This same “Playbook” also shows us how to Resist Tyranny

Catholic Candle note: The article below concerns the descent of the U.S. government (and other Western governments) into tyranny.[1]  While the evidence we give below comes mostly from the U.S., similar evidence can be found in other Western countries. 

Although it is true that we suffer under increasing tyranny, we must also remember that revolution is a sin and Catholics are not revolutionaries.  Read the explanation for that truth here: https://catholiccandle.org/2021/02/01/revolution-is-in-the-air/

 

 

Human nature always remains the same and so the virtues of good men and the vices of evil men remain essentially the same as they always were.  One consequence of this truth is that the “playbook” for acquiring and maintaining a tyrannical government is essentially the same as it was throughout all history.

For this reason, our best guides/teachers concerning the features of tyranny (and the rest of the science of political life) remain the ancient (and greatest) philosophers of all time, namely, St. Thomas Aquinas (the greatest Doctor of the Catholic Church), and the magnificent Aristotle.

St. Thomas and Aristotle describe how governments act when they seek to achieve and maintain tyranny.  We see their descriptions of tyranny given so long ago now being exemplified daily in news reports, especially since March 2020.

A tyrannical government seeks discord among its citizens to prevent them from uniting against the tyranny.

A tyrannical government fears that its people will unite against the tyranny imposed on them.  Thus, such government seeks to divide its people into warring or contentious factions or classes, to keep them too weak and disunited to effectively oppose the tyranny.

Here is how Aristotle explains this truth:

[One] art of the tyrant is to sow quarrels among the citizens; friends [being] embroiled with friends, the people with the notables,[2] and the rich with one another.[3]

Current application: Our increasingly-tyrannical government actively fosters division and contention among its people.  Thus, for example, the government fosters division of the people into a plethora of “victim” groups whose grievances are constantly stoked and whose resentment it encourages.  The tyrannical government and its allies[4] (e.g., in the mainstream media, Big Tech, radical universities, big corporations[5], big banks[6], etc.) promote such division along the lines of race[7], gender, unnatural vice, “transgender”, immigration status, and many other bases.

Our increasingly-tyrannical government encourages people to “snitch” (tattletale) on each other, for non-compliance with abusive COVID-restrictions, seeking to set its people against each other.[8]  As the mayor of Los Angeles stated: “snitches get rewards.”[9]  This mentality should be abhorrent to a free people.

A tyrannical government seeks to eliminate opportunities for its people to build bonds of friendship and trust.

Not only does a tyrannical government promote divisiveness among its people, but it also seeks to prevent the opposite from happening, viz., development by its people of strong bonds of friendship and trust between each other.  Such bonds would allow the people to unite against the oppressive government and in other ways join together in ways not controlled by the tyrants.[10]

Here is how St. Thomas explains the tyrant’s suppression of the people’s bonds of friendship and mutual trust:

They [viz., tyrants] also see to it that there be no friendly relations among these [viz., the people] so that they may not enjoy the benefits resulting from being on good terms with one another, for as long as one has no confidence in the other, no plot will be set up against the tyrant’s domination.  Wherefore they … forbid anything which furthers society and co-operation among men, such as marriage, company at table, and anything of like character, through which familiarity and confidence are engendered among men.[11]

Similarly, Aristotle teaches that tyrants act this way:

[A tyrant] must not allow common meals, clubs, education, and the like; … he must prohibit literary assemblies or other meetings for discussion, and he must take every means to prevent people from knowing one another, for acquaintance begets mutual confidence.[12]

Current application: Among the countless examples of our increasingly-tyrannical government seeking to alienate the people from each other, we see lockdowns by which abusive government seeks to prevent the association of good people with each other, while allowing Marxist protestors and rioters to have free reign to promote disorder, civil unrest, destruction, and other evils.[13]

Our increasingly-tyrannical government closes restaurants as well as commands the people not to gather in their homes with friends and relatives.  One Canadian Premier boasted that he is “the guy who’s stealing Christmas” because he abusively banned social gatherings then.[14]

Our increasingly-tyrannical governments are abusing their authority by alienating people from each other by stifling social contact through mask mandates, so-called “social-distancing” and other anti-social commands.[15]

The tyrants prohibit people from gathering at funerals and from visiting the sick at hospitals because those acts promote charity and human bonds between members of society.

Our oppressors ordered the closing of most businesses, clubs, and meeting places.  They banned serious attempts at education and allowed only ineffective “pretend” education over Zoom.

Our increasingly-tyrannical government’s destruction of society’s cohesiveness has become more abusive recently, but has long included the evil of pushing mothers out of the home[16] to get a “career”[17] and to destabilize the family[18] by promoting divorce and temporary “romantic” liaisons while at the same time discouraging marriage.[19]

Just as in communist countries, Western governments are implementing (or currently developing) “vaccine passports” to control the people’s travel in order to cement control over them.

Our increasingly-tyrannical government seeks to know everything we do.

Our increasingly-tyrannical government seeks to keep the people under constant surveillance.

Here is how Aristotle explains this conduct of tyrants:

Further, [a tyrant] must compel all persons staying in the city to appear in public and live at his gates; then he will know what they are doing: if they are always kept under, they will learn to be humble.  In short, … a tyrant …  endeavor[s] to know what each of his subjects says or does, and … employ[s] spies ….[20]

Applications:

One dramatic example is the Obama-era initiative directing the National Security Administration to conduct the MYSTIC and RETRO programs to gather and record the voice phone calls of Americans and others.[21]  This program was secretly begun in 2009 and only revealed in 2014 by whistleblower Edward Snowden.[22]  Because of subsequent political pressure, the U.S. federal government announced that it “voluntarily” limited the scope and reach of these programs.  It is unclear how the true status can be known since the program’s very existence was kept secret for about five years.

There are video cameras watching people virtually everywhere.  These cameras are in use not only in communist countries such as China[23] but also in places such as Belgium[24], France, Britain (4.2 million cameras),[25] and Atlanta, Georgia, (11,000 cameras) [26] watching everything the people do.

In other ways also, communist governments[27] and the increasingly-tyrannical Western governments, such as Germany[28], constantly surveille their people.

Increasingly-tyrannical Western governments seek to corrupt the morals of the people

A tyrannical government seeks to erode the virtues of its citizens – especially courage – as well as to harm its people’s spiritual good in other ways, because virtue makes citizens act according to both reason and firm principles; but these very qualities are independent of the control of the tyrannical government.  Thus, virtuous men cannot be easily manipulated by the whims of an evil government.  Here is how St. Thomas explains this truth:

Nor does the tyrant merely oppress his subjects in corporal things but he also hinders their spiritual good.  Those who seek more to use, than to be of use to, their subjects prevent all progress, suspecting all excellence in their subjects to be prejudicial to their own evil domination.  For tyrants hold the good [citizens] in greater suspicion than the wicked, and to them the valor of others is always fraught with danger.  So, the above-mentioned tyrants strive to prevent those of their subjects who have become virtuous from acquiring valor and high spirit in order that they may not want to cast off their [viz., the tyrants’] iniquitous domination.[29]

Application: Among the countless examples of tyrannical governments oppressing the virtue of its citizens, we see governments attempting to disarm the people[30] lest they courageously defend themselves against criminals and/or tyranny.

Likewise, tyrannical governments seek to stifle other instances of standing up for morals, such as a cake bakery refusing to make a cake to celebrate a “lifestyle” of vile impurity.[31]  In another example, a British man is arrested for reading the Bible in public, concern what marriage and the family are.[32]

We see the government-supported schools teaching how to commit the vilest impurities and indoctrinating students about the advantages of murdering innocent babies.

The increasingly-tyrannical governments (and their media allies) promote immorality as well as acting on emotion, rather than encouraging people to use their reason.[33]

The tyrants order most of society to “lockdown” and command the closing of churches[34] while permitting marijuana dispensaries[35] and clinics murdering innocent babies[36] to be designated “essential businesses” which can remain open.

Our increasingly-tyrannical government seeks to prevent its citizens from obtaining wealth and power which is independent of the government, but promotes wealth and power for those persons who are the tyrants’ own allies in oppressing the people.

A tyrannical government fears its citizens who are rich and powerful unless it controls those citizens or unless they are allies in the tyranny. 

Aristotle teaches:

It is characteristic of a tyrant to dislike everyone who has dignity or independence ….[37]

St. Thomas further explains this truth:

They [viz., tyrants] moreover strive to prevent their subjects from becoming powerful and rich since, suspecting these to be as wicked as themselves, they fear their power and wealth; for the subjects might become harmful to them even as they are accustomed to use power and wealth to harm others.[38]

Aristotle adds more points along the same line:

[A tyrant seeks to] impoverish his subjects; he thus provides against the maintenance of a guard by the citizen and the people, having to keep hard at work, [so they] are prevented from conspiring.  …  Another practice of tyrants is to multiply taxes ….[39]

Application: We see Bill Gates, George Soros, the Big Tech companies, Big Pharma,[40] the “Big box” stores all thriving and all using their political and economic muscle to promote the increasing tyranny which is oppressing the people.  Meanwhile, the governments’ abusive lockdowns and regulations are oppressing small business and bankrupting the “mom and pop” businesses, which are forced to shut down because of lockdowns (if other government meddling does not kill them first).  Also, this destruction of our economy causes unemployment, impoverishment and dependence on the government.

Further, inflation and debasement of our currency are like hidden taxes to impoverish the people.[41]

The leftists not only push socialism, big government, and tremendous spending sprees in Western countries, but also increase taxes, seeking to destroy the financial independence of the people.

Our increasingly-tyrannical government promotes endless foreign wars

When a government is tyrannical, it seeks to engage in continual military activities in other places in the world, to weaken the country and make people tired of conflict so they are less likely to be willing to challenge their own tyrannical government.  Such foreign wars also impoverish the people and tend to make them rally behind their (tyrannical) leaders because they face a foreign foe.  Here is how Aristotle teaches this truth:

The tyrant is also fond of making war in order that his subjects may have something to do and be always in want of a leader.[42]

Dystopian novelist, George Orwell, portrays how tyrannical governments stay in power, in part, because of continual trumped-up wars.  Here is the setting of his novel, 1984:

[W]ar had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war. …[43]

In principle, the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population.  In practice, the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage.  It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.[44]

Application:

The U.S. and other Western countries have embarked in a long string of foreign wars where victory was seemingly not the goal and these countries withdrew after sufficient time, energy, blood and treasure were exhausted.  These countries are now working toward supposed withdrawing from Afghanistan (the U.S.’s longest war) and Iraq, preceded by earlier “adventures” in Iraq, Kuwait, Vietnam, Korea, Libya (two wars), Syria, Uganda, Somalia (two wars), Serbia, Haiti, and Bosnia, in the last three decades.[45]

As governments become increasingly tyrannical, the people become dispirited, demoralized, and discouraged from participating in public life, and they hide themselves.

When a government is tyrannical, people “keep their heads down” and don’t join in public life because they do not want to be attacked.  Here is how St. Thomas explains this truth:

[As it says in the Book of Proverbs, 28:28]: “When the wicked rise up men shall hide themselves”, that they may escape the cruelty of the tyrant.  It is no wonder, for a man governing without reason, according to the lust of his soul, in no way differs from the beast.  Whence Solomon says [Prov 28:15]: “As a roaring lion and a hungry bear, so is a wicked prince over the poor people.”  Therefore, men hide from tyrants as from cruel beasts and it seems that to be subject to a tyrant is the same thing as to lie prostrate beneath a raging beast.[46]

Application: In 2019, a mother in Notre Dame, Indiana was disturbed by the indecent attire worn by the young women in church, wrote a local newspaper editorial asking women to dress more modestly.[47]  She was attacked contemptuously from all over the U.S. including in the Washington Post.[48]  That is one of countless messages leftists send, telling people of common sense, who have somewhat conservative views, to stay quiet or you will be attacked.

In another example, a “Christian” bakery closes down because the owners were exhausted because of harassment by leftists.[49]

Similarly, conservative-leaning teachers and university professors and many others in public life “keep their heads down” or retire early (just when we need them the most), to avoid being viciously attacked. 

Aristotle sums up the character of tyrants

Aristotle recaps a tyrant this way: there is no wickedness too great for him.[50]

Application: We see the truth of Aristotle’s observation in the decadence promoted by our increasingly-tyrannical governments.  For example, Virginia’s governor and many other government leaders have sunk so low as to promote infanticide.[51]

What can we do to oppose the increasing tyranny we are facing?

We are soldiers of Christ the King and we have a duty (and the honor!) of doing what we can to oppose the coming kingdom of Satan.  But what can we do?  Here are four things all of us can do:

1.    Sanctify ourselves;

2.    Pray hard for sinners and pray for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary through the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart by the pope and bishops of the world;

3.    Be a good example to others by our own conduct; and

4.    Spread and speak the truth in your “little corner of the world”.

Below, we briefly discuss each of these points.

1. Sanctify ourselves

This is our principal duty in life and is the first element of serving and glorifying God.

Holiness of life is our main weapon in the fight against Satan and his minions.  As St. John teaches: “this is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith.”[52]  Our virtue and holiness are not only our main weapons but they also give effectiveness to our other weapons.

2. Pray hard for sinners and pray for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary through the consecration of Russia to Her Immaculate Heart by the pope and bishops of the world

Our fight is for Christ the King.  Our fight is more against Satan than against his evil minions.  As St. Paul teaches:

Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.[53]

That is always true.  But in our times, one can see even more obviously that we are fighting Satan himself, as, e.g., we increasingly see that our leftist enemies openly promote their connection to, and service of, demonic spirits.[54]

3. Be a good example to others by our own conduct

Our Lord told us: “So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”[55]  God wants us to live lives which are a beacon of light in the darkness around us.

Thus, we should not fear to live our Faith in public, without pretension and without apology.  This means, e.g., unostentatiously praying your meal prayer in public (e.g., when you are in a restaurant), praying your morning rosary on the bus (when that is where you are when it is time for your prayers), not cowering before the “mask police” when entering a store or post office, etc.

As stated in the precept attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel always.  When necessary, use words.”

Living the holy Catholic Faith without cowardliness will do much for the strength of your own Faith as well as for the encouragement of others.  Our example will help our neighbor maintain his bearings in this disorienting world.

It is easy for people to lose hope because it seems that the whole world is against us.  However, it is a great blessing to be alive now and to be serving Christ the King.[56]  We should live our lives cheerfully and courageously, always remembering that “If God be for us, who is against us?”  Romans, 8:31.  Our firmness and calm joy will “rub off” on others.

As much as possible, don’t cooperate with any of the tyranny being imposed by the governments and their allies.  Be bold for Christ the King!  In this way, you avoid giving bad example and you strengthen people to act courageously themselves.

4.   Always spread and speak the truth in your “little corner of the world”.

God does not want us to teach everyone – otherwise He would have made us the “teacher of the world”.  He gave us a tiny corner of the world in which to profess the truth – His Truth – to those that He puts in our path.  We can do this in conversations, spreading good books and articles, etc.

For example, some of the Catholic Candle team, whose duties of state include weekly trips to the grocery store, have engaged in countless discussions about the Catholic Faith, which were started by store clerks or other customers because those Catholic Candle team members were modestly dressed, not wearing a mask/muzzle (when everyone else did), etc.

These discussions often have resulted in giving those clerks or customers rosaries, catechism books, good Catholic advice, etc.

This is what we should all do, as opportunity presents itself.

Let us always remember: we are first and foremost Catholics!  We are subjects of Christ the King!  Everything else we are, is secondary!

Thoughts of Comfort and Clarity

During Revolutionary Times

 

With a grateful “nod” to Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, especially the first and last paragraphs of this novel about the French Revolution

 

‘Tis best of times and worst of times,

‘Tis age of wisdom and the fool,

It is the epoch of belief,

As well, the epoch incredule.

 

It is the season of the Light,

And also season of the Dark,

The spring of promise and of hope,

The winter, which despair doth mark.

 

‘Tis best of times because our times,

Are made for us to save our soul,

The times to prove who loves Our Lord,

And places first th’ eternal goal.

 

‘Tis worst of times because our times,

Have revolution in the air,

The wolves and leftists in control,

We, for our martyrdom, prepare.

 

‘Tis age of wisdom, in our times,

We, saints or Satanists must be,

We must have greatest trust in God,

And live the right priority.

 

Yes, ‘tis the time of fools galore,

With high regard for software fast,

But no care for eternal truth,

Nor the great learning of the past.

 

It is the epoch of belief,

A blind trust in the “science” fake,

“Religion” of the mask mandate,

And climate “crisis” man did make.

 

It is the epoch incredule,

Reject whatever use to be,

Reject Tradition, truth and good,

Trust feelings though, and “empathy”.

 

God Willed us to live now, and help,

Our children – both the young and grown,

This, leading to far-better rest,

God grant! – than we have ever known.