/CONT/   #

ABSOLUTISM IN THE BUSINESS WORLD

And there certainly can be no real doubt as to the nature of the 
corporate systems of authority that predominate in the business 
sphere; the fact is, they are so "dictatorial" (some would even say 
"tyrannical") that if they were practiced in the political realm, 
the people who practiced them would be "run out of town on a rail." 
Now in saying all this, it's not our purpose to advocate "socialism 
in the workplace;" it's simply to say that - more than most of us 
care to admit to ourselves - the world we live in is much more 
autocratic than it is advertised to be, and while the "worth of 
the common man" is celebrated in our mythology, democracy does 
not touch our everyday working-lives quite as much as we imagine. 
Moreover, unlike the world of politics, there is no need to give 
"lip service" to the ideals of "democracy" in the
business world. 
Absolutism is accepted as a "given" in the corporate world - or 
does one imagine, even for an instant, that Ford, General Motors, 
IBM.

Microsoft, Cisco Systems, ADM, etc. are run as "democracies" 
where "everyone has a say." Of course not!  

The truth is, those who stand at the head of today's corporations 
are every bit as much autocrats as Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun 
ever were, and so much so that the men and women who have 
come to occupy the lofty heights of today's corporate world look 
down on the rest of humanity (and most especially upon their 
workers) with about as much contempt as Louis XIV evinced when 
he gazed down on the inhabitants of Seventeenth Century Paris. 
Moreover, by their business decrees and executive fiats they 
affect the lives of their "subjects" (i.e., workers) in ways 
that are just as profound as those of the absolute monarchs 
of a thousand or five hundred years ago.  

None of these businessmen and CEOs are given much to democratic 
modes of living; they are in fact despots in the most severe 
and brutal meaning of the word - megalomaniacs like Steve Case 
of AOL/Time Warner, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Sumner Redstone 
of Viacom, Michael Eisner of Disney, Rupert Murdoch of News 
Corporation, Lawrence Ellison of Oracle, John Chambers of 
Cisco Systems, C. Michael Armstrong of AT&T, Tom Feston of 
MTV, ad nauseum - egotistical, conceited, presumptuous little 
tyrants - all of them - and to say otherwise is to expose 
oneself as an ignoramus! Professor C. Wright Mills of Columbia 
University writes of such people:  

"These men transcend ... the ordinary environments of ordinary 
people, and by their decisions they set up and break down the 
destinies of others ... They are not 'confined' by their 
'responsibilities' as are 'ordinary' people. They are not bound 
by their communities. They need not merely 'meet the demands 
of the day and hour'; in some part, they create these demands, 
and cause others to meet them. Whether or not they profess their 
power, they wield it in a manner which far transcends that of the 
underlying population. What Jacob Burckhardt said of great men, 
could be said of them: 'they are all that ordinary people are not'."  

So what do we have here? - a press that is totally controlled by 
these kinds of people, people who are absolutely and totally anti-
democratic in nature, and who are - therefore - given to using the 
press (i.e., the media) as a propaganda mechanism. And it is the 
very anti-democratic nature of these people that predisposes the 
press towards the emergence of a new Hitler. Indeed, the American 
press today is less free of forces given to anti- democratic 
proclivities than was the press of Germany in 1933 - and that's 
quite a statement!  

So much for the first element necessary for the creation of an 
Antichrist-figure in the United States. What about the other two 
elements: (1) a willing population, and (2) the existence of an 
actual person around which a "messiah myth" can be built? Let's 
take first the matter of whether or not there exists a "willing 
population" in the country that is predisposed to the emergence 
of an Antichrist - and we will find that there does indeed exist 
such a population, and - as we just indicated - it exists, 
surprisingly enough (at least insofar as many evangelicals 
would be concerned), in the world of religion.  

ABSOLUTISM IN THE RELIGIOUS WORLD

The fact is, the same exact proclivities and biases that exist 
against democracy in the business world, and which - like the 
business world - hold the concepts of democracy in contempt, 
exist in the religious world as well. We speak here, of course, 
of the evangelical Christian community - and most particularly 
of that portion of evangelical Christendom that aims at "restoring" 
what it perceives to be the "ruins of our 'Christian nation'" 
(i.e., America) by seeking more closely to unite its version 
of Christianity with state power.  

IT IS PRECISELY HERE, IN THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY, THAT WE FIND 
THE "WILLING POPULATION" THAT IS PREDISPOSED TO THE EMERGENCE 
OF A NEW HITLER-FIGURE. What's ironic about all this, is that 
this is the very community that should be predisposed AGAINST 
the emergence of the Antichrist. It gives you an idea of how 
APOSTATE evangelical Christianity has become.  

The very real fact of the matter is, there exists today within 
the evangelical community a predisposition of mind towards 
EXTREMELY anti-democratic modes of thinking - modes which, 
like those in the business community, make the religious 
community such READY-MADE TERRAIN for the emergence of a 
new messiah - which cannot help but nourish autocratic 
proclivities and biases.  

Indeed, the truth is, the pastoral system that now predominates 
in the evangelical world is as despotic as is the one that is 
found in today's business world, and so much so that those who 
stand at the head of most of today's evangelical churches are 
as tyrannical and autocratic as their corporate counterparts 
- maybe even more so; i.e., evangelical leaders like Charles 
Stanley, D. James Kennedy, Tim LaHaye, the late John Wimber, 
Juan Carlos Ortiz, C. Peter Wagner, Beverley LaHaye, Ern Baxter, 
Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, 
Jerry Falwell, Chuck Colson, Jack Hayford, David Yonggi Cho, 
Robert Stearns, Mike Bickle, Reuven Doron, Che Ahn, Frank Hammond, 
Cindy Jacobs, Bill Hamon, John Eckhardt, Bobbie Byerly, Dutch Sheets, 
Jim Goll, John Paul Jackson, James Ryle, Frank Damazio, Ed Silvoso, 
Carlos Annacondia, Claudio Freidzon, Roger Mitchell, Ted Haggart, 
Paul Cain, Chuck Pierce, Rick Joyner, Kingsley Fletcher, Jim 
Laffoon, Barbara Wentroble, ad infi! nitum.  

The list is endless and runs the entire gamut of evangelical 
Christianity. These men (and some women) - ALL OF THEM - exercise 
as much autocratic power as any CEO in today's corporate world 
- and perhaps even more so because they make the claim that 
their power derives from the divine - a claim that only a very 
few in the business world would dare to make (though I suppose 
there are a few who would probably do so).  

CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP HAS BECOME ABSOLUTIST & TYRANNICAL IN RECENT YEARS

As we indicated previously, these evangelical leaders - like the 
CEOs they imagine themselves to be - are autocrats in the most 
severe and brutal meaning of that word - megalomaniacs in love 
with their own presumed "piety" and "holiness;"
"little gods" 
- everyone of them - egotistical, conceited, and presumptuous; 
proud peacocks who strut and prance every Sunday before their 
parishioners without any shame and embarrassment. Like their 
business counterparts, these are not men much given to the 
institutions of democracy or any kind of belief in the equality 
of Christians within the community of God, let alone the community 
of man.  

For example, the late R.J. Rushdoony and his estranged kinsman, 
Gary North, both consider democracy to be a "heresy." Rushdoony 
called democracy "the great love of the FAILURES and COWARDS 
of life." He insisted that true "... Christianity is completely 
and radically ANTI-DEMOCRATIC." David Chilton believes pretty much 
the same thing. And one is making a great mistake in believing 
that the thinking of Rushdoony, North, and Chilton is that much 
removed from the thinking of most of the other leaders in today's 
Christendom. Rushdoony appeared numerous times on Pat 
Robertson's 700 Club. North has also appeared on the same 
program, and both made repeated appearances at D. James 
Kennedy's massive church in Florida and other similarly 
disposed churches throughout the country.  

There are, of course, some evangelical Christians who might deny 
that the thinking of people like Rushdoony, North, Chilton, etc. is 
representative of most in today's Christianity - to which I would 
simply say, "Where have you been for the past several years?" The 
truth is, anti-democratic sensibilities are a common fact of life 
in most of today's churches, and these sensibilities are easily 
discerned in the way that most of these churches are organized: 
As corporate hierarchies that promote a military-like discipline 
that is enforced by an extremely rigid chain-of-command where one 
is required to "submit" to those who are "above," and
to "rule over" 
those who are "below."  

THE CHURCH AS READY-MADE TERRAIN FOR DICTATORIAL SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT

Outwardly, the "system of government" in these churches 
(especially the mega-churches) looks like a giant pyramid which 
by its very nature and character emphasizes in a most unkind and 
incessant way "rank and position" - and so much so that one's 
very "spirituality" is measured by how high up one is in the 
church pyramid. No room here for any expression of "individuality" 
(a concept that is totally at variance with what passes today for 
"spirituality" in most of these churches); no chance either for 
any kind of "personal walk" with Christ outside the church's 
system of hierarchy. In the end, one's "spirituality" is measured 
simply by the yardstick of SUBMISSION - and by that, it is meant 
submission to CHURCH authority. THIS IS, OF COURSE, EXACTLY 
THE TYPE OF "READY-MADE TERRAIN" THAT NOURISHES THE KIND OF 
BLIND, UNTHINKING SUBMISSION TO AUTHORITY THAT IS NECESSARY 
TO ANY ANTICHRIST SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.  

SADLY, BY EMBRACING THIS SYSTEM OF AUTHORITY, MOST CHRISTIANS 
ARE UTTERLY UNAWARE OF HOW CLOSE THEY ARE TO EMBRACING THE 
ANTICHRIST. That Christians could accept the kind of thinking 
that promotes this type of blind submission to authority only 
underlines how brainwashed and propagandized evangelical 
Christians are today with regard to the question of authority!  

/CONT/

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