I
thought that a bit of introduction and interpretation of what the book
cover photo says to me might be in order. It is like I could see it all
out in front of me, and there were simply hidden puzzle pieces that made
this amazing cover come to life. It tells so much of what I fear for
the future of America and the world at large.The art work in this cover represents a lot of time painting and trying to write a novel in images. As you look inside the crystal ball, you can get a feeling of what the cover says about my most powerful story ever, The Consortium.
One Nation Under Tyranny The painting, 'One nation Under Tyranny' is a painting I did in grief over the murder of our American sister, Terri Schiavo by the evil hands and intent of the United States Government, which is sworn to protect all of its people, and which has no authority to end anyone’s life or liberty who has also not committed a crime deserving of such punishment. Terri Schiavo was a common American woman wholoved her life, wanted a good future and who was sadly stricken with a youthful heart attack that cause her brain damage, but as far as I know in the United States of America, illness is not a crime.
Terri Shiavo was determined to be brain dead even though she could follow her visitors with eye contact, smiled when they came and cried when they left. She was on no life supports at all and was only fed with a feeding tube. She was said to have no feeling, but this woman was very much alive. Her only requirements for life were nursing care and food and water. Though over four million dollars was raised for her rehabilitation, not one penny was ever spent to try to increase her quality of life. In fact, her ex-husband, who had already remarried and has children by his second wife, received every penny of those donated funds, which he never used for Terri, the moment she died.
Terri Schiavo was murdered by the US Government to get her off what they considered to be a waste of funds for one of its own constituents the
members of this corrupt government who were elected to serve, protect and defend.On March 31, 2005, Terri Schiavo died after 14 days of agony, having all her nutrition and hydration denied to her and she died of starvation and thirst after being tortured to death by the system that said her survival simply wasn’t worth the cost.
At
that whole moment in our history, when the government killed our
American sister, the whole notion that Americans were living in a nation
with a government of the people, for the people and by the people died
and every member of the government had the nation's blood on their
hands.This tyrannical body of worthless politicians no longer had a right to govern. The rabble ruling the roost in America didn't care about helping a free people. That was the moment I believe that we ordered God to take his guiding hand off of America and when God granted this nation their request of living in a nation devoid of God’s law and His steady loving and guiding hands over our nation.
I was so upset about losing the battle to save Terri Schiavo’s life and I had the image you can see inside the crystal ball on the Consortium book cover shining so brightly I could see it just hanging out in front of my mind so clearly. So, I simply painted what I saw it all in my mind. The Eagle is completely shaded and sanded in pencil and took me four weeks
to
complete. I wanted to depict what I call a Dictocracy that has the
semblance and the speech of a free nation but which, in reality, is a
nation controlled by those we entrusted to keep us free.The day Ms. Schiavo died, the legitimacy of the the American Republic died forever and without God’s blessing over our nation, we replaced what was enshrined in the constitution with a system that no longer seeks to protect its people’s rights of assembly, free speech, freedom of Religion to allow everyone to worship as they choose, or choose not have a faith is choice of all. That is freedom and it has been assaulted by the government whose sole purpose for existing was to protect it equally stabbed liberty, the nation in the heart and freedom is gone.
The end of freedom to speak and practice our freedom is depicted in the president’s dagger shoved through the left wing of the eagle. You can see the olive branches in the dagger and a broken arrow. That is a representation of the fact that such evil leadership that seeks to enslave our nation has broken the back of the powerful force that the US Presidency had always been as based on freedom. The Current president is totally distrusted and rejected by many because he can no longer rules constitutionally but only through tyranny.
The nation’s inability to trust any longer in the goodness and righteousness of our laws was depicted by the Congress pinning the eagle’s right wing to the constitution that is stained with the blood of the death of the American Republic by passing and enforcing laws they have never read and which they know are unconstitutional.ally, I showed in the image that it was finally the Supreme Court who slaughtered the free beast through ruling such as Roe v Wade and the ruling that outlawed God and prayer in our schools. It is the highest court in the land who has finally dealt the fatal blow to the soaring eagle that WAS America.
The slaughtered eagle depicts what life will be with an all-powerful government when that government can stoop to national murder. All in pencil, it represents
all
that we have all loved and enjoyed coming to an end. God can really use
us if we let our hearts learn to feel how God did when we, America turned
our backs on our protector, by taking our nation out of the hands of a
good and loving and faithful God and telling Him we no longer need him.
God has simply exceeded to our request to remove His control over us by
taking our nation out of the hands of a good and loving and faithful God
and telling Him we no longer want him.Look at the result of losing the righteous judgment of God. In California, on any given day, you can see up to one hundred police officers who have become ominous figures in our social lives. Yet, I have lived in Communist nation of China for almost three years now and I have seen a total of five police officers on the streets. How can we call ourselves free and independent people when, because we have abandoned the faith of our fathers, we can no longer maintain a civil society without a police force that is as militant as our brave fighting men and women who wage war abroad for the nation’s security?
President Barack Hussein Obama said himself that America is no longer a Christian nation. Because of that new paradigm that is devoid of anything resembling the Judeo-Christian ethic, we can kill 45 million babies even if God says we can’t. God said that a man should cleave to his woman and that the Woman should cleave to her man.
We know that it is the will of God, even with all the difficulties relationships have, man was made for a woman, and woman was made for a man; that is the will of our Master, and we said we didn’t care and went about to corrupt the intended will of a Holy God. We have failed to turn back to the will of God, we have turned our backs on His will, and He has turned his face against America, just like He has done to nations who turned against his long history of blessings he had afforded them.
It is only self evident to say that a nation without the guiding hand of God lacks compassion and wise judgment and safety. It turns itself into a heartless system of living without real life, devoid of mercy and selfish. America has become a nation of angry people who no longer seem worthy nor able to bear the title of the “United” States of America. As in China, where I currently am residing and working, if American buses were so full you could not scratch your nose, it would get dangerous and even a fatal situation.
Here, I find these people so patient and helpful to each other, because the Chinese people still love each other and are proud of who they are. I do not think China is becoming free because of the leaders they have either. Yet, because of their patriotism to their posterity and their traditions, the Chinese people have remained as a great people in spite of the evil they have endured.
Americans have lost that sense of pride and patriotic fervor because we have taken our eyes off of the one who made it all succeed. We have come from being proud of our nation, from a nation of heroes and great warriors, men and women of stunning great valor to become a nation that no longer cleaves to the God who gave America the power and the glory. Today, God is just letting America destroy itself until she finally cries out to God again, father forgive us; we know not what we do. Will we do so? That is not yet known.
An America without God-given rights is no America at all, would you not agree? The book cover portrays the end of the nation of greatness and it makes me think of King Saul in the Bible. He had been told not to go to battle and told God he did not care and by the end of the battle, he needed help from his men to fall upon his own sword. He too said no, in the face of his knowledge the will of God said, “I don’t care,” and he was a failure. America, no less, shall face the same result shortly unless the nation seek God’s forgiveness and his grace, and find a new respect for life. Though King Saul had sought to kill a young King David repeated, when he heard of the death of his adversary, David cried out, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen!” Is that what will be said of the United States of America as well?
I have just started teaching an American Culture course at my university here in China. I offered a challenging question to my students. I went did a little overview of Chinese history, which is, by the way, over ten thousand years old. I told them, their people have gone through emperors such as the Ming and the Qing dynasties and successive wars, which left them often in the hands of rulers who had brutally abused them. They had been through Mao, and the Communist revolution and good and bad leaders up to this very day. Yet, the Chinese people have lasted, endured blow after blow, tragedy after tragedy and even massive disasters. They have held together because of an enduring history and culture and dedication to the fact that they are Chinese. Their culture has outlived every single tyrant that has harmed their lives and their progress.
Then,
I asked them, “What holds the American Republic together?” America, as a
nation, has a history of less than three hundred years. We have no
language in our name and we are a people gathered out of every kindred,
tribe and nation. What does an American look like? We look like Europe,
Africa, Asia, anyone. My students looked so deeply at me as I sought to
get them to tell me what keeps a nation like America together in times
of trial and crisis. We are mixed in every way and a salad bowel of
every kind of person, thought, religion, food and ideal imaginable.Finally, what I told them next amazed them, and I could see literal shock on their faces. I looked them and held up a copy of the United States Constitution. I asked them, “Have you ever considered that this great people who conquered the Nazis, the Soviets, conquered space and went to the moon and this great people who has managed to transform itself generation after generation is in reality the most fragile nation on Earth. For, we are not held together by the quantity of our years of history. We do not even have a language named after us. We are a nation held together by this tattered old piece of parchment, which if shredded, would cause the nation we say we love to cease to exist in the form by which she has always been known.The Consortium is a book about a nation that lost its way so badly that when pushed into a corner from which there was no escape, the silent enemies who feed our financial appetites finally cashed in all their chips and let the American house fall like a house of cards. I know it will not make people sit and think, “Oh, that was a fun read.” Instead, and I hope it will cause readers to sit back and wonder about where they are being led to and about the future of the nation that has historically granted its people more safety and freedom than anywhere in the world in any place and in any time.
The presentation on American culture I gave my students gave them great pause. Does it have the same effect on you? It should have, and if it does not, you are not taking your nation’s wellbeing seriously enough. Those who would come and tinker with the supreme law of the land risk to cause this land to no longer resemble the America we have loved and cherished.
Ask yourself, before you vote, who will preserve this beacon of hope to the world for your children and their children, after you are gone? Then, you will certainly choose between those who love the America we have loved and that has loved us and those who seek to fundamentally transform her into a nation of cutthroat Politicians who wish us only control and woe. That is the choice before us now. Will you take it and react to it as seriously as my students did? It’s up to you. - Author Steven Clark Bradley
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