#'OPPOSITION TO THE GOVERNMENT IS A MORAL NECESSITY IN TYRANNICAL TIMES'

[bonefall]

Why doesn't Blossom just. leave? Idk if that sounds weird since you have talked about how the clans essentially function like a cult (although this was in reference to starclan), but if Blossom feels so completely isolated and shut off, why not just. Run away.

Blossom literally gets told 'no one cares about you, why not just disappear?", and the clan does NOTHING to say otherwise, and their silence is basically agreement. Suicide tw, to someone who is already at their lowest, or just climbing out of it at least, that line could have horrible implications- you dont matter, just fade away, no one would notice, etc. Idk if that was intended (ashfur seems like the kind of asshole who would intend it but i dont think you intended it), but. yeah its horrible.

Since im believing it wasn't intended, maybe change it? Emptycry could work (instead of 'no one cares, you're a waste of space' its 'your words are empty, be quiet'), or maybe naming her Rottedpetal- the flowers have been shredded, and now they have begun to rot instead of growing anew. Or, if you want to keep the name, Blossom snaps and decides that he's speaking the truth- so she leaves. Maybe she becomes a loner (does the lake territories even HAVE any loners that function similar to Barley, Ravenpaw, Smudge, etc???), or joins another clan (i highly doubt this since the other clan would eventually learn of 'clearface' and start calling her that again, or worse kick her out for breaking the code), OR she becomes a kittypet, completely willing to trade freedom just to be loved.

...forgive me but I feel like a lot of people are missing the point of Dishonor Titles and why and how Ashfur uses them.

Ashfur is picking the cruelest possible names he can think of exactly because he wants the people who oppose him to be broken. He is finding a character's deepest insecurity and putting it on full display, forcing the other cats in the Clan to join in on his mental abuse to set them against each other.

This serves the purpose of showing that Ashfur is even worse than Bramblestar, and that he is very perceptive of people's insecurities.

The cruelty is the point. These titles from the Impostor aren't meant to be petty, they are meant to be gutwrenching.

Why does Blossomfall not leave? Because her entire family is here. Father, siblings, three children, any friendships she's finally started working on. She had to beg to come back in on their grace and she will not get another chance. Random humans aren't an option. It hurts but she eats it, knowing her only options are to take it for the next two weeks or be exiled forever.

If she was going to leave because of the name, then that is something Bramblefake can use as well. "Codebreakers are weak cats. She couldn't handle having her disrespect thrown back at her and cared more about her pride than her Clan. A traitor twice, now a traitor thrice."

But things were just finally starting to get better for her, and she's not willing to leave her entire life behind for the exciting opportunity to... live alone in the woods. Not yet.

She becomes a rebel later, but not yet.

[curtolson]

Why I am a former Republican

The Christianity Today editorial by Mark Galli has stirred up folks amid Big Evangelicalism--the Christian leaders often connected to the President. No matter if it is Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins, Richard Land, JFJr., Robert Jeffress, Eric Metaxas, or others, each makes the mistake of contending we have just two choices--the standard R or D--in any election for POTUS.

None of them, that I have seen, have responded to John Piper, who said the following the Sunday before election 2016:

“The right to vote in America is not a binding duty (without regard to other factors) for Christians in every election.

“’The children are free.’ ” We are free from human institutions. As citizens of heaven, we are not bound in every situation to participate in the processes of human government. This is not our homeland. We vote — if we vote — because the Lord of our homeland commissions us to vote. And he does not absolutize this act above all other considerations of Christian witness.

“In this election, with the flagrant wickedness of both party candidates, the logic that moves from “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution” (1 Peter 2:13) to the necessity — the binding duty — of voting, has lost sight of three things:

--the radical meaning of the words, “for the Lord’s sake,” and how it relativizes all human authority and how it brings to bear many other considerations;

--the radical freedom of the children of God from the inherent authority of human institutions like government; and

--the aim of every citizen of heaven in all human engagements to display our allegiance to the values of another world.

“I am not saying we are bound not to vote. I am saying that the children of God are free to hear the voice of their Master about how to best witness to his supremacy. . . .”

I turned 18 in the latter part of the Reagan Administration: 1986. My first Presidential election was 1988. I had voted for the Republican nominee each time. And yes, there were times I believed I had to settle for "the lesser of two evils" because, after all, isn't that how Christians are conditioned to accept political reality? A seat at the table. Get whatever influence you can. Always engage in the left-wing-right-wing banter. Any fighting is winning. I subscribed to all of it.

Sometime after election 2012, I began critically examining what the GOP had been feeding me for nearly 30 years as a voter. The GOP tells Christians they are the party of a strong national defense, lower taxes, expanding liberty, strong families, and the party that would bring the federal leviathan under control, not to mention judicial appointments that will stand for the rule of law.. And this is where they also promote themselves as being pro-life.

"You can trust us," we are repeatedly told.

Unfortunately, their rhetoric and actions are too often polar opposites. "Talk is cheap," as the saying goes. We see several things happening over time, but they accelerated after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Prior to 9-11-01, we had former President George HW Bush get crushed politically by his failure to follow through on a tax cut. Remember, "Read my lips. No new taxes"? We also had Reagan high court appointees Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy relish in their swing-vote roles, frequently acting activist, not defending the Constitution's plain simple language. Kennedy emerged as a nominee after Robert Bork's character assassination by the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy.

When the GOP emerged with the Contract for America in 1994, it seemed as if Republicans genuinely cared that their word was their bond. It did not last, however. After the terrorist attacks in NYC and DC, we witnessed genuine assaults on liberty and freedom, and it is accelerating. 

The following are just a partial list of the grievances I have with the GOP, which compelled me to become a former Republican (I will never be a Democrat.) within the past 5 years:

During the Bush 43 administration (I voted for him in 2000 and 2004), the GOP passed Medicare Part D, which launched the feds further into healthcare policy. The government doesn't do much very well, let alone thinking it's smart and benevolent enough to regulate medicine and healthcare for seniors. The Bush 43 administration also gave us No Child Left Behind, which was the federal government sticking its nose further and further into education policy. The more the feds mandate, the less power that exists for local school boards and parents. Republicans should know this, but they "had to do something."

The Patriot Act that emerged from the Bush 43 administration following the terrorist attacks has been one of the most significant assaults on liberty and an ability to live without the government intruding on American citizens. It could very well be the most tyrannical piece of legislation passed in American history. It has been tweaked here and there, but nearly two decades later it has survived as the NSA and other federal agencies monitor the phone calls and emails of Americans, complete with the assistance of corporate America. The passage and reauthorization of The Patriot Act (there are some in Congress who consistently vote against its reauthorization) is perhaps the clearest sign the GOP has no problem with tyranny triumphing over liberty and freedom. It is inexcusable.  And just because the government hasn't called me in for questioning doesn't make it right or just.

Nation building--The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq compelled us to eventually engage in nation building, which is not the role or function of the US military. We have spent trillions of dollars in both nations. A recent Washington Post investigative piece revealed billions--or perhaps more--of American dollars lost on corruption in Afghanistan and political promises from three administrations--Bush 43, Obama, and Trump (notice that wonderful bipartisanship)--that was just hot air. I was initially in favor of both wars. As time has passed I have come to a hard conclusion: no amount of force can compel folks to prefer freedom and self-government if they have no idea what it will mean to sustain it. I believe freedom and self-government require a knowledge and acceptance of spiritual truth because our founders warned us that to keep the system we had would require people living by biblical principles. We are imposing this on Muslims, who do not believe the Bible. As much as I was moved by women voting in both countries, Islam will not allow freedom and self-government to be sustained. PS. I am not a neocon and do not believe we should be finding places to engage in warfare. Many neocons have their sights set on Iran. That would be a disaster. PSS I do believe the US should be actively engaged in defending persecuted religious minorities and insisting other countries protect those folks. Religious freedom either is a priority or it isn't. This s determined by actions, not rhetoric.

Department of Homeland Security--A new federal agency behemoth--DHS--surfaced as an expansion of the federal government after the terrorist attacks. Again, Republicans had no problem expanding government.

National Debt--The National Debt, which is now $23 trillion and climbing, has been doubling every 10 years since Bush 43. Note that we grew government (DHS) and funded two wars on a credit card. And of course President Obama grew government with ObamaCare. When is Big Evangelicalism (I remember JFJr. said Trump was needed to get the debt under control. Trump is spending like Barack Obama.) going to start treating the national debt like the moral issue that it is? We are stealing from future generations of Americans. Worse, the more both parties kick the can down the road, the options they will have when something is forced upon them will be extremely limited. And this doesn't account for all of the unfunded liabilities, which some estimate to be . . . $122 trillion. This. Is. Not. Sustainable.

Lack of transparency in budgeting and legislation--The leadership of both parties love to use Omnibus spending bills just before the Christmas recess to justify the crafting of bills behind closed doors, with little, if any, ability to amend these bills. Additionally, there's no ability for any member of the House or Senate to read the details of these spending bills that typically arrive in a late afternoon and they have less than 24 hours to read over 2,000 pages. Th Rs and Ds actually expect members of the House and Senate to just line up and vote and not consider the details of which they vote. It's tyrannical. The spending of money this way ensures no accountability. Taxpayers learn about the stupid ideas later. Why can't they have an honest debate and siphon the garbage out of these bills? That makes too much sense.

Planned Parenthood/Abortion--There has been more rhetoric from the Republican party attached to this issue and the premier organization promoting infanticide than any other issue. The dirty little secret is most of the "changes" coming from DC surface as executive orders that a Democrat will change with the stroke of a pen. Kermit Gosnell commits his crimes in PA and there's nothing that surfaces mandating inspections of abortion clinics. PP is caught on film bragging about the harvesting of organs from aborted babies and the GOP does nothing. No prosecution of the guilty. No accountability, Nothing. Yes, PP opted out of Title X funding when the Trump administration changed rule (this was a very good thing). But PP still gets hundreds of millions of dollars off American taxpayers for killing babies. The GOP has threatened de-funding PP multiple times. They never follow through on the threats. They are all bark and no bite.

Former President Obama and others perpetuate the lie that administration was "scandal free." Fast and Furious. The IRS weaponized to go after political opponents of President Obama. The rollout of ObamaCare. Benghazi. All we ever received from Republicans were congressional hearings that allowed members of the House or Senate to play to the cameras of C-SPAN and others This is not accountability. The lack of accountability flourishes all across the three branches of government.

Judges--The Trump administration has now put its stamp on the lower federal courts. This is a good thing. But I would remind everyone who utters the phrases, "But Gorsuch." or "But Kavanaugh." that judges are bound to make a lousy decision. When they do what will happen to the high court argument regarding judicial appointments?  Additionally, all of this attention on the courts leaves me wondering is this the new fail safe for losing the White House or Congress? "At least we can rely on the courts." Can we?

I do vote for Republicans at the local and state levels. 

I have been challenged by Exodus 18:21 where Jethro instructs Moses on the attributes to seek for judges for the growing Israelite population. There are four requirements: able men who fear God, men of truth, and men who hate dishonest gain. The argument is this is a group of people who were not elected and it automatically ignores women. Really? Are you really going to suggest these four attributes don't apply to the 21st century for Americans seeking character traits of elected officials? How myopic and insulting. Yes, even women can possess these traits.

Christians have been aiding and abetting the dumbing down of the American electoral process. We should, can, and must be better. We owe our allegiance to the King not of this world, yet our rhetoric in America reveals something very, very different.

[gegen-kapital-und-nation]

Theoretically ‘democracy’ means popular government; government by all for everybody by the efforts of all. In a democracy the people must be able to say what they want, to nominate the executors of their wishes, to monitor their performance and remove them when they see fit. Naturally this presumes that all the individuals that make up a people are able to form an opinion and express it on all the subjects that interest them. It implies that everyone is politically and economically independent and therefore no-one, to live, would be obliged to submit to the will of others. If classes and individuals exist that are deprived of the means of production and therefore dependent on others with a monopoly over those means, the so-called democratic system can only be a lie, and one which serves to deceive the mass of the people and keep them docile with an outward show of sovereignty, while the rule of the privileged and dominant class is in fact salvaged and consolidated. Such is democracy and such it always has been in a capitalist structure, whatever form it takes, from constitutional monarchy to so-called direct rule. There could be no such thing as a democracy, a government of the people, other than in a socialistic regime, when the means of production and of living are socialised and the right of all to intervene in the running of public affairs is based on and guaranteed by the economic independence of every person. In this case it would seem that the democratic system was the one best able to guarantee justice and to harmonise individual independence with the necessities of life in society. And so it seemed, more or less clearly, to those who, in the era of the absolute monarchs, fought, suffered and died for freedom. But for the fact that, looking at things as they really are, the government of all the people turns out to be an impossibility, owing to the fact that the individuals who make up the people have differing opinions and desires and it never, or almost never happens, that on any one question or problem all can be in agreement. Therefore the ‘government of all the people’, if we have to have government, can at best be only the government of the majority. And the democrats, whether socialists or not, are willing to agree. They add, it is true, that one must respect minority rights; but since it is the majority that decides what these rights are, as a result minorities only have the right to do what the majority wants and allows. The only limit to the will of the majority would be the resistance which the minorities know and can put up. This means that there would always be a social struggle, in which a part of the members, albeit the majority, has the right to impose its own will on the others, yoking the efforts of all to their own ends. And here I would make an aside to show how, based on reasoning backed by the evidence of past and present events, it is not even true that where there is government, namely authority, that authority resides in the majority and how in reality every ‘democracy’ has been, is and must be nothing short of an ‘oligarchy’ — a government of the few, a dictatorship. But, for the purposes of this article, I prefer to err on the side of the democrats and assume that there can really be a true and sincere majority government. Government means the right to make the law and to impose it on everyone by force: without a police force there is no government. Now, can a society live and progress peacefully for the greater good of all, can it gradually adapt to ever-changing circumstances if the majority has the right and the means to impose its will by force on the recalcitrant minorities? The majority is, by definition, backward, conservative, enemy of the new, sluggish in thought and deed and at the same time impulsive, immoderate, suggestible, facile in its enthusiasms and irrational fears. Every new idea stems from one or a few individuals, is accepted, if viable, by a more or less sizeable minority and wins over the majority, if ever, only after it has been superseded by new ideas and new needs and has already become outdated and rather an obstacle, rather than a spur to progress. But do we, then, want a minority government? Certainly not. If it is unjust and harmful for a majority to oppress minorities and obstruct progress, it is even more unjust and harmful for a minority to oppress the whole population or impose its own ideas by force which even if they are good ones would excite repugnance and opposition because of the very fact of being imposed. And then, one must not forget that there are all kinds of different minorities. There are minorities of egoists and villains as there are of fanatics who believe themselves to be possessed of absolute truth and, in perfectly good faith, seek to impose on others what they hold to be the only way to salvation, even if it is simple silliness. There are minorities of reactionaries who seek to turn back the clock and are divided as to the paths and limits of reaction. And there are revolutionary minorities, also divided on the means and ends of revolution and on the direction that social progress should take. Which minority should take over? This is a matter of brute force and capacity for intrigue, and the odds that success would fall to the most sincere and most devoted to the general good are not favourable. To conquer power one needs qualities that are not exactly those that are needed to ensure that justice and well-being will triumph in the world. But I shall here continue to give others the benefit of the doubt and assume that a minority came to power which, among those who aspire to government, I considered the best for its ideas and proposals. I want to assume that the socialists came to power and would add, also the anarchists, if I am not prevented by a contradiction in terms. This would be the worst of all? Yes, to win power, whether legally or illegally, one needs to have left by the roadside a large part of one’s ideological baggage and to have got rid of all one’s moral scruples. And then, once in power, the big problem is how to stay there. One needs to create a joint interest in the new state of affairs and attach to those in government a new privileged class, and suppressing any kind of opposition by all possible means. Perhaps in the national interest, but always with freedom-destructive results. An established government, founded on the passive consensus of the majority and strong in numbers, in tradition and in the sentiment — sometimes sincere — of being in the right, can leave some space to liberty, at least so long as the privileged classes do not feel threatened. A new government, which relies for support only on an often slender minority, is obliged through necessity to be tyrannical. One need only think what the socialists and communists did when they came to power, either betraying their principles and comrades or by flying colours in the name of socialism and communism. This is why we are neither for a majority nor for a minority government; neither for democracy not for dictatorship. We are for the abolition of the gendarme. We are for the freedom of all and for free agreement, which will be there for all when no one has the means to force others, and all are involved in the good running of society. We are for anarchy.

Neither Democracts Nor Dictators: Anarchists - Malatesta