Degenerate

There is probably no single policy contributing to the destruction of a society greater than the institution of Legal charity by a nation.
James Madison knew that, “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
Rome could not sustain itself as a viable republic once the free society sustained itself with the free bread of its public religion. Greek and Roman Historians like Polybius and Plutarch saw the covetous practices of legal charity by the State was not a War on Poverty but a war on liberty that created a culture that established a place of sin that weakened the people and a safe place where tyrants thrived.
You will not long have liberty wherever legal charity is allowed to erode the very fabric of a free society.
Like moths dining in the dark they digest a man's coat in the summer so that he freezes when the winter winds do blow.
It has been well known for centuries that any social safety net instituted through the exercising authority of government. The character and virtue of the masses will diminish wherever fervent charity is neglected. New Deals are the old deal of Cain and Nimrod, Sumer and Egypt. People have criticized "the poor laws" because they divided the family and today the welfare state is the driving force that has removed fathers from the family which has always been the foundation of all free societies.
If the institution of the legal charity of the welfare state destroyed the black community which was targeted by LBJ and activists like Cloward and Piven, then that is the source of the degeneration of liberty today.

Degenerate

According to the theories of societal degeneration, we will find a host of individual and social pathologies forming in a finite network of diseases, disorders, and moral habits.

Symptoms

The primary symptoms of degeneration would include a weakening of natural forces and willpower of society. Men and women would display less and less of the common natural male and female virtues distinguishing them within rising successful cultures. There would be more self-destructive behavior, more alcohol abuse, more use of drugs, both legal and illegal, and more self-abuse of their bodies including denial of any proper dietary concerns. This would include as both cause and effect more depression, less sense of a personal purpose, and more physical abuse or neglect of themselves and others, including murder, abortion, and suicides. Both their life and the life of others would seem to become of little value.

Origin

The choice to neglect the natural practices of mutual care for one another which is normally required to maintain and strengthen the health and well being of society will weaken the social bonds within a naturally free society. This process begins with the individual who again chooses to care about themselves, their desires, their rights, their comfort more than the rights and needs of their neighbors or strangers within society or even the members within their own families.

Motivation

Institutions and ideologies may enhance and drive the process of degeneration and destruction but process begins with the choice♪ of the individual.

For a generation to maintain its health, wealth, and vision of the truth, it's life, it must care about more than itself, its personal feelings, in the present. They must care about the life of the next generation.

Deviations

A wide range of social and physical deviations from sound social and natural behaviors would become common and accepted, including crime, violence, alcoholism, prostitution, gambling, and pornography, would be excused as merely a biological defect within the individual, part of an evolutionary process. Personal responsibility and conscious choices and a rejection of virtue would be ignored and the idea of a Divine Design or any sort of Divine Will or a God would be treated as superstition.

Changing the signs

Sophistry is the first tool of the adversary. Samuel Johnson, who authored the first English dictionaries, tells us that “Words are the signs of ideas.”

Religion, which had been the performance of a duty to your fellowman according to Natural Law would also degenerate into a mere superstition with ritual songs and chants, magic phrases and saying, irrational doctrines conjured up through senseless rituals and ceremonies perpetrated by intellectuals and a religious elite upon emotional and self-deceived people requiring philosophical justification for their personal depravity. The original purpose of Religion which had once provided actual care and life-giving provision for the true needy of a moral society would become an opiate of the people. That opiate would always prove to be insufficient and would cycle people mentally into more and more radical faith in the doctrines and images of the superstition, or they would seek stronger drugs or distractions.

The idea that religion had once been the desired performance of a duty to care for the life of others through voluntary sacrifice which in turn had created and maintained the social bonds of a free society would be replaced with a sense of self-righteousness and entitlement at the expense of your fellowman and the searing of the conscience to maintain this cognitive dissonance as moral would lead to more and more vulnerability to other strong delusions.

"Some men weave their sophistry until their own reason is entangled." Samuel Johnson

Blinded

Amongst the people of a seared conscience there will be only their truth. There can be no God of Truth. Contradictory opinions must be banned and condemned until there is a contempt for free speech, Freedom of Religion and any freedom except for them.

Those afflicted with degeneration were thought to represent a return to an earlier evolutionary stage before the invention of God. They worship their image of nature, denying the very cause and effect of the Law of Nature. Soon, good is evil and evil is good, right is wrong, and slavery is freedom.

Preachers and worshippers of Doom

Paul Urlick who made lots of many with his book The Population Bomb is still at spreading his fear that people are the problem. That might be partly true but not for the reason he claims.

The problem is not quantity of people but the quality of people. What social practices or political policies have been known to degenerate people individually and as nations for thousands of years? Why are people today in such uniform denial of this basic truth evident throughout the history of mankind? What are the basic changes easily pursued and embraced individually and as communities that would reverse the elements that creep into what had been historically recognized as successful societies and civilizations? What has historically ushered in that internal degeneration and self destruction people could not see at the time but has been observed before those nations and cultures went through their own decline and fall?

Machiavellianism

What feeds the Machiavellian nature in men but positions of power and many weak and vulnerable people?

Machiavellianism is a personality trait describing a manipulative individual who deceives and tricks others to achieve his or her selfish goals. The trait may be scaled as related to cold selfishness and pure instrumentality where those high on the trait were assumed to pursue their motives in duplicitous ways. Psychologists try to assert that there is a genetic predisposition towards callous, selfish, and manipulative personality traits but this is not an ancient gene that haunts man but more likely an influence of a genetic memory passed down for a few generations requiring reinstitution of a the selfish cycle common amongst those with a seared conscience. We know that an early parental influences and home life or a lack of it is probably a much greater deciding factor.

We know "that the surest way to create a psychopath is to cycle a child through half a dozen foster homes from birth to age 11."

The same is true of Psychopathy common when parasitical predators mingle unchecked in societies where callousness and a lack of empathy and covetous of what is others has become acceptable culturally. Narcissism followed by a descent into Sadism will become common within society with few capable of countering or even recognizing its presence, even the victims of it. In fact, being a victim will become a desired status and even a badge of pride.

Degrade

To degrade is "to lower in dignity or estimation; bring into contempt: ... to lower in character or quality; debase."

"to spoil or destroy the beauty or quality of something: Every day the environment is further degraded by toxic wastes."

If the institution of the legal charity provided through the welfare state is toxic to the social virtues and fabric of society.

A formal definition of degrade in American English:

"1. to lower in rank or status, as in punishing; demote."

"2. to lower or corrupt in quality, moral character, or value; debase."

To go from the state of a free citizen with certain unalienable rights not subject to the administration of government to a citizen as otherwise defined with civil rights subject to the administration of government is a lowering in rank or status.

To do this while engaging in covetous practices or biting one another as a person is to lower and/or corrupt in quality, moral character, or value; debase.

To degenerate means:

"1. to pass from a higher to a lower type or condition...

"2. to sink into a low intellectual or moral state."

Legal charity destroyed the black community which was targeted by LBJ and other activists like Cloward and Piven, then that is the source of the degeneration of liberty, first within the black community.

https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1715465410856841628

Dividing

There are many things that may divide the people who seek to gather together for the purposes of Christ.

• "... Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand:" Matthew 12:25

Safe Space

There is a burden to being a Christian. You must be willing to hear the rebuke of others with forgiveness and love. You must be willing to hear and weigh the truth that others offer in love or not.

It is the truth that sets you free. You must be willing to share what you see as true with others and allow others to share with you what they see as true.

A free assembly or congregation is not a "safe space" and certainly not safe from the truth. No one should be dividing themselves because they took offense at what is said to them by others.

You will not be free if you are dividing yourself from others because you choose to take offense or fail to forgive what you imagine as an offense from others. The wise man welcomes rebuke. He is not tossed to and fro by opinions, but he believes in free speech and honest and open discussions. Being willing to see the truth about yourself will allow you to see the whole truth about everything else.

People over the years have divided themselves from Free Assemblies and Congregations because they are looking for some sort of "safe space" where people give the appearance of love free of rebuke or any conflict or contrary opinions.

They are often seeking self righteousness and personal comfort rather than truly seeking the Righteousness of God. The Holy Spirit is our comforter, and our comfort does not come from a pastor, nor a preacher, nor from the people of our congregations.

Can you imagine how long Israel could have survived if every time someone said something that could be taken as an offense, the people of the tens separated from the network through which the people gathered the whole nation?

So you think that every congregation of ten families was nothing but sweetness and nice?

They did not forsake the coming together as a result of some one criticizing someone else. They did not abandon one another or the entire assembly because someone in their group of families was not perfect or questioned their perfection.

They came together for the purposes of God, not for their own comfort nor personal pride. They were Congregations of Rebuke. The same was true of the early Church. This was why they focused on Christ, and they warned against those who brought division and did not fear honest rebuke and opinions of others.

Some are divisive; we are not with them: Division leads to forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. How do you exhort one another and provoke one another to love and good works after you forsake assembling?

None of us are worthy. But we all should have the right to speak our mind in sincerity and hope of knowing the truth one way or another.

Let everyone speak their mind and heart. Hear their heart and receive their rebuke if it comes with love and patience. Let the Holy Spirit be judge. The congregation of God is not a safe space but a place of humility and forgiveness.

• Proverbs 18:10 The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.
• Proverbs 29:25 The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe.

One Spirit

There is one spirit which is the Holy Spirit that we seek to conform to by our acceptance and performance of its will and no other.

Proverbs 16:19 "Better [it is to be] of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud."

A minister should never seek to develop nor encourage the loyalty of the congregation to himself. Our loyalty should be to God alone and His Holy Spirit which may guide us in His righteousness.

"Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?" 1 Corinthians 1:13

1 Corinthians 12:11 "But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will."

Dividing Doctrines

The church by definition is to teach the doctrines of Jesus. If Jesus did not say it then it is not His doctrines. No one has the power or right to put words in the mouth of Christ nor remove them. Every interpretation of what Christ said is a private interpretation.

The personal opinions of men as to what Christ meant are all private interpretations. They may or may not be correct. Why did Jesus Say all the things he said?

We should not be dividing one another over these differences of opinion.

Be not dividing yourselves nor let others divide you.

Mark 3:24 "And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand."