Laurence, as you have conclusively shown LRC readers repeatedly in countless egregious examples, Statolatry, particularly of the military, has become the principal form of worship in contemporary America.
People erroneously talk about the “Separation of Church and State” when “the State” has replaced “the Church” as idolatrous venue for worship. As the Church had its Holy Days of Obligation and sacraments, so to does the State have its own sacred holidays, icons, rituals, and protocols.
Memorial Day, which has been transformed to blind worship of the military, is one of the most pervasive and insidious.
Our American Republic was founded in opposition to the imperial tyranny of King George III and the British Empire, and scorned standing armies as the principal threat to the preservation of their essential rights and liberties, God given inalienable natural rights which had been endowed upon on them by their creator, and not by the State.
A new type of superstition has gotten hold of people’s minds, the worship of the State. People demand the exercise of the methods of coercion and compulsion, of violence and threat. Woe to anybody who does not bend the knee to the fashionable idols. Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, page 11.
The worship of the State is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt or vile men. The worst evils which mankind have ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government, page 47.
Each day in rote millions of captive schoolchildren in government schools recite the Pledge of Allegiance, their solemn oath to this sacred creed, without giving it cursory reflection or thought.
Thus is born a new generation of worshipers at the Golden Calf of Statism.
1:24 pm on May 27, 2016
