Here is a summary (newspaper) version of Sam’s latest article

Thanks for your support. I heard from our local newspaper today and they want to publish a 750 word summary of the "Children of the Beast" article featuring me as a guest columnist.  The shorter version is more palatable for a general audience. Please share!

Here is a summary (newspaper) version of Sam’s latest article. The entire article is available in the Word attachment, and also at: http://beastchildren.blogspot.com/

“Children of The Beast”

By Sam Sewell

"The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe."   H.L. Mencken

Most people see the conflict between limited government and big government as a political battle between conservatives and liberals.  This conflict is much more profound than political theory can encompass.

“The Beast” is too big to be responsive to human will

“This system is like a steamroller with an unresponsive steering wheel; no matter who is in the driver’s seat it continues to crush the people.”    Aristotle the Hun

At every level of life we recognize that the more complicated any system becomes the less efficient its function. Complicated systems overwhelm the people who participate in them.

For example, let’s look at people and their possessions.  Most of us have made the observation that as we accumulate “things” there comes a time when our things own us, rather than us owning our things.  My wife has created a system that prevents her closet from taking over our house.  She will not put a new piece of clothing into her closet unless she eliminates something that is already there.

Many businesses have a similar policy.  In addition to not adding a new policy without eliminating an outdated policy, managers do a periodic analysis of the existing bureaucracy to determine what paperwork and procedures need to be eliminated.

Governments would do well to implement similar solutions.  Most government programs have a constituency of voters who object to “their” special interest program being eliminated, resulting in a system that eventually overwhelms the citizens.  Not only are government agencies inefficient, they often produce “schizophrenic” results, like making attempts to reduce the use of tobacco at the same time that tobacco growers are receiving government subsidies.

This not just a modern problem!  The same dynamics were present in large systems thousands of years ago. Bureaucratic inertia was as much a cause for the fall of the Roman Empire as barbarians at the gates.  The ancient Jews had a solution to the problem that has escaped the attention of leaders of modern government systems.

"This fiftieth year is sacred—it is a time of freedom and of celebration, when everyone will receive back their original property, and slaves will return home to their families. "  Leviticus 25:10

Every fifty years all debts were cancelled, all slaves were freed, and all land was returned to the ancestral owners.  There were several other provisions associated with the Year of Jubilee. This religious tradition was a way for an entire culture to be reset, or “rebooted,” in order to wipe out the accumulated bureaucratic inertia.  We modern people can “defrag” our computers, but we don’t know how to “defrag” our federal government.

The problems associated with complex systems are not unique to the government of the United States.  In fact the founding fathers who created the Constitution built in some safeguards because they were already aware of the problem.  The 10^th Amendment is one of those attempts to curtail the unrelenting tendency of government to grow into a curse upon free men and women.

 “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

This Constitutional Amendment was intended to restrict the power and size of the federal government.  Over the decades the federal government has steadily centralized its power, while the 10^th amendment has been mostly ignored.

For example, if the 10^th amendment were respected, the Federal Environmental Protection Agency would cease to exist, and individual state agencies would protect the environment of each state.  Also, the Federal Department of Education would be eliminated, and local school boards would set the standards and supervise the education in each individual community.

As you might suspect ““The Beast”” and “The “Children of The Beast”” are adamantly opposed to such corrections.

It is a fundamental truth that all systems grow to the point where their internal inertia causes them to fail, and often catastrophically so.  The sudden failure of a large empire is not a surprise or a mystery!  So it is clear that we are struggling with dynamics more profound than modern politics in the United States.  These dynamics are rooted into the very nature of reality, even showing up in complicated systems of the physical world of engineering and physics.  The more complex the system, the less efficient and more unwieldy it becomes.

Metaphorically, American citizens are struggling with “The Beast” that has forgotten who is serving whom. I wonder if the right to bear arms includes cattle prods.   Sam Sewell

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Find out Why there are so many “Children of the Beast”

The rest of the article http://beastchildren.blogspot.com/

Rev. Sam Sewell is an ordained Christian clergyman, a psychotherapist, a member of Mensa, a U.S. Navy Veteran, and a Member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. He is a frequent commentator on religious and political issues.