A recent article by Cameron Hilditch in National Review on July 2nd talks about how there is an assertion of dominance going on between the West and the East, between what is referred to as a civilization-state, like Russia and China, and a nation-state, like the U.S., Mexico, or Canada.
Cameron writes, when describing the difference, “The nation-state, properly defined, is a territory in which a single sovereign government wields the geographic monopoly on violence.” and further, “Whereas Westerners think of their countries as nations, men such as Putin and Xi think of their own as civilizations. The idea of the civilization-state allows a polity to extend the story of its own history back to a time before its current constitutional settlement.”
“The role of the government in a civilization-state is therefore different from its role in a nation-state. In the former, the purpose of government is to maintain the unity of the civilization across time and space and prevent its dilution, rather than secure the individual rights of its citizens.”
“The very different relationship between conscience and coercion envisaged by America’s enemies demonstrates what is at stake in the coming great-power struggle,” he concludes:
“In the coming clash of civilizations, the United States would appear to be at a severe disadvantage EXCEPT for the fact that the beliefs about human nature and religious freedom that underpinned American Revolutionary thought have a rich and hard-won history that reaches back to the earliest days of Christianity.”
In other words, what distinguishes us from the rest of the world is our foundational Christian heritage.
When one asks, “Does God have a special mission for the U.S?. It would appear we have an answer.
Dennis Prager stated recently in an Interview for The Epoch Times, that “if something as powerful as the 10 commandments isn’t relevant, then what’s the point? It has to be relevant for it to matter.”
By the same rule, if the Urantia Book isn’t relevant, what’s the point? But in this discussion about the U.S., about the differences between a godless-Civilization State, and a nation-state that treasures the human spirit, we can ask an important and relevant question. Does God, or at least what we might imagine to be the principles of Godliness, favor one kind of nation or another?
From this we can find and answer in paper 69 on the Human progress, we can read specifically that communism is NOT the ideal form of government, at least beyond its earlier stages in the earlier times of human evolution…pause to consider the following passages:
“Communism was indispensable scaffolding in the growth of primitive society, but it gave way to the evolution of a higher social order because it ran counter to four strong human proclivities:
1. The family. Man not only craves to accumulate property; he desires to bequeath his capital goods to his progeny. But in early communal society a man’s capital was either immediately consumed or distributed among the group at his death. There was no inheritance of property—the inheritance tax was one hundred per cent. The later capital-accumulation and property-inheritance mores were a distinct social advance. And this is true notwithstanding the subsequent gross abuses attendant upon the misuse of capital.
2. Religious tendencies. Primitive man also wanted to save up property as a nucleus for starting life in the next existence. This motive explains why it was so long the custom to bury a man’s personal belongings with him. The ancients believed that only the rich survived death with any immediate pleasure and dignity. The teachers of revealed religion, more especially the Christian teachers, were the first to proclaim that the poor could have salvation on equal terms with the rich.
3. The desire for liberty and leisure. In the earlier days of social evolution the apportionment of individual earnings among the group was virtually a form of slavery; the worker was made slave to the idler. This was the suicidal weakness of communism: The improvident habitually lived off the thrifty. Even in modern times the improvident depend on the state (thrifty taxpayers) to take care of them. Those who have no capital still expect those who have to feed them.
4. The urge for security and power. Communism was finally destroyed by the deceptive practices of progressive and successful individuals who resorted to diverse subterfuges in an effort to escape enslavement to the shiftless idlers of their tribes.
And then there is this specific statement where, as the revelators state, from paper 70, paragraph 12, where they state the following exhortation to us on the best path for civilization to take, on what they offer to us as the way for humans to live:
“The universe administrators have learned from experience that the evolutionary peoples on the inhabited worlds are best regulated by the representative type of civil government when there is maintained proper balance of power between the well-co-ordinated executive, legislative, and judicial branches.”
It would appear then, that the Revelators, indeed, the Most Highs whole rule in Kingdoms of Men, are absolutely specific on what provides the best impetus for a truly progressive civilization.
What makes this comment most intriguing is its clarity. Rarely does the Urantia Book proffer specific advice on how we should manage our earthly affairs., preferring for us to find our own way.
Amidst the current global tension, its nice to have some good avice.
America is on the right track. The question now is whether we can maintain this path.
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