Should Christians support the Freedom Convoys

From my facebook 

I stopped regularly listening to MSM and instead turn to Rebel News, and to citizens reports who do live stream walk-throughs of downtown Ottawa on YouTube. You get a very different picture of what's happening in Ottawa! Of course we don't agree with everything that said and done there, even as we would not agree with everything that every Canadian soldier said and did on the battlegrounds of WW II. But yet we say the cause they fought for was just and right!

Didn't John Calvin say that a rebellion was legitimate if under magistrates agreed and participated. There are several MP's who publicly supported and have spoken up for the "Freedom  Convoy" participants. 

When the prime minister judges the views being expressed as that of "a small Fringe minority with unacceptable views" and condemns the participants as "racists and misogynists and white supremacists" he is no longer acting like the leader of a Nation, but as a spokesman for a  segment of society that has a particular viewpoint.  In effect he has declared as unacceptable, the views of the many Christians who are protesting their loss of freedom to worship, of expression, of association, of movement, of privacy.

This is similar to Hillary Clinton, who said that half of Donald Trump’s supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables” characterized by “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic” views.

Moreover, in our civil society we are permitted to protest against our governments at the ballot box. But we're also permitted to protest against our governments by marching in the street. We do it every year with a pro-life March. The freedom convoy is different only in the matter of degree: the March for Life is not much of an inconvenience to the people who live in downtown Ottawa; The Freedom Convoy is. 

The present protest is peaceful (except for the air-horns). The brou-haha about the Terry Fox memorial should cause the leftists to be ashamed. A Canadian flag was draped over the shoulders of the Statue of Terry Fox and a placard was put in his arms. The leftists were appalled because Terry Fox, they said, should not be appropriated by antivaxxers; his memory belongs to those who believe in universal health care! Go figure! I find it interesting that those who complain about the Terry Fox memorial have not complained about the BLM protests tearing down John A McDonald's memorial in Montreal, or the beheading of the Statue of Queen Victoria.

Of course we disagree with those who think it appropriate to fly a swastika or a Confederate flag.  

But Justin Trudeau's allegation that truckers were stealing food from homeless people is leftist spin on an unverified news bit that some protesters tried to get some free food from a homeless soup kitchen. That is a far cry from stealing food from homeless people.  Now we see the protesters providing free food for anyone who wants some. I can't imag6ine they would turn the homeless away! We don't hear the prime minister recognizing that! (The soup kitchen is also now receiving hundreds of dollars of unsolicited donstions!)

It may be true that some protesters treated the grave of the unknown soldier with disrespect, but since then many have laid flowers on the grave.  The prime Minister has not recognized this act of contrition and acknowledgment of wrong doing by some at the protest. 

The prime minister in his pronouncements is purposely misleading the citizens of the country that he is supposed to be leading. When several under magistrates agree with a significant segment of the population that the government must go, then organized protest and civil disobedience is not unbiblical nor unChristian. It can and may be employed by Christians to advance the cause of the church and to build up the kingdom of God. Especially when the prime minister declares our views "unacceptable"!

By the. Liberal Party spin, our government is swiftly losing credibility and legitimacy.  I fully support the Freedom Convoy. If people don't want to be vaccinated that should be their choice. I've had "two and a boost" but that's my choice. If I would get COVID and be unvaccinated, because of my Parkinson's I would probably die of pneumonia. So I made an informed decision. 

In our country we don't penalize smokers or the obese or those who engage in extreme sports, by making pariahs out of them banning them from civil society. Why should I with "2 and a boost" be afraid of unvaxxed. Why should they lose their jobs. Why ban them from restaurants, museums, airplanes, concert halls,  theaters, bowling alleys, gyms and spas... (and in Quebec even from worshipping) Let them be! 

I wonder at the inconsistency of the leftists, who in their pro-abortion rhetoric will state that a woman's body is her own, and what she does with her body is between her and her doctor. But a freedom loving right of center Christ follower is denied the opportunity to use that argument with respect to vaccines.  The left will bludgeon freedom loving libertarian into submission. This is the time for Christians to speak out. We have a legitimate (and I think God given) opportunity to reclaim civil freedoms that are a legacy of the Great Reformation and that the ungodly left will be pleased to steal from us: Freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom to worship, freedom to travel inside our own national borders without being tracked, freedom of privacy! 

They will use their arguments to support their positions but deny Christians the right to use similar defenses. The is no reasoning with a post-milleniaĺ post-modern.  Our views, opinions and worldview are that of  "a small fringe minority and are unacceptable." 

Trudeau has shown his true colours and we, judged by him to be "The Small Fringe Minority" should take that up as a badge of honor! We of the unacceptable views!  

In Dutch history, in 1566, among the leaders who bound themselves to assist in defending the rights and liberties of the Netherlands against the civil and religious despotism of Philip II of Spain, were the nobles, Louis of Nassau and Hendrick van Brederode. On April 5 1566, permission was obtained for the confederates to present a petition of grievances, called the Request, to the regent, Margaret, Duchess of Parma. About 250 nobles marched to the palace accompanied by Louis of Nassau and van Brederode. The regent was at first alarmed at the appearance of so large a body, but one of her councillors, Berlaymont, allegedly remarked "N'ayez pas peur Madame, ce ne sont que des gueux" ("Fear not madam, they are only beggars"). (Wikimedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geuzen)

"They're only gueux", a French slur. The protesters took on the slur in pride. And when they used their  ships to blockade the harbour at Brill, they called themselves the Water Geuzen. The action at Brill by the Water Beggars is some what paralleled by the Freedom Convoy. Except that the Water Beggars protest became an armed military uprising. The Dutch rebelled against the Roman Catholic Hapsburgs and established a free Calvinist State.  

Full disclosure: my mother's maiden name was De Geus and and family tree goes back to a fellow Jacob the (knife) Sharpener, who took the surname '"de Gueuz" in 1572, (the year the Beggars captured Brill and Vlissingen, which marked the beginning of the final stagesprotest of the Dutch revolt.) 

The Water Beggars were privateers or pirates depending on your point of view (though sanctioned by William of Orange) yet I've never heard that their actions against the Roman Catholic Hapsburgs was illegitimate, or that the Dutch revolt was unChristian nor was the establishing of the calavinist Netherlands.

And we could mention Bonhoeffer and his involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler. If I remember correctly, Bonhoeffer was Dr Jelle Faber's beloved heretic, because of his nvolvement. Faber told us of the vile memories of Amsterdam Jews being rounded up. It was duing his last month of teaching that the Berlin wall fell-- Nov 9 1989--and we asked him what he thought about it. He said he feared German reunification. I don't think Dr Faber thought that Bonhoeffer was wrong.

Daniel's friends stood up against the king of the great city of man, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. With the whole world as witnesses, they defied great king of the City of the world and would not submit. When prayer was forbidden, Daniel didn't go and hide when he prayed, but publicly defied the great king of the city of man, because he had his eyes set on the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

Let us, the SFM, the Basket of Deplorables, allied with the Trucker Beggars do the same. We have a legitimate protest; which we as God's people may and should use to protect our Christian freedom.

Churchill and Orwell: Champions for the Equality and Freedom of the Individual

  Thomas E. Ricks Churchill and Orwell: The fight for freedom. Penguin. NY. NY. 2017 (275 pages, 51 pages end notes; 13 pages index; 16 pages photos).

Thomas Ricks has (in 2017) presented a new biography on Churchill with a parallel biography of George Orwell. Ricks compares the two giants on the 20th-century stage and notes their parallel lives: one as an upper-class politician, the other as an author with working-class roots. Both of these men championed the cause of the Western social value of equality and freedom of the individual.

Understanding and valuing what these men fought for has become more pressing in the past year with the black lives matter campaign, the predominance of intersectionality, and the rise of critical theory” These three phenomena promote the concept that personal identity is defined by the groups we are part of. Some groups are victims; some groups are oppressors. Proponents of critical theory want us to pay attention to gender, race, class identities and inequities. Intersectionality studies the interconnectedness of race, class and gender as they apply to groups, creating intersections of overlapping systems of discrimination, disadvantage and oppression. The black lives matter campaign will not admit the slogan every black life matters. Their movement is not about the individual but about the collective. It’s all about systemic racism and the victimization of the group or class.

Ricks shows us how these two giants on the 20th-century's stage fought against tyranny; the tyranny of the Marxists and of the Nazis and how they fought for the freedom and equality of the individual. The opening chapters describe their vast dissimilarities and very different life trajectories (pg 3). As flamboyant as Churchill was, Orwell was phlegmatic and introverted. But “together in the mid-20th  century, these two men led the way, politically and intellectually, in responding to the twin totalitarian threats of Fascism and Communism (Pg 3).”

Both these men saw clearly the threat of the state subverting “the value of the individual … and all that that means: the right to dissent from the majority, the right even to be persistently wrong, the right to distrust the power of the majority, and the need to assert that high officials might be in error—most especially when those in power believe they are not (Pg 5).” Orwell once wrote, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear (Pg 5).”

The book traces the lives of the two men from early childhood, to their careers as writers. Thomas Ricks, the author, has been a war correspondent who wrote news items for American news media from Iraq and the Middle East. He saw in Churchill and Orwell an interesting parallel with himself: both were war correspondents. Churchill reported from India and the Afghan border, went to Sudan, then back to India and then South Africa. Orwell wrote from Spain during the Spanish civil war.

It was during the 30s, at the time of the great depression, that many believed that liberal capitalist democracy was tired and failing: the only solutions that were being advanced were fascism or communism. Churchill had been in government in the 20s but the 30s proved to be a political wilderness for him. His peers did not want to hear him on the “Nazi threat.” Orwell, on the other hand, had developed into a leftist pro-communist champion of the working class in his writings (though his books were not popular) and in 1937 he joined the anti-rightist forces in the Spanish civil war. Joining the communists against the fascists, he had “a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom (Pg 66).” But he learned differently. While he was in Barcelona he saw how the Stalinists murderously purged their own, and how no one was safe from the communists. This was no utopian egalitarian society. It was a ruthless battle for power and influence. It was not freedom, but bondage from which to escape and flee. And flee he did, back to England. From then on Orwell wrote not only against the totalitarianism and oppression of the right (Naziism) but because of his experience in Spain he now also took up his pen in opposition to the tyranny of the left (Communism).

When in 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland and the British and the French declared war, Churchill came into his own. Chamberlain stepped down and Churchill became prime minister. He spoke in the British House of Commons about the coming war: “This is not a question of fighting for Danzig or fighting for Poland. We are fighting to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defence of all that is most sacred to man. This was no battle for domination or imperial aggrandizement or material gain; it was not a conflict to shut any county out of its sunlight and means of progress. It was  a war, viewed in its inherent quality, to establish on impregnable rocks, the rights of the individual and it is a war to establish and revive the stature of man (pg 85).” Orwell wrote, “if this war is about anything at all, it is a war in favour of freedom of thought (pg 85).”

Ricks then recounts the war between the Allies and the Nazis and the rise of the USA and the Soviets as world powers and the decline of the British Empire. After the war, Orwell wrote his satire on communism, Animal Farm, and Churchill wrote his memoirs in 6 volumes. Then in 1949 Orwell published 1984, about a dystopian world of totalitarianism; a society where there is no equality and no freedom; where the protagonist is Winston! Where WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. Big Brother is watching you!

Ricks ends his book with a review of especially Orwell’s literary significance in 2016, He wrote this book prior to Donald Trump’s rise to power, the advent of Black Lives Matter; prior to the rise of Critical Theory, and the advance of intersectionality. Churchill stood against Fascism, which is based on a conflict of races, meaning no freedom; Orwell stood against communism based on a conflict of classes, meaning no equality.

Ricks applies the lessons from Churchill and Orwell to the civil rights movements of the 60s and the failure of the Soviet Bloc in the 80s. He reflects on the post 9/11 World and the rise of the data gathering of the Silicon Valley giants: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. They are watching you!

But Trumpism on the right and intersectionality on the left should give us pause. Are we entering a new crisis with no leaders? Will we lose our freedom of thought and our equality before the law while we post pictures of our latest Amazon purchase on Facebook? Will we care? You will if you read this book!