Recommended Reading

Over at TMH’s Bacon Bits, DL has a post, “Conservatives Asking: Which Face Now?”, that I consider a “must read” for anyone who needs a reminder of the political dilemma facing responsible voters in upcoming elections. In it he makes mention of disaffectation among the Rpublican Paty faithful.

Loyalty is a two way street. The party faithful can only maintain faith with the party when the party leaders maintain faith with them.

BTW, “faith” entered the English language from Norman French. It was a term explicitly used to denote fealty relationships. relationships that required two-way loyalty. even more interesting is that “belief” came to English through a Celtic/Anglo linguistic journey. “Lief-an” was the relationship between a Celtic chieftan/leader and his people denoting much the same two-way loyalty that faith’s French journey into English followed. (The Anglic intensifier “be” was added much later as “lief-an” became pejorated to denote the highest form of lief-an.) The history of both these words was strongly reflected in their contemporary meanings at the times Wycliffe, Coverdale and later the KJV translators used them to translate verb and noun forms of “pisteuo” which—in first century Koine—held the same meanings of bilateral loyalty. Or, to use a more current idiom from the military, loyalty up the chain of command is only as strong as loyalty down the chain of command.

In fact, one of the fundamental principles of Christianity has remained that we are only able to be faithful to God because of His faithfulness to us. Our faith in Him is a gift from him. The best of feudal rulers understood this and that’s where the concept of noblesse oblige came from: to whom much is given (wealth, power, prestige, etc.), much shall be required in return.

Our current political elite—of both major parties—have no such understandings of faithfulness, responsibility, obligations. To the leaders of both parties, political power is more important than doing what is right and just and good. The representative republic handed us by the Founders has become a kakistocratic kleptocracy.

And “we the people” are to blame.

The Tree of Liberty is getting mighty thirsty…