THE LAST DAYS OF
THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC

INTRODUCTION

An open revolt by the Left against the American imperial system has broken out in the halls of Congress. In many ways it's a replay of what happened 40 years ago during the Vietnam conflict. It's pitting the neo-conservatives and the proponents of empire against those who want to retreat from empire, or - as Rep. Dennis Kucinich says -

"… are fed up with having America separated from the world community. They're looking for a new vision, one that includes America as a nation among nations, NOT A NATION AGAINST NATIONS …"

Emboldened by the results of last November's congressional elections as well as President Bush's deeply unpopular proposal to send more troops to Iraq, congressional Democrats are shedding their wariness about tackling the war and are instead embracing positions once primarily held only by the party's most liberal, anti-war fringe.

Republicans respond by saying that the anti-war Democrats who are clamoring against Bush's war policies should tell the American people what their solution to the fighting in Iraq would be other than just criticizing the president. Don't they understand that if the U.S. pulls out of Iraq, America's position in the Middle East will be put in jeopardy?

BRING THE TROOPS HOME AND
"TO HELL WITH THE AMERICAN EMPIRE"

In saying this, however, "pro-war" Republicans (and most evangelical Christians) are revealing an appalling lack of understanding as to the REAL position of Kucinich and his anti-war allies: THEY DON'T CARE IF AMERICA'S POSITION IN THE MIDDLE EAST COLLAPSES IF THE TROOPS ARE "BROUGHT HOME." Kucinich and his followers derive no benefit from the spoils of empire - neither do they want any.

"Moderate" Democrats - Democrats under the control of the Democratic Leadership Council (the DLC) - seem powerless to control the spreading revolt in their ranks. Noam Levey writes:

"Centrist Democrats are lining up beside longtime antiwar liberals, promising to do everything in their power to stop the president's plans to deploy an additional 21,500 troops in Baghdad and Al Anbar province. The war's most passionate opponents in the House, whose last meeting before the midterm election was relegated to a basement room, met last week in one of the grandest rooms on Capitol Hill and drew scores of supporters, television cameras and journalists."

The Democrats' rapid embrace of what were once minority positions capped an extraordinary week on Capitol Hill as Congress stirred after years of standing by a wartime president. Representative Lynn Woolsey, an anti-war Democrat from Petaluma, CA, says:

"OURS IS NOW THE MAINSTREAM POSITION."

That's enough to send shivers up the spines of the DLC. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), co-founder of the congressional "Out of Iraq Caucus," claims the caucus has more than 80 members now.

SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY AND VIETNAM

The rapid surge in support of the Left's anti-war position among "mainstream" Democrats was "kicked-off" by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in a speech on the floor of the Senate - a speech laced with references to the mistakes of Vietnam. Within hours of Kennedy's speech, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who had been one of the leaders of the Democratic Party's "go-slow" approach to anti-war activity, bowed to the onrush of support for the Left's "get-out-of Iraq-quick" position and said that he would introduce a resolution the following week condemning any White House plans to send additional troops. Soon thereafter, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi abandoned her position of "moderation" and moved to embrace the radical, anti-war position of the Left. Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Alamo), a centrist Democrat signed on to the House version of Kennedy's bill. She gave voice to what other centrist Democrats now believe:

"WE HAVE TO TAKE A STAND … WE HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING WE CAN."

THE TAIL WAS NOW WAGGING THE DOG: Radical Democrats were now in control of events.

SWIMMING IN DANGEROUS WATERS

The "STAND" that Kennedy, Tauscher and their anti-war sidekicks want to make revolves around Congress's control of the purse strings - the threat that Congress could force the troops out of Iraq by cutting off funding for the war. Concerning that by-now-very-real-possibility, Lauren Zanolli writes that there is now very real and rising -

"… speculation over a possible suspension of funds for the war in Iraq."

Zanolli elaborates:

"When asked in a recent interview how a Democratic Congress could stop the war, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), who is chair of the Ways and Means Committee … answered, “You’ve got to be able to pay for the war, don’t you?” Fellow member of the "Out of Iraq Caucus," Woolsey says “Personally I wouldn’t spend another dime on the war,” AND SHE NOTES THAT CONGRESS HELPED FORCE AN END TO THE VIETNAM WAR BY REFUSING TO PAY FOR IT."

And there's more here than just the speculation of Lauren Zanolli and the "off-the-cuff" comments of Charles Rangel and Lynn Woolsey. On Thursday, February 1, 2007, Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic Party, warned openly and very ominously on CNN that if the President ignores the anti-war resolutions of the House and the Senate, Democrats will move to "cut-off" funds for the war - and that's coming from the Chairman of the Democratic Party whose job it is to speak for the entire party.

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN CONGRESS CUT
OFF FUNDING FOR THE VIETNAM WAR

Zanolli continues by asking rhetorically:

"What happened when DEMOCRATS in Congress cut off funding for the Vietnam War thirty years ago?"

She answers her own question:

"Historians have directly attributed the fall of Saigon in 1975 to the cessation of American aid. Without the necessary funds, South Vietnam found it logistically and financially impossible to defeat the North Vietnamese army. Moreover, the withdrawal of aid encouraged North Vietnam to begin an effective military offensive against South Vietnam. Given the monetary and military investment in Vietnam, former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage compared the American withdrawal to “a pregnant lady, abandoned by her lover to face her fate.”Historian Lewis Fanning went so far as to say that “IT WAS NOT THE HANOI COMMUNISTS WHO WON THE WAR, BUT RATHER THE AMERICAN CONGRESS THAT LOST IT."

THAT'S A VERY SERIOUS CHARGE, and one that has hung like some wretched albatross around the neck of the Democratic Party for more than thirty years - a charge that, after the hysteria against the War in Vietnam wore off - has locked the Democrats out of the presidency, and earned for them the reputation that Democrats "MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR" - even when the nation's security is at stake. The slogan, as it were, worked for only one president, Jimmy Carter - and in the end, it led to the collapse of his presidency also.

Indeed, after 1976, it led to the demise of every Democratic Party contender for the presidency except Clinton: Carter (1980), Mondale (1984), Dukakis (1988), Gore (2001) and Kerry (2004). "MAKE LOVE NOT WAR" is not the kind of party maxim calculated to win over most of the American population.

Even Bill Clinton was unable to rescue the party from this reputation - and it hung like some kind of black cloud over his entire presidency. As a matter of fact, it can be argued that the only reason it didn't "kill-off" Clinton's original bid for the presidency is that Ross Perot carried 20% of the electorate in 1992, thereby splitting the votes of "conservative" Americans which allowed Clinton to win, but not by a majority of the population, but only a slim plurality.

LOOKING BACK AT THE ANTI-WAR
HYSTERIA SURROUNDING THE VIETNAM WAR

When one looks back on the Vietnam War one is led to believe that opposition to the war was there from the beginning. But that simply isn't true. The war started in earnest for the United States in 1964 with the "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" - an "incident" that occurred off the coast of North Vietnam on August 2-4, 1964: It was alleged that two American destroyers, the Maddox and the Turner Joy, had been attacked by North Vietnamese naval gun boats, an act of war to which the United States had to respond. 

In documents later released by the National Security Agency on November 30, 2005, the whole "incident" was revealed to have been a "MANUFACTURED" event designed to elicit rage from the American people in support of the war - which is EXACTLY what happened. The "incident" was used by President Johnson as a bludgeon over the head of Congress to grant him authority to go to war on behalf of America's client-state, South Vietnam. [NOTE: The striking similarity between the "MANUFACTURED" event that got the United States into the Vietnam War and the 'MANUFACTURED" events that got the United States into the War in Iraq is startling. It seems that the elites never tire of playing the American people for suckers.]

Fighting an insurgency war, however, is NOT like fighting a war such as the Second World War where it was permissible to kill civilians indiscriminately in massive bombing raids that leveled whole cities; where whole populations were defined as "enemy combatants" which could be targeted for destruction - which is what happened in the firebombing of Dresden and Hamburg in Germany, and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Indeed, in the Second World War the U.S. was prepared to carry on the war against both Germany and Japan until the populations of both countries had been totally annihilated.

In a counter-insurgency war, however, the "native" population is presumed to be the "victim" and, thus, "off limits" to being targeted. This fact holds the power of the Empire in check, since how does one save a population by killing it off? Thus, the U.S. is forced to enter the towns and cities of the "victim" population and kill off the enemy one by one - a tactic that opens its own soldiers to being killed off by the enemy. THIS CAN BE A LONG AND VERY FRUSTRATING PROCESS, AND A PROCESS THAT THE AMERICAN POPULATION IS NOT PREPARED TO SUSTAIN FOR ANY GREAT LENGTH OF TIME. After all, the benefits of "counter-insurgency" warfare accrue only to the elites; they do not dribble down that much to the "plebes" who are doing the fighting and/or are sending their sons and daughters off to die for the sake of Exxon-Mobil, Haliburton, Boeing (which is in the process of shipping most of its civilian manufacturing off shore), etc.

Thus, while counter-insurgency war may begin with a paroxysm of patriotism and a surfeit of flag-waving - as both Vietnam did in 1964 and Iraq did in 2003 - it doesn't take long for the people to turn against it.

THE TURNING POINT

In Vietnam, the turning point insofar as American patience for the war was concerned came with the Tet Offensive by the Viet Cong in the early months of 1968, after about four fruitless years of conflict. That seems to be the "magic number:" FOUR - which is about the length of time in years that the U.S. has been involved in the "counter-insurgency" war in Iraq. From Tet (February)1968 the American population turned against the war in SPADES.

Interestingly, it was just after Tet that the United States began introducing its Phoenix techniques (i.e., its death squad methodologies) into the war, and began actually "winning" using these brutal techniques - and the fact is, by 1972 one could travel the length and breath of Vietnam and not be subjected to "enemy action." The Viet Cong had been destroyed, and the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) had been confined to fighting along the borders of South Vietnam without really being able to penetrate the country. Moreover, all this had been accomplished as Nixon was withdrawing American troops from the country. And more than just that, the B-52 bombing of North Vietnam's infrastructure and cities which Nixon had initiated had thrown a real scare into the leaders of the North, and there were very REAL indications that the North Vietnamese were preparing to "give up" and sue for peace on American terms.

In January of 1973, President Richard Nixon approved the Paris Peace Accords negotiated by Henry Kissinger, which implemented an immediate cease-fire IN PLACE in South Vietnam which - in effect - left America's client-state government in charge of the whole country. It's true that the Accords called for the complete withdrawal of American troops within sixty days, but that troop withdrawal was already well under way. The very real fact of the matter is, "Vietnamization" of the war (i.e., shifting the fighting from American troops to South Vietnamese troops) had proved successful, and South Vietnam - with the help of off-shore American air power - was more than capable of keeping the NVA at bay.

But that was the "catch:" the South Vietnamese were still dependent upon the use of American air power; so to that end President Nixon met with South Vietnamese President Thieu and secretly promised him a “severe retaliation” against North Vietnam should they break the cease-fire - presumably the renewal of B-52 attacks against North Vietnam.

IT WAS TOO LATE - THE TAIL
WAS NOW WAGGING THE DOG

It was all too late, however; the tail was now wagging the dog. The "peace movement" had gotten up too much of a "head of steam" to be stopped by the new "facts on the ground" in Vietnam. Moreover, the "Bring the Troops Home" movement had by then FIXATED on Richard Nixon and he had become the target of their rage - a rage that had turned a two-bit break-in at the Watergate into cause celeb to destroy the Nixon presidency.

The so-called "illegal" B-52 bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia, the surfacing of the "Pentagon Papers," the "Watergate Affair" and a whole host of other "illegal" war activities were all rolled up together into a "witches brew" which the Nixon Administration was forced to swallow whole.

On June 19, 1973 the Democratic-controlled Congress - in an excess of rage against the war and Nixon - passed the Case-Church Amendment, which called for a halt to ALL military activity in Southeast Asia by August 15, thereby ending twelve years of direct U.S. military involvement in the region. In the fall of 1974, Nixon resigned under the relentless pressure of the "peace party" (which had been using the Watergate scandal as its foil) and was succeeded by Gerald Ford.

Congress then used its "power of the purse" to cut off ALL funding to South Vietnam. THE ANTI-WAR RAGE OF THE LEFT AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY HAD REACHED ITS ZENITH. As the North Vietnamese Communist Party Secretary Le Duan observed in December 1974:

“The Americans have withdrawn … this is what marks the opportune moment.”

THE END COMES

The "cut-off" of American aid to South Vietnam caused a sharp decline in morale in the ranks of the South Vietnamese who now lacked any form of American support. The NVA began its final assault in March of 1975 in the Central Highlands. Ban Me Thout, a strategically important hamlet, quickly fell to North Vietnam. On March 13, a panicked Thieu called for the retreat of his troops. His decision to retreat spurred a chaotic mass exodus of civilians and soldiers that clogged the dilapidated roads to the coast. So many refugees died along the way that the migration along Highway 7B was alternatively described by journalists as the “convoy of tears” and the “convoy of death.”

On April 21, President Thieu resigned in a bitter televised speech in which he strongly denounced the United States. Sensing that South Vietnam was on the verge of collapse, the NVA accelerated its attack and reached Saigon on April 23.

DEMOCRATS: SLIDING DOWN THE SAME SLIPPERY
SLOPE THEY WENT DOWN 30 YEARS AGO

On the same day that President Thieu resigned President Ford announced to cheerful students at Tulane University that as far as America was concerned,

“The war was over.”

The war officially concluded on April 30^th, as Saigon fell to North Vietnam and the last American personnel were evacuated.

THIS IS EXACTLY THE SCENARIO THE LEFT WANTS TO REPEAT INSOFAR AS IRAQ IS CONCERNED - AND THE LEFT IS ALREADY WELL DOWN THE ROAD TOWARDS A REPEAT IN IRAQ OF WHAT HAPPENED IN VIETNAM. Moreover, just as it did during the last days of the Vietnam War, the Left now believes that it is in the process of forming a PERMANENT ANTI-WAR constituency in the United States that it can use to, as Rep. Dennis Kucinich says, make America simply -

"… a nation among nations, NOT A NATION AGAINST NATIONS …"

IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT

The only thing that is lacking insofar as the "witches brew" that the Left has concocted for the Right to drink is the threat to impeach President Bush, the Right's current champion, and, thus, irrevocably disgrace the Right and drive it PERMANENTLY into exile. The threat to impeach the president was one of the main ingredients in the brew that the Democrats forced Nixon to swallow, and the tactic is now being brushed off and used against Bush. Sarah Baxter reports:

"The movement to impeach President George W Bush over the war on terror began with a few tatty bumper stickers on the back of battered old Volvos and slogans such as “Bush lied, people died” on far-left websites. But … dreams of impeaching Bush are no longer confined to the political fringe [and since Democrats have come to power in Congress], this temptation to humiliate him is likely to be irresistible.

"A taste of the battle to come was provided last week by Senator Russ Feingold, a popular choice for the 2008 presidential nomination among Democrat anti-war activists. He proposed a motion of censure against Bush for authorizing the National Security Agency to wiretap Americans suspected of links to terrorism without a court warrant.

"Feingold gave notice that the party should stop “cowering” before Bush on national security issues. 'If there’s any Democrat out there who can’t say the president has no right to make up his own laws, I don’t know if that Democrat really … [has the right to call himself a Democrat]', he said."

Baxter continues:

"If few senior Democrats are calling publicly for Bush to be placed in the dock, plenty are flirting with the idea. One of them is Al Gore, the defeated 2000 presidential candidate. Gore said recently that Bush’s 'unlawful' eavesdropping was part of a larger pattern of 'seeming indifference' to the American constitution, WHICH COULD WELL BE AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE.

"John Kerry, the 2004 presidential nominee, was overheard in an Irish bar on Capitol Hill talking about how satisfying it would be to impeach Bush ... He was just having a laugh, his spokeswoman rushed to explain: 'Impeachment jokes in Washington are as old as Donald Rumsfeld'. But then she turned serious: 'How are the same Republicans, who tried to impeach a president over whether he misled a nation about a [sexual] affair, going to pretend it does not matter if the administration intentionally misled the country into war'?

"The urge to impeach is partly payback for the Bill Clinton era when Republicans dragged the president through the mud over his dalliance with the intern Monica Lewinksy.

"Others are convinced there is a good case against Bush based on the 2002 Downing Street memo — revealed by The Sunday Times — in which Richard Dearlove, then head of M16, said 'the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy' of removing Saddam Hussein. CONGRESSMAN JOHN CONYERS, THE SENIOR DEMOCRAT WHO TOOK PART IN THE WATERGATE PROCEEDINGS AGAINST PRESIDENT NIXON IN 1974, HAS CALLED FOR A COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY INTO GROUNDS FOR IMPEACHMENT." 

IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES

And make no mistake about it! - the list of impeachable offenses that the Left could "dream up" to charge the president with are staggering:

• The political scams that Republicans used to win Florida for Bush in the 2000 presidential election.

• The events surrounding 9/11.

• The lies which suggested that Iraq was responsible for 9/11.

• The unlawful "contracting out" of lucrative reconstruction projects to Bush's and Cheney's pals at Haliburton, Brown & Root, Blackwater, etc.

• The deliberate distortion and misrepresentation of intelligence data concerning "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (WMDs) - distortions and misrepresentations that were used to get the United States into war with Iraq.

• The unlawful wiretapping of American citizens.

• The unlawful detention of American citizens.

• The torture of enemy combatants in contravention of the Geneva Accords.

• Etc.

Now while President Bush's allies in the Religious Right might think that the charges listed above are a "reach," they should remind themselves that those driving the process to impeach the president do not think so at all. As we have previously suggested, the tail (e.g. Kucinich, Waxman, Rangel, Kennedy, Conyers, Woolsey, Feingold, Waters, etc.) of the Democratic Party is now wagging the dog of the Democratic Party (i.e., the members of the DLC - Reid, Pelosi, etc.).

To people like Kucinich, Waxman, and Rangel, President Bush is guilty of "High Crimes & Misdemeanors;" he has run roughshod over the Constitution and he must be held accountable. And in all of this, one should be sure that the left-wing of the Democratic Party will be backed up in SPADES in the street demonstrations that are sure to break out in the nation in the two years or so remaining in the president's administration - demonstrations that could very well rock the foundations of the country and make what happened to Nixon look like a child's game in comparison.

RAGE - once it has taken hold on a population - has a way of quickly spreading like wildfire in dry brush; a way of creating a vortex capable of sucking into its swirling mass people who otherwise are not prone to impulsive and reckless behavior. This is certainly what happened to Democratic (and even Republican) moderates in the rush to impeach Nixon over Watergate. And this is certainly what happened to Republican moderates when the far-right of the Republican Party rushed to impeach Clinton over the Lewinsky affair.

IRAQ IS NOT VIETNAM AND
BUSH IS NOT RICHARD NIXON

But there is a price that one must pay when he imbibes in rage, just as there is a psychological and physical cost to participating in a drunken brawl. When the dawn comes, there is the wreckage of the previous night that one must pay for; the never-ending headache one must endure; the stupid things one said and one did that must be atoned for; the embarrassment that must be "lived-down," etc. - and so it was with the Democratic Party insofar as its rage against the Vietnam War was concerned.

Yes! - the "bring the troops home" crowd won the day in Vietnam. But it turned out to be a pyretic victory where the "winners" eventually became the "losers." Moreover, the belief by the Left today that they are in the process of forming a PERMANENT ANTI-WAR constituency in the United States may very well turn out to be as much an empty daydream as it was when the Left thought it had done so in driving Nixon from power in 1974 and forcing the "troops out of Vietnam." In the long run, making America simply "… a nation among nations, NOT A NATION AGAINST NATIONS …" is not something calculated to go down well with most of the American electorate.

What, in the end, the Left may very well generate is the same kind of BACKLASH they generated after Vietnam - a BACKLASH that painted Democrats as having "stabbed the army in the back" insofar as victory was concerned in Vietnam; a BACKLASH that forever turned the nation's military against the Democratic Party; a BACKLASH that forbade the presidency to the Democrats for more than two decades; and a BACKLASH that painted Democrats as "limp-wrist" sissies and two-bit weaklings incapable of strong, muscular action in the sphere of foreign affairs.

And one must remember here that after Vietnam, this BACKLASH occurred in the absence of the Religious Right; it developed spontaneously and quite unexpectedly. It welled up in an almost instinctive, unpremeditated reaction against the Left; something from deep within the American psyche - and if that's the case, then God help the Democrats if this reaction is catalyzed by the Religious Right and the other right-wing institutions that are now fully grown and well-developed. One should take heed to the following facts before one follows the Left into oblivion:

• The stakes in Iraq are infinitely higher than they were in Vietnam. Vietnam - at best - occupied a position on the periphery of the American Empire. On the contrary, Iraq (and - ipso facto - the oil wealth of the Middle East) is the jewel in the crown insofar as the American New World Order System is concerned. It is difficult to imagine that the elites who in reality govern this country will walk away from this kind of wealth. They've killed for far less than that in the past - e.g., JFK, Martin Luther King, RFK, etc.

• Right-wing political institutions such as the AEI, Concerned Women of America, the CNP, etc. - which if they existed at all in 1968, existed only in an embryonic fashion - are in "high dudgeon" today.

• While Richard Nixon did not possess a real "mass following," the Right today enjoys the support of one of the largest, most homogeneous followings in the United States: The Religious Right, a rock-solid core of adherents that constitutes one-third of the voting population. It's a population that would follow their leader to hell if need be, which is what they are likely to do.

• At the time of the Vietnam War the Right did not really possess control of any of the media - they had never thought that that was really necessary. However, the crucifixion of Richard Nixon by the "mainstream media" such as CBS, ABC, and NBC taught them differently. Today they have "tempered" the "mainline" media in a way that would have been considered inconceivable during the Vietnam conflict. And more than that, they have created a media of their own (e.g., Fox, MSNBC, "talk radio," etc.) that parrots the right-wing "party line" just as surely as Izvestia and Tass parroted the Communist "party-line" in the Old Soviet Union.

• Today's military establishment has become a virtual institution of the Republican Party - one that has no "truck" with the Democratic Party, and one that is prepared to actually defy the Left as it demonstrated when Clinton tried to force gays on the military early in his first administration. Such an open revolt by the military to the dictates of the president would have been inconceivable in 1968.

• The ultra liberal "Warren Court" of the 1960s - which did so much to make the Left a viable political and cultural force during the Vietnam era - has been replaced by the ultra conservative "Roberts Court" which is more likely to curtail the kind of "free-expression" that made the street demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s such powerful tools of the Left.

• The police forces of today are much more "MILITARIZED" than they were in the 1960s and are today tied into the intelligence apparatus of an "all-seeing" surveillance state that would make the police forces of the 1960s look archaic in comparison - kind of like comparing Dallas SWATT to the "keystone cops."

• The Patriot Act and similar legislation have made the risk of defying the will of the elites a much more dangerous affair than it was during the 1960s; this legislation has made the possibility of "political incarceration" a very real thing.

THE COMING WITCH-HUNT

What does all this mean? For one thing, it means that when the inevitable reaction sets in against the cultural "excesses" of the Left and its non-muscular, effeminate war policies, the reaction this time, unlike the reaction of the 1980s, will be extremely harsh and brutal, and it will have about it the "feel" of a charismatic, tongue-speaking WITCH-HUNT.

This kind of WITCH-HUNT, as we have already suggested, did not occur in the 1980s because the Religious Right was still in its infancy. But now the Religious Right is fully-formed and burning with "PIOUS" fervor and righteous excess - ready to pounce on the infidels of the "Secular-Humanist Conspiracy" and burn them at the stake as enemies of the "Kingdom of God." It's for this reason that Jesus warns us:

"Take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to [religious] councils; and in the … [churches] ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them." (Matthew 13:9)

What this clearly implies is that anyone who opposes the state and the state's toady, the church, will be branded ""secular-humanists" and hunted down like rabid dogs. And Jesus goes on to say:

"Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death.

"And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake ..." (Matthew 13:12-13)

This is what happens when the fires of a religious WITCH-HUNT get out of control.

THE COURSE OF THE REACTION

That the nature of the coming REACTION will be religious in nature is clear, for what other possible explanation can be obtained from verse nine of chapter thirteen of the Book of Matthew: "… they shall deliver you up to [religious] councils; and in the … [churches] ye shall be beaten …" [NOTE: the term "synagogue" is used here; but the word that is here translated "synagogue" merely means "religious establishment" which when used in connection with Western Civilization indicates a "Christian establishment" or "church."]

The second part of this verse - i.e., "… ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake …" indicates that the same legal process that was used against Jesus will be used against TRUE believers who dare to defy the dictates of the American New World Order System and the church with which it has allied itself: Specifically, that Jesus was first delivered up to the RELIGIOUS authorities [i.e., the High Priest (Caiaphas), together with the chief priests, and the scribes (Matthew 26:3)], and then to the SECULAR authority (i.e., Pontius Pilate and the Roman government).

THE CHURCH AS INSTIGATOR

Plainly, the religious establishment will be the instigator of the coming great persecution against the "Opponents of Empire" (just as it was in Christ's time) - i.e., against the Kuciniches of this world, the Waxmans, the Rangels, the Kennedys, the Conyers, the Woolseys, the Feingolds, the Waters and all those other "Opponents of Empire" and those who espouse or are believed to espouse the values of the hated and sinister "Secular-Humanist Conspiracy."

It is into this "secular-humanist" pot that those Christians who oppose the dictates of the American New World Order System and the church it has partnered with will be thrown - after all, if Jesus could be called a BLASPHEMER of God by the religious authorities of His day (Matthew 26:25), it would not be a great thing if real Christians today should be lumped together with "New Agers," atheists, radical feminists, gays and lesbians, etc.

People will tremble with fear at the presence of this wild monster, this new inquisition. The mere mention of its name will send people scurrying for cover. Those who have ever spoken out against the American New World Order System and the so-called "Christian Values" it espouses will shudder to hear that late night "knock on the door," which will mean "their time has come."

Men and women will be "disappeared" as if the ground had opened up and swallowed them. Their property will be confiscated, their children will be snatched from them and delivered over to "Child Protective Services" to "preserve" them from the "heresies" of their parents. Many will seek to shelter themselves by "repenting" of their former lives and turning on their erstwhile comrades. Friends will betray friends, relatives will betray relatives - if by so doing they can escape imprisonment OR, per chance, they can negotiate a quick death over and against the torture that awaits them. Indeed, the words of Matthew 13:12 will become a REALITY as "brother betrays brother to death, and father betrays son; and children rise up against their parents and cause them to be put to death." (Matthew 13:12)

TWO POSSIBLE SCENARIOS

There are TWO possible scenarios here as to the timing of the coming REACTION; none insofar as the actual event is concerned, but only insofar as the timing of the event:

• FIRST, there is the very real possibility that the Left could push their agenda too far and too fast - that coupled with (a) an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, and (b) another "MANUFACTURED" 9/11 event would change everything regarding the Left's march away from empire and its effort to make America "… a nation among nations, NOT A NATION AGAINST NATIONS …"

  An Israeli air strike against Iran, and another 9/11 event; the one would follow the other as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Whether the 9/11 event would be "for real," or whether it would merely give cover for the elites to "MANUFACTURE" such an event, the outcome would be the same. The world would go up in flames as each side ratcheted up its response to the other.

  Moreover, as the flames reached higher and higher into the heavens, martial law would be declared by the president, and the neo-cons of the Bush Administration would be given carte blanche to treat the Islamic world as an "ENEMY ABSOLUTE." No need any longer to treat the people of the Middle East as "victims;" no need to fight the "enemy" from house to house. The peoples of the Middle East could be obliterated totally just as the citizens of Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were.

  Not only that, but as the holocaust spreads, the Left would be "exposed" and then denounced as "collaborationists" and "fifth-columnists," and these "exposures" and denunciations would make what happened during the McCarthy WITCH-HUNTS of the 1950s seem tame in comparison. 

  So-called "left-wingers" would be rounded up like the Japanese were after Pearl Harbor and confined to "concentration camps. And with the members of the Religious Right breathing the fires of hell down on them, the "secular-humanists" could face much worse than mere confinement to "relocation centers." They could be attacked as agents of the devil involved in a world-wide conspiracy designed to destroy Christianity.

  All this could easily take place in the last two years of the Bush Administration. The wildcard is Israel.

• SECOND, there is the possibility that the Bush Administration could go the way of the Nixon Administration - driven out of power by the mad anti-war hysteria of the Left in street demonstrations and a plethora of hysterical congressional "impeachment" proceedings presided over by the left-wing radicals of the Democratic Party. In its place, a Left-wing, anti-empire party could be swept into power - an anti-war party led by a WOMAN as president (Hillary Clinton), and a BLACK as vice president (Barak Obama).

  Both Clinton and Obama are irrevocably committed to the "hated," "secular-humanist" ideals of multi-culturalism and pluralism; ideals meant to strip Christianity of its place in the politics and culture of the nation, and both are committed to seeing the nation as merely "… a nation among nations, NOT A NATION AGAINST NATIONS …" So much, then, for America's role as "GOD'S REDEEMER NATION" destined by God to "liberate the world from tyranny and injustice." No special place for America in Clinton's and Obama's eyes.

  What then would happen IF - under the superintendence of a Clinton/Obama Administration - the U.S. attempts to "talk its way out of Iraq?" What then would happen IF the army is "stabbed in the back" by the anti-war fanatics of the Democratic Party and forced to pull out of Iraq the same way it had to pull out of Vietnam? - with its tail between its legs. What then would happen IF the radical Islamists - taking advantage of America's "sissified" state of mind - should capture and hold Iraq as a new and powerful "staging area" for attacks on the U.S. and its holdings world-wide? 

  The anger of the U.S. population would be set in motion in a way not seen since Pearl Harbor, and the Clinton/Obama Administration would go the way the Carter/Mondale Administration went in 1980 - only this times in SPADES, and under the relentless and RIGHTEOUS anger of an infuriated Religious Right. And all those who participated in the Clinton/Obama presidency would be rounded up and sent to "relocation camps" and worse, just as the socialists were rounded up and "disappeared" after Hitler took power in Germany in 1933.

  Moreover, one can only guess at the RAGE that would be uncorked insofar as the feminists and the black community are concerned. It would not go unnoticed that Clinton is a woman and Obama a black - giving substance to the prophesy that he (antichrist) will "oppose the desire for women to be the equals of men." (Daniel 11:37)

Brothers and sisters, one of these two scenarios are going to take place - and one should not necessarily hope for the second scenario in the belief that it is the "easier" of the two "scripts" (as it were), and that it gives one more time to delay taking action.

A LIGHT THAT SHINETH IN A DARK PLACE

As I have said before on many occasions, truly we are immersed in dark times. But the Bible says:

"We have … the sure word of prophecy; WHEREUNTO YE DO WELL THAT YE TAKE HEED, as unto a LIGHT THAT SHINETH IN A DARK PLACE ..." (2 Peter 1:19)

I URGE you, therefore, with all of my heart to sign up for the TRAINING. Find out for yourselves what the Scripture has to say on the matters we have been discussing. Let the Light of the Word shine in your heart.

You may sign up for the training here and begin putting your life on the line for Christ. This training well equip you for the hard times that are coming, and it well involve you in action. It will bring you out of your isolation into the open field where people will join you or cast insults at you and eventually persecute you for your belief. But isn't this what Christiantiy is about, and isn't this what Christ said:

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for GREAT IS YOUR REWARD IN HEAVEN: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

"Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

"Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." (Matt. 5:11-12, 14-16)

WE CONTINUE TO NEED YOUR FINANCIAL HELP

Finally, we continue to need your financial support as we begin to transition the ministry out of North America to Germany. So I say to you, if the spiritual treasures that we have ministered unto you have profited you, then please respond with your material treasures . As Paul said under similar circumstances so many years ago:

"If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things?" (1 Cor. 9:11)

God bless you all,

S.R. Shearer
Antipas Ministries