The Power Barons: Humanism’s Deities

A recent study by Harvard Business School found that United States corporate executives make over 300 times as much as the average worker.  Based on a $30,000 annual worker income and a 40 hour week the CEO gets $4326.00 an hour while the worker gets $14.42.

In the mid-thirties during the depth of a serious depression executives at General Motors were making 200 times as much as their workers. It was this disparity that helped set the stage for a power shift from the corporate moguls to John L .Lewis  and his CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations).  John L. Lewis and hundreds of thousands of disgruntled workers succeeded in forcing well-armed and well connected corporate executives to allow collective bargaining which ultimately unionized large portions of the U. S work force.

It was a struggle of epic proportions that bared the fangs of the power elite against the will and leadership of the workers.  It began at the Chevrolet Body Plant in Cleveland, Ohio and spread to Flint, Michigan then to Atlanta, Kansas City, Pontiac, and finally to Detroit itself.  Nearly half a million workers were involved.  At Flint they staged a sit in where the workers sat at their stations day and night.  Machine guns were brought in.  The courts got involved. Finally an injunction was issued.

The strike began on December 28, 1936.  The edict ordered prison sentences and million dollar fines if the strike was not stopped by February 3rd.  Governor Frank Murphy of Michigan called out the National Guard who along with strike breakers armed with clubs and crowbars surround the Flint Plant.

According to William Manchester’s account in “The Glory and the Dream” Governor Murphy was ready to send the bayonets of the National Guard against the workers when at the last moment he called John L. Lewis asking what he should do. Lewis replied, “You want my answer, sir?  I shall personally enter General Motors Chevrolet Plant Number Four.  I shall order the men to disregard your order, to stand fast.  I shall walk up to the largest window in the plant, open it, divest myself of my outer raiment, remove my shirt and bare my bosom.  Then when you order your troops to fire, mine will be the first breast that those bullets will strike.  And as my body falls to the ground, you will listen to the voice of your grandfather as he whispers in your ear, ‘Frank, are you sure you are doing the right thing?’” (Murphy’s grandfather had been hanged in an Irish uprising.)

Fourteen strikers were wounded during the night but Murphy backed down and finally ordered GM not to prevent the strikers from carrying food to the sitting strikers.  With President Roosevelt silent and Governor Murphy aiding the strikers the corporate elites succumbed, signing contracts for collective bargaining.  Unionization spread rapidly into other big corporations.

Globalization was anathema to union workers.  When the rape of United States markets was set in place by our elected officials through ratification of international trade legislation a great burden was placed on unions.  The rush to be competitive in world markets was diametrical to unionism.

Justice is a prerequisite to peace.  When human power is concentrated and not prescribed ghastly actions often result.  God’s overarching legal system provides perfect justice and a necessary restraint; when it is cast off the power swings that marked unions and management replace it.

In our time a more insidious power structure threatens our well-being. For at least a century a systematic plan has been in place to bring the nations of the world under international law.  Nation after nation has been subverted by monstrous, opaque centralized power.  Every major nation of the Western world has been subjected to stealth control. Debt is the weapon.  Since Islam forbids most debt, Muslim nations are harder to conquer.   Military force is necessary and the United States is being used as an instrument of conquest.

Corporate mergers have created behemoths that have little competition and are tyrannical in their own rite. The furtive power seekers are not planning a free society.  Their vision appears to be a controlled environment similar to China.  As economic pressure drains wealth from the United States and oppression ramps up, our standard of living falls, eventually bringing us to par with third world labor.  It is like a 007 movie where James Bond has accepted a bribe to join Blofeld.

Globalization is marred by the illegal procedures used to bring it about.  Wealthy and powerful men and women conspired to burglarize, undermine, and tyrannize the entire population of the world. Their methods are bribery and intimidation and the results of their evil intentions are apparent around the globe.

One wonders if an honest, forthright free-will proposition had been presented to the people of Western Civilization they might have voluntarily participated in bringing the Far Eastern Nations into their economic circle and endorsed an international legal code that would guide global trade.  Conspiracies are sometimes successful but they are wicked and harsh.

Recently, the National Press Club between Bruce Fein, a Ron Paul adviser and resident scholar at the Turkish Coalition of America, and John Yoo,  a wily Korean born Constitutional Lawyer and prominent Bush II adviser. C-Span carried the debate.  Yoo maintained that the increase in the power of the Executive Branch of our government was a result of congressional acquiescence and Fein maintained that it is up to the people to elect officials that will abide by the Constitution.

The contending positons were logical and convincing but as with all of public discourse the core issues were evaded.  No one mentioned the fact the incumbent elected official have the political clout to codify unconstitutional and tyrannical law while continuing to garner enough votes to stay in office.  Yoo claimed that congressional leaders are regularly consulted on Executive Orders and other major closed sessions; no one mentioned that this plotting is inimical to the well-being and health of the nation.

Consider the repercussions if a nuclear bomb had been dropped on the city of Detroit!   Legislation passed by our elected officials has caused similar damage.  In a recent interview a Detroit official said that there are 80,000 derelict homes in the city. They are being demolished in a process that is similar to cleaning up after a major attack.  The destruction of this once great city is a result of the heretical actions of our own government and it has been done without as much as a whimper from our citizens.

Fein was right when he placed responsibility with the people but at this point the statement was mute for not only has the damage been done but our people are still inert and deluded. Because we have forsaken the Creator and cleaved to the creature our delusion has allowed us to sink so far into the quicksand that escape seems improbable.

Rousas Rushdoony writes “To control the god of any system is to control the men within it. The long battle between church and state has this fact at its roots.  Orthodox Christianity gives us a God who is beyond the control of church and state alike.  Hence the God of Scripture has been resented by civil governments, and attempts to subvert orthodox Christianity and its churches have been legion.  The church too often has been restless under so sovereign a God; churchmen too prefer a god who can be put into man’s pocket.”

The citizens of the United States of America worship humanistic gods.  Our deities are designed and controlled by human beings.  These gods, created in human minds, have been in place for most of United States history.

Now the chickens have come home to roost!

Human beings were not created to govern themselves and when the anarchy of human opinion gains leverage over society, absurdity, chaos, and tyranny soon follow.

In the Harvard survey U. S. citizens guessed that corporate executives were making about 30 times the average worker’s wage.   Citizens in other nations made similar errors in estimates.

It is readily apparent that the captain of the ship fills a more important role than a kitchen worker but to accurately measure and quantify that difference is difficult.

What is interesting, however, is that the U. S. tops the world in the size of its wage inequity.  Switzerland is 2nd and Germany is 3rd, both have disparities of about 150 times the average worker or half that of the U. S. Wage inequity is not the only area in which our nation excels:  We incarcerate the larger percentage of our citizens than any other nation in the world (including China and Russia); we have the world’s largest army.  We had the world’s largest economy before the power barons began to dismantle it.  We are probably the most violent nation.  Violence brought the United States independence, violence freed the slaves and preserved the nation, violence conquered the West, it was the instrument of land acquisition, and of efforts to subdue rebels.  Now it is being used to subdue the Muslim world.

When we are too lethargic to stop voting in elections that are rigged and too lazy to verify that our news is mostly propaganda and lies, we have no chance of helping to bring our profligate nation back under the sovereignty of the One True God.

God’s Law provides perfect justice.  Peace is impossible without justice.  When injustice becomes ingrained in a society that society comes under judgment and God’s judgment can be grueling.  If Bruce Fein’s charge to U. S. citizens ever finds fertile ground it must start with Christians.  Christians are required to be the light of the world.  Light reveals what darkness hides.  It is long past time for Christians to discern and reveal the evil that confronts us.