Praying for Strength and Courage

 I wrote sometime back that I intended to dedicate myself to telling the truth, as I understand it at all times.  Naturally, I did not intentionally lie, but there were many times when I didn't say something at times out of fear.  Fear is no way to live, yet it is the way most people live.  It is not easy to live fearless, and I must pray daily for strength and courage.  In Ephesians 6:12, Paul writes:

12 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.

Today, at the American Thinker J.B. Shurk has an article that is well worth reading entitled Set Yourself Apart from This Corrupt Generation, in which Shurk recalls Actor Jim Caviezel speaking a few years ago about his movie Paul, Apostle of Christ. Caviezel is a devoted Christian, and did not shy away from his faith.

When he spoke of freedom, he was clear to articulate that God's gift to His children is not the freedom to do recklessly whatever we wish, but rather the freedom to choose wisely how we ought to act in pursuit of moral lives. He answered Maximilian Kolbe's trenchant observation that "indifference is the greatest sin" by charging every listener to "fight for that authentic freedom" that requires us to live courageously. "And with the Holy Spirit as your shield and Christ as your sword, may you join St. Michael and all the angels in sending Lucifer and all his henchmen straight back to hell where they belong!"

...snip...

In contemplating Paul's conversion from a notorious hunter of Christians to a devout follower of Jesus Christ, Caviezel also reflected on the significance of the apostle's name. Before disappearing into the desert and suffering blindness, he was Saul; after comprehending the truth of the Holy Spirit and finding sight, he became Paul. "The name Saul means 'great one.' The name Paul means 'little one,'" Caviezel noted. By "changing one little, tiny letter ... we can become great in the eyes of God. But it requires us to be little if we wish to be great.

This is the way of the saints." This is the way of the saints. What a magnificent and revealing truth...

Shurk goes on to ask when we became so damn timid. I personally know people who should know better that insist on wearing masks, and knuckling under to unconstitutional demands by people who have only bluster to back them up. We need to speak up every time. Shurk lists a number of attempts to limit our ability to speak by extremely powerful groups such as Twitter and Google. You tube has cancelled many videos. Even Democrat politicians are asking cable companies to deplatform news sites such as Fox, One American News Network, and News Max. What are these people afraid of? As Shurk writes:

Perhaps it is because truth, no matter how small it is made to look, is too impressive when not endlessly threatened and controlled by those who wish to distort it. Perhaps that is why the same people in power spend all of their time demonizing the people with no power at all. Perhaps people with no power but who refuse to betray or relinquish truth for temporary comforts will find that they are more powerful than they know. Perhaps those Americans now made to feel little will remember that humility and courage are the siblings of greatness.

Rights, not Needs

 With Biden indicating...did I say indicating?,,,I mean promising gun control, the American Thinker yesterday had a piece entitled A Short Primer On the Importance of our Second Amendment Rights by Andrea Widburg. Widburg gives five reasons why the right is so important. The first reason is that the Second Amendment supports all the others. It is, as St. George Tucker said in Blackstone's Commentaries, the " true palladium of liberty." Second, there is no greater killer than government. Criminals, no matter how malicious, pale in comparison. Three is that there really is no way for people to counter a rampaging government except to be armed. Four is that gun control is, at its heart, racist. And five, of course crime actually increases when gun control is implemented.

Please go read the entire post, as it isn't long. Widburg does an excellent job of paring down the various arguments into their essential form. And it is all true. But once again, it is, as Barr calls it, a needs based analysis. I call it utilitarian.  It asks the question "why do we need guns?" and then proceed to answer it. with facts and figures. But what if the person you are arguing with dismisses your needs? What if the answer facts with made up statistics and cherry picked facts?  Is there a rebuttal?  Because we have been having these kinds of arguments for 70 years, and it has not worked.

I think there is a rebuttal. It is contained in David French's idea here that carrying a weapon is a civic duty. It is contained in Bill Barr's two articles here and here that discusses the Second Amendment in terms of a natural right. 

The only lasting, effective way to defend the Second Amendment is to view it as our Founding Fathers did; not as a utilitarian concept, which it necessarily becomes when considered as a “needs-based” right, but as a God-given, natural right of all mankind. Framing the Second Amendment in this original context completely changes the playing field from that on which the debate rages today, according to which it is the responsibility of citizens to prove why they need firearms in the face of government restrictions. Instead, when considered in its proper and historic context, it is the government that should be required to show verifiable cause to justify taking firearms away. This distinction makes all the difference, and clearly undergirded the crafting of our founding documents.

I commend Widburg for at least taking on the gun issue.  Too few at the American Thinker do. But I think it must be framed as a right, where the Government has the burden of proof if they wish to take it away. As it stands, it is we, the people, who keep having to prove why we need guns. Think of it this way: would the master of a servant allow the servant to tell him what he could and could not do? Specifically, would a master of a servant allow the servant to be armed to the teeth, and to tell him that he couldn't be armed at all? That is the position we put ourselves in with a needs based argument.  But government is supposed to be our servant, we do not serve the government.

Can your children learn more useful stuff playing in the back yard?

 Today at The Federalist Joy Pullman points out that Your Kinds Would Be Better Off Feral Than Going to Schools That Make Them Anti-American Racists. Perhaps feral is pretty strong, but being home schooled certainly isn't. You can do a better job that our public schools these days. Go read the article and see what you think can be done.

The Natural Right to Arms

Bob Barr has a piece at Full Mag News entitled The Second Amendment Is a Natural Right of Man, Not of Government. The article is a follow up to a previous article in which he argues that the current defense of the Second Amendment on the basis of needs is not sufficient. I could not agree more, and have said so many times. The needs argument is basically a utilitarian argument.  And while utilitarian arguments, such as John Lott provides, may be useful in shoring up our position, the main thrust has always been based on rights.

Now, I have argued that the Second Amendment is based on rights granted to mankind in general, specifically the right to life. These rights were granted by our Creator. In granting us life, he also thereby granted us a right to defend that life by the most effective means available: what David Codrea refers to as "any chair in a bar fight." I have argued this way because I am a Christian, and the Declaration of Independence supports the notion these rights come from God and are thus inalienable.  Inalienable means that government can not legitimately take them away.

But, what if you do not believe in God? Can you participate in rights granted to you by a Creator in whom you do not believe? Fortunately whether you believe in Him of not, the Creator believes in you, and so you carry these rights anyway. But note that these rights have also been described as natural rights. The natural rights of man can be ascertained by simple observation. Man obviously is alive. Men also act to defend their lives. Men can speak and reason. Men make tools and implements.

The part that is not so clear is that these rights, if defined as natural rights, are inalienable. So, while a man has a right to speak, you can shut him up. But just because you shut him up, does not mean you change his mind, does it? And if he feels strongly enough, he will find a way to speak. He will speak to his neighbors, he will speak to others, and he will act on his beliefs. So I would argue that again, by observation, that natural rights exist, and they can not be separated from the individual.

It is on the basis, then, of Natural Rights that Barr goes on to discuss the rights acknowledged by the Second Amendment. Being a lawyer, Barr is grounded in our Founding Documents:

The only lasting, effective way to defend the Second Amendment is to view it as our Founding Fathers did; not as a utilitarian concept, which it necessarily becomes when considered as a “needs-based” right, but as a God-given, natural right of all mankind. Framing the Second Amendment in this original context completely changes the playing field from that on which the debate rages today, according to which it is the responsibility of citizens to prove why they need firearms in the face of government restrictions. Instead, when considered in its proper and historic context, it is the government that should be required to show verifiable cause to justify taking firearms away. This distinction makes all the difference, and clearly undergirded the crafting of our founding documents.

John Adams, one of the brightest luminaries of America’s Founding, stated that “resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature.” Samuel Adams then defined this “duty of self-preservation” as the “right to support and defend them in the best manner [the colonists] can.” Without question, the Founders believed self-preservation as one of man’s most sacred natural rights, and the Second Amendment was designed and purposed to ensure government does not encroach on it. For many decades following our independence, the Amendment did just that.

I have long felt, and I have said that the movement toward concealed carry that started with Florida in 1987 was always a good first step. The gun rights community has born the progressive notion of compromise too heavily. The progressive notion is that they take, and we give, and its a good first step. When they come back for more of our rights, the part we have given up is assumed, of course. So my notion has always been a return to what is called Constitutional Carry, that is if you can own a gun, you can bear it anywhere. After all, crimes do not happen only in certain areas.  You may have to defend your life anywhere at any time.

The fact of the matter is that the restriction of our right to arms began in the later half of the 19th Century as a way to disarm freed slaves. As such, it is a distasteful idea perpetrated on the United States by Democrats, fearful of what their former slaves would do to them. They needn't worry, for their former slaves had more Christian Charity than did the Democrats.  Indeed, I would argue that this lack of Christian Charity still exists today in the Democrats continued attempts to disarm us.

Tragically, the notion of government restricting citizens’ access to firearms (“gun control”) originating in the mid-19th Century as a means to disarm freed black citizens, exploded in the latter decades of the 20th Century as Democrats came to see exploiting gun violence as an effective tool for gaining political capital. Other cultural factors as well played a part in the surge of gun control legislation and regulations, such as pressure from police departments unwilling to share the burden of public safety with responsibly armed citizens, the “war on drugs” launched in the late 1960s, and the three-decades-long crime wave starting in that same decade. More recently, a spate of mass shootings, which understandably shock our sensibilities as humans, has made gun rights more vulnerable than ever.

These cultural factors have been made all the worse by society’s weakened understanding of gun rights as a fundamental natural right, which opened the door to so-called “common sense” restrictions that increasingly conditioned citizens to believe such encroachments were not just tolerable but were the responsibility of government to make in the first place. There was no way a needs-based defense of the Second Amendment could survive this changing cultural perception of gun rights, especially with the emotional manipulation of gun violence having been mastered by Democrats across all sectors of our society — in government, in the media, and in education.

Fighting these challenges is where the natural rights defense of the Second Amendment proves its worth. Not only is this defense more philosophically consistent with the origins of gun rights in America, but using it actually helps educate Americans on the Second Amendment’s origins. By reawakening citizens to their natural right of self-preservation, and reminding them the Second Amendment ensures, as Sam Adams described, that citizens can protect themselves “in the best manner” they believe, conservatives will find new allies to bolster their efforts to reject the Left’s gun control gambits, and in so doing begin to reclaim freedoms stolen from them by government over the past century.

I urge you, gentle readers, to go read Barr's article, and if you have not yet, check out the article that precedes it. You can find it hyperlinked in the article.

 Bob Barr was a Congressman from Georgia from 1995 to 2003.  He currently writes on gun rights and other matters.  

Bravo Tucker Carlson

 Tucker Carlson yesterday had a great monologue outlining his plan to end systemic racism and income inequality.  You can read about it in a piece by Andrea Widburg at the American Thinker entitled Tucker Carlson's Plan to End Systemic Racism and Income Inequality. I especially hope you will watch the video of Carlson's monologue at the hyperlinked article.

However, after detailing the attacks the elites are leveling against working- and middle-class Americans, Tucker explains that the real failure of diversity, equity, and inclusion is to be found at America's top colleges and universities. The data show conclusively that these are institutions in which rich people cluster. Further, attending one of these indoctrination centers ensures generational wealth. With an eye toward the academies, Tucker proposes a more traditional revolution, one that sees America's elites give way to those who are victims of systemic racism and economic inequality.

To achieve this end expeditiously and without bloodshed, Tucker proposes immediately requiring the top 50 colleges and universities to stop admitting their usual cohort of students from rich families and, instead, to admit only economically disadvantaged people. These new admittees don't even have to be in America legally. They just need to come from the bottom-most echelons, representing people who have suffered from the systemic racism that the elites see everywhere and from the economic inequality that Democrat policies promote.

And what about the children of our rich and elite? Well, you just have to go to the hyperlinked article to see. Widburg explains it, but it is richer when you hear it from Carlson himself.

Tucker Carlson's proposal would be, if enacted, certainly poetic justice.  Of course, it won't be.  But if Carlson makes a dent in the thinking of our so called "elites," it will be worth it.  Carslon's point is that the systemic racism and social justice complaints are not really the problem, because they are not real.  What this is really about is that the elite globalists are trying to get rich by taking the wealth of the middle class.  When spoken out loud this way, it makes the likes of Zuckerburg, or Bezos, or Gates, or indeed any of these Leftist billionaires look like monsters.  They have unimaginable wealth, yet they want to take away your miserable thousands.

Don't Look To The Supremes For Justice

 At the Epoch Times, Roger L. Simon has a opinion piece entitled Lies The Supreme Court Told Me. Simon, like everyone who believes that there were certainly shenanagins in the 2020 election, and that some of those were clearly unconstitutional, has lost faith that the Supreme Court is anything but an extension of the swamp.

The Supreme Court is the apotheosis of this system—an organization that puts its finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing (assuming that’s even necessary) and then writes its opinions based on pre-conceived notions designed to offend the lowest number.

Sadly, it’s the last place to look for justice in a presidential election—or anything, really, that tilts against that prevailing wind.

They wouldn’t even, as Justice Clarence Thomas requested, explore the blatantly unconstitutional malfeasances in various states where unelected officials clearly and unlawfully superseded the legislatures in changing election law by fiat, something we would think would only happen in totalitarian countries.

But it happened here, my friends, several times. We could cite the Supreme Court for dereliction of duty … or we could look elsewhere for justice.

It's Not Insurrection, It's Patriotism

 At Ammoland.com there is a post by Alan J. Chwick and Joann D. Eisen entitled Gun Ownership: It's Not Insurrection, It's Patriotism. Try Telling That to Gun Banners. They point may seem like it is trying to characterize Democrats as Nazis, the truth is that what the Democrats are persuing in terms of gun bans are the things traditionally tyrants do to secure power.

Now that Joe Biden is the Resident of the White House, the Socialist Democrats must mitigate the strength and resolve of Trump’s core constituents. So to this end, the Democrats employ many historical methods, from the Bolshevik Revolution to the NAZI agenda, to ‘evilize*’ us Trump supporters.

* Yes, we made up the word ‘evilize.’ We use it as ‘To be made evil’.

That my friends, is us, America’s conservatives and civilian gun owners. Not only must Americans accept that Trump is an insurrectionist, but they must also believe gun owners are insurrectionists, too.

Until U.S. gun owners are neutralized, the left cannot take total power. We must now be transformed from racists into violent, dangerous revolutionaries; Media and Big Tech have the dominating power to make that real in the eyes of ignorant Americans.

We, as gun owners, need to as the saying goes, hang together, or we will surely hang apart. We need to stop calling them Fudds, but at the same time, we need hunters, skeet and trap shooters, as well as defensive handgun owners to stick together and support each other.

A hat tip to War on Guns for pointing to this article.

Who Is The Pope Representing? It Is Supposed to be God.

I am not a Roman Catholic, and therefore, for me, the entire "Maryology" thing is...well...not a thing. But, as a Lutheran I understand that while we may have theological disagreements with Roman Catholics, they are indeed our brothers and sisters in Christ. Therefore, it is appalling to me that the Vatican proposes that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was "Jewish, Christian, and Muslim woman." This is utter balderdash. It is factually incorrect, and Christianity should cling to the truth. Raymond Ibraham has the report at the American Thinker entitled Vatican Papal Academy Sells Out Mary for Muhammad.

The same folks to bring you "Abrahamism"—the idea that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are intricately connected—have narrowed their sights on promoting Mary, the mother of Christ, as "a Jewish, Christian and Muslim woman," in the words of Catholic priest Fr. Gian Matteo of the Pontifical International Marian Academy. In a ten-week webinar series titled "Mary, a model for faith and life for Christianity and Islam," the academy will seek to present Mary as a bridge between the two religions.

This is easier said than done — at least for those still interested in facts. For starters, the claim that Mary was a "Jewish, Christian and Muslim woman" is only two-thirds true: yes, she was a Jew by race and background, and yes, she was a Christian in that she literally birthed Christ(ianity), but she was most certainly not a Muslim — a term and religion that came into being 600 years after Mary died.

Worse, far from being the Eternal Virgin, as she is for 1.5 billion Christians of the Catholic and Orthodox variety, Islam presents Mary, the Mother of Christ, as "married" to and "copulating" with Muhammad in paradise — a depiction that would seem to sever rather than build "bridges."

If the Pope has read John 14:6 where: "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." There can be no bridge between Christianity and Islam. Sorry, it just can not be done. The Koran is a corrupt document, and everything in it is a lie. I say these things not with malice, but sorrow in my heart.

Please go read Ibraham's article.  One has to wonder what the hell the Pope is thinking, and who is the Pope representing on earth.  It is supposed to be God.

If We Don't Fight Back, Communism Is Our Future

At Townhall.com Dennis Prager has an important piece entitled The Denial of Evil: The Case of Communism that tells the horrors of Communism in ways that I have not made plain. Yes, the Communists killed wantonly and often. They felt no compunction about taking the life of fellow human beings, which begs the question of just how did they attain this level of dehumanization. But it may have been the torture and humiliation visited upon even more people than just those killed.

And, of course, these numbers do not describe the suffering endured by hundreds of millions of people who were not murdered: the systematic stripping people of their right to speak freely, to worship, to start a business or even to travel without party permission; no noncommunist judiciary or media; the near-poverty of nearly all communist countries; the imprisonment and torture of vast numbers of people; and, of course, the trauma suffered by the hundreds of millions of friends and relatives of the murdered and imprisoned.

These numbers don't tell you about the many starving Ukrainians who ate the flesh of people, often children, sometimes including their own; or the Romanian Christians whose communist prison guards forced them to eat feces to compel them to renounce their faith; or the frozen millions in the vast Soviet Siberian prison camp system known as the Gulag Archipelago; or the Vietnamese communists' routine practice of burying peasants alive to terrorize people into supporting the communists; or Mao Zedong's regular use of torture to punish opponents and intimidate peasants, like leading men through the streets with rusty wires through their testicles and burning the vaginas of wives of opponents with flaming wicks -- Mao's techniques to terrorize peasants into supporting the Chinese Communist Party in its early days.

The thing that ought to scare you is that it can happen here, indeed, it is happening here. If we don't fight back, it will become our future.

Well, At Least We Know Where We Stand

 C. Edmund Wright has an article at the American Thinker entitled Our Supreme Court Goes Full Nicaragua in PA Election Case. In refusing to "grant cert" to the case, the Supremes have basically cemented election fraud as the "new normal." I can remember when we all looked upon our electoral system with a certain pride. Oh, sure, there was the occasional mischief pulled in an election, but it seldom affected national elections. Right? Right??

While I think the United States Supreme Court stumbled badly in its 7-2 rejection of the Texas case on standing last year, the refusal to “grant cert” (i.e., to take the case) yesterday in a Pennsylvania case is horrifying beyond words. I could say that our election laws are now full-on banana republic, but I’d hate to insult bananas that badly.

What the Supreme Court codified yesterday, and what it started with the Texas rejection, is that election laws and procedures cannot be challenged beyond a state court, at any time, regardless of how badly those states shred the United States Constitution, and regardless of the major consequences to the other 49 states as a result. They don’t ever say that per se, but the results of what those two rulings have done are just that. Period.

Those trying to challenge Pennsylvania’s obviously corrupt and rigged election system have been told that they cannot challenge the laws ahead of the election, because there is not yet a victim. They’ve been told that fellow Americans impacted by Pennsylvania’s corrupt system cannot challenge, because of standing. Now they’ve been told that they cannot challenge after the election, because it’s after the election - and therefore moot.

Ortega on line one, asking the Democrats just how do they get away with this?

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and Justice Kavanaugh are true disappointments. Senator Feinstein needn't have worried about the dogma living loudly in Barrett. As for Roberts, I gave up on him years ago. Thomas seems the only one with any guts, and good for him. Perhaps it was his hard scrabble youth that gave him the courage to speak.  But as Wright writes:

In other words, we are punting the ball again. But let’s make no mistake -- this is “not doing nothing” with all respect to Justice Thomas. This is proactive, and it absolutely legalizes institutional voter fraud and neuters state legislatures in lieu of state courts. Lawyers gonna lawyer, I reckon.

The only other quibble I have regarding Justice Thomas’s statement is that actually no, we don’t expect more of our courts any more. This is exactly what we have come to expect. We saw Brett Kavanaugh emasculated in his hearing process, and clearly he hasn’t had enough testosterone replacement shots yet, and Amy Coney Barrett, the mom, seems worried about her kiddies at school. Cancel Culture 1, Constitution 0. Voters be damned.

At least we know where we stand. We can not count on the Court to protect our rights to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, of indeed any of our First Amendment rights. Nor can we count on the Court to defend our Second Amendment rights It is finally up to us, we the people.

Our Supreme Court is now no more an agent of a free people than similar courts are in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua. Our nation is becoming ungovernable, because there is no reason for a thinking person to have any respect for our institutions like the FBI, The Justice Department, or our courts on any level. We are facing dark days indeed.

China's Achille's Heal

 Something to think about as tensions build between China and the U. S.  Our vulnerability is that everything seems to be made in China today, whereas in World War II, we were the dominant industrial country.  Yet, China has a vulnerability as well.  They are not self sufficient in food.  You can read about it  here.

The Childishness of Cancel Culture

 Rob Jenkins is a college instructor who apparently still retains a bit of common sense.  He has written a piece at Townhall.com entitled Dear Students: You Have No Right Not to be Offended. Of course, what these students do not realize is that the same cancel culture they seem to revel in can be turned on them by a change in the political winds. But if self preservation doesn't convince them, then what about intellectual integrity?

The latest insanity from the Left (or one of the latest insanities, at least; they seem to compound daily) is that a group of Harvard students and faculty are demanding the university rescind degrees awarded to Ted Cruz, Kayleigh McEnany, and other conservatives and “Trump allies.” Why? Because said students and faculty members disagree with them about politics. Because they find their views to be “offensive.”

Where in the world did people get the notion that they can cancel others just because they offend them? Are the would-be cancelers oblivious to the fact that the Constitution expressly protects freedom of speech while offering not one word about freedom from offense?

Jenkins then lets his readers in on a speech he gives at the beginning of each semester in which he explains that students may be offended at some point in his class. His speech is a nice way of saying "Tough luck. Grow up."

“There’s a lot of talk these days about 'hate speech' and other things people say that are “offensive.” So before we go any further, I need you to understand that 'hate speech' s not an actual thing, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed—including very recently in Matal v. Tam (2016).

He also points out that being offended is a choice. You choose to be offended, someone doesn't "make" you to be offended. It is the same with resentments. You take them, they are not given to you. The fact is that you can only control yourself; you can not control others. Oh, and attempts to do so do not turn out well.

“More importantly, in the context of a college course, you should understand that being offended is an emotional response, not an intellectual one. The appropriate intellectual response to offensive speech, whether objectively wrong or merely subjectively distasteful, is to formulate a cogent rebuttal.

...snip...

Unfortunately, as a society, we seem to have gotten the idea that the answer to offensive speech is to shut down or cancel the speaker. But that never works, long-term, as the history of oppressive regimes clearly shows. That’s especially true in the United States, where many of us have grown accustomed to speaking our minds and view efforts to silence us as a personal challenge.

Please go read the whole article, and also read the embedded article as well. Understand that the cancel culture is childish, churlish, and in the end doesn't really work. It instead provokes a reaction, not always a pleasant one. In order to become an adult, people must grow out of the cancel culture and embrace freedom of speech. The answer to offensive speech is more speech that explains why it is offensive. It is the only way to have intellectual integrity.

Will The Real God Please Stand Up?

 At the American Thinker today, Denise McAllister has an interesting article entitled The Case for True Religion and Revolutionary Repentance. In the article she points out that some 87% of us claim to believe in God, yet the question really is what god to people believe in. McAllister believes that we are in an age of unprecedented idolatry, and that much of what people claim is God is really themselves. My pastor would agree.

Despite Levin's opening claim, we are not living in an era of unprecedented doubt. We are living in an era of unprecedented idolatry. We, as a culture, are looking for meaning in ourselves and in truth defined by our own moral standards and feelings. We are seeking understanding of who we are and our place in the world — not in our Creator, but in group dynamics and social movements that feed on self-worship. Our belief, our confidence, is in ourselves, especially as we organize within groups that prop up our own doctrines of self. Of human power and self-will, there is no doubt.

The clay has told the Artist that it is perfectly capable of molding itself. We have rejected God's objective truth, God's providential hand in human history, God's authority in culture, God's standards of morality, God's design of human identity, and God's purpose for institutions. This rejection perverts everything in society, from the individual to the family to institutions, which are "durable" only when they are built on a solid foundation. That foundation has now been bulldozed and replaced with the shifting sands of postmodernity. Subjectivism has replaced objective truth. This is the worldview of our age. It is the abolition of man.

If most people understood, really understood the God of Creation, who made each of us, and loved us before we were born, we would repent each and every day for those things we inevitably do, and for those things we do not do, that might offend him. But at the same time we would understand that our sacrifices, whatever they be, have no effect. God does not want them. Why, you may ask?  Because all is His to begin with.  Instead, what God wants is our love for Him, and our love for each other. We keep trying to do something, to try to "earn" our way into heaven. But we can not.

Fortunately, God has already done everything that needs to be done for us.  We just need to acknowledge that fact, and appreciate it.

Please go read the whole article, because McAllister is onto something here.

Biden Should Follow His Catholic Faith

 In my continuing focus on the culture, the Epoch Times reports that a Catholic Archbishop has called on Biden to stop defining himself as a devot Cahtolic over his pro abortion stance.

President Joe Biden needs to acknowledge that his support for abortion contradicts his Catholic faith, Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumannn said in a recent interview.

The archbishop, who serves as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, discussed Biden’s Catholic faith during a February interview with the Catholic World Report.

Media outlets and reporters frequently describe Biden as a devout Catholic, though Biden has drawn criticism for supporting and advocating for policies that the Catholic Church explicitly opposes. Naumann suggested that Biden himself should take a more “honest” approach to his faith.

The practice of abortion in its various forms was often practiced in the ancient world. Usually, unwanted babies were left exposed to die. They were also killed in ceremonies of fertility rites. Indeed, it is often thought that the story of Abraham obediently preparing to sacrifice his only son Isaac, then at the last minute being ordered by the Angel not to do it, and instead substituting a ram was to teach the Israelite people not to sacrifice their own children. In any case, the practice would continue in other parts of the world until Christ came into the world.

Christians recognized the killing of babies as murder, and as they gained in numbers, slowly changed the laws throughout the Christian world.  The Supreme Court in their ruling in Roe v. Wade made a terrible mistake, and set the abortion debate back many centuries.

I recognize that there will inevitably be young women and girls who get pregnant.  It is the way of the world.  But there are more compassionate ways to deal with the pregnancy than to murder the unborn child.  Just as we now have safe houses for battered women, surely we could again have safe houses for unwed mothers.  Of course, many women today who seek an abortion are drug addicted, and probably have been ensnared by the sex trades.  This complicates the situation, but calls for even greater compassion.  Remember that every life is unique and has worth.

The Center of Cultural Rot Is The Left

I start this series of posts on the nature and origin of the Left because while the Left is not the real problem, it must be understood that most of the cultural rot emanates from the Left.  I believe that the reason for it is because the United States as founded* stands as a rebuke to the Left.  Understand that while the United States has never lived up to its founding, the aspirational nature of the Constitution and the self correcting nature of its framework are the opposite of any other governing system ever devised.  We are not now following the Constitution;  if we did, we would not be in our current dire straits.

The origin of the political Left and by extension, the political right was during the French Revolution. In 1789, as the assembly seeking to write a constitution met:

One of the main issues the assembly debated was how much power the king should have, says David A. Bell, a professor of early modern France at Princeton University. Would he have the right to an absolute veto? As the debate continued, those who thought the king should have an absolute veto sat on the right of the president of the assembly, and those who thought he should not — the more radical view — sat on the left of the president of the assembly. In other words, those who wanted to hew closer to tradition were on the right, and those who wanted more change were on the left.

The writers of the article above are perhaps a little to kind to the Left. The people on the Left were the radicals. The people on the right in France were monarchists, which is no better, unfortunately. But as an aside, the "right" in Europe tends to be monarchist. In the United States, the right is not monarchist. The right in the United States is trying to conserve the Constitution as a framework for the Federal government. I would argue that those in favor of Constitutional governance are actually the middle, because they recognize the need for some government, but insist that government be limited to its role of protecting peoples' God given rights.

The problem with the French Revolution is that it wasn't based in the principles that undergirded the American revolution.  The French revolution was many things, but at heart it was about revenge for all the terrible things the monarchy had visited on the French people.  Unfortunately, the monarchy and the aristocracy viewed the French people rather as Marx did, as masses, interchangeable parts in a machine that served them.  The French revolution devolved into the Rein of Terror, with blood literally flowing in the streets.  But this is how most revolutions go.  A monarchy or dictatorship is overthrown, only to install another monarchy or dictatorship.  Nothing really changes except the people in charge.
 

Fast forward to 1848 and Karl Marx and Frederick Engels published the Communist Manifesto. Marx was the quintessential radical living figuratively in his parents basement, and never accomplishing anything of value. Engles was the son of a rich self made man who probably felt he didn't deserve his station in life.  Remind you of anyone (cough...60s radicals?...cough?)

The philosophy itself was a spiritually desiccated idea that the center of life is economics. As befitting a philosophy, he introduces a bunch of new terms which people seem to have taken seriously. For instance, the way that business has been conducted since time immemorial suddenly became "capitalism." Capital and capitalism became the enemy. I have noted before that the Left always needs an enemy.   And of course the best enemies are those who can't fight back.

The people operating the capital enterprises were termed the "bourgeoisie."  Really they were just middle class entrepreneurs who gave jobs and a living to others.  Of course, then the heroes of the story became the "proletariat." The proletariat were the people who were often exploited by the bourgeoisie. The proles of course were not individuals, with individual dreams, loves, hopes for their children. No, these were viewed as the "masses" and were thought of as having the identical interests, indeed as widgets in a machine.  That is why I say Marxism is a desiccated philosophy devoid of anything contributing to life.  People are individuals, and are properly seen as such.  What Marxism was, and is, is a way to power.

Lenin recognized the ideas in Marx as a way to power, and in 1917, as the Russian monarchy was distracted by World War I, took advantage of the unrest in the country, and the Bolshevik revolution, to initiated the Russian revolution and put himself in power  Like the French revolution, the Russian revolution involved numerous purges, and these continued under Stalin.  You can read a sanitized version of mass killings here. The Russians showed the way for every tin horn dictator since. Whether it was Mao in China, or Castro in Cuba, or Pol Pot in Cambodia, or Chavez in Venezuela.  And of course one must also acknowledge  Mussolini in Italy or Hitler in Germany because these regimes were socialist.  When these regimes are referred to as "right" we are using the Lefts preferred terminology.  They can only be considered right in respect to Communist regimes.  

I have noted elsewhere that the Left always needs enemies.  Usually, these enemies are internal, because it is much easier to go after relatively unarmed and unorganized civilians than to take on another county's army. How brave of them. In the Soviet Union, the enemies varied.  In one case, the Holomor, Stalin starved to death 3.9 million people in an effort to collectivize farms in Ukraine. In Nazi Germany, the enemies included Communists and of course the Jews.  Right now, the enemies include "white supremacist," "domestic terrorists," and Trump supporters.  Of course, the so called "white supremacist" are a vanishingly small number.  Most domestic terrorists are actually on the Left, but these people get a pass.  And of course the "Trump supporters" including a large number of gun owners, who are being targeted not because they have committed any crime but for perceived political opposition to the regime.  But know this: if you are not targeted now, you can be at any time the Left needs to find new enemies.

With the possible exception of Mussolini, the Left universally goes after religions.  In the Soviet Union, the New Soviet Man was Atheist.  Except, of course, that what the Soviet regime actually wanted was for the masses to worship the State.  You can read about Soviet "militant atheism" and the effects here:

In elementary schools, children were taught to denounce parents who held onto their Faith. After 1964, university students were required to take a course titled “Fundamentals of Scientific Atheism,” although few students were genuinely interested in it. Throughout the existence of the Soviet Union, several antireligious campaigns were carried out in order to eliminate religion from the public square. One of the worst of these was the antireligious campaign carried out under Nikita Khrushchev, who revoked the parental right to instruct children in the Faith.

...snip...

An organization called the League of Militant Atheists, which boasted a membership of 5.6 million persons in 1932, sent out atheist missionaries to convert Soviet citizens located in rural parts of the country. Atheistic literature numbering a total of 800 million pages was distributed throughout the USSR. To those who did not warmly receive its message, the League of Militant Atheists resorted to implementing a bloody approach on these innocent believers, by imprisoning clergy and laity or placing them before firing squads. Sister Anna Abrikosova, foundress of the Religious Sisters of the Third Order of St. Dominic, was arrested by the OGPU (Obyedinyonnoye Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravleniye, commonly referred to as the Joint State Political Directorate, however, the predecessor of the NKVD and the KGB), spent several years in prison, and toiled in a labor camp for eight years before perishing on July 23, 1936. She is now recognized as a Servant of God by the Catholic Church.

The Chinese are currently committing genocide on Uyghurs because of the Muslim faith, and the Falun Gong. The Falun Gong also called the Falun Dafa doesn't seem to threaten the CCP in any way, yet the Chinese Communist Party must go after them because the State must always take center stage in everyone's hearts.

Finally, one must realize that the Left lies as a matter of course. They lie about everything all the time. They lie like a fish swims, like an eagle flies. It is what they do. And they do it so well. The lies the Soviets told their own citizens are legion. Hitlers propaganda minister Joseph Goebbles promoted the idea of the "Big Lie," a lie told so often and by so many people that it literaly became the "truth" that most people believed. At The Federalist today there is a good article on this very topic by Jesse Kelly entitled The First Step Towards Righting America Is Refusing To Believe the Left About Anything. The Left lies by creating "narratives," story lines that they then rigidly follow, and ignore any evidence that contradicts the narrative:

This is also why it is so critical to ensure the general public gets an accurate narrative. Otherwise, if the base set of publicly believed facts is wrong, every step after that will also be incorrect. It’s like getting swallowed up by an avalanche and digging ferociously in the wrong direction.

The weakness and stupidity of America’s right has allowed false narratives to cement in the minds of the public. It’s killing our freedoms. It’s killing our jobs. It’s killing our families. It’s killing our schools. It’s killing our nation.

* As founded means including all amendments. The Constitution includes twenty-seven amendments, proving that while it is difficult to amend it, it is not impossible. One of these amendments, for instance, made it illegal to possess a person as a chattel slave. The Left yaks on and on about how the 3/5 provision in Article 1 section 2 meant that individual blacks were considered only 3/5 of a person.  This interpretation misses the point.  The  provision in the original Constitution was a compromise to reduce the power of slave owning states so that slavery could eventually be abolished. That it too a civil war is appalling, but perhaps necessary. God works in mysterious ways.

God Has Called the Loan

 Yesterday, Katherine Limbaugh came on at 12:07 and explained that her husband, Rush Limbaugh had passed that morning.  Ever since he had announced his diagnosis of cancer, I had been praying for him.  But clearly, he would eventually lose the battle, as we all must.  Rush, and I use his name familiarly because, even though he did know me, I can not help but feel a connection through the radio, always referred to his "talent on loan from God."  Well, God has called the loan.

I began listening to Rush during the 2000 campaign between George W. Bush and Al Gore (who invented the internet.)  Rush was one year older than I was, but unlike me, Rush was always a rock ribbed conservative.  Being surrounded by liberals and leftists, I thought what I believed was an outlier.  Rush confirmed that what I believed was not an outlier, but actually represent the beliefs of most of the people.

Rush was not one to spout principles, but he started me searching for the actual principles that undergird conservative beliefs.  Jonah Goldberg has stated that conservatism has no principles, but he is wrong.  The principles of conservatism can be found in the Bible, in Christianity, and in reality.  Rush also called himself the Mayor of Realville.  That sense that what is true can be found in these principles confirmed me in the belief that I must always speak what I believe to be true, and not use the language of the left.

Rush was actually sincere in his beliefs, but he understood that the Left was duplicitous.  And the Left was duplicitous because the Left understands that there ideas, if spoken sincerely, would not be popular.  This understanding of the Left has made me understand that these people have given in to evil.  And evil must be confronted.  At the same time, one can not be consumed by it, lest one becomes evil as well.  This may be Rush's ultimate lesson:  to be a happy warrior for God.

Culture drives Beliefs drives Actions

I have been noodling around in the back of my mind since the November 3 election exactly what do we do.  By we, I mean conservatives who are watching our country disappear before our eyes. I have listen to Glenn Beck, and of course to Rush Limbaugh.  Of course, I have also listened to Tucker Carlson, as well as read many articles on a number of websites.  Out of all of it, I have determined that what we are witnessing is the result of a destruction of the culture.  I call this the anticulture.  The anticulture is the opposite of our traditional culture.  The anticulture is in fact a cancer on the culture of the United States.  

Like a cancer, the anticulture has been with us since our founding.  The name for it, the Left, came about from the French Revolution.  Also like a founding, it has grown in the United States for perhaps 120 years until now it occupies the heights of the cultural spaces, including the arts, academia, the media and social media, and of course, government.

Mrs. PolyKahr and I were watching a program on the Unabomber the other day.  At one point one of the narrators made in interesting observation.  Was Ted Kazynski crazy?  The answer is of course that no, he wasn't.  What accounted for what seemed like crazy behavior can be explained by the things Kazynski believed.  In Kazyski's case, he believed that technology, the tool or instrumentality, is evil, and therefore he went around sending elaborate letter bombs to people who were advancing technology.  But, of course, the seeming "crazy" part is that technology itself is neutral, neither good nor evil.  What makes it so is the intent of the user of that technology.

In Europe, Muslims have immigrated.  Women in Muslim countrieds walk around in black sacks covering their bodies from head to toe.  the can not travel about unless escorted by a male relative.  Indeed, women are treated as chattel, objects to be used.  When they see European women in much skimpier clothing, and walking about without escorts, they assume these women are of loose morals, and of course their Koran tells them it is their right to rape these women.  These behaviors are based on their beliefs.

And beliefs are driven by culture.

I think we need to have a cultural revival.  The traditional culture of the United States was first and foremost based on Christianity.  The Declaration of Independence expressed a belief in Providence, another word for God, and further a belief that our rights are granted not by government, but by God:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

Up until very recently, no one disputed these ideas. Nor did anyone dispute John Adams who said "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."  But now the Left has spawned a culture that is diametrically opposed to traditional culture. 

As I said, beliefs are driven by culture.  Further, actions are driven by beliefs.  So, in order to change the actions of people, we need at root to change the culture.  I intend then to have a series of posts on cultural issues, but we need to work hard to change the culture.  One group that is doing this is Turning Point USA . It deserves your support, but there are a thousand things other we can be doing. Each of them will probably not change the world, but if we can amass enough of these things, we can collectively change the culture.

The first thing I intend to take on is the origin and spread of the Left.  But I also plan to have pieces on abortion, on education, on critical race theory, guns, art and the arts, and other issues of cultural interest.  I intend these posts as much for my own clarification as for education for young people.  In other words, these posts will be a sort of "thinking out loud."  One other thing, though, is that since they will not be typically off the cuff, my output will necessarily be less than of late.

Stay tuned.

31 Reasons To Not Take the Vaccine

 Over at a blog, The Gates Of Vienna, there is a post written by an Israeli Rabbi named Chananya Weismann entitled 31 Reasons Why I Won't Take the Vaccine. His number 1 reason is because the thing called a "vaccine" isn't really a vaccine. The technology behind the vaccine is experimental, and no one actually knows the long term effects on the people taking the vaccine. Weismann often repeats himself, so that if he was more concise, he could probably cut his reasons down to 10, or, given this is an Israeli Rabbi, 12. Go read his entire post. And consider that given the 99.7% recovery rate of this virus, and the fact that the "authorities" are telling us that, no, you can not go back to normal, like not wearing a mask, is there really a reason why you should take the vaccine? Frankly, I am happy to let other be the guinea pigs in this world wide experiment.

And then there is this:

11. Three facts that must be put together:

Bill Gates is touting these vaccines as essential to the survival of the human race.

Bill Gates believes the world has too many people and needs to be “depopulated”.

Bill Gates, perhaps the richest man in the world, has also not been injected. No rush.

Uh, no. I’ll pass on any medical treatments he wants me to take.

Dark Days Ahead

Vince Coyner as an article that in many ways matches my own experiences of the last decade or so entitled Book Burning, Name Calling, and the Democrats Praetorian Guard over at the American Thinker:

When Barack Obama ran in 2008, I was virulently opposed to his candidacy. I wasn’t a huge McCain fan, but at least I knew he had America’s best interests at heart, something I never felt about Obama. Four years later I had issues with Romney, but for similar reasons, I voted for him.

Once Obama was in office, I disagreed with almost everything he did for eight years, whether Obamacare, DACA, GM, DADT, or virtually everything race-related. I disagreed with his trading for Bowie Bergdahl, his pardon of Chelsea Manning, and his commutation of the sentence of FLAN terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera. I disagreed with his signing the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran deal, and his servile posture towards China. I disagreed with his policies on housing, on education, and on energy. Essentially, there was nothing I agreed with Barack Obama on. He could have been Chinese or Italian or Jewish or Klingon…I didn’t care. I thought everything he did was simply wrong.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Obama’s inauguration: Apparently, I magically transformed into a racist. Who knew?

I remember a conversation in which I expressed disagreement with the Obamacare bill, and was called a racists. At that point, I said I disagreed because Obama was a Marxist and was pushing a Communist agenda. My opponent then said something to the effect that he supported Obama, did that make him a Communist? I shut him up by saying that if the shoe fit... It's understandable that when the person pushing these unpopular ideas is half black, that they would call average Americans racists to avoid arguing the merits. Having been told that they deserve a share in the wealth created by others, they have nothing else to argue.

But the average American isn't racist, which is why Democrats keep defining racism down. Now they have something called "systemic racism" that is so subtle, that you can't even see it, but trust the Dems, it's there. Except, of course, like the Emperors New Clothes, it isn't there.  In a similar fashion, they have defined "terrorist" down as well.  Terrorism used to require...you know...terror as a means of changing politics.  But now you don't have to do anything terroristic to be a terrorist.  You just need to be a Trump supporter.

From “The police acted stupidly,” to Kaepernick, to Ferguson, America took a giant step backward in race relations during the presidency of Barack Obama. Then came Donald Trump, a guy with no filter, who often insulted delicate snowflakes with language more appropriate for a factory floor than the UN stage. But more than his words, it was his ideas that were abhorrent to Democrats and establishment Republicans: Get government out of people’s lives. Reduce government power! Allow citizens to be free and keep more of their money. Stop endless wars. Those words are Kryptonite to career government apparatchiks, contractors, and the universe of sycophantic lobbyist and media pilot fish who feast on their scraps.

And so, today, we find that Democrats, having fraudulently eliminated the single biggest threat to the leviathan of government power in a century, have decided to eliminate all potential to resurrect any such threats. Not only are leftists seeking to bar Trump from ever running again, but they’re also seeking to demonize and ostracize his supporters.

Then there is the military. The military has heretofore been scrupulously nonpartisan. Yes, individuals in the military may have their private views. But now President Asterisk has ordered the military to "stand down" to confront and get rid of "extremists" in the ranks.

And based on the fiction of widespread “white supremacism,” the Biden administration is “standing down” the American military so commanders can address “extremism” in their ranks. Essentially one political party is seeking to eliminate from within military ranks all those who support that party’s political opponents – despite soldiers taking an oath to uphold the Constitution, not a man or party. In this way, should Democrats call on the military to support its purges, they’ll face less resistance from soldiers who understand the Posse Comitatus Act and who might be averse to raising their weapons against law-abiding American citizens.

The Democrats are using the fiction of Trump supporters being terrorists to mold the military into a Praetorian Guard for use against Americans when and if necessary. Anyone familiar with the Roman Empire understands why that might not be conducive to a free society.

Quite frankly, the Democrats seem hell bent on, even drunk on power. Such greed for power, however, will eventually turn these people on each other. Oh, right now they have an "enemy" to face, but someday that "enemy" will be effectively defeated. The what?

Please go read the highlighted article.  In the meantime however, we face dark days ahead.

Gun Grabbers Have No Respect for the Constitution

 Allen West has a good article today entitled Attacks on Second Amendment Trigger Tyranny. I have to admit that never in my lifetime have I seen so many bills proposing the craziest gun grabs of which one can think. None of these proposed gun control bills would stop any crime. In fact, all of these bills would simply burden the law abiding while allowing the criminal to go about armed with none of the burdens faced by the law abiding. And, of course, once some of these proposals become law, history shows that the government sooner or later will begin confiscating the guns.

The election swept in a legion of Second Amendment foes. Americans can expect them to take James Madison’s statement that disarming the people is “the best and most effective way to enslave them” as less of a warning and more of a directive.

During the campaign, Joe Biden was asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper if a Biden administration would mean “they are going to come for my guns,” and Biden responded, “Bingo.”

...snip...

The freedom to possess firearms will be attacked by the feds and the states through legislation, taxation, punitive fees, red flag laws, and pressure on banks and credit card companies. The restrictions will be aimed, as they always are, at law-abiding citizens and not the criminals responsible for gun violence.

You will want to read the entire article. As West says, the gun grabbers seem not to be too fussy about respecting the Constitution.

The Left Always Has To Have Enemies

 Yesterday, Mrs. PolyKahr and I were watching a new program, which is a remake of an old series that was popular, and at some point they script writers had two people who see themselves first and foremost as representatives of their respective races complaining about how bad they have it.  Since Mrs. PolyKahr had not seen any left wing messaging in entertainment, I paused the show to state "That, right there, is identity politics inserted into the script for this show. These people should be proud as Americans, but instead they feed the line that the system is rigged against them."

There followed a heated debate in which I was accused of being "privileged" and not understanding how hard it is for minorities. But there have been several other debates, one of which was whether or not "white supremacy" is wide spread. She believes they are around every corner, while I contend that I simply don't know any.  But the point is that emphasizing minority status, and making as many minority groups as possible, each with its own grievances against the others, is a way claim that the Left are the people to seek revenge on these peoples' perceived oppressors.

Today, at the American Thinker is a piece that discusses some of the talking points that the Mrs. and I debated last night. The article, by Chris Boland, is entitled White Supremacy and the Dearth of Ideas. Here is what I maybe should have said to the Mrs:

My wife was watching a TV program that caught my attention as I was walking through the room. It was an episode of Madame Secretary in which one of the protagonists is embedded in a White Supremacist organization to disrupt a pending attack. I commented that the series was winding down and would likely be canceled soon.

She asked me what I meant by that and I explained my theory of Hollywood and White Supremacy; namely, that when the writers ran out of all possible woke storylines, they resort to a White Supremacy thread to stave off cancellation.

I say I have never met a "white supremacist" and only one or two actual racists. But, if truth be told, these unsavory characters are not Constitutional conservatives. Indeed, they are yet more collectivists, which places them on the Left of the political spectrum. Such people are trying to do what the Left itself is attempting to do, divide Americans into smaller groups, setting forth grievances for each group, and then claiming that they are the ones to seek revenge for these grievances.

There may indeed be White Supremacists, White Nationalists, Christian Identitarians, or other unsavory groups that progressive minds associate with the political right, but in my two decades of living in Hollywood, I never met any. I met Russian gangsters, Armenian gangsters, hookers and pimps of all stripes, MS13 gangsters, White Fence, independent criminals, and various other miscreants, but never the Central Casting Racist depicted in television or the movies.

Working on a tuna boat, or in an oil field, or on a construction site, I have never met the feared Neo-Nazi. Even working for eight years in the steel town of Fontana, California, the birthplace of the Hells Angels, I never met a White Supremacist. I have met many racists over the years, some black, some brown, some white, but I have never met any racist I would elevate to the level of “supremacist.”

The people they are really talking about are not actual "white supremacists" or Neo Nazis. They don't exist in great enough numbers to account for the outrage generated in the media and by bloviating politicians. No, what they are really talking about is you and me. If you are a conservative, or voted for Trump, you are now a white supremacist racists. Doesn't matter that you might be black, or from South and Central America, or Asian. You are the one in the cross hairs.

Oh, and when the New York Times seriously proposes that the Asterisk Administration should appoint a "reality czar". while others propose "Truth and Reconciliation Commissions" and re-education camps, things that Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and China have done, is it any wonder that some may feel targeted? But then, they are right to concerned, for the Left always needs enemies to flourish, even if they have to make them up.

The Development of the Model of 1911 Pistol

 I am a fan of the Model of 1911 pistols.  While I like 1911s, I don't disparage other pistols such as the Glocks or the HKs, Kel Tecs, or Kahrs.  My experience with the Kahr is that it is a good, and reliable weapon.  All that said, there is something about the design of the 1911 pistol, and its role in history that is attractive to me.  Anyway, while looking for something else on the interwebs, I found an interesting video on the development of the 1911 pistol. Not much about John Moses Browning (may he rest in peace), but some interesting Colt history. Go watch for a treat.

Some people believe that JMB came up with the 1911 through sheer genius.  I will admit that he was a brilliant designer, but as this video shows, there were a lot of automatic pistols and rifles in the works.  The Mauser broomhandle pistol was the first successful semiautomatic pistol that I am aware of (some may argue that Hugo Borchardt C93 was first). It appeared in 1896, and continued production through 1937.  It saw combat in a number of conflicts.  Churchill famously carried it during the Boer War.  It was, however, an unwieldy gun.  The genius of Browning, in my opinion, was to make the 1911 pistol safe, easy to take down without tools, and rugged enough to survive in actual combat in the field.  It conceals rather well for its size, and with modern manufacturing methods and materials, it still serves today.

Question everything

Is it too much to call the current state of affairs a police state?  It is certainly a proto police state.  In any case, you can read what J. B. Shurk considers a police state at an article in the  American Thinker today entitled American Police State: No Questions Allowed. Shurk points out that simply asking inconvenient questions may be the highest form of patriotism. But I have experienced our new police state before. Mrs. PolyKahr used to shut me up when going through airports and I would ask inconvenient questions of TSA officials, or even of officious people at the DMV. It has become a crime to question those who exercise authority they do not have.  I have long thought that Mrs. PolyKahr did not understand the First Amendment, but maybe she knew it too well.

When does a free state become a police state? Is it when government declares itself "essential" but religious worship "selfish"? Or when making a living becomes a crime? Or when free speech rights are afforded only to those who say "correct" things? Or maybe when tens of millions of Americans find themselves unexpectedly labeled as "domestic terrorists" by the military-media complex overnight?

Perhaps the telltale sign is this: simply asking why becomes subversive. Questions become bigger threats than foreign missiles. Words are regarded as weapons legally possessed only by those in power. For all else, they are rendered contraband.

Please go read Shurk's article, and consider asking more questions. You are not stating facts, mind you, but merely asking questions. Can a question be subversive? Only when powerful people are hiding behind the answers.

Meanwhile, Kurt Schlichter has an acerbic and yet hilarious take on the issue in an article at Townhall.com entitled Stop Calling It an 'Insurrection'. Schilichter notes the difference between actual insurrections, of which he has been an eye witness, and ambling around the Capitol Rotunda taking selfies. If the people who broke (and why do people have to "break into" what is our collective property?) into the Capitol had meant insurrection, many more people would have been killed, more property would have been destroyed. Oh, and as for AOC and her little performance art? Don't quit the day job just yet, it needs a little more work to be convincing.

The idea of an “insurrection” is to delegitimize all resistance to the garbage Establishment’s reign of error, and to play along is to give credence to its lie and to empower its propaganda. You have done nothing wrong by rejecting the Establishment narrative. You have done nothing wrong by protesting what you see as a flawed election and a corrupt ruling class. You have a right to protest anything you want, and you don’t need their permission.

...snip...

Now, I also had the chance to see the wreckage of a real insurrection when I was in Kosovo with the Army after the fighting ended. An insurrection means ruins and mass graves, not some dude in a horn hat wandering around the House as a police officer asks him to chill. Don’t let them define insurrection down to mean “Anything conservatives do.”

Nor was this incident some sort of “attack on Our Democracy where our freedom hung on by a thread.” The drama queenery might play on MSNBCNN, but it just makes the base despise the Republican Party even more – which is hard – when that crap comes from our own people. You are not downplaying what actually happened by characterizing it accurately and without the kind of breathless exaggeration the Democrat demagogues delight in. The Democrats’ cat’s paws spent six months burning down the cities and this overwrought handwringing only draws attention to the discrepancy in elite caring between when the pols were vaguely threatened and when the proles were losing everything.

So, yes, the election was stolen. They have even admitted it. In all probability, the so-called "insurrection" was also a false flag operation planned in advance to hijack the Trump crowd as cover. And the current second impeachment trial, I think Ted Cruz called it: A told by idiots, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing.  Indeed, the real insurrection is happening right now in Congress and the White House, by people who took an oath to defend the Constitution, but are shredding it.

Now to switch topics, I also wanted to highlight the interview with Andrew Klavan over at The Federalist yesterday by Gabe Kaminski. Noting that culture is upstream of politics, before we can fix politics, we first must confront culture. I have noted before the depraved state of culture in our society, but these posts get little traction. I get more when I post about guns and the Second Amendment, but let's be honest here. While we all train with our guns, we are unlikely to be forced to use them. However, a true warrior is also a gentleman (or lady) who can play music, write poetry, knows how to tie a tie, and which fork with which to eat what course of food.  I have also noted that when our politics was strong, our cultural output was glorious as well.  We wrote great novels and plays, we had great and creative music.  Our language became the lingua franca of the world. Cleaning up our culture and making it meaningful are the real issues. And because we can both become more cultured, and participate in politics, we conservatives can also begin to take over the Republican party at the grass roots level. Trump has showed us how, now we need to get to work. 

And question everything.

Thoughts on the Second Amendment

 Why do so many churches advocate for gun control and gun confiscation?  Doesn't the 6th Commandment tells us "thou shall not murder"?  And the answer is of course, that yes, yes it does.  As with everything in these commandments, if it tells you to do something, it is also telling you to NOT do the opposite.  So, since it commands to not murder, it also means that you shall defend not only your own life, but the lives of your neighbor and those under your care.  But, it turns out that in a stunning survey of Christian beliefs taken in 2020, we find that huge numbers of Christians don't believe in the very things that make someone a Christian, including that Jesus was God or that He issued the 10 Commandments!  Lloyd Bailey and Pastor John Bennet discuss these issues at The Armed Lutheran this week.  It's around 45 minutes, though it is also entertaining, so check it out when you have time.

I attended an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for a time, and got a weekly dose of left wing social issues.  That would included the need to gun bans because guns murder people.  Not, of course that the murderers had anything to do with it.  No, the guns caused these people to be used as tools to commit murder.  To me this showed a stunning lack of understanding of Luther's theology.  Surely the pastor had read Luther's Small Catechism, which explains the meaning of each of the Commandments.  After all, he had to teach children using the Small Catechism, right?

I have noted that guns really should not be a partisan issue.  Because human nature is, if left to their own devices, to do the wrong thing, guns are needed by everyone for self defense.  The need for self defense may arise as a result of a mugging, of gang violence, of foreign invasion.  Everyone who bears arms hopes to never be forced to use them.  But the idea is always in the back of one's mind that they day may come.  This was wisdom that the Founders had, that seems to have disappeared today.

The wording of the Second Amendment to the Constitution is pretty clear that one of the reasons for including it in the Bill of Rights was foreign invasion.  The Founders were, rightly in my opinion, concerned about having too large a standing army.  A large standing army is expensive.  Moreover, it must be kept busy doing something, and that something might not be good. Many a military officer has carried out a coup and named himself dictator for life.  Better to have the whole body of men trained to arms.  Of course, those men would need to bring weapons and ammunition when called up at a moments notice.

Which of course, brings us to the notion that "weapons of war do not belong on the streets of America," as has been uttered by many Democrats and probably a few Republicans as well.  This notion is...how do I put this?...pure high grade hogwash.  If we were following the Constitution, we would draft every young man and train him as a soldier, and send him home with the type of firearm with which he trained.  There are a number of texts you can use to understand the philosophy behind the Second Amendment, but a good place to start is The Hertitage Foundations in an article by Bob Barr. It is also a long piece, but deserves your study.

That document argues against what he terms a "needs based" defense of the Second Amendment.  Indeed, he is correct that the right to self defense, out of which the Second Amendment grows, is a God given right, one that no government can grant, therefore one that no government can take away.  Even if the government bans guns, since it has no right to do so, we still have our rights to keep and bear arms.

Gun Control Doesn't Solve the Problems, It Just Makes Them Worse

 Today at Sultan Knish Daniel Greenfield has an article entitled What We Don't Talk About When Talk About Gun Control. It's a long article, but if I were to put it into a nutshell: the people pushing "gun control" are laser focused on the instramentality of gun violence, to the exclusion of the social and moral factors involved. This aspect of the gun control movement is different from every other aspect of the Left, with the possible exception of environmentalism.

Take alcoholism. There’s the object, alcohol. There’s the choice that the individual makes to drink the alcohol. And, finally, there’s the social problems that can be blamed for widespread alcoholism.

The gun control movement operates in the same object-oriented space of the prohibitionist movement. For prohibitionists, the problem was gin. For the gun control movement, it’s all about the guns. Get rid of the gin and the guns, and the underlying problem goes away without having to do anything else.

While the old prohibitionism of sin substances, liquor, drugs, and pornography has been ridiculed and its legal infrastructure dismantled, the obsessive certainty that guns are inherently corrupting holds sway. The lefty media insists that the only solution to gun violence is prohibitionism and more prohibitionism.

Yet the argument for blaming guns is much weaker than the one for blaming drugs or alcohol. Alcohol and drugs are addictive compounds that shape how we think. Guns, unlike alcohol and drugs, aren’t addictive. Nor do they influence behavior. Their relationship to us remains an external one.

Greenfield goes on to note that by focusing on the gun, the Left excludes the question of why people kill others. Guns do not motivate people to kill, and people are infinitely imaginative when it comes to the means of killing, even mass killing. He points out that people have used cars and trucks to kill large numbers of people, as well as bombs. The question of what instrumentality is used is not what is interesting, nor should it occupy our government. If they want to do their jobs, they will instead look at the social and moral factors that cause people kill each other, and fix those things.

The media play a role here too. I don't know why it is that people who supposedly believe in the First Amendment can not see the value in the Second Amendment, but it certainly colors their reporting on gun issues

Most gun violence is still gang violence. Mental illness isn’t killing 5 or 6 people in Chicago, Detroit, or Baltimore over the weekend. The media overlooks regular mass shootings in major cities, while zooming in on unusual mass shootings in suburban communities. That’s because the gun control movement really doesn’t want to talk about the social component of gun violence and organized crime.

Usually, the Left loves root causes. It can trace any individual dysfunction to the problems at the heart of a society. But when it comes to guns, it refuses to look past the physical object, while blaming everyone responsible for the existence of guns, from firearms manufacturers to the NRA. But blaming everyone involved with the existence of an object is not an examination of the root causes of its misuse.

The prohibitionists weren’t dealing with the root cause of alcoholism by busting up gin mills. The latest attacks on firearms manufacturers have just as little to do with the problems they claim to care about.

The fact is that a substantial number of people own at least one firearm. I would peg firearm owners in America at perhaps 100 or so million. These firearm owners own approximately 393 million guns. So, when one lone guy mass kills people at one location somewhere in the United States, remember that 392,999,999 people did not commit any crime at all. And neither did their guns. These facts put the lie to the gun prohibitionist movement. The Founders had it right when the wrote the Second Amendment into Bill of Rights protected by the Constitution. 

The question is not what means do killers use to commit their crimes, but rather what moral and social factors make killing seem reasonable to those committing crime? Legislatures and law enforcement officials should look into these complex questions. But of course, the easier fix is always to prohibit ownership. Unfortunately that doesn't solve the real problem; indeed it makes it worse.  Meanwhile such laws are of the type known as malum prohibitum do not inspire respect for the law.  And in this case, they feel a lot like punishment for exercising a right.

Drills For Older Shooters

If you are an older shooter like me (I am older than dirt, doncha know) you might appreciate these drills for older shooters. I try to do some dry firing every day. But I think I may try some of these as well.

The Left Always Accuses Conservatives of Things It Is Doing

Yesterday I was on the road, working, and listening to the Glenn Beck monologue where he kept quoting a   Time Magazine article about the secret cabal composed of Big Tech, Big Business, Big Labor along with BLM and Antifa to rig the election. Oh, of course they used the term "fortify" instead of "rig." And of course, all this was done in the name of saving "democracy" from the people, the demos. Nonetheless, it is an astonishing article. If you haven't read it, I suggest you do.

So, those of us who have been saying all along that the vote was rigged, who have analyzed the data and have been showing and talking about the anomalies, and the people who have talked about and shown film footage of ballots being stuffed were not conspiracy theorists. They were in fact conspiracy factualists. So, the calls to invested not the rigging of the election, but the people who were talking about it ring hollow, don't they?  This reminds me of the effort, on a smaller scale, to Bork Judge Bork. The subsequent book gloating about it, reveals a Left that has given in to the vile and evil side of human nature.

Today, at the American Thinker Monica Showalter has a post again highlighting the Time magazine article entitled Hubris: Elites brazenly gloat they rigged election...and that's good news for us. She goes on to discuss the article in greater detail.

"There was a conspiracy"? "Not rigging, but fortifying? Changed the rules? Did a campaign against misinformation, meaning, suppressed the New York Post story about Hunter Biden? “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated”? 

This is some creepy-ass gloating from leftists who have obviously won and would like us to know.

That's going to be their downfall, but right now, they don't know.

Ball's idea, of course, is to claim that big corporate, big tech and the rest of the co-conspirators who brought us doddering puppet Joe Biden were actually heroes. They're like suddenly beloved hedge funds of GameStop fame. They saved "democracy" from the demos, but claim they "saved" us from President Trump. Because, after all, us peons can't help ourselves, we just keep voting for Trump. Being big-hearted and all, they saved us from ourselves. Which kind of sums up what Ball's story is about.

...snip...

Bad as that sounds, it's good news, too. It's intelligence. It's someone opening up their secret files like WikiLeaks used to do to John Podesta to give us their battle plans. The spin is (edited), but the truth is out. And with that in mind, we now know we're not conspiracy theorists, we now know we have a gloating enemy convinced their victory is total. It's as if we now have their game plan and now know what to look for, come 2022, to counter it. Knowledge after all, is power. But they're too dumb to know this. Even Antifa knows enough to keep these kinds of secret battle plans, memberships, victories and techniques out of the news, denying everything, convincing us they're just "an idea" but not these guys. That's what's good news for us. They've come out of the woodwork to do a victory dance. But we now know who the opponent is and are no longer battling an invisible enemy.

Now that they have come out and we can see the full panoply of powerful groups that made up the conspiracy to stymie the will of the American people, we can take small actions. For example, when it make sense, get out of that Verizon phone contract where they are giving money to Planned Parenthood and get Patriot Mobile instead. Patriot Mobile doesn't use your money against you. Similarly, disengage from facebook. Why allow yourself to be used by Leftists? Don't you have better things to be doing, like calling and talking to those you "friended" on facebook on you Patriot Mobile phone. Why buy your stuff from Wal er Chinamart? The less we are on facebook, the less money facebook is making. And believe me, we want to starve it to death. We also need to begin cleaning up the Republican party. Get involved in your local party decisions.

Oh, and once again the Left has shown us that it always accuses us of what it is doing.  

NY Times Proposes Ministry of Truth

Orwell is rolling over in his grave.

 If you are of an age when history was taught using actual true events, both the beautiful and the ugly, and when literature in this country included the great works of English writings, we all had to read George Orwell's book 1984 .  1984 was intended to be a cautionary tale. However, it seems to have become a how-to manual for the Left. If you haven't read it, I urge you to obtain a copy while you can, before Farenheit 451 comes to life as well.

The reason I am remembering 1984 because of an article at Zero Hedge entitled NY Times Calls for Biden to Appoint "Reality Czar" to Fight "Misinformation." Note that this comes from the people who believe that a man can become a woman by a simple delaration. Indeed, that someone can change his or her sex at all. These are the people who believe that the riots this past summer were "mostly peaceful" even though they resulted in destruction in the billions of dollars, while the January 6 riots were more horrific than even 9/11. These are the people who believe that inanimate objects actually cause crime rather than the people committing the crime. And they act on these beliefs by trying to get rid of guns. These people clearly do not live in the real world so any discussion by them of "reality" is rich indeed.

Typical of the Left, they want to redefine "reality" to be not what is actual or true, but to be whatever happens to be politically correct today.  "Reality" it seems can change tomorrow, and you better keep up on the latest "reality."  This is exactly what the "Ministry of Truth" used to push on the people of Oceana in 1984 The analogy truly is exact. Doesn't anybody read Orwell anymore?

Mark Robinson Fights Back

Andrea Widburg has made a national story out of something that heretofore had been a local story.  Widburg has the story in a post at the American Thinker in a post entitled North Carolina's Lt. Governor shows how to fight back against a corrupt media. As an aside, I voted for Mark Robinson, and so far it appears to have been the right vote.

As always, I urge you, gentle reader, to go to Widburg's hyperlinked article, read the article, and listen to the two videos as well. These videos will give you a sense of the man. He is fearless, and knows true history. I was impressed that he brought out that it wasn't the Republican's who had formed, supported, and protected the KKK. Indeed, Republicans in the post bellum South were targets of the KKK as were blacks and Catholics.  The cartoon published by WRAL.com was both offensive and ignorant, and dare I say it, racist. The fact that a teacher. who should know better, drew this cartoon makes one wonder what kind of garbage he is teaching.

One other things to point out here:  Mark Robinson is North Carolina's first black person elected to the Lt. Governor's office. Liberals and the Left are always going on about the first this or that so called "oppressed" minorities. I certainly read a biography of aviator Amelia Earhart as a young teen and I was impressed. I read a number of biographies, including one of George Washington Carver (invented peanut butter, but was more impressive than that), and Benjamin Franklin. But the thing that impressed me then, as now, is not that they each represented different races, but that they performed feats in their various fields that are very much human.  The fact that they were a "first" is not the part that should impress, in other words.

I voted for Mark Robinson because he seems to be someone who will fight for my views and my rights. I did not know about supposed anti Jewish prejudice, and I hope if he has such, that his views have modified. As a Christian, I very much look at the Jews as a pioneering people, bringing the word of the Living God into the world and preserving it for all mankind.

Covid Vaccines

H. P. Smith at the American Thinker today reports on a white paper published by America's Frontline Doctors on COVID Vaccines They note that the new vaccines us a technology called messanger RNA, which has not been approved for any disease. As such, they are experimental vaccines for exigent purposes.

A few key highlights from the paper: First, all three vaccine candidates -- from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna -- are still experimental and investigational. Pfizer, in its own executive summary to the FDA on December 10, 2020 calls it “...an investigational Covid-19 vaccine.”

The experimental vaccines from both Pfizer and Moderna utilize mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) which instructs the body’s cells on manufacturing proteins. It is technology that has not “ever been approved for any disease, or even entered final-stage trials until now.” There have been no independently published animal studies on any of the vaccines, and it is not yet known what effects they will have on the elderly, the very young, or women who are pregnant or might become pregnant in the near future. I’d say those are important groups whose safety is critical.

...snip...

The point of the white paper is not to say that people shouldn’t get the shots; it is merely to inform people of the reality of the situation, such as the possibility that the vaccines may cause worse spread of the virus via asymptomatic carriers. Those vaccinated may think it is safe to be around others when it actually isn’t. People should be given all the facts before making a decision for themselves or their families. At this stage, do people getting a shot even know which shot they are getting?

America’s Frontline Doctors are also circulating a petition against the possible future mandating of the vaccine. Rumors have been spreading that there may come a time when employers, schools, airlines, and even concert venues may require proof of vaccination, which would be illegal on many levels, not the least of which is the access by third parties to people’s private medical data. What happened to “my body, my choice?”

I have never been an early adopter of any new technology.  But even so, I have to wonder whether a virus that has a survival rate of 99.7% or higher really needs a vaccine?  Indeed, I wonder why the panic over the Wuhan Flu?  After all, there are more deadly killers out there.  Heart disease, cancer kill far more  Could it be that the Wuhan Flu was seized upon to inject a Communist dictatorship into the United States?  Indeed, I wonder if in fact the virus was made specifically for that purpose?  They are just questions, but I would like to answer some of them.

Please go read the whole article, and when you have the time, look at the America's Frontline Doctors website.