco manufacturers of New York's reservations at this very moment. Evidently, they believe they are too big to fail, and that betraying smaller tobacco producers will somehow make them look good.).

If tobacco bans are not repeats of hate movements and genetic cleansing, then why are they resorting to the same language and tactics used by these movements?

"The ugly truth is that smokers are not anything like junkies or alcoholics or prostitutes or anyone else who feels powerless over a hideous addiction. They are far worse.

"Smokers are alone the degenerates of society in that they share their poison with everyone within breathing vicinity" (Andrea Peyser, "Cancer Sticking It To Whining Nico-Fiends," 31 March 2003, emphasis added)

Why does my local Tobacco Free movement display a cartoon depicting a tobacco smoker shot dead by three gun-toting zealots because "he was packing"?

Why does the local Big State and Big Pharma funded highschool brownshirt group have T.V. commercials with dour-faced do-gooders holding pictures of camels with contorted lips and grasshoppers while their little voices say "I am not your grasshopper," and "I don't spit"? These are tried and true tactics used to subliminally tap into mankind's tendency to think of certain groups as less human, sub human, not human. Depicting a tobacco chewer as a plague insect, such as a grasshopper implies that these are only insects with no soul which should be crushed underfoot. In days past, Jews, Blacks, Tutsi, and Indians were shown as less human, more animal. It wasn't right then, and it's not right now. It's heinous and disgusting.

And speaking of spitting and contorted lips and faces. I've seen more non-tobacco users spitting and contorting than tobacco users. Yes, another sign of the past rising its ugly head. I've been spit upon, called names, and given looks of death because I am tainting the purity of the gene pool by existing. They said that about about other groups in the past too.

If tobacco bans are not about genetic cleansing then why has the local Tobacco Free site recently changed its wording for the word "group" to "cluster," a word used to describe a genetic group of people in scientific circles?

The local anti-Tobacco/pro Pharma nicotine group is pushing for an outdoor ban on tobacco chewers and smokers.

"Arguments for [non smoking] policy: Changes the social norms around tobacco use by eliminating highly visible 'clusters' of smokers....."

"Clusters," not people freely congregating and socializing. "Smokers," not people, but things that cluster and smoke. Not human.

The word "cluster" is very specific to genetics research as a way to discuss distinct groups of people who share genetic commonalities. It also has a distinctly malignant sound to it, as of disease.

There are literally hundreds, perhaps thousands, of researchers funded by tax dollars and Big Pharma trying to pinpoint and prove a genetic marker that defines those who use coffee, tobacco, and alcohol. This is barely a justifiable use of tax payer money which should not be confiscated from hard working people for such useless purposes.

When reading these "objective" and "scientific" pieces of paper one must read them as if reading a twisted form of metaphor. The geneticists have spent much time and discussion formulating their language in order to hide what it is they really are saying in order to confuse and deceive new students and older "clusters" who remember history.

It is a bit difficult to see modern racism because it does not always seem clearly defined or focused upon external traits such as skin color or religion. From a superficial level a ban upon those who use tobacco may look benign and as if it has nothing to do with a particular phylogenetic group. But the truth is that racism has moved to a microscopic, molecular, and internal level. Instead of the yellow armbands with a Star of David marking people, the markers are internal strands of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), which is divided into units called genes, which are unique to each of us.

Rather than using the word "People," or "Black," or "Blonde Haired" the words "genotype," "phylogenetic," and "cluster" are now used. Most people have the same genes/alleles, but differences/polymorphisms in the way the genetic sequences are organised. It is a language like any other, and like a language with a few basic letters and sounds, can be organised in many distinct ways. Thus, all of those with a shared allele sequence/polymorphism are a phylogenetic group, much the same way a person from a particular geographic region shares a distinct pronunciation and slang. Molecular genetics seeks to find the distinct polymorphisms for each phylogenetic group.

The language is highly suggestive of racism. The variations of sequence polymorphisms are called restriction length polymorphisms (RFLPs). The molecular biologists are busy trying to piece together these restriction polymorphisms in order to link them to particular phenotypes/families/people. When a restriction polymorphism is definitively linked to a particular trait, such as eye color, or disease it is called a restriction marker. It is claimed that identifying these "restriction markers" will help in diagnosing disease and in "isolating" genes, id. est., people.

This is exactly what went on in the first part of the 1900s. The strange science of racial purity flourished with the aid of universities and States. And the States did not merely want to rid the earth of a few diseased individuals, but also of those carrying supposedly tainted (restrictive) genetic markers. Germany and the U.S. (the U.S. was quieter, but no less avid) decided who carried the "restriction markers," which barred these people entry into society. Germany "isolated" the genes, the people in ghettos, IG Farben/Auschwitz, sanitariums, veterans homes, and hospitals.

One may believe they are safe because they are perfect -- don't drink, don't smoke, don't drink coffee, and don't eat the "wrong" foods. One may believe they are perfect because they go to church, don't waste energy, don't have the wrong skin color, vote for the correct political representatives, or whatever else. One may be perfect, but be carrying "restriction markers" all over within the secret little cells of their body.

What science doesn't tell us is that simply having a particular genetic sequence does not mean a person will die from it, or be an addict. There is such a thing as free choice, which we forget exists. Free choice is a genetic marker that each and everyone of us carries. It's the worst polymorphism of all to despots.

The direction that our wonderful science, which has been corrupted into a religion, is going is backwards. There will be no cure for cancer or other diseases. The scientists of Nazi Germany had a war on cancer, but the cure was death for millions. And in all these many, many years of scientific progress we have gotten no further than they. Our "cures" are exactly the same. Bans, blaming heredity, isolating the unwanted individuals. There will be no cure for cancer, only "therapies," which profit large corporations and the State.

There was not much cancer before the 1900s. But people have been drinking for thousands of years. People have been eating for thousands of years. People have been smoking for thousands of years, and hundreds in the Old World and Asia. People have ingested coffee for thousands of years. Why is it that a Japanese man may smoke and never get cancer, but an American man can't?

To admit the horrible truth would harm the giant monopolies and our governments who have committed crimes and made mistakes which they would rather not own up to. It is better to blame the individual for their cancer, blame their genetics and choices, better to call them "burdens" upon society than admit that there is more to cancer and its causes.

And now, that we have moved into the era of health care for all, this war on cancer, which is really a war on the individual will be ramped up. The large corporations and the State will place "restrictive markers" on as many "clusters" as they can because there is no way they will spend our money on us if they can help it. If an individual doesn't profit the State monopoly and Big Pharma, then they are a cancer and not worthy of life. Isolated. Banned.

And this is why 2nd and 3rd hand smoke were invented. There is barely a person alive that can say they have never been exposed to 2nd hand smoke, and 3rd hand smoke can be "caught" anywhere, from anyone. This creates the myth of the person who chooses to use tobacco as a virus, spreading cancer around like a flu. Thus, no matter what, the tobacco user will be the cause of all cancer, the scapegoat that must bear the sins of the people. And those who are caught anywhere near a tobacco user will be seen as carriers of the disease.

The harsh reality is that a tobacco user (or a coffee drinker or an alcoholic behind the wheel) is incapable of wiping out humanity the same way that Big Pharma and despotic states are. These people, if they ever do kill another, do it in dribs and drabs and feel extreme guilt for what they do. But large masses of "righteous" people kill large masses of innocents and feel no guilt. They tend to believe they are God's chosen and thus, have a command to kill. Somehow, the masses continually mistake Molech for God, and forget the story of Jesus and that it was a mob and the State that crucified Him.

It's easy to identify a person that smokes by sight and smell, much as if they were a group with a different skin color than the majority, or as if they were tattooed with a number. This makes them easy to hate and blame. No one cares because they're all poor and broken.

But the cause of cancer will not be eradicated by banning those who use tobacco. In fact, a new, but obvious group will have to be found, then another, and another. This will be the cure for our ignorance and will keep us distracted with hate and fear while feeling righteous and moral.

The truth is that cancer is a sad, sad disease and no one deserves to die of it or for it. It has many causes and most of them are linked to things we are unaware of, and nearly powerless over. Most causes of cancer can be attributed to our way of life the past hundred years, our addictions to things we have never considered addictions or dependencies, and issues that are too emotional to tackle.

In the 1950s and beyond, millions of Baby Boomers were given the life-saving polio vaccine which was grown on simian monkey kidneys which transferred a cancer-causing virus called SV-40 to those who received the vaccine. SV-40 lays dormant for many years until triggered for one reason or other, then may cause cancers of the soft tissues--lung cancer, skin cancer and others. SV-40 can be spread from one person to the next much like AIDs.

Many vaccines have been found to lead to cancer. A vaccine should be good, and they have stemmed many sicknesses, but there are often future ramifications which one does not find out until many years later.

Then there is radon, an invisible gas, which is in many homes. This too, causes lung cancer.

Exhaust from our automobiles contains many carcinogens.

Our jobs in certain industries which require exposure to chemicals and toxins may cause lung cancers.

Radiation exposure, such as via a full body scanner, or an X-ray machine can cause cancer.

Kissing someone with the HPV virus can cause cancer. In fact, all forms of warts are actually cancer viruses.

The use of immunosupressant drugs, such as are used by organ transplant patients, or by AIDs patients, or for arthritis leads to cancer.

Being born and living may lead to cancer and or death.

With the increased Chemical/Pharmaceutical push for genetically engineered grains cancer will increase even more. These genetically engineered foods usually contain an animal or human protein in them. Our bodies instinctively know when a foreign body has entered and this incites our immune system to be rid of it, the same way an organ transplant patient's body knows a foreign organ has been introduced into it.

Genetically engineered food will cause our immune systems to overreact, which will wear the body down, which will lead to more patients in the doctor's office asking for immunosupressents and allergy meds, which will lead to cancer.

Not only will genetically engineered crops harm our immunity, but they will cross breed with other crops and destroy them, putting small farmers out of business, giving the Chemical/Pharmaceutical corporations a monopoly over what we eat. The same corporate monopolies that are behind the smoking bans are also behind genetically engineered foods. They'll feed us from the cradle to the grave on their cancerous foods and their "therapies" for the sickness they have given us. But the tobacco users and others will reap the blame. And the people will be blamed for destroying the environment, while the genetically modified pollen spreads its disease to our land and farmers right under our noses.

We don't have to return to the stone age or eschew modern conveniences, but we must be more aware of what our modern and thoughtless addictions have led to. We are a nation of addicts. We think that a pill will solve our problems and that mixing unlike things, such as human with plant will give us health and nutrition. We think we can ban cancer by banning people.

It is nearly impossible to give up our lotions, foods, jobs, medicines, fertilizers, pesticides and cars. We don't have to, but we can find other ways, even if our friends and neighbors deride us and wonder if we are crazy. This author is going to try to the best of his ability to put his money where his mouth is, and also how to do without certain products. But time is running out. Once a group is banned, once a university's "pharmaceutical" grain crop sends its pollen out into the surrounding regions, once a cancer-causing virus contaminates a vaccine it is nearly too late to stop the spread of cancer upon our souls and society.

This is why I take a stand against tobacco bans. It seems that this one wall is what stands between everyone and complete monopoly over every aspect of our lives. Believe it or not, the tobacco companies devoted much time and money to combating the forces of Big Chemical and Big Pharma. According to the anti-tobacco propaganda, the tobacco companies saw the World Health Organization and the Big UN as their biggest threat, as their biggest "competition," and worked hard to keep them from implementing domination. We may never know exactly how important tobacco users and their money were in keeping America and the rest of the world free. And now, they are banned and hated by the very people they may have protected. Isn't that the way of the world.

Or, we will see how important and generous tobacco users were/are, but continue treading down the wrong road. Already, in my state, only a few short months after a smoking ban in the hospitality industry, the state has lost millions in revenue. The bars are having to lay off bartenders, most of whom are single mothers. In turn, these single mothers will lose homes, cars, nice clothes, money for their children's dance or sport activities, or tutoring, nights out with friends, etc, etc. In turn, this money may have flowed back to the fathers paying the child support. These single mothers will end up in government subsidised housing and on welfare, and the fathers will be punished by the State with fines, jail, confiscated driver's licences for not paying up. How does that save the tax payers money? A smoking ban effects the entire economy because the money doesn't merely stay in the bar or the casino. It goes out into the community, even benefiting those that hate tobacco users. Tobacco users can be highly generous and loving people, but not if their company isn't good enough for the community.

A ban on tobacco hurts our health in so many different ways. And Big Pharma Nicotine "therapy" will not save any of us in health costs because these products cause cancer, ulcers, diabetes, heart attack, brain death, and other wonders of medical madness.

I recently read a comment suggesting that the non profit status of churches be revoked to make up for lost revenue due to the tobacco bans. At the moment, this seems a plausible solution, as these groups (Christian, Jew, Muslim) quit being answerable to God by joining with the State and Big Pharma to push for the bans--at least where I live. There is no separation of Church, Corporation, and State. They're the same. They want our money to save the world, yet won't give anything back unless one sells their soul to them. And always, they blame illness upon some evil committed by the individual, thus claiming exemption from mercy or forgiveness.


The smoke of the saints. Good enough for God. Banned on earth.

image: Caravaggio, David and Goliath

Albert Jay Nock: The State of Conquest

"Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: you get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you. A citizenry which has learned that one short lesson has but little left to learn" (Albert Jay Nock, "The Criminality of the State," The American Mercury, March, 1939)

I have discovered that American prophet, that typical hermit in the desert, Albert Jay Nock. Reading him makes one understand why the prophets of old were hunted down and hated by the rulers and the masses. What he says is not what we want to hear because it's what we know is true, but would rather not put into words. We would rather continue blaming everything outside of ourselves, and think betterment comes from without too. We would rather finger-point, and find innocent scapegoats to lay upon the alter. Even quoting Nock feels dangerous, which makes me wonder if free speech really exists.

The following quotes are all from Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy, the State, first published in 1935, which can be read online at Mises.org:

"What we and our more nearly immediate descendants shall see is a steady progress in collectivism running off into military despotism of a severe type. Closer centralization; a steadily growing bureaucracy; State power and faith in State power increasing, social power and faith in social power diminishing; the State absorbing a continually larger proportion of the national income; production languishing, the State in consequence taking over one 'essential industry' after another, managing them with ever-increasing corruption, inefficiency and prodigality, and finally resorting to a system of forced labour. Then at some point in this progress, a collision of State interests, at least as general and as violent as that which occurred in 1914, will result in an industrial and financial dislocation too severe for the asthenic social structure to bear; and from this the State will be left to the 'rusty death of machinery,' and the casual anonymous forces of dissolution will be supreme" (206).

"[T]here is actually no such thing as a 'labour problem,' for no encroachment on the rights of either labour or capital can possibly take place until all natural resources within reach have been preempted. What we call the 'problem of the unemployed' is in no sense a problem, but a direct consequence of State-created monopoly" (107)

"expropriation must precede exploitation" (Nock).

"After the conquest and confiscation have been effected, and the State set up, its first concern is with the land. The State assumes the right of eminent domain over its territorial basis, whereby every landholder becomes in theory a tenant of the State" (104).

"This regime was established by a coup d'Etat of a new and unusual kind, practicable only in a rich country. It was effected, not by violence, like Louis-Napoleon's, or by terrorism, like Mussolini's, but by purchase. It therefore presents what might be called an American variant of the coup d'Etat. Our national legislature was not suppressed by force of arms, like the French Assembly in 1851, but was bought out of its functions with public money; and as appeared most conspicuously in the elections of November, 1934, the consolidation of the coup d'Etat was effected by the same means; corresponding functions in the smaller units were reduced under the personal control of the Executive" (11-12).

The following is interesting, because things have changed a bit:

"Whenever economic exploitation has been for any reason either impracticable or unprofitable, the State has never come into existence; the government has existed, but the State, never. The American hunting tribes, for example, whose organization so puzzled our observers, never formed a State, for there is no way to reduce a hunter to economic dependence and make him hunt for you. Conquest and confiscation were no doubt practicable, but no economic gain would be got by it, for confiscation would give the aggressors but little beyond what they already had; the most that could come of it would be the satisfaction of some sort of feud" (57-58).

In the case of the native peoples of America, the State did an interesting thing. It placed the people on confined pieces of land, nearly forcing them to become little states which they became attached to. Then, in this weakened and prone condition, resting after being chased and massacred across the countryside, the state came in with its religious and scientific arms to take the only thing the native wanderers had left: family.

The children, for their own good (!), were taken from their parents and boarded in institutions which could provide for the children's upbringing "better" than their old fashioned and ignorant parents. In these State and religious institutions they were removed from their history and health. In Canada, they are still excavating the bone yards of the children accidentally killed by the wonderfully caring and effective authorities, then secretly buried around the grounds until fairly recently.

What Nock neglects is that the State can confiscate more than material property. It can confiscate souls, hold them prisoner, making it very difficult for the owner to free it and realize that they are a person.

And here we are, not seeing that what happened to those beautiful little children born of weary parents is happening right here every day to those off of the reservation too. And every day, the parents willingly, unquestioningly, submissively drop their children off at the institution. Nock has some words about American education too, which I haven't read, although it should be interesting as he was not formally educated, which explains a bit about his unformal beliefs.

Anyway, Nock has me thinking and musing on a few things these days.

Albert Jay Nock's Word To The Remnants

"Isaiah's Job" by Albert Jay Nock, The Atlantic Monthly, 1936:

One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: "I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?"

An embarrassing question in any case, and doubly so under the circumstances, because my acquaintance is a very learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe produced in his generation; and naturally I, as one of the unlearned, was inclined to regard his lightest word with reverence amounting to awe. Still, I reflected, even the greatest mind can not possibly know everything, and I was pretty sure he had not had my opportunities for observing the masses of mankind, and that therefore I probably knew them better than he did. So I mustered courage to say that he had no such mission and would do well to get the idea out of his head at once; he would find that the masses would not care two pins for his doctrine, and still less for himself, since in such circumstances the popular favourite is generally some Barabbas. I even went so far as to say (he is a Jew) that his idea seemed to show that he was not very well up on his own native literature. He smiled at my jest, and asked what I meant by it; and I referred him to the story of the prophet Isaiah.

It occurred to me then that this story is much worth recalling just now when so many wise men and soothsayers appear to be burdened with a message to the masses. Dr. Townsend has a message, Father Coughlin has one, Mr. Upton Sinclair, Mr. Lippmann, Mr. Chase and the planned economy brethren, Mr. Tugwell and the New Dealers, Mr. Smith and Liberty Leaguers – the list is endless. I can not remember a time when so many energumens were so variously proclaiming the Word to the multitude and telling them what they must do to be saved. This being so, it occurred to me, as I say, that the story of Isaiah might have something in it to steady and compose the human spirit until this tyranny of windiness is overpast. I shall paraphrase the story in our common speech, since it has to be pieced out from various sources; and inasmuch as respectable scholars have thought fit to put out a whole new version of the Bible in the American vernacular, I shall take shelter behind them, if need be, against the charge of dealing irreverently with the Sacred Scriptures.

The prophet's career began at the end of King Uzziah's reign, say about 740 B.C. This reign was uncommonly long, almost half a century, and apparently prosperous. It was one of those prosperous reigns, however – like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or the administration of Eubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington – where at the end the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding crash.

In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. "Tell them what a worthless lot they are." He said, "Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you," He added, "that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life."


Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job – in fact, he had asked for it – but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so – if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start – was there any sense in starting it? "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it."

II

Apparently, then, if the Lord’s word is good for anything – I do not offer any opinion about that, – the only element in Judean society that was particularly worth bothering about was the Remnant. Isaiah seems finally to have got it through his head that this was the case; that nothing was to be expected from the masses, but that if anything substantial were ever to be done in Judea, the Remnant would have to do it. This is a very striking and suggestive idea; but before going on to explore it, we need to be quite clear about our terms. What do we mean by the masses, and what by the Remnant?

As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, labouring people, proletarians, and it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass-man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.

The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most unfavorable. In his view, the mass-man – be he high or be he lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper – gets off very badly. He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence knavish, arrogant, grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous. The mass-woman also gets off badly, as sharing all the mass-man’s untoward qualities, and contributing a few of her own in the way of vanity and laziness, extravagance and foible. The list of luxury-products that she patronized is interesting; it calls to mind the women’s page of a Sunday newspaper in 1928, or the display set forth in one of our professedly "smart" periodicals. In another place, Isaiah even recalls the affectations that we used to know by the name "flapper gait" and the "debutante slouch." It may be fair to discount Isaiah’s vivacity a little for prophetic fervour; after all, since his real job was not to convert the masses but to brace and reassure the Remnant, he probably felt that he might lay it on indiscriminately and as thick as he liked – in fact, that he was expected to do so. But even so, the Judean mass-man must have been a most objectionable individual, and the mass-woman utterly odious.


If the modern spirit, whatever that may be, is disinclined towards taking the Lord’s word at its face value (as I hear is the case), we may observe that Isaiah’s testimony to the character of the masses has strong collateral support from respectable Gentile authority. Plato lived into the administration of Eubulus, when Athens was at the peak of its jazz-and-paper era, and he speaks of the Athenian masses with all Isaiah’s fervency, even comparing them to a herd of ravenous wild beasts. Curiously, too, he applies Isaiah’s own word remnant to the worthier portion of Athenian society; "there is but a very small remnant," he says, of those who possess a saving force of intellect and force of character – too small, preciously as to Judea, to be of any avail against the ignorant and vicious preponderance of the masses.

But Isaiah was a preacher and Plato a philosopher; and we tend to regard preachers and philosophers rather as passive observers of the drama of life than as active participants. Hence in a matter of this kind their judgment might be suspected of being a little uncompromising, a little acrid, or as the French say, saugrenu. We may therefore bring forward another witness who was preeminently a man of affairs, and whose judgment can not lie under this suspicion. Marcus Aurelius was ruler of the greatest of empires, and in that capacity he not only had the Roman mass-man under observation, but he had him on his hands twenty-four hours a day for eighteen years. What he did not know about him was not worth knowing and what he thought of him is abundantly attested on almost every page of the little book of jottings which he scribbled offhand from day to day, and which he meant for no eye but his own ever to see.

This view of the masses is the one that we find prevailing at large among the ancient authorities whose writings have come down to us. In the eighteenth century, however, certain European philosophers spread the notion that the mass-man, in his natural state, is not at all the kind of person that earlier authorities made him out to be, but on the contrary, that he is a worthy object of interest. His untowardness is the effect of environment, an effect for which "society" is somehow responsible. If only his environment permitted him to live according to his lights, he would undoubtedly show himself to be quite a fellow; and the best way to secure a more favourable environment for him would be to let him arrange it for himself. The French Revolution acted powerfully as a springboard for this idea, projecting its influence in all directions throughout Europe.


On this side of the ocean a whole new continent stood ready for a large-scale experiment with this theory. It afforded every conceivable resource whereby the masses might develop a civilization made in their own likeness and after their own image. There was no force of tradition to disturb them in their preponderance, or to check them in a thoroughgoing disparagement of the Remnant. Immense natural wealth, unquestioned predominance, virtual isolation, freedom from external interference and the fear of it, and, finally, a century and a half of time – such are the advantages which the mass-man has had in bringing forth a civilization which should set the earlier preachers and philosophers at naught in their belief that nothing substantial can be expected from the masses, but only from the Remnant.

His success is unimpressive. On the evidence so far presented one must say, I think, that the mass-man’s conception of what life has to offer, and his choice of what to ask from life, seem now to be pretty well what they were in the times of Isaiah and Plato; and so too seem the catastrophic social conflicts and convulsions in which his views of life and his demands on life involve him. I do not wish to dwell on this, however, but merely to observe that the monstrously inflated importance of the masses has apparently put all thought of a possible mission to the Remnant out of the modern prophet’s head. This is obviously quite as it should be, provided that the earlier preachers and philosophers were actually wrong, and that all final hope of the human race is actually centred in the masses. If, on the other hand, it should turn out that the Lord and Isaiah and Plato and Marcus Aurelius were right in their estimate of the relative social value of the masses and the Remnant, the case is somewhat different. Moreover, since with everything in their favour the masses have so far given such an extremely discouraging account of themselves, it would seem that the question at issue between these two bodies of opinion might most profitably be reopened.

III

But without following up this suggestion, I wish only, as I said, to remark the fact that as things now stand Isaiah's job seems rather to go begging. Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses' attention and interest. This attitude towards the masses is so exclusive, so devout, that one is reminded of the troglodytic monster described by Plato, and the assiduous crowd at the entrance to its cave, trying obsequiously to placate it and win its favour, trying to interpret its inarticulate noises, trying to find out what it wants, and eagerly offering it all sorts of things that they think might strike its fancy.


The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one's doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message.

Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favour, and answerable only to his august Boss.

If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedious business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one’s resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about. The prophet of the American masses must aim consciously at the lowest common denominator of intellect, taste and character among 120,000,000 people; and this is a distressing task. The prophet of the Remnant, on the contrary, is in the enviable position of Papa Haydn in the household of Prince Esterhazy. All Haydn had to do was keep forking out the very best music he knew how to produce, knowing it would be understood and appreciated by those for whom he produced it, and caring not a button what anyone else thought of it; and that makes a good job.


In a sense, nevertheless, as I have said, it is not a rewarding job. If you can tough the fancy of the masses, and have the sagacity to keep always one jump ahead of their vagaries and vacillations, you can get good returns in money from serving the masses, and good returns also in a mouth-to-ear type of notoriety:

Digito monstrari et dicier, Hic est!

We all know innumerable politicians, journalists, dramatists, novelists and the like, who have done extremely well by themselves in these ways. Taking care of the Remnant, on the contrary, holds little promise of any such rewards. A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great renown out of it. Isaiah’s case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others, but not many.

It may be thought, then, that while taking care of the Remnant is no doubt a good job, it is not an especially interesting job because it is as a rule so poorly paid. I have my doubts about this. There are other compensations to be got out of a job besides money and notoriety, and some of them seem substantial enough to be attractive. Many jobs which do not pay well are yet profoundly interesting, as, for instance, the job of research student in the sciences is said to be; and the job of looking after the Remnant seems to me, as I have surveyed it for many years from my seat in the grandstand, to be as interesting as any that can be found in the world.

IV

What chiefly makes it so, I think, is that in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those – dead sure, as our phrase is – but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness; and this, I should say, is just the condition calculated most effectively to pique the interest of any prophet who is properly gifted with the imagination, insight and intellectual curiosity necessary to a successful pursuit of his trade.

The fascination and the despair of the historian, as he looks back upon Isaiah's Jewry, upon Plato's Athens, or upon Rome of the Antonines, is the hope of discovering and laying bare the "substratum of right-thinking and well-doing" which he knows must have existed somewhere in those societies because no kind of collective life can possibly go on without it. He finds tantalizing intimations of it here and there in many places, as in the Greek Anthology, in the scrapbook of Aulus Gellius, in the poems of Ausonius, and in the brief and touching tribute, Bene merenti, bestowed upon the unknown occupants of Roman tombs. But these are vague and fragmentary; they lead him nowhere in his search for some kind of measure on this substratum, but merely testify to what he already knew a priori – that the substratum did somewhere exist. Where it was, how substantial it was, what its power of self-assertion and resistance was – of all this they tell him nothing.

Similarly, when the historian of two thousand years hence, or two hundred years, looks over the available testimony to the quality of our civilization and tries to get any kind of clear, competent evidence concerning the substratum of right-thinking and well-doing which he knows must have been here, he will have a devil of a time finding it. When he has assembled all he can and has made even a minimum allowance for speciousness, vagueness, and confusion of motive, he will sadly acknowledge that his net result is simply nothing. A Remnant were here, building a substratum like coral insects; so much he knows, but he will find nothing to put him on the track of who and where and how many they were and what their work was like.

Concerning all this, too, the prophet of the present knows precisely as much and as little as the historian of the future; and that, I repeat, is what makes his job seem to me so profoundly interesting. One of the most suggestive episodes recounted in the Bible is that of a prophet's attempt – the only attempt of the kind on the record, I believe – to count up the Remnant. Elijah had fled from persecution into the desert, where the Lord presently overhauled him and asked what he was doing so far away from his job. He said that he was running away, not because he was a coward, but because all the Remnant had been killed off except himself. He had got away only by the skin of his teeth, and, he being now all the Remnant there was, if he were killed the True Faith would go flat. The Lord replied that he need not worry about that, for even without him the True Faith could probably manage to squeeze along somehow if it had to; "and as for your figures on the Remnant," He said, "I don't mind telling you that there are seven thousand of them back there in Israel whom it seems you have not heard of, but you may take My word for it that there they are."

At that time, probably the population of Israel could not run to much more than a million or so; and a Remnant of seven thousand out of a million is a highly encouraging percentage for any prophet. With seven thousand of the boys on his side, there was no great reason for Elijah to feel lonesome; and incidentally, that would be something for the modern prophet of the Remnant to think of when he has a touch of the blues. But the main point is that if Elijah the Prophet could not make a closer guess on the number of the Remnant than he made when he missed it by seven thousand, anyone else who tackled the problem would only waste his time.

The other certainty which the prophet of the Remnant may always have is that the Remnant will find him. He may rely on that with absolute assurance. They will find him without his doing anything about it; in fact, if he tries to do anything about it, he is pretty sure to put them off. He does not need to advertise for them nor resort to any schemes of publicity to get their attention. If he is a preacher or a public speaker, for example, he may be quite indifferent to going on show at receptions, getting his picture printed in the newspapers, or furnishing autobiographical material for publication on the side of "human interest." If a writer, he need not make a point of attending any pink teas, autographing books at wholesale, nor entering into any specious freemasonry with reviewers. All this and much more of the same order lies in the regular and necessary routine laid down for the prophet of the masses; it is, and must be, part of the great general technique of getting the mass-man's ear – or as our vigorous and excellent publicist, Mr. H. L. Mencken, puts it, the technique of boob-bumping. The prophet of the Remnant is not bound to this technique. He may be quite sure that the Remnant will make their own way to him without any adventitious aids; and not only so, but if they find him employing any such aids, as I said, it is ten to one that they will smell a rat in them and will sheer off.

The certainty that the Remnant will find him, however, leaves the prophet as much in the dark as ever, as helpless as ever in the matter of putting any estimate of any kind upon the Remnant; for, as appears in the case of Elijah, he remains ignorant of who they are that have found him or where they are or how many. They did not write in and tell him about it, after the manner of those who admire the vedettes of Hollywood, nor yet do they seek him out and attach themselves to his person. They are not that kind. They take his message much as drivers take the directions on a roadside signboard – that is, with very little thought about the signboard, beyond being gratefully glad that it happened to be there, but with every thought about the directions.

This impersonal attitude of the Remnant wonderfully enhances the interest of the imaginative prophet's job. Once in a while, just about often enough to keep his intellectual curiosity in good working order, he will quite accidentally come upon some distinct reflection of his own message in an unsuspected quarter. This enables him to entertain himself in his leisure moments with agreeable speculations about the course his message may have taken in reaching that particular quarter, and about what came of it after it got there. Most interesting of all are those instances, if one could only run them down (but one may always speculate about them), where the recipient himself no longer knows where nor when nor from whom he got the message – or even where, as sometimes happens, he has forgotten that he got it anywhere and imagines that it is all a self-sprung idea of his own.

Such instances as these are probably not infrequent, for, without presuming to enroll ourselves among the Remnant, we can all no doubt remember having found ourselves suddenly under the influence of an idea, the source of which we cannot possibly identify. "It came to us afterward," as we say; that is, we are aware of it only after it has shot up full-grown in our minds, leaving us quite ignorant of how and when and by what agency it was planted there and left to germinate. It seems highly probable that the prophet's message often takes some such course with the Remnant.

If, for example, you are a writer or a speaker or a preacher, you put forth an idea which lodges in the Unbewußtsein of a casual member of the Remnant and sticks fast there. For some time it is inert; then it begins to fret and fester until presently it invades the man's conscious mind and, as one might say, corrupts it. Meanwhile, he has quite forgotten how he came by the idea in the first instance, and even perhaps thinks he has invented it; and in those circumstances, the most interesting thing of all is that you never know what the pressure of that idea will make him do.

For these reasons it appears to me that Isaiah’s job is not only good but also extremely interesting; and especially so at the present time when nobody is doing it. If I were young and had the notion of embarking in the prophetical line, I would certainly take up this branch of the business; and therefore I have no hesitation about recommending it as a career for anyone in that position. It offers an open field, with no competition; our civilization so completely neglects and disallows the Remnant that anyone going in with an eye single to their service might pretty well count on getting all the trade there is.

Even assuming that there is some social salvage to be screened out of the masses, even assuming that the testimony of history to their social value is a little too sweeping, that it depresses hopelessness a little too far, one must yet perceive, I think, that the masses have prophets enough and to spare. Even admitting that in the teeth of history that hope of the human race may not be quite exclusively centred in the Remnant, one must perceive that they have social value enough to entitle them to some measure of prophetic encouragement and consolation, and that our civilization allows them none whatever. Every prophetic voice is addressed to the masses, and to them alone; the voice of the pulpit, the voice of education, the voice of politics, of literature, drama, journalism – all these are directed towards the masses exclusively, and they marshal the masses in the way that they are going.

One might suggest, therefore, that aspiring prophetical talent may well turn to another field. Sat patriae Priamoque datum – whatever obligation of the kind may be due the masses is already monstrously overpaid. So long as the masses are taking up the tabernacle of Moloch and Chiun, their images, and following the star of their god Buncombe, they will have no lack of prophets to point the way that leadeth to the More Abundant Life; and hence a few of those who feel the prophetic afflatus might do better to apply themselves to serving the Remnant. It is a good job, an interesting job, much more interesting than serving the masses; and moreover it is the only job in our whole civilization, as far as I know, that offers a virgin field.