The Days of the Late, Great Will Grigg Have Arrived
by drfuture2013
As I watch Americans of all races and types fill the streets daily for weeks now (with even a handful of evangelicals!) in support of their brothers and sisters, and for accountability of State force when it is excessive and sometimes deadly without cause, and how it (like mass shootings) are normally quickly swept under the rug over days by the political and legal establishment and media as a perpetual mockery of justice, I see many of my Christian brethren bristle and defend the excessive force or divert attention to some other concocted conspiracy theory behind all of this, yet others have been uniquely pricked of heart for the first time, and realize we all have a responsibility in these matters, and not limited to lip service.
For me, however, these days of destiny remind me of the one who made me first care about police or institutional brutality of the common man, and from a Christian perspective – a man I considered the most brilliant man writing anywhere on the Internet, and was blessed to be a friend and have as a frequent guest on my old Future Quake radio show – the indomitable Will Grigg, host of the iconic Pro Libertate blog.
I loved every minute of reading his writings, even when his extreme positions of liberty and individualism and anti-statism were a bit too far for me – they always gave me significant uncomfortableness and food for thought, and in any case doubled my vocabulary, with the wickedest sense of humor since H. L. Mencken, Ambrose Bierce or Mark Twain. I never loved being reprimanded more, and he finally softened my heart.
Will was of mixed Mexican and other race heritage, was orphaned and then raised by a Mormon family, and later became a more mainstream Christian. However, he always was a voice crying in the wilderness. He became famous, of all things, as the star writer for the John Birch Society for their New American magazine, and they had big plans for him. However, he bravely wrote an article that encouraged a little bit of understanding of immigrants, which caused his prompt firing as being antithetical to the Society and their benefactors. Sadly, he then lost his health coverage simultaneously as his wife suffered a malady so severe that it forced him to stay at home to care for her and take care of the large number of children, and this brilliant man lived hand-to-mouth the rest of his days, as some of us tried to help where we could. To add to his burden, this strong-as-an-ox weightlifter and MMA-trained thespian fell victim to a simple infection and died at an early age, leaving a sick wife and many small children. As most pioneers in human rights or spiritual progress, his life was a lonely walk.
He wrote something that I brought up on my show that stuck with me more than anything that ever stuck with me. He said that if you are driving down the road, and you see a man in uniform beating a man on the ground on the side of the road, and your first instinct is, “Good thing that officer has that man under control,” then you are a statist; if your first instinct is, “What cause does that man have to be beating his fellow man?”, then you are an individualist.
I learned something with every post he did on the themes of the little guy being the victim of the State, which are all preserved on his Pro Libertate blog I recommend everyone read through, or his radio interviews with me preserved on my old Future Quake website; he showed me what being a real Christian and humanitarian was really about, and you could do it with pinache. I understand one of his many followers recently released a book of his unedited writings called, No Quarter: The Ravings of William Norman Grigg, which is available here on Amazon.
I would have loved for him to have seen this day, and white, brown and black common people marching together, and demanding that the State begin a purge of the “tough guys” in their ranks, and that a threat to one is a threat to all.
P.S. My book, Two Masters and Two Gospels, Volume 1 – The Teaching of Jesus Vs. the “Leaven of the Pharisees in Talk Radio and Cable News, is available in Kindle and paperback on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, with the latter also having a hard cover version and Nook ebook, and ebook versions also available at Kobo/Walmart and I-Books, and elsewhere. If you are an EBook reader and you buy the ebook at my BookBaby store site, linked here, you get Kindle MOBI and well as EPUB and pdf versions for one price, and if you leave your email address there at checkout to forward to me, I’ll find and send a pdf of some other writing I’ve done just to send to those brave souls. Thanks!
well i am certainly against abusive and excessive force, whether from recognized authority or fascist ANTIFA thugs. Anyone who watched the video of mr. floyd being murdered without being outraged is missing something critical to being human. I will confess that my urge was to choke out the officer, at least until he removed his knee from the mans’ neck.
While i am critical of abusive authority. i am also critical of mindless violence, more so of organized violence, a topic that you don’t even mention, much less criticize. Did you miss the violence? Did you miss the burning buildings, destroying the property and work of innocent people (mostly minority). Or do you approve of it? Endorse it?
While not minimizing the death of Mr. Floyd, here are some numbers to crunch. In 2019, the number of unarmed black men killed by police was 10. Yes, 10 too many, but ten, The number of black men killed by other sources…….7,000. Yes, 7,000. Why don’t we address that issue as well. Is it not of concern? Doesn’t fit a certain narrative? Is this really, really all about a fraction of a percentage point of abusive cops? Do black lives really matter. Or just when they feed the flames of anarchy?
Isn’t this just about authority and power? The censoring of those who don’t follow the official script? And what conspiracy theories are you referring to, or was that just the usage of genetic fallacy, the implication that those who won’t follow your script are nuts or irrational, or worse yet, shhhhhhhh…..RACIST!!!!!!!.
You do quite well with stream of thought writing, but often there is no real content, just posturing or virtue shaming. Is there racism in America? Yep. Is there racism everywhere in the world? Yep. Doesn’t mean we have to approve of it, or endorse. It also doesn’t mean we have to destroy the property and livelihood and innocent people.
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Chuck, did you know that antifa is an acronym for “anti fascist”? So a “fascist antifa” couldn’t exist. It would be like matter and antimatter combined, which would result in total annihilation, a phenomena Dr Future could probably elaborate on.
More seriously, I noticed that you carefully groomed your inquiry about police killings in 2019 to only “unarmed black men”. I’m not sure how you arrived at your number. Perhaps you were referring to a statistic stating the number unarmed black men who were SHOT by police. Regardless, the total number of killings by police in 2019 is estimated at around 1500. Unfortunately, we don’t have reliable data because police departments and/or the FBI don’t comply with the law to do so. And what data is available is misleading because of the inconsistencies in classification. For instance a 12 year old shot and killed for playing with a toy gun is classified as “armed”. 2 teenage girls were chased in their car through a dark cemetery by a cop with no emergency lights on until they drove into a pond where they drowned. The cop watched for 5 minutes as the car sank, offering no assistance, but was not charge in the killing.
You brought up the issue of burning buildings and property damage. When I see this retort, I can’t help but think “is this supposed to offset any outrage we should have for police brutality, racism, and killing?” But while addressing the property violence, don’t forget to included the fact that cops too were recorded destroying property, that provocateurs from right wing groups were exposed, and someone or some groups arranged to distribute pallets of brinks near protest areas. Did you the only groups associated with those arrested during the riots were linked to right wing groups?
Regardless of the property damage, the most important point is this: we are seeing with our own eyes – almost in real time – state sponsored brutality and killing with a particular racist bent. We are seeing police and other law enforcement, even at the direction of the President, attack peaceful protesters.
We can always rebuild, but when you take someone’s life – that’s forever.
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Jim, I’m glad you brought up the question of when lives are taken, they are taken forever. Because nobody mentions the huge black-on-black violence in cities like Chicago. Father’s day weekend, for example saw scores of shootings, and 14 deaths, including a toddler, a thirteen year old girl, and two tenage boys, aged sixteen and seventeen. Don’t their lives matter? In England last Saturday, we had three gay white men stabbed to death in a park and the media is silent, because the victims were the wrong colour, and so was the perpetrator, who was a person of darker skin from Libya.
As for Antifa being anti-fascist, I am anti-fascist, but you must remember that Stalin was also anti-Fascist and he killed way more millions than Hitler.
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Bro. Jim, welcome to the board! Thanks for your comments.
I was going to respond to your thoughts in a more lengthy way, but they got so long I thought, what the heck, why not just make it an entirely new post, so there you go!
Thanks for diverting my entire day away from what I had planned to so! I guess I share some of the blame for the excessive research and such…
I forgot to add – cool architecture site there, bud!
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Thank you Mike!
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Well Jim, i don’t care what you tell me you are, i care about what you say and do. So yes, antifa, thought “supposedly” anti-fascist, are by their words and actions, clearly fascist in nature. Composed mostly of radical progressives with violent intent. And while i have seen nothing of what you claim about police burning buildings, i sure as hell saw plenty of protesters doing it. would love to have your source for this. As for black men shot by police, this has been on numerous networks. The number is 10, one by a black officer, and 5 had attacked the police. This is easy to find. You can make up different categories to try to inflate the numbers, but i doubt anyone would recognize their veracity.
To conflate property and lives is a slick trick, but not buying it. two different categories that should be dealt with seperately. Burning down your own neighborhood won’t bring anyone back, but most of those arrested among the protesters weren’t even from the different cities, they were from out of state, sent there to provocate. Your attempts are indicative of the progressive post-modern mind set. Redefine, personalize, and distract. Deal with the issues mentioned.
I know of no one who doesn’t think we can’t improve police depts. To defund? Wow, welcome to hell, or criminal heaven. The truth remains. 2019 deaths of black men by white officers-9. Deaths by other black men- over 3000. Why doesn’t that matter to you? Why no outcry. If black lives matter to you, why don’t these. Try again. Do better
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For once, I (mostly) agree with Chuck. I note that Dr Future gives a one-sided version of events. He ignores the fact that there is some kind of cultural revolution going on, with people being denounced and forced from their jobs for questioning Black Lives Matter/Antifa. One man, the Serbian soccer player Aleksander Katei was made to denounce his wife for some tweets that she wrote (in Serbian, when they weren’t even in the same town) and then he was fired and assaulted by the mob.
I have been such a fan of Dr Future that I bought and read his recent book, “Two Gospels, Two masters”, but the fact that evangelicals have acted badly doesn’t excuse his silence on the mob asssault on western society, not just in the US, but in much of the western world. Remember, Mike, “silence is complicity.”
And I can’t help but think that Will would not have adopted such a one-sided approach to this mob. I doubt he would have stayed quiet about the Autonomous Zone in Seattle either. Nor would he have gone along with the tottalitarian lockdown policy, and I am sure that he would have called out the so-called science behind the destruction of your rights and liberties.
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well said Tsar
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Greetings Dr. Future, Started reading your book (and listened to your podcast with Derrick Gilbert) and have a concern about your view on the limits of the Constitution. You mention “public assistance” during the New Deal on your website for the book. Do you hold the view that the Feds have power under the Constitution to take from people in order to give to others? If you are able to answer due to your busy schedule, I understand and will try to understand your position by continued reading. Thanks, John Kabitzke
On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:59 PM The Two Spies Report wrote:
> drfuture2013 posted: ” As I watch Americans of all races and types fill > the streets daily for weeks now (with even a handful of evangelicals!) in > support of their brothers and sisters, and for accountability of State > force when it is excessive and sometimes deadly” >
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Bro. John,
Thank you so much for your sincere, honest and legitimate and constructive question, as a brother in the Lord, and your respectful manner; we go back a long way.
To first answer you directly, let me say that I believe that the government has such a privilege, and even mandate, to “provide for the general welfare,” as per the Constitution. It regularly does so to provide for a common defense, build interstate highways, make sure Wall Street sharks are not committing fraud to consumers (at least they’re supposed it) when other safeguards are not practical, sometimes to take from some to give to others when they determine stealing has occurred or other crimes, inspect meat so we are all not poisoned, and the like. Pure libertarians would argue that the government does not even have the right to give veterans health care or other benefits from funds taxed coercively, but I disagree with them (governments already draft people coercively at times to force them to kill, but few Christians have problems with that). Every citizen should have a proportional right to decide how these decisions are made, and whether it comprises the “general welfare,” and we will never get a unanimous vote on such matters, so at least some will be “coerced”. These rights of government have existed since the dawn of recorded history, even in the most libertarian societies. It can also be argued that the “general welfare” is also relevant when prudent government assistance is provided, not only to address the negative position of a nation’s moral standing in the world and its moral force and credibility and its ramifications, but at least the ability to avoid a far more dangerous revolution of a desperate, starved people with nothing to lose, as has often happened in recorded history, not even counting the moral imperative that is held by a wide swath of people of different ideologies far beyond the Christian ethic. What I am more interested in is beyond the legal requirements, to what we feel are the obligations of government as Christians, and what is a universal value and ethic that embraces most moral people of good will, and how we came to be so repulsed about the assistance to the less fortunate by that means.
You and I both know we have benefited in many respects from our acquaintance with libertarian ideas. I now refer to it as the “libertarian garden,” and we all found some real “flowers” of concepts in its midst. Amongst those are the principles of the rights of free association and self-determination, and most importantly (in my view), the essential of non-coercion, all of which such “flowers” I have still kept and cherish, and it would do all Christians good to value these, as I feel they are biblically-supported. However, as I often say, I am now of a frame of mind that everything in our lives, principles and values, including those basically good and generally noble, must be critiqued honestly as a Christian (the best we can), for I believe that “that which we don’t critique, we worship,” and that is a position that I believe only Christ deserves, as the “cornerstone” that is beyond further critique, and rather the standard for all other things, even good ones. I find this process to be particularly painful when regarding things I have cherished, at least for myself, but Jesus has a right to expect it from us. Having said that, I have stated that while I found legitimate “flowers” in the libertarian “garden” and still cling to them, as a follower of Jesus and as I dug deeper, I also found many “weeds,” including an Ayn Rand-admitted hyper-selfishness and disregard for others that could well be described as a Luciferian-consistent self-deification in terms of disregarding the needs of others, as she professed not only her atheism as essential to her ideology, and she and her organization philosophers officially tell the public that they must reject Jesus and His Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule and “turning the other cheek,” stating that plainly in Fox News as well as elsewhere, as I document in Volume 2 of my book series, I believe. On the other hand, later in Volume 1 I show that many of the other founding fathers of American libertarianism veered towards New Age Gnosticism, and disregarded things like the Atonement. I want to make clear that these facts do not diminish the value of the “flowers” I cited before that I think we can use to enrich our Christian understanding, but we Christians should incorporate truths and wisdom large and smaller into an ever-larger cosmic and eternal “worlds-view” that acknowledges even vaster truth of this reality and God’s nature and His goals, values and motives, and the roles of other entities in this drama played out in the universe and our destiny, while still not coercing others beyond a general, unavoidable level that is universal to men and respectful to them, and not dependent upon a particular spiritual worldview, as I will now explain.
We all have our ideological blind spots (particularly me), and while libertarian ideals have elevated my understanding in many areas, they also have their own dark side. I would assert that libertarianism is a sometimes well-meaning (depending upon the practitioner) pure yet utopian ideology, that is often good to instruct one into some wisdom, but more difficult in world history to pragmatically practice. I think these limitations are based upon two fundamental oversights, beyond the sometime Christian conflicts with it, that being the their overlooking of the role that (a) the work and sacrifices of others and their neighbors and predecessors that has led to the lifestyle that they feel that have earned independently by their own works, and (b) how their lifestyles are not just merely independent “self-expression” and “freedom” that does not impact others, but often does impede on the rights and well-being of their neighbors (i. e., insisting on their “rights” to drive gas-guzzling and polluting cars, or dirty factories that pollute their neighbor’s air, ground or water, or consume limited resources (and maybe even affect the climate or their productivity of their neighbor’s crops) that are then deprived to their neighbor, which is a particularly culpable state here in the materially-blessed West). They often cling to the principle, not really borne out by honest logic or history, that a man can be an “island” unto himself, not rather being blessed by the works of others nor taking advantage of anyone else (even unintentionally), and subject to the unearned blessings of health, a reasonably financially and socially secure family with good values in which to be raised, being born into a culture in which there are economic and even political opportunities, healthy role models, and an abundance of material goods, educational opportunities and advancement, clean water and food, and even physical security. We Christians should in particular be ashamed to think that we did not receive some things we did not deserve from others, God or maybe just good fortunes, in addition to our hard work, and that we are entitled to all of its provisions while we see those with lesser fortunes strive with difficulty.
Another myth that I feel libertarians often fall for is that we can truly live in a fully non-coercive world, free of all its forms while it does serve as an ideal in many respects, and that all men operate in hermetically-sealed environments and rise and fall solely on their own merits, with the fate of those who falter being their own problem, not ours. In reality (at least in my emerging understanding), we are borne into a coercive world, and our question is how we respond to it. We cannot flee the innate coercions of threats to our health by disease organisms, even wild animals who seek us for food, environmental threats to our well being (such as sun exposure, extreme weather, droughts, etc.), and particularly other people who may be stronger, smarter and more ruthless, and even have strength in numbers, who can threaten our access and needs for food, shelter and security. This is the “jungle” and obeys the “law of the jungle,” where only the strong survive until overcome by the yet stronger, who stays as “king of the hill” as long as possible as the survivors dwindle further and further. This environment still exists in the modern, sophisticated eras that are libertarian ideals, like Dicken’s London in the era of Ebenezer Scrooge and Oliver Twist, with a small elite circle of the most ruthless, and streets full of street urchin kids and turberculosis-ridden workers in squalor; in America the ideal would be the similar condition in our era of the Gilded Age and robber barons, under the same conditions of the common folk (with the average life expectancy in America in 1900 being 35), until Social Gospel-styled Christians waded into these hell-holes to minister to these pitiful people, and fight for their rights for health and worker safety that their own pitiful economic state could not do for them.
Libertarians cling to the myth that a regulation-free “jungle” marketplace will lead to a Golden Age of all people prospering, and in places like America the poorest have had some modest improvements in certain eras, but mostly due to an abundance of natural resources and lack of war on our soil for the most part and internal minimal interruptions to our peaceful operations (except for the Civil War, obviously), as opposed to being attributed to any libertarian ideals. In reality, their era of libertarian ideals have ruled in America until some time in the 20th century when it began to be challenged, and yet data shows that with minimal to no regulation of the capitalistic marketplace by (hopefully) defenders of the less powerful, and wealth is aggressively accelerating in the redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest, to soon reach crisis levels that will likely cause a French Revolution of our own, from a desperate people, because our own aristocrats don’t wish to share the wealth. That is the real “redistribution of wealth” that the hard data has shown us has occurred, with government collusion from the politicians the wealth class has bought, via “welfare” in the form of lucrative government contracts with high profits and salaries allowed, business credits and deductions achieved by lobbyists, profits from the war machine, etc., all of which dwarfs the pittance provided to the elderly, blind, disabled (mentally and physically), and even those in the bondage of substance abuse, while the same wealth class invests a large sum (but small portion of their largesse) in public relations and “think tanks” and paid media to convince us that the poor are our real enemies and trying to steal our wealth by “redistributing income” to them.
As I discuss in my book, God both recognizes and took actions against the inevitable concentration of wealth in the hands of the richest in unregulated capitalistic markets, which is otherwise inevitable. When he set up the ideal government, He made it part of the coercive Mosaic Law – a command, not a suggestion – that people leave the produce of the land for the poor and immigrants one year out of seven – in essence, a 15 percent tax just for the poor, in addition to the ten percent for religious/spiritual affairs – which presumably would be enforced by their “rulers” or government, with no worthiness “litmus test” for the poor or undocumented immigrant passing by, as well as the Jubilee Year, which we would see today as an agregious “redistribution of wealth,” but was really a “restoration of wealth” to the people, to keep it from eventually imploding, which unregulated capitalism will inevitably produce by those with economic power in the marketplace and over the workforce. As I say in my book, God also says repeatedly through the prophets that God will primarily judge the nation (and nations) for the exploiting the poor in the marketplace with “dishonest weights and measures” and other exploitation of the common man like the “Stalls of Annas” or the “den of thieves” at the Temple, exploiting the poor in the courts as the rich buy their protection there and raid the wealth of others, and the failure of the “rulers” to protect the well-being of the poor, widows, orphans and the “stranger” immigrants, and given equal rights, for Israel “once were strangers in Egypt.” God even says He will judge the “sons of God” appointed over the Gentile nations (including our own) for not looking out for the poor, weak, vulnerable and widows in Psalm 82. God further says He sent Israel to captivity in Babylon not primarily for idol worship (other than of themselves), but because they did not honor the Sabbath Years and Jubilees (which was also supposed to forgive all debts), because they were so greedy, according to Jeremiah. Since we live in a participative democracy, with our elected officials serving as our proxies, the biblical commands to “rulers” to do these things now rests squarely on our shoulders. In other wirds, when Cain asks God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, the libertarian says “No,” while the Father and the Son says, “Yes.” I talk about all this in my book, but I didn’t know if you hadn’t gotten through those sections yet.
I further add that from the time people began to populate the earth, men began to force themselves coercively on others, because of their greater numbers, strength, weapons or ruthlessness. Government was formed as a collective of the people to stop this exploitation. Whether it was a posse, town council, elders or whatever, it was intended to restrain the coercive power of the lawless, and the only way to stop them was to give the power of coercion to the government to arrest their power. Now, the major power of exploitation is by the ownership of money (capital) and its control of negotiations with the working man (who has to feed his family soon and has little negotiating leverage) in wages (the fairness of God demands in scripture), the controls of the marketplace, and the courts (and now the media). The common people have no say over what the corporation does – it answers only to the whims of the shareholders (and in reality, the board members), and has no morality, whereas our elected officials are to be accountable to us at the ballot box to protect our interests.
The real enemy is not government, but corrupt government, and it is our responsibility as our own “rulers” to enforce its integrity. And we must be careful not to resist God when God clearly tells us to share some of the wealth He gave us, even by our own hard work, with the poor, sick, elderly or scared “stranger immigrant”, because in truth He gave us our health and blessed us with where we were born and the fruit of our hands, no matter how hard we worked, and He has decreed it, and expected rulers to enforce it. We should be glad He gave us a government to fight the forces of the Great City Babylon with regulations in marketplace, as He told Israel to have, and environmental regulations He established in the Mosaic Law, to let the land “rest” and stay fertile for future generations, and for us to fight the government corruption that will happen in the fallen world, until Jesus comes to run it with full integrity. It would be nice if our Christian charity would meet the needs of the needy without the use of government “rulers” as God previously decreed, but we can see that millennia of Christian domination and wealth did not eliminate poverty or destitution, and it has only grown, so we cannot count on the guilty consciences of people (particularly Christian ones) on Christmas Eve to meet the massive needs for food, housing, health care and such that keeps getting worse. Particularly, we cannot listen the the Great City Babylon wealth classes to tell us that their resister who is supposed to stand in their way, the government, is inherently evil, or that coerced help for the poor and helpless is wrong – it is what makes us “civilization”, the level thereof defined by how we treat our most vulnerable and weak, otherwise we live in the libertarian, Darwinistic, every-man-for-himself “jungle” – a nightmare world without mercy or justice, which becomes particularly important when we are inevitably the “weak”. As I said to a Christian friend who said I worried too much about the “Weak,” that there are two world views – the libertarian, Darwinistic focus on the “ninety and nine” herd, where each member thinks itself strong and self-sufficient (at least for today), and doesn’t mind losing the stragglers in the herd, or that of Jesus Christ, who leaves the ninety-and-nine to go find and rescue the weak straggler, who otherwise does not contribute to society – a state that at some time will be every one of us. This does not preclude sensible and reasonable standards to screen out cheaters or exploiters of assistance, which I fully support so as to not dishearten workers who are called to help, but the presence of a small number of cheaters even then does not absolve us of the God-mandated duty to help the poor, widow (or single parent), immigrant “stranger”, physically or mentally impaired, or any other form of bondage. Some Christians have told me that this understanding I have expressed here has been very liberating for them, to be free to be compassionate about those less fortunate than them, and seek to be the champions of the desperate who are counting on us.
I hope this helps clarify my position, Brother John, and I hope we can advance together as brothers in Christ in our understanding, and learn from each other, and I seek your further comments on this. I think this issue is so important that I believe I will add the question to my “Frequently Asked Questions” page on my websites. Thanks!
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