Faithful Christians Should Confront Evil Ideas

Have you ever wondered what Jesus was like as a person?  I have.  And I have wondered: would I have like Jesus?  The truth is I am not so sure.  There are many passages that tell us that 'being nice' was not high on the Lord's priorities.

As it turns out, 'being nice' should not be on our priority list either.  Instead, we should be proclaiming the faith and confronting evil.  August Meyrat has an excellent article on this very topic at The Federalist today entitled How Making Christianity A 'Nice People Club' Is Destroying The Church

So what do these two news items have in common besides having to do with the Catholic Church? They are both a result of the same phenomenon that has plagued the church and nearly every other political and cultural institution in the developed world: deadly indifference.

I take this term from the new book from Catholic writer and editor Eric Sammons who explains how the church went from being a large, influential community of practicing Christians to a hollowed-out cultural relic run by out-of-touch Boomers. In short, he argues that church leaders in the 1960s took radical measures to “open up” to different viewpoints and practices. In effect, they became “indifferent” to frequently incompatible systems of thought.

Every faithful Christian should confront ideas that are fundamentally at issue with God's will. Abortion is one such issue. Divorce is another. And yes, we the faithful have committed sins. But through our repentance, and the Grace of God, we are free to now confront these evils.  But we can not do these things if we are being 'nice.'

The Three Percent

 Today there are two intertwining articles at the American Thinker that speak to the Leftist takeover of our nation. The first, written by Eric Utter is entitled Government Is Forgetting That Our Rights Are Unalienable

I hate bullies.

And government is the biggest bully of them all. Always. Everywhere. Since governments were instituted. Kings. Tyrants. Dictators. Banana republics. The Soviet Union. The Third Reich. Chairman Mao. Pol Pot. Idi Amin Dada. Fidel Castro. Hugo Chávez. Etc., etc., etc. And now Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, the Iranian mullahs, the Biden administration, Justin Trudeau, and Scott Morrison.

Two hundred forty-five years ago, Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence proclaimed: "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."

Note that Jefferson invoked Providence in his formulation of our unalienable rights. But the Left wants to push God out of the public square, indeed, they want to get rid of God all together.

Leftists detest God because they are jealous of Him and wish to usurp His power...and be worshiped themselves. They believe they have unalienable rights, but no one else does. Consequently, these are the people who most fervently wish to be in government.

The Founders, now often reviled, believed in every individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Let's make the obvious clear once again: government has no right to lock up — or down — innocent people. It has no right to issue mask or vaccine mandates, tell us our jobs aren't "essential," or prevent us from visiting our families and neighbors. It has no right to ban weddings or funerals of more than a certain number of celebrants or mourners. For that matter, it has no "right" to the fruits of our labor. As it has no right to indoctrinate our children or tell us how to raise them. Period.

The idea of "rights" and who gets to excercise them is important to our Founding. The Constitution does not recognize any "rights" as belonging to government. Rights are only recognized as belonging to the people, and the people as individuals. There are no collective "rights," only individual rights.

Utter's piece is generally pretty pesimistic, noting that the Left has generally taken the cultural high ground. On the other hand, J. B. Shurk has a more optimistic article entitled The Case For Optimism. I would liken his article to the military commander who, when informed that he is surrounded, replied that "We have them where we want them." Shurk lists a whole host of horribles that we have seen afflict this once free nation:

The whole thing is so absurd and so unfathomable to most Americans that it is causing them to lose faith in any future at all. We can't vote our way out if vote counts can't be trusted or if the Uniparty just continues seeding battleground states with tens of millions of illegal aliens who will either be granted immunity and voting privileges in short order or be encouraged to break our voting laws, just as they were encouraged to break our immigration laws. Big Tech and Big Media have strangled information so successfully that the need for samizdat has returned. Big Business and Big Government have worked together to transfer all the wealth of the middle class to the richest one percent of the one percent. Vaccine passports promise a future of completely controlled movement. Central bank digital currencies promise a future of completely controlled commerce. Quarantine camps provide a convenient excuse for housing all the troublesome skeptics immune to groupthink socialism. And Americans who are just itching for a chance to push back against the government's abuses are reminded daily that a few hundred unarmed January 6 Capitol "trespassers," whose technical crimes, if any, paled in comparison to those we've been forced to endure from the hands of the FBI-approved BLM and Antifa Marxists for several years, are still languishing in solitary confinement going on a full year now with laughably bereft American due process, proving that justice in the United States is, indeed, two-tiered.

Now, who could read through all that mess above and be optimistic about what is to come? Easy. Anybody who has been watching the Marxists' long march through history trampling over American freedoms one decade at a time, just hoping the day would arrive when enough people would wake up to the severity of the situation to do something about it.

...snip...

Imagine how many naysayers still existed in the American colonies after the Declaration of Independence was first published in 1776. Troubles with England had already existed for over a decade. War with England would engulf the next decade. The Articles of Confederation didn't last the decade after that. The U.S. Constitution and the whole American experiment in individual liberty almost evaporated when the British took a second bite at the apple during the War of 1812. Although Americans who have resisted the brainwashing of the Marxists rewriting American history are fond of thinking of those five decades of uncertainty as being guided by God and destiny, they were filled with moments that could have stopped America's birth. Only the unwavering fellowship of Americans clear in their purpose kept the nation on course. Only in hindsight did everything seem certain.

We, too, find ourselves in uncertain and explosive times. Enemies of freedom have hardened the battle lines. Protectors of freedom have awakened to what's at stake. And more and more people are seeing the light. If you doubt that we're gaining ground, then just consider how hostile government now is. The appeal of personal liberty — its resplendence, if you will — is far brighter and more attractive than the government would like, which is why, every day, its enforcers work so hard to keep us apart, lost, and in despair. When we find courage through each other, we make their mission impossible.

Keep in mind too, that only 3% of the population was involved in the fight for independence at any given time. Already more than that are among the awakened. Optimism indeed.

A Joyful Warrior For Christ

 Back to Normal.  It sounds so good.  And yet, a majority of people are still huddled in fear.   Too many believe the MSM and their constant Covid panic porn. I know one woman who shows up at local meetings wearing two masks, when the rest of us are mask free.  Of course, whatever makes her feel safe.  But there is no safety in the type of masks she wears. 

Today, at The Federalist Elle Reynolds has a list of things one should do right now to both get back to a normal life, and to help other to realize that they are not going to die if they too take off their masks.  She brings a bright and hopeful message.  Clearly Reynolds has a different life than I do, but I have done a number of things on her list too. You can find the list at 50 Back To Normal Things I Didn't Wait For Permission From The Covid 'Experts' To Do, And Neither Should You.

I have been attending church in person, without a mask for a number of months, and I have both sung and taken communion. Indeed, communion is central to our worship, and I don't understand how we can hold services over Zoom. Of course, I have been going to the grocery store, and indeed other errands in person and without a mask. And I have made a few trips to the gun range. Ammo being scarce, I have not participated as fully in these activities as I would have like, but I go to the range, again without a mask. And of course, I have shaken hands with friends, and sat down and had coffee with friends. But the point is, I didn't wait for permission either. If you wait for permission, you will be waiting forever. The virus and its attendent mandates and restrictions was never about your or my health. What it is about is power for the elites, who frankly don't deserve it.

Please go read Elle Reynolds short article.  She presents the very picture of the joyful warrior for Christ that we all should be.

There But For the Grace of God...

 Andrea Widburg has two stories that show the wisdom of our Founders in placing the Second Amendment into the Bill of Rights.  The story can be found at the American Thinker entitled Two stories that highlight why the Second Amendent matters so much. One story is of the United States, the other is Australia. Australia has gone full on totalitarian. As you will see, the police are beating construction workers in the streets and shooting them with rubber bullets. The construction workers were protesting the requirement to stau locked down, sonce these people must work to put food on the table.

The Founders’ wisdom has been borne out by the history of the 20th and (to date) 21st centuries. Although the drive-by media loves to lead with stories about gun crimes, there are two data points even more significant than the fact that most seem to occur in Democrat-run, heavily gun-controlled regions.

The first is that, per a CDC study published under the Obama administration, having a gun is the safest self-defense strategy. Even more significantly, defensive use of guns occurred between 500,000 to 3 million times per year, far outweighing the annual 30,000-40,000 gun deaths in America (most of which are suicides).

The second fact is that, while criminals are bad, there is no killer more efficient than a government turning on its unarmed citizens.

             In 1915, Turkey killed 1.5 million unarmed Armenians.

From the 1920s to the 1930s, the Soviet government killed approximately 7 million unarmed Kulaks.

From the 1960s to the 1970s, communist China killed between 23 million to 50 million unarmed Chinese.

From 1933-1945, the Nazis killed 6 million unarmed Jews, along with 220,000 homosexuals, 250,000 gypsies, and up to 10 million Slavic people.

From 1975-1979, Pol Pot’s communists killed one-quarter of Cambodia’s citizens.

From 1954 to the present, the North Korean government has killed an estimated 1.3 million North Koreans.

Today, we have no idea how many Uighurs the CCP is killing.

You can expect Afghanistan to become a new killing field. Just last month, the Taliban ordered all citizens to surrender their privately owned weapons.

To avoid mass slaughter, government should have a respectful fear of its citizens, so much so that it stays carefully within a constitution’s clearly delineated lines, especially because free, well-governed citizens are peaceable...

The saying goes, and it fits here, that "There but for the grace of God go we."

Be Not Afraid

 I remember a two volume set of the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas among the Great Books collection of the canon of Western Civilization in my parents' house.  As a young man of 12 or 13, I attempted to read from these two volumes and found them too dense for me to comprehend at the time.  I should have attempted to read Aquinas at a later time, but I was too busy.  Too bad for me.  But fortunately, others have taken on Aquinas, and we have a book report on his efforts at The Federalist by Casey Chalk entitled Recovering Our Common Sense Means Rediscovering The Divine.

As Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., argues in his Thomistic Common Sense: The Philosophy of Being and the Development of Doctrine — recently translated by Matthew K. Minerd — common sense is only coherent if it derives from a specifically Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of being. That might sound esoteric, but the basic outline of Garrigou-Lagrange’s argument is not.

What Thomistic philosophy is describing is the nature of reality itself. The nature of being, of substance, of what the French call raison d’être or purpose of being. As Chalk points out:

This might seem all fairly straightforward, but much of modern philosophy since the Enlightenment has rejected it. Immanuel Kant rejected raison d’être as entirely subjective because of his rejection of all knowledge originating in being. Rene Descartes — who authored the famous phrase cogito ergo sum — believed our intellect knows itself before it knows being. The pantheist Baruch Spinoza rejected free will because our wills are determined in some ways.

This obscuring of reality instead of clarifying it is ultimately the sin of breaking the First Commandment:

Thus philosophy in our own day is understood not as something that clarifies reality, but obscures it. Writes Garrigou-Lagrange 100 years ago: “How many times, after leaving the courses of the Sorbonne, did the judgment of Saint Paul concerning the philosophers of his times come back to our own mind … ‘Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man.’”

Most Americans understandably look askance at philosophy as arcane nonsense, all the while drawing haphazardly from utilitarianism, materialism, moral relativism, and various other modern and postmodern systems, in order to make sense of life. Intellectual coherency matters little.

To all of this, Garrigou-Lagrange would retort: “Nothing is intelligible except in function of being.” In other words, inasmuch as any of us actually employ our common sense, we rely upon the same ideas articulated by Aristotle and his medieval interpreter Thomas Aquinas.

In abandoning reality, modern philosophy has made many decisions more complicated. Now, men believe they can simply will themselves to be women and vice versa. Indeed, men believe in a new god called the State.  And the State is all about power for itself, which definitely defies the First Commandment.  Look at the scare porn the state media constantly puts out in order to convince you to believe things that are unscientific and therefore untrue.  If you did not believe them, they would have to convince you to obey by more forceful means, which is what they are doing now with forced vaccination and universal masking.

Here, the book of Daniel shows the way to resist.  The first thing to do is not be afraid.  They want to scare you with, as H.L. Mencken, an endless series of hobgoblins, mostly imaginary.  Do not succumb.  Next, continue to pray and to worship God, as Daniel did.  Defy them when the insist you should pray to the state.  The state wants you to believe your life depends on them.  But it does not.  As always, God gave you your life, and he invested human life with certain unalienable rights, and only God has the right to take that life away. 

Pray For the People Advancing the Cult of COVIDism

 Fay Voshell has an excellent piece this morning at the American Thinker entitled The Forcible Conversion to COVIDism, in which she points out that the rituals associated with the Pandemic remind no of science itself but of a new religion. To be sure, she is not the first to notice this, but Voshell has particularly expertise in these matters. Voshell holds a Masters of Divinity from the Princeton Theological Seminary.

By now, even progressives are aware that the restrictions imposed by COVID-19 hygiene rituals are onerous. Temperature-taking, hand-sanitizing, mask-wearing, social distancing — all have become ubiquitous social practices since the arrival of the virus eighteen months ago.

Now forced vaccination and possibly vaccine passports have been added to the list of requirements deemed necessary for establishing and maintaining national health.

It strikes one that the ever-changing rituals pronounced by such entities as the CDC and WHO have become not only arbitrary and increasingly revelatory of dubious and ever-changing science, but also evocative more of religious practices than of rational, scientific measures.

Eerily, many of the rituals of COVIDism have assumed the status and significance of the ceremonies practiced by millions of Christians, who cross themselves, genuflect before the altar, and who pray the rosary. Christians believe those rituals are acknowledgement of the higher power who is God. God is represented by irreducibly Christian symbol of the cross and worshipped by the observance of sacraments, of sacred liturgies and by bowing the knee in prayer.

Devotees of COVIDism are acknowledging by their repetitious and symbolic rituals a higher power as well—that of the almighty State.

The emphasis is mine, to highlight what I want to discuss next. COVIDism is therefore yet another form of the idolatry that infects modern life. In the ancient times, people openly worshipping at the bronze bull were clearly idolatrous.  But, anything that calls to us and takes away our understanding of ourselves as dependent on the ever living God is idolatrous.

A Lutheran pastor once told me that if one could obey the First Commandment, one would automatically keep all the rest.  And this seems to be close to the heart of Lutheranism.  For in reading Luther's Small Catechism, on can see that the explanation for each of the Commandments begins with "You should so fear and  love God that"...  Clearly none of us can keep even the first Commandment, which is why God took it upon Himself to do the work of salvation for all mankind by Himself submitting to the Cross.

Meanwhile the reason for promoting the lie that is COVIDism is for one purpose:

While no one seriously doubts that COVID-19 is an illness requiring medical attention, it is increasingly apparent that the fear of the virus and almost superstitious practices have been factors in the rise of the cult of COVIDism, which in turn has become a useful tool for establishing the State's control over every sector of society and every aspect of life.

It is also perfectly clear the governing priestly elite foisting their quasi-religious rituals on the masses are miraculously immune from a virus that discerns who are the pure sheep of the church of COVIDism and who are the deplorably diseased goats. The high priests partying at the Obama birthday bash on Martha's Vineyard, at the Met gala, and at the Emmys do not have to wear masks. Nor do they have to observe the rules of social distancing once reserved for lepers and others deemed unclean.

But the unhealthy goats, most of them congregated in churches, the middle class, and the military, do have to follow the regulations and rituals.

Voshell offers some solutions to the cult of COVIDism. Let me suggest that there is more we the average American can do. For example, if you attend a congregation where you must be masked to enter, perhaps you should consider finding another congregation. You may be forced to submit while at work, because your employer is paying you to. But the moment you clock out, rip off that mask. Show that you will not be afraid. But at the same time you resist, do it joyfully. Do not take the resentment they ovviously desire to place upon you. Indeed, pray for the people advancing the cult of COVIDism. No, it may not change them, but that is not the point. Your prayer for them is intended to keep you sane, joyful, and focused on God.

The Corruption of Science

 I have often pointed out that the whole "climate change" theory is an utter hoax, a sophisticated hoax to be sure, but just as Piltdown Man was a hoax, so is "climate change."  The panic porn of Covid is equally a hoax.  In both cases I do not dispute that climate change is happening, or that the Cov-Sars-2 virus is real.  Rather, the notion that climate change is man made is what the hoax.  And reporting that Covid-19 is more dangerous than it actually is, is the actual hoax.  Today, at the American Thinker, Norman Rogers has an article entitled The "Science" of Climate Change that skewers both the hoaxes as unscientific.

The science surrounding COVID has been hijacked for political purposes. People who recovered from the disease are pushed to get vaccinated, even though they have a natural immunity that is stronger than vaccine immunity. People are required to wear masks even though masks are essentially useless for preventing infection. People that die are reported as dying of COVID even though they died of something else. The government demands that children be vaccinated even though they are naturally resistant to the disease and suffer disturbing side effects from the vaccine. Schools are closed for no good reason.

The “science” of climate change is also BS. That should be easier to accept after seeing what the government did to COVID science. Why do politicians want to hype a nonexistent climate crisis? In a word: power. By claiming that there is an urgent climate crisis the politicians can spend billions to fight the imaginary foe. Those billions create political allies and reward friends. H.L. Mencken put it nicely in 1918:

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

Rogers is a real, honest to goodness scientist, and seems to know where the bodies are buried. He drops names like that of Richard Lindzen and others less famous. You will want to check out the many links he provides to these other scientists' sites.  But for many, he points out, they really can't afford to tell the truth.  To do so is the kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

I spent 10 years going to the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union. I spoke with many climate scientists including many who freely admitted in private that global warming is a very dubious enterprise.

I remember a Danish guy who visited beaches in northern Greenland by dog sled. He discovered 6,000-year-old driftwood on a beach always blocked by ice, year-round. That was clear evidence that the Arctic Ocean was summer ice-free during a time called the Holocene Optimum. Present-day global warmers claim that our coming climate disaster will again make the Arctic Ocean summer ice-free, something that happened 6,000 years ago with no help from SUVs or belching cows. Of course, the guy was afraid to make too much of his discovery because it challenges the climate doom theory.

There is no such thing as an early career climate scientist that is skeptical concerning global warming. I actually tried to find one and did a poster at a scientific meeting on the subject. The reason is simple. It is not because the science is so clear that only an idiot would question it. It is because our early-career climate scientist would soon be looking for a new job. Interfering with the flow of money from Washington is grounds for dismissal.

What we are seeing is the corruption of science by money from governments and corporate interests, who hope to gain money and power from these hoaxes.

Is the ELCA Still a Christian Organization?

 So here's a...just lovely...piece at the American Thinker from Andrea Widburg entitled The Evangelical Church In America Abandons The Bible. It confirms my decision to leave the ELCA. I describe my decision to my fellow Missouri Synod Lutherans as that I am an escapee from the godless ELCA. 

It all started when the ELCA voted to allow gay and lesbian people in what they called "committed relationships" to be ordained as pastors. We were promised that LGBTQxyz pastors would not be pushed upon us. I said at the time that sooner or later such people would be pushed onto normal congregations and sadly, I was right.

I noted at the time that there was something terribly wrong with the ELCA.  There were no children in the church, and the average age of the congregants was older than I was at the time.  I was 60.  We should have had a Catechism class each year, yet the pastor only occasionally had a Catechism student.  I still have a picture of my own Catechism class of 30 students.  Clearly there was something wrong, and I was unable to do anything about it.  So I left and found a home in the Missouri Synod.

Do I need to highlight the way pronoun madness turns English into gibberish? No, I don’t think I do.

It’s bad enough when ordinary people with body dysphoria take it upon themselves to declare that they have the power to transform from one sex to another and to control the English language. However, it’s really bad coming from someone who not only claims to be religious in accordance with the Bible but who also occupies a position of power within a religious institution. You see, the Bible is very clear:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (King James Bible 1:27.)

God didn’t give a choice of “None of the above,” or make a person’s sex a buffet from which he can choose. If you belong to a Bible-based faith, “transgenderism” simply isn’t within that religious framework.

And because this whole thing really irks me, let me make one more point: The whole “transgender” edifice is a fake. If Rohrer, an archbishop who attacks people for misgendering that poor child he’s raising as an “it,” really could magically change his sex, you wouldn’t need the appellation “transgender” in front of his identity as a woman. Instead, if he had the god-like power he’s arrogated to himself, he’d simply be a “woman,” with no “trans” about it.

The label “transgender” is the "tell" that the people identifying as such know that they’re not capable of transforming into the opposite of their biological sex. Instead, these are people suffering from a form of body dysphoria every bit as delusional as anorexia or the belief that one is an alien or a cow.

Widburg obviously feels about the whole "transgender" issue as I do. Indeed, the whole idea of "trans" anything is out of step with the reality that God created. This makes it wrong, and sinful. And while yes, of course, we all sin, we all have gone astray, and desperately need the forgiveness that God freely offers, that doesn't mean we don't need to at least recognize our sins. For how can we confess our sins if we don't recognize them and ask?

One has to ask if the ELCA is still even a Christian organization?

Gun Control Is Not About Preventing Crime

 Kevin D. Williamson writes generally thoughtful articles, even if I don't always agree with him.  But in Gun-Control Laws Aren't About Preventing Crimes I think he is onto something. Indeed, what gun control laws are really about is yet another front in the Culture War.

In the latest issue of National Review, I write about the lax enforcement of our gun laws and touch on a theme that is worth exploring a little more: Gun control is not about gun crime — gun control is about gun culture.

If we cared about keeping guns out of the hands of felons, we’d be locking up straw buyers. We’d be prosecuting prohibited “lie and try” buyers who falsify their ATF paperwork. And we’d be confiscating guns sold in retail transactions that were wrongly approved because of defects in the background-check system. But, for the most part, we don’t do much of any of that.

Instead of doing the hard work of enforcing the law on people committed to breaking it, we focus almost all of our efforts on the most law-abiding group of Americans there is: People who legally buy firearms from licensed firearms dealers, a group that, by definition, has a felony-conviction rate of approximately 0.0 percent. These are law-abiding people, but they also are, in no small part, the type of people who mash the cultural buttons of the big-city progressives who dominate the Democratic Party both culturally and financially. From that point of view, what matters is not that retail gun dealers and their clients are dangerous — which they certainly are not — but that they are icky.

In explaining why he thinks that the idea of gun control is a culture issue rather than being intended to prevent crime, Williamson cites an article from the New York Times by Gail Collins. And Collins, it turns out, is either ignorant, or a deliberate liar, or both:

That culture-war mentality produces a great deal of sloppy thinking and ignorant commentary. Consider the case of Gail Collins in Thursday’s New York Times. Collins is hopping mad about gun shows, about which she seems to know . . . not a whole lot. “Yeah,” she writes — really, “yeah” — “right now one easy way to buy a gun without having anyone check to see if you have a history of criminal convictions, mental illness or a domestic violence restraining order is to just plunk down some cash at a gun show.”

This is — and this part still matters! — not true.

Willimson goes on to point out the many things that are not true. Long guns of all sorts from single shot .22s to 30-06 rifles, the evil AR 15s and shotguns make up perhaps 2% of all gun crime, which is less that fist and feet. Oh, and the same requirements obtain at gun shows as at the dealers store, or anywhere else. And criminals by and large get their guns by stealing them of buying them from the black market (i.e. from someone who stole them.) Oh, and this:

Collins goes on to spend five paragraphs excoriating Texas for its new “constitutional carry” law. I myself preferred the old concealed-carry regime, with the required classwork, shooting test, and background check. But what Collins does not mention is that this is not some new innovation unique to the redneck states — Texas now has the same law as radical, right-wing . . . Vermont, which has had constitutional carry for as long as we have had the Constitution. Texas joins Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming in this arrangement. Some of those states have relatively high rates of murder and other violent crimes (Alaska, Arkansas) — though not a single one of them has a murder rate as much as half that of the District of Columbia — while others (Maine, Vermont, Idaho) are among the safest states in the Union. The obvious conclusion is that whatever the important variable is in murder rates, it isn’t this.

It always amazes me that people like Collins think everyone has a life as pampered as her life is. I know a guy who is a retired telephone installer. He confessed to me that he used to keep a pistol on his truck, despite the fact that the telephone company required them to be unarmed,  because he often found himself in some questionable neighborhoods. Maybe Collins doesn't feel the need for a gun, but that doesn't mean the single mom working a late night shift at a convenience store doesn't need a gun for protection. Or how about a nurse working the late shift at a hospital? I suspect it has to do with the fact that todays journalist all come from the upper middle class because of the need for J-school credentials to get a job in journalism. In the old days, journalists came from the working class and had more empathy with their fellow man.

But of course, she can't empathize with people who aren't as fortunate as she is because she is so locked into the cultural tribalism of them versus us.  To her, guns are not tools that may protect, but talismans that show gun owners as subhuman.  Sad.  

Our best hope is to pray

 The Roman Empire wasn't always an empire.  It started life as the Roman republic.  It wasn't quite like our republic, but a republic it was.  The end of the republic of Rome was the day Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river with his army at his back.  Republics die when their leaders no longer follow their founding principles.  It is in this context that Robert Arvay asks Is the Republic dead? Can it be saved?

It’s not nearly as complicated as once I thought it was. It’s a top-down insurrection. All that it ever needed was a sufficient number of conspirators, in key positions, to network with each other. Granted, the numbers needed were large. That is why it took so many years to take hold. Once the threshold was reached, however, circa 2015 or 16, the treachery began in full swing.

The plotters were delayed by one mistake, a very big one, in 2016. They underestimated the amount of electoral fraud that was needed to place Hillary Clinton in the White House. That set them back four years. By 2020, however, the insurrectionists understood their error, and they did not repeat it again. This time, the fraud was massive. It was too large to hide, but on the other hand, there was no longer any need for concealment. Nobody in power was ever going to oppose the reported result, save for President Trump and a very few others, but there were not enough of them to be effective.

As of now, there are a few loose ends to be tied up before the take-over is strong enough to make us into another Cuba. The top is secure, but the bottom is a bit unsteady. One of those loose ends is that pesky Second Amendment, or more precisely stated, the people who exercise it. It’s not that those in power cannot prevail against an armed rebellion of the citizens; they can, and they know it. They also know, however, that it would be messy. Spartacus never really stood a chance against the Roman Empire, but he still defeated a legion while trying. He made a mess of things for quite some time.

In retrospect, perhaps we should have seen it. But I confess to being too busy doing the normal things people do like holding down a job, mowing the grass, and trying to enjoy the few free moments life gave me. Then too, in recent years the Democrats put up such terrible candidates that it made the Republican candidates, bad as they were, seem like the right choice. But as George W. Bush has shown, he was really just playing a part in a play put on by the ruling class. And the fact that the United States was truly unique among the nations of the world, was indeed as Reagan put it a "shining city on a hill," doesn't matter to these narcissistic people, who are already rich and powerful. But it isn't enough for their grandiose sense of themselves.

Arvay offers some hope that we may prevail in the end.  

There remain two last hopes. First, the parents of public schoolchildren are outraged that their children are being indoctrinated by radical leftists, and morally undermined by sexual perverts lecturing in the class, in one case, by a man with bared buttocks. Will the parents act effectively? If the general public fails to protect its children, there is no hope.

The second hope is that, as is well known, those in government tend to be inept. This is why, in communist nations, the Great Leaps Forward have always tended to fall flat on their faces, worsening the economic deprivation that communism inherently inflicts on its millions of subjugated people. How does that apply to America? To paraphrase Barack Obama, never underestimate the ability of Biden to screw things up. That applies to progressives in general.

Both "hopes" seem iffy at best. I suggest we pray.

Apparently Democrats Are Not In Favor of "Democracy"

 Once again, the Dems have used black Americans as a tool to strike down voter photo identification in North Carolina.  Note that the judges are in fact Democrats.  This is pure politics.  Yet it keeps happening.  The people passed a Constitutional amendment, but the Dems deny it.  The Legislature tries again, and the Dems manage every time to strike it down.  You can read about the story at the Epoch Times right here.

For those who think that the Dems might have a point, please note that if you have a drivers license, you have an ID sufficient for voting. But there are several other things that you can use, including a FREE state identification. You need a photo ID to visit the doctor's office, to buy alcohol or tobacco, to have a bank account, and many other things people do every day. For someone to not have photo identification, one would have to be living off the grid. There are not many people doing so, and such people don't vote.

This is nothing more than the Democrats trying to make it easier to commit fraud.  The people have spoken.  Apparently the Democrats are not in favor of "democracy."

A Note To Elitists, When The Revolution Comes...

 I've said it before, perhaps in even more stark terms, that when the "revolution comes" many who now are rooting for the Left will be the first people thrown against the wall and shot.  Members of the media, and a host of others who know where the bodies are buried will also suddenly become unnecessary.  Pol Pot shot anyone who wore glasses. And Castro had Che Guevara executing people on an industrial scale. Anyway, that is the point of James Mullin's piece at the American Thinker today entitled An Urgent Message To Deep State Elitists.

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and say I suspect that it's not just patriotic deplorables who read the essays in American Thinker. It's not an intergalactic leap to assume that what is written here gets "monitored" by congressional aides, assistant-assistant media editors, and sub-administrative assistants at our tech behemoths, to name just a few of the woke elements that draw the short straw and are tasked with reading our thoughts. They just watch what we're up to, hoping to catch us "insurrecting." So, knowing they're listening, I have a message of vital importance to them.

You probably assume that your zealous and loyal service to the Deep State will "get you a ride" on that "last plane out" or a golden ticket admission to the deep bunker in Mount Thunder or wherever, if and when it all comes crashing down. So, news flash — it won't. You and yours will be left outside in the cold, wailing with the unwashed deplorables as America comes tumbling down. Just ask one Andrew Cuomo.

For those who may be just a little bit dense, what Mullin is saying is that most of you will be in the same boat is we deplorables. History tells us this is true. It has been ever thus at least since the French Revolution devolved into the Reign of Terror. Many people lost their heads, quite literally, while the rest starved. It was so in the Soviet Union, in Communist China (indeed it still is.) As I say, it has been ever thus. Meanwhile, you are throwing away the one system that has lifted the average person out of poverty, allowing us to achieve our best selves.  Naturally, not everyone will pursue his or her best self.  But everyone has the opportunity.

Too Little, Too Late?

So, after all this time, the Durham Investigation has turned up an indictment against the lawyer representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.  You can read about it at the Epoch Times in an article entitled John Durhan Grand Jury Indicts Lawyer Whose Firm Represented Democrats In 2016. Nothing about any of the people whose names everyone knows, like James Comey, or John Brennan. I'm sorry, but the Durham so called investigation is a little too little, a little too late.

Which brings up the entire incompetence of our Republican representatives. Oh, they bloviate endlessly on Fox News and tell us what they think we want to hear. But what do they do? According to Joy Pullman at The Federalist, not much. We need to incentives our Republican representatives with a corn cob soaked in turpentine applied to their rear ends.

I urge gentle readers to read each of these articles.

Did Muhammad Exist

 How about something a little different?  Robert Spencer is at it again with a new edition of his book Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam's Obscure Origins. Andrew E. Harrod reviews Spencer's new book at the American Thinker in an article entitled Robert Spencer Deconstructs Islam. One of the things that Spencer points out, which is damning, is that for a number of years after the Arab conquest of vast territories, no one seems to have mentioned that they were doing this in the name of a prophet of Islam named Muhammad:

Spencer surveys the historical record of various of various societies like the Byzantine Empire that bore the brunt of Arab invasions in the Middle East and North Africa following Muhammad’s supposed death in 632. The surprising documentary result:

"No one who interacted with those who conquered the Middle East in the middle of the seventh century ever seems to have gotten the impression that a prophet named Muhammad, whose followers burst from Arabia bearing a new holy book and a new creed, was behind the conquests."

Spencer notes that “this silence is extremely strange. Islam, in its canonical texts, is an unapologetically supremacist religion.” Tellingly, “coins minted in the 650s and possibly as late as the 670s” by early Islamic caliphs like the Damascus-based Umayyads make no “reference to Muhammad as Allah’s prophet or to any other distinctive element of Islam.” Some of these coins even feature crosses, but “it is hard to imagine that such a coin would have been minted at all had the dogmatic Islamic abhorrence of the cross been in place at the time.”

In addition to the fact that Muhammad doesn't seem to have been mentioned in the years after his supposed death, unlike Jesus Christ, who was constantly invoked by those who knew Him in life, and who witnessed His ministry, His death and resurrection. But even the supposed holy book the Koran doesn't, in many places make sense. Now, here is a topic which I do not understand, so I am relying on Spencer here, but the written Arabic includes what are known as diacritical marks, dots placed above or below a character, that change the character. Spencer notes that with many of these problematic passages, if you take away the diacritical marks, the passage suddenly makes sense read as Syriac passages. This implies that the texts were borrowed from other sources.

In addition, Spencer notes that much of Islamic tradition is based on the supposed life of its "prophet" Muhammad. But these Hadiths were written many years after Muhammad's death. Spencer makes the point that many, maybe most, of these stories may have been manufactured to support various factions within Islam. More interesting, the Hadiths paint a picture not of man teaching peace and love, but of a warlord who ordered the assassination of his enemies.

The resulting potential for hadith fraud surrounding a holy lawgiver Muhammad is enormous, Spencer observes. Thus, “with Muhammad held up as an exemplar, the Hadith became political weapons in the hands of warring factions within the Islamic world. And as is always the case with weapons in wartime, they began to be manufactured wholesale.” “The consequence of all this was inevitable: utter confusion,” Spencer concludes; the “Hadith is riddled with contradictions.”

In the end, one must decide which God is the True God. There is Allah, who is vengeful, cruel event to those who believe in him, and fits all the qualities of Satan himself. Or there is the God of Creation, who knew each of us before the world began, who loves his creation and wants the best for each of us. (Oh, I know that there is another alternative, but we will leave that for another day. I do not believe it is possible to be an atheist.)

I would note that the God of Creation could care less about politics.  Yes, we try in our way to express God's will in our votes, but God is not a Republican or a Democrat.  There is, furthermore, a just reason for war, but we have often engaged in unjust wars.  Our God weeps for every child killed in the womb, of that I am sure.  But he also has as much affection for women as for men, and would not like us to treat them as mere objects.  And while He would be appalled at the way some of women dress, He also does not want them to be forced into nameless, faceless burqas.  God especially loves children.  How do I know?  Because Jesus loved children.  

The Time to Act is Now

A political science major at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, Olivia Rondeau tells us that Non-Compliance With Tyrannical Laws and Leaders Is American As Apple Pie. Rondeau takes us through a brief history of civil disobedience from Thoreau to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. More importantly, she points out the case for the morality of civil disobedience. And the moral case goes back to the Biblical book of Acts, Chapter 4, and specifically 4:19 and 20. If you find yourself having to choose between obeying either man or God, you have no choice but to obey God.

Our rights, remember, come from God.  You can test this for yourself by observing the nature of people.  People are alive, and unless killed, will live until God himself decides to end that life.  People have the power of speech, and left to themselves, this power is freely exercised.  People naturally have liberty, can move about, and see to their livelihood, take such actions as to defend themselves and their families.  The tyrannical acts of the British government against the rights of the colonists is what sparked the Declaration of Independence. 

Thoreau makes the point that our natural rights are constantly threatened by government overreach, and it is up to us to stand up and protect them.

Not only is it moral to disobey laws that infringe on individual rights, it is morally necessary. Jim Crow segregation ended because people broke the law. Chattel slavery ended because people broke the law. So, for modern forms of government tyranny, such as medical mandates, it is clear that non-compliance is necessary to successfully fight back, despite the dangers that naturally accompany such a response.

At American Colors, Alexander Solzhenitsyn muses on how civil disobedience might have changed the lives of himself and his fellow Soviet subjects:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

Make no mistake, that Biden and those around him mean to do to us what the Soviets did to Russians. The time to act is now.

Remembrance of 9/11/2001

 Today is the 11th of September, 2021.  For those of us who were alive at the time, I don't think any of us will forget where we were when it happened.  For me, I was at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC.  I was watching the breaking news broadcast of the burning first tower.  When the second plane hit, I turned to the person beside me and said "We are at war!"  Later, a plane hit the Pentagon.  I could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon.  I could have been there giving a briefing, but fortunately wasn't.  Some of our people were.

Several months later, I told my wife that we should get permits to carry concealed.  She agreed. and so I started the process of getting each of us our permits.

Over at Bearing Arms Tom Knighton tells his own story of 9/11 in How 9/11 Helped Make Me A Gun Owner. You should read Knightons post. It is both poignant and deeply personal. The bottom line, however is:

For me, though, the first was 20 years ago today. That was the day I decided I would get a gun.

Not a day has passed where I felt bad about that decision.

A gun is a tool, like a fire extinguisher. You hope never to need it, but if you do, nothing else will do. That realization is what came over Mr. Knighton that day. The idea that if he needed a gun to defend himself, his wife and children, what would he do? I had a gun, but what hit me in that moment was that too often I could not access it if I needed it. So I deceded to carry it wherever legal.

AR-15s Are America's Rifle

At The Federalist, Mark Overstreet has a somewhat optimistic article entitled AR-15s Are Why Leftists Can't Commit Taliban Atrocities Here. I say it is an optimistic article because, frankly, I haven't seen anyone telling the Leftists "No." Still, some may be inspired by Overstreets piece. Check it out.

Chipman Nomination Down For the Count

 According to the Epoch Times Biden Withdraws Nomination of Gun Control Advocate David Chipman to Head ATF. While Chipman certainly did not deserve to be the head of the ATF, I worry that the * administration will nominate someone even worse, but without Chipman's baggage.

Just as the job of a District Attorney is to provide justice, not to convict people by any means necessary, so the head of the ATF is to fairly enforce the law as Congress has written it, not to as he would like it to be to have been written. We have seen the ATF play fast and loose with the law, and it would be nice to see someone who enforced the law as written without the ego or an agenda.

There Are No Noncombatants In The Fight for Life

 Another article on the them of speaking out, below, is Christopher Bedford's article entitled The Left Has Made It Perfectly Clear: There Are No Civilians In The Fight For Life, And We Must All Speak Up Now.

I will not quote any of the article, but instead I will urge gentle readers to go read it for themselves. It isn't long. For all the vitriol Texas has received, their new law is not that extreme. When you can detect an actual heartbeat, you know you are not "doing a procedure to get rid of a clump of cells." No, it is a life...a human life at that. That child has as much of a right to life as her mother.

We Have to Have the Guts

 J. B. Shurk has an article today at the American Thinker entitled How to Tell What the Government Fears Most. Shurk makes a point that I have also made: that the thing we can do to keep our freedom in these times is to tell the loudly tell the truth as a counter to the lies you are being fed. The more of us that can work up the courage to do that revolutionary act, the less power the government will have agaist us.

If government can make you afraid of something — imaginary or not — may it then control your life completely in order to guarantee FDR's "freedom from fear"? Does depending on government to ensure "freedom from fear" not incentivize government to invent new fears that only additional government powers can vanquish? Does this not subsidize fear with taxpayer dollars and guarantee that government will always strive to make citizens afraid? Can it really be true that individual liberty should be "allowed" to exist only when there is nothing that can hurt us? Isn't that what a master might tell his slaves?

If truth exists independently from governmental decree, and science is a process in search of truth, then why are governments working with Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor scientific debates? Is truth so fragile that it will not survive false attacks? Is science so dependent on "official edicts" that it must be regulated and practiced only by a small priestly caste? If scientific consensus depends on government creating a monopoly over information, does this mean that truth is whatever government deems it to be? Since government is incentivized to invest in fear, is it likely that government will ever declare a truth that isn't also scary?

If government power grows by monopolizing information and weaponizing fear, then isn't the greatest threat to government an independent citizen unafraid of thinking for himself? Is it not true, then, that every single person is capable of destroying the illusion of total government control? Is it not true that leaders can rise from anywhere — whether at local school board meetings, in football stadiums, or even from spontaneous testimonials during Red Lobster dinners? Is it difficult to imagine "freedom speakeasies" popping up wherever freedom is outlawed? Is it not true that there are more citizens than jail cells and that when enough people choose to disobey unjust laws, government must choose either to change the laws or lose its powers? Is it not true that every fight for freedom throughout history has started with a spark that catches fire? Is it not also true that sometimes the worst brushfires spread, and things get unbearably hot for a while, but then great growth rebounds after that?

OK, so I didn't say telling the truth would be easy. It requires a lot of reading and research, and using your ability to reason and your common sense. The answers are out there to be found, but it requires searching for them. But as Shurk suggests, if you can find what the social media are censoring, that is a great start toward the truth. And when you find the truth, you must not be disuaded. All attempts to take away your rights and freedoms are ultimately based on lies. The citizen who refuses to repeat the lies is what the government fears most. And keep in mind that unlike many people who have faced such times, we have the Second Amendment, which limits the oppression that can be imposed on us. We just have to have the guts.

At The Federalist, Joy Pullman writes that The Top Reason I Hate Masks Is They Force Me To Live by Lies. Again, the theme is that by acquiesing to the dictates of the regime is to place ourselves in chains. We do the work for them. In this case, by wearing masks even though we know they don't stop the virus, we make it appear to others that the majority of us do infact believe these things.

This is what mask mandates achieve — a false signal that dissenters don’t exist, that everyone buys into the indefinite suspension of our rights “because COVID,” no matter how much it harms people, nor how weak its alleged rationales. This was confirmed for me when my governor finally let his mask mandate lapse. Suddenly, after I had been for months nearly the only person I ever saw without a mask, now almost nobody wore them.

And it wasn’t because everyone was vaccinated, as government statistics show the majority are not. So it was clear that the vast majority of my fellow citizens were obeying the mandate simply because it was a mandate, not because they fully supported it. Yet their compliance communicated the falsehood that the COVID regime had mass support. And that is exactly the point.

Citizens’ assistance to a lying and oppressive regime, Havel says, changes those who corrupt themselves in this way: “they may learn to be comfortable with their involvement, to identify with it as though it were something natural and inevitable and, ultimately, so they may — with no external urging — come to treat any non-involvement as an abnormality, as arrogance, as an attack on themselves, as a form of dropping out of society.”

In other words, falsifying reality brings about more of that falsified reality. It’s the same dynamic as gang initiations requiring initiates to commit crimes. Once people have compromised themselves, they are more likely to identify with their compromise, because it’s embarrassing to admit you were wrong. So instead, people double down. They heap onto their initial cowardice the additional cowardice of refusing to admit they could have been wrong.

Said differently, lying demoralizes people, quite literally, which is the ultimate goal of the regime. What government fears most is people with moral authority. We just have to have guts.

Biden's Ammunition Ban Is Part of the Left's Plot To Ban Guns

 David Kopel, writing at The Federalist that Biden's Ammunition Ban Is Part Of the Left's Plot to Disarm Americans. Kopel notes that gun grabbers have been frustrated in their goal to get rid of guns. But now they have figured out that if they can ban ammunition instead, then the guns suddenly don't matter. Without ammunition, guns are just paper weights.

The Biden administration recently prohibited the import of ammunition from Russia. That’s bad news for American firearms owners, but there may be much worse to come.

The gun prohibition lobbies, having mostly failed in their campaigns to convince legislatures to ban guns, have intensified their efforts to disarm Americans by other means. The Biden ammunition ban is one step in the process.

Please go read Kopel's article. Also please support ammunition manufacturers and your local gun shop whenever possible.

Maybe We Should Break More Rules

 I have two articles today on the new Texas law that allows people to sue abortion providers for the act of providing abortions.  The serious one is by Fletch Daniels at the American Thinker entitled Abortion: The Animating Sacrament of the Left. The other, by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall.com talks about the "new rules" that the Left installed in our society, but that they are not happy with now they are being used against them.

First, let us understand that the act of deliberately killing a child in the womb is evil. You can put scientific sounding words around it to make it sound antiseptic, but make no mistake: once a sperm and an egg get together, a child is conceived. Given time, and assuming nothing interferes, that child will grow into person, like you. It can not be anything else. And also note, in case this wasn't obvious to everyone, but getting pregnant doesn't happen by accident.  Usually, a woman voluntarily has sex with a man.  A bit of discipline could have prevented it.

Fletch Daniels notes that the fervor with which the Left celebrates abortion is Satanic, and abortion is their central sacrament.

The Texas abortion law and the reaction to it has shone a spotlight on the fact that abortion is the primary animating force for the left, a sacrament of a sort that drives both their priorities and energy.

...snip...

It is always interesting to watch the conversion of a “conservative” to the leftist religion, which seems to happen somewhat regularly when weak principles collide with the cultural power and temptations of the left.

A key moment in the conversion of a former “conservative” involves showing fealty to the sacrament that binds together their new tribe, and they usually do it as loudly as possible to ensure that their new friends embrace them. This is why these “conservative” converts, ala Jennifer Rubin, usually sound even crazier than the long-time denizens of the left.

In what read like a parody, the Satantic Temple joined the fight. They apparently established an abortion ritual which the Texas law threatens. These Satanists see abortion as a form of worship that needs protecting.

In the letter they sent to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, they wrote, “The battle for abortion rights is largely a battle of competing religious viewpoints, and our viewpoint is that the nonviable fetus is part of the impregnated host is fortunately protected under Religious Liberty laws.”

That “nonviable fetus” has a heartbeat at a bare minimum and is often fully viable at the time of abortion, suffering only from a mere few inches of geography that allows the baby’s life to be taken. One of the challenges the abortion movement has is that technology has advanced since 1973, making it nearly impossible to maintain the fiction that the choice they champion does not consist of the taking of a life. But, for the Satanists, this is a feature.

On one point, I would agree with them. There is very much a spiritual component to this discussion, which is why there is so much fervor on the left, a religious fervor that cannot be understood apart from the demonic influence that drives it.

Since we are talking about religion, Daniels doesn't make it explicit, but I will. That abortion is the central animating sacrament of the Left means they stand in direct opposition to Christ and the God of Abraham, the God of Israel, the God of Creation. One of the appellations of Jesus Christ is Lord of Life. You can not be a true Christian, and be in favor of abortion. Indeed, it was Christians who began outlawing abortion wherever they became the majority. But it also makes sense in that what species can survive that kills its own offspring? Yet the killing of children was the norm until Jesus entered history and changed the World.

Kurt Schlichter, who is always happy to irritate a Leftist, and the more irritating the better, writes:

You know, there was a time when I might have thought that the Texas legislature’s creative lawmaking that lets random people sue those facilitating abortions was against my principles. But that was before “principles” became nothing more than a cynical codeword designed to tie our hands as the libs pillaged through our society like a bunch of hopped-up Visigoths who just got into Hunter’s secret stash.

The new rule is that you use your power ruthlessly to defeat your opponent. And so, I’m totally comfortable with it. The Dems, not so much – this legislative suppository is shaped like a starfish and it ain’t going in easy.

Now, the best part about this whole imbroglio, besides that it might well close down the open season on babies that is a central sacrament of the pagan religion that is modern America liberalism, is how the Texas Solons shamelessly snagged it from the arsenal of anti-democratic tactics pioneered by the left. Here’s how governing should go, in the world that no longer exists that you learned about on Saturday morning TV’s Schoolhouse Rock. One of our elected legislators proposes a bill to do something, it gets debated, passed, signed by the chief executive and then challenged in court, where it should almost always be held constitutional. But that’s kind of a hassle, since a lot of the things Democrats want can’t get enough votes to pass. So, the democracy-loving Democrats eschewed democracy and decided they would sub-contract the dirty work to the courts. You know how people liked smoking, which they knew might well kill them? Why not use lawsuits to do indirectly what could not be done directly, i.e., properly? They kept at it until they found enough gullible jurors in gullible venues to shakedown the tobacco companies, mostly by pretending that puffers were shocked – shocked! – that smoking was sub-optimally healthy.

Again, note that Schlichter too recognizes that abortion seems to be a sacrament in a religion of evil.  But he also makes a great point that whenever conservatives take a page out of the Lefts playbook, they become apoplectic.  It is as if they were the only ones who could break the rules that we all originally agreed upon.  But if it makes them actually think instead of just "feel," then maybe we should try breaking some other rules. 

Gun Control Should Be Run Through the Nancy Lanza Test

Ranjit Singh over at Bearing Arms has an interesting test for Gun control proposals called The Nancy Lanza Test For Gun Control Proposals

This Tuesday, former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) published an op-ed at The Philadelphia Inquirer touting universal background checks as a means to saving lives. Tom Knighton has already taken on her misleading op-ed and I recommend that you read his article.

The 800 lb. gorilla in the room that’s missing in Giffords’ article is that the man who shot her passed a background check when he bought the pistol he used in his crime. That alone undermines Giffords’ claim in a big way. And it’s not just him; most perpetrators in highly publicized mass attacks that I can think of – Sutherland Springs, Orlando, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Charleston – you name it, all of them passed background checks and in some cases, with glaring governmental incompetence. (Others got their guns through theft and straw purchases.)

Nancy Lanza was the mother of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook killer. Rather than subject himself to a background check, which he couldn't pass, he killed his mother and stole her gun. Of course, his mother had passed a background check. So, what is the Nancy Lanza test?

Insurance mandates such as the ones demanded by the San Jose mayor? Nancy Lanza was financially comfortable enough to afford the insurance and would have bought it.

Special taxes on guns and/or ammo? Same as the insurance policy; financially comfortable citizen Nancy Lanza would have been able to afford the special taxes.

Training demands such as the ones proposed by New York Democrats? Nancy Lanza was a firearms enthusiast who made regular trips to the gun range. She would have passed every marksmanship test that the Gun Grab Lobby demands we take.

Registration laws? Model Citizen Nancy Lanza would have complied with those too, and registration wouldn’t have made any difference anyway.

Raising the minimum age to buy guns? Nancy Lanza would have been old enough to buy a gun even with the minimum age raised to 21.

Red flag laws? Nancy Lanza never posed a threat to anyone and would not have been subject to red flag confiscation.

There were no indications that the actual perpetrator who stole her guns and committed the crime posed a threat to anyone either. Not one of the above unconstitutional gun control proposals would have stopped Sandy Hook because all those proposals, if enacted into law, would have applied to Nancy Lanza, not the perpetrator who murdered his own mother because she was in the way of his perverse plan.

I do believe that some people sincerely believe that gun control would work, but as you can see, it never really does. And that is why the Constitution states rather clearly that the peoples right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. All of the laws proposed to limit gun ownership or tho register guns are infringements. Moreover, they would not ahve prevented Sandy Hook, or indeed, any other shooting.

Governor Cooper Proves Himself To Be A Racist

This is old news by now. I expected that Cooper would veto this bill, and yes, I am angry that when Republicans had a veto proof majority, they did not act. The story is by Larry Keane at The Truth About Guns entitled Governor Roy Cooper Likes North Carolina's Jim Crwo Gun Control Law Just Fine.

North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper had an opportunity to end his state’s discriminatory Jim Crow-era law. Legislation to repeal the state’s requirement for citizens to obtain a pistol purchase permit from their local sheriff was passed by state lawmakers and sent to his desk for signature, in what would have ended a practice known to discriminate against African-American gun buyers. Instead, he vetoed the measure.

...snip...

It was a lost opportunity to stand up for his citizens’ Second Amendment rights and put an end to abuses of permit system that unlawfully denied North Carolinians the ability to protect themselves. NSSF backed the legislation that would have repealed the 102-year-old relic of the Jim Crow-era and brought North Carolina into the 21st Century.

Of course you should read the entire article. It goes into much detail about the use of the law to discriminate against minorities, especially blacks. Funny thing is, it is still used to do so today. Funnier thing: Wake County Sheriff Baker is black. Go figure.

Democrats, who were the party of slavery, and Jim Crow, are always calling other people racist. But with CRT and other Democrat policies, they prove themselves to be the actual racists. By vetoing this bill, Cooper, a Democrat, proves himself to be a racists.  No surprises there.

Did The Supreme Court Just Overturn Roe v. Wade?

 Rebecca Downs at Townhall.com reports that the U. S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 Decision Lets 6 Week Abortion Law Stand In Defiance Of Roe v. Wade. I say, it's about time.

After Kabul, Biden Needs To Shut Up About Guns

 At Bearing Arms today, Tom Knighton quotes Tucker Carlson from Monday night in a post entitled Tucker Carlson: Biden Needs To Shut Up About Gun Control After Kabul. Tucker Carlson is exactly right. While he wants to take away our semiautomatic AR 15s and even 9mm pistols, he literally gave the Taliban fully automatic weapons. Peaceful Americans versus brutal terrorists. Joe at the very least has is grossly hypocritical. But I suspect it is worse than that. Biden really sees peaceful Americans who have guns as the true enemy, whereas he sees the Taliban as "frenemies," people who he can do business with. Either way, it is sick and must stop.