Complicated…

Deke really could not find a better word to describe “Dread” than that which the seemingly omnipotent being had used to describe himself. On the one hand, he seemed utterly vain and sadistic, creating Ravenloft for his own amusement, while on the other hand, Dread seemed fairly just, imprisoning some of the most foul and wicked beings in that dreadful realm. He seemed to have power supassing that even of the “gods” of Faerun, but he said that even he was a created being, albeit chief among them. Who created Dread? Did that creator have a Creator? So many questions…

Deke tapped his finger twice on the bar and the well-trained barkeep knew to bring him another pint of ale, his eighth.

Never had Deke felt so powerless, so insignificant, so powerless. Even when his father had been murdered by Darksparkle, he felt that he could do something; he thought that he was in control of his own destiny. Now he wasn’t so sure. Had Dread known about Cain’s bargain before Cain offered it to him? If so, then there was really nothing Deke could do. Knowledge is power. If Dread was truly omniscient, then he was omnipotent and there was nothing Deke could do to save Cain. But Deke really had no way of knowing whether Dread knew his current thoughts. Could he really pay attention to everything at once?

Cain had not fully solved the problems in Faerun. It seemed as if Cain had pruned the weeds without getting to the root, for Womai was still alive and well, far more powerful than Bloodborne and far more malevolent. However, Womai had not yet destroyed the free peoples of Faerun either. Deke had always been willing to sidetrack his larger quest for the sake of his comrades, as he had left the party with Cain to recover Drakesbane during the campaign against Muhrann. Deke had no hesitation as to what he should do. The only question was how…

Deke tapped his finger on the table but the barkeep was nowhere to be found. He groggily rubbed his eyes and staggered to his feet in the dark, empty room.

Now for it! At some point during the night, perhaps while he was passed out Deke had found his solution. It was certainly something he had to do before he sobered up and his wisdom kicked in…

Deke slowly lumbers up to the battlements and cries into the dead of the night:

“ALL RIGHT DREAD! IF YE LIKE TO MAKE DEALS ‘N PLAY GAMES, I’VE GOT ONE FOR YA! YOU WANNA BE AMUSED? TRY THIS ON FOR SIZE! GIMME A CHANCE TO REDEEM CAIN! PULL ME AN’ TRYTO AN’ JONATHAN INTO YOUR SADISTIC LITTLE REALM! PUT US TO THE TEST! IF WE PASS, YOU RELEASE CAIN TO US, BUT IF WE FAIL, I SHALL BE FORFEIT TO YOU; FOREVER YOUR SLAVE! CAN YOU HEAR ME DREAD?! IF YOU WANT SOME EXCITEMENT, I’VE GOT A BELLY FULL!”

“Amateur,” thought Deke as he gazed in the dark at the corpses of the elite Tristadi bodyguards, and, more specifically, at the field plate armor it had taken himself and Zynthoid all of five seconds to breach. “Look at this! No range of motion, an (h)uge gap between the breastplate and the epaulettes. Any fighter worth his weight in mutton could exploit this. Shabby…”

“Speaking of shabby,” Deke remembered that he had two handprint-sized holes in the shoulders of his chain mail. His shoulders were still a little tender from his odd supernatural encounter. “I guess I’ll be doing some mending during my watch,” he muttered. Deke had saved the material he removed when he shortened the suit of mail and would use it to mend the small holes left by the handprints.

He had woken up a little early for his watch and decided to take a walk to wake himself up.

With little else to do, Deke had taken up his armorsmithing in earnest during the years he spent in Ravenloft. He had used his engineering knowledge to build his own forge and had masterfully crafted armor that turned his town’s militia from a ragtag band of broadsword fodder into a formidable defensive force. It was a lonely existence, and had caused Deke to become increasingly like his taciturn ancestors. He would spend days simply drawing up designs for the perfect suit of armor, the amount of crumbled paper in the corner amounting daily to a month’s wages for a member of the Leneasa town guard, where his adventuring career began. During this time he had finally begun to see the wisdom of the words his father, Ebanezar, spoke to him when he was but a wee lad.

“Deke, ye cannah survive in battle on offense alone. Ye can kill yer opponent with a wee pebble if ye place it right, but it dannah matter much if ye doonah live to see the next battle. Learn weapons ahnd yull burn brightly but not fer long; learn defense ahnd yull be tellin’ this to yer wee great-great-grandson.

He thought back to that day.

His father was caught by surprise by the raid of the drow, and didn’t have the opportunity to get back home for his shield and armor. He grabbed two bastard swords from fallen comrades and assailed Darksparkle. Though he did a great deal of damage to the evil invader, a cheap, poisoned dart got the best of him. He became sluggish; his attacks became fewer and further between until Darksparkle finally cleaved his head from his shoulders with his vorpel blade. Would that dart have hit him if he were properly armed? Doubtful… Would Darksparkle have gotten the best of him if he were wearing his armor and using his shield? Also doubtful.

But on that day, Deke was too shocked, too angry to think clearly. He grabbed the bastard swords from his father’s body and went out for looking for revenge. Perhaps he was also suicidal from all that happened to him. He knew his style of combat was foolhardy, he knew he would not live to see his children, much less his great-great- grandchildren, but he fought this way nonetheless, nearly dying several times without using his brain, needlessly rushing into battle hoping he could kill them before they killed him. Reckless… Foolhardy… Maybe Isharra was right. Deke was one-dimensional…

The time alone without adventuring gave Deke thousands of hours to reflect upon the past and to self-consciously form a combat philosophy. He had never been adequately armored. Even the magical field plate he wore before he came to Ravenloft restricted his range of motion more than he would have liked, as he would often curse under his breath when he took a hit he would have otherwise dodged. There had to be a way for Deke to protect himself. “That’s why Jonathan never got hurt,” he would think, “nobody could touch him.” Deke remembered back to his dream and to that polyhedral armor that nearly any direct blow would glint off of without harming the wearer. As Deke analyzed that armor, he realized that it was simply a fancy alteration on plate armor, and would still limit his range of motion. He thought of ways he could preserve the range of motion without leaving vulnerable soft spots in the armor, often frustrating himself with the apparent paradox. He had to craft armor that would perfectly suit his unique abilities and idiosyncrasies, for the perfect style of armor for Deke would be an annoying hindrance to Cain and fail to take into account the subtleties of mounted combat that would better suit Jonathan and Zynthoid. Armor had to be crafted to the individual user in order to be of optimal use. The armor Deke had worn was not crafted to suit him. A master armorer does not mass-produce generic armor to collect dust on shelves but crafts armor to suit specific, wealthy clients. Weight was not an issue, as Deke could don lead armor weighing 300 pounds, without even being affected by the weight, but he needed the range of motion to take advantage of his agility. Could he make something that protects better than full plate, but grants the mobility you would find with studded leather or chain? It seemed like a pie in the sky dream, but when you have a lot of time and enough motivation, the impossible becomes improbable, and the improbable becomes reality. The mithril Sash of the Martyr his father had given him provided a model for…

SASH OF THE MARTYR! The thought of his most prized possession jolted him back to reality. He had no idea where it was. He hadn’t had it the whole time in Ravenloft and had no idea where it could be now. He had kept hope, a fleeting wisp of hope, the whole time in Ravenloft that it would mysteriously reappear in his possession when he returned to Faerun. If he ever returned to Faerun… Now that he had returned, without the sash, the last vestige of hope fled from him. He wanted to cry but knew he could not. “Spare your tears, dwarf,” Cain would callously and coldly admonish him, the way he did when Deke pleaded for the opportunity to fight Darksparkle that first time. Deke could not cry; he refused to cry, but had to vent his emotion somehow.

Rage…

Deke let out a primal yell that surprised even himself and kicked the lifeless body of the Tristadi bodyguard so hard it flew five feet into the air and landed with a muffled thud in the tall grass a full fifteen feet away. After a minute, Deke came to his senses, as his heart rate subsided and the adrenaline became diluted within his bloodstream. He looked at his hands and saw his own blood. In his rage he had rent his chain shirt with such force that it removed some of the skin from them. The shirt was now but a long flat sheet of mesh, lying on the ground next to him. He soberly picked up his chain shirt and returned to camp. It was now time for his watch, and he would now need to spend all of it mending his shirt, all the while reflecting on how this new power Rhal Afar had granted would affect him.

Who is like You, O LORD?  Indeed, to ask the question is to answer it.  For You alone are from everlasting to everlasting.  You alone are uncreated, One God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity.  You keep Your covenants eternally.  They shall endure long after heaven and earth pass away.  You alone are able to perfectly remember mercy in Your justice, to redeem Your elect, to conform them to the image and likeness of Christ, and to build the church.

Let us shout for joy and be glad, for You are unrelentingly faithful to Your people.  With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, You delivered Your people from slavery in Egypt and parted the Red Sea that they were able to cross on dry land.  You vanquished Og of Bashan and Sihon of the Amorites.  You redeemed Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba.  Though their sins were like scarlet, you have made them white as snow.  You ordained the random arrow that slew Ahab from before the foundations of the earth and converted Nebuchadnezzar.  Is anything impossible with You?  Grant us faith to more continuously believe it!

Let us say continually, “Let the LORD be magnified, Who has vanquished sin and Satan, Who has bound the strong man and is now plundering his house through the foolishness of preaching to prove that it is by His hand and not by the false wisdom of man.”  Let us extol You, O LORD, for You are taking us, a ragtag bunch of misfits and outcasts, quarrelsome, petty, and bloodthirsty, and building us into a glorious and spotless bride.  You alone can accomplish this, for You raise the dead to life.  Like Jacob, we are limping toward glory against all odds because You have commissioned it.  You are building Your church and the gates of Hell shall not stand against it.  Some trust in chariots, and some in horses; but we will remember Your name O LORD, our God.

And our tongues shall speak of Your righteousness and of Your praise all the day long, for these tongues belong to sheep who have been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and nobody can snatch us out of His mighty hand.  It is in His name that we dare to approach Your throne Almighty Father, through the Holy Spirit, amen!

If you have one monkey with a typewriter, you will quickly get the U.S. Code.

I thought of this while listening to Henry Hazlitt destroy John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money on mises.org.  I originally thought of the joke in reference to the General Theory, but since that’s an obscure reference, I decided to apply it to the United States Code instead.  Either would be fitting.

“Now, I am perfectly ready to admit that standardization in some spheres is a good thing. It is a good thing in the making of Ford cars; but just because it is a good thing in the making of Ford cars, it is a bad thing in the making of human beings, for the reason that a Ford car is a machine and a human being is a person.”

Quoted in With Education Like This at mises.org by Shawn Ritenour.

Today I preached my second sermon at Christ Church of North Carolina.  I preached on Proverbs 11:1 and the title of the sermon is “Weights and Measures: Just and Unjust.”  In it I deal with such issues as honest business dealings, fraud, fiat money, and a basic overview of Christian economics.

Feel free to listen to the sermon, provide feedback, and share it with anybody whom you believe may benefit from it.  Like any endeavor you need a lot of practice at this to get good at it.  I’ll probably need to preach a hundred sermons before I come into my own.

The sermon audio can be downloaded here.

The manuscript of the sermon in PDF format can be found here.

While you’re at it, check out the Christ Church sermon archives page here.

Like all things at michaelduchemin.com, you are free to distribute these under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 unported license.

PDF of sheet music here

Piano accompaniment here

Soprano part here

Alto part here

Tenor part here

Bass part here

As with all material published on this site, you may freely copy, distribute, and even sell this hymn for a profit under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Generally, the rise of domestic American tyranny has been via a gradualist approach, much like the philosophy of the Fabian Socialists.  Incorporate an income tax at 2%, make use of a crisis to increase the top marginal rates to 90% and then settle on a rate of 35% for the time being.  They approach hasn’t been uniformly gradual.  Often the government will increase its influence at a greater rate during crises.  As Robert Higgs illustrates in Crisis and Leviathan, the government never lets a good crisis go to waste.  The government will substantially increase its intervention in the lives of its people during times of crisis, but once the crisis is over, the government never returns back to its pre-crisis levels.

The recent TSA implementation of a choice between naked scanners or a frisk-down that goes beyond inappropriate has provoked the proverbial frog to jump out of the water.  If this was a pilot program for the American tolerance for tyranny, I am pleasantly surprised with the level of resistance.  This is far more encouraging than the results of any election.  Even people at work who are usually silent regarding political matters are up in arms about this.  Only the most ardent statists are defending the TSA, and even they are grasping at straws.

Airport security is frankly too important to be entrusted to bureaucrats.  In a truly free economy, the airlines would have a vested interest in seeing to it that passengers safely arrive at their destinations without humiliating and alienating them.  If Delta got their own naked scanners, they would not get repeat business.  This should hopefully help people to rethink their opinion of government competence and “benevolence” in endeavors outside of airport security.  Education is too important to entrust to (any level of) government.  The economy is too important to entrust to the government.  “National security” is too important to entrust to the government.  This will be a tough sell for your garden variety conservative, but we need to realize that the department of “defense” is just another government bureaucracy.  As such it has the interests of bureaucrats, lobbyists, and powerful interests well above those of doing the actual job it purports to do.  I’m not stating that every individual in the armed forces (or any other government agency) is of this mindset, but every individual in the armed forces is trained to obey orders without questioning.  What the TSA has done is essentially given us a picture of what the American forces do to the rest of the world.

This parasitic tyranny needs to be opposed at home and abroad.  God has ordained civil magistrates to be his ministers of wrath.  Those usurpers who would rule in a manner that refuses to submit to the Triune God acknowledging their role as subordinate deacons, who violate God’s higher law, who pervert justice, have a lot more to worry about than a bunch of angry subjects.

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,

Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.      -Psalm 2

http://www.youtube.com/user/RichardMaybury#p/u/10/AqEmEjYuT1s

(Quote begins at 6:49)

Anyway, nullification has made a comeback in the past few months, and I’m glad of it.  Aside from Doug’s post, Tom Woods has written a recent book about it and been interviewed by a zombie.  Anyway, we have seen a lot of interesting developments lately, and I decided to record my thoughts as the first Of the Way podcast.  I know I’m more likely to listen to something at my desk than to read a blog, and I thought at least some of my readers might have similar preferences.

“Can I Tell You” by Kansas can be purchased on iTunes, or by going here or here.

Enjoy!