While this book is out of print and has become somewhat dated (1997), this is a very interesting review of a variety of intentional communities all over America. David Janzen, from Plow Creek Fellowship in Tiskilwa Illinois, brings a wealth of experience of living in community to reflect upon the basic principles of meaning and purpose of community living, in addition to sharing reviews of over 30 communities which were current at the time.

Some of the communities reviewed were urban centers for social renewal, where special care was given to the poor, homeless, mentally ill, ex-convicts, and those  recovered from drug addictions.  Others were rural agrarian communes, where families lived together and worked the land, pursuing spiritual and physical health and peace. They were all counter-cultural in some way.
Many of the communities held their money in a common purse, where everyone was expected to contribute, and the benefits of labor were shared with the weak. Some of them had significant resources, like Bethany Fellowship, with a huge 70-acre campus for training in foreign missions, which was supported by Bethany House Publishers. Others were living a meager existence supported by sustenance farming. Simplicity was part of the calling, and so poverty was welcomed as a discipline. Some workers were intentionally poor to avoid paying income taxes which support unjust bloodshed.

Joining some communities were temporary arrangements, while others were practical lifetime commitments. Families would trust their whole livelihood to the community, and raise their children in the context of shared responsibilities. Most of them were very open to individual participation at all levels, welcoming an inter-racial mix, women in leadership, and children with responsibility.

It is apparent that living in community is a serious commitment, involving difficult dynamics of personal relationships. With all of the costs come significant rewards, as lives are spiritually enriched.

Would to God for 1,000 Sheriff Macks all across the country! Here is an example of a man in career law enforcement who actually awakened to his constitutional duty to protect and serve the people from the worst criminal element of all—that of the Federal Government.

Richard Mack became disillusioned with working for numbers, quotas, and department revenue as a police officer; and found his calling to uphold and defend the Constitution, as the Oath of Office requires. He later became the sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, fought the unconstitutional imposition of the Brady Bill all the way to the Supreme Court, and won.

This is precisely the kind of leadership we most need at a time like this. While agents of the Police State often earn for themselves a reputation as jack-booted agents of tyranny, we need to think of the military and local law enforcement as potential allies in the struggle to defend the People against tyranny.

This booklet concisely articulates the separate and distinct sphere of government authority presided over by a county sheriff, and clarifies how the duty of the sheriff is to protect the civil rights those in the county from those that would violate them, including Federal agents or IRS officers acting outside the law, or acting outside of their legal jurisdiction.

It clarifies how the county sheriff is the highest law enforcement authority in his own county, and has the power even to summon what is essentially a local militia under Posse Comitatus. The people should join together to know and defend their rights.

The only problem with this message is the distribution format. At $13, it is a poor value for such a small booklet. It would be much easier to propagate as an e-book download online, or a glossy magazine, which could be sold for $1 apiece and distributed widely. Save your money, but definitely spend the time to read and listen to anything you can get online from Sheriff Richard Mack.

This is a good elementary introduction to traditional American free-market economics, supported by Biblical principles. It is not a systematic plan for an economy based upon Biblical Law, but it lays down some basic principles for those who may be unfamiliar with them. It focuses on the problem with modern Socialistic thinking as propagated by the American government school system, and it points towards a potential solution, but falls short of actually providing a plan for one.

He reviews the Biblical regard for private property, as protected by commands such as “Thou Shalt not Steal.” and “Thou Shalt not Covet”, and clarifies how private property ownership includes the right of control, and the right to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor. There is a good review of how profit is a good and necessary goal (if it is gained by voluntary exchange, and not coercive force), how profit leads to surplus capital, which leads to the increased availability of tools for more efficient production (which do not only replace jobs, but create more), which finally leads to better production and prosperity for all involved.

The worst drags upon prosperity are fraud and coercion, such as the “false weights and measures” implemented by a fiat currency, and the coercion practiced by government taxation and regulation. All too often, government-directed commerce leads to outright theft, like the “eminent domain” practiced by King Ahab when he killed Naboth and seized his vineyard.

It reviews the current malaise of the American economy, and promotes some good and healthy Biblical principles, such as avoiding debt and sloth.

Hamilton's Curse: How Jefferson's Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution--and What It Means for Americans Today by Thomas DiLorenzo

Thomas DiLorenzo has done it again. He illuminates the history of America from the perspective of the economic philosophies that drove leaders, generations of men, and the entire heritage of these United States. Here he returns to the very source of the Constitutional Republic, and shows the conflict between founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and his desire for a decentralized representative republic of free men, and Alexander Hamilton, and his desire for an empire of subjects ruled by an aristocracy of corporate elitists.

In his day, Jefferson won the hearts and minds of his countrymen, prevailing in influence as the third president of the new republic, but over time the philosophy of Hamilton prevailed, leaving us with the conflicted heritage that we have today. It defines the very character of modern America, how we remember Jefferson’s legacy, but we live in Hamilton’s society. It is Hamilton’s Curse that overshadows us all.

The legacy of Alexander Hamilton is the spirit behind Abraham Lincoln, and the foundation laid for Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The new world of American empire and crony capitalism is the old world of royalty and British mercantilism. Everything that led up to the formation of the Federal Reserve System and our current system of  fascist corporatism was carefully laid out from the very beginning by the tireless mechanizations of Alexander Hamilton.

From presidential executive orders, to a silly-putty constitution wrested by unaccountable Federal judges, to a monolithic central bank and government that tramples self-government for the sake of insider corporate profits, it all began with Alexander Hamilton.