Under the Tower of Babel
Copyright ©1995 by Dean Isaacson : All rights reserved - ISBN 1-887008-00-4
Introduction :: Under The Tower Of Babel
We learn only one thing from history: that history repeats itself. It would be helpful if we learned from our mistakes or from those before us. Nonetheless, it seems that the primary benefit of experience is that it enables us to recognize our error when we are in the middle of repeating it again.
The Tower of Babel is a very important part of man's history. For it was at the Tower that man made his first attempt to set up a one world government. This 'New World Order' defied the command of Creator God to subdue the earth and to fill it. Instead mankind determined to centralize civil government, to settle into one place and make a name for himself. The Biblical account explains that the tower was built of brick instead of stone.[1] I sometimes wonder if their intent was to build the edifice using manmade materials in opposition to natural or 'God given' materials.
An early encyclopedia noted that the tower was erected under the supervision of a semi divine being called Etanna.[2] This is interesting because a short while ago I watched a documentary on the Tower of Babel. They claimed that the bricks for the tower were heated just right to take on the characteristics of quartz crystals. The purpose was to give them the ability to communicate with extraterrestrial beings. If this is true, the tower was essentially a giant crystal radio kit.
Many cultures have had similar beliefs and towers. The great pyramid of Cholula was consecrated for the worship of the Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl. Legend has it that the people originally built this structure to storm heaven. They did not finish it before the gods destroyed it with fire and confounded their language. According to the tale, this happened shortly after the great flood, contemporary to the Tower of Babel. The Incas of South America, the Mayans of Central America and the Egyptians all had similar structures and religious beliefs.[3] It is interesting that a symbol of these towers, drawn as a truncated or perhaps unfinished pyramid capped with an all seeing eye, is illustrated on the reverse of our one dollar Federal Reserve note.
God confused the language of the people at Babel. At the moment of mankind's greatest glory, man had fallen again.[4]
History is the account of the rise and fall of man. When we reject God's law we substitute our own. Man's law is oppressive. We tend to regulate everything and create a law for every peeve. One of the Biblical warnings, when the early nation of Israel wanted a king, was that the king would subject the people to servitude and take the best of their lands.[5]
King's do this. They conquer and take the land. Early accounts of national parks and forests date back to the years of King Solomon of Israel. At that time Hiram, king of Tyre, kept the cedars of Lebanon for royal industry and export. It is recorded that King Artaxerxes of Babylon maintained forests for marketing timber. Alexander the Great kept forests for hunting and timber harvesting. It was not, however, until about a thousand years after Christ that kings and rulers began to understand the usefulness of parks and forests as a tool for managing people and populations. This movement began slowly, but it has built up so much momentum that now it threatens to replace the very foundation of our land.
William, duke of Normandy was hunting in his park at Rouen when the word reached him that Edward the Confessor had died and Harold had assumed the throne of England. A few years earlier, he had allowed Harold to return home only after he promised that he would secure the throne for William. A mighty battle ensued and King Harold II met defeat at the hands of William the Conqueror, just outside Hastings.[6]
Five hundred years of Saxon rule in Britannia ended suddenly. The new king set up brutal taxes and regulations to strip the Saxon land of its wealth. He established Norman bureaucracies and replaced the Saxon priests and judges, fettering all avenues of referendum and appeal.
Toward the end of his reign William instituted the Doomsday Book. This was a survey of all the landed property in England, thoroughly described by county, by village and by owner. The book also listed leaseholds, machinery and farm stock. The purpose of the book was to establish the rights of the Crown and inventory the taxable resources of the country.[7] The effect was to divide the people into classes, the rich from the poor, the bureaucrats (king, barons, knights, viscounts, scribes, friars, monks. . .) from the villein, the servile, the common working man.[8]
Once he had the lands databased, he went on to dislodge the people. Through battles, regulations and confiscation, he drove the landed nobility out of the country. He laid to waste an area known as Hampshire. For thirty miles around, he expelled inhabitants, villages and churches, confiscating the land to establish 'New Forests'[9] for hunting and recreation. He forced the people out of the rural areas and on to the lands of his friends, the lords and the barons. Thus, he altered the economy of the land from one of law and property to a feudal state, which is in modern terms, a fascist[10] state.
It was this tyranny that inspired the legend of Robin Hood. Two hundred years after the Battle of Hastings, Royal Forests were carpeting the countryside. These forests along with all game, wood, water and minerals contained therein were off limits to all villeins,[11] or common folk.[12] The peril was great, for those caught in the woods would be subject to harsh penalties, including torture and death. Ironically though, the density of the forests made them the most suitable hiding places for those in rebellion. Thus came the stories of those who hid out in the forests, robbing only those who would siphon from the working poor.
The oppression of the Crown continued to be evermore severe until the noblemen compelled John Lackland[13] to sign the Magna Carta or suffer severance at the neck. Many God given rights were returned to the people at Runingmede, (Runnymede) that 15th day of June 1215. The Magna Carta became a major milestone in the formation of the Common Law. It held the kings and rulers accountable to God and the people.[14] This idea led to a recognition of Scriptural law and mankind's God given rights. These are the principles upon which our nation was founded.
Incidentally, three of the articles of this document relate to oppressive environmental laws.[15] I have taken the liberty to upgrade the language into modern terminology.
- The king must return all forests and wetlands to the people.[16]
- The king must abolish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Department of Fish and Wildlife, Department of Ecology, etc.[17]
- The king and his bureaucrats must restore all private lands that were confiscated.[18]
After signing the Magna Carta, however, King John backed out of his agreement. He obtained a bull from Pope Innocent III annulling the document and he went back to war. He died the following year in Nottinghamshire, the area known as the 'Sherwood Forests.' Following in his tradition, King John's successors seized rights from the people by ignoring the Charter, or by limiting the claims recognized therein. The document, however, struck a spark that would continue to grow until it would give birth to a new land of freedom.
As time went by, freedom loving people fled from the oppression of the European autocrats to a new land called America. It was their commitment to God given rights and their defiance of tyranny that produced our Declaration of Independence. Then, after a bloody revolution, our forefathers founded the United States upon a constitution chartered after the Magna Carta, and Common Law.
History is about to repeat itself again. A modern feudalism is being pursued for the centralized control of property, resource and enterprise. It has come upon us so subtly. We began with national parks and forests and have evolved toward national land use controls and regional governments. We, however, never noticed it until it hit us squarely with wetland ordinances, growth mitigations, and environmental regulations. Through various tactics and regulations, we are being ushered out of the country and into the cities. Now the international autocrats are trying to maneuver our nation to surrender more control of land use to their evil agenda. Will we recognize it early enough to overcome them? Will we allow the Royal Forests, to survive in this land of individual liberty?
The purpose of this book is to help you understand the international park movement, what freedoms are at stake and what we must do to get out from under the Tower of Babel.
May God save our nation.
Dean Isaacson
31 January 95
Footnotes:
[1]Genesis 11:3.
[2]The Encyclopedia Britannica, New American Supplement, (1902 ed.) vol. III, p. 179.
[3]Experts claim that the major cities of the Maya were abandoned for no explainable reason and left to rot in the jungles. It may be pure speculation, but I wonder if they had their own problems with environmental regulations and international parks.
[4]Man's failure was three-fold: a) rejecting God's command to fill the earth; b) rejecting God by worshipping supernatural phenomenon rather than the supernatural God; c) rejecting God by glorifying man.
[5]1Samuel 8:10-17.
[6]14 October 1066.
[7]ed. cit., Theodore Plucknett, A Concise History of the Common Law, 5th ed., Little, Brown and Co (1929, 1956) pp. 12 13.
[8]The saying goes, "To the victor go the spoils." Most nations are governed by this axiom. That is why there are usually such widely divided classes of rich and poor. Those in political power have the spoils. The United States, however, is not yet accustomed to this philosophy. We have been a constitutional republic which has until recently recognized the laws of God and our God given rights. We are leaving that law and our freedoms are eroding. Now we, like other nations, are beginning to experience this division of the classes. As history repeats itself, we will witness our property being divided amongst the political victors.
[9]On the 2nd of August 1100, his son, William II died from injuries received while in these forests.
[10]FASCISM: . . .an authoritarian and antidemocratic political philosophy placing the corporate society, as embodied in the party and the state, above the individual, and stressing absolute obedience to a glorified leader. . . The New American Desk Encyclopedia, 3rd ed., Signet Books, pp. 440 41, (1984, 1993).
[11]Villein: "In feudal law, a person attached to a manor, who was substantially in the condition of a slave, who performed the base and servile work upon the manor for the lord, and was, in most respects, a subject of property belonging to him." Black's Law Dictionary, 6th ed., West Publishing (1990).
[12]We are still common folk. We are villeins living under a modern feudal system. Granted, it has the appearance of a 'free market' because it is competitive. You may dispute this because you have a $30,000 or maybe a $400,000 salary. Well, try this experiment. Go to your employer and tell them what hours you really want to work. Better yet, tell the government that you want the title to your car. Tell them that you will not get a license nor a passport to travel. Of course this is absurd because we are under contract. That is my point. Free people do not have their lives under contract to the lords and the barons. Where did our freedom go? Well, we traded it for security. We looked to the government to coddle us from cradle to grave. In turn, they took away our independence and gave us a number. They promised us a future but extracted a fee. They took away our money and gave us paper. We are slaves to the 40 hour work week and even our wives are required to tend to the barons' manufacturing plants and stores. We can no longer retire on our modest savings because the government extracts an overhead by taxing our incomes and property. Now we cannot survive economically without their help. So we are not free. We are villeins.
[13]King John was known as 'Lackland' because he was left without an inheritance and owned nothing until his brother, King Richard I, conferred a large portion of land upon him. op. cit., The Encyclopedia Americana (1904 1906 ed.), vol. VII.
[14]"Know ye, that we, in the presence of God, and for the salvation of our [the king, his judges, police and bureaucrats] soul, and the souls of all our ancestors and heirs, and unto the honour of God and the advancement of Holy Church, and amendment of our Realm. . . . 61. And whereas, for the honour of God and the amendment of our kingdom, and for the better quieting the discord that has arisen between us and our barons, we have granted all these things aforesaid; willing to render them firm and lasting, we do give and grant our subjects the underwritten security. . ."
[15]We don't have time to go into other subjects, but it is worth noting that the Magna Carta also abolished the practice of hearsay evidence (§ 38), and removed international police, or UN troops, from their soil (§ 51).
[16]Magna Carta § 47: "All forests that have been made forests in our time shall forthwith be disforested; and the same shall be done with the water banks that have been fenced in by us in our time."
[17]Magna Carta § 48: "All evil customs concerning forests, warrens [habitats and ecosystems], foresters, and warreners, sheriffs and their officers, water banks and their keepers, shall forthwith be inquired into in each county, by twelve sworn knights of the same county, chosen by creditable persons of the same county; and within forty days after the said inquest be utterly abolished, so as never to be restored: so as we are first acquainted therewith, or our justiciary, if we should not be in England."
[18]Magna Carta § 52: "If any one has been dispossessed or deprived by us, without the lawful judgment of his peers, of his lands, castles, liberties, or right, we will forthwith restore them to him; and if any dispute arise upon this head, let the matter be decided by the five and twenty barons hereafter mentioned, for the preservation of the peace. . ."