FLAGLESS

An Update

(1)  We’re a member site of Liberty Web Alliance now.  They’re the group that brings you CopBlock.org and other valuable sites.  You can see the introductory interview that r0thbard conducted with me here: Interview with r0thbard.

I’m excited to continue the expansion of network, not because I like feeling like I’m part of a collective mind (like that has any value as a dictator of truth claim) but because cognitive friendship is a valuable asset in a time when our general understanding of things is seriously questioned by 95% of our peers.

It makes me realize that, yes, this is worth continuing.

(2)  We’re working through where we should go next.  We’ve made the sweeping position statements (here, here, here, and here) that I think are necessary to make.  We have some outstanding questions that I think we’ll spend some time answering over the next few weeks and we have the major pestering questions that Christians tend to hole up in and then refuse to listen to anything we say until we’ve answered them.  Since those questions revolve mainly around proof texts I think that what we’re going to do is intermittently address the texts.

My pastor is working through 1st Peter right now and I know how he is going to interpret 1st Peter 2 when it comes around so that may be where I start.  I have confidence that I’m going to receive more than a few in-my-face comments after that sermon so I’d like to have a prepared defense.

Anyway, if any of you follow us out there, that’s the plan.  Enjoy.

Ryan Day Thompson, Contributor
The Flagless Cooperative

Ryan’s Revolution Reading List

So I’ve had a reading list requested from me several times in the last few weeks.  Any of you reading this who know me know that I read profusely and never make any decision without first consulting multiple sides of an argument in print.  Of course, fewer and fewer of you who read me are people I know.  Sooo…yeah.  I read a lot.

Anyway, here are the books, articles, and musicians I recommend you read.  If you care to read.  Which you should.  I have included links to various bookstores that carry these if you want physical media and links to ePubs and PDF’s if you don’t.

• The Machinery of Freedom, David Friedman (DON’T END HERE.  Friedman misses crucial aspects of the truly free market and his systems of privatization are not that good.)  (Physical | PDF)
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• Man, Economy, and State, Murray Rothbard (This is an economics treatise.  It is rough sledding and 1000+ pages.  Like any book of this size, read the chapters that look interesting to you.  You really will benefit from understand Austrian Business Cycle Theory though.)
  (Physical | ePub | PDF)
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• Human Action, Ludwig Von Mises (If you like Ron Paul, you have to read this book.  Paul goes nowhere without this tattered old tome.  In fact, I would advocate that you can’t really be a Paul supporter in good conscience and not read this book.) (Physical | ePub | PDF)
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• No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, Lysander Spooner (If you’re brainwashed into believing that the Constitution is somehow still an authoritative document, you need to read this.) (Physical | HTML)
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• For a New Liberty, Murray Rothbard (So you want practical?  Here it is.  The quintessential Libertarian tome!) (Physical | ePub | PDF)
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• Resist Not Evil!, Clarence Darrow (Sure, he defended Scopes.  Get over it.  People can be wrong about some things and spot on about others.) (Physical | ePub | PDF)
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• Advocates of Free Markets Should Embrace “Anti-Capitalism”, Gary Chartier (Necessary.) (PDF)
  Also:  Libertarian Anti-Capitalism, Charles Johnson (Again, necessary.) (HTML)
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• Agorist Class Theory, Wally Conger (I haven’t read this entirely, but what I have read is gold.  Read it.) (PDF)
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• Anarchy as Order, David S. D’Amato (HTML)
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• The Myth of a Christian Nation, Gregory Boyd (So you think America was founded a Christian nation?  Wrong!) (Physical)
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• Love & War & The Sea In Between, Josh Garrels (I have no idea where this guy falls politically but he appears to be the only “Christian” musician who even remotely understands my life.  All the others are off with their heads stuck in the heavens and apparently have no idea how to apply the Biblical gospel to everyday life.  That or they’re just out for money.) (Free Download)
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• Ending Tyranny without Violence, Murray Rothbard (HTML)
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• The Bible, God (This book is only last because most of you asking for my reading list already read it.  However, I could babble about Rothbard and Mises forever and it would make no difference if they had nothing true to say.  Here’s the deal:  The Austrian/Voluntarist/Agorist/Anarchist scheme lines up squarely with Biblical truth when it comes to championing human rights and revealing and opposing the Satanic influence of the state.  In a way, the Bible is the original resistance manual.  Just go read Acts if you don’t believe me.)

So there it is.  Ideas are found in books!  Ideas change the world!  Read, read, read!

Ryan Day Thompson, Contributor
Flagless: A Christian Anarchist Cooperative

Has the American State Become Your Religion?

“You shall have no other gods before me.” (Ex. 20:3)

Before falsely using YHWH’s name, before the sabbath, before honor of father and mother, before murder, adultery, theft, or false witness or coveting, before all of these is this single command: “You shall have no other gods before me.”  It is unqualified.  Commentators have noted how the commands that follow this one command and every book that follows Exodus relate to it.  Jesus summed up the two tables and their Deuteronomical and Levitical reiterations well.  He said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and…you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” (Matt. 22:37-38).  Throughout the Old and New Testaments the command is clear.  When a king of Israel set up idols to Baal?  He got sick and died or got killed in battle.  When the Israelites themselves served Baal?  The whole nation experienced strife and suffering.  Israel was eventually conquered and destroyed for their idolatry.  When Ananias and Sapphira worshiped their stuff rather than their creator?  They died.  Moses made it clear.  The prophets made it clear.  The Psalmists made it clear.  Job made it clear.  Jesus made it clear.  Paul made it clear.  There is no God but YHWH.  You cannot serve YHWH and serve another god.

Whenever the followers of YHWH have ceased following Him, be it the church or Israel (if you choose to make that distinction,) and followed gods and systems who disdained human life, indulged in human sacrifice, and called for general immorality, the followers of YHWH have proven themselves not followers at all but, rather, idolaters who fall into many immoral pursuits.  The writer of Hebrews said it well, “For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief,” (Heb. 3:16-19).  This is one of those rare texts that connects disobedience closely with unbelief.  Those people who called themselves follower of YHWH?  They were no followers at all, they were unbelievers and they proved it with their actions of unfaithfulness to YHWH.

Imagine a god who calls for you to sacrifice your children!  Imagine a god who calls for you to slaughter humans on his altar!  Imagine a god who calls you to steal from your neighbor!  Imagine a god who demands that you devote yourself to it and no other.  “Baal!” you say.  “Moloch!” you say.  Why, yes, those gods did demand human sacrifice, theft, and pure devotion.  They are gods of aggression.  They are gods whose image we surely do not bear.  They are not YHWH.  They are not the true God.  If you worship them you worship nothing and show yourself to be an unbeliever.

However, I am not talking about Baal or Moloch per se.  I speak of the modern Baal.

Hear me out.

When you pay your taxes, the state takes that money and uses it to kill women and children both here and abroad in the protection of their own interests.  When you put on a uniform and wield a weapon on behalf of the state to kill, you kill the son of another father and mother and a creature created in the image of God.  When you vote, you perpetuate a system of democracy that is rooted in injustice (imagine using a majority of 51% to screw 49% out of their inherent right to something!)  When you take millions of dollars from the state you swear your devotion to it for life.  When you campaign for Rick Perry, or Ron Paul, or Michelle Bachmann, or Mitt Romney, or Barack Obama, or any human, you say, “This, I worship!”  “The state?” you say?  “HOW DARE YOU!?”

I am tracking a deeply disturbing trend: many Christians maddeningly refuse to hear “Christarchists” out when they decry the state’s protection of itself in war.  Many Christians virtually stop their ears and gnash their teeth before they will hear us out when we decry the use of your taxes for abortion and the killing of the Muslim (while they somehow still “oppose” abortion and murder.)  Many Christians refuse to hear us out when we decry the perpetuation of a system rooted in the injustice of the many oppressing the few.  Many Christians refuse to hear us out when we question the validity of an institution that calls them to murder, steal, and inflict poverty wherever they go.

It is as if we were decrying the worship of YHWH!  It is almost as if we used the very name of YHWH in vain!  I, personally, have been sworn at, accused of being “inconsistent” with my worldview, and told that I am a disgrace to to the concept of freedom.

Why?  Because I have chosen to live consistently with the Sermon on the Mount?  Because I have attempted to live as consistently as possible with the system of non-aggression that the Bible predominantly espouses?  Because I have expressed disdain for a Church that largely refuses to do its work and feed the poor?  Because I have called for Voluntary consent to all taxes and systems of government (imagine a world in which we may voluntarily decide where we want our money and efforts to go!  Is that not freedom?!)  Because I have asked you to actually do what you say you’re doing and read Thomas Jefferson’s hatred of centralized government and banking?  Because I have dared to point out that we in Evangelicalism and many Reformed circles are treating the Constitution as if it were God breathed?

Christians, the American state is the modern Baal!  The voting booth is the modern “high place!”  Politicians are the modern Asherim, the Constitution a modern Golden Calf, partisan politics the modern Marduk.  As Moloch asked the Israelites to sacrifice their children on his altars, the state demands that we fund its murder of children.  As Asher demanded immorality on her altars, the state demands at the point of a gun that we fund every immorality which we supposedly oppose.  As Nebuchadnezzar built a giant image of himself and demanded Daniel worship it, the state presents politicians of all colors who build an image of themselves through various media and demand that we worship them with our vote and consent (and, subsequently, our money, time, and lives.)

I am seriously uncomfortable in my church now.  Why?  Every time I look at my pastor (who preaches amazing, Biblical, Christ-centered sermons) I see the American flag directly behind him.  That’s right, the symbol of the modern Baal, proudly displayed for all to see and hear that we condone the murder of children, that we love war, that we adore theft!  That flag speaks so loudly I cannot hear my pastor anymore.  We may as well have a Pentagram on the wall!  Let us display the Asherim!  Let us build a high place!  Let us mold a golden calf and dance around it!  Let us bow down and worship Tiamat!  If we’re going to go this far we may as well “go the whole hog!”

Christians, the American state is dangerously close to being our religion if it is not already.  It is becoming hard to distinguish between the two for me.  Do we serve Baal, or do we serve YHWH?  Choose, and choose quickly, because this state is about to demand your total and complete worship.

If we bow down, we prove our unbelief.   YHWH and YHWH alone is God.  If we dance around this golden calf, we prove that we do not ultimately believe that Christ is the one and all-sufficient King. 

Do we serve YHWH, or do we serve Herman Cain?  Do we serve YHWH or do we serve the Republican party?  Do we serve YHWH, or do we serve the American state?  Has the American state become our religion?

We worship in vain before blocks of wood and dead pillars of stone wrought by the hands of men if we continue to serve America, the modern Baal.

There is no King but Christ!  Let us serve the King!

Ryan Day Thompson, Contributor
The Flagless Cooperative