does this sound familiar?

FOLLOWING THE PRACTICE of overlapping that I've been following with the Louis Boudin text, I'll start where I left of from Walter Brueggemann's lecture Justice From Below because it makes the extremely important next sentence make complete sense. 

Now, what I want to suggest to you is that we should be very suspicious of this liturgy of justice because I believe it is simply a recital of mindless mantras.the way every politician is for justice for the middle class, etc. etc. etc. . .  And it occurred to me it's kind of ironic in the use of such mantras that the People who care most about the flag and the pledge of allegiance to the flag tend to be the People who are the least interested in liberty and justice for all.

We love our mantras better than we love our practices. 

And I suggest that we should be suspicious of this liturgy on two counts.  

First of all, there is no specificity.  They don't spell anything out. So it's just a headline.  

I will break into it here to point out this is a criticism that any rational person should make of large sections of the Constitution, especially the dangerously inspecific, vague language in the Bill of Rights, what the Republican-fascists have used to allow the corporate media into propagandizing us into near fascism and arming those so propagandized with modern, may as well be automatic weapons in extremely dangerous arsenals capable of that minority either killing lots of us even if they are not entirely successful in establishing a white-supremacist, fascist state.  This is, I think a far more potent criticism than many might first suspect it is.  It is extremely dangerous when inspecific and vague language is given such power by those who should not be trusted. 

And the second reason I think we should be suspicious is that there's no human agency. It's just these monied, powered people expressing "God" to guarantee justice. [with sarcasm] "Thank you so much, Jesus for doing it all." There is in the Jerusalem liturgy as as John Golden Gaye said about Psalm 72 this morning, there is some hope that the king will do something about justice for the poor.  And you can see that played out in the text we quoted Christmas from Isaiah 9 and Isaiah 11.  About justice and righteousness and the increase of his government, there will be no end and so on.

But I don't think it amounted to very much and if you look at King Solomon as a model it's perfectly clear that King Solomon didn't have much interest in justice because he taxed his regime into collapse. The tax that feeds my suspicion is in 1st Samuel 8, you might know it.  The NRSV [New Revised Standard Version] translates:

"These will be the ways of the King."

The NIV [New International Version] translates:

"This is what the king will do."  

But neither one of those is what the Hebrew says.  The Hebrew Says:

"This will be the king's Mishpat." This will be the king's notion of justice. "He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and horsemen," that is the draft. "And they will run before his chariots.  He will appoint some as commanders of thousands."  "And some,"  this is income tax, "to plow his fields and reap his harvest. He will take your daughters," I think that's trophy wives, " to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.  He will take the best of your fields and your vineyards and your olive orchards and give them to his entourage.  He will take one tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers.  He will take your slaves and the best of your cattle and your donkeys and put them to work. He will take one tenth of your flocks. And," this is the last verse, "Ye shall be his slaves."

This is the king's mishpat.  Justice read from above tends to be predatory.

That strand of Biblical justice, it seems to me, calls for a hermeneutic of suspicion because it is a confiscatory regime that transfers wealth, does this sound familiar?, from common people to the urban elites who preside over the military economy.

This will be the king's mishpat. 

Of course back then as, increasingly now, the income tax in the United States has so many loopholes and other corruptions in it that the super-rich don't have to pay it while the burden on the lower classes is ruinous.  That was the way of classical era and ancient taxation, it was generally not as severe in its impact of the wealthy, if at all and as ruinous as they could make it for those without money and, so, power.

If this doesn't sound familiar to Americans it could only mean that you are either so invested in the system of "justice" that issues from the Supreme Court and too many lower courts on the basis of, not "God" but of "The Founders" on their "original intent" or, if the criticism of that judicial rigged Ouija board mode of judgement is pinching too much, "the text" or, perhaps the biggest lie of all, "the intent of Congress" when they passed a law. 

I will propose a pseudo-scientific law that will probably be far more apt than many of those that have current currency, when the results of "justice" as decided is injustice delivered, especially injustice for the poor, the widow, the orphan, . . . the stranger among you, that, alleged democracy or republic or not, it is exactly what Brueggemann found in the Old Testament and examined with his hermeneutic of suspicion, a suspicion which by long standing habit and convention under our own royal-judicial system of such unjust "mishpat" is not to be noticed, remarked on, protested or mentioned.  

The robed royals of the Supreme Court have us all snowed with their mysterious, incomprehensible language, their clerical garb, the mystery they generate around themselves and their unwisely bestowed lifetime appointments where they cannot be impeached and they cannot be removed for the most obvious corruption, injustice and even what should be criminal collusion with billionaires, millionaires and others who rig the system, the liberal-democratic, republican replacement for the king's lackeys who are waiting for the spoils of their class and associations and want to cultivate the court to get more.