The Crazy Is Strong In This One

In case you haven't yet had the pleasure of making his acquaintance, meet Rick Joyner.




Now, ol' Rick there is part of an elite cadre of Christian fundamentalist crackpots who make our good friend Pat Robertson look like a measured and thoughtful individual. There are quite a few these days, and they all seem to believe that Obama is the Antichrist. They simply will not let that canard go. According to these folks, the nation is so far gone at this point there remains virtually no hope for us. Things are bad—really bad—in their eyes. My personal theory is that Joyner and his lot believe things are so bad as a result of the fact that the influence they once wielded over a few crucial people in government has been eroded to the point of rendering them essentially irrelevant.

"But John," one might wonder, "if they're irrelevant at this point why pay them any mind at all?" Good question metaphorical person who acts to allow me to justify taking up other people's time. We pay attention to these people for a couple of reasons: 1) They provide all manner of free entertainment; and, 2) These sorts of people are the ones who advocate murder and sedition because, surprising though it may be when you first hear about it, their priorities and God's happen to match perfectly. Admittedly, the second reason is far more important than the first one.

If you watched the video above (and if you haven't I'm confused as to why you would be reading down here) you'll know that Joyner squandered good bandwidth to make the following case: "We're recklessly disregarding our Constitution! It's the foundation of our republic! My suggestion for fixing this untenable situation is to disregard our Constitution and abolish the republic in favor of military dictatorship. It's important that we get the right man in the White House, and clearly the people can't be trusted to do it." I'm guessing Joyner is of the opinion that Rome continued to be a republic in more than name once Julius Caesar decided to hang on to that dictatorship the Senate bestowed upon him by establishing himself as emperor. Because everyone knows any self-respecting republic has an emperor. It's simply good manners.

Fortunately, there are few people who are sympathetic to Joyner's views these days. Unfortunately, the people who remain sympathetic tend to be easily motivated to act, and a good many of them are well-armed.* I don't fear for our republic. Obama, for all his faults, is a pretty middle-of-the-road politician by American standards. By the standards of the rest of the Western world, he's pretty damn conservative. Assuming our current president manages to royally screw the pooch for the remainder of his time in office, we'll still be fine. We've survived far worse. It's worth making note of people like Joyner, however.

Exceedingly few conservatives would nod in agreement with what the Rickster says in the video I feature in this post. The same goes for evangelical Christians. Of the people I know who are gun owners, every one would oppose his idea of an armed insurrection against our government despite the fact that most of them aren't terribly fond of Obama. Real patriots believe in the enduring value of our system. They hold that you go about changing our system by making your case and winning the argument. Still, the system is flawed. It's messy. Hell, our government shut down this morning because one party refuses to accept that it won't get its way on a particular bill it doesn't like, and it claims it's doing the will of the American people despite the fact that polls show 72% of Americans do not support what it's doing. Said Grand Old Party is also dangling the possibility (again) of an unprecedented default on the debt as a backup plan to defund Obamacare just in case its current tactics fail. What I'm saying here is that things can get crazy with us, but we've endured. We will continue to endure. Hopefully, we'll grow out of this stage in which a vocal minority (with lots of financial backing from powerful groups) can hold the rest of the nation to ransom sooner rather than later, but that day will come.

People like Rick Joyner are not patriots. They're zealots. They're theocrats. They carry on ad nauseum about loving liberty, but their idea of liberty is everyone else doing what they say. Their influence waxes and wanes, but they do not disappear. Not entirely. Not ever. Thanks to today's technology, it's far more difficult than at any point in our history to consign them to the obscurity they so richly deserve which is the primary reason why it's worth keeping an eye on them, and when they reveal their true selves as Joyner has here we do well to hold them to the ridicule they have earned.

*Studies have shown that fewer and fewer Americans now own more and more guns. Plainly stated, certain people are hoarding weapons, and a whole bunch of those people are doing so out of fear of the government. That being said, I'm not trying to besmirch all gun owners. I know quite a few, some of whom are in my family. I'm impugning gun owners who believe the same sort of thing Joyner believes. That's an entirely different exercise.