Dear Reader,
The wearing of a face mask to protect against a respiratory virus is an act of grand deceit. It is a behavior that defies research on the topic. Wearing a face mask, as this article (one of many) points to — is unsafe to do and is ineffective.
Until the narrative around mandatory masking has changed, each day by 6am Eastern, I will both post here and send out a science-based reason why no one should wear a face mask.
I ask that you help me circulate these pieces to those around you who you believe could most benefit from them. It is important not to remain silent on this topic. These are important discussions to be having with friends, family members, business owners, healthcare practitioners, public servants, and others in the community.
-Allan
You speak loudly with your actions. No matter what your words are, you actions speak so much more loudly.
Romans 13 is often presented as a guide for the cowardly Christian. Only out of context can it be read so. In context, the text so clearly says to do what is moral at all times. No child should be taught the bootlicker, out-of-context, reading of Romans 13.
Romans 13 Does Not Apply To Covid-19
In the United States, we do not have one government. We quite specifically have checks and balances between branches (examples include the checks and balances laid out in the US Constitution, or through the seizure of judicial power that took place with Marbury v. Madison in 1803), checks and balances between state and federal (as stipulated in the Tenth Amendment), checks and balances between local and federal (through the existence of sheriffs, or with the existence of home rule communities), checks and balances between individuals and federal (as indicated by concepts such as jury unanimity or jury nullification, voting, civic participation, lobbying, civil disobedience, the right to redress grievances contained in the First Amendment, the Second Amendment’s implicit threat from an armed citizenry, or even Thomas Jefferson’s November 13, 1787 letter to William Stephens Smith1 in which he praises the tax protest commonly known as Shay’s Rebellion), and numerous other checks and balances.
For all of its messiness, that befuddling bureaucracy of conflict appears to be part of how our government was intended to operate.
A president would like you to believe that he is in charge, a congressman would like you to believe that his body is in charge, the courts the same, the governor the same, and yet others may say a cabal, a special interest group, or the deep state runs the whole operation. In reality, no one is in charge.
Governmental factions were intentionally established by the founding fathers to constantly battle against each other in a separation of powers. This is defense of freedoms by self-entangling bureaucracy. It is a reason that the utilitarian libertarian shibboleth of “efficiency” may reduce freedom. Unfortunately, that bureaucracy spends a lot of time cooperating across its various parts, which is to the detriment of the free man, rather than fighting each other, which would be in the interest of greater liberty. This proves 234 years of critics accurate that the US Constitution has been used as an instrument of tyranny.
Elusive Authority Renders Romans 13 Irrelevant
The amorphous “authority,” in the United States, includes the above factions, established as various checks and balances.
There is no single government in the United States and there is no single voice for the country. There are 1.) settled matters of consensus, 2.) contested matters of consensus, and 3.) matters on which no consensus exists.
This system of elusive authority renders Romans 13 irrelevant, until a settled consensus can be nailed down on a particular topic.
For all its flaws, the US Constitution, by design, makes that consensus hard to nail down. It makes the defining of authority nearly impossible.
Some commentators address this by asking what constitutes moral authority, and defining it as “That which is in line with the US Constitution,” but that does not go far enough. To be in line with the Constitution is so amorphous a concept, even from a strict reading. Some place that alongside two other amorphous concepts — individual conscience and natural law — both useful despite their amorphous nature. There is no need to even push this issue, though, until a determination has been made about what “Caesar” is really saying.
Romans 13 Is A Text On Moral Obligations,
Not A Guide To Civic Participation
Romans 13 says nothing about whether you may ask for an audience with Caesar to discuss an edict and to inform him of his edict’s unintended consequences. It says nothing about what to do if the courts do not agree with the executive. It says nothing about what to do if the legislature does not agree with the governor. It says nothing about what to do if the public health technocrat does not agree with a member of the judiciary.
We do not have a Caesar in the year 2020 or any other clear unitary figure. We have a political class, many competing layers of government, and a population that has cooperative streaks and uncooperative streaks, with varying claims to authority. Before compliantly shuttering their churches beginning on the Ides of March 2020, the pastors did not even do the most basic work to make sure that the right hand of Caesar agreed with the left hand of Caesar. Nearly two years later, as this book goes to print, there are churches that remain closed.
I am not suggesting rebellion. This is a far cry from that. To even think that some cowardly church leaders would do anything of the sort is preposterous — they did not even bother to bow to their almighty Caesar and ask for permission to make sure that all the parts of great Caesar’s government, source of temporal truth and authority, were in agreement. They did not seek meetings with the Governor. They did not seek meetings with the President. They did not seek meetings with judges — also known as lawsuits. They did not seek for all of these parties to get on the same page with each other. The duty of a responsible citizen in the United States is to exert some pressure on the system in order to bring about communication across these parts. The many parts of our adversarial system will barely communicate without some provoking.
A bold, anti-bootlicker reading of Romans 13 is suitable for an edict from a unitary king or a statement rooted in governmental consensus, but we have neither in the case of Covid-19.
Churches Did Not Behave Pro-Actively Enough To Trigger
Romans 13, They Merely Treated Press Releases As Gospel
From the Ides of March 2020 onward, many churches refused to provide the very minor level of resistance to figure out what the government was even officially saying. Many churches simply accepted the press release of some relatively minor pettifogger with a government sinecure and elevated that to the official word of the United States of America or the official word of their state or their county, and then using the lens of Romans 13 effectively elevated that press release to the official word of God. Louis XIV, who saw himself as a God-like figure, said “I am the state.” Many local pastors said “The unsigned county press release is the state.” To some extent, they even said “The unsigned county press release is superior to the Word of God.”
When their country needed them to aid the government by applying some minor pressure, American clergy largely refused. They pretended that abrogating their civic duty, was the same as performing their civic duty. Even a bootlicking reading of Romans 13 calls on them to fulfill this civic duty, for without it, there is often no way to even know what government authority is instructing you to do. Unfortunately, for those who seek to be both a good citizen and a compliant human, the American system does not provide well for this. It requires pressure, often from the actions of individual citizens, to achieve consensus among the disparate branches. To be a compliant human is to fail as a good citizen.
Romans 13 is not instruction to sit on the sidelines. Romans 13 does not instruct a pastor to blindly follow the unsigned press release. A pastor, a church council, and the elders of a faith community are entrusted with protecting the church for their short time on this earth and passing on its teaching to the succeeding generations.
After they have performed their civic duty of getting agreement from government, then they may do what many brave-spirited commentators suggest and evaluate the morality of the request, because until then, there is no official government edict to follow. Taking a press release from a minor pettifogger with a government sinecure, made into a false idol, and given far more loyalty than such a document could possibly deserve, is an error of many who so easily fall into the trap of seeing democracy as a god, to reference the insightful Hans Herman Hoppe, a god which predictably fails.
The Romans 13 Test Was Not Triggered By The Covid Response
To use the judicial parlance of our day, the “test” of Romans 13 is not even triggered until an authoritative government edict is determined. That determination takes some resistance to arrive at.
The pastor seeking to be obedient to the governmental authority of our day, must do the basic work of bringing the authorities in line with one another. The lazy compliance we have seen from some ecclesiastical bodies does not fulfill even their own reading of Romans 13, for it ignores the nature of American government.
I am grateful to all who provide anti-bootlicker readings of Romans 13, but until the disparate parts of government are brought in line, on a specific topic, no application of such a reading is possible.
Library of Congress Exhibitions. Thomas Jefferson Establishing A Federal Republic. n.d. Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefffed.html#105
The bestselling book "Face Masks In One Lesson" by Allan Stevo describes how to never wear a face mask again. The follow-up to the book, "Face Masks Hurt Kids," describes why to never wear a face mask again. We must defeat the awful, narrative around the mandates.
Examples of how face masks hurt kids will be posted to the Lockdown Land Substack each morning by 6am Eastern until the narrative around this ineffective and harmful medical intervention has shifted. Face masks are, in fact, not just harmful to children. Face masks are harmful to everyone. Thank you so much for helping me circulate this research.
I think I missed this post the first time around. Very good. I'm saving it. People I love and used to admire asserted the "justification" of this scripture when I raised questions at the beginning of the Ides of March.
It takes a special like of dementia to think that any current government was ordained by God.