TrueTomHarley

I didn’t know that. Good post, Himee.    

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (1940) that children MUST salute WHEN told to do so, with NO excuses, the phrase “freedom of the human mind” was used to defend the minority, Jehovah’s Witnesses. The words were employed in the minority opinion. Today, the phrase “freedom of mind” is used to attack them! along with other ‘cults.’ It is an amazing reversal—from defending the rights of the minority from majority assault, to defending the rights of the majority from minority assault!
How does the minority pull off such a threatening stunt? Through ‘mind control’ and “brainwashing!’ It is an incredible charge and an 180 reversal of history! Freedomofmind.com is the url of the “cultexpert,” the founder of the BITE model, the means through which the nefarious minority manipulates members of the majority—through Behavioral control, Informational control, Thought control, and Emotional control. It is always someone else’s fault with these ‘anti-cultists”—its founder has progressed to calling half the country a victim of political mind-control! He’s not drunk too much of the Kool-Aid himself?
THAT is the takeaway point to be gleaned from the following article. It is not the point I had in mind when I initially wrote it. But it is the point that best endures:
....
Dave McClure
I worked with Dave McClure the circuit overseer—I used to stick to those guys like glue—one fine morning in the 1980’s. “We’re just calling on our neighbors in order to....” he began. The householder glanced at the Michigan plates on his car—it didn’t exactly suggest to a New Yorker that the man was a neighbor. “Neighbor?” he said. But Dave was never ever at a loss for words. “Well, I’ve got to fly the flag!’ was his chipper comeback. 
It was a perfect comeback. Michigan plates that year featured the most colorful backdrop of numerals against a flag that I have ever seen. Brother McClure was newly assigned to our circuit and hadn’t yet switched over his plates—you’re allowed a certain time interval to do so, I believe. I mean, it can’t be a requirement from the moment you cross the state line.
But it was a perfect comeback for another reason. When he was a boy, Dave McClure routinely got beat up by classmates for not flying the flag, or at least not saluting it. He told his experiences at a special assembly in Niagara Falls, New York. As only Brother McClure could do, he made getting beat up almost sound like fun—I mean, this is the fellow who, when in the presence of friends and confronted with something unexpected, would repeatedly and furiously move his hand from breastbone to abdomen and back again. He was just “staking himself,” as he would explain.
In 1940, the Minerville School District v Gobitis U.S. Supreme Court ruling held that Witness children could be compelled to salute the flag. Walter Gobitus was a Jehovah’s Witness whose child did not. Witnesses view declining the flag salute in any nation as a matter of avoiding idolatry. They connect the salute with God’s words to Moses that “you must not make for yourself...a form like anything that is in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. You must not bow down to them...for I, Jehovah your God, am a God who requires exclusive devotion...” 
Walter, then 10, had told the local school authorities: ''I do not salute the flag not because I do not love my country. I love my country, but I love God more, and must obey his commandments.'' Didn’t cut it with the Supreme Court.
The Court decision signaled open hunting season on Jehovah’s Witnesses. Mobs surrounded them in their public preaching work. Many were accosted. Some were tarred and feathered, some were forced to drink castor oil. At least one was lynched. They were rounded up in their ministry and crammed into local jails, sometimes without charge—they were contemptible enough in the eyes of respectable society so as to be denied the rights afforded everyone else. One brother tells of how he would always carry a toothbrush with him in the ministry so as not to be unprepared should he spend the night in the hoosegow.
Note the majority Supreme Court opinion of Justice Felix Frankfurter: “National unity is the basis of national security. To deny the legislature the right to select appropriate means for its attainment presents a totally different order of problem from that of the propriety of subordinating the possible ugliness of littered streets to the free expression opinion through handbills.” Note his contempt for the “possible ugliness of littered streets” from handbills, such as Witnesses were known for.
Justice Harlan Stone was the lone dissenter. He wrote that “the guarantees of civil liberty are but guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom and opportunity to express them .” Note how “guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit” were presumed defenses for those who would think outside of the mainstream; note today how ‘anti-cultists’ have turned that logic on its head so that a ‘cult’ taking ones outside of the mainstream constitutes a violation of “the freedom of the human mind and spirit.”
Shortly thereafter, probably aghast at the violence they had unleashed, the Court had a change of heart. Three members signaled their changed views. Two others retired and were replaced by those thought more attuned to individual liberties. The matter came up for review again, wending its way though lesser courts until it ascended to the top Court. The plaintiffs in the case were named Barnett, Stull, and Lucy McClure. Dave was the young son of Lucy.
The decision reversed. The new majority opinion (released on June 3rd, Flag Day, 1943):
''If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein,'' Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote. 
The new minority opinion , written by the former winner, now the loser, Felix Frankfurter, included the grumbling:
“As has been true in the past, the Court will from time to time reverse its position. But I believe that never before these Jehovah’s Witnesses cases (there were many more besides those concerning flag salute) …..has this Court overruled decisions so as to restrict the powers of democratic government.”
Yes, that’s how it is with governments, democratic or not. They want more power. They don’t want to give it up. A certain amount is necessary, of course, so as to maintain public order and safety. Witnesses cede it to them willingly and render obedience. But when they grab for yet more - the consciences and souls of their citizens, someone has to call them on it. And that someone has often been Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The topic came up 45 years later. The first George Bush thought it a fine idea for teachers to lead their classes in mandatory flag salute. His electioneering opponent, Michael Dukakis, did not. The New York Times reviewed the JW items of decades past and even tracked down some of the original participants. “Mr. Gobitis,” it wrote, “now a 62-year-old piano tuner in Belgium, Wis., has followed the 1988 salute debate closely, and a bit disgustedly. ‘It's hard to comprehend why they're raising this issue again,’ he said. ‘They're ignoring our constitutional development and history.’ It reminded him, he said, of a passage in Chapter 16 of the Book of Revelations. ‘To Jehovah's Witnesses,’ he said, ‘all this political fanfare boils down to is 'the croaking of frogs and expressions inspired by demons.’”
And you know, I just can’t get over the reversed use of that phrase, “guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom.” Then it was used to protect the minority from the majority. Today anti-cultists use it to protect the majority from the minority, lest ones of that minority ‘deceive’ them by ‘manipulation’ and ‘mind control.’ 
As for Dave McClure, my old Circuit Overseer, he would have been serving our circuit somewhere around that time. But if he ever had thoughts about the 1988 brouhaha, he never shared them with me. He passed away in Florida several years ago.

Come come. Are you really a ‘newbie?’ You read very much like an ‘oldbie’ to me.
He doesn’t ‘vote.’ He laughs—like a hyena.

I can deal with someone accusatory. And I can deal with someone stupid. But someone accusatory AND stupid I admit I have a difficult time with. That is largely why I am distancing myself from this particular forum in favor ot the smaller one.

Come come. Are you really a ‘newbie?’ You read very much like an ‘oldbie’ to me.
He doesn’t ‘vote.’ He laughs—like a hyena.

Isn’t ‘Queens’ a borough of New York? I think that you may come to rethink your doubting.

“Am I on Candid Camera?”

Come come. Are you really a ‘newbie?’ You read very much like an ‘oldbie’ to me.
He doesn’t ‘vote.’ He laughs—like a hyena.

Come come. Are you really a ‘newbie?’ You read very much like an ‘oldbie’ to me.
He doesn’t ‘vote.’ He laughs—like a hyena.

I dislike incurring the displeasure of Dooyaateehda Ajigaleidii, and I hope never to do so.

What a bunch of slippery yoyos hanging out here! Making up a ‘hovah’ word Sheesh! It reminds me of how the evangelicals tried to say that early translators simply made just an honest mistake in mistranslating the word ‘kaaru’ so as to make scriptures say what they wanted them to say, and Rabbi Singer called them on it. There is no ‘kaaru’ he said. No such word—or rather there wasn’t until you coined it to cover your dishonest tracks:
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2010/03/so-there-was-this-lutheran-evangelical-and-he-approaches-this-rabbi.html

I got to pass both the bread AND the wine to all those in the audience (my wife). How often does THAT happen?

No dear.... relax.... but thanks for caring. 

The king of the south has taken advantage of the financial crisis to provide himself an excuse to neglect road repairs. Recently I crashed headlong into a huge pothole and spent the rest of the afternoon muttering, driving around on 3 1/2 tires.

I got to pass both the bread AND the wine to all those in the audience (my wife). How often does THAT happen?

The king of the south has taken advantage of the financial crisis to provide himself an excuse to neglect road repairs. Recently I crashed headlong into a huge pothole and spent the rest of the afternoon muttering, driving around on 3 1/2 tires.

The king of the south has taken advantage of the financial crisis to provide himself an excuse to neglect road repairs. Recently I crashed headlong into a huge pothole and spent the rest of the afternoon muttering, driving around on 3 1/2 tires.

Exactly my impression when this first aired weeks ago.

Exactly my impression when this first aired weeks ago.

I saw an item about some squirting wine at car occupants using turkey basters to keep social distance. Or is that only in my mind’s eye that I saw it?

I saw an item about some squirting wine at car occupants using turkey basters to keep social distance. Or is that only in my mind’s eye that I saw it?

I thought today’s WT study timely indeed, as it addressed:
 (1) How should anointed ones view themselves? (2) How should those who partake of the emblems at the Memorial be treated? (3) Should we be worried if the number of partakers increases? 
The really true anointed don't say: “Well, you can go to the elders if you want, but if you REALLY want to know what is going on, here I am. I am one of the anointed, after all. I mean, c’mon! You don’t think there are some unbalanced ones who will claim—and in most cases, truly convince themselves of it—the status exactly for that purpose? It is such a power-play to do it that way. It is so much like the greater world. 
To hear some here carry on about the ‘anointed being muzzled’ you would think it as though the GB was the media that had succeeded in separating Trump from ‘his base.’ On and on they rage about it. Will some lunatics on this forum rage about what they are going to do as the ‘true anointed’ in just a few short years? We’ll see. They are not too far along in the ‘to do’ list, the first item is to merely show up at all. For every 10,000 persons who can point to what they are going to do, there is only one who can point to what he has done—and so far, the GB are that one.
It doesn’t matter if the number has in rising in recent years. It has risen no more than ten thousand over—what? twenty years? In a congregation of 8.5 million, that is statistically nothing. The organization doesn’t even try to figure it out; it can easily be attributed to possible emotional duress and imbalance. Nobody would argue that there’s not plenty of that going around today in the world, and Jehovah’s servants are not unaffected. Or maybe it is real. Doesn’t matter. It is irrelevant to faithful life.
You don’t have to know it, is the point. You don’t have to figure out: ‘Is he (or she) really anointed or not?’ It is a designation of a heavenly assignment. Unless one is tapped for a GB assignment—and how likely is that?—it is irrelevant for the present life in this system. Should they come to feel they need one more member, surely it will be someone with a long-time record of faithful service and not just one ‘right off the boat.’
One brother commented on how there are VIP clubs today in the world and that it is a sign of status to belong to a VIP club. It is exactly what the really true anointed do not do. Such a club excludes everyone else. Anointed don’t do it.
As to any tendency to treat them as celebrities? Look they do not want that. Face it, why do we usually want to meet any well-known person? Because they have made it to the top! GB members don’t view themselves are making it to the top—it is part of their very aualitficatons that they do not think of themselves in that way.
 

I thought today’s WT study timely indeed, as it addressed:
 (1) How should anointed ones view themselves? (2) How should those who partake of the emblems at the Memorial be treated? (3) Should we be worried if the number of partakers increases? 
The really true anointed don't say: “Well, you can go to the elders if you want, but if you REALLY want to know what is going on, here I am. I am one of the anointed, after all. I mean, c’mon! You don’t think there are some unbalanced ones who will claim—and in most cases, truly convince themselves of it—the status exactly for that purpose? It is such a power-play to do it that way. It is so much like the greater world. 
To hear some here carry on about the ‘anointed being muzzled’ you would think it as though the GB was the media that had succeeded in separating Trump from ‘his base.’ On and on they rage about it. Will some lunatics on this forum rage about what they are going to do as the ‘true anointed’ in just a few short years? We’ll see. They are not too far along in the ‘to do’ list, the first item is to merely show up at all. For every 10,000 persons who can point to what they are going to do, there is only one who can point to what he has done—and so far, the GB are that one.
It doesn’t matter if the number has in rising in recent years. It has risen no more than ten thousand over—what? twenty years? In a congregation of 8.5 million, that is statistically nothing. The organization doesn’t even try to figure it out; it can easily be attributed to possible emotional duress and imbalance. Nobody would argue that there’s not plenty of that going around today in the world, and Jehovah’s servants are not unaffected. Or maybe it is real. Doesn’t matter. It is irrelevant to faithful life.
You don’t have to know it, is the point. You don’t have to figure out: ‘Is he (or she) really anointed or not?’ It is a designation of a heavenly assignment. Unless one is tapped for a GB assignment—and how likely is that?—it is irrelevant for the present life in this system. Should they come to feel they need one more member, surely it will be someone with a long-time record of faithful service and not just one ‘right off the boat.’
One brother commented on how there are VIP clubs today in the world and that it is a sign of status to belong to a VIP club. It is exactly what the really true anointed do not do. Such a club excludes everyone else. Anointed don’t do it.
As to any tendency to treat them as celebrities? Look they do not want that. Face it, why do we usually want to meet any well-known person? Because they have made it to the top! GB members don’t view themselves are making it to the top—it is part of their very aualitficatons that they do not think of themselves in that way.
 

Most of these churches that defy government quarantine restrictions do so because they see the government being opportunistic—‘never let a crisis go to waste.’ They are intensely political on the right, celebrate the Bill of Rights, and they fear that government surveillance, monitoring, restrictions will not revert to normal after the crisis has passed. To them, the crisis is the wedge to introduce permanent restriction of freedom. Some see it as a deliberate move to so decimate capitalism that all that will be left is for socialism to take the helm. A fringe of these people even think the ‘crisis’ is manufactured for exactly that purpose—to extend control and restrictive means of government over all persons. And don’t get them going about Bill Gates!
None of this is so absurd to be dismissed out of hand. See how popular Bernie Sanders is, or even Elizabeth Warren. The trouble with conspiracy theories is that once a few of them turn out to be true it becomes so much easier to swallow anything coming down the pipe. I am glad that we really don’t have to worry about it. We never put our trust in human institutions, so if it turns out that there are machinations amongst them, it does not unsettle us to the degree that it unsettles people who do put full trust in human self-rule. Nor do we look to human institutions for ‘staying power.’ If they don’t go down this way, they will go down that way. All we have to do is stay loyal to God, no matter what, and let the chips fall where they may. When push comes to shove, this life is not the ‘real’ life of 1 Timothy 6:19.

Most of these churches that defy government quarantine restrictions do so because they see the government being opportunistic—‘never let a crisis go to waste.’ They are intensely political on the right, celebrate the Bill of Rights, and they fear that government surveillance, monitoring, restrictions will not revert to normal after the crisis has passed. To them, the crisis is the wedge to introduce permanent restriction of freedom. Some see it as a deliberate move to so decimate capitalism that all that will be left is for socialism to take the helm. A fringe of these people even think the ‘crisis’ is manufactured for exactly that purpose—to extend control and restrictive means of government over all persons. And don’t get them going about Bill Gates!
None of this is so absurd to be dismissed out of hand. See how popular Bernie Sanders is, or even Elizabeth Warren. The trouble with conspiracy theories is that once a few of them turn out to be true it becomes so much easier to swallow anything coming down the pipe. I am glad that we really don’t have to worry about it. We never put our trust in human institutions, so if it turns out that there are machinations amongst them, it does not unsettle us to the degree that it unsettles people who do put full trust in human self-rule. Nor do we look to human institutions for ‘staying power.’ If they don’t go down this way, they will go down that way. All we have to do is stay loyal to God, no matter what, and let the chips fall where they may. When push comes to shove, this life is not the ‘real’ life of 1 Timothy 6:19.