The Shining City Is the Open City
A contrast
The channel that posted this video is called 2Corinthians317. The verse is Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Paul wrote it from somewhere on the road, against a priestly class that wanted to keep the veil over the face — the veil that mediated and gatekept and rented out access to the thing that was supposed to be free.
The verse the video opens on is Matthew 5:14. Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. The Sermon on the Mount. Same argument in a different grammar. The light is not licensed. The city is not private. The hill is not behind a paywall.
The speech is Ronald Reagan’s farewell address from the Oval Office, January 11, 1989. The last sentence he gave the country before walking out of public life. He describes the shining city. He says the doors are open. He says the people of every place are walking toward it. He says — and this is the line the apparatus that now invokes his name has burned — we the people.
I am not handing him to them. The Reagan of the farewell address belongs to the relay. The apparatus that called the American pope the Antichrist last week and fled the country to avoid the wealth tax does not get to keep the city on the hill. They abandoned it. They locked the doors. They sold the keys.
2 Corinthians 3:17. Matthew 5:14. The shining city is the open city. The doors are open. The freedom is where the Spirit is.
Heaven should be a republic.
