Alan Keyes
Will Americans embrace synoptic thinking?
By Alan Keyes
Synoptic: seeing apparently distinct things or events as they relate to one another to form, on the whole, a coherent plan, pattern or design
Data: Obama issues orders to allow open homosexuality in the military.
Data: An anti-Christian extremist who decries Christian military personnel who share their faith as "enemies of the Constitution," "virulently homophobic," and "human monsters" meets Obama-appointed Pentagon officials. The Pentagon thereafter issues "a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith."
Data: U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., says he believes open purchase orders from the Department of Homeland Security to buy over 1 billion rounds of ammunition are part of an "intentional" effort by the Obama administration to "dry up the market" for gun-owning citizens.
Data: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin believes the federal government is "stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest."
Data: "When the Rhode Island State Senate tallied up the votes against a same-sex marriage bill passed there on Wednesday, something was missing: Republicans. All five of the chamber's Republican lawmakers had voted for the bill." The Rhode Island legislation is part of a general offensive for same-sex marriage in politically vulnerable states around the country. The key to its prospects: support from "some of the country's leading Republican fundraisers and strategists." Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has angled for support from wealthy pro-gay marriage contributors like David Koch, flouts his opposition to any change in the BSA policy prohibiting homosexuality in the ranks or the adult leadership of the Scouting movement.
Data: And while – regarding so-called same-sex marriage – the elitist faction leaders and key financiers of the GOP promote the homosexual agenda, against the wishes of the voters the party is supposed to represent, at least one vocal proponent of that agenda admits that "the institution of marriage should not exist. ...[F]ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there – because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie."
In regard to political information, we live in times that are cursed with a blessing. Data flow with abundance – found, stored, and researched with relative ease. The bits and pieces are readily available. But the ability to perceive them as more than a series of bits and pieces, to parse, decode, and interpret them to make sense of the information they convey, on the whole, is not only rare, it is discouraged and frowned upon.
Consider the different pieces of information provided above. Taken as discrete bits of information, the reports about the possible prosecution of evangelistic Christians in the military and about GOP quislings on the issue of same-sex marriage might be mistaken for separate and discrete episodes. People concerned about the free exercise of religion may be prodded by the first. People concerned about the nature and integrity of family life may be poked by the second. But then we notice that the person attacking Christian evangelizers in the military seeks to label them as "virulently homophobic." The salience of this attack draws on the moral capital created by the success of the movement to destigmatize homosexuality and demonize those who disapprove of it. The push for same-sex marriage is the cutting edge of that movement. It creates an important component of the moral ammunition being fired off against Christians in the military.
The moral quislings in the GOP are setting the stage for legislative victories that arm the movement promoting homosexuality with the force of law, while leaving the large number of people who oppose this movement without representation (because the political party that is supposed to represent them is more and more openly collaborating with the other side). Will the government's effort to force people to violate their consciences on this and other issues (like the destruction of nascent human life) meet with opposition? Will armed force be required in this effort? Will it be opposed in kind?
Sarah Palin and Sen. Inhofe both agree in entertaining the possibility that the DHS effort to hoard ammunition is aimed at the America people. Inhofe suggests that it is intended to disarm the people. Palin suggests that it is intended to arm the government. Put the two things together, and you have a situation in which a disarmed people face a government monopoly of arms.
Is the implosion of the money economy the only likely scenario in which that monopoly comes into play? Or does it also have a bearing on the moral economy – i.e., the unconstitutional determination to enforce laws that deny and disparage the Ninth Amendment rights of the natural family, and to impose in their place government fabricated rights? Is the goal to keep order, or to impose a new order in which there is no basis for a claim of right except the arbitrary will of those in positions of power?
What if the government successfully claims the power to disregard claims of unalienable natural right with respect to the human family, the foundational institution of human social life? What will this mean in practice for the whole idea of God-endowed unalienable right, from which America's institutions of constitutional self-government (of, by, and for the people) derive their authority? Contrary to Rousseau's famous dictum, people are not born free. They are born into the nurturing bonds of family life. If there is no unalienable right to preserve the natural life of the human family, what unalienable rights are left to the human individuals the natural family exists to produce (by natural procreation), nurture, and sustain? If family has no meaning or worth but what the government dictates, is there some aspect of the meaning and worth of the natural human individual which government does not determine and control? People who have no natural heritage are apt to have no identity but what the government imposes upon them. In what vain, improbable fantasy of so-called freedom do we imagine as free, individuals with no sense of their own history or personality except what depends on the contrivance and permission of their rulers?
Thus it turns out that the data with which we began are not just separate bits and pieces of information, of concern to this or that special-interest constituency. Seen in relation to one another, they suggest a pattern of activity, a design aimed at subverting, in fact and principle, America's way of life in decent liberty. Tragically, the so-called "leaders" the elitist faction is presently imposing upon the nation intentionally include none with the strategic competence to understand and articulate that synoptic vision of the whole. Americans who wish to remain free have to look elsewhere. More and more they see the need, but do they have the will?
May 13, 2013
Synoptic: seeing apparently distinct things or events as they relate to one another to form, on the whole, a coherent plan, pattern or design
Data: Obama issues orders to allow open homosexuality in the military.
Data: An anti-Christian extremist who decries Christian military personnel who share their faith as "enemies of the Constitution," "virulently homophobic," and "human monsters" meets Obama-appointed Pentagon officials. The Pentagon thereafter issues "a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith."
Data: U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., says he believes open purchase orders from the Department of Homeland Security to buy over 1 billion rounds of ammunition are part of an "intentional" effort by the Obama administration to "dry up the market" for gun-owning citizens.
Data: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin believes the federal government is "stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest."
Data: "When the Rhode Island State Senate tallied up the votes against a same-sex marriage bill passed there on Wednesday, something was missing: Republicans. All five of the chamber's Republican lawmakers had voted for the bill." The Rhode Island legislation is part of a general offensive for same-sex marriage in politically vulnerable states around the country. The key to its prospects: support from "some of the country's leading Republican fundraisers and strategists." Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who has angled for support from wealthy pro-gay marriage contributors like David Koch, flouts his opposition to any change in the BSA policy prohibiting homosexuality in the ranks or the adult leadership of the Scouting movement.
Data: And while – regarding so-called same-sex marriage – the elitist faction leaders and key financiers of the GOP promote the homosexual agenda, against the wishes of the voters the party is supposed to represent, at least one vocal proponent of that agenda admits that "the institution of marriage should not exist. ...[F]ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there – because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie."
In regard to political information, we live in times that are cursed with a blessing. Data flow with abundance – found, stored, and researched with relative ease. The bits and pieces are readily available. But the ability to perceive them as more than a series of bits and pieces, to parse, decode, and interpret them to make sense of the information they convey, on the whole, is not only rare, it is discouraged and frowned upon.
Consider the different pieces of information provided above. Taken as discrete bits of information, the reports about the possible prosecution of evangelistic Christians in the military and about GOP quislings on the issue of same-sex marriage might be mistaken for separate and discrete episodes. People concerned about the free exercise of religion may be prodded by the first. People concerned about the nature and integrity of family life may be poked by the second. But then we notice that the person attacking Christian evangelizers in the military seeks to label them as "virulently homophobic." The salience of this attack draws on the moral capital created by the success of the movement to destigmatize homosexuality and demonize those who disapprove of it. The push for same-sex marriage is the cutting edge of that movement. It creates an important component of the moral ammunition being fired off against Christians in the military.
The moral quislings in the GOP are setting the stage for legislative victories that arm the movement promoting homosexuality with the force of law, while leaving the large number of people who oppose this movement without representation (because the political party that is supposed to represent them is more and more openly collaborating with the other side). Will the government's effort to force people to violate their consciences on this and other issues (like the destruction of nascent human life) meet with opposition? Will armed force be required in this effort? Will it be opposed in kind?
Sarah Palin and Sen. Inhofe both agree in entertaining the possibility that the DHS effort to hoard ammunition is aimed at the America people. Inhofe suggests that it is intended to disarm the people. Palin suggests that it is intended to arm the government. Put the two things together, and you have a situation in which a disarmed people face a government monopoly of arms.
Is the implosion of the money economy the only likely scenario in which that monopoly comes into play? Or does it also have a bearing on the moral economy – i.e., the unconstitutional determination to enforce laws that deny and disparage the Ninth Amendment rights of the natural family, and to impose in their place government fabricated rights? Is the goal to keep order, or to impose a new order in which there is no basis for a claim of right except the arbitrary will of those in positions of power?
What if the government successfully claims the power to disregard claims of unalienable natural right with respect to the human family, the foundational institution of human social life? What will this mean in practice for the whole idea of God-endowed unalienable right, from which America's institutions of constitutional self-government (of, by, and for the people) derive their authority? Contrary to Rousseau's famous dictum, people are not born free. They are born into the nurturing bonds of family life. If there is no unalienable right to preserve the natural life of the human family, what unalienable rights are left to the human individuals the natural family exists to produce (by natural procreation), nurture, and sustain? If family has no meaning or worth but what the government dictates, is there some aspect of the meaning and worth of the natural human individual which government does not determine and control? People who have no natural heritage are apt to have no identity but what the government imposes upon them. In what vain, improbable fantasy of so-called freedom do we imagine as free, individuals with no sense of their own history or personality except what depends on the contrivance and permission of their rulers?
Thus it turns out that the data with which we began are not just separate bits and pieces of information, of concern to this or that special-interest constituency. Seen in relation to one another, they suggest a pattern of activity, a design aimed at subverting, in fact and principle, America's way of life in decent liberty. Tragically, the so-called "leaders" the elitist faction is presently imposing upon the nation intentionally include none with the strategic competence to understand and articulate that synoptic vision of the whole. Americans who wish to remain free have to look elsewhere. More and more they see the need, but do they have the will?
To see more articles by Dr. Keyes, visit his blog at LoyalToLiberty.com and his commentary at WND.com and BarbWire.com.
© Alan KeyesThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
