The Reds Are Coming! The Reds Are Coming!

Kurt Schlichter today has a post at Townhall.com entitled Peaceful Insurgency Tips For Virginia Patriots that I think captures what Virginians need to do in the coming weeks and months, but also the rest of us in other States. Schlichter sees Richmond as a victory for the Patriots because there was no violence. Patriots took the high moral ground that day. And winning hearts and minds is not just important, it is ultimately everything.

Don't get me wrong here, I believe that guns will be important in the coming fight, and we will be required not just to have them and display them as in Richmond, but to know how to use them as well. But I believe for the most part, that guns will be symbolic of the Constitutional order and of our rights as people.

Let’s begin with a basic principle: You have no moral obligation to respect or obey unconstitutional actions by a government. None. And when a government acts outside its constitutional limits, you do not merely have the right but the sacred duty to reject and replace it.

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What now is that you continue with the momentum from the rally and before. This is an insurgency – a peaceful one, despite the “de-escalate” crap your Jazz Singing’ chief executive is shoveling – and you need to keep up the pressure. This is about guns, which are the backstop of freedom but the liars and losers of the media want to pretend you don’t think so. They want to pretend you are looking for a chance to commit violence. They want to pretend you want to hurt people. That’s how they plan to delegitimize you.

Don’t fall for it.

First step: resolve that these garbage people, whether liberal pols, the media, Twitter blue checks, or Fredocon sissies who would have been all in with the Redcoats in 1776, can kiss your sweet Northam. When you don’t ignore them, mock them. They want to shame you into the shame of submission. They have zero moral authority. They are lying trash and worthy only of your contempt. Treat them accordingly.

Second step: turn your anger into votes. The gunfascists got into power because far too many of you thought, “Oh, we’ve had Democrats in power in Virginia before and it’s no big deal.” Okay, wrong. The Democrats today are not the Democrats of yesterday. These are CA/NY billionaire-funded activists whose goal is to turn you into serfs by taking your power, your money, and your dignity. You must register to vote then you must vote only for Republicans – and you need to make sure you don’t nominate any wuss Republicans during the primary. Next, you must reinvigorate your party. Why don’t you run for a seat on the local GOP committee? Organize! The mobilization for gun rights sanctuaries and the march on the Capitol proved that if you organize and act, you will win.

The second pooint Schlichter is making is important. Get involved in politics, as disgusting as it may be. But do not, under any circumstances, vote for a Democrat.  The Democrat party is no more.  Zel Miller sounded the deathknell of the Democrat party back in 2004. The group that has taken over the remains of the Democrat party are communists, socialists, fascists, and Islamists.

Now, I know what many of you are thinking. The Democrats may be the party of evil, as evidenced by the ease with which they lie, but the Republicans are the stupid party, the party of spineless, feckless people afraid of their own shadows. I know. It wasn't always so, though. The Republicans started out in a school house in Wisconsin with a goal to end slavery. They finally gained enough political power to elect the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.  They were fighters for the cause of abolition.  They kept the underground railroad running, risking life, fortune, and reputation on it because they believed God demanded it.  Republicans could be that party again.

Amil Amani has a piece over at the American Thinker entitled The Rage Of The Democrats. Amani's point in the article is what I have been saying as well, that the Democratic party is bad for America and the World. Of course, he says it nicer than I do.

What underlies the rage of the Democrat Party and of the leftist Democrat Establishment vis-à-vis President Donald Trump?

Over forty years ago, during my high school years in Iran, my father and I had a conversation. He was an avid Republican, even though he lived on the other side of the world. Right before I prepared to leave Iran for the U.S., he gave me some fatherly advice. He explained why the Democrat Party was bad for America, bad for Iran, and bad for the world. He advised me that if I ever became a US citizen, I should never vote for Democrats. After all these years, I now understand what he meant by those words of wisdom.

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It is obvious that the Democrat Party is at war with America, and Democrats are not interested in stopping any time soon.

The radical left enjoys controlling people from cradle to grave. (Sounds like Muslims.) They want socialism. They want to be in charge for eternity. The leftist agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and fosters government reliance, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, promotes sharia law, denigrates the sanctity of marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship and much more.

For decades, the Democrat Party has shown by both words and deeds that they despise the U.S. Constitution while they bend over backward to embrace Islamists, illegal aliens, and anyone who hates America and feels entitled. The left is interested only in power and nothing else — even if it means sacrificing our safety and security.

I had abandoned being involved in politics for many years. My experiences as a precinct committeeman for the county Republicans turned me off of politics. You know the old saying about how sausage is made. Well, I can stomach sausage making pretty well compared to politics. But I have recognized the need to get involved, again. I have held my nose plenty of times to vote for the lesser of two evils. It is time to find some candidates who will be more like Trump, and then back them fully, as Trump supporters do. Trump will eventually leave office. Who will we put in his place to continue his work?

Oh, and Grass Roots North Carolina has an equivalent of the Virginia Citizen's Defense League Lobby Day.  I confess I have never attended.  I mean to make a different decision next time.  Because like it or not, the Reds are coming. Patriots need to organize and make your voices heard.

 *As an aside, our Democrat Governor will not have to make an emergency declaration.  Guns are already forbidden on the Capitol grounds and buildings.  They afraid of us, aren't they?

The Founding Fathers Entrusted We The People With The Republic

As an old fart, I remember well the 1960s.  It was a time of upheaval, and the so called "New Left" was on the march.  The struggle over the meaning of the First Amendment was at least as intense as the struggle over the Second.  A commonly heard argument from Leftists was that "I support your right to say things I do not support."  And conservatives agreed, thinking that the Left was arguing in good faith.  Silly conservatives!  All that changed as "New Leftists" began to take positions of authority and power in the various institutions of the culture.  This was the great "March Through The Institutions" of which you have no doubt heard.  Because so much news came to be biased in favor of the Left, Fox News Channel has had a good run with its marketing tag line of "fair and balanced."

Conservatives, of course, still believe in free speech.  We believe that if the facts are revealed, and both we and the Left are equally allowed to give our own interpretation of those facts, our side will prevail.  The Left evidently believes so too, for they routinely do not allow our side to even present the actual facts, let alone interpret them.  For instance, at yesterday's VCDL Lobby Day event in Richmond, Virginia, and NBC reported falsely claimed that the rally was really about white supremecy. In fact it was about the 2nd Amendment and there were exactly zero arrests for violence.  Sorry, media, but gun rights supporters are not itching for a fight.

David Weinberger has a think piece out today at The Federalist entitled Why the News Media Cannot and Should Not Be Unbiased. He argues that even deciding which facts to report and which to keep silent about involves bias. Interpreting those facts that are reported involves yet more bias. He is right, of course.

However, when conservatives rail against a biased press, they are not talking so much about the kind of bias that Weinberger mentions here, but about systemically preventing any conservative to speak at all. Conservative and religious ideas are barred from the public square not just be the traditional media, but by social media such as twitter and facebook.  Of what are they afraid?  When, for instance, Ann Coulter goes to a campus to speak, she must have security there to protect her, and she is often shouted down. If the Left believes their cause is correct, of what are the so afraid?  Whatever happened to the idea of colleges being places of free thought and debate?

In fact, rather than having a headline that grabs attention by blaring that "news media can not be unbiased," what it should say is that the news media should provide a more balanced diversity of ideas.  For that is the main point of the article.

Now, some will say that certain ideas are beyond the pale, and should be suppressed.  Examples include the skinheads and Neo-Nazi movements.  But I say the more speech the better.  Let them talk and be heard.  Any reasonable person will quickly see that the ideas espoused are ridiculous.

The Founding Fathers ultimately entrusted the nation to We The People.  I am sure it was not without some trepidation.  But the newspapers of the day were as biased as anything we see today on all sides of every issue.  Wise people read and discussed all sides of every issue.  The Left should allow us the same privilege today.

Virginia hasn't descended into tyranny...yet

In a post over at Bearing Arms, Cam Edwards says that No, Virginia hasn't descended into tyranny...yet...but if Governor "Blackface" Northam had his way, it would already by a tyrannous hell hole. And electing Democrats to hold any office, even dog catcher, is always dangerous. I suspect that many of the Democrats who were elected in 2019 to seize the Capitol took Bloomberg's money, but had no intentions of doing his bidding. None the less, some of Bloomberg's anti-gun agenda will be accomplished.

No less than George Washington himself is said to have uttered the quote "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." But a number of the founders have expressed similar ideas: that government should be deliberately limited to give widest scope to individual achievements.

Since the founding, the Second Amendment has been the touch stone of the Bill of Rights. The other rights recognized by the Bill of Rights are the important ones, but the right to keep and bear arms secures those other rights. You will notice that Governor "Blackface" is trying to constrain people from peacefully assembling, and from making their grievances known to their representatives. The First amendment doesn't say that we have a right to assemble disarmed inside a fenced in kill zone, after all.  We do have the right to peacefully assemble, period.  We have the right to petition our government for redress of grievances, period.  We have the right to back up these rights with force if necessary.

None the less, Edwards is correct that so far tyranny has not taken hold in Virginia.  What he is saying is that everyone should remain calm, keep your eyes open and your head on a swivel.  The time for backing up our First Amendment rights with the Second Amendment has not come.  It may never come.  But the right to keep and bear arms can be likened to having a fire extinguisher.  You pray you never need it, and the great majority of fire extinguishers will never be used. But does the rarity of use mean the government should mandate that you give them up and rely on the fire department alone to protect you?  That is the argument being made by those who wish to disarm us.

Go read Cam Edwards piece at Bearing Arms to get the latest status of the Bills before the Virginia legislature.

Is Governor Northam Setting Stage For Violence On Lobby Day?

January 20, 2020 marks, of course, Martin Luther King Day, but it is also the date of the annual Virginia Citizens' Defense League (VCDL) Lobby Day.  The purpose of Lobby Day is a day for volunteer members of VCDL to speak with their legislative representatives and Senators about gun issues.  VCDL, along with a number of Republicans have been responsible for getting concealed carry passed in Virginia, and expanding gun rights in general.  When I lived in Virginia, I was a member of VCDL.  It is a mainstream organization that ties members from all walks of life together by a common bond of carrying a concealed handgun for personal protection.

The Governor of Virginia, Gov. "Blackface" Northam has preemptively declared a gun free zone around the state Capitol, tagging VCDL members as white nationalists and skinheads, and blaming VCDL members for any violence that occurs on January 20.  The story can be found at the American Thinker in a post by James G. Robertson entitled Blame Game Set for VA. Gov. Northam's Gun Free Kill Zone

Capitol police expect to funnel as many as 10,000 people through magnetometers into the outdoor gun-free kill zone that will be contained by fencing around the Capitol grounds. Thus, any violent extremists motivated by mass murder will be able legally to carry their weapons onto 9th Street and have a free fire zone into the trapped and defenseless crowd.

Similarly, it will be legal to carry anywhere on the streets surrounding the kill zone. Trapping people in an enclosure won't make them safe, and the prospect of mixing bad and good actors in the streets is an object lesson in the futility of gun-free zones.

On Lobby Day, should people need to escape the gun-free kill zone, they will be funneled into exit choke points along the fence, where they will be vulnerable to further concentrated violence. This is the same type of plan used in Charlottesville to trap Unite the Right demonstrators behind metal barricades, and then to funnel them through exits targeted by the Antifa mob.

Antifa mob?  Who are these guys?  Lets take a look at the history of the so called Antifascists who are the new military wing of the left.  Doug Petrikat has a piece at the American Thinker entitled The Fascist Roots Behind Today's Justification Of Political Violence. Petrikat points out that Antifa is the same old group of communists who fought against the fascists in the 1920s and 1930s in fascist Italy and Germany.  The entire enterprise is Un-American, indeed, is an imported philosophy from Europe, from Marx and Engles.

But now someone I personally know and consider a rational, intelligent person was justifying political violence. It made me think that we have reached the point where apparently normal people believe violence is an acceptable way to resolve internal political differences.

This is a disturbing development. In a civilized society, freedom of speech and open discussion enable those with different views to learn from each other and consider their own positions from a more critical perspective. However, where threats, intimidation, ridicule, and political violence are the norm, open discussion is suppressed, and progress is hindered.

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Antifa began a century ago in 1921 as a front group under the direction of the Soviet Union to incite a Communist revolution in Germany. In 1923 the Politburo of the Communist Party in Soviet Russia held a meeting to plan an armed insurrection to overthrow the struggling democracy in Germany’s Weimar Republic. Following the Politburo’s instructions, the German Communist Party formed its armed movement to silence rival political parties through violence and to overthrow the government. The party named its movement Antifaschistische Aktion.

The party chose the name Antifaschistische Aktion, now known as Antifa, because an Italian Marxist fell out with his nation’s Socialist Party, founded his own party, and took power in 1922. Although he still held leftist views, nationalized 75% of Italy’s economy, and expanded the state’s social safety net, he believed that a hierarchy should be part of society and ignored the dictates from both the Socialists in his former party and the Communists in Moscow. For this heresy, his new party was branded as a rogue movement.

If one were prone to conspiracy theories, one might think that Governor Northam, a Leftist, might well be coordinating, indirectly of course, with Antifa, to create the violence while arranging the stage to actually cause it. Not that I am a conspiracy theorists, but...

T, L, Davis lays out the theory in more detail in a post at the American Thinker entitled Is Governor Northam Trying To State a Second Civil War? Davis notes that normal political behavior is that in the face of overwhelming unpopularity of a given policy, politicians usually either modify their plans or dump them all together.  After all, how can you govern without the consent of the governed?  Yet the Democrats seem poised to ram extreme gun control down Virginia citizens' throats. 

If you are planning to be a part of Lobby Day, please read the embedded articles, and keep your head on a swivel.  Be ready to film anything that looks like it may become Antifa mob violence, or may be a false flag operation designed to make gun owners the bad guys.

What Does Our Society Value?

I get regular posts in the email from a group of columnists that call themselves the American Partisan. Today's post is by the author whose nom de plume is The Gray Man, and is entitled Escape The Ranks Of The Insane As Gray Man points out, there are fewer and fewer of those of us who see through the insanity that marks current "culture."

I was reading Drudge the other day and found an article that I will not link here, since the readers do not need to add another few points to their blood pressure. It is there is a person with severe delusions regarding their gender. I believe it was a woman pretending to be a man and expecting the rest of us to join them in there delusion, or else be labeled with some variation of bigotry. The subject of the article was dismayed that despite their decision to masquerade as a man, she was still having a monthly menstruation and was forced to buy a $12 pink box of tampons that had a woman (by all evidence, an actual one) on the front of it. In the article the mentally ill woman complained about the price, complained about the look of the box itself, complained about the “dysphoria” her monthly event caused her, and there was even a tone of surprise that I sensed. Surprise at the fact that the menstruation didn’t cease the moment this individual decided that she was now a man. NBC News of course thought this was newsworthy and ran it like a serious piece. That’s our media, and they wonder, they legitimately wonder, why at least 40% of the US population don’t take them seriously anymore.

Of course I can agree that seemingly every day there is something in the news that seems crazy, and that makes me wonder about how anyone can believe this stuff. After all, if they test what they are being told by comparing it to reality, it will soon become apparent that what they are being told is not true. But it was specifically what The Gray Man had to say about art that was shocking, and I am not easily shocked. I have long characterized much of modern art as a hoax being played on a gullible public. Now I see that it my be a deliberate plot to undermine Western art and culture:

The book “The Naked Communist” had 45 goals to destroy the US, in which “US” could really be seen as non-communist Western Civilization. Number 23 said “Our goal is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.” I was at the University of Florida earlier this year and saw a piece of “art” in an open area near some museums. The piece was simply three, long metal beams. Two of them formed an “x” and the other was propping them upright. That was it. That is art in our modern civilization. Recently I read that an art exhibit had a piece that sold for quite a lot of money. It was a banana duct taped to the wall. There have been several pieces of art made entirely, or mostly, from shit. Excuse my language here, but is that what our society, our civilization here in the West, values and holds dear? Shit?

One often hears the saying that "art is in the eye of the beholder." But people who say these things are promoting a lazy and intellectually dishonest concept of art. Art is, in fact, capable of definition, and can indeed have standards. In fact, it must have standards in order to have meaning. Art requires knowledge, discipline, talent and vision. The idea that a banana duct taped to a wall is art is frankly disgusting. The fact that most of the best movies today are remakes speaks volumes about the state of the movie industry. I often find 1940's music better that what is being written today. As for poetry, nobody reads it any more. One can hardly blame people for finding it obscure and indecipherable. Where is today's Shakespeare, or Tennyson.

Art is an inseparable part of any civilization. And great civilizations produce great art. I am not sure whether it's a matter of the chicken or the egg, but in any case, the state of our art suggests our society is heading into the abyss.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves. - Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Patricia McCarthy, over at the American Thinker is the latest to express a belief that the DOJ is stringing Trump supporters along in hopes of running out the clock. Her post today entitled The Rule of Law, Abuse of Power, and Justice Denied makes clear:

Yes, the gears of justice grind slowly, but this is ridiculous. More and more Americans, especially those of us who support President Trump, are losing hope that anyone will be held responsible for the most horrific political scandal in U.S. history. It seems to have become the rule that those who attain bureaucratic power get to keep it no matter how appalling the nature of their crimes. The virulent racists, from the cops to the DAs, who sentenced numerous innocent men to death row in the South all kept their jobs and most likely continued their evil ways just as our high-profile traitors at the CIA, FBI and DOJ have kept theirs. The sheriff who knowingly charged McMillan with murder in 1987 was re-elected six times after his wrongdoing was revealed; rather like Biden's re-election after numerous ethical lapses, plagiarism the least of them. Peter Schweizer's new book is likely to expose much more serious crimes of the Biden family.

No one who is an Orthodox Christian and conservative can be anything other than a pessimist. For Orthodox Christianity contains the doctrine of Original Sin, which says we have, all of us, fallen short of the Glory of God, and are helpless to achieve Heaven on our own. What that means in practical terms is exactly what Ms. McCarthy is talking about in this post. I too fear that Barr and Durham are log rolling to run out the clock on the Trump administration. There will be no indictments of these traitors, there will be no jail time.  They will go on to lucrative careers and be supported by the Democrats.

It is rather like an old joke in the bureaucracy regarding the six phases of a big project:  Enthusiasm, Disillusionment, Panic, Hunt for the "guilty", Punishment of the innocent, and Promotion of the actual guilty parties. In the above joke, it is understood that the "hunt for the guilty" will be plausibly pinning the responsibility for disaster on someone other than the actual guilty parties.

This also highlights another thing that I have learned along the way, namely if you are a Democrat, your chances of getting away with whatever are greatly enhanced.  Oh, you can not get away with literally anything, but you can get away with a lot as long as other Democrats feel you can...uh...make a difference...ahem.  Republicans had better in general adhere to the straight and narrow path.

Meanwhile, at The Federalist Margot Cleveland has an article discussing the fact that The FISA Court Is Complicit in the FBI Abuses It's Raising Cain Over. Cleveland is The Federalist court reporter.

Today is the deadline Collyer set for the government to “inform the Court in a sworn written submission of what it has done, and plans to do, to ensure that the statement of facts in each FBI application accurately and completely reflects information possessed by the FBI that is material to any issue presented by the application.”

And FBI Director Christopher Wray has duly submitted a twelve part plan to add yet more bureaucratic hoops to jump through, in the belief that these will indeed force the FBI to do the right things. But the problem was not that the FBI did not have enough steps in the process to ensure that they were not violating a person's rights, and that they did indeed have probable cause to obtain a warrant. No, the problem was that FBI agents deliberately chose to ignore these process steps, and to lie to the FISA Court. And according to Cleveland, it may have been with the Court's connivance.

The problem is a lack of integrity on the part of individual agents and lawyers within the DOJ, not on a lack of process.  Like the Constitution itself, a process is only as good as the integrity of the individuals following the process.  It they choose to betray the intended goal of the process, all bets are off.

As Shakespeare noted in the play Julius Caesar through his character Cassius, "The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Joaquin Phoenix Offers Bad Diet Advice

If, gentle readers, you read my post from Tuesday, January 7, 2020 about the Hollywood elite forgoing meat at the Golden Globe awards, you know that meat is not the environmental problem it is made out to be.  Rather, the problem is how meat is produced in the huge feed lots feeding grain and soy beans to cattle that have evolved to eat grass.  Moreover, while most of us do not need to eat as much meat as we do, we all need some.

Over at Townhall.com today, Julio Rosas has a post that says it all. The post, here has Joaquin Phoenix apologizing for flying to speak at Jane Fonda's "Friday Fire Drill" on the Capitol steps, but then encouraging everyone to give up meat.

"Something that I think isn't oftentimes talked about in the environmental movement or in the conversation about climate is that the meat and dairy is the third leading cause of climate change," Phoenix said. "I think sometimes we wonder what can we do in this fight against climate and there is something you can do today right now and tomorrow by making a choice what you consume."

"I struggle so much with what I can do [to combat climate change] at times. There are things that I can't avoid — I flew a plane out here today, or last night rather. But one thing that I can do is change my eating habits and so I just want to urge all of you to join me in that," he continued.

Let's see here, what is it that Ricky Gervais said during his monologue at the Golden Globes?

So if you do win an award tonight, don't use it as a platform to make a political speech. You're in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.

So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and fuck off, OK? It's already three hours long. Right, let's do the first award.

Hanoi Jane has lived on her fathers name all her life. Her father was a talented actor. She and her brother, not so much. So, I look at her "Friday Fire Drills" as a way to stay in the public eye. But just as one shouldn't follow the morals of celebrities, so one shouldn't accept diet advise from them either.