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Conspiracy Against Liberty

Greetings and welcome as we continue our study and opinion of Albert Pike’s “Morals and Dogma”. We find ourselves today about half way through chapter 29.
 
  Please recall that “Morals and Dogma” was published in 1871 at a time when America was experiencing her own growing pains post civil war, and at the dawn of the coming industrial revolution. 
 
 Pike was a General for the Confederate States during the civil war, and after the war Pike was an astute lawyer who very often found himself in court with claims against the established United States government. 
 
  It is important to recall these aspects about Pike as we begin our study today, just as it is important to recognize that Pike’s words, though written in the 1800s, are extremely important today as the United States is experiencing a governance unpopular with the majority of the people. 
 
 In the past few months we in America have witnessed the streets flooded with protests against what many are considering an attack on liberty and freedom from the highest levels of American government. It is the people who are demanding to be recognized and who are now defending the rights of the “least of us”.
 
  As we begin our study, we might agree that Pike’s words in these paragraphs couls have been written just yesterday.
 
  And now, LET’S READ PIKE!
 
  It is quite true that Government tends always to become a conspiracy against liberty; or, where votes give place, to fall habitually into such hands that little which is noble or chivalric is found among those who rule and lead the people. It is true that men, in this present age, become distinguished for other things, and may have name and fame, and flatterers and lacqueys, and the oblation of flattery, who would, in a knightly age, have been despised for the want in them of all true gentility and courage; and that such men are as likely as any to be voted for by the multitude, who rarely love or discern or receive truth; who run after fortune, hating what is oppressed, and ready to worship the prosperous; who love accusation and hate apologies; and who are always glad to hear and ready to believe evil of those who care not for their favor and seek not their applause.
 
Pike writes that government tends to always become a conspiracy against liberty, and that government basically falls into the hands of the least noble of us. 
 
  We may have found it true that even presently, our leaders have been propped up not for any noble attempts to ensure a better society, but from pomp and circumstance of celebrity and ideas that cater to a sort of hatred to nouns that are different than the nouns “acceptable” to certain cutures in America where ignorance rules free thought.
 
 Pike writes of those who “love accusation and hate apologies”, and unfortunately this is the state of our politics at the highest levels in America at this time and place in 2017.
 
  Our obligations as Masons is to bring forth light against the darkness of ignorance. We begin this journey by first exposing light to our OWN ignorance, and then we help our friends and neighbors to become enlightened, too. 
We, as Masons, should also bring this light to our representatives in government as a means to also better society. Masonry is the bastion for freedom and charity. 
When our governments stand against either, Masonry should become the voice to bring freedom and charity back into governance. 
Masonry stands firmly against the conspiracies against liberty that government often brings forth towards those that need freedom and liberty and acceptance the most.
 
 Next
 
  

But no country can ever be wholly without men of the old heroic strain and stamp, whose word no man will dare to doubt, whose virtue shines resplendent in all calamities and reverses and amid all temptations, and whose honor scintillates and glitters as purely and perfectly as the diamond--men who are not wholly the slaves of the material occupations and pleasures of life, wholly engrossed in trade, in the breeding of cattle, in the framing and enforcing of revenue regulations, in the chicanery of the law, the. objects of political envy, in the base trade of the lower literature, or in the heartless, hollow vanities of an eternal dissipation. Every

p. 806

generation, in every country, will bequeath to those who succeed it splendid examples and great images of the dead, to be admired and imitated; there were such among the Romans, under the basest Emperors; such in England when the Long Parliament ruled; such in France during its Saturnalia of irreligion and murder, and some such have made the annals of America illustrious.

In these paragraphs, Pike assures us that there always are some people that exist in every country, no matter the level of tyrrany that might exist.
 
  In American history we learned of the heroics of Brother George Washington who stood up to bring freedom from the rule of a King that reigned on the shores of the American continent. 
Abraham Lincoln, we learned as much as we often debate, signed the declaration to free the slaves held by their “masters” in the southern states. 
 
  We learned of Frederick Douglass who stood firmly against the practice of slavery as an African-American even though it could have risked his own life and liberty by doing so, and Harriett Tubman’s heroics in leading slaves north to freedom by means of the underground railroad. 
 
  Martin Luther King, Jr., we learned stood up in the face of Jim Crow and lead minorities to the hope of equality by leading protests until Jim Crow was overturned.
 
  And in recent days, Americans have found that our system of checks and balances usually works as edicts from the highest levels of government that were put forth to seal our borders from those fleeing war and tyranny, were challenged and overturned by our high courts and those that were fleeing towards hope have found a home in my country.
 
  
  Masory stands for the freedom and liberty and equality of all people, and we as Masons, should also stand in solidarity to ensure that there is liberty everywhere beginning in our lodges and our immediate communities. 
 
  Next
 
   

When things tend to that state and condition in which, in any country under the sun, the management of its affairs and the customs of its people shall require men to entertain a disbelief in the virtue and honor of those who make and those who are charged to execute the laws; when there shall be everywhere a spirit of suspicion and scorn of all who hold or seek office, or have amassed wealth; when falsehood shall no longer dishonor a man, and oaths give no assurance of true testimony, and one man hardly expect another to keep faith with him, or to utter his real sentiments, or to be true to any party or to any cause when another approaches him with a bribe; when no one shall expect what he says to be printed without additions, perversions, and misrepresentations; when public misfortunes shall be turned to private profit, the press pander to licentiousness, the pulpit ring with political harangues, long prayers to God, eloquently delivered to admiring auditors, be written out for publication, like poems and political speeches; when the uprightness of judges shall be doubted, and the honesty of legislators be a standing jest; then men may come to doubt whether the old days were not better than the new, the Monastery than the Opera Bouffe, the little chapel than the drinking-saloon, the Convents than the buildings as large as they, without their antiquity, without their beauty, without their holiness, true Acherusian Temples, where the passer-by hears from within the never-ceasing din and clang and clashing of machinery, and where, when the bell rings, it is to call wretches to their work and not to their prayers; where, says an animated writer, they keep up a perennial laudation of the Devil, before furnaces which are never suffered to cool.

In this paragraph, Pike explains where many in America stand now.
 
 In my conversations with co-workers and family and friends, we do lament that we miss the times past, and we hope to be able to talk about what might be a brighter future.
 I think as we experience the feeling of the conspiracies against liberty, we thirst for liberty more, and we are more willing to demand freedom and liberty and equality as the trio is seemingly eclipsed by edicts againts them from on high.
 
 So long as there is goodness and a yearning for liberty in the hearts of the people, I am convinced that liberty will always prevail with the hard work of the people to keep it alive.
 
 
  And with those words of hope, I will end our study for today.
 
   Thank you for reading along with me for these past 3 years if you are a “veteran” and please accept a warm welcome if you are new here. 
 
    Universal Freemason is on You Tube (Universal Freemason Channel) and Instagram (universal_freemason). 
 
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    Have a great week.
 

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