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"Dino Comets"
A long-ago comet might have done in most of Montana's dinosaurs, but there's still a few haunting the capitol in Helena, and this guy hanging out along the hi-line, in the suburbs of greater Rudyard. The hi-line's "Dinosaur Trail" also harbors a string of museums and a few dino digs.
"Peaceful Lamb."
A young lamb rests peacefully in a bed of straw, under the nurturing care of its mother.
Behind the lens.
Everyone responds to this photograph with a universal, "Aaaaaaw!" This is a good example of how camera angle influences how we respond to an image.
I created this intimate image of a ewe and her lamb by getting down at eye level (and crawling around in some interesting-smelling straw). How boring would it look if I'd photographed the very same scene from a standing position?
Boiled down to basics, photographing people and animals from above makes them look relatively smaller and weaker. Photographing from below makes the very same subject look bigger and stronger. But we feel the strongest connection when we are looking at the subject eye-to-eye. Call it, "The Aaaaaw Effect.".
"Mountainside Retreat"
A herd of bighorn sheep rams rests among the yellow balsamroot flowers of a spring time mountainside in western Montana.
Behind the lens.
I like customer compliments, of course, but what I love are those moments when wild animals allow me into their personal space. Their acceptance makes the occasion - and the resulting images - stand apart as something memorable.
Batty Aurora Reflections
Bats forage over Montana's Island Lake during a 2 a.m. aurora.
An ermine is only an ermine in winter, when it's fur is white. During the rest of the year, it wears brown and yellow fur and is called a short-tailed weasel.
Ferret Face
A rare black-footer ferret peeks out from a prairie dog burrow at night. The eyes of our native ferrets reflect an emerald-green "eyeshine," and conservation biologists use spotlight to search for this glow during the wee hours.
Black-footed Ferret Blues
An endangered black-footed ferret looks out from a prairie dog burrow to find the Milky Way crossing the midnight sky. Ferrets are native, nocturnal animals who are most active in the we hours of the night.
"Ferret Kit"
A female black-footed ferret kit watches the midnight prairie from the safety of a vacant black-tailed prairie dog burrow, in central Montana.
Prairie Bandit
One of Montana's rarest animals, a black-footed ferret, becomes active around midnight when the sky is filled with stars. Our native ferrets were thought to be extinct at one time, and now there are fewer than two dozen making the midnight rounds in eastern Montana.
"Blazing Saddles"
Rocket — a horse at Dunrovin Ranch — grazes peacefully (and safely) in the town of Lolo, Montana, while a forest fire blazes up the flank of Lolo Peak, west of town. The horses here were never in any danger, and horse owners from nearby forested areas brought their own animals here for safety during the fire.
Isaac is a four-year-old paint who found his "forever" home thanks to the Montana Horse Sanctuary near Simms, Montana. The Sanctuary is a non-profit which helps in-crisis horses and horse owners. Learn more at www.MontanaHorseSanctuary.org.
"That Was a Good One!"
A wild stallion appears to enjoy a good joke, but he's really just smelling and gesturing towards his mares. Montana's last band of wild horses live in the Pryor Mountains, in the southeastern corner of the state.
You can learn more about Montana's wild mustangs by visiting the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center.
"Mother Daughter."
A young mare, "Halo," nuzzles her very first foal, "Kaelia," at the Pryor Mtn. Wild Horse Range, in southeastern Montana. Both are free-ranging, wild horses.
To learn more about Montana's wild mustangs, visit the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center.
"Mother's Watchful Eye."
"Buffalo Girl" keeps a loving watch over her four-month-old foal, "Kitalpha." They are among the free-ranging horses at the Pryor Mtn. Wild Horse Range, in southeastern Montana.
To learn more about Montana's wild mustangs, visit the Pryor Mountain Wild Mustang Center.
"A Soft Eye."
Happy, a young mare, enjoys a peaceful moment at Montana Horse Sanctuary in Simms, Montana. The Sanctuary is a non-profit that shelters and assists in-crisis horses and their owners. To learn more, visit www.MontanaHorseSanctuary.org.
"The Watchtower"
Chief Mountain stands sentinel over a horse feeding peacefully in the last rays of evening on the rolling plains.
Behind the lens.
This mountain is sacred to many people, but especially to the Blackfeet People, who call it, "Ninaistako."
Although not a "rescued" horse, Dancer provides therapy to Montana Horse Sanctuary horses through play and friendship. The Sanctuary is a non-profit that shelters and assists in-crisis horses and their owners. To learn more, visit www.MontanaHorseSanctuary.org..
"Who Nose Where This Might Lead?"
A male black bear (right) cautiously greets a female nose to nose. During spring the young couple will travel together for a few days before parting ways again.
Note - these are two wild and free-ranging back bears.
"Three Little Bears"
Learning to recognize sounds is a big part of growing up as a bear cub. When these black bear cubs hear something they don't recognize, they run together and look at mom. Based on her reaction, the cubs learn the appropriate response and file that information to memory.
"Mountain Matriarch"
A bear who can raise two cubs through their first summer is a good mother. But raising three cubs, like this black bear mom, requires all of the skills of a Montana matriarch. This family grew up in the Many Glacier Valley, and the cubs are grown now and on their own.
"Checking In"
A mother black bear stands on her hind legs to check her cubs who are feeding nearby. It goes without saying, but bear mothers are very protective parents.
"Black Bear Stare"
Some books say that bears have "poor" vision, but it's comparable to ours. Bear vision is only poor in comparison to their incredible sense of smell.
"Thirsty Grizzly."
A wild and free grizzly bear stops to sip from a pool of water while ambling around in Glacier National Park.
Behind the lens.
A lot of photographers rent captive bears that otherwise live in cages when not posing for photographs. Then they put the bear up high and photograph them from below eye level, making these "pets" look like scary monsters. Can you guess my opinion of so-called "game" farms, and so-called photographers?
I like this image because it is the antithesis of the others. Here is a wild bear just being a bear, getting a drink of water and going about life. It isn't posed or scary, it's natural.
"Up a Creek."
A male arctic grayling swims upstream through the riffles of a small, western Montana spawing stream.
Behind the lens.
Male Arctic Grayling have large dorsal fins with irridescent blue spots and red trim, while the females' dorsal fins are about half as big and less colorful. I noticed that, as they swam upstream, they would sometimes come partially out of the water when moving through shallow riffles. So I hunkered down and watched and waited.
Every now and then a fin would appear, but the eye of the fish would almost always be distorted by the waves. Trust me, an oblong fish eye looks really wierd. After several arm-cramping hours of following fish through the riffles with my lens, this male finally made the image come alive. He's holding his dorsal fin high, and his eye actually looks like an eye. That's more than I could ask for from a preoccupied fish.
"The Boys in the Choir."
Wild arctic grayling work their way upstream, into the spring current of a small, unnamed spawning stream in western Montana.
Behind the lens.
As our neighbor says, Montana is 10 months of winter followed by 2 months of bad sledding. But the poor sledding is more than made up for by the amazing wild lands and wildlife that surround us.
Take the rare Arctic Grayling, for example. In our neighborhood, there is a tiny trickle of water that swells up in the spring melt-off to become a bonifide creek (or "crik," depending on where you grew up). Part of the rhythm of our lives here is the return of the Grayling each spring to spawn in this unnamed creek. Tracy and I have more or less adopted this little natural wonder, and we get to help when the state biologists come here to collect Grayling eggs to raise and transplant into other lakes and rivers.
To provide a sense of the wildness in this photograph, I positioned the camera lens to be partially above water and partially below water, so that you get a feel for the underwater and streamside habitats that the fish need. I used a remote camera with a long "extension cord," and then sat back among the trees and waited for the Boys (and Girls) to arrive...
"Grayling Rapids"
A female arctic grayling swims upstream through a small set of rapids.Montana's Grayling swim upstream each May to spawn in small creeks.
"Eye of the Trout"
A large westslope cutthroat trout — Montana's state fish — works his way into the current of a shallow spawning stream.
"Trout Bubbles"
A westslope cutthroat trout swims into the bubbling current of a small spawning stream in western Montana.
Behind the lens.
This was a difficult image to create. I wanted an eye-level portrait of the trout that included the air bubbles, which would show off the current that the fish was swimming in. But the fish is under a log in the shadowed corner of an undercut bank. Just getting in position without scaring the fish away was challenging -- and time-consuming.
The low light levels meant a slow shutter speed,and that in turn helps show motion in the air bubbles. I had to be pretty close to the fish because that much current tends to pick up debris, and shaded underwater areas want to turn blue on you. So the resulting image is a pleasing compromise between lighting, motion and camera positioning.
"Rising Trout"
A westslope cutthroat trout briefly rises above the surface while jostling for position in a shallow spawning stream in western Montana.
Behind the lens.
While photographing this spawn, I noticed that the fish tend to push each other around to get the best pools, and again after they've paired off. So I watched and I waited, focusing over the most active individuals.
With time and patience -- and a little luck -- I finally captured the full-face, out-of-the-water portrait that I had pre-visualized. If you look closely below this fish, you can see the black spots of the other fish involved in this tussell.
Because I was working in dappled sunlight and shade, I used a strong fill flash to really bring out the bright colors of the spawning fish.
"Resting Trout."
A westslope cutthroat trout rests along the edge of a small stream during its journey up the creek to spawn.
Behind the lens.
When we name the "forest animals," we don't tend to include fish in that group. But the health of the water, and thus the fish, is dependent on the health of the land surrounding them. To keep our native fish healthy, we need to maintain a good amount of wild, un-manicured land (ie -- forests) intact around our lakes, streams and rivers.
I intentionally set out to photograph this trout in a way that shows the overhanging vegetation at the water's edge. These are natural resting places for fish -- and we all need nice places to rest.
"Moose Cascades"
A bull moose saunters across a cascading creek in the Two Medicine valley of Glacier National Park.
"Autumn Moose"
A bull moose turns the golden leaves of fall into an evening meal, in Glacier National Park.
A big bull moose gingerly wraps his lips around the delicious leaves of fall, in Glacier National Park.
"Moose Meadow."
Mother moose and calf feed peacefully, side-by-side in a grassy meadow. (Note cards available here.)
Behind the lens.
There's something about this photograph that I can't quite put my finger on. People respond well to the balance between the two moose, the two trees, and the calm green colors. Everything combines to form a peaceful, calming image.
"Moose Munchies."
A hungry moose turns an aspen sapling into a quick snack.
Behind the lens.
After photographing stars overnight, we wandered into Glacier Park's Many Glacier valley to watch the sunrise. No one else was up yet, except for this moose. She watched us watch her as she browsed her way through a patch of aspen saplings.
This is a good example of rim lighting, with low-angle light coming in from behind. I like this kind of lighting so much that I seldom even attempt photographs in straight-up daylight. The first and last hours of the day are almost always the best for photography.
"Moose March."
Mom moose listens to her baby behind her while feeding in a shallow western Montana lake -- but what is the baby listening to? (Note cards available here.)
Behind the lens.
This image is from the forests west of Glacier National Park. If you're already at a lake when moose arrive, they tend to ignore you. If you arrive after they do, they'll often leave. This was one of those wonderful morning that I arrived first, and I got to watch them feed for almost half an hour.
A bull moose looks forward to a summer of growing his velvet-covered antlers. The caloric needs to grow a pair of antlers is about the same amount that a female moose needs to grow a calf.
Behind the lens.
We discovered this moose on a trail in Glacier National Park. Instead of chasing him with a camera, we hustled back down the trail, set up the camera at eye level, and then sat still and waited. In this way, the moose could choose whether or not to approach us, based on his comfort level -- not ours. He stopped to look us over, and then kept his eye on us as he walked past peacefully. Is it just me, or is he smiling at our trailside etiquette?
"Moose Mom."
A mother moose pauses to check on her calf while exploring the lakeshore.
Behind the lens.
These moose arrived on my birthday, in late June several years ago. That's the kind of wonderful gift that you can't buy at the department store. (But you can purchase a print here!)
"Montana Traffic Jam"
A rather large bison claims the middle of the road at the National Bison Range, in western Montana.
"Bugle Boy"
Nothing says fall in the mountains like the rustling of aspen leaves and the bugling of bull elk on a brisk, sunny evening.
"Elk Mist."
A bull elk feeds peacefully in a misty meadow on a brisk, fall morning. (Note cards available here.)
Behind the lens.
Most professional photographers only look for the biggest horns or antlers, ignoring everything else. I tend to see animals in terms of ecology and behavior, and my images tend to reflect this different view.
So my bull elk image is as much a peaceful landscape as it is a wildlife photograph. As the first light of day creeps across the meadow, lighting up the steam from a creek, this elk just moves along slowly and chews contentedly.
"Elk Bugle"
When the chill turns the aspen to gold, bull elk are busy battling other bulls for the right to breed the females that come into estrus.
"One of Those Days"
Elk antlers are designed to disengage when combatants back away. But they are easily damaged while velvet-covered and spongy-soft inside. Fortunately for this spike elk, these damaged antlers will be shed over winter, and both of his new antlers should grow normally next summer.
"My New Hat"
A pronghorn bucks marks his territory with scent glands, and one pair of glands is located just below the ears. When the mature bucks rub their horns and scent glands onto vegetation, they sometimes end up with a new set of head decorations.
"Crayfish Reflections."
A Montana crayfish is reflected in the surface of a shallow lake. (I think the world needs more crayfish photos!)
"Morning Fawn"
A white-tailed deer fawn meanders through tall grasses on a silent summer morning, in a field of foggy dew.
"Male Muley"
Mule deer bucks grow their antlers for use during the fall rut. The antlers usually grow symmetrically, but not always. This guy is missing a brow tine on his right antler but is still quite sure of himself!
"Curious Fawn."
Curiosity gets the best of a spotted fawn, and he peeks out from underneath mom's protective care. (Note cards available here.)
Behind the lens.
For a newborn animal, there's a lot that must be learned in a short amount of time if it's going to survive to adulthood. Both fear and curiousity are instinctive, and they tend to temper each other during this crash course in learning.
Here, curiousity wins out over fear as a spotted fawn sneaks a look at what might well be her first glimpse of a human.
black bearsowGlacier National ParkMontanaJohn Ashley


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Scotty McCreery, Sugarland + More Added to 2011 CMA Awards Lineup
If 'American Idol' winner Scotty McCreery keeps this pace up, he'll be performing the halftime show at the Super Bowl before long. On the day the 18-year-old performed the National Anthem to kick off the World Series, it was announced he'd be performing at the 2011 CMA Awards in Nashville next month.
McCreery, Sugarland, Sara Evans, Martina McBride and the Zac Brown Band are the five latest artists announced as performers for the November 9 broadcast. It's not clear which song each will perform, but typically a singer will choose their most well-known hit from the past 12 months. These five join a star-studded roster that already includes all five Entertainer of the Year nominees, all new artist nominees and select others like Rascal Flatts and Carrie Underwood.
Both Evans and McBride are nominated for Best Female Vocalist at this year's awards, with Evans also being included amongst the Single of the Year nominees for 'A Little Bit Stronger.' Sugarland are nominated for Vocal Duo of the Year and the Zac Brown Band are up for four awards including Album of the Year and Single of the Year for 'Colder Weather.'
Underwood and Brad Paisley will host the 45th annual CMA Awards. It's their third time co-hosting the event together. They'll also recreate their chart-topping duet 'Remind Me' with a live performance.

subset: commoncrawl


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Dr. Colin S. Gray
External Researcher
COLIN S. GRAY is Professor Emeritus of International Politics and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, England. He worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, England, and at the Hudson Institute in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, before founding the National Institute for Public Policy, a defense-oriented think tank in the Washington, DC, area. Dr. Gray served for 5 years in the Ronald Reagan administration on the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. A dual citizen of the United States and the United Kingdom, he has served as an adviser to both the U.S. and British Governments. His government work has included studies of nuclear strategy, arms control, maritime strategy, space strategy, and special forces. Dr. Gray has written 29 books, including: The Sheriff: America's Defense of the New World Order (University Press of Kentucky, 2004); Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005); Strategy and History: Essays on Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2006); Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace and Strategy (Potomac Books, 2009); National Security Dilemmas: Challenges and Opportunities (Potomac Books, 2009); The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (Oxford University Press [OUP], 2010); War, Peace and International Relations: An Introduction to Strategic History, 2nd Ed. (Routledge, 2011); Airpower for Strategic Effect (Air University Press, 2012); and Perspectives on Strategy (OUP, 2013), which is the follow-on to Strategy Bridge. The final volume in the Strategy Bridge trilogy, entitled Strategy and Defence Planning: Meeting the Challenge of Uncertainty, was published by OUP in 2014. Dr. Gray is a graduate of the Universities of Manchester and Oxford.
*The above information may not be current. It was current at the time when the individual worked for SSI or was published by SSI.
SSI books and monographs by Dr. Colin S. Gray
What Should the U.S. Army Learn From History? Recovery From a Strategy Deficit
July 26, 2017
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
View the Executive Summary
Although history does not repeat itself in detail, it certainly does so roughly in parallel circumstances. Of course, much detail differs from one historical case to another, but nonetheless, there are commonly broad and possibly instructive parallels that can be drawn from virtually every period of history, concerning most circumstances.
Thucydides Was Right: Defining the Future Threat
April 03, 2015
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
View the Executive Summary
To define future threat is, in a sense, an impossible task, yet it is one that must be done. The only sources of empirical evidence accessible are the past and the present; one cannot obtain understanding about the future from the future.
Always Strategic: Jointly Essential Landpower
February 11, 2015
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
View the Executive Summary
Why is Landpower always strategic? Is Landpower still Landpower when it is dependently joint?
Defense Planning for National Security: Navigation Aids for the Mystery Tour
March 19, 2014
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
View the Executive Summary
What do we believe we know about the future with sufficient reliability for it to serve as a basis for defense planning? Science and social science are both utterly disarmed by the complete absence of data about the future, from the future.
Making Strategic Sense of Cyber Power: Why the Sky Is Not Falling
April 04, 2013
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
View the Executive Summary
Cyber is now recognized as an operational domain, but the theory that should explain it strategically is very largely missing. As the military establishment accepted the revolution in military affairs as the big organizing idea of the 1990s, then moved on to transformation in the early-2000s, so the third really big idea of the post-Cold War Era began to secure traction—cyber. However, it is one thing to know how to digitize; it is quite another to understand what digitization means strategically. With respect to cyber power, Dr. Colin Gray poses and seeks to answer the most basic of the strategist's questions, "So what?"
Categorical Confusion? The Strategic Implications of Recognizing Challenges Either as Irregular or Traditional
February 24, 2012
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
"First, do no harm" is a golden rule for both medicine and strategic theory. Challenges to national security are simply challenges, they are neither irregular nor traditional.
Hard Power and Soft Power: The Utility of Military Force as an Instrument of Policy in the 21st Century
April 08, 2011
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
The concepts of "hard" and "soft" power are subjected to close critical scrutiny. The author finds the latter is significantly misunderstood and therefore inappropriately assessed as a substitute for the former, the threat or the use of military force.
Schools for Strategy: Teaching Strategy for 21st Century Conflict
October 28, 2009
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
Education in strategy is feasible and important. Few would-be strategists are beyond improvement by some formal education. However, for such education to be well-directed, it needs to rest upon sound assumptions concerning the eternal nature yet ever shifting character, meaning, and function of strategy, and the range of behaviors required for effective strategic performance.
After Iraq: The Search for a Sustainable National Security Strategy
January 13, 2009
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
A sustainable national security strategy is feasible only when directed by a sustainable national security policy. In the absence of policy guidance, strategy will be meaningless. The only policy that meets both the mandates of American culture and the challenges of the outside world is one that seeks to lead the necessary mission of guarding and advancing world order.
The Implications of Preemptive and Preventive War Doctrines: A Reconsideration
July 24, 2007
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
The Bush administration has declared a doctrine of preemption, when what it really means is a doctrine of prevention. Despite heavy criticism from home and especially abroad, there is a need for the United States to be willing and able, very occasionally, to take preventive action in order to forestall future dangers.
Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy: Can the American Way of War Adapt?
March 01, 2006
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
At present and probably for some years to come, America's enemies are of an irregular character. These irregular enemies necessarily wage war in modes that are largely unconventional.
Recognizing and Understanding Revolutionary Change in Warfare: The Sovereignty of Context
February 01, 2006
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) was the most widely used, and abused, acronym in the U.S. defense community in the 1990s. Subsequently, transformation has superseded it as the preferred term of art. For the better part of 2 decades, American defense professionals have been excited by the prospect of effecting a revolutionary change in the conduct and character of warfare.
Transformation and Strategic Surprise
April 01, 2005
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
The U.S. Armed forces may be attempting to effect the wrong transformation. What the country needs is military power that is not only superior at warfare, but also can win wars and the peace that follows--and those are strategic and political competencies.
Maintaining Effective Deterrence
August 01, 2003
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
Today there is a sense that terrorism has rendered deterrence obsolete and forced the United States to substitute preemption for it. The author provides both a conceptual framework for understanding deterrence or, more accurately, the psychology of deterrence and policy guidance on how the United States can most effectively use it. The author concludes that an adaptable and flexible military with robust landpower is the only tool that can maintain deterrence.
Defining and Achieving Decisive Victory
April 01, 2002
Authored by Dr. Colin S. Gray.
The author explores the concept of victory in the war in terrorism, but he does so by placing it within the larger currents of change that are sweeping the global security environment. He contends that the time-tested idea of decisive victory is still an important one, but must be designed very carefully in this dangerous new world.


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Miller & Hillyer of New York,portrait artist firm.William H Miller 1820 - 1907 & William Hillyer 1815 - 1907. The partners were William H. Miller, William Hillyer, and, after 1859, Stephen Krauss (see entries on each). From 1846-58, the firm was Miller & Hillyer; from 1859-60 they were Miller, Hillyer & Krauss; after 1860 they were Miller & Hillyer once again. After 1862 the partners turned to photography and gave up miniature painting. Sources: G&W; NYBD and CD 1846-64; Am. Inst. Cat. and Trans., 1846; NYHS, Catalogue, 1974 (cat. no. 2357). For more information: Email: Bob Frassinetti. Press here to go back to web blog:Daily Updates on Art, Antiques, Collectibles as well as travel information for Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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Bob Frassinetti
Contact me See "artdealer_ar" profile on Yahoo, I'm online now!:You can chat with me using Yahoo Instant Messenger. Contact me threw ICQ Unified Messaging Center :You can also chat with me using ICQ 78541000..


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Five RFID Myths Exposed
Page 1 of 3
In our previous article, RFID Primer: Where the WLAN Hits the RFID Fan, we described what RFID technology is and what it can and cannot do. In this article, we continue our exploration of RFID technology by extrapolating that knowledge into actual deployments.
We'll look at where the money is, what people expect from the technology, and what it can, at present, deliver. Much hyped, RFID is the subject of several myths.
Myth 1: RFID will replace bar code
In reality, these are two complementary technologies. While RFID can store more data than bar code, bar code is much cheaper. Most consumers are familiar with linear (one dimensional) bar codes. Many industrial applications employ a denser rectangular (two dimensional) bar code which can contain a significant amount of data.
Bar code is so reliable and cost effective that it will continue to provide a better ROI than RFID in many new deployments. Bar code is synergistic with RFID, and serves as a useful backup to RFID. In fact, all Tech Center RFID implementations to date also employ bar code technology.
RFID tag inlays may be affixed directly behind bar code labels, and programmed by new Intermec and Zebra Bar code label printers equipped with the RFID tag write ability.
|Optical technology
|RF technology
|line of sight only
|non line of sight
|read only
|read only or read/write capable
|Can carry data
(2D only)
|Can carry data
(depending on tag vendor)
|Typically attended read
(can be unattended)
|Typically unattended read
(attended read for handheld)
|Typically not reusable
The real savings from RFID comes not from simply deploying the technology, but from improving the entire business process. It's therefore no accident that many early implementers of RFID, like Tech Center, have experience implementing CRM and ERP, which are other technologies whose true value can only be realized after significant changes in business processes.
Compared to bar code, RFID enables greater automation of the data collection process. With RFID, non line of sight (NLOS) interrogation is possible. With circular polarized antennas, the beam does not need to be oriented manually, as it may have to be with a linear bar code. It enables the reading of multiple tags at the same time and even allows the reading of selective tags, as determined by identification data residing on the tag.
RFID (and bar codes) allow data to be securely transmitted from one company to another. Many companies use independent suppliers. Data from those suppliers can be carried on tags and uploaded automatically to the receiving company's ERP system the moment a component is delivered.
Most companies are accustomed to knowing what's in their warehouse, but RFID promises to enable them to drill deeper, tracking each pallet, lot, or even each unit.
In turn, an RFID tag will allow companies to track each pallet, lot, and unit long after it has left the factory or warehouse. Manufacturers will be able to track product genealogy, understanding better the creation of successes and defects. Product recalls could be far more focused, saving massive amounts of money, especially in the health care and automotive industries.
Companies will therefore have better data about post-production product performance. Taking the automotive industry as an example, a car would consist of individually tagged components. The car body, engine, each tire, and each air bag would have a separate tag. Data could be collected at repair shops or accident sites.
Even within the factory, tags could enable foolproof manufacturing. An auto body tag could tell a factory person or robot, "please install a red steering wheel on me." If a mistake is made, the unit can be tracked and fixed later without stopping the assembly line, or it can be fixed immediately.


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This morning, as we open again the Word of God, we find ourselves in Matthew 14-15. I invite you to open the Word of God with me to this passage. One of the supreme statements of God's will is expressed in Exodus 20:7. The very familiar statement there is this, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain."
We all know that command, and have heard it many times if we've been raised in a Christian environment. We've heard it said so often that we are not to take the Lord's name in vain, but we may not fully understand what that means. The concept of 'name' has to do with person, character, nature, essence, who someone is. Therefore, we are not to take God, in the fullness of who He is, and treat Him in a vain way, or an empty, irreverent, impious, insincere, phony, fraudulent manner.
Not taking the Lord's name in vain, then, is not limited to cursing or something like that, but it means to treat God with irreverence, superficiality, insincerity, or phoniness, or to bring to God empty worship, hypocritical worship or honor. Someone has said frankly that God's name is taken in vain more often in the church than outside of it, where people come and offer empty worship with their needless repetition, empty praise-words, singing without thought of God, praying with indifference, hearing the Word and never applying it - all of this is empty worship, phony, hypocritical. Such worship is damnable, condemned in the Word of God.
It is not only in our day that this is condemned, but in days past as well. In fact, if we go back in the history of Israel to the prophet Isaiah, and look at Isaiah 1:13, we read this. "Bring no more futile sacrifices; incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies -- I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting. Your New Moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; they are a trouble to Me, I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands,I will hide My eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood."
In other words, all of those things which God had ordained - the feasts, festivals, occasions, ceremonies, sacrifices - He said, "I don't want any more of those things because your hearts aren't right." Verse 16 says, "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. 'Come now, and let us reason together,' says the LORD, 'Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.'"
In other words, God wants to cleanse your hearts, and to wash you on the inside; He will not otherwise tolerate your empty, vain worship. At the end of Isaiah, you basically see the same thing. In fact, this entire prophecy is bracketed by a call for true worship. God says in the last chapter that He has made everything, but He still looks for one thing. In all that He has made, there is one thing He still wants: "I look for one who is poor and of a humble spirit who trembles at My words." Then He indicts them for their false religion. "He who kills a bull is as if he slays a man; he who sacrifices a lamb, as if he breaks a dog's neck; he who offers a grain offering, as if he offers swine's blood; he who burns incense, as if he blesses an idol."
In other words, "It's all meaningless because your hearts are so perverted." In verse 3, it says, "Their soul delights in their abominations." In verse 5, he says, "Hear the word of the LORD, you who tremble at His word." God wants genuine worshipers. The prophet Amos, in chapter 5, verses 21-27, that whole section says, "I don't want any more feasts, festivals, sacrifices, and I want you to stop your singing until you get your hearts right." Malachi says the very same thing, "Don't offer any more polluted offerings, lame and blind and maimed animals, don't desecrate your marriage relationships and deal treacherously with the wives of your youth and then come into My temple and purport to worship Me. Get out until your life is right." Proverbs 21:27 sums it up by saying, "The sacrifices of the wicked are an abomination."
In other words, empty, hypocritical worship is intolerable to God. Isaiah said it, we say it today, and Jesus, our Lord, said it as well in this text. Verse 9 sums it up, "In vain," or with emptiness, "Do they worship, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." In this passage, Jesus is basically preaching the same message that Isaiah preached about empty, hypocritical, insincere, disingenuous worship. Let's set the scene.
After our Lord had fed the 5,000+, He had reached the peak of popularity. They wanted to force Him to be a king, and to haul Him down to Jerusalem, put Him on the throne, and have Him destroy the Romans and Herodians. They wanted Him to give them liberty and healing and food, and do all the things they had seen Him do with His miracle power. They really had come to a fever pitch in terms of Jesus fitting their definition of an economic, political kingdom. But Jesus rejected their shallow, self-centered, indulgent ambition. He said, "No," to their political, economic, self-indulgent definition of a kingdom. He sent the crowd away, and went back to being with His disciples. That was the peak, and from here on, it's downhill.
He rejected the shallow, sham kind of interest. It was superficial, political, self-centered, self-indulgent; they wanted food, they wanted healing, they wanted freedom from Rome and the Herodians, but they didn't want their hearts changed, or Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, so He rejected the shallowness of their interest. From here on out, things begin to descend; He loses popularity, hostility begins to rise, we are one year away from His crucifixion, and the majority of that year is spent in seclusion with the Twelve. He is readying and equipping them for the tremendous ministry they're going to have when He leaves.
So we see a turning point occurring in this part of the Scripture. In Matthew 16:21, there is a rather definite statement that from that time forth, He began to show His disciples. There, we see Him moving into a withdrawn ministry; He retires to be with them and to invest that last year with them. But prior to that, there are a couple of times when He is with the multitudes. This is one of those times that we'll look at in our text today.
From here on out, He's going to spend more and more time with the Twelve as the hostility, anger, bitterness, and rejection arises. Again, as we look at our text, we see an instant change that helps us note this as a turning point. The crowd has given to Jesus the pinnacle of popularity, and it is the very next day that He is confronted, here in this text, with the scribes and Pharisees who pour their venom on Him, and reveal the fact that what they really want to do is publicly discredit Him and get rid of Him. So the turning point comes immediately, and we are faced with the hostility of these religious leaders of Israel.
These are stony ground again, as Jesus defined all men in their responses to the Gospel in the parable of the soils; this is the stony ground, the hard, resistant soil of those who are not interested. Among the Jews, there were always the true and the false; there were always those who truly sought God, and the real remnant with pure hearts who did respond to God's Word and responded, in this period, to God's Messiah. But this group did not; they are the hardhearted religious phonies, those who manned the legalistic system as it existed, and they want Jesus Christ out of the way.
The Lord confronts them in this passage, and confronts them with the emptiness of their worship. It's no different than the message that Isaiah, Amos, and Malachi gave, or than a message that I might give today to a church where we know there are people who hypocritically worship God. It's the same basic message: that when you come to worship God, it must be with a pure heart, and you must worship Him from the inside, not only externally.
Let's look at the text, beginning in Matthew 14:34. "When they had crossed over, they came to the land of Gennesaret. And when the men of that place recognized Him, they sent out into all that surrounding region, brought to Him all who were sick, and begged Him that they might only touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched it were made perfectly well. Then the scribes and Pharisees who were from Jerusalem came to Jesus, saying, 'Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.' He answered and said to them, 'Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God commanded, saying, "Honor your father and your mother"; and, "He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death." But you say, "Whoever says to his father or mother, 'Whatever profit you might have received from me is a gift to God' -- then he need not honor his father or mother." Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: "These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men."'"
That is a very important passage; it crystallizes the religious battle between Jesus and the religion of His day, which was the dominant religion. As we look at this text, I want us to see some glimpses of our Lord here. We want to see Him as the main character.
First of all, in verses 34-36, we see Him as the compassionate healer. Then in the first 9 verses of the next chapter, He is the condemning judge; then, next week, in verses 10-20, we see Him as the correcting teacher. In each case, He is setting right something that is wrong. Their diseases He made into wholeness; their hypocrisy, He unmasked and postulated true religion; their misunderstanding of truth, in verses 10-20, He corrected for proper doctrine. He comes as one who heals, who condemns hypocrisy, as one who corrects false teaching.
Let's look first of all at Him as the compassionate healer in verses 34-36, and this will give us the context out of which the incident occurs in chapter 15. "When they had crossed over," that is, the disciples and our Lord had gone over the Sea of Galilee. Remember that they had spent the day before feeding the multitude and healing and preaching the Kingdom, and at night, Jesus had come, walking on the water. They had finally arrived at the shore, and sometime after that, they had come into the land of Gennesaret. So it may be the next day, later in the day.
We remember when they came to the other shore early in the morning, Jesus taught that great and profound discourse on the bread of life. The same crowd that had been on the eastern shore had come across; they had a free dinner and they were back for a free breakfast. But instead of Jesus feeding them physically, He fed them spiritually, speaking about the bread of life. That may have occupied the morning, and it may have been later in the day that they retreated to the land of Gennesaret.
Gennesaret is not a town, or a village, or a city; it is an area. Gennesaret is a plain about 3.5 miles long and maybe up to 2 miles wide at its widest point. It borders the northwestern coast of the Sea of Galilee. It is in proximity to Bethsaida and Capernaum, and it is very likely that Jesus went there with His disciples to find some of that privacy and quiet that He had sought the day before in the mountain on the other shore, and He had been so interrupted by the multitude. So again, they go into the land of Gennesaret.
By the way, that particular land, according to Josephus, was a lush land with unrivaled beauty, marvelous crops, and a variety of products. It had no less than four springs pouring forth almost full rivers of water to water it. It had magnificent wheat fields; all kinds of vegetation grew along the edge of the lake which was inhabited by many kinds of birds. It was a beautiful area. Because of its rich soil, it could produce three crops a year. There was no city in that area, so it was all just plain farmland. They went there for a time of rest.
Luke calls the lake the lake of Gennesaret, so it was a well-known area, even giving the lake its name in some people's minds. Verse 35. Jesus, again, no doubt, endeavoring to spend time with His disciples, is interrupted. "When the men of that place recognized Him, they sent out into all that surrounding region, and brought to Him all who were sick." So they went around and collected all the diseased people, "And begged Him that they might only touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched it were made perfectly well."
They went into the whole countryside and collected all those who were still ill. We don't know how many there were in that group, but we do know that in past ministry there, He had healed multitudes and multitudes and multitudes, so there were a lot less than there originally were. But whoever they were, they were diseased, and whatever their disease was, they were all collected, believing in the miraculous power of Jesus which had been demonstrated in their area for so long now. They brought them all together, and were so confident of His power that they said, "We'll just touch you."
They may have remembered the woman in chapter 9, who grabbed His robe and was healed. All they felt they needed to do was to touch Him, and I think there is a sense of beautiful propriety here, a sensitivity here; they are saying, "We need so desperately what you have to give, but we don't want to be an extra burden for you. You don't have to get around to all of us; we'll just touch You, and that way we'll be as little a problem to You as we can be." So there is a sense of propriety and sensitivity in their approach, and a great, great measure of faith.
The end of verse 36 says, "As many as touched it were made perfectly well." There are no progressive healings, or claims that, "Jesus healed me, and I've been getting better ever since." They were made totally well in the instant that they touched Him. Here, again, we are wont to remark that the compassion of God is demonstrated; He is the compassionate healer. It is so that God may be revealed as a compassionate God, a God of loving kindness and tenderness toward people.
While they were somewhat sensitive and while we see the compassion of God, there is a note of pathos in this. It strikes me that this again is a classic example of the fact that people inevitably came to Jesus to get what they wanted. Then, having gotten what they wanted, they left. That is the pathos of this whole thing. It always seems to be so with Jesus. Once people have received what they wanted, they're gone.
Even today in our contemporary kind of Christianity, Jesus is seen as a genie who responds to our wishes, and having received our wishes, we abandon any meaningful relationship. It's as if Jesus is offered as one who is a panacea and little else. We, today, are as guilty of ingratitude toward God and Jesus Christ, which, by the way, may be the ugliest of all sins, as these were in that day. So in spite of their ingratitude and self-centeredness, and in spite of the fact that their commitment to Him was one of great faith and great need and not one of great adoration, He healed them. That is the compassion of God.
From the compassionate healer, we come to the condemning judge. Let's look at verses 1-9. May I say that you really need to understand this passage because it is a crucial passage in the flow of the gospel record and the flow of human history. We see the condemning judge; as compassionate as He is on one hand, so condemning is He on the other hand. God, as God, is compassionate, but is also a God of great judgment and justice.
We'll see the unfolding of these 9 verses in three segments. Number one is the confrontation in verse 1. Then, and the 'then' is indefinite; we don't know if it's the very same day that the healing in Gennesaret began or if it's one of the days, or a few days afterward. We really don't know, so it's a rather indefinite 'then.' We know this was around the time of the Passover, according to John 6, which means this is the third Passover in the ministry of our Lord, and the fourth one was the one in which He was crucified, so there is a year of His life left.
"At that time came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees who were of Jerusalem." Here again we are introduced to the scribes and Pharisees. If the Passover has already happened, then this delegation is sent post-Passover to Galilee, no doubt at the request of the Galilean Pharisees who were equally upset at Jesus. In fact, back in Matthew 12:14, it says that they wanted to kill Him.
So no doubt at their request, a delegation with clout was sent from Jerusalem. They are representatives of the legalistic, self-righteous, external, hypocritical, phony religious establishment. They are of Satan, not God; they hate Jesus Christ. They lie about what they teach, so they despise the truth that is in Christ; they are in darkness, so they despise the light. They are the enemies of our Lord.
Among the people of Israel, there were some who believed, whose hearts were turned toward God. But these are not among those. These were the bitter, legalistic people who were leading the religious, hypocritical establishment, and they were threatened by the truth of Jesus Christ. For them, religion was external, ceremonial, had nothing to do with the inside, but only with the outside, so when Jesus talked about the inside, He posed an imminent threat to the security of their position.
It says in verse 1 that they were from Jerusalem, which is an important note, because now Jerusalem is in on the act. Not only is Galilee angry at Jesus in terms of its religious establishment, but so is Jerusalem. All of this will converge on His head ultimately in His death. Jerusalem was the seat of the temple, the place of the schools of Judaism, the most imminent minds and scholarship, so this is the high-powered group that come to discredit Jesus publicly. They want to attack Him publicly because they want to make Him look bad in front of everyone. They want to get rid of Him and discredit Him. I might add that since they were more prestigious than the local group, Jesus handled them with more severity.
What Jesus taught was diametrically opposed to what they taught, it was the exact opposite, and they were on a head-on collision course. They believed that worship was ceremonial and external, and Jesus taught that it was in the heart. So there is the religion of external ceremony and the religion of internal spirit on a collision course, and that is what ultimately resulted in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ - the ceremonialists would no accept the religion of the heart. They both cannot exist; one must die, and we find out in this text which one.
Let me also add that this is the same battle that Isaiah, Malachi, and Amos fought, and the same battle we fight today with hypocrisy in the church, and people all over the world who call themselves Christians but who are not, but go through external motions. It is the same battle, and we could call it the continual, religious heavyweight championship of the world. It never stops.
The first blow is thrown in verse 2 by the scribes and Pharisees. "Why do Your disciples transgress the traditions of the elders?" May I tell you, folks, that they thought about that question for a long time. They had a long trip, 60 miles at least, walking. They had thought a long time about that question, and it sums up the battle instantly. "Why do your disciples transgress the traditions of the elders? Why do You teach people to break ceremony?" It's exactly what they're asking, and hitting the nail right on the head, crystallizing the issue. This shows where they were. They were utterly, totally committed to tradition.
Let me talk about tradition so you'll understand what it was; you can't understand what He says unless you understand what the tradition of the elders was. Tradition is that which is handed down from one generation to the next. It is not to be confused with that which comes from God; that is Scripture. Anytime you have a religion that is Scripture plus tradition, you have a problem. That is the case with Roman Catholicism, which we'll see tonight, and the case with Judaism. It is even the case with Protestantism in many, many instances, where tradition has been added to Scripture, and people no longer know what is from God and what is from men.
Let's see where their tradition fits in, and talk about them in general. The Talmud, which is the codification of Jewish law, says that God gave the oral law to Moses, and then told Moses to pass it on to great men of the synagogue, and these men of the synagogue were to do three things with the law of God. First, to be deliberate in judgment. In other words, properly apply God's law. Two, they were to raise up many disciples so that, in the next generation, there would be others to apply the law. Three, and this is the key, to build a fence around the law; wall it in to protect it. Don't let it suffer attack, but wall it in.
They were protectors of the law. So you know how they decided to protect it? Since so many people's hearts were not right, basically, and the obedience was not spontaneous from the heart, the only other way to get people to do things is to make them do it. If they won't do it willingly, then you have to force them to do it. So they started adding laws and laws and laws and laws and laws, and they became the spiritual enforcers of the laws. Down through history, the slats in the fence kept going up, and there were more and more and more and more. The ultimate result was that it totally obscured the law of God. All the people saw was all the fence slats, but they couldn't see the law of God.
All those fence slats that were to protect the law but actually obscured the law are what we call the tradition of the elders, or the wise old sages who put these things down and said, "This is what we want you to do, they are the principles of behavior." Let me approach that general concept in a more specific way. When Israel and Judah went into captivity, and particularly Judah to Babylon in 586 B.C., it was a shock to the land of Israel and the Jewish people. It was as if God had abandoned them. I mean, here they were, the promised people of God, living in the promised land of God, and now all of a sudden they're hauled off into captivity. They were jolted.
The God-fearing Jews among them realized that what had happened had happened because they had departed from Jehovah God, and they were getting what Isaiah said they would get and what Jeremiah said they would get; they were getting the judgment of God because they departed from God. So they decided that the only hope of reconciliation was to turn to God, go back to God. As a result of that, a movement started to put those fences back up and reacquaint the people with the law and all the traditions of the elders, to get them back to the right kind of behavior.
A man by the name of Ezra fathered a whole group of people known as scribes, and the job of a scribe was to collect, collate, interpret, propagate all of these slats in this traditional fence. It kept building up, and every rabbi commented on it, and every student commented on it, and more and more stuff kept piling and piling. This is a key point that they lost the distinction between the law of God and the tradition of men; it got rubbed out, and was a big mishmash. The commentary effectively obscured the basic law of God.
Over the years, this thing became unwieldy and difficult to handle, so in 200 A.D., Rabbi Yehuda pulled the whole pile together and committed it to wiring, which must have been an absolutely monumental job, and it is called the Mishnah, which is from the Hebrew verb 'to repeat.' Then, not only did they have the Mishnah, but beyond that, they needed commentaries on the Mishnah, because the Mishnah, which was trying to explain the law of God, needed to be explained. So they then had the Gemara, and that is a series of commentaries on the Mishnah. So there is a massive accumulated tradition, the Mishnah, and the Gemara, which is the commentary on the tradition, and it's filled with all kinds of things.
Some rabbinical schools got together and decided to put all of this together, and in Jerusalem they put the Gemara and the Mishnah together, and it became known as the Talmud. In Babylonia, they did the same thing, only they made it four times a big by collecting four times as much material, so the Babylonian Talmud is now the best, or the most accepted, among the Jews. By the way, if you were to buy a set, it's at least 20 volumes in Hebrew; a massive amount of material.
Now this wasn't enough either, so they added to this the Midrash, which are the commentaries on various books of the Bible. So there is the Midrash, the Gemara, the Mishnah, and just volumes and volumes of stuff to wade through, which is all supposedly to fulfill the Mosaic injunction to the scribes to put a fence around the law. What it did, in effect, was totally obscure the law of God. It is absolutely chaotic.
The sum of it is this, and here is the key. This is where these guys were, even though they were 200 years before the Mishnah was even codified and written, they still have all the stuff, all the tradition. They're still trying to deal with all this material, and they had come to be so committed to it that the Talmud says, "The words of the scribes are more lovely than the words of the law. It is a greater crime to transgress the words of the school of Rabbi Hillel than the words of Scripture. My son, attend to the words of the scribes more than the words of the law." So you see, they were committed to a lot of traditional stuff, not the Word of God. They had ceremony and tradition as over against truth and righteousness.
This huge mass of material in the Talmud is divided into six main sections. Under those, there are tracts and treatises, and under those, there are paragraphs and chapters so that you can look things up. One of those sections is on cleansings and washings, and under one of those headings is a whole part on hand rinsing, and that becomes the issue here. Look back at verse 2.
"Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?" That is a general statement, but then they give an illustration. "For they don't rinse their hands when they eat bread." They're not talking about cleanliness, or saying, "These guys didn't wash their hands before they eat," and anyone knows you want to be clean before you put food in your mouth; that is not the issue. They aren't accusing them of being uncouth, but of violating religious tradition.
They believed, because it taught in all this material, that you had to go through ceremonial washings of your hands for two reasons. Reason number one was that if you had touched a Gentile that day, you had been defiled, and there was a prescribed ceremony to detoxify your Gentile touch. Secondly, the rabbis taught that there was a demon by the name of Shibtah, and he dwelt on people's hands while they slept. So if they did not go through the ceremonial washings that eliminated him, they would pass him to their food and into their bodies.
This became so important to them that Rabbi Ta'anith taught, "Whosoever has his abode in the land of Israel and eats his common food with rinsed hands may rest assured that he shall obtain eternal life." They believed that you received eternal life by going through the ceremonial rinsing of your hands.
Granted, in the Old Testament there were washings that God instituted in Exodus 19 before the people came before God; He had them wash all their garments. The priests in Leviticus 15-17 had to wash themselves before they could carry out any rites of the priesthood, but those were outward symbols of an inward reality. They had long ago slain the reality and now, they had magnified the symbols and invented their own. Nowhere in any part of Holy Scripture does God ever say to go through this kind of stuff, to rinse your hands in a ceremonial way to get rid of Gentile influence or to drown the demon Shibtah so he won't get in your body.
Edersheim, the great Jewish scholar, writes, "Water jars were kept ready to be used before every meal. The minimum amount of water to be used was a quarter of a log, which is defined as enough to fill one and a half eggshells. The water was first poured on both hands, held with the fingers pointed upward. It must run down the arm as far as the wrist and drop off from the wrist, for the water itself was now unclean having touched the unclean hands. If it ran down the fingers again, it would render them unclean. The process was repeated with the hands held in the downward direction, the fingers pointing down, and finally, each hand was cleansed with being rubbed with the fist of the other, and a strict Jew would do this before every meal and between every course in every meal."
Rabbi Ta'anith said that if you did that, you'd obtain eternal life; so they did it. So the Word of God was utterly submerged in their tradition. In fact, a story is told of the very famous Rabbi Achabah, who was put into prison. His water ration was reduced, and he took what little water he was given to wash his hands before eating rather than to drink it, saying that he would rather die than transgress the tradition of the elders. Another rabbi said, "It is better to go four miles to get water than to incur guilt by neglecting hand rinsing before you eat."
Lest you think it is unique to the Jewish people, I submit to you that it isn't necessarily unique to them, although it is unique to them in this instance. Throughout history, even in Christianity, people have attached all kinds of meaningless ceremonies that have obscured the truth. Spurgeon said one time that if there were no Sunday morning service at 11, he thought many people would not be Christians. You can have all kinds of ceremonies and traditions.
We go, then, from the confrontation to the condemnation in verse 3. Watch how Jesus responds to this. They are defending ceremonial religion, the religion of the external. "But He answered them, 'Why do you also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?'" I want you to notice the word 'also.' That word is an admission of guilt. Jesus is saying, "Yes, we do break your tradition. We don't deny that." Then He dismisses it; He doesn't even bother to deal with it, because it's so meaningless. He didn't have any reason to keep their tradition because it wasn't binding. There was no point in it. "Yes, we do that. So what?" He swept the whole thing away as meaningless and never even interacted with it, discussed the issue, or answered the question about washing and rinsing. He never discussed the disciples' hands, or what they did or didn't do when they ate.
There was no issue there for Him to deal with; it was utterly meaningless and pointless. He simply said to them, "We're not violating any commandment of God, but you are with your tradition, therefore the only thing that matters is not tradition but Scripture. That's all that matters." Only Scripture is binding. They called them the traditions of the elders, but He says that they are their traditions, so He pulled them out from behind the skirts of the elders and showed them to be the responsible parties.
They said, "Why do you break the traditions?" and give Him an illustration, and He says, "Why do you break the commands of God by your traditions," and gives them an illustration too. Verse 4. "For God commanded," and He quotes Exodus 20:12, "Honor your father and mother."
That is a very clear command, and bound up in honor is respect, love, reverence, a sense of dignity, and also financial support; you are supposed to take care of your parents and give them the money they need to live. When they get old and cannot work and have need, you are supposed to meet that need. That was all bound up in that. So the Scripture said that you are to honor your father and mother, to meet their needs, to care for them, to give full respect and honor to them, which means supporting them if they need it.
On the other hand, He quotes Exodus 21:17, which says that if you don't honor but revile, or curse, or remove the dignity of your father or mother, then you should die the death. In other words, you take care of your parents, or there is capital punishment. That is very clear, very simple, they knew it and understood it; there is little argument, because it is right out of the Ten Commandments.
He says, "You know that, but," verse 5, "You don't accept that command; you violate it." Then there is a most interesting and difficult verse, at first. "Whoever says to his father or mother, 'It is a gift,'" or doron, or, as Mark says it, corban, "'By whatever you would be profit from me.'" Let me tell you what that is saying. Anyone who says to his father or mother, "Corban!" or "'Doron!' Whatever it might be by which you might have been helped, surely does not have to honor his father." That is the Greek translation of what is a little obscure in this text.
Your mother and your father have reached old age, and you're responsible to meet their needs. But they had developed a tradition that if you said, "Corban," or, "Doron," and corban is a gift, and doron is an offering, then you were saying, "This is for God, I'm giving it to Him," so that was exempt from any other use and you wouldn't have to give it to your parents. So they were going around teaching people that if you've ever said, "Corban," or "Doron," over your possessions, or had made a vow to God, like in Numbers 30:2, it says you're to keep your vow to God, and if your parents come along with a need, you could say, "So sorry; I've given it to God." It is so pious, so self-righteous, and the Bible doesn't say that.
You say, "The Bible does say to keep a vow," but it also says that if you make a stupid vow, you had better change it. What they had done was to literally say, "Corban," over everything they owned. By the way, the Talmud says that you can say, "Corban," and later on, keep it for yourself. So the whole deal was that they were so selfish that they didn't want to meet the needs of their parents, so to justify that, they developed this tradition of corban or doron, and by saying that over something, they therefore exempted it from having to be given to the people who were in need.
That was a direct violation of the law of God by one of their traditions, and that was a typical situation of where they had replaced a normal, godly love and desire to care for their parents and to manifest a true, changed heart, and replaced it with self-centered, external religion and had justified it by inventing a stupid game that they played to keep things form their needy parents. Jesus said, "You are using your tradition to cause people to disobey God in the honor of their parents."
The Greek text even indicates that they are saying, "If you said, 'Corban,' you cannot give it to your father, so don't feel guilty about it because you don't have a choice." They wouldn't stop at saying that you didn't have to do it, because you'd still have to deal with the guilt, so they said that if you had ever said it, even in a passion, you were not allowed to give it. The point was that you could, later on, use it for yourself, as the Talmud said. I suppose you'd come back and say, "Un-corban." This thing got to be so ridiculous that when someone owed you money and say, "Corban on your bank account," and that person's bank account was devoted to God, and you could make claim on it.
Tradition. We think of tradition as something wonderful, and there are traditions that are warm, and that bring to us memories of past days and help us to keep culturally alive and sensitive, but this kind of tradition is debilitating and godless. The Talmud said that to be against the words of the scribes was to be more punishable than to be against the words of the Scripture, so people believed them, and they were going around teaching this tradition. Jesus said, "You break the commandments of God. True religion is bound up in one basic word - obeying the commandments of God from the heart."
We go through the confrontation to the condemnation to the commentary, and Jesus in verses 7-9 offers a commentary on them right out of Isaiah 29:13. He quotes directly, "You hypocrites." That is not mincing words; hupokrites means 'to cover with a mask.' He was calling them spiritual phonies, frauds, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you." In other words, He's saying, "When Isaiah said this in chapter 29, it was not only true of his own people but he was speaking right to you!" And he is very likely speaking to some of you right now, right here, as well. It was hypocrisy.
An early rabbi said, "There are ten parts of hypocrisy in the world; nine in Jerusalem and one everywhere else." I suppose that today, we could say that there are nine parts of hypocrisy in the world; nine in the church and one everywhere else. If we know anything about Satan, we know that he invariably corrupts the truth with hypocrites. Hypocrites play a part.
Then, He quotes Isaiah in verse 8. "This people draws near to Me with their mouths, and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me." God is not interested in ceremonial, ritualistic, traditional religion. You hear people say today, "Our family goes to such-and-such a religion, and it's a tradition with us." Tradition will damn your soul to Hell if that's all you've got.
Jesus is not interested in tradition, or people who draw near with their mouth and honor with the lip, but whose heart is far from God in empty pretense of worship. That is the indictment that He rendered in Matthew 23, and we'll see that as we get further in this book, but that is just a blistering attack on them, "Whited sepulchers; outside, painted white, and inside, stinking, full of dead men's bones," and all these indictments of hypocrisy, and ceremonial external ritualistic religion that just keeps tradition and goes through ceremonies, and the heart is not toward God, a heart of obedience, love, and true worship.
In verse 9, He quotes again from that same text, this time from the Septuagint, or the Greek version, "In vain," or in pretense, "They worship Me, because they are teaching for doctrine the commandments of men." They are putting human wisdom on the level of divine wisdom. What a terrible thing. Some men worship ritualistically, ceremonially, legally, with regulations, but what God wants is a heart worship, and that's why Ezekiel 36 says that God is going to take away the stony heart and put a heart of flesh in because there has to be a new heart.
Jesus said in Matthew 5:20, "Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you'll never enter My Kingdom," and the kind of righteousness the scribes and Pharisees had was external, superficial, rules and regulations, playing around with the fence. The kind of righteousness that Jesus demanded was that of the heart, and that's why, from there on in that passage, He says, "You say not to kill, but I say not even to be angry. I'm going deeper, to the very heart attitude. You say not to commit adultery, but I say not to even look at a woman and lust after her."
In other words, He takes them from that external kind of behavior which they had ascribed as truth and pushes it into the heart and the attitude. That is the reason Jesus was crucified, because the ceremonialists couldn't tolerate the religion of the heart, because their hearts were black and sinful. They were filled with the darkness and night of sin.
May our worship be true, and what God wants it to be. I guess we could say that in closing, you need to examine your heart, and look deeply within it to examine whether you love Jesus Christ with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Do you long to be with Him, in His presence, like Him, to obey Him from the heart? That is the stuff of true religion. If you're going through the motions, God help you, because tradition and ceremony is a damning thing.
Father, as we have looked at this parable, for it is a parable, even though it is a true story, it is a picture, a story with a lesson, we have wanted to look at our own hearts. Are we those who are bound up in tradition, even though the tradition is connected to the truth, or are we those who worship from the heart? Are we those whose hearts are filled with the light or the darkness, the truth or the error? Are we those who are bound only to ceremony and ritual, or are we bound by love to the living Christ? God, we pray that we might realize that there can be no heart religion, no genuine relationship, no true worship except through Jesus Christ, for only in Him can we come into Your presence to receive from You a new heart. So we pray that Christ might be exalted in our lives.
If there are any in our fellowship this morning who have never come to Christ or opened their heart to Him, who have never received a new heart or new spirit, who have never been born anew, who do not worship from the inside, who have never known what it is to love, obey, or hunger after righteousness, we pray that before this hour is passed, they will enter into that knowledge through faith in Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection for them.
For the rest of us Lord, help us to pursue always true worship without hypocrisy, that we might not only honor You with our mouths and lips, but with our hearts, that You will be pleased with our worship.
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The Heritage of Jeffersonianism
To the young Virginia Republicans of the year 1800, Jeffersonianism seemed to be a comprehensive social philosophy peculiarly adapted to their needs. It offered a practical and humane program of national development in harmony with existing fact and native genius. It had not yet been distorted by the caprice of circumstance into a somewhat nebulous idealism, nor confined within the narrower limits of political equalitarianism and states-rights theory. By later generations jefferson has been interpreted too exclusively in terms of the Declaration of Independence, the glowing idealism of which has proved curiously elastic and has been stretched by later libertarian movements to meet their special and particular ends: by the jacksonian democracy in their struggle for manhood suffrage; by the Abolitionists in their attack upon a slave-sanctioning Constitution; by other idealists in their various crusades. The great name of jefferson, in consequence has come to be commonly associated with the conception of democracy and the idea of social justice. But to his young Virginia followers in the morning of the Republican movement, the perennial suggestiveness of their leader lay in the fact that he embodied for them the many-sided liberalism of French revolutionary thought, its economic and social idealism equally with political. They interpreted him more adequately, for they understood, as later interpreters frequently have not, how deeply the roots of his natural-rights philosophy went down into current economics. Of the different French writers who gave shape and substance to his thinking, the strongest creative influence on the mature jefferson carne from the Physiocratic group, from Quesnay, Condorcet, Mirabesu, Du Pont de Nemours, the brilliant founders of an economy that was primarily social rather than narrowly industrial or financial. Historically the Physiocratic school is as sharply aligned with idealistic agrarianism as the Manchester school is aligned with capitalistic industrialism. The conception that agriculture is the single productive form of labor, that from it alone becomes the produit net or ultimate net labor increment, and that bankers, manufacturers and middlemen belong to the class of sterile workers, profoundly impressed the Virginia mind, bred up in a plantation economy and concerned for the welfare and dignity of agriculture.
Franklin had first given currency to the Physiocratic theory in America a generation earlier, but it was jefferson who spread it widely among the Virginia planters. He did more: he provided the new agrarianism with politics and a sociology. From the wealth of French writers he formulated a complete libertarian philosophy. His receptive mind was saturated with romantic idealism which assumed native, congenial form in precipitation. From Rousseau, Godwin and Paine, as well as from Quesnay and Condorcet, Game the idea of political justice and the conception of a minimized political state, assuming slightly different forms from filtering through different minds. The early doctrine of laissez faire, laissez passer-a phrase given currency by Cournay, the godfather of the Physiocratic school-proved to be curiously fruitful in the field of political speculation, as in economics. From it issued a sanction for natural rights, the theory of progress, the law of justice, and the principle of freedom. The right of coercion was restricted by it to the narrowest limits, and the political state was shorn of all arbitrary power. "Authority," the Physiocratic thinkers concluded, "should only employ the force of the community to compel madmen and depraved men to make their conduct conform to the principles of justice."
So far jefferson went gladly with the Physiocrats, but in their acceptance of a benevolent despotism he discovered a denial of their first principles, and turned to the more congenial democratic group. With the political principles of Godwin and Paine he was in hearty accord. With them he accepted as an historical fact the principle that government is everywhere and always at war with natural freedom, and from this he deduced the characteristic doctrine that the lover of freedom will be jealous of delegated power, and will seek to hold the political state to strict account. From this same principle, following Paine, he deduced the doctrine of the terminable nature of compact, which he set over against the legal doctrine of inviolability. In this matter French liberalism and English legalism were at opposite poles. Replying to Burke s doctrine of irrevocable compact, Paine had written The Rights of Man, which jefferson did much to popularize in America, and with the broad principles of which he was in complete accord. "The earth belongs in usufruct to the living," Paine had argued, and the dead possess no rights over it. Government from the grave is a negation of the inalienable rights of the newborn; hence social justice demands that a time limit should automatically revoke all compacts. Since no generation can rightly deed away the heritage of the unborn, the natural limit of every compact is the lífetime of the generation ratifying it. "No society," jefferson said, "can make a perpetual Constitution, or even a perpetual law."
In this suggestive theory of the terminable nature of compact is to be found the philosophical origin of the later doctrine of states rights. However deeply it might be covered over by constitutional lawyers and historians who defended the right of secession, the doctrine was there implicitly, and the southern cause would have been more effectively served if legal refinements had been subordinated to philosophical justification of this fundamental doctrine. With a frank contempt for all legalists jefferson believed that social wellbeing was not to be bounded by constitutional limitations or statutory enactments; that political action should be governed by reason rather than by historical precedent. He had discovered that the political state does not remain static, but gathers power by the law of physical attraction; with increasing power it becomes increasingly dangerous to natural freedom; hence a long-established and venerable constitution may become, by reason of its hold upon the popular affection, the most useful of agencies to cloak aggressions on the rights of the people. The love of profits is always seeking to overthrow the tale of justice. Human selfishness persistently distorts civic conduct, warping it from ideal ends. But the shortcomings of existing political states cannot abrogate the law of justice or destroy the love of freedom. To safeguard freedom from encroachment by the political state, and to establish the tale of justice, were always the great and difficult ends that jefferson aimed at, and as a follower of the Physiocratic school and a Virginia planter he tuned naturally to a laissez-faine agrarianism in opposition to a centralizing capitalism.
But he was much too shoud a political thinker and too sagacious a party leader to rest his case upon abstract theory. In all his later writings and counsels he kept his mind elose to economic fast, and the jeffersonian movement was a long and effective training school in the economic basis of politics. It habituated the motley rank and file of the electorate to think in economic terms and to regard political parties as the instruments of economic groups. This was in keeping with the soundest eighteenth-century tradition, before romantic dogma had divorced politics and realism; and in so far jefferson agreed with his Federalist opponents, Hamilton and john Adams. A decade of acrimonious debate had made it plain to the common voter that the rea] struggle in America lay between the rival capitalist and agrarian interests, of which the Federalist and Republican parties were the political instruments. the Congressional enactments of the first twelve years had further clarified the issue. The funding plan had visibly increased the number and wealth of the rising capitalist group. The first banks were being erected and the complex machinery of modern credit-the hated "paper system" that had driven out the traditional metallic currency-was being rapidly built up. A small financial group in the northern cities was growing powerful from discounting and money-brokerage. The truth was slowly coming home to the farmers and small men that war is profitable to the few at the cost of the many; that from the egg of war-financing was hatched a brood of middlemen who exploited the postwar hardships and grew rich from the debts that impoverished the producing farmers. This ambitious class, hitherto negligible in America, was provided wíth the means to make a vigorous fight; it invoked the political state as an ally, and under Hamilton's leadership used the administration to serve its financial interests. It looked with open hostility upon every agrarian program, was cynical towards French romantic theories, and was restrained by no scruples. To loose the hands of this capable class from the helm of government, to keep America agricultural, and the Federal state secondary in all but necessary police powers to the several commonwealths, was the avowed and logical purpose of the jeffersonian Republicans. (1)
The leaders of the movement were men who in capacity and training were worthy opponents of the capable Federalists. In surprising number they were from the Old Dominion, gentlemen of the best Virginia stock, who in the last decades of the eighteenth century engrafted upon a generous plantation tradition the Physiocratic doctrines of France. A finer rate of gentlemen America has never produced, and it was fortunate for the jacksonian movement, which produced no notable thinkers and contributed little to political and economic theory, that the preceding generation had given adequate form to the philosophy of agrarianism. That theory took definite shape between 1800 and 1820. In the days of Hamilton s control of the Treasury Department, the agrarian opposition was weakened by the Jack of such a theory; but the necessities of the situation were a prod to the young Republicans, and the philosophy of agrarianism rapidly crystallized. In its final form it was an extraordinarily interesting and native expression of two hundred years' experience of a society founded on agriculture-a reasoned defense of an older America against the ambitious of a younger and more vigorous.
JOHN TAYLOR: An Agrarian Economist
Tne intellectual leader of the young Republicans in the great attack on the economics of Federalism was a thinker too little recognized by later Americana. His just fame has been obscured with the cause for which he labored, and his reputation lies buried with the old agrarian régime. Nevertheless John Taylor of Caroline County, Virginia, "the philosopher and statesman of agrarianism," was the most penetrating critic of Hamiltonian finance and the most original economist of his generation. Unambitious, simple, honest, calm and dignified in bearing, he embodied the heroic virtues of the great age of Virginia. In his Thirty Years' View, Thomas H. Benton describes him thus:
I can hardly figure to myself the ideal of a republican statesman more perfect and complete than he was in reality:-plain and who, a wise counselor, a ready and vigorous debater, acute and comprehensive, ripe in all historical and political knowledge, innately republican-modest, courteous, benevolent, hospitable,-a skilful, practical farmer, giving his time to his farm and his books, when not called by an emergency to the public service-and returning to his books and his farm when the emergency was over. He belonged to that constellation of great men which shone so brightly in Virginia in his day, and the light of which was not limited to Virginia, or our America, but spread through the bounds of the civilized world. (Chapter XVIII.)
Taylor was a member of Congress at the time of the funding operations and contributed two notable pamphlets to the public discussion: the first, issued in 1793, entitled An Examination of the Late Proceedings in Congress Respecting the Official Conduct of the Secretary of the Treasury; the second, issued the following year, entitled An Inquiry into the Principles and Tendencies of Certain Public Measures. Twenty years later, in 1814, he embodied his matured convictions in a stout volume, printed at Fredericksburg, entitled An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States. The work is tediously prolix dressed, according to Benton, "in a quaint Sir Edward Coke style°-even more tediously moralistic; but in spite of very evident stylistic shortcomings, fit deserves, in the opinion of Professor Beard, "to rank among the two or three really historic contributions to political science which have been produced in the United States" (Economic Origins of ]effersonian Democracy, p. 323) . It was the fast of the eighteenth century works, solidly reasoned, keeping a main eye upon economics and refusing to wander off into the bog of constitutionalism, concerned rather with the springs and sources of political action and the objectives of political parties. It summed up adequately the agrarian argument against capitalism, analyzed the current tendencies, and provided a convenient handbook for the Jacksonian movement, from which the latter drew freely in the dispute over the Bank.
Like Jefferson's, the agrarianism of Taylor was founded in the Physiocratic economy. He was convinced that the tiller of the soil was the only true economist, and that if republican America were to retain its republican virtues fit must guard against every system of exploitation, for in exploitation lay the origin of social caste. America had rid itself of the feudal principle of a landed aristocracy, which in the past had provided the machinery of exploitation, by the abolition of the law of primogeniture and entail, only to be confronted by a graver danger, the new aristocracy of liquid wealth. His main purpose, therefore, was an examination of the sources of power of the capitalistic order, and the successive steps by which fit had risen to power. His analysis is acute and reveals a mind concerned with the realities that lie beneath outward appearances. It is the economics of history that concern him most, for as fully as John Adams he was convinced that economics determine the form of the political state. In his analysis of the origins of government, he discovers in every society a master class that becomes the beneficiary of sovereign power: the political state is first erected and thereafter used to safeguard the past acquisitions and to further the present ambitions of a dominant economic group which calls itself an aristorcracy; and such an aristocracy imposes its will upon the exploited mass, crudely by the sword and purse, and subtly by the skillful use of psychology. Once in control of the political state fit intrenches itself behind certain fictions which profess to carry moral sanction. This political jugglery plays many tricks to catch the gullible; arrayed in the garb of patriotism, loyalty, obedience to authority, law and order, divine right, fit carries a weighty appeal. When these moral fictions fail, the fictions of the law step in, and such doctrines as the sacredness of contract translate the stealings of the master class into vested interests which the state is bound to protect. There is a fine irony in Taylor's implied references to Burke's doctrine of a changeless constitution based on a non-revocable compact, and Hamilton's doctrine of the public faith, which, he argues, were clearly designed to sacrifice the common good to the interests of a class:
Law enacted for the benefit of a nation, is repealable; but law enacted for the benefit of individuals, though oppressive to a nation, is a charter, and irrepealable. . . . Posterity, being bound by the contracts of its ancestry, in every case which diminishes its rights, man is daily growing less free by a doctrine which never increases them. A government intrusted with the administration of publick affairs for the good of a nation, has a right to deed away that nation for the good of itself or its partisans, by law charters for monopolies or sinecures; and posterity is bound by these deeds.' But although an existing generation can never reassume the liberty or property held by its ancestors, it may recompense itself by abridging, or abolishing the right of its descendants. (Page 61.)
The two theories to which he devotes chief attention are the natural aristocracy theory of John Adams, and the capitalistic aristocracy theory of Hamilton. The first of these takes its bias from stressing the inequality inherent in the nature of men; individuals are biologically unequal; and from this fact Adams deduces that the thrifty rise to opulence and the thriftless sink into poverty by reason of individual qualities. Society can neither keep a strong man down nor thrust a weak man up. Between the rich and the poor, the capable and incapable, a state of war exists, held in check by the strong hand in feudal and monarchical societies, but necessarily open and bitter in a democracy. Hence the inevitably failure of democracy wherever it is tried, and the necessity of nicely calculated checks in a republic to prevent the equal tyranny of an aristocracy and a mob. The second theory, the Hamiltonian, justifies itself by the saure theory of human nature. It accepts the fact of social inequality as inherent in men, but it sees no reason to pursue Utopian dreams. Recognizing the universal fact of economic control, it erects the state upon exploitation as preferable to anarchy. This capitalistic state it defends before a gullible public by eloquent appeals to the national faith, the security of property, the fear of lawlessness.
Having thus analyzed the two theories Taylor seeks to cut the ground from under both by arguing that social classes cannot be historically explained by the fact of biological inequality amongst individuals, but rather by accidental opportunity, unscrupulousness, and brute force. All aristocracies, whether feudal, natural, or capitalistic, take their origin and uphold their dominion, not from superior excellence or capacity, but from exploitation, that beginning in a small way grows by what it feeds on ti]] it assumes the proportions of a colossus. Exploitation breeds a continually augmenting exploitation that conducts inevitably to caste regimentation. All aristocracies are founded in a social theft. They are not established in the morality of nature, but exist as parasites on the social wealth; they levy upon the producer; and the only preventive is to destroy the foundations on which they rest by taking from them the means of exploitation.
In conjuring up phantom dangers of feudal aristocracies, Taylor pointed out, John Adams was fighting dead issues. No feudal aristocracy could arise in America; land was too plentiful and the quick jealousy of the people would strike it down. The danger to republican institutions was closer at hand; it was the poison of the new capitalism that was spreading its virus through all the veins of the national life. And in order that the American people might know something of the history of this innovating force which they must reckon with, John Taylor proceeded to open to them a page in the economics of capitalism. The aristocracy of credit, founded on "monopoly and incorporation," he pointed out, had arisen first in England with the growing power of the middle class; it had gone forward swiftly in consequence of the Napoleonic wars, and through the agencies of The Bank of England and the Consolidated Debt, it had secured control of the public credit. It had arisen first in America in consequence of the financial disturbance resulting from the Revolutionary War, and had further strengthened its position by the War of 1812. Ambitious men had taken advantage of the national necessities to create an artificial paper system identical with that of England. They had profited immensely from the funding operations and the National Bank; they were setting up their private banks in every city and town, and through the manipulation of credit were taking heavy toll of the national production. A money monopoly was the most dangerous of all monopolies, and the master of all.
Taylor had grown up under the traditional domestic economy. He was habituated to think of production in terms of consumption, and of money as a stable measure of exchange. He could not adjust his mind to the theory of production for profit, of middleman speculation, as socially legitimate; and when that speculation extended to the national currency, and exacted its profits from the medium of exchange, he took alarm. Cold and silver are fairly stable commodities that allow of no sudden increase or diminution, and in consequence a specie currency does not readily lend itself to speculative juggling. But a paper system has no natural limitations. Expanded and contracted at the will of speculators, it subjects the business of the country to the exploitation of money brokers. Vast sums had thus been taken from the people by the fundíng operations. Cold and silver had been driven out of circulation, and with their disappearance a riot of speculation had begun by which only the brokers had profited. Such was the origin of the new money aristocracy that had already taken possession of the state and was using it for the sole end of exploitation. America must make choice between agrarianism and capitalism; the two were incompatible, John Taylor was convinced, and unless the ambitions of the paper-money aristocracy were held in check, the American producer would come under the heel of middle-class exploitation.
So suggestive was the reasoning of Taylor, so interesting for the light it throws on the agrarian mind of the Virginia Republicans, that it will be well to set down his theses in compact form. As summarized admirably by Professor Beard, his argument runs thus:
i. the masses bave always been exploited by ruling classes, royal, ecclesiastical, or feudal, which have been genuine economic castes sustaining their power by psychological devices Such as "loyalty to the throne and altar."
2. Within recent times a new class, capitalistic in character, has sprung up, based on exploitation through inflated public paper, bank stock, and a protective tariff, likewise with its psychological devices, "public faith, national integrity, and sacred credit."
3. In the United States, this class was built up by Hamilton's fiscal system, the bank, and protective tariff, all of which are schemes designed to filch wealth from productive labor, particularly labor upon the land.
4. Thus was created a fundamental conflict between the capitalistic and agrarian interests which was the origin of parties in the United States.
5. Having no political principles, capitalism could fraternize with any party that promised protection, and in fact alter the victory of the Republicans successfully entrenched itself in power under the new cover.
6. the only remedy is to follow the confiscatory examples of other classes and destroy special privilege without compensation. (Economic Origins of Jeffersonían Democracy, P. 351.)
In the great battle of ideas that followed the conflict of interests, the Virginia agrarians armed themselves with trenchant weapons. In intellectual equipment they were a match for the ablest of the Federalists; in social idealism, in generous concern for the res publica, or common public business, in sober and practical humanitarianism, they were far superior. Between John Taylor of Virginia, spokesman of planter agrarianism, and Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, spokesman of Boston Federalism, the contrast could scarcely be greater. It is a contrast in social culture, in humane ideals, in interpretations of the native genius of America; and in the comparison it is not the Virginia Republican who suffers.
1 See Charles A. Beard, The Economic Orígins of Jeffersonian Democracy, Chapter XIII.
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