THE EMMAUS WALK PRESENTS:

"America is an Oligarchy," A View of American Society and Government, by Ronald Ginther

As a lifelong student of the literary, cultural, and political life of America, I have come to see over the course of my lifetime that there is a spiritual reason for what I see has come to rule America. America has not been reconstructed--it has been overthrown from within, then reconstructed, with all the Founding Documents, Formal Institutions, Representative Governmental Procedures and Protocols intact. In a nutshell, we have a virtual dictatorship, a tyranny, in reality, yet with all the trappings of a constitutional, representative democracy misleadingly intact and trumpeted (this is very much like imperial Rome, during the reign of Caesar Augustus, a time in which the trappings of the Republic were paraded and trumpeted).

If not for the Bible, I would not care, and just retire, apolitically, from the stupendous horror we have now accepted as the legitimate form of rule over us.

What is meant by oligarchy and elitism? There are the standard dictionary definitions, but really to know what they are you have to look at what is being done by whom, not what is given mere lip service to or claimed by those holding power in this country.

For a long time, there has been a widening disparity, a yawning gulf, between the founding documents and even the institutions of government and the actual reality of the true, unofficial, unconstitutional government that has usurped what the Founding Fathers created and instituted and called the United States of America.

We are called a representative system, a republic, a democracy that is restrained by division of powers, division of the branches of government into three main groups of the presidency, the judicial (the Supreme Court at the head of the judiciary system), and the legislative body divided further into Senate and the House of Representatives.

This is a very, very complex system, and hard to understand by the average person, except that the whole original intent of the Founders (as they expressed it in their numerous writings) was to divide power and restrain evil human government (it is not benign, it is not good, it is always tending to become evil, monstrous and oppressive, in their view!) so as to preserve the people's liberties in the best way they could conceive possible.

This labyrinthian system with its built in checks and balances, guards, delaying tactics, digressions, and other means to hold back government from becoming the monster it tends to be, of course, wars against the special interests of various factions or parties or even individuals who want more power than is constitutional and so they, gradually, subvert the whole system, bending it however they can toward the legislative or the judiciary or the presidential. We have such gross distortions now achieved that these bodies in no way act as they once were created to act. Measured against the Constitution and what we know the Founders believed, this is glaringly apparent.

Of course times change, and a document that is more than 200 years old cannot possibly fit a society that has changed radically from an agrarian society with few big cities to the hitech, highly urban society we know today.

At least that is the excuse for ignoring it or twisting it into something it was never intended to be. The Amendment process, which is supposed to adapt the aged Constitution to changing society, is so difficult and unworkable, it is not even resorted to when there is clear majority opinion in American for a particular amendment. Special interests can defeat such amendments every time they are put forward by Congress. Supreme Courts, activist and routinely ignoring the Constitution in favor of their own "rulings" or decrees by fiat, overturn the legislatures and the voting majority in America time after time in their cases. The legislature can constitutionally restrain this court, but has failed to do so even after the most egregrious abuses of judicial power.

Special interests, which are huge power players, able to field millions of dollars for their agendas, pull the strings of the U.S. Congress. They also can control the judiciary indirectly through the pressure put on the appointment process in the Congress after the President has made his choice on an appointee.

How in the world did we arrive at a "representative system" that is the last thing from being such? The two main political parties, Democratic and Republican, are virtually interchangeable. They fight bitterly for respective control of Congress and the Presidency and the Judiciary, wasting untold millions of dollars and resources in their campaigns, but they are almost mirror images of each other. Imagine an octopus looking in a mirror--that is the case with these parties! Republicans, for instance, stand for smaller government and less taxation (and the Democrats stand for the opposite), but when in power the Republican-controlled government continues to grow by leaps and bounds, and taxes go up, and the national debt continues to increase catastrophically into the trillions of dollars, with interest payments gobbling up the very future of the next generation.

This is a government (whether Republican or Democrat) that has managed to subvert the Constitution, and the elites that have taken the reins of power (the President is only one component of the oligarchy of elites or the "groupings of nobles and the wealthy" that rule America) are easily identifiable but are unstoppable.

These elites struggle for supremacy, behind the scenes of the political debates and the party conferences--and what they want and who they want in the front-line positions from President and Speaker of the House, and Supreme Court Judge, or what have you, are decided by them.

What about the voters? They are easily manipulated by the press, which is owned and operated by members of the elites. The voters think that by voting in whoever they want from one of the two parties, they can get representatives who will do what they wish to see happen--but this is a charade. Votes do matter (one vote often decides the elections or vital issues!), and sometimes a "dark horse, someone not selected by the elites originally, is catapulted into power unexpectedly. But the whole system immediately closes ranks, and he soon finds he can do nothing without concessions and compromises with them. President though he may be, he can do nothing on his own--so he must give in to them.

This is a process I am describing. It is not a finished process, by any means. It is not all a negative thing, as some commentators point out. Tyrants in ancient Greece, by the way, were not necessarily bad--they came into power to right the social wrongs created by the oligarchies of rich people. As soon as they had restored order, prosperity, and a greater degree of social equity, they were usually thrown out and the elites stepped back into their old positions, with the democracy "restored," officially, if not in fact.

In other countries where the civilians do not have a tight rein over the military, as they do in the U.S., we see hopelessly corrupt democratic governments taken over by military leaders, with a resultant purge of the bad leaders and their policies, followed by a restoration of democratic processes. This happened periodically in ancient Greece, is happening today in the world, and has yet to happen here in the U.S. where bad government, under any party name, continues unabated.

Is there any hope that truly representative government can be restored to America? I, for one, believe there is hope, if we as Christians turn back to God in a nation-wide self-humbling move of repentance and seeking God's will for our lives individually and corporately. As long as we continue to go on the way we have, and trust in these elites and parties and their agendas, all the while being made pawns by special interests and oligarchies, we will see the erosion of our liberties and the loss of any meaningful say about our lives to those at the top.

One organ of government, the Presidency, has declined even as it has gained powers it should never have been allowed. It has morally declined, that is clear, at the same time. It has misled our nation again and again--and celebrity worship has made a cult of sorts of the president. He is either extravagantly and passionately hated or extravagantly and passionately loved, depending on how he satisfies the desires of the mass of Americans who support his political party. All eyes are fixed on him, as if he is the savior or messiah of the nation--which he can never be, constitutionally.

Not one Founding Father, it is safe to say, would approve of the government of today that we call the U.S. Government. It is a monster, no matter how much you whitewash and sugarcoat it. Hopelessly corrupt, incompetent, bloated in numbers and departments and sub-departments and secret agencies draining the tax dollars without accountability of any working kind, the U.S. Government has become an oppressive leviathan of gigantic proportions that would have stopped the horrified Founding Fathers in their tracks, if they had been able to forsee what we now have in Washington, D.C.

20th century U.S. Presidents, since World War II, have done much damage to our government, freedoms, and society by their immoral lifestyles and overweeming self-reliance and always preferring man's limited wisdom over God's infinite wisdom. They have served to drag our nation the wrong way, and set a course of unrighteousness that is now causing us to reap in a thousand plagues what we have sown. Very few have done more than lip service to Biblical morality and belief in the God of Christ (not the God of money, power, technology, fame, whatever idol they have really served). We, as a matter of fact, have not had presidents that are constitutional. They have way too much power to be presidents, they are more like the emperors of Rome who ruled under the masquerade or smokescreen of being "First Citizen," or "Princeps," as the Republic-loving Romans heartily disliked imperial, Eastern-style kings and emperors. The U.S. presidents also evidence way too much pride, and very little faith in in a personal God. They turn to phalanxes of advisers, all, like the late Kenneth Galbraith or a Mr. Kissenger (who has just announced to the world, by the way, that the Iraq war is "impossible to win," certainly a defeatest, self-fulfilling prophecy!), puffed up with their own importance and their own presumptious wisdom and education and credentials--rather than turn to demonstrated, proven men of God who truly have God's wisdom. I cannot forget how Billy Graham sternly admonished the nation's top leaders, who all gave him prefunctory applause and flattering comments as he and his wife and life-companion Ruth were awarded America's highest prize, the Congressional Medal of Honor, while sitting determined facing him, determined not to do a single thing he was almost tearfully advising them to do.

The scene is etched on my memory. I will never forget the faces of those V.I.P's, all dressed to the nines and sitting there like paragons of virtue and patriotism--Mr. Gore and Hillary Clinton prominent in the front rows. What was going through their minds, as Billy Graham pleaded for them to turn back to God, for their sake and the sake of this erring nation? They must have been wincing at every reference to God, to morality, and to their own accountability for their actions--but their faces betrayed nothing of their discomfiture, being professional, practiced, even cynical politicians.

For this reason, misled by such conscienceless and self-serving "misleaders," we are at the point of no return, when the iceberg has appeared in the water dead ahead. Seeing it, I find I must join my voice with all those who previously made this call to America--"Iceberg straight ahead!".

As one citizen, I know I speak for millions of like mind when I make this call to the nation: To all the Bible-based churches and ministries in the United States and their leaders: Assemble in Washington D.C. at the Capitol and prayerfully conduct an "intervention" led by the Holy Spirit, just as is done with alcoholics (our nation's leaders are truly "drunk," that is, riding high and mighty on their own pride, lust for power, lust for money, and prestige).

Let the Capitol police try to arrest God's interventionists for praying in a public place, just as they have earlier arrested other people who tried to pray on the Capitol steps, or stopped guided tours when they paused for prayer! The Capitol, they can remind the police, was once a Bible-based Christian church, where services were held beneath the Capitol Rotunda, regularly attended by hundreds of government officials and the chief leaders of our nation, including the president!

Again, let church services (Christian, not New Age Interfaith charades of religiosity, be held there--as a sign to the entire nation that a brand-new Day has dawned for this nation--a Second American Revolution, with the throwing off the tyranny and bondage of anti-America Secular Humanism and its entire pantheon of false gods. They must also call the Congress, President, and Supreme Court, speak to them and admonish them with the supreme authority of Almighty God, to turn back to the Fear of our Founding Fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God the founding documents of this nation all acknowledge and revere. Let them draw a line in the sand, and those who refuse to cross over to the side of God can be exposed by their own choice.

There is no God but this God--and we must submit to Him, or submit to lesser gods that are not God at all, vanities of the imagination of religious men, that will certainly destroy us. Will they be honest? Will they step over to the side of God just to curry votes? God will not have difficulty telling!

Particularly in the last Midterm Elections, we and our nation set a fatal course, just like Lord Ismay and Captain Smith of the White Star Line set a fatal course. We are aboard our own version of the R.M.S. Titanic of 1912, and, put in the path of unrighteousness by ungodly leadership, we too are hurtling toward utter destruction.