Adam Weishaupt

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Adam Weishaupt
Johann Adam Weishaupt

Adam Weishaupt
Full name Johann Adam Weishaupt
Born 6 February 1748 (Ingolstadt, Bavaria)
Died 18 November 1830 (aged 82) (Gotha, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha)
Era 18th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Empiricism
Main interests Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ethics
Influenced by[show]
Influence on[show]
Johann Adam Weishaupt (6 February 1748 in Ingolstadt – 18 November 1830[1][2][3][4] in Gotha) was a German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati, a secret society with origins in Bavaria.

Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Founder of the Illuminati
3 Activities in exile
4 Contemporary Opinion
5 Quotes about Weishaupt
6 References in pop culture
7 Works
7.1 On the Illuminati
7.2 Philosophical works
8 Notes
9 External links
Early life



Adam Weishaupt was born on 6 February 1748 in Ingolstadt[1][5] in the Electorate of Bavarian. Weishaupt's father Johann Georg Weishaupt (1717–1753) died[5] when Adam was five years old. After his father's death he came under the tutelage of his godfather Johann Adam Freiherr von Ickstatt[6] who, like his father, was a professor of law at the University of Ingolstadt.[7] Ickstatt was a proponent of the philosophy of Christian Wolff and of the Enlightenment,[8] and he influenced the young Weishaupt with his rationalism. Weishaupt began his formal education at age seven[1] at a Jesuit school. He later enrolled at the University of Ingolstadt and graduated in 1768[9] at age 20 with a doctorate of law.[10] In 1772[11] he became a professor of law. The following year he married Afra Sausenhofer[12] of Eichstätt.

After Pope Clement XIV’s suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, Weishaupt became a professor of canon law,[13] a position that was held exclusively by the Jesuits until that time. In 1775 Weishaupt was introduced[14] to the empirical philosophy of Johann Georg Heinrich Feder[15] of the University of Göttingen. Both Feder and Weishaupt would later become opponents of Kantian idealism.[16]

Founder of the Illuminati

At a time, however, when there was no end of making game of and abusing secret societies, I planned to make use of this human foible for a real and worthy goal, for the benefit of people. I wished to do what the heads of the ecclesiastical and secular authorities ought to have done by virtue of their offices ...[17]
On 1 May 1776 Weishaupt formed the "Order of Perfectibilists". He adopted the name of "Brother Spartacus" within the order. Though the Order was not egalitarian or democratic, its mission was the abolition of all monarchical governments and state religions in Europe and its colonies.[18]

Weishaupt wrote: "the ends justified the means."[citation needed] The actual character of the society was an elaborate network of spies and counter-spies. Each isolated cell of initiates reported to a superior, whom they did not know, a party structure that was effectively adopted by some later groups.[18]

Weishaupt was initiated into the Masonic Lodge "Theodor zum guten Rath", at Munich in 1777. His project of "illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason, which will dispel the clouds of superstition and of prejudice" was an unwelcome reform.[18] Soon however he had developed gnostic mysteries of his own, with the goal of "perfecting human" nature through re-education to achieve a communal state with nature, freed of government and organized religion. He began working towards incorporating his system of Illuminism with that of Freemasonry.[18]

He wrote: "I did not bring Deism into Bavaria more than into Rome. I found it here, in great vigour, more abounding than in any of the neighboring Protestant States. I am proud to be known to the world as the founder of the Illuminati."[citation needed]

Weishaupt's radical rationalism and vocabulary was not likely to succeed. Writings that were intercepted in 1784 were interpreted as seditious, and the Society was banned by the government of Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, in 1784. Weishaupt lost his position at the University of Ingolstadt and fled Bavaria.[18]

Activities in exile

He received the assistance of Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1745–1804), and lived in Gotha writing a series of works on illuminism, including A Complete History of the Persecutions of the Illuminati in Bavaria (1785), A Picture of Illuminism (1786), An Apology for the Illuminati (1786), and An Improved System of Illuminism (1787). Adam Weishaupt died in Gotha on 18 November 1830.[1][2][3][4] He was survived by his second wife, Anna Maria (née Sausenhofer), and his children Nanette, Charlotte, Ernst, Karl, Eduard, and Alfred.[2] Weishaupt was buried next to his son Wilhelm who preceded him in death in 1802.

Contemporary Opinion

Main article: Illuminati
John Robison, a professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University in Scotland and a member of a Freemason Lodge there, said he had been asked to join the Illuminati. After consideration he concluded that the Illuminati were not for him. In 1798 he published a book called Proofs of a Conspiracy in which he wrote: "An association has been formed for the express purposes of rooting out all the religious establishments and overturning all existing governments ... the leaders would rule the World with uncontrollable power, while all the rest would be employed as tools of the ambition of their unknown superiors." This book was sent to George Washington, who replied:

It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more truly satisfied of this fact than I am. The idea that I meant to convey, was, that I did not believe that the Lodges of Free Masons in this Country had, as Societies, endeavoured to propagate the diabolical tenets of the first, or pernicious principles of the latter (if they are susceptible of separation).[19][20]
Quotes about Weishaupt

Wishaupt [sic] seems to be an enthusiastic Philanthropist. He is among those (as you know the excellent [Richard] Price and [Joseph] Priestley also are) who believe in the indefinite perfectibility of man. He thinks he may in time be rendered so perfect that he will be able to govern himself in every circumstance so as to injure none, to do all the good he can, to leave government no occasion to exercise their powers over him, & of course to render political government useless.
—Thomas Jefferson[21]
Wishaupt [sic] believes that to promote this perfection of the human character was the object of Jesus Christ. That his intention was simply to reinstate natural religion, & by diffusing the light of his morality, to teach us to govern ourselves. His precepts are the love of god & love of our neighbor. And by teaching innocence of conduct, he expected to place men in their natural state of liberty & equality. He says, no one ever laid a surer foundation for liberty than our grand master, Jesus of Nazareth. He believes the Free masons were originally possessed of the true principles & objects of Christianity, & have still preserved some of them by tradition, but much disfigured. The means he proposes to effect this improvement of human nature are "to enlighten men, to correct their morals & inspire them with benevolence. Secure of our success, sais he, we abstain from violent commotions. To have foreseen, the happiness of posterity & to have prepared it by irreproachable means, suffices for our felicity. The tranquility of our consciences is not troubled by the reproach of aiming at the ruin or overthrow of states or thrones." As Wishaupt [sic] lived under the tyranny of a despot & priests, he knew that caution was necessary even in spreading information, & the principles of pure morality. He proposed therefore to lead the Free masons to adopt this object & to make the objects of their institution the diffusion of science & virtue. He proposed to initiate new members into his body by gradations proportioned to his fears of the thunderbolts of tyranny. This has given an air of mystery to his views, was the foundation of his banishment, the subversion of the masonic order, & is the colour for the ravings against him of Robinson, Barruel & Morse, whose real fears are that the craft would be endangered by the spreading of information, reason, & natural morality among men. This subject being new to me, I have imagined that if it be so to you also, you may receive the same satisfaction in seeing, which I have had in forming the analysis of it: & I believe you will think with me that if Wishaupt [sic] had written here, where no secrecy is necessary in our endeavors to render men wise & virtuous, he would not have thought of any secret machinery for that purpose.
—Thomas Jefferson[21]
References in pop culture

Adam Weishaupt is referred to repeatedly in The Illuminatus! Trilogy, written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, as the founder of the Bavarian Illuminati and as an imposter who killed George Washington and took his place as the first president of the United States. Washington's portrait on the U.S. one-dollar bill is said to actually be Weishaupt's.

Another version of Adam Weishaupt appears in the extensive comic book novel Cerebus the Aardvark by Dave Sim, as a combination of Weishaupt and George Washington. He appears primarily in the Cerebus and Church & State I volumes. His motives are republican confederalizing of city-states in Estarcion (a pseudo-Europe) and the accumulation of capital unencumbered by government or church.

Weishaupt is also mentioned among the mish-mash of complicated conspiracies in the PC game Deus Ex. During JC Denton's escape from Versalife labs in Hong Kong, he recovers a virus engineered with the molecular structure in multiples of 17 and 23. Tracer Tong notes "1723... the birthdate of Adam Weishaupt" Weishaupt was in fact born in 1748. However 1723 was the year that Weishaupt's freemasonry lodge, "Theodor zum guten Rath", was founded.

Adam Weishaupt is also mentioned ("Bush got a ouija to talk to Adam Weishaupt") by the New York rapper Cage in El-P's "Accidents Don't Happen", the ninth track on his album Fantastic Damage (2002).

Works

On the Illuminati
(1786) Apologie der Illuminaten.
(1786) Vollständige Geschichte der Verfolgung der Illuminaten in Bayern.
(1786) Schilderung der Illuminaten.
(1787) Einleitung zu meiner Apologie.
(1787) [Einige Originalschriften des Illuminatenordens...]
(1787) [Nachtrage von weitern Originalschriften...] Google Books
(1787) Kurze Rechtfertigung meiner Absichten.
(1787) Nachtrag zur Rechtfertigung meiner Absichten.
(1787) Apologie des Mißvergnügens und des Übels.
(1787) Das Verbesserte System der Illuminaten.
(1788) Der ächte Illuminat, oder die wahren, unverbesserten Rituale der Illuminaten.
(1795) Pythagoras, oder Betrachtungen über die geheime Welt- und Regierungskunst.

Cannon Fodder for the New World Order

In 1926, General Cherep-Spiridovich wrote, “War is only a ‘legalized mass murder.’ Thus Christ pointed out those who arrange all wars and revolutions, and that their chief cause is Satan and his sons’ ‘lust of murder.’ But ‘Christians’ never seem to agree with Christ.”¹ Gandhi concurred when he said, “Everyone but Christians understands that Jesus was nonviolent.” Those who “arrange all wars,” are typically among the very top echelon of secret societies, often Illuminati front groups like Skull and Bones, many of whom serve in elected and unelected government positions. Government officials implement a dark agenda of terrorism and genocide through directives developed by members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) the Bilderberg (BB), and the Trilateral Commission (TC). Some may view these allegations as incredible conspiracy theories, which is exactly the perspective that the media-managing elites encourage in order to conceal their reprehensible operations and their true loyalties.

General Cherep-Spiridovich said that those who arrange wars have a “lust of murder.” They also demonstrate a lust for power and profit, made possible by government-sanctioned warfare, funded by privately owned central banks which print billions of debt-based, interest-laden dollars, debt that is passed off onto the citizens who also fight and die in those wars. The increased glut of cash into the market devalues the currency already in circulation and further jeopardizes the country’s diminishing economy. The malevolent, parasitical bankers achieve their objectives by funding power-hungry, often psychopathic, well-compensated politicians who accommodate the bankers at the expense of the citizens they claim to represent. Representative government ends when the polls close. Christians have been persuaded to accept what Christ long ago disdained and warned against – usury. Citizens are manipulated into participating in war. Essentially, in accepting pro-war propaganda, we abandon Christianity and acquiesce to the mass slaughter of strangers targeted by the warmongers. In effect, we idolatrously “worship the golden calf” of the banker-backed, man-made state when we abandon the peaceful tenets of Christianity. If double-minded individuals, either naively or knowingly, promote war while claiming to abhor abortion, we absolutely must evaluate their motives and loyalties and then withhold our support for warfare. In Christianity, there should be no fence sitting, no serving of two masters.

The Ten Commandments include “You shall have no other gods before me” and “You shall not murder (kill).” Communists and Socialists, who like Lucifer, are rebellious towards God, attempt to replace Him and impose their own laws upon the naïve masses. An authoritative state advocates, with numerous deceitful justifications, mass murder through warfare, actually genocide of entire foreign populations. Like Lucifer, since Lincoln’s War, the war planners always shift the blame for the initiation of warfare onto others via the use of false flag operations. The highly skilled war planners choreograph or aggressively provoke an attack and then call for a retaliatory strike against the people they attribute the attack to. From the shots fired at Fort Sumter, the explosion on the USS Maine, the sinking of the Lusitania, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Tonkin incident, and numerous attacks on various U.S. embassies, there have been managed assaults. One of the major functions of the CIA is to create chaos in other countries – just so the U.S. can justify sending in military troops to restore order. That is how the deceitful war planners get our support; we believe that we are valiantly defending our country.

Christians should be the first to recognize the probability of secret societies or secret combinations and money interests that are so intent on depriving others of their liberty, life and property. Christ’s death, though redemptive, was the result of a currency conspiracy. There were also plots to kill Paul and other disciples. Early day “public relations” provocateurs skillfully influenced the pliable masses in order to execute their covert agenda – remember, the loving admirers who bowed before Christ upon His entry into Jerusalem, were the exact same people who, a few days later, clamored for His death. What changed? The moneychangers, the same greedy people who sold the over-priced sacrificial animals in the temple courtyard, would have lost their future profits if people accepted His rational teachings on usury and the charitable cessation of the exploitation of others. After all, we work for our sakes, not to have others confiscate the product of our labors.

Government education spawns battalions of potential soldiers who are willing to die “for their country.” Eager soldiers have been advantageously and subtly prepared through compelling peer pressure participation in Pentagon-designed video games that have been commercially marketed as entertainment. Dutiful teachers working within the federally controlled educational system regularly memorialize the vilest, most warmongering politicians of the past. This subtle programming is supported by a controlled media which has been licensed and regulated by the federal government (FCC) since the 1920s. The international bankers, who profit most from warfare, have controlled the entertainment and documentary media for decades. Media moguls, often in conjunction with the Pentagon, produce movies that glorify war, promote immorality, immodesty and profanity, all in an effort to subtly shape our opinions, alter our culture and persuade us to abandon traditional Christian values. If Christians forfeit so-called small ideals, they are more likely to relinquish Christ’s prohibition against warfare.

Prior to the U.S. entering World War II, the influential media vilified anti-war activists by characterizing them as unpatriotic, Nazi and anti-Semitic. They were portrayed as un-American traitors.² These psychologically devised tactics were created by Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and are still employed today to discourage dissent and immobilize inquiry. Anti-war activists and dissidents are allowed airtime with super-skilled radio and television hosts whose sole purpose is to repudiate the ideas of their guests, ridicule the truth, and castigate candidates who question U.S. foreign policy. These tactics are designed to produce a herd mentality within the population. Individuals reconsider their rhetoric when they see others discredited for similar views and remain silent. These devices, which discredit individuals and information, also discourage others from examining certain events and circumstances for themselves.

International bankers, without particular national loyalties or regard for those used as cannon fodder, typically fund both sides of every war and often have major investments in, or outright ownership of, ammunition production facilities. Guaranteed contracts for tons of one-time-use bullets and bombs are tremendously more lucrative than selling cars and washing machines to consumers. Henry Kissinger, one-time U.S. Secretary of State said, “Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.”³

Given the manner in which individual governments exploit soldiers to enrich the bankers, those troops are evidently expendable. Their bloodied bodies create massive profits for the international bankers, the original advocates of globalism, acquired through warfare, usually followed by sanctions, reparations and finally obedience to an international entity. A nation uses warfare to impose its policies on another nation. Gutele Schnapper Rothschild, the wife of Mayer A. Rothschild, who grew enormously wealthy by collecting usury while funding the European wars, said, “If my sons did not want wars, there would be none.” One might add “grandsons, great grandsons and other male relatives and all of their banking affiliates camouflaged under numerous names – Goldman Sachs, Lehman, Kuhn-Loeb, Citibank and others.”

While Mother Rothschild sounded decidedly cold-hearted, other Talmudic Judaics, like the contemporary Rabbi Haim Druckman, a leader of the Religious Zionist movement, said on September 7, 2004, “Killing enemy civilians during war is normal.” Druckman and other like-minded Zionists view gentiles and even their own Semitic kinsmen, the Palestinians, including children, as sub-humans. The Talmud states, “Our lives come first.” Druckman ridiculed Christian opposition to warfare, “The Christian preaching of ‘turning the other cheek’ doesn’t concern us, and we will not be impressed by those who prefer the lives of our enemies to our lives.”⁴ And who is the enemy – any country that resists the international banker’s insistence on installing a central bank within their country. Further, banker-backed corporations target, confiscate and profit from the seizure and control of the natural resources in the said enemy’s land. Many Christians, indoctrinated to believe that there is such a thing as a “good war,” have unwittingly accepted barbaric total war tactics regarding unarmed women and children, and are perfectly willing to engage in mass slaughter at the behest of the bankers.

Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), a Bolshevik said, “The establishment of a central bank is 90% of communizing a nation.”⁵ The way to get the U.S. to incrementally embrace communism began in 1913 with the establishment of the privately owned Federal Reserve. The massively wealthy owners of the Federal Reserve would ultimately invest in and sit on the boards of every major corporation and eventually capture the majority of America’s wealth in addition to usury, burdensome taxation and continual warfare.

International Communism, adapted for expediency, was a means of brutal seizure of control, a perfect political mechanism for the international bankers. If people objected to tyranny, they were sent to slave labor camps or were quickly killed and silenced. Lenin and Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronstein) were divided on one issue – Lenin supported violent revolution while Trotsky favored a non-violent, intellectual approach to total government control.⁶ Lenin maintained, “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” In America, the bankers control the left and the right paradigm, the conservatives and the liberals, the Democrats and the Republicans. American Trotskyites, who prefer intellectual infiltration, seized the “conservative” label and continue to promote their agenda through numerous “conservative” groups. They manipulate and publicly promote certain religious leaders who then endorse that same agenda. The Trotskyites fund influential, noble named think tanks and regularly appear in the media.

Americans are aghast when they hear about the millions of Chinese and Russian citizens who have been slaughtered by their Communist masters. Yet, under the federally sanctioned abortion laws, approximately fifty million people have been eliminated under the intellectual guise of “freedom of choice.” The ultimate abortion decision was fueled by the CIA-funded women’s movement. Steinem and the others were well paid to pretend concern for the rights of women while ignoring the rights of infants. So rather than Lenin’s depopulation method, the U.S. used Trotsky’s more subtle process. The results are the same.

Contemporary Neo-cons William “Bill” Kristol and Robert Kagan established the Project for a New American Century, which called for a “new Pearl Harbor” in order to implement momentous change and to conduct Middle East warfare. Kristol’s late father, Irving Kristol who was often funded by the CIA, is known as the “godfather of neo-conservatism.” His organization promotes warfare (revolution), first in Iraq and now in Iran. Charles Krauthammer and Kristol, editor of the Rupert Murdoch-funded The Weekly Standard, the official voice of this cabal,⁷ and their Neo-con cronies provide opposition to the left agenda, as suggested by Lenin. On September 18, 2002, Kristol claimed that a war in Iraq “could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East.”⁸Krauthammer and Kristol regularly appear on pro-Israel Murdoch’s “fair and balanced” Fox News where they allege that Iran is building nuclear weapons, a subtle form of their previous allegations about Iraqi’s weapons of mass destruction. Murdoch has always been a Rothschild family asset.

On February 17, 2003, Krauthammer, a prominent Washington Post columnist writing in Time admitted that America’s imminent war against Iraq “is not just to disarm Saddam. It is to reform a whole part of the world…What the U.S. needs in the Arab world is not an exit strategy but an entry strategy. Iraq is the beckoning door…” Krauthammer further targeted “Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria and beyond” as part of the neo-conservative war policy. On February 18, 2003, as reported in the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suggested that the U.S. wage war on Iran, Libya and Syria after “the successful destruction of Iraq.”⁹ Krauthammer, a former psychiatrist has called for an all-out U.S. war against the Muslim world.¹⁰ War is the most effective way of bankrupting a nation and to set it up for total collapse and a tyrannical takeover. The warfare in the Middle East is not in the best interests of America – it only serves the international bankers.

On March 17, 2003, just before the U.S. invaded Iraq, Kristol, in his editorial in The Weekly Standard, wrote, “obviously, we are gratified that the Iraq strategy we have long advocated . . . has become the policy of the U.S. government.” On March 18, The Washington Post clarified his obvious influence when their columnist, Richard Cohen, referred to the impending conflict as “Kristol’s War” and prior to the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad, “this would seem to be Kristol’s moment.”¹¹

Millionaires and billionaires buy up politicians. Those who defy the bankers suffer dire consequences, like Charles A. Lindbergh, whose grandson was kidnapped and murdered. Lindbergh had written articles of impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors against five members of the Federal Reserve Board, W. P. G. Harding, Paul M. Warburg, Frederick Delano, Adolf C. Miller and Charles S. Hamlin. Louis T. McFadden, another defiant Congressman died as a result of poisoning, their third attempt to eliminate him. Other non-compliant politicians are run out of office, assassinated, arrested, die in airplane crashes, are impeached or publicly humiliated. U.S. politicians understandably fear the international bankers more than they fear the wrath of their disgruntled constituents.

Author R. Duane Willing, in his book Money: the 12th & Final Religion, claims that Richard M. Nixon, once compliant, fell from grace when he attempted to alter the nation’s money system and develop an interest-free Greenback-style currency which would have immobilized the national debt and obliterated the curse of usury. In 1969, Nixon appointed Dr. Preston Martin as Chairman and Chief Operating Officer of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. Martin allegedly masterminded Nixon’s currency plan which would have converted 4,950 Savings and Loans into full commercial banks with the capacity of issuing checking accounts. This would have created a nationwide banking network outside of the auspices of the Federal Reserve network.¹²

Austrian-born Arthur F. Burns (Burnseig), chairman of the Federal Reserve (1970-1978), had offices on the 8th floor of the Watergate Apartment Hotel. On June 17, 1972, five husky Watergate burglars were apprehended on the 6th floor after they had carried heavy files from Burns’ office down to the 6th floor for photographing.¹³ Allegedly, the burglars had broken into the Democratic National Committee headquarters, a convenient cover story. However, Martin was apparently promised the future chairmanship of the Federal Reserve if he abandoned Nixon and the populist currency plan that would have ended the power of the Federal Reserve. Nixon was purged from the presidency by a media-driven frenzy and forced to resign on August 9, 1974.¹⁴ He was later pardoned by Ford, probably on the basis of his continued silence about the real details surrounding the Watergate break-in.

Martin didn’t replace Paul A. Volcker (CFR, TC, and BB) as chairman (1979-1987). Instead, Alan Greenspan was appointed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Burns (CFR) suggested that a review board be established to evaluate wage and price freezes.¹⁵ Nixon’s handlers created a comprehensive New Deal, Democratic-style strategy called the New Economic Policy after clandestine consultations at Camp David with George P. Shultz (CFR), Burns, Paul W. McCracken (CFR), Caspar W. Weinberger (CFR, TC), H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Peter G. Peterson (CFR), Volcker, John Connally and Speechwriter Bill Safire. Volcker initiated the collapse of the U.S. economy. He has, since 1952, as an economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, influenced U.S. economic policies. In 1962 he became the director of financial analysis at the Treasury Department and in 1963 he was appointed as deputy under-secretary for monetary affairs. He returned to the Treasury as under-secretary (1969-1974) where he promoted international solutions to monetary problems.

The House of Rothschild continues to influence the U.S. economy and domestic and foreign policies. Volcker, after having served as the Federal Reserve Chairman under Presidents Carter and Reagan, went to work for the Rothschilds as chairman of the European investment-banking firm, J. Rothschild, Wolfensohn and Co. in March 1992. Since February 2009, he has been the Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under the obedient President Barack Obama who continues to decimate the economy at the behest of the international bankers.

Richard N. Goodwin, former speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy (assassinated in 1963), said, “The principal power in Washington is no longer the government or the people it represents. It is the Money Power. Under the deceptive cloak of campaign contributions, access and influence, votes and amendments are bought and sold. Money establishes priorities of action, holds down federal revenues, revises federal legislation, and shifts income from the middle class to the very rich.”¹⁶ “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”¹⁷