The Enlightenment project is very comprehensible in terms of
the "Wars of Religion" that followed the Reformation. Whether all
that is said about the Wars of Religion are entirely fair or not
(Rushdoony's tapes on World History have some very helpful things to
say about this) it is still the case that it is not entirely untrue,
and has a great measure of truth, that Princes and Kings expected
their church to rule in their realm, and Protestants and Catholics of
all varying stripes were at one anothers throats for 2 or 3 hundred
years. The Enlightenment Project of placing religion and teleology
in the realm of opinion, and science and methodology in the realm of
fact and knowledge, is comprehensible. Proximate methods are
testable and can be agreed upon, and apparently religion cannot be
either tested or agreed upon. Hence, to pursue efficient causalities
is the pathway of peace. And indeed, this cut the "thymotic" glory
seeking part of man away, and cut the ground from under not only
religion, but rotten monarchies that continually sought glory through
war and conquest. The Straussians are quite right that Democratic
Capitalist regimes are peacable in nature. Turning man into a
consumer rather than a glory seeking creature, causes nations not to
go to war with other nations that are potential markets (our one
great hope with the emerging China--Russia in the meantime is de-
evolving to a glory seeking military empire once again, and is a
great danger--finding alliance with nations like Iran to be more
congenial to their temper than alliances with the West). But the
long term destruction in the West with such religion free, glory free
regimes, is that they are pointless and have no purpose other than
greater production and consumption. This gives ancient tribal and
monarchial and religious peoples in the modern world (especially
apparently in the Islamic world) great advantages in pursuing warfare
with the west. In spite of technical incompetence, they believe in
something, however negative and awful--the West does not--who is
willing to die for his or her I-Pod and Social Security Check?)

Hence, we need an Emperor who is also a Prince of Peace (a
contradiction in the ancient world, but disclosed first through
Solomon). The great gain of the libertarian capitalist state is very
real, but the impersonalism and purposelessness of it is unbearable
over the long run. This is why Ron Paul is really not viable. One
cannot build ones political stakes on simply negating everything and
hoping for cohesion. One is left with the complete nominalism of
libertarianism, and the complete impersonalism of a leaderless
world. We need an Emperor. The Puritan dictum that one cannot have
democracy without a King is a true paradox.

When I meet with the government officials the great question in the back

of my mind is, "Just what IS the point of Boulder--or of Colorado,or of

America, or Western Civilization?" Apart from a personal Emperor

(King of kings) who is behind everything and rules all for His own glory,

and is ENTIRELY personal in his rule of all things, there is not one.

Libertarianism is its own victory in its own way, but it is
unbearably impersonal and pointless. It is only a way station along
the way of the destruction of the ancient world. To be more than a
stopping place is impossible--human nature cannot bear this. And,
Old Testament Law may give us many processes that would be much
more "efficient" if established, but they do not make sense without a
Solomon of some sort to refer them to. And that is who is already here in
Jesus. He has vacated the world of the old god-rulers, but
ultimately to replace them not with nothing, but with Himself.
Somehow, the church is where and how this otherwise invisible reality
is disclosed to the otherwise blind world.

"When we are Christians, to the extent to any degree we are faithful to the gospel, we are bigger than ourselves. And that is why whether they are Arminian, Roman Catholic, or Calvinist, people who are truly serving the Lord are bigger than their own thinking, bigger than their own faith. We transcend ourselves. And that is the glory of the gospel. It enables us to do more than we can do. It is the grace of God working through us. It is not that we teach different gospels; we are trying to teach the same gospel even though at times our emphasis will be a warped one, a limited one, a partial one. All the same, God can use it". ^{R.J. Rushdoony}

Grandfather Bledsoe

Florence, Colorado was the home of two branches of our family. Uncle Gale and Aunt Arnola, along with Corinne and Sheryl lived there and they owned the local Penny's store. When I was still quite young, they left and moved to Fowler, Colorado to own and manage the Penny's store there. But I can still remember walking down the street in Florence as a youngster, feeling a bit conspiratorial and very important, and thinking to myself, "Little do they know (all the nearby pedestrians and merchants) that my aunt and uncle owned the Penny's store here."

The other branch of the family that resided there were the Bledsoe's. Grandmother Bledsoe lived at the family homestead of 205 Marble Street until her death in 1985 at the age of 103. She lived with Uncle Roy, who died at 84 in 1987.

Our Grandfather Bledsoe had died long before in 1947, which was about two years before my birth. He has long seemed to me to be the most interesting, and certainly one of the most complex, of our ancestors.

He was a man who stood on the very edge of the American frontier. He was poor, hardworking, and he was almost entirely self educated. My Father told me that he was the smartest man he ever knew, and he felt he could only stand on his shoulders and perhaps see a little father than he did. My mother was afraid of him. She said that he "talked a lot", (and apparently very loudly) "and had theories about everything." When I visited Mom this afternoon, since this was on my mind, I asked her again about him (it has been a number of years since we have talked about this). With her 97 year old memory, she said several things. She said, "He was very learned and profound, and I didn't understand most of what he talked about. He was tall and he was important." I was curious as to what she meant by being "important" (because he was a very poor man, and never occupied an outwardly significant position). She could not quite explain what she meant, but I took her to mean that his bearing gave one this sense. I asked her what he talked about, and she said, "Philosophers." I asked her which ones, and she said the only one she could remember was Socrates. She said when they saw him, he "gave a lecture on something for about an hour." My father told me that he taught himself mathematics all the way up through calculus (all of the Bledsoe's seem to have been very mathematical and they were all very proud of the mathematics that they could do "in their heads"). The book case in the Bledsoe's house had an entire set of the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica published in 1910-11 (I now have it in its entirety on my book shelves). There were also a number of texts from ICS (International Correspondence School) which were still advertising their home correspondence courses in the back of comic books when I was a kid. In the last year, I have seen some of these texts in the restored library of the old school house in Ward where Aunt Dody taught school in the 1930s that still stands right in front of the old Kelly cabin. I think a lot of these courses would today be graduate level courses (there were texts in Ward on Metallurgy, and Mechanical Engineering). The level of these text books tells you a lot about the abilities of the American working man and frontiersman.

Our father's first name was Marx, and that was not accidental. There can be no doubt that our grandfather had read Karl Marx. Our father was born in 1913, four years before the Russian Revolution. He had certainly read the Communist Manifesto and perhaps he had read at least portions of Das Capital. I doubt he was a systematic Marxist. Like a number of people in those days, I suspect he found a wild, romantic hope for justice in the theories of Marx. But it would have been extremely unusual for an American frontiersman to have a working knowledge of the esoteric German at that time.

But there is a whole other side to our grandfather as well. My father told me several stories about him. I wish I had heard more and knew more.

He said our grandfather was an expert with a team of horses and with a handgun. He won third prize for using a handgun in the 1906 Texas State Fair. My father added when he told me that, "and there were a lot of gun slingers in Texas at that time." He was good, real good with a gun.

He was a dirt farmer in what would now be Fort Worth, Texas. Two lawyers used legal shenanigans to steal his land. Our grandfather had a response that probably tells you a lot about his character. He took his handgun, and paid a visit to the lawyers, and he shot off their knee caps. He apparently had no Hamlet like indecisiveness about him.

After that, it was necessary that he flee. He fled in a covered wagon with our Uncle Roy, who was then ten years old. He left our grandmother behind with the new baby, who was to become our father. He left with a cover story behind him that protected our grandmother. He left the story behind that the two lawyers had tried to rape our grandmother. The story apparently had enough credibility that he was not pursued very vigorously, if at all. It took him nine months to reach Littleton, Colorado, because he had to stop and work. He at some point sent for my Grandmother and our father, who no doubt arrived by train. I do not know how long they were in Littleton, or why they left. But they left there and moved south to Florence, Colorado where they settled for the rest of their lives.

Again, I do not know, but I think it possible that they moved to Florence, because the first oil well west of the Mississippi was drilled there, and Sinclair Oil Company (I believe) planned to open a refinery there, and that would mean work. My father told me that the refinery never opened because the city of Florence "got greedy" and decided to levy a great tax on it. This is a lesson in the folly of high taxation. Sinclair Oil decided they could relocate and they did not need Florence. Florence seemed to have needed them however, but the goose of the golden egg was killed by city counsel, and the town simply stagnated and never amounted to anything.

Our grandfather at some point mastered a certain amount of chemistry, and he worked for a paint company. My father told me that in the little white brick house that was on the property, was a chemistry lab that he had set up there. He worked on lead based paints.

The Ku Klux Klan was immensely powerful in Colorado for a number of years and certainly was in the 1920s. My friend Betsy Hoffman, when she was the president of CU, told me a story (which I heard her repeat at a graduation ceremony several years ago) about George Norlin who was president of CU (after whom Norlin Library is named). The governor was in the pocket of the Klan, and he ordered Norlin to fire all of the Jews at the University. If he did not, all state funding would be cut off. Norlin refused to do so, and for several years in fact, the university received no funding. But Norlin did not fire a single person for religious or ethnic reasons. Today, he is remembered as a hero.

My Grandfather's leftist orientation might be remembered today in the light of the horrors of tens of millions of the dead who were destroyed by Marxism. But a part of the leftist heritage of that era that can be remembered as "righteous" was its hatred of bigotry. He later became a devotee of Roosevelt, and revered him so much that he thought "he should have been made king." My father told me two stories that are priceless and are now a source of very great pride.

Our grandfather hated the Klan and everything that it stood for. He was not a man to be bullied or who could be frightened. His antipathy for the Klan was apparently well known. They attempted intimidation. He was told that the Klan were going to come to his house and burn a Cross in his yard. It was officially suppose to be a secret who the members and leadership were, but in fact, many of them were well known. It was common knowledge that the Grand Wizard was the owner of the hardware store. Our grandfather went down to the store and bought a Colt 45 from him. He asked him what it was for. Grandfather Bledsoe told him that if the Klan ever came to his house to burn a Cross in his yard, they would find out. They never came.

As he grew older, his view of guns apparently changed. My father said he came to hate guns. After the crisis with the Klan was over, he disposed of the gun somehow. He said they never knew where, or how he disposed of it. He thought he maybe dismantled it and threw it in the well, or a mine shaft, but he did not know, and they could never find it or the remains of it.

Some years later, there was a city election in Florence. The Klan were not going to allow any Mexicans or Catholics to vote. Our grandfather went down to City Hall and simply stood next to the ballet box all day long, and then sent my Uncle Roy and my Father all over town in his Ford (I don't know if it was a Model T or Model A) and had them pick up all the Mexicans (we would say Hispanics now, because these were American citizens) and Catholics, and brought them to City Hall to vote. Nobody interfered. I take it from stories like this that his presence was commanding.

Uncle Roy died in the late 1980s and I inherited the house. It was really little more than a shack with a little one room white brick house (where the chemistry lab was located) across the driveway, a garage, and some out buildings in the back. It must have been about a third acre of land. I had to go down on a number of occasions to prepare the property for sale. One day, I had been in the cellar doing some cleaning work, and as I was coming up, an old man who I had never seen before, and never saw again, was walking down Marble Street, and was near the old mulberry tree which was near the street. He saw me, and I suppose knew that Uncle Roy had recently passed away. He came over to me and he said, "This was Bates Bledsoe's house, wasn't it?" He had by that time been dead about forty years. I acknowledged that it had been. He then said, "There are two basements down there in that cellar aren't there." (It was a statement, not a question) Indeed there were. We always knew from childhood that there was a cellar below the first cellar. "Do you know why?" he asked. Why yes, I thought. It had always been explained that the stove down there was used to heat the house in the winter and that that heat was so nice coming up through the floor. "He had a still down there. Bledsoe made bootleg whiskey down there." Of course! It was one of those explanations that was as obvious as the nose on your face. During Prohibition, he had dug that space with a spoon, and heaven only knows how long it had taken him. My father told me he dug it with a spoon. After my Grandmother's and Uncle's deaths when I inherited the property, I found a diary that he kept on an old Indian Chief tablet. He wrote in it everyday with pencil. It was dated and entry after entry was very pedestrian and common. Many of the entries described how he had dug for so many hours with the spoon. I have lost the tablet. It is the one thing that I now value amongst a lot of legal and insurance and medical papers that I still have. But that is the one document I wish I had, and I do not know where it is. But it tells in a prosaic way part of that story.

Our Grandfather was also an "expert with a team of horses". My father used exactly those words. But, he also didn't learn to drive an automobile until after he was forty. He never mastered the automobile and it finally overmatched him. He was a beekeeper, and one day he had been out tending his hives. When he came to drive back, his auto turned over on him. The car caught on fire and he was burned to death in the accident. That was in 1947, He lived long enough to learn that his first grandchild was on the way. He did not live to greet Elaine into the world, but he had heard. My dad said that it was a "miracle he didn't kill himself long before..." with the clumsy way he drove a car. The man who could do "anything with a team of horses" was like my generation are with computers. What you learn after forty is never second nature to you, and the auto was not to him.