OUR SHIP OF STATE
By David D. Hambleton
To whom would go command? Where should they sail it? What would they see there? Would it serve The Great Shipwright who had inspired them in its building? How could they ensure that it would survive as a legacy – or would it? They studied and talked long and passionately about how it should be structured. Asked what he had wrought, a master-builder among them said, “I give you a ship, if you can keep it.”
They were good students of ships, and built it better than anything afloat had ever been built before. It was nearly destroyed many times, from both without and within, right there in the drydock; saved only by divine intervention on more than one occasion – and that acknowledged, by some of the most skeptical of divinity among them.
Consensus came hard, but it was had. The keel would lay so; ribs and decks solid and braced with structural integrity and checks and balances of power to protect those within. Her sails and hull shape were set to fly in open water. Glorious, she would be commanded by a captain chosen from the deck plates, for no royalty would be had on this voyage. Counterbalances were installed between the navigator, the master, and the commander. No subjects were among those builders who threw off servitude to any but their creator, as they themselves created this ship to serve them and carry them and their progeny to more prosperous places nearer The Creator.
Crewmembers elected representatives to the ship’s mastering and navigating councils and to the captaincy. These would stand for re-election frequently so as not to grow over-comfortable or privileged in those roles. The roles were defined and limited in the Ship’s Charter, and the mastering committee charged with ensuring the navigators and commanders would not violate those boundaries. Members would be allowed to speak freely and worship The Creator, or not as they chose with impunity and no benefit from the ship itself. The armory was distributed among the crew, to protect one as well as others, and to keep the leaders honest.
Unique among vessels, this one would be crewed by sailors who owned it. When they pulled a line or set a course, they pulled and plotted not as a slave to avoid the stripe, but as one who profits from the pulling or steering. Some onboard were indeed slaves, but would be freed in time by plan, intent, and agreement; in a manner that ensured overall growth and prosperity as well as ultimately recognize The Creator-given equality and liberty among all crewmembers – and this goal would take a war between sailors on board, but in keeping with the ship’s charter, it was surely won.
Landlubbers, used to being subjects of the despots who governed them, saw what it meant to be onboard, aspired to join this crew and applied. Many were accepted and became some of the best of the crew, making it better for their partnership as sailors.
It was a sound vessel; the fastest afloat! And it raced ahead of the greatest navies in the world. Indeed, it was attacked before launch and again and again thereafter. Those battles were hard, but this crew and ship won the day. That winning would continue and set the world’s shipping lanes free from pirate and despot alike against all odds, the whole world to prosper as never before.
In an unbelievably short time, common people all over the globe for the first time were set free to flourish into a standard of living heretofore un-known among any but the wealthiest of kings. Great personal wealth was accumulated and distributed. Incurable diseases were healed and forgotten. The lot of the impoverished improved, and disaster relief was funded like never in history.
All this success, yet there remained disagreements as to how to set the sail or trim the ballast or which course to set through storms and strife. Followers of those who wished this ship not to be built in the first place remained onboard. These were civil struggles among fellow-laborers with honest questions as to how much of the sheet and which angle the jib, how much rum or beef for dinner, or into which port for how long.
Then an evil arose among the crew. Sailors who didn’t want to sail but had desires to live ashore had grown in the ranks. These postulated that life ashore would be better, as the grass was certainly greener than the ship’s deck on this side of the gunwale. They claimed they were wiser, and spoke of their vast education and scientific approach, having cast off superstition, among which was The Great Shipwright Himself. Though their arguments were pure sophistry, good and faithful members of the crew didn’t want to be rude so they let them ramble on. These didn’t want to sail the blue water where big fish and big profits lay, but desired a slower pace in littoral waters where all shared a pittance of a common collectivist mite, like the other landlubbers did... They became wicked in their desires and methods to achieve their ends.
They set about to re-focus the crew’s training from weather, ocean currents, and sailing the ship in general to focus on this ship – and even replacing The Great Shipwright with this ship; promising more logical methods of running it. They hid and obfuscated the knowledge of how the divine had saved them and set them on course, claiming it was the work of people like them who secretly had rejected The Creator since the start. Lost among many were the arts of navigation by trustworthy means. And more than once the ship came near running aground or foundering in heavy seas or on shoals.
But there remained a remnant among whom the knowledge was retained by passing it not through the indoctrination system of the wicked but from mother to son, father to daughter, and faithful friend to faithful friend. They remembered The Great Shipwright and how He created. They remembered the conversations the builders had and their reasons. They remembered the ship’s charter and used it as a guide, a compass through the convoluted misdirection of the wicked.
The wicked fabricated mythology about The Creator being a creation of the created, claiming earlier crewmembers had made up the divine being – even while they were advocating placing the created ship in the place of The Creator. The ship – or the wise elite rulers of it – should provide all, protect all, decide all, and determine all. Free to speak by the ship’s guiding dictates, they stood on deck and said it over and over until some said it may be true – at least parts of it...
If the divine weren’t real, they were free to behave as they wanted. They rejected morality to the point that it killed some, but over and over on deck they blamed the faithful for not protecting them. The faithful were compassionate, relented and agreed they could have done more to prevent death, and it stuck. The faithful were guilty.
The wicked complained about having to stand watch with others among them who’d been slaves early on. A faithful man called them out and shared a dream that exposed their uncooperative nature, encouraging the crew and the world to judge one-another not on arbitrary measures but based on the content of their character.
Caught, the wicked hid out for a while, and then blamed the faithful for persecution and posted criers on deck to repeat the lie until it caught hold among some and then many crewmembers. “Those vicious faithful!”
The wicked even advocated and eventually succeeded in authorizing and carrying out killing babies and the old, if their life wouldn’t be very comfortable or normal. Only a cruel faithful sailor would require them to be born into this mess of a ship or make them go on living in their pain. In no way, shape, or form should anyone err on the side of human life because scientists said there were too many people on the ship – on the whole planet for sustained habitation anyway, so they had to find a way to let some go. Who would go? Life was cheapened. With no recognition of the divine origin of life, young crewmembers in fits of normal adolescent desperation found themselves devalued and tragically took their own lives.
They spun yarns of the ship wreaking havoc among the fish where the keel cut the water, claiming that sailing her was leaving indelible tracks on the ocean, killing the fish and damaging the planet. They even had a scientist bring out a fish skeleton, saying it demonstrated the notion was true, and two others agreed, so they had a consensus. Other scientists disagreed, but they were denounced for various things on deck by the wicked, who said they really wanted to destroy the planet so they shouldn’t be trusted. The time for argument was over. What if the dead fish guy was right? Shouldn’t they err on the side of keeping poor fish alive? The ship had to put ashore to save everything, or everyone would all die like the fish and the faithful would be at fault. Nobody wanted to hurt another poor fish, let alone be at fault for the end of the world. And it was a small thing and besides these were the logical scientific people saying these things, so good people went along. Is one ship worth the whole world, after all?
They spread lies about how some captains were trying to establish an empire, desiring to conquer other people and rule them – and even keel-haul or perpetrate unspeakable water tortures on them! They elected captains and council members who argued for sailing against winds or in circles to purposely slow movement to seaward and float ever-more close to the coast – though they called themselves forward-thinkers. Their “forward thinking” always and consistently, though usually surreptitiously, involved getting the ship and crew aground, but some sailors wanted to believe their lies so those put hope in the change the wicked advocated.
They ridiculed those who set straight courses guided by the great navigator. Caught falsely accusing, they accused the accuser of something – anything outrageous. It may be a lie, but there they stood on the deck shouting the lie until many crewmembers began to wonder; were both sides somewhat to blame? Feeling convicted, some faithful conceded to meet them half-way to their shoreward westward course. From the intended true bearing of north they went first to northwest, then half again to west by- northwest. Some of the faithful objected and said we should turn east to compensate, but they were shouted down as ridiculous zealots and the ship ambled on into the brown coastal water.
These forward-thinkers secretly aspired to turn into a marsh where they could ground the ship and raid her, spilling her wealth onto the shore to be picked over and shared by the landlubbers there. Speaking this aloud to expose it, the faithful were accused of oppression and adherence to the antiquated concept of “The Great Shipwright”, who was, they claimed, obviously not really there, or there never would have been a dead fish or sick sailor. The faithful were denounced as anti-ship extremist radicals for not agreeing with the marsh-bound wicked.
The faithful knew that blue water was where this ship was built to sail, running with the wind to new horizons. There were heated disagreements in the navigation council’s cabin. It was desperate, and the wicked knew they couldn’t take the ship to their chosen destination by honest means, so they fought. Arguing at first, then accusing the faithful of mean-spiritedness and ill-intent, wanting to take the ship out to get lost at sea. The faithful engaged them and held the wicked from the tiller for some time, but there eventually came times when they took over.
The faithful reasoned, “They haven’t truly harmed us yet, so maybe we should tolerate them among us? They deserve a chance. Give them a turn at the wheel… The Ship’s Master’s Council will keep them from going too far.” But that Council had been infiltrated by the wicked as well.
They tried again and again to open the gunwales to allow uninvited landlubber stowaways aboard who would work in the scullery and scrub the deck like other crewmembers supposedly refused to do. The ship really needed these workers. After all, they were just workers and not real crewmembers at all, so they didn’t need a full sailor’s rations or take a full share of profits. Besides, these workers would vote and contend on their side against the faithful. Even some of the most faithful bought this lie.
The wicked raided the treasury and threw the hard-won wealth of all over the side onto their landlubber friends’ small boats and into the deep water. In desperation, they reasoned that if they could bankrupt the crew, there’d be nothing with which to buy provisions in order to continue the journey.
How appalled were the faithful when they finally realized these wicked argued only enough to distract; for they were no longer trying to win control, but to scuttle the ship under their very feet. They hacked and burned at the hull and keel in order to dash a hole or crack the back of the ship so they’d have no alternative but to turn ashore – or founder and wash up there anyway.
How this tale ends is entirely dependent on the faithful. The truly wicked are not many, but they studied Machiavelli and Alinsky, so they are good at standing on deck announcing their talking-points until the lie appears true. We must study these as well, but we have the Truth, The Great Shipwright, and His Teachings on our side.
A lie is a lie, and we see through them like never before. These wicked humanists have “educated” (indoctrinated) many and “reported” (lied) to many more with their godless insidious, blasphemous, hopeless, damning ideas until good and faithful people feel damned hopeless.
They’ve even co-opted many otherwise faithful people with one cause or another, telling enough truth to bring them along and retaining them by offering ever more utopian dreams, or dispiriting the faithful by assuring them that the True Divine is imaginary and their god, the totalitarian state is the only thing on which we can depend.
There is a battle afoot! It will take action on the part of the faithful to win, by having faith in The Creator and nothing besides, and by loving – truly unselfishly loving – those around until they ask why. The only way to accomplish what we must is always standing on the solid foundation laid by The Great Shipwright. We must counter the actions of the wicked with righteousness and goodness, so we must study to be found approved as crewmembers of The Creator’s ship, bringing true hope, faith and love to the broken and dispirited. Let’s train our children, educate our neighbors, and invite some landlubbers aboard who understand our Ship of State’s vision of republican Individual Sovereignty and Free Market Capitalism, and teach ‘em to sail!
This Ship of State, the United States of America, is the legacy to which we’ve been born and to which some of us have aspired and achieved citizenship. She’s covered with barnacles and there are holes in the sheets. The deck is mossy and the yardarm hangs kind of funny. She’ll take some shoring up, and a lot of scrubbing, but we’re a crew with a legacy and a backbone of steel! She’s our ship! She still sails right fine with a steady hand at the rudder and quick climbers in the rigging. Her promise remains strong and bountiful, though she’s been pillaged and vandalized. Let us swab the decks and unfurl the sails, set a vigilant watch, pick up a good bearing and breeze, and ply open water once again in fair winds and following seas!
Come sail with me!
This ship of state is built for me and you
To guide and sail her straight and true,
Now a bright white wake through dazzling blue
Into brilliant red sunsets, oh faithful crew!
May our Heavenly Father bless these United States of America.
