A NATION OF SHEEP: TYRANNY ON THE MARCH
An Urgent Exhortation
by Pauly Fongemie, September 27, 2013
Feast of Sts. Cosmos and Damian, Physician-Martyrs


In his work, WHENCE COME WARS, 1940, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen wrote this concerning tyranny, about which he was most prescient:

"We are just waking up to the old historical truth that the loss of God is the beginning of tyranny." [p. 11]

So many people now look up in horror and disbelief to see how far our country has descended into a police state of PC irrationality, loathsome and unduly regulations, heavy debt, unjust taxation, the slaughter of the innocent in the womb, the legitimization of perversity, the celebration of the absurd and the grotesque, and the ruling regime's actual, willful abuse of power by writing its own laws by fiat and disregarding those duly constituted laws that oppose its despotic aims bent on "total transformation of America". They ask, "How could this have happened?" It began with the removal of God and His right to govern over the actions of men not only privately, but publicly. This blasphemous apostasy was and is accomplished on the installment plan, counting on the weakness of human nature whereby most men, although capable as individuals, tend to become ineffectual sheep as a group, content only on acquiring their own necessities, without regard to the larger socio-political reality around them. The tactic is easy - overwhelm the flock one incident at a time, so that even the more vigilant and valiant members tire from having to constantly overcome the perennial onslaughts.

Let me use a prosaic analogy. Some years ago, undetected by us at first, an old tree in our backyard had become infected with a large army of ants that eventually overran our home, one ant at a time. It started almost seemingly innocuous at first. One ant showed up in our kitchen. I quickly dispatched the creature into oblivion. It was small and it was easy, although I do not like killing any animal as such, simply because as a woman I was made for bringing forth life, not taking it, and the instinct is so strong, I have to gear myself up to kill a simple insect, even though I know I am morally permitted to do so. I left to do an errand and when I returned, I found more than one ant in three or four places. I killed those, too, but I had to work faster as they were scurrying to shelter as fast as their little legs would carry them. Thinking I was finally done and confused about the sudden invasion of ants where there had been none before, I decided to see if I had accidentally left some crumbs around the counters or on the floor. I wiped everything down to be certain - I did not find anything that I could see - and when I finished I was wearied as we have a large country kitchen. Suddenly more ants emerged, this time double or more the number from before. I had to elicit my husband's help when he came home from work. He set up ant traps which did the trick, but he had to get to the hardware store quickly while I remained at home slaying as many of the oncoming horde as possible. That month a workman in our yard discovered that the source was the old tree. When the tree was taken down and carted off, the ant problem subsided and soon we never had another ant disrupting our home. Ants in Maine are usually small, easily killed without any effort as long as they arrive one at a time, yet this, too, takes diligence to maintain guard and it can be exhausting if enough of the vermin infest at the same time or speedily in succession.

This is what has occurred in America. The inundation method of unjust, unreasonable acts by government and those social organs in concert with them, at first just a little -as trial balloons - then more, time after time, and then more and more until the polity at large surrenders out of sheer discouragement at having to be so watchful and at the ready. The balloons begin to take flight and permeate the national horizon. Ever since we decided, or rather, let the elites, led by the animus against Christ from the ACLU tribe, decide for us [by not impeaching judges who rubber-stamped the assault], that the natural law and its attendant responsibilities before God could be dispensed with, the left has pushed us to the brink of utter disaster. The means was as delineated above, one case at a time until the people felt so taxed with constant effort to repel the invasion against western Tradition that it seemed easier to just let "them have their way, as I have a family to take care of and the tax man cometh more and more, I have enough to worry about..."   The intelligentsia refer to this breakdown of divide [causing sides in approach to the reproach against normalcy to form] and conquer, "progressivism", which serves to disguise the pernicious intent, all the more insidiously. We still tend to react to liberalism but seem confused and unsure when faced with the ideas called progressive, as if they were actually different. The only difference is in the methodology, not the final outcome, a totalitarian state! By officially denying God in our public institutions and tolerating those who imposed this insult to Heaven upon us, we lost the grace of God to the extent we began to merit the government we got. A nation of sheep. Our founders spoke and wrote eloquently about the need for vigilance as one of the costs of self-rule and ordered liberty.  G.K. Chesterton has warned modernity about the nature of tyranny and its advancing encroachment, emphasis in bold mine:

"Tyranny is the opposite of authority, for authority simply means right; and nothing is authoritative except what somebody has a right to do, and therefore is right in doing ... Tyranny means too little authority; for though, of course, an individual may use wrongly the power that may go with it, he is in that act disloyal to the law of right, which should be his own authority." [As I Was Saying, pp. 158-59] and

"Modern tyranny can find its prototype in the torturing of heathen slaves in two fundamental respects. First, that the modern world has returned to the test of the heathen world, ... that of considering service to the state and not justice to the individual ..." [Fancies Versus Fads, p. 106]

There is no other way to describe our sorry state than through the analytical lens of this great thinker and devout Traditionalist of western culture and mores.

The Obama-led "transformation" of America is on the installment plan also, but on the fast track; he can count on a generation or more of nabobs, who have been deliberately "dumbed down" in the government schools, no longer worthy of the name voter, yea, even citizen, if we are to be objectively honest. The idea of a Constitutional Republic with limited government and personal self-restraint and self-reliance, is a foreign notion to them, now almost 40 % of the populace. So those in power with unholy designs and the will to use that power - a form of corruption - to implement them are confident that the sheep are by now so dumb that they do not even realize that they are sheep being led to their enslavement in the almighty despotic state.

But maybe not so fast. We have always had the stalwart, the brave, the persistent patriots who do not cede ground to tyranny, whatever the personal cost. We used to call them statesmen, as opposed to politicians and they were not so few and generally admired. Today they are heroic and singular and much despised by the vanguard left and their allies in the media and academia. They must be denounced as evil, in fact, not just "misguided". This is why when the Democratic pro-abortion Texas state legislator filibustered a pro-life bill she was hailed as a champion of democracy. When Ted Cruz exercised the same right, the right to dissent from a proposed law, he is considered an untouchable by the same crowd. Hypocrisy raised to a new low.

At the heart of the consecration of the nation to the Obama tyranny is the control and subjugation of the people through literally holding the matter of life and death in its behemoth claws -so-called "Health Care". During his pre-presidential days Obama opined that the people were not ready for a one system medical plan [the government], so that they would have to be convinced by subterfuge, making it eventually a fait accompli because the system that is initially established is so untenable chaos ensues and the government appears to be the savior. An old scheme, rather effective given human nature. After all it is human nature, given the trajectory of the Progressive mentality instilled slowly in the universities and schools and the media that largely shares the Progressive agenda and even approves of its scurrilous methods, to prefer safety to liberty. However, once the principle is sacrificed it is almost impossible to recover it. The leftists - "progressive" or not - bank on this.

Maybe not so fast. We are not without hope, for in our midst has arisen a mighty cohort of republicans, who also happen to be Republicans, the kind we have seen little of as of late, hence the string of losses to the morally bankrupt Democrats who have no sense of shame in their hypocrisy and smug self-satisfaction, which is anything but appealing in anyone claiming to be an adult while representing the people.

Enter stage right Senators Ted Cruz and company, few in number but many in the people they represent, from Maine to Alaska to Texas and all points south and west and north and where decent hard-working, God-fearing Americans still inhabit the land once known as America the Beautiful. Since the left will brook no dissent - a robust debate of real ideas is an anathema to it - any resistance to the statist cause, the law-breaking regime entrenched with its myriad bureaucracies with a multitude of tentacles to strangle and or intimidate the people, must be crushed. Thus we witnessed the spectacle of the progressive wing of the leftist party - "mainstream Republicans" - refusing to support Sen. Cruz who is simply keeping his campaign promise to Texans that he would do everything in his power under the law, to oppose Obamacare. For this he is excoriated, denigrated, slandered, hung on a cross as if a criminal. But then Algore, mutant progressive has recently suggested that any business that dissents from the liberal bias on various matters he and his ilk favor, ought to be fined. I am not kidding, he was serious.

The senator named Cruz, which means cross in Spanish, is not intimidated. By any modern standard and plenty of old-fashioned ones also, he is indeed heroic and truly an inspiration to the rest of us sorely in need of light, we have already too much heat or the hot air of oppression from those who are but parasites in disguise! Senator Cruz is that light, shining forth a penetrating beam of truth and human reason and normalcy unto the nation. This is an exhortation, an urgent exhortation to this nation of sheep, wake up and stand up before we relinquish all rights to do so; it is almost time now, for our right to bear arms in self-defense, especially against the ruthless, lawless government, will be taken away from us; the process has already begun, again, one stomping boot, one crushing heel, one brown shirt foray at a time. Wake up America and reclaim out right to liberty and self determination, especially in those regions of the most intimate, the traditional family and one's household, one's very life. Just this past week a young school boy who was playing in his own yard with a toy gun duly purchased legally by his mother was suspended from school because supposedly a school bus happened to be nearby and his mother charged with a felony as if she had bought a real gun on the sly, then gave it to her son. This is just one incident of so many like ones, such as the father who was arrested at a school board meeting because he wanted to have answers that he is rightly entitled to about Common Core. The DA later dropped the charges, not because he said they were wrong, but because at the moment such a trial would not serve the elite's purposes. Note, he said the charges were legitimate and just!

I salute Sen. Cruz and those who supported him on the floor of the US Senate this week and I praise and thank Almighty God for his witness, his courage and tenacity, his fidelity to duty, to his constituents who are also his neighbors and to our country which used to have thousands of Ted Cruzes. May a thousand more join him every week until there are millions. My motto is that one woman, with the courage of her convictions makes up a majority. Might that go doubly for Sen. Ted Cruz and his fellow soldiers. I will pray for them every day on the Rosary as I do for the country; won't you please join me?

This soldier, this simple woman from Maine of hearty immigrant stock who taught her to love America and to esteem and guard western Tradition and the natural law, stands with Ted Cruz and proclaims to the tyrants on the move, that I will not march in lockstep. I am not afraid for myself, only for a nation of sheep who cower while still grazing, even when they know what is really right but rationalize away their perfidy to their neighbor. To the drum beat of the modern style - really the same old style - despots and despisers of normalcy, I say:

NO SURRENDER!







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