Sittin' Up with the Dead Blog - Post 017 - Loophole Five - A Pinch of Incense

Bible sanctioned excuses for ignoring rogue governments. 

Today, through the miracle of modern cut and paste technology, we are able to simulate an interview with the brilliant and untamable (in the true Shakespearian sense of the word) ex commodities broker Ann Barnhardt.  (Yes, the one who painted her AR-15 pink so it wouldn't be mistaken for an evil assault rifle.) 

Ann’s remarks have been edited for brevity (and civility) -- in keeping with the genteel and erudite nature of this blog.  You can read her original, more colorful monologue in  Rendering Unto Caesar posted on September 11, 2012 at barnhardt.biz.  

Dead Ringer:  Hello, Ann.  Welcome to the Sittin’ Up forum where we boldly discuss the kind of stuff folks just don’t want to know about. 

In recent postings (Post 012 - Post 016) we’ve been discussing Romans 13 and possible exceptions, or "loopholes", to its requirement to “obey the governing authorities” no matter how corrupt they may be.  I understand you once posted your own thoughts in this matter?

Ann Barnhardt: Now is the hour in which the full and hideous scope of the horror that dares call itself “modern, Western Christianity” is revealed. There are not words to express the depth of my disgust. I am ashamed – yes ASHAMED – of every single one of you. Your cowardice, your failure to grasp even the most rudimentary concepts of Christianity, starting first and foremost with the First Commandment, but most especially the shallowness of your discernment, is repellant to behold.

Dead Ringer:  Um, ok…   Well anyway, can you sum up your position in a nutshell?

Ann Barnhardt: I’d just cite paragraph 2242 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which specifically cites the Tribute episode [render to Caesar] as the ratification of civil disobedience:

The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel. Refusing obedience to civil authorities, when their demands are contrary to those of an upright conscience, finds its justification in the distinction between serving God and serving the political community.  "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."  "We must obey God rather than men."

Dead Ringer:  Ah, yes, the very words Peter and John used with the Jewish authorities in Acts 4…

Ann Barnhardt: “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's” is NOT a release from the First Commandment.  I had one guy email me and tell me that Jesus will not hold any of us responsible for any of the abortions in this country because we JUST HAVE to pay taxes and we have absolutely no choice in the matter. B.S. First, what the hell do you think is happening right now? Boys and girls, you are going to be held to account for sitting by and subsidizing the holocaust of the preborn. This country is being brought down as punishment for the genocide that every one of us is partially responsible for. YOU IDIOTS WORSHIP THE I.R.S. ABOVE GOD. YOU FEAR THE I.R.S., BUT DO NOT FEAR GOD, HIS JUDGEMENT OR HIS WRATH IN THE SLIGHTEST. And you call yourselves Christian? Really?

Dead Ringer:  I don't know.  Jesus, Peter and Paul never really mentioned any exceptions when they talked about obeying the government here, here, and here respectively...

Ann Barnhardt: Now let's think logically. The words, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's; and render unto the Lord that which is the Lord's” have as a direct corollary the asking of a question. What is that question? Come on. Think. You can do this. The question is, what rightfully belongs to Caesar and what rightfully belongs to God? The God part is easy. EVERYTHING belongs to God. Uh-oh. Now we have a mathematical conundrum, don't we? If we believe in God, and we believe in the First Commandment, then “Caesar” is truly OWED nothing. We can CONSENT to pay taxes in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity and freedom, but only if those four specific ends are served by our taxes.

Dead Ringer:  Yes, we recently pondered that very argument back in Post 016, although we didn’t consider what the actual requirements for giving our consent might be.

Ann Barnhardt: Let's go through each of the four:

• TRUTH:  Barack Obama is a usurper. He is constitutionally ineligible to hold the office of the presidency, and he knows this, the entire Congress knows this, the entire upper-echelon of the military knows this, the entire intelligence community knows this, and the SCOTUS knows this. Barack Obama is an enemy of the United States, who is in a state of open, declared war upon it, its constitution and its people. This is the absence of truth. We are being “led” by a human lie, backed by an entire government of oath-breaking liars. Therefore, the government is illegitimate and has forfeited its licitness.
• JUSTICE:  The Rule of Law is effectively dead. From the presence of Obama himself in the White House, to the lawless Department of Justice, to Fast & Furious, to Solyndra, to the unconstitutional “czars” and “executive orders”, to the Federal Reserve, this is a society ruled by a government of men, not laws. When government is ruled by men and not laws, the determining criterion of how government relates to people becomes brute force of arms and violent coercion, and not transcendent truth. We are utterly deprived of justice by the government itself, and thus the federal government has forfeited its legitimacy. 
• SOLIDARITY:  The government is inciting both race-centered, age- centered and class-based antagonism and violence. In declaring pre-born children non-human, a genocide has been legally sanctioned that has cost 50 million lives AND COUNTING. ObamaCare is poised to exterminate the elderly by determining that their lives are not worth living. The government is consciously and expressly trying to break down solidarity amongst citizens along race and class lines, and in that action it forfeits its legitimacy.
• FREEDOM:  From ObamaCare, to the TSA, to the forced acceptance of sexual perversions, to forced “political correctness”, to the overt support of Sharia law and muslim sedition, to the destruction of the Free Exercise and Equal Protection clauses, this government is working consciously and overtly against fundamental human freedom, and has thus forfeited its legitimacy.

Dead Ringer:  It’s not hard to make the case that our government has been overthrown by enemies of the constitution and Christianity itself.  But that's not really the point. When Peter and Paul and Jesus told us to obey the governing authorities, pay taxes, and render respect to whom respect is due, they were living during the reigns of some of the most evil Caesar’s of all time.  I’m not sure our government today is any worse than their’s was back then…

Ann Barnhardt: I don't owe Caesar a damn thing, and it is now to the point where the continued subsidizing of this utterly lawless and illegitimate government puts me in violaton of the

• First Commandment (I AM the LORD thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before me.) 
by forcing me to break God's Law - the Natural Law - in order to follow the laws of the state; the
• Second Commandment (Thou shalt not take the Name of the LORD thy God in vain.) 
by punishing and imprisoning my fellow citizens (See Lakin, LTC Terry) who attempt to uphold their sworn oaths, and by forcing me to subsidize a government that is, to the man, populated by oathbreakers; the
• Fourth Commandment (Honor thy father and thy mother.) 
by actively and consciously destroying the family, discouraging right-ordered marriage through the welfare state, legislating perverted “false marriage” paradigms, facilitating the murder of children by their parents, and pitting society against their parents by encouraging or even mandating euthanasia via ObamaCare; the
• Fifth Commandment (Thou shalt not murder.) 
through the “legally sanctioned” and MANDATED taxpayer subsidizing of the holocaust of preborn children via abortion as well as the premeditated murder of thousands of Mexican civilians via Operation Fast & Furious; the
• Sixth Commandment (Thou shalt not commit adultery.) 
through the forced “legalization” of sodomite faux-marriage and the discouragement of chastity and marriage itself via the HHS contraceptive and sterilization mandate as well as welfare state; the
• Seventh Commandment (Thou shalt not steal.) 
via the government sanctioned, legalized and protected confiscation of private property, the illegal nullification of contracts by the federal government, and the stirring-up by the government of envy and the sense of entitlement to the property of others; the
• Eighth Commandment (Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.) 
by forcing me to subsidize and give my tacit approval to the lie of Barack Obama's presidency and the fundamental dishonesty of the ... Department of Justice, in addition to the mathematical lies regarding the state of the banking sectors and the mathematical impossibilities of the government run entitlement ponzi schemes; and the
• Tenth Commandment (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.) 
by forcing me to subsidize a government that is built on a premise of and is attempting to fully convert to a system based wholly upon coveting the property of one's neighbor and the forced redistribution of private property.

We're batting .800. Enough is enough. You CANNOT subsidize this government and still claim that God is “first” in your life. It is mathematically, metaphysically and morally impossible. You must choose your allegiances NOW. You must NOW choose who or what it is that you truly worship. Do you worship God or do you worship your wealth? Here's a simple litmus test for you: are you or are you not willing to give up all of your wealth in bearing witness to God in His Truth? If the answer is no, then stop calling yourself a Christian, because you very simply are not.

Dead Ringer:  But Ann, most of us are not doing any of these things!  We are simply gritting our teeth and obeying Romans 13.  Who are we to challenge the Lord’s anointed?

Ann Barnhardt: Whether you care to admit this or not, people are responsible for their government. And We The People of the United States of America have perhaps the most personal responsibility for our government than any other nation in history. Why? First, because we are a representative republic founded upon a foundation of Judeo-Christian law and philosophy. This was the best set-up in all of human history, and it also therefore bestowed the most responsibility upon its people for the government itself, up to the very top.

The other reason we are the most culpable nation in history for our government is because we are an armed nation. The people of North Korea, because they were disarmed decades ago, bear less responsibility for their government than we do – but they are still responsible. If the people of North Korea, disarmed and half starved to death, are responsible for their government, how much more are We The People, armed and fed, responsible for the absolute abomination that is our Federal government? This concept of citizen culpability for governance is why it was morally licit to firebomb Dresden, Tokyo and finally drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The civilians of Japan permitted, allowed and cooperated with their government in its wars of aggression during WWII. The same goes for the German people. They could have and should have put down their respective governments – but they didn't and so they paid for it.

The exact same dynamic applies to us. We have let this happen. We have sat by, complacent, impotent and self-absorbed, coveting our personal wealth and possessions above EVERYTHING. And now that there is no denying or escaping what our duty is to God and neighbor, we can only concoct fictions about the omnipotence of the Internal Revenue Service in order to convince ourselves that we aren't to blame, and that we have no duty except to ourselves. Because you fools refuse to act to correct your lawless government via the most effective, simple and utterly non-violent method, namely a tax strike, you are guaranteeing hot war, bloodshed and catastrophic suffering.

The fact is that every single Christian clergyman should have called for a national tax strike on Sunday, January 28, 1973. Why? Because that was the Sunday after SCOTUS legalized the murder of preborn children. Because of that first moral failure, here we now sit, and it is no one's fault but our own.

Most of you out there apparently have the capacity for delusion that allows you to convince yourself that you will not be made to answer for any of this, but I do not, and for that I can only say “Thanks be to God.”

Dead Ringer: That’s a pretty scary indictment…

Ann Barnhardt:  I fear God, and God alone, and thus I will render unto Him EVERYTHING, up to and including my wealth, assets, freedom and life, if that is what is required to remain in compliance with His commandments. The early Christians went to their deaths rather than offer a pinch of incense on the altar of Caesar. Incense is merely symbolic and burns away. Money subsidizes, finances and enables activities that break God's law - the Natural Law. Therefore I will not file, and I will not pay income taxes unless and until the Federal Government of the United States is reformed under the Constitution of 1787 as amended, and the Rule of Law is reasserted, necessarily and non-negotiably including the arrest and trial of Barack Obama, and the re-criminalizing of abortion in all cases, or until a new, legitimate government replaces it.

Dead Ringer: I think that pinch of incense argument is your most powerful point.  Tough choice:  obey the powers that God has appointed or subsidize its evil for which we are held responsible.

Well thank you Ann, we’ll add your thoughts to our research as Loophole #5 and call it The Barnhardt Doctrine.

Ann Barnhardt: Just shoot me.

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