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. 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,
and the rich with one another.
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
(e.g., in the mainstream media, Big Tech, radical universities, big
corporations,
big banks,
etc.) promote such division along the lines of race, 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.
As the mayor of Los Angeles stated: “snitches get rewards.” 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
to get a “career”
and to destabilize the family
by promoting divorce and temporary “romantic” liaisons while at the same time
discouraging marriage.
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 ….
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.
This program was secretly begun in 2009 and only revealed in 2014 by
whistleblower Edward Snowden.
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
but also in places such as Belgium,
France, Britain (4.2 million cameras),
and Atlanta, Georgia, (11,000 cameras)
watching everything the people do.
In other ways
also, communist governments
and the increasingly-tyrannical Western governments, such as Germany, 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.
Application: Among the
countless examples of tyrannical governments oppressing the virtue of its
citizens, we see governments attempting to disarm the people 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. In another
example, a British man is arrested for reading the Bible in public, concern
what marriage and the family are.
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.
The tyrants
order most of society to “lockdown” and command the closing of churches while permitting
marijuana dispensaries and clinics
murdering innocent babies 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 ….
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.
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 ….
Application: We see Bill
Gates, George Soros, the Big Tech companies, Big Pharma, 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.
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.
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. …
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.
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.
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.
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.
She was attacked contemptuously from all over the U.S. including in the
Washington Post.
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.
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.
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.
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.” 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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
