Gospel Nous Ministries

by Brian McConnell
January 18, 2008


Salvation Redacted

Recent months have been the most difficult for me since tax season. Reflecting back on a Monday in mid-April, I remember reading an editorial during my lunch break at a neighborhood high school and pondering the Congressional investigation surrounding Monica Goodling’s role in the firing of “several U.S. attorneys”.1 Where just months earlier I’d met and passed along examples of my work to the Dean of the School of Education at Regent University, I was dismayed by the article’s implications of Goodling being one of 150 graduates working in the Bush Administration from Pat Robertson’s Virginia based college.2 The following day, with my daughter about to deliver our family’s first great-grandchild and her Marine husband (now in Iraq) here for the birth, the killing of 32 people at Virginia Tech rendered a stunning blow. With my son still residing in the campus’ general vicinity however, and the shootings occurring only days before Columbine’s commemoration, the week’s events severely challenged my outlook on America’s future.

Discouragingly, but for this middle-aged, divorced father of two who, despite being reasonably skilled, trained, educated, and serving for nearly a decade and a half as an on-call teacher, subsists in living conditions comparable to those of a third world country, the ‘American Dream’ lingers as a fond, but dimming memory. In only the last year however, have I ceased questioning whether my life merely reflects temporary hardship or has come to embody something more permanent, perhaps . . . even sinister. As a result of weathering a few months of homelessness two years ago following my father’s diagnosis of congestive heart disorder and the subsequent sell of he and my mother’s home of more than 16 years, it’s especially lamentable that mortgage default rates in my area are presently among the highest in the nation. Chairman Bernanke’s recent testimony before a joint congressional committee too, further adds to my dismay over the Federal Reserve’s prognosis that fourth quarter ‘growth’ will “slow noticeably” as a result of the “higher energy prices” associated with oil costs of more than $90 a barrel and a continued “weakness in housing” brought about by the impropriety of subprime lending (borrowing).3 Combine that with U.S. Comptroller General, David Walker’s admonitions of how sorely “massive deficits and spending large amounts on debt service” have weakened our capacity to “face the challenges of the future” and evidence of a financial calamity is redoubtable.4


“Apocalypse This Way Comes”

"Cataclysm is headed our way. I speak not religiously here, but historically, politically, economically. This is not an "end times" scenario. We will endure as a nation, but in what form -- slave or free? If freedom is to survive the cataclysmic times ahead, it will be because there are still those who can see the big picture, still those who understand that natural law rules all men, still those who possess the contrarian will to fight with word and deed -- not for what is popular, but for what is TRUE."

Nelson Hultberg, from Apocalypse This Way Comes 5

Admittedly, because the circumstances I’ve described diminished the joy that would have otherwise accompanied my grandchild’s first Christmas, it seems trite of me to suggest that we, you and I (average Americans) are poised at the epicenter of events which will, over the next several months, radically reshape our country’s directional future. While it may help to be among a small cadre of Yale graduates (more on that in a moment) to better grasp this actuality though, my perspective is encapsulated by President Bush’s summation of 9/11; ‘we’re under terrorist attack’. By far both, the most threatening and debilitating aspect of his conclusion however, is the extent to which we as ‘Americans’ have allowed ourselves to be diverted from a deeper understanding of what the threat of terrorist assault actually means. Yet, while the Bush junta used events surrounding 9/11 to increase US military-industrial presence in the Middle East as outlined the year before in PNAC’s "Rebuilding America’s Defenses", its failure to identify an ‘enemy’ any more specifically than Islam, or unite us as a nation against it, clearly stands as a testament and conviction of its inability to lead. However, and putting this fact aside, our President nonetheless took it upon himself to overstep the authority ascribed him by the Constitution and commandeer executive power which, in circumventing accountability by overview, subjects those like myself to defenseless surveillance while simultaneously increasing the risk of reprisal if, even arbitrarily, deemed ‘subversive’.

Though a collective sense of all that’s occurred since 9/11 reflects a commonly shared conscience however, a vast set of pernicious inconsistencies surrounding this treacherous act remain seared upon, and continue to smolder relentlessly within, the American soul. Yet sadly, similar quietude in the form of public indifference and inattention over recent decades has spawned a dysfunctional system of social indenture no less devastating to the American spirit. As a result, this leviathan has morally divested our nation of ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’ and instead, nurtured interspersed vestiges of ‘learned helplessness’, further succoring a gnawing dependence that’s left a great many virtually powerless in the face of this (their) present reality. Combined, these two elements, complacency and ignorance, have seized the very heart -- the ideological (e.g. Constitutional) groundwork upon which crucial segments of our society, including education, mass media, religion, health care, and ‘social science’, have been founded. Posing what appears a gaping fissure between secular (objective) knowledge and religious (subjective) faith however, this involution represents a similar type of ‘moral dilemma’ to that described by Arnold J. Toynbee in A Study of History but one which, unless creatively transcended, must disintegrate with our civilization’s own demise.

In respect to ‘value’ and this subject/object dichotomy however, it’s strangely ironic that virtually the same polemic between ‘left’ (globalist Education) and ‘right’ (statist Church) has become so institutionalized within American culture that the relative strength of each has pitted one against the other in a senseless quest for ideological hegemony. This paradox is all the more shameful however, because alignment with one school or the other translates into a virtual disregard at least discounting, if not outwardly disadvantaging, those unassociated with either. As a seemingly practical matter of convenience then, it’s especially atrocious that this exclusion is so readily accepted, mutually rationalized, and subsequently excused; either in terms of evolutionary (‘survival of the fittest’), or theological (‘divine right’), apologetics. Ironically though, if an individual chooses to abdicate their ideological autonomy in siding with one view or the other, their choice is inevitably (and almost unalterably), reinforced by a jointly shared 501c tax-exempt status. As a result, but over the course of the last century, issues of ethical responsibility moderating the two perspectives have been so thoroughly obfuscated politically, vast factions of America’s populace remain tragically enmeshed in their devotion to this ‘old order’ status quo. Disparagingly enough, this situation has generated a great many privileged ‘haves’ who, fearing loss of entitlement, now find themselves in toe-to-toe conflict with friends, neighbors and even family, disputing the ‘social injustice’ to which they’re so unabashedly subjected. However, along with gradually decaying morale and the subsequent deterioration of commonly shared community values, the likelihood of plausible scenarios ranging from utilizing private goon squads against the threat of civil upheaval, to popular revolution -- or worse, are all subsequently increased.

Where Erich Fromm, under comparable conditions authored Escape from Freedom (1941) to explore the psychological reasons why Europe, as it sank ever deeper into totalitarian narcosis, would choose leaders like Franco, Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler; so others today, are signaling similar alarm. In the midst of a series of events surrounding the U.S. savings and loan collapse, George H. Bush’s September 11th proposal of the Gulf War in advancing a ‘New World Order’, marital conflict preceding my mother-in-law’s succumbing to cancer, and just prior to Ross Perot’s 1992 campaign for President, I read Christian author, Larry Burkett’s, The Coming Economic Earthquake. Assuming a Scriptural approach, his book revealed how the Keynesian model, such an integral part of America’s military-industrial complex, through corporate syndication, was waging an auspicious crusade through deficit spending, unbridled consumer credit, “reduced saving”, and big government, to expand its global influence. It’s sadly ironic then, but perhaps just an opus of ‘Divine’ interpolation, that Burkett’s predilection of a rocketing collapse of the US dollar (USD), like that of the Trade Towers, now looms so imminent.

Somewhat oddly though, because educators “since World War II” have touted the Keynesian theory almost exclusively to “college economic students” as “the means to continued, depression-proof prosperity”6, there’s been little study of practical alternatives in the event some inherent, but fatal flaw, were ever revealed in the original. This fact is especially concerning however because, without better understanding its fundamental working nor, knowing its real history, over the last century, America’s own relationship to this ‘debt based’ juggernaut has increasingly become akin to that of a cocaine or heroin addict to their ‘drug’. Yet, in respect to the rest of our ‘global society’, this impropriety over recent decades has been made that much worse because we’ve simultaneously absolved ourselves of the responsibility to exert managerial control over this megalomania, and instead, recklessly endorsed its very purveyors. Thus, under the sedated cloak of a consumer-induced coma, American society in particular, has both blindly sanctioned, and mindlessly underwritten, the surreptitious mission of a ring of corporate and banking elite to advance ‘global development’ by foisting this ever engorging ‘beast’ on the world’s assailable throngs; until recently. For these reasons though, it’s particularly important to recognize how the development of internet technologies, especially since 9/11, has afforded those like myself both the means of exposing this clandestine ‘project’ of mass ‘econo-lution’, along with the vehicle to share the unfolding findings of that work with others.


A ‘New World Order’

“Political federation, we have to realise [sic], without a concurrent economic collectivisation [sic], is bound to fail. The task of the peace-maker who really desires peace in a new world, involves not merely a political but a profound social revolution, profounder even than the revolution attempted by the Communists in Russia.”

H.G. Wells, from The New World Order – 1940

Though history certainly features an assorted cast of characters in this plot’s overall contrivance, perhaps none was more centrally positioned, or prolific in articulating his respective involvement in it, than H.G. Wells. A former biology student of T.H. Huxley’s at the Normal School of Science, Wells joined the Coefficients (dining club) in 1902 along with others including, Bertrand Russell, (Rhodes trustee) Edward Grey, and Cecil Rhodes’ surviving protégé, Alfred Milner. Representing the ‘crème de la crème’ among Edwardian era reformers and imperialists alike, this conclave of British ‘elect’ convened in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish-American and Boer War(s) for the apparent purpose of furthering the British Oligarchy’s preeminence, throughout the world.

It’s intriguing though, that both Bertrand Russell’s and H.G. Wells’ subsequent memoirs should, in reflecting back to 1902, frame Edward Grey’s own membership as a Coefficient with the skepticism they do. As a one-time “Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs” to fellow Rhodes trustee and Rothschild son-in-law Lord Rosebery, Grey’s staunchness on ‘Entente’, regretfully, was sufficiently forbidding to induce Russell’s resignation from the group. The freethinking social reformist later recounted in his autobiography:

“One evening Sir Edward Grey (not then in office) made a speech advocating the policy of Entente, which had not yet been adopted by the Government. I stated my objections to the policy very forcibly, and pointed out the likelyhood [sic] of its leading to war, but no one agreed with me, so I resigned from the Club. It will be seen that I began my opposition to the first war at the earliest possible moment."

Strangely, one might dismiss this incident as just another fading blotch in the obscure annals of history though, had Edward Grey not become the “British Foreign Secretary” in 1905, and subsequently consummate the Triple Entente between Great Britain, France, and the Russian Empire in 1907.7 Further contributing to his derogators’ skepticism however, in the aftermath of an assassination (rumored a conspiracy by Serbian terrorists) of Austria’s heir apparent in 1914, as Foreign Secretary, Grey played a pivotal role in the failure of agonizingly complex negotiations between Austria, Russia, and Germany, immediately preceding the outbreak of World War I.

Given this series of events however, but following establishment of the Federal Reserve (1913), the First World War, founding of the Council on Foreign Relations (1921), and writing The Open Conspiracy (1933), H.G. Wells’ publication of, The New World Order (1940) is especially telling. Introducing his treatise with a historical overview “about war and peace in the course of” his life, but using Hitler’s inevitable downfall as his premise, Wells proposed a blueprint for a revolutionary new ‘world system’ to avert returning to one, he reasoned; if unchanged, would ingenerate a subsequent “dégringolade of violence” and eventually, lead only to mankind’s “extinction”. Citing the causes behind the vanishing of the “late-nineteenth-century dream” of a flourishing global economy cultivated through a financially interrelated network of world ‘states’, Wells pointed to the subversive affect of certain ‘disruptive forces’. These factors included a menacing buildup of arms and munitions by individual European states prior to even World War I which had in turn, contributed to what he termed an ‘abolition of distance’ and ‘change of scale’. However, where Fromm (Escape from Freedom) had examined the historical influence of ‘Christian values’ in shaping the middle class’s traditional role in western society, Wells similarly addressed the strife arising from the economic disparity between the “Haves” and “Have Nots” of their day.8

It’s especially revealing too, that Wells’ exposé of these ‘disruptive forces’ and his explanation of their leading to “breaking-points”, should so directly target the “half-educated young man”. Citing the “primary factor” for “the general political instability” of his time as an excess of “human energy in the form of unemployed young people”, the inspiration for Wells’ New World Order appears to have been born from a basic need to direct or otherwise manage, the proletarian masses.

“The eager and adventurous unemployed young are indeed the shock troops in the destruction of the old social order everywhere. They find guidance in some confident Party or some inspired Champion, who organises [sic] them for revolutionary or counter-revolutionary ends. It scarcely matters which. They become Communists or they become Fascists, Nazis, the Irish Republican Army, Ku Klux Klansmen and so forth and so on. The essence is the combination of energy, frustration and discontent. What all such movements have in common, is a genuine indignation at the social institutions that have begotten and then cold-shouldered them, a quasi-military organisation [sic] and the resolve to seize power for themselves embodied in their leaders.”

From this springboard then, Wells offered a rather trenchant critique of Clarence K. Streit’s plan for world federation as presented in Union Now, and subsequently outlined his own version as “A New Type of Revolution”, proffering its key points in a “Declaration of the Rights of Man”.9 Not surprisingly then, but “as World War II was still raging”, “730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered” “in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire” during July of 1944 for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference and, over the course of the next three weeks, “established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states.”


The ‘Ultimate Revolution’

“If you are going to control any population for any length of time, you must have some measure of consent. It's exceedingly difficult to see how pure terrorism can function indefinitely.”

“It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy, who have always existed and presumably will always exist, to get people to (actually) love their servitude.”

Aldous Huxley, excerpts from a speech at Berkeley - 1962
(Certain text and punctuation edited. Italics added.)

Consequently, where the Atlantic Charter forged between Roosevelt and Churchill proved “the most notable precursor to the Bretton Woods Conference”, establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1945 enlisted the United States’ economic strength in “investment capital, manufacturing” and “gold reserves” in catapulting it to the forefront of this new ‘world market’ as its financial leader.10

Less than two decades later however, but at the onset of a buildup of US ‘aid’ to Vietnam and a year before John Kennedy’s assassination, Aldous Huxley’s speech before an audience at Berkeley University in 1962 is today, particularly ominous. A grandson of Wells’ former professor (T.H. Huxley) and brother to UNESCO’s founding director and Wells collaborator, Julian; by the early ‘sixties’ Aldous had authored, among other works, Brave New World (1932) and The Perennial Philosophy (1945). Entitled, The Ultimate Revolution, Huxley explained how the subject of his talk was actually a subtle form of ‘terrorism’, comparing the predated tenets of his own Brave New World to the succeeding ones of George Orwell’s, Nineteen Eighty-Four - 1984 (1949).

“Whereas my own book which was written in 1932 when there was only a mild dictatorship in the form of Mussolini in existence, was not overshadowed by the idea of terrorism, and I was therefore free in a way in which Orwell was not free, to think about these other methods of control, these non-violent methods. (And) I'm inclined to think that the scientific dictatorships of the future, and I think there are going to be scientific dictatorships in many parts of the world, will be probably a good deal nearer to the Brave New World pattern than to the 1984 pattern. They will be a good deal nearer not because of any humanitarian qualms of the scientific dictators but simply because the Brave New World pattern is probably a good deal more efficient than the other.”11

Now, in retrospect, it seems rather foreboding that what stands as one of the most significant economic incidents of my lifetime, though occurring more than three and a half decades ago, should continue to exert such a dramatic influence upon global affairs. Even more concerning to me perhaps, is the fact that someone with a formal education and professional background in Finance and Economics as strong as mine, only learned about it recently and likewise, that it should yet remain virtually unheard-of by the vast majority of the American public. Nevertheless, these facts serve to further exemplify the courage, strength, and integrity of Ron Paul’s own insight, knowledge, and leadership in this regard. Thus, referring to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system with Nixon’s declaration of “insolvency” in 1971 following “a huge gold drain” brought on by the “French and others in the late 1960s”, in a message to the House of Representatives on February 15, 2006, the Texas Congressman explained:

“Realizing the world was embarking on something new and mind boggling, elite money managers, with especially strong support from U.S. authorities, struck an agreement with OPEC to price oil in U.S. dollars exclusively for all worldwide transactions. This gave the dollar a special place among world currencies and in essence “backed” the dollar with oil. In return, the U.S. promised to protect the various oil-rich kingdoms in the Persian Gulf against threat of invasion or domestic coup. This arrangement helped ignite the radical Islamic movement among those who resented our influence in the region. The arrangement gave the dollar artificial strength, with tremendous financial benefits for the United States. It allowed us to export our monetary inflation by buying oil and other goods at a great discount as dollar influence flourished.”

In hindsight, while these arrangements with OPEC have worked with varying degrees of success until only the last decade or so, as the strength of the Euro has increased, diplomatic relations with major oil producers like Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela have become far more problematic due to irresolute attitudes concerning the dollar’s (USD) favorability in exchange for crude.12


An Uncontested Coup

"All democracies turn into dictatorships—but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea. What kinds of things push people and institutions in this direction? That's the issue I've been exploring: how did the Republic turn into the Empire? … How does a good person go bad, and how does a democracy become a dictatorship?”

Star Wars filmmaker George Lucas - 2002

Shortly before my father’s stroke in July, I was fortunate enough to see Webster Tarpley give a talk in San Diego. Though already well informed to that point about 9/11 truth, Tarpley’s presentation, whose expertise is in making sense of seemingly unrelated and at times, sordid minutiae; helped open my eyes to a terrifying truth. Yet, while virtually unimaginable, this simple fact for me is nevertheless, now plainly evident.

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, with various agencies and departments of the United States government working in collaboration with each other to coordinate simulated terrorist attacks, something went horribly awry. Where at one moment, President Bush appears to have been abreast of the day’s previously planned operations, in the next, would evidently be reduced to at least deliberating, an illusory party's proposed terms or directives later that day. From this vantage point, but within the course of a few short hours, the Executive Branch of the United States government had thus, fallen prey to a silent but nonetheless successful, coup.

As utterly disconcerting as the prospect of this reality is however, the consequence of its impact upon our nation, and its respective future, is certainly no less daunting. If we can in essence, acknowledge its eventuality though, the first question we might ask is, “Who is it, exactly, now exerting the power of their will upon us?” and secondly, “What can we do about it?”

In answer to both questions, and without pointing fingers or dropping names, the force against which we’re now accosted is nothing less than a contemporary form of designer Fascism or ‘corporatocracy’. Incredibly enough, one of the most notable individuals arriving at a similar conclusion is Naomi Wolf, author of a book published in September entitled, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Once regarded as a “literary star” amongst ‘third-wave’ feminists, like Bill Clinton, she too is a Rhodes Scholar. Even more coincidental, Naomi is a graduate of Yale, sharing that same distinction with our last three Presidents, Clinton and both Bushes.

Wolf’s findings then, suggest rather convincingly that our government has acquiesced in allowing the implementation of a 10-step fascist agenda, and casts particular concern on Blackwater, an independent ‘for profit’ paramilitary group run by ‘Christian evangelical’ Erik Prince. Likewise, but since 9/11, several organizations with suspicious intentions and whose mere existences raise questions of constitutional legitimacy, have been operating with impunity on both domestic and foreign fronts. In addition to the Patriot Act’s provisions of course, the Council on Foreign Relations has assumed a lead role in advancing development of a Security and Prosperity Partnership between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, which represents a significant step towards the planned project completion for a North American Union.  Thus, because the dollar’s collapse might well substantiate conversion to the Amero, and though North America’s installment as a Continental Union would negate the United States' constitutional autonomy, RFID chips could be implanted in NAU citizens as an (already) legislatively (REAL ID Act) authorized, system of  identification.

Disturbingly enough, all indictors at this juncture point to the fact that the promise of this ‘Brave New World’ is rolling its way to your neighborhood, as it already has in mine, and unless mitigating factors intervene, we as a nation, over just the next few weeks, will begin a major retrograde to ‘1984’. Because the economic circumstances surrounding this adjustment will be severe however, the primary consideration for the average ‘American’ will be, above all else, to sustain employment. Motivated by subtle forms of fear, where the presence of Nazi ‘brownshirts’ subjected fellow countrymen to explanations they were only ‘carrying out orders’ or ‘doing their job’, so it will be for us in the coming days.  The 'belt tightening' will mean cutting costs, so both the quality and availability of social, health, and educational services will, necessarily deteriorate. Similarly, individuals may find that seeking legal recourse in certain civil matters is no longer an option for the simple reason, ‘due-process’ isn't accessible. While I fully expect Hillary Clinton will ascend to the Presidency by popular consensus as a figurehead of leadership, a symbol of national ‘unity’ and ‘hope’, the pageantry in so doing, will be nothing less than a massive public relations blitz by main stream media.

When a populace has mindlessly relinquished the capacity to think for itself, when public school texts no longer contain actual history and its teachers are more concerned about safeguarding retirement accounts than shaping their students' futures, well . . .  In times such as these, the wiser among us will nevertheless recognize our children's lives are less likely to be the product of their own moral choosing, and more that of an unthinking, uncaring, experiment in social totalitarianism.

God help us.

In memory of my Dad for imparting his kindness, patience, and good humor, Aaron Russo for modeling the courage of his convictions, and Beth Houser, a good friend who, though younger than myself, traded a broken body and diminished earthly capacities to instead, ‘dance with the angels’.