Kropotkin - The State - Medieval Communes

'Their commercial and craft relations extended beyond the city, and their agreements were made without taking into account nationality. and when in our ignorance we boast of our international workers' congresses, we forget that by the fifteenth century international congresses of trades and even apprentices were already being held.'

'In short there is a massive and varied documentation to show that mankind has not known, either before or since, a period of relative well-being assured to everybody as existed in the cities of the Middle ages. the present poverty, insecurity, and physical exploitation of labour were then unknown.'

'Was it not in fact the rule of the guild that two brothers should sit at the bedside of each sick brother - a custom which certainly required devotion in those times of contagious diseases and the plague - and to follow him as far as the grave, and then look after his widow and children?'

'Abject poverty, misery, uncertainty of the morrow for the majority, and the isolation of poverty, which are the characteristics of our modern cities, were quite unknown in those free oases, which emerged in the twelfth century amidst the feudal jungle.
In those cities, sheltered by their conquered liberties, inspired by the spirit of free agreement and of free initiative, a whole new civilization grew up and flourished in a way unparalleled to this day.'

'In the commune, the struggle was for the conquest and defence of the liberty of the individual, for the federative principle for the right to unite and to act; whereas the States' wars had as their objective the destruction of these liberties, the submission of the individual, the annihilation of the free contract, the uniting of men in a universal slavery to king, judge and priest -to the State.

'In the course of the sixteenth century, the modern barbarians were to destroy all that civilization of the cities of the Middle Ages. These barbarians.......subjected the individual. They deprived him of all his liberties, they expected him to forget all his unions based on free argument and free initiative. their aim was to level the whole of society to a common submission to the master. They destroyed all ties between men, declaring that the State and the Church alone, must henceforth create union between their subjects; that the Church and the State alone have the task of watching over the industrial, commercial, judicial, artistic, emotional interests, for which men of the twelfth century were accustomed to unite directly.' 

State Feminism - A Religion Of Power

Mary Malone writes:
Like Islam, State Feminism is a religion of submission and violence, of power, not love.
The aim of State Feminists is to bring women into the power structures of Neo-Patriarchy. There is no wish for liberation. Liberation is forgotten, replaced by the false god of Equality. In other words, women are to be dragged into the salaried, waged, hierarchical workplace. They are to lose their traditional autonomy. Equality means equality of exploitation, equality of servitude.
According to the perverse ideology of State Feminism violence is the prerogative of men. Men are abusers and women are their victims. Women are supposed to be helpless, child-like, unable to protect themselves from men. They must turn to the government for help.
The aim of State Feminism is to destroy working class solidarity, turning women against men, making men fear and loathe women, dividing and ruling. Women are placed under State tutelage as if they were innocent children. What a sad loveless world is this world of suspicion and equality, this desert of gratification and exploitation, this world of rights and indignation, of enmity and hatred and power.
Men in autonomous societies have often worked selflessly and sacrificially for their women, and women have often cherished their menfolk, but the State Feminists will have us believe that there was never any love, only violence and domination.
Unsupervised, unregulated love is anathema for the State Feminists, these modern worshippers of Power.

State Anarchists

Like Christians, Anarchists have had their clothes stolen by the State. Like Christianity, Anarchism is based on mutual support and mutual giving, but it finds the functions of autonomous society usurped by the State. Health care, education, support for the aged, the widows, and the orphans, the disabled and the insane are all the business of the bureaucratic hierarchy. In every action, at work and increasingly at home we are accountable to those in self assumed authority. Christians are left with a few periferal activities and end up as worshippers of the State. Anarchists are unable to do without the handouts, and end up as self indulgent children.
Horizontal society, its autonomy and its solidarity has been assimilated by the the vertical bureaucracy.
We have the pitiful sight of so called Anarchists joining State worshippers in opposing 'the cuts'. They suckle the teat of Big Mother, wanting to forget that Big Brother stands behind her with his stick and his dagger, his bombs and his dogs, his chains and his dungeons.
Any true Anarchist would reject the Welfare State, or at least rejoice at 'the cuts.' As long as the government provides the goodies we will be governed. We will never be free.

What Should A Christian Do?

If we accept that working for the State often does as much harm as good, that teaching crushes youngsters as much as it imparts knowledge, that the health services medicalize as much as they cure, that the social services destroy the family as much as they help the individual; if we accept that so called charities such as Oxfam and Christian Aid often do more harm than good, reinforcing corrupt power structures, enabling warrior gangs, belittling, humiliating and patronizing the foreigner, legitimizing taxation and climate change scams, reinforcing the power of elites both here and abroad, where does a Christian put their money, their effort, their love?
Even on a small scale, charity can be counter productive. It can discourage autonomy and encourage dependency or even crime, e.g. drugs, people or weapons trafficking, or simply a problem of persistent begging and mugging.
So is 'charity' really what Christian charity is about?
We are called to love our neighbours, but the poor hate charity, the dole, dependency. This sort of charity defines the giver as rich and exalts their power. How can a rich person be a poor follower of Christ?
If a Christian gives away all their money, then who to?
Most Christians have steady respectable jobs, particularly in the state sector, complete with holidays and pensions. Their ethos of public service is all that is left that is good in the public sector.
But in giving money to charity, are they simply giving money to professional troughers in order to appease their consciences?
If they were to live like Christ, with no thought for the morrow, with no pension, trusting in each other and the Lord, would their charity be more effective? Certainly more poor people might enter their buildings. If the Church tried once again to live outside the State, would it live more truly within Society?
But, apart from giving a little more time and money to charity, what distinguishes a Christian from the modern heathen?
Amazingly, being poor almost totally excludes you from being a Christian here in England. The poor are powerless, and unless you live in a poor country, the Church is mostly made up of those who have power over others.
The poor are Jesus's favourites, yet modern Christians say they want to make poverty history.

Terrorist States

The United States and the United Kingdom are the world's two leading terrorist states. Arms sales, fomenting civil war, bombing, the use of chemical weapons such as napalm and depleted uranium is all in a day's work for the war criminals of the West. Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright was once asked, 'We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And you know, is the price worth it?', to which she infamously replied, 'I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it.'
Can there really be greater evil? The mass murder of innocents simply for geopolitical advantage. These criminals make Herod look good.
Here is a list of the countries bombed by the USA since the end of World War 2.

China   1945-6
Korea  1950-53
China  1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Guatemala 1964
Dominican Republic 1965-66
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Lebanon 1982-84
Grenada 1983-84
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1981-92
Nicaragua 1981-90
Iran 1987-88
Libya 1989
Pakistan 2003; 2006 -
Panama 1989-90
Iraq 1991
Kuwait 1991
Somalia 1992-94
Bosnia 1995
Iran 1998
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia/Serbia 1999
Afghanistan 2001
Yemen 2002
Iraq 2003
Yemen 2009
Libya 2011

The Lost Chord - Adelaide Anne Procter

Seated one day at the organ,
I was weary and I'll at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.

I know not what I was playing
Or what I was dreaming then,
But I struck one chord of music
Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an angel's psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife,
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.

It linked all my perplexed meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the organ,
And entered into mine.

It may be that death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,
It may be that only in Heav'n
I shall hear that grand amen.

John's Gospel Chapter 6 - Blessed Assurance

'All that the Father giveth to me, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.'

John Ball writes:
Jesus does not blame the unbelievers, he does not condemn them. He does not rage against the unbeliever.
For Jesus knows that faith is a gift of God. Those of us who know Jesus as Lord and Saviour, who struggle daily with the implications of his Love in our often sad and sinful existences, those of us who are allowed to approach the throne of Grace, in humble supplication, emptied of all pride, have been given to the Lord by his Father in heaven.
Our belief is not so much a decision as an opening of our eyes. As people possessing free agency we wish to honour the Lord, in gratitude for his Love, to honour his holiness, but we cannot, by our own will come to faith.
The gift of the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ comes through faith, which is a gift from God.
It is God who opens the eyes of the blind, not the blind themselves.
Don't place the burden of your own salvation on your shoulders! Don't have faith in your faith! You cannot 'fall out of grace'.
Look to Jesus, not yourself. He is your blessed assurance. He has come to set you free.