To Ms. Widburg, "Welcome to the Party, Pal"

 I have two articles from the American Thinker to share today. Both directly or indirectly deal with guns, which was one of the original reasons for this blog.

The first is by Civis Americanus, clearly a nom de plume, entitled Lesson From Ukraine--Don't Give Up Your Guns (or Nukes). A little history for those not paying attention (and why would you have been?  You have your own problems, right?) In 1994, in Budapest, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in return for promises to defend it should Russia attack. To do so is never a good idea. First, you never know if that one doing the promising will actually come to your rescue. This applies both to individuals and to nations. Then there is the moral factor. Whose business is it to defend you (hint: it is not the police)? Again, this applies to both individuals and to nations.

Ukrainians are being urged to arm themselves to resist the unprovoked Russian invasion of their country. The immediate question is, "with what?" noting that Ukraine has exactly the kind of gun laws the Democratic Left wants to inflict on the United States. Handguns are illegal unless licensed, and licensing is "may-issue" the same way it is in New York. It is also necessary to have a license to purchase a long gun (as is the case in Illinois with its firearm owner ID card), and authorities can exercise discretion as to who can have a license. There are at most thirteen firearms for every hundred Ukrainians, versus more than one firearm per capita for Americans. Magazine sizes are restricted to 10 rounds, which would of course delight the governments of California and New York.

Guess what, boys and girls -- the Russian Bear doesn't have magazine size limits, nor does he obey international norms and treaties that forbid invasion of other countries. Vladimir Putin is simply another Tsar, and I mean an expansionist land-grabber like Peter I, Elizabeth I Petrovna ("like father, like daughter"), Catherine II, and Nicholas I "the flogger." Peter and Catherine are not called "the Great" for nothing, but they were great for Russia and not for Russia's neighbors.

It is also to be remembered that Ukraine inherited roughly five thousand nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union. "When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine turned over thousands of atomic weapons in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States, and other countries." The British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, signed a similar scrap of paper with Adolf Hitler, and we know what that got him. Ukraine's former defense minister, Andriy Zahorodniuk, said of the more recent security assurances, “Now, every time somebody offers us to sign a strip of paper, the response is, ‘Thank you very much. We already had one of those some time ago.’”

Ukraine occupies prime real estate. Besides being the breadbasket of Europe, it has great mineral resources, and of course would be an ideal route for oil pipelines from Russia. When it signed the agreement and gave up their nukes, all of this was utterly predictable. The title says it all, don't give up your guns.

The second article is by Andrea Widburg entitled The unexpected constitutiona amendment Occupy Democrats support

If there’s one principle that all factions of America’s leftist spectrum support, it’s that guns are bad. The only way to keep society safe, they all say, is for the government to seize everyone’s guns. However, Occupy Democrats, which is siding with Ukraine as Russia attacks it, has a newfound enthusiasm for the Second Amendment. It put out a series of tweets celebrating these weapons of war in civilian hands.

So now these Democrats are all in favor of Second Amendment as long as its in a war in another country and they are siding with the resident tyrant. But then, consistency has never been the Democrats long suit. Principles, like rules, are meant to be broken after all.

Widburg points out that tyrants always and everywhere disarm the population before imposing their will on it. Indeed, that is how you can tell that Democrats intend to rule tyrannically, rather than be our servants. And don't get me wrong, there are a number of Republicans who are right there with their Democrat "friends."

If there’s one thing history has proven repeatedly, it’s that tyrants immediately disarm their people before getting down to the serious business of imposing their will on the country. The most recent example is Canada, which has been slowly disarming its citizens for decades (and the citizens have self-righteously gone along with this to show their moral purity). It struck the biggest blow in May 2020, when it outlawed semi-automatic weapons. Then, two weeks ago, Trudeau declared martial law. I don’t know about you, but I see “cause and effect” there.

Perhaps we should send all the Democrats North to Canada, where they can live under the benevolent rule of a tyrant. Meanwhile, we should invite the Canadian truckers to apply for U. S. citizenship. But of course, the Democrats don't want to live under a tyrant's rule; they want to be the tyrant. Every mask Nazi who yells at YOU to put on a mask, every gun grabber who tells YOU to give up YOUR guns, wants to rule, to be the tyrant. Interestingly, Andrea Widburg herself was once a gun grabber as she admits:

In America, Hurricane Katrina gave us a small insight into the importance of law-abiding citizens with arms. When the hurricane devastated New Orleans, law enforcement broke down completely. It wasn’t a matter of “when seconds count, the police are minutes (or hours) away.” Instead, the police were days or weeks away. Looters immediately went into action and the only people who were safe from them were those who could defend themselves. That’s when I switched from my lifelong Democrat habit of opposing guns to being a staunch Second Amendment supporter.

It seems that former Communists and Democrats are the most articulate and vociferous members of the cause of conservatism. All I can say to Ms. Widburg is "Welcome to the party, pal, and pass me the ammunition."

Christian Dissidence

Please watch the video at the website Withdraw Consent. The video is roughly 18 minutes long, not that long. But it makes several good points. The man speaking is Doug Wilson. Looking up a whois Doug wilson, he is a conservative Christian pastor in Moscow, Idaho.

The first is that the insanity we are seeing, transgenderism, and all the rest, are obviously untrue. And the people making the claims don't believe in these things either. Rather, the point is to get YOU to make the claim even though you know it is a lie. If they can get you to lie, knowing that you lie, they control you. And control is really what all the insanity is about. As a Christian, you can not, you must not, give in to the lie. And it is not compassion as they claim, but it is shear cowardice. Don't do it.

The second is that the notion of "secularism" turns out to be a hollow shell. I must confess to falling into the secular trap. Wilson makes the point that when we are told that we are trying to impose our morality on the other side, here speaking about the abortion fight, our response should be "Yes, we are, and so? After all, you want to impose your morality on the child. We think God's ideas are better than yours."

Wilson offers Christians who are wondering where to turn next some ideas on things to do. And of course you should pray.

Question Authority!

 J. B. Shurk has written an article at the American Thinker today that shows that the Power of the Powerless Is Real. The main advantage that the tyrants have is that they are few in number and therefore can formulate a united front. The disadvantage for us is that we are many and it is hard to get us all on the same page. Which points to the fact that citizenry can not participate in the lies of the tyrant. Of course, first we have to realize that tyranny is comming...no, has come.

The growing tyranny in the West has not happened overnight. It did not suddenly arrive at our doorsteps with the Chinese Flu. It has been a nightmare decades in the making. The difference today is that previously slumbering citizens once sublimely content in the normal humdrum of their lives are waking up to realize that the enemies from our past have returned with a vengeance. Free speech is treated as dangerous. Western governments, corporations, and social media platforms engage in rampant censorship. Race and sexual identity are used as the defining attributes of a person to the exclusion of talent, character, and achievement. Teachers' unions openly demand the right to indoctrinate children according to the interests of the State. Parents are threatened for believing that their children belong to them. The criminal justice system is used as a place to punish political opponents and to protect political friends. Religious expression is outlawed. Leftists' "secularized religion" is imposed. Freedom is disparaged as "right-wing." Coercion has replaced consent. Victimhood has replaced virtue. Conformity has replaced individuality. "Correct" thinking has replaced freethinking. "Social justice" has replaced real justice. And the protection of government has become more important than the protection of human rights.

For the newly awakened, there is a tendency to see all this carnage for the first time with fresh eyes and become overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the rot. The corruption, criminality, and chaos have infiltrated everything once held dear, and the future seems hopelessly lost. That hopelessness, however, is not based in reality but rather the "Us/Them" self-delusion that tyranny could not happen here. It's not easy to accept that the great sacrifices of the past made in the struggle for human freedom have once again been squandered by a new generation of despots. It is a necessary first step, though, before the righteous can throw themselves into the fight and get back to work. And once people come to terms with the fact that tyranny not only could happen here, but that it is happening here, then they will realize that the struggle has only really begun in earnest.

So, remember the disadvantage of the citizens? It is that we are many individuals. But interestingly, the despots are terrified of us, which points to the fact that they are not as strong as they want us to believe.

Western governments are terrified of their people today. They are terrified of what their people believe, or else they wouldn't feel compelled to criminalize thoughts as "hateful." They are scared to death of what their people might say to each other, or else they wouldn't engage in mass surveillance and blatant censorship. They are fearful of free and fair elections, or else they wouldn't work so hard to manipulate and undermine them. And they are absolutely petrified of a future where cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies free their citizens from the consolidated control imposed by central banks and spendthrift treasuries. If discouraged and demoralized Westerners doubt that they have more power right now than their governments could ever possess, then take a hard look at the obscene lengths to which those governments have gone in order to maintain and preserve their jurisdiction. Embracing tyranny under the sickening pretense of "preserving democracy" betrays just how weak these governments have become!

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Now consider all of the slogans we daily encounter from government and corporate mouthpieces alike: Black Lives Matter!; Build Back Better!; Trans Rights Are Human Rights!; The Science Is Settled!; Save the Earth!; Stop Global Warming!; The War on Women Is Real!; We're All in This Together!; Abortion Is Health Care!; My Body, My Choice! It doesn't matter how vapid, factually incorrect, or contradictory the political slogan. What matters is that all of us repeat them obediently to prove our allegiance to and faith in the system. And therein lies the key to our salvation.

Question the lies, and you question the system. Push back against the State's monopoly over truth, and you cripple the State's legitimacy. Celebrate individuality, and you fracture the mental prison of groupthink. Live "in truth," and you erode the control of State dogma. When people realize that they individually strengthen the State by submitting to its lies, people then understand that the whole artifice of the system survives purely through their individual consent. At that point, it becomes obvious that the small number of people at the top of the system are not really in control at all. It is the large population — psychologically abused and tormented by their government — that wield power when they choose. Once the powerless have this epiphany, they alone control their destiny.

I remember the 1960s, when the slogan of the Left was "Question Authority!" Maybe we should adopt the slogan for ourselves.

Serpents do bite

 Today we have two related posts.  The first from the American Thinker by Jeff M. Lewis is entitled You Will Know Them by Their Fruits. The title is a reference to the Gospels when Christ warns the Apostles, and us, that there will be false prophets. These false prophets would lead the people away from the true Church. They would be wolves in sheep's clothing. Today, we can see that our scavenger elite at all levels are in fact attempting to impose an anti-Christian regime on everyone. They want to rule us and will brook no dissent. Just look at what Justin Trudeau is doing in Canada to the Freedom truckers and to anyone who helped the truckers in any way.

Their tactics are so repetitive and predictable it is pathetic. When citizens wear the wrong color ball cap or peacefully assemble to demand a redress of grievances before the government or demonstrate against a leftist cause or policy, one can be sure they have an effective, even devastating argument when the response from the left is “racist!” or “fascist!” or any other “-ist!” The adherents to leftist ideologies detest that they must debate and win their arguments in the arena of ideas so, instead, they use every dirty trick they can think of.

There is no longer any doubt: Leftists intend to govern by force, against the will of the people if need be and, according to leftists, we had better get accustomed to it.

Second is an article by Laura Hollis at Townhall.com entitled Reclaiming Our Coutry and Our Individual Agency in which sy notes that:

Americans are basically good and decent people who tend to assume the best of others -- especially those in positions of leadership or trust. But millions of us realize now that that decency has been exploited. Those we have trusted have betrayed our trust; they have lied repeatedly; they are using their power for destructive ends. They are hobbling the economy, flooding the country with millions of unvetted migrants and crippling it with debt, and undermining the rule of law.

Human beings are flawed, so there will always be liars, thieves, grifters, opportunists, greedy business owners and corrupt politicians. When betrayal of the public's trust is the exception, it may still draw ire, but it will not threaten the integrity of the system itself. However, when we are bombarded, daily, with proof that those with prominent societal roles do not deserve them, and in fact are using them to wreak havoc, it can become overwhelming. What are average citizens to do?

The answer is both bad news and good news.

...snip...

To the contrary, the proof of how terribly naive we have been is everywhere. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the government's lust for power and willingness to use that power oppressively, not to mention the hypocrisy of elected officials and other wealthy and powerful people who have demanded masks and lockdowns while blithely ignoring the same restrictions they impose on their fellow citizens. A year-plus of online learning has exposed the seamy underbelly of some of our school systems, including policies that protect sexual predators, insert sexually explicit materials in curricula and in school libraries, promote communism and collectivism, racial hatred and division under the guise of "critical race theory," "systemic racism" and "white supremacy," encourage sexual experimentation and gender confusion in schoolchildren -- and deliberately exclude parents from knowledge of any of this. Instead of promoting the free exchange of ideas and questions, our social media companies now act as de facto censors for the government (as long as it is run by Democrats). City councils and state legislatures are passing laws and ordinances that permit homelessness, open drug use and theft. Law-abiding citizens and property and business owners are held hostage by governments that extract outrageous levels of taxes but refuse to provide basic police protections. Violent criminals are released without bail or on absurdly low bonds, not only in major metropolitan areas like New York City and San Francisco but even more bucolic areas like Waukesha, Wisconsin, where Darrell Brooks, a serial violent criminal, plowed into a Christmas parade last November, killing 6 people and injuring 60. Brooks had been released on a paltry $1,000 bond just days before, for running the mother of his child over with a car.

As Christ said to his deciples, we must be wise as serpents and as gentle as doves. But we must remember, always, that we are in the right, and after all, serpents bite.

Three Unrelated Posts

 Several unrelated, yet important articles today deserve to be highlighted by your humble servant.  

The first is by the inestimable Andrea Widburg at the American Thinker today entitled Canada is destroying its banking system. Banking systems started in the Middle Ages with the Knights Templar. Before that time, anyone traveling would have to take his wealth with him, and of course hire armed guards to guard it along the way. The Knights set up a system whereby you could deposit your wealth at the local Commandery, for which you received a letter of credit (sort of the first bank checks).  When you got to your destination, you could receive your wealth at another Commandery by presenting the letter of credit. The Knights had a reputation for being honest, which made placing your worldly possessions in their care seem worthwhile. Banking has come a long way since then, but one item necessary is still trust:

The financial world functions only if there is some element of trust. I must believe that if I deposit my money with Bank X, that Bank X will return those funds to me when I demand them. Moreover, I must believe that if the bank fails to do so because it doesn't like me or my politics, the government will side with me, not the bank.

And if neither the bank nor the government likes me, I must have the minimal assurance that there is a neutral process to determine whether their dislike trumps my rights in my own money. Without that trust, I'm going to keep my money under a mattress rather than deposit it with an arbitrary and capricious banking system.

Trudeau has just turned Canada's entire banking system into one that utterly lacks due process. It is, instead, arbitrary and capricious, depending entirely on the tyrant's whims. Even the money-launderers (and it turns out that Canada has been a money-laundering haven) will have no incentive to trust their ill-gotten gains to Canada's banks.

What Trudeau and Co. are doing is complete madness. Like many tyrants before them, their fanatical, unhinged efforts to protect their status and punish their enemies mean they are engaging in self-destructive acts that, sadly, will also destroy their country.

No doubt the American Left is looking to Canada for ideas. They should think twice though.

Next up is a piece by Josh Hammer at Townhall.com entitled The View From Budapest. Hammer has been to Budapest, has spoken to Victor Orban, and some of his associates, and comes away with a very different portrait of the man and his politics. Tucker Carlson did a similar look at Orban and his government, and came away with similar findings.

I'm writing from Budapest, the beautiful, Danube-bestriding Hungarian capital. Hungary, though a faraway land and modest in both size and population, has played an outsize role in the American conservative conscience for the past half-decade or so. After just a few days, it is not difficult to understand why. Hungary, under Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party, is a real-life experiment in government under a framework of "national conservatism." Lessons for American conservatives are clear and legion.

Western media typically covers Orban in hysterical fashion, accusing him of autocracy, crypto-fascism or outright thuggery. It is difficult to believe that any of these left-wing keyboard warriors have ever met Orban, much less spent any time with him. I spent a couple hours standing directly next to him earlier this week, when he met with a small group of visiting media, think-tankers and other public figure types. That meeting was illuminating.

From firsthand experience, I can attest that the prime minister is nothing like the caricature the media portrays him as. He is personally quite funny, gregarious and engaging, and he handled even critical questions with aplomb. Perhaps most surprising for blue-checked Twitterati types who view him as a power-hungry, barbaric European dictator, he is also a genuine conservative intellectual. Orban spent time at Oxford, and he dedicates one day every week to reading up and immersing himself in substantive political reading material. To borrow a popular online phrase, he has "done the reading."

...snip...

Hungary under Orban rejects the illusion of liberal neutrality, recognizing, as this column has previously phrased it, "that values-neutral liberal order amounts to a one-way cultural ratchet" toward leftism and progressivism. As euroskeptical Hungary and other like-minded Central and Eastern European nations, such as Poland, have learned all too well, it is impotent to defensively plead "live and let live"-style tolerance from imperious liberal European Union overlords in Berlin and Brussels. Rather, the only way for traditionalist nations like Hungary and Poland to push back against the EU's progressive, globalist vision of the good, the true and the beautiful is by offering an affirmative counter in the form of its own conservative, nationalist vision of the good, the true and the beautiful.

That last is what too many Republicans don't get. They need to present a unified program in opposition to the Left. They cannot just be better caretakers of Democrats' hairbrained ideas. And even if a law lines up with God's word, it still might just be the right thing to do. After all, doesn't nearly everyone think that murder is a bad thing (except of course Planned Parenthood, who I suspect of being psychopaths murdering innocent babies right and left)? Perhaps we should try the other 9 Commandments as well, right?  What we are doing is not working.

Finally, we have William Barger at the American Thinker who outlines what he believes to be The Church's Role in COVID Recovery. Many people are scared out of their wits over a virus for which the overall survival rate is 99.8% I know on local news, fully half of the news program is devoted to COVID, case numbers, hospitalizations, and the latest gubernatorial diktats. The government and its media propagandists are creating a cult of Covidianism. The cult requires mask wearing at all times, lockdowns, and of course vaccination with a product proven not to work as advertised.  The Church needs to remind people that we have faced worse before, to place their trust not in men but in Christ the King.

Pandemic recovery is an excellent opportunity for the Church to remind us to place our hope not in earthly princes, but in Christ’s kingship and mercy. Public health technocrats and power-hungry officials relied upon an ambiguous definition of “safety” to demand that churches be closed, funerals eliminated, small businesses closed, and promoted the vaccination of every person. Churches shuttered for long periods, based upon the government’s edicts. When big box stores and liquor stores were allowed to reopen as “essential,” but churches were not, the clergy should have pushed back. Some did. Many did not. The U.S. Supreme Court had to alert the State of New York that they could not arbitrarily keep big box stores open while shuttering churches. This was a time when people truly needed access to services and sacraments, but they were not there.

The technocrats' obsession with control even has them demanding vaccination of our youngest children, who face miniscule risk from infection. We need reminders that virtues combat vice. Pride and greed can explain why public health experts demand compliance with a pandemic response that enriches pharmaceutical companies, and enables government officials to engage in crushing mandates, lockdowns, and diktats. Despite their methods being proven ineffective, again and again these “experts” continue to spew forth draconian mandates and advice to “defeat” the coronavirus. Marxism demands compliance, even when their demands became irrational. The Church has been a bulwark against Marxist ideologies before.

...snip...

The American Church, clergy as well as laity, must take back its moral authority and proclaim the dignity of human life. The Church is to be the guardian of conscience rights. Protecting religious liberty and dignity of the faithful can be accomplished by protecting its clergy, sacraments, and the right to worship freely, without limitation. Both clergy and laity must work to help others recognize that Caesar asks too much by demanding even children be vaccinated, that the ill be isolated in hospitals, and that our “safety” requires the elimination of sacraments and worship, including a Christian burial. The Church must restore the practice of adults withstanding short-term struggles for the protection of the children. Doing every act our idols demand for our “safety,” no matter how irrational, must be opposed, and be identified as a “science”-based cult. The Church must proclaim the spiritual purification that occurs in suffering for the defense of God’s truth. Believing our technocratic elites are capable of controlling God’s creation is a dangerous spiritual path. The Church needs to remember that it is in the business of saving souls. The Catholic Church, specifically, has been through these types of battles throughout its history. We are now at a time in history where future generations will hear of the courageous actions of faithful people that were effective in the protection of the Church and its teachings.

Using Lawfare Against the Left

 In an interesting piece on PJ Media Athena Thorne tells us The Remington Settlement Was Awful. Let's Do the Same Thing. By now most of you have heard the news that the Remington settlement with the families of the Sandy Hook masacre was settled for the plaintiffs. This settlement wouldn't have happened to any other lawful industry (and apparently to unlawful ones like drug cartels either. Notice, no one is suing drug cartels.) And it happened despite a federal law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

Now, the Left is constantly looking for ways to get rid of, or at least nullify, the Second Amendment. The Left always seeks to rule over you and me, and realizes that they can only go so far if we have guns. Well, as it turns out, there are a few things the Left loves that we, the normal people, would like to get rid of too. That is where Thorne says "Let's Do the Same Thing."

Many of us on the Right have been saying that it’s time we started playing by the Left’s rules, since they’re the ones making the rules these days. The Remington case shows us the way forward in some important battles.

A great place to start would be holding Big Publishing accountable for pushing sexuality and LGBTQ grooming onto children.

It’s easy to show damages. Regarding LGBTQ youth, it’s long been established that young people with gender identity issues commit or attempt to commit suicide at a shockingly higher rate than children who haven’t been coached to deny basic reality. Sadly, it wouldn’t be hard to find young people or their families who have been harmed by having inappropriate ideology pushed on them as minors.

You can read the rest of what Thorne has in mind. Our problem, one the Left doesn't have, is shopping for a sympathetic court. Clearly though, Trump has helped in that regard by putting so many federal judges through the Senate. Could, say, a group of taxpayers have standing to sue their Secretary of State over election integrity? It would be interesting to find out. Sovereign immunity is another thing that is not absolute. You, gentle readers, can no doubt think of other uses. The Left will not like the new rules, but since they put them in place, let them howl.

As Conan the Barbarian says: "What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women."  Oh, yes, ain't the Left's new rules grand?

An Optimistic Take on the Durham Investigation

 Yesterday, Andrea Widburg wrote a depressing post about the latest details of the John Durham investigation. I tended to agree that, based on past performance of other investigations, Durham's real job was to sweep the truth under the rug.  Today, she writes a more optimistic post entitled A more optimistic take on the Durham bombshell.

Yesterday, I wrote a post detailing what was in Special Prosecutor John Durham's latest filing, a seemingly innocuous motion that contained within it the allegation that Rodney Joffe, a tech executive, at the behest of Hillary Clinton's campaign, spied on Trump, both in Trump Tower and his apartment and, later, in the White House. However, my cynicism is such that I doubted that this would actually come to anything. Mark Wauck, a retired counter-intelligence special agent for the FBI, is more optimistic.

You can read Wauck's entire post here. It's built upon responding to what I wrote.

All I can say is "From Durham's mouth to God's ear." This is a coup, and the perpetrators deserve to be tried and held accountable. Nothing like this has ever occurred in the United States. The corruption is breath taking, and overwhelming. So, overwhelming, indeed, that one can become numb to it if you let it.  But we cannot let it; we must remain shocked by it.

Looking Northward at the Canadian Truckers

I have been watching the Canadian Trucker's protest with great interest. The truckers realized that they could tie Ottawa in knots by acting together, and did so. The Canadian governments, at a number of levels, have acted in many cases unlawfully, such as stealing truckers fuel, and tying up donations to the truckers through GoFundMe and GiveSendGo. Justin Trudeau has shown himself to be a petty tyrant of the worst kind, both cowardly and at the same time determined to put the boot on the necks of Canadian truckers.

Cliff Nichols has a piece on all this at Townhall.com today asking Is the Canadian goverment starting a civil war? The usual suspects constantly stress that protests must remain peaceful and lawful. Nichols points out that while these are generally good, there comes a point when to do right, one must fight. You never want to be the one to start a fight, but you must be prepared to finish it.

The Premier of Ontario has declared what he calls a “state of emergency” to justify the Canadian government’s removal of the truckers and their trucks from Ottawa.

Others, however, could view his statement to more closely resemble a Declaration of War.

...snip...

What are Trudeau and his minions thinking? Why are they willing to unleash possibly lethal force to enforce a diktat on unwilling people that, by all reports is, at best, an ineffective medical experiment. As such, their mandate should more likely be found not only immoral, but unlawful. On this point, Trudeau’s government need go no further than a consideration of the moral, ethical and legal predicates underlying the Nuremburg Code that, in reference to medical experimentation on humans -- like the Covid vaccinations -- provides, in pertinent part: The voluntary consent of the human subject -- i.e. each individual trucker -- is absolutely essential. (emphasis added)

...snip...

Of course, the gaping question this leaves for the world to reflect upon yet again is how should the people of any nation be able to define what it is to properly “protest” against the evils of such a regime in defense of one’s unalienable rights?

...snip...

If tyrannies throughout history have proven anything, it is that sometimes to achieve success, actions must be taken by those on the side of “good” that necessarily must often fall far short of what may be considered “peaceful.” For instance, consider World War II. To successfully protest the evils of Hitler’s Nazi regime required actions to be taken by U.S. forces that were about as “peaceful” as those that were taken by George Washington to successfully protest the evils practices of the British Crown. Clearly, neither of these stands taken by Americans to “protest” the evil of their day were remotely even “mostly peaceful.” Yet, both are undeniable instances where violence was absolutely necessary and appropriate to defeat the evils presented at those moments in our nation’s history.

In the end, Nichols makes clear that he doesn't think the Canadian government is declaring a civil war...yet. And it is certainly not time for the protestors to resort to violence. But if the government doesn't soon de-escalate the situation, the time for violence might well come.

Exercising Our Reason and Judgement

 John F. DiLeo writes a Letter From Facebook Jail that decries the fact that discrimination...the true meaning of the word...is lacking in favor of one size fits all solutions. In other words, DiLeo believes that we should look at the facts of individual cases, and make intelligent decisions based on based on those facts. We should, in other words, exercise our reason and our judgement.  

DiLeo is in "Facebook Jail" for posting a poem, written over 100 years ago by a British parliamentarian that includes the hanging of a person.  The discussion that ensued was a literary conversation about the qualities of the poem.  But Facebook put DiLeo into "Facebook Jail" not by having a human review the posts and determine if it indeed violated some vague, never specified community standard, but with literally an algorithm.  But Facebook, as irritating and arrogant as it is, is only reflecting the larger society.

DiLeo gives us some examples:

If a public school or coffee shop is a gun-free zone, then anything that looks like a gun is banned; police may be unwelcome unless they leave their sidearms in the car, and students can be suspended or expelled if they nibble a Pop-Tart into the shape of a handgun.

If a school has a no-smoking policy, then children can get disciplined for having candy cigarettes, just because they look like cigarettes.

If a surgical team in an operating room, cutting into a sick human being, wears masks in hope of protecting against infection, then surely mandating such masks for people walking in parks, driving alone in cars, and sitting in offices is just as sensible.

If a welfare plan – such as free housing, food, and medical care – makes sense for the aged and poor, then surely it makes just as much sense to offer such a welfare plan to everyone, regardless of age and condition, even regardless of citizenship. What’s good for 90-year-old WWII veterans who lived their lives in Chicago should also be provided to a caravan of Venezuelans who hiked through seven other countries to get here. Why not?

The people of Arizona and California have frequent water shortages. But if you buy a shower head or toilet in Michigan, in the very heart of the Great Lakes, that product must be designed with a water governor to limit your usage too. It’s federal law, applied nationwide, no matter whether you live in constant drought or you reside in a flood plain.

Wind and sunlight are free; to use windmills and solar panels to power a farmhouse in a sunny, windy area might be cost-efficient and sensible… but the federal government is now staffed with legions who worship the sun and wind as cure-alls and seek to impose dependence upon these sources on areas that lack both consistent wind and sun.

Each of these issues seems completely different from the others. Some are the choices of unions and associations, others the decree of school boards. Some are the unconstitutional whim of mayors and governors, some are the regulatory overreach of federal bureaucracies.

But what they have in common is a lack of judgment, a lack of understanding that circumstances differ, so situations require localized or personal discrimination.

These are but a few of the myriad cases where we have given up our individual judgements to what are essentially mindless "algorithms." One wonders where else this might be happening. The professions, people in the medical fields, lawyers and judges, engineers and architects to name a few, are licensed because they are specifically trained to exercise judgement and discriminate based on the facts of specific cases. Yet more and more these people are constrained by laws that make a one size fits all solution whether the facts actually fit or not.

Part of the reason people do not exercise their individual judgement is because of fear of being sued.  To be honest, there really are too many lawyers who also seem to lack reason and judgement.  The courts should shut these people down.  Indeed, we all need to exercise our reason and judgement.

Have the Capitol Police Been Weaponized Against Republicans?

 Andrea Widburg has a post at the American Thinker entitled The Capitol Police have been fully weaponized against Republicans. Congressman Troy Nehls of Texas claims Capitol Police entered his office when he wasn't there, and without asking his permission, and photographed legislative materials on his desk. He speculates that the Capitol Police are spying on him because of criticism of Nancy Pelosi.

The Capitol Police Inspector General has opened an investigation:

I know I'm cynical, but I assume that this investigation will be a whitewash. A wrist or two might be slapped with a wet noodle, but the main call will be to protect the institution's pro–Democrat party mission.

It's clear that innumerable (all?) federal agencies have become ideological, policing, or fundraising arms of the Democrat party. The big question is what happens when (if?) the Republicans retake Congress. (I say "if" because I'm not sure elections will be any more honest in 2022 than they were in 2020.)

One of the things we learned during the Trump years is that the employees in the various federal agencies were so loyal to the Democrat party that nothing would sway them. Is the same true for the Capitol Police? Once Nancy Pelosi is no longer calling the shots, will they begin to do their job policing the Capitol, or will they continue to act as partisans who believe that their mission is to ensure that Washington, D.C. is a one-party town, no matter what the American voters want?

I share Widburg's jaundiced view of the situation. It seems that people at all levels of the Federal government commit acts that are clearly illegal, with no consequences. One wonders what they get in return for that loyalty?  Go read the whole post.

We must become intolerant of the Left's Bull Schiff

Kurt Schlichter, at Townhall.com tells us that conservatives have been entirely too tolerant, of Leftist male bovine excrament. He says Conservatives Must Stop Tolerating Commie Nonsense.

What got us here, to this sad and sorry state, is that we were polite for too long. In a misguided sense of misplaced kindness we failed to call it as we saw it. Stupid people, deluded people, and/or malicious people all confronted us with their stupid, deluded and/or malicious nonsense, and instead of telling them to cut the Schiff, we smiled and tolerated it. Now we got dudes setting records in women’s sports, roving bands of mouth thong vigilantes pestering those of us who exercise facial freedom, and communists who have decided that racism is cool as long as it’s useful to their agenda. We should have told them “No” the first time they opened their yaps.

...snip...

We need to be intolerant of stupidity, intolerant of delusions, and intolerant of those who want to change our country into a giant college run by the kind of people you avoided when you walked across campus.

When the first dude approached us and announced that he was now Gladys, our society defaulted to kindness. Someone who is suffering gender dysphoria does not need to have more pain heaped upon him or her, and we had no desire as a society to compound that pain. But tolerating this confusion was not enough. The demand became to celebrate it and to pretend it was real. But it’s not real. A man can never menstruate or give birth or ask for directions. A woman cannot be a father or (generally) carry 120 pounds of weapons and gear or fully appreciate The Dirty Dozen. These are facts, these are written, these are science, damnit. And we believe in science.<

Understand that when you tolerate a lie, pretend it is real, you not only encourage the deluded person in his delution, but you yourself become demoralized, quite literally. You lose your moral bearings and moral authority. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the Left wants. They want it because it sows chaos and confusion. We can not let that continue. We need to start calling a spade, a spade. Schlichter is right on this.

Holding Our Scavenger Class Accountable

 Joel Duffie at the American Thinker has an article explaining that Americas crime spike goes much deeper than policing or the lack of it. I have said it is a spiritual problem, and Duffie identifies that it is a abandonment of morality. He is correct. He notes that when our so called "elites," who should be called scavengers, do not obey the very laws they make, how can they expect the ordinary person to obey them?

We work 40 or more hours a week just to have our paychecks snatched by the government for taxes. Sometimes we rob Peter to pay Paul just to keep the electricity on and then, when we turn on the television, we hear Nancy Pelosi claim that “we’re a nation of laws” right after she made a fortune in Tesla stock. Come on, man!

Crime is spiking because the American people are becoming as morally bankrupt as the politicians in our government. Harsher sentences won’t help stop crime because the jails and prisons are already packed full. More police won’t solve anything for the same reason.

If you want to fix the problem with crime, you need to start by clearing out the swamp in Washington. Our leaders need to be held accountable like everyone else. Nobody is supposed to be above the law here but you could have fooled me.

I suspect that this won't be solved anytime soon. The Roman empire was hopelessly corrupt. Italy is still hopelessly corrupt. So, at the same time that our scavenger class wants to exempt themselves from laws they created, and issue mandates that from which they exempt themselves, they want to take away Americas guns. Civis Americanus has an article at the American Thinker entitled The Perfect Label to Destry Gun Grabbing Democrats' Credibility.

It is a basic principle of psychological warfare and propaganda that the assignment of a name that sticks to somebody or something can make or break that person or entity. A fictional example from the Game of Thrones series exemplifies this. If you're a slave in Meereen, and somebody called the "Mother of Dragons" and "Breaker of Chains" is outside your masters' walls with an army, you'll probably pick up anything you can use as a weapon to join a slave revolt. If we look at a real historical example, serfs who had previously been willing to do almost anything to avoid service in the Russian Army, including knocking out their front teeth so they could not bite open musket cartridges, were eager to follow Aleksandr V. Suvorov, also known as "The Russian Hannibal." He took good care of his soldiers and tended to win lopsided victories with minimal losses to his own side.

So what does Civis Americanus think is a better than gun grabbers?

Call Them Firearm Quacks or Anti-Gun Quacks

"Dangerous quack" is not an overstatement. The houseplant in chief has dispensed advice that could easily, if acted upon, turn you into either (1) a convicted felon or (2) a corpse. "Joe Biden's Shotgun Advice Could Land Jill Biden in Jail" states that "[f]elony aggravated menacing, reckless endangering charges could result from shooting gun in air." This is under the laws of Delaware, Biden is (presumably still) licensed to practice law. Missouri attorneys Mark and Patricia McCloskey, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to charges for merely displaying firearms, as opposed to actually firing them, to warn protesters off their property.

Biden's quackery is not limited, however, to recommending the unlawful and reckless discharge of firearms, a practice discouraged by all responsible Second Amendment–supporters and NRA members. He also said, "Instead of standing there and teaching a cop, when there's an unarmed person coming at them with a knife or something, you shoot them in the leg instead of in the heart is a very different thing."

Welcome to reality, Joe. Here is a video of a female police officer who empties her sidearm into the center of mass (not the leg) of an "unarmed" subject who attacks her with a knife and almost succeeds in killing her despite sustaining multiple hits. He managed, in fact, to apparently reach her weapon and jam it momentarily, because the bodycam video shows her clearing it so she can continue to fire. Had she followed the houseplant in chief's quack advice by shooting to wound, it would have probably been "end of watch" for her.

Our Dangerous Quack in Chief keeps insisting that no right is absolute. That is true but doesn't allow any infringement that he wants at the moment. The wording of the Second Amendment is just about as absolute as it gets. That means that the government may regulate guns, but not infringe on anyone's right to keep and bear them. Naturally, as David Codrea has often said, "Anyone who can't be trusted with a gun can't be trusted without a custodian." That means that some people should be in prison...for life. On the other hand, our scavenger class has over criminalized life for the rest of us.  By creating crimes where there is none, the scavengers have created a situation in which at any time they can target a someone they don't like.  It is a terrible use of the law.

What would they do differently?

J. B. Shurk asks Has the U. S. Government Declared War on it's Citizens? And one has to ask, if someone wanted to destroy the country, what would that person do differently?

Imagine if the U.S. government targeted a foreign nation state by devaluing its currency, pushing waves of migrants across its borders, undermining the security of its elections, denigrating the unifying elements of its citizens' shared history, stoking the flames of any racial or ethnic discord, and spreading fake news in order to incite the passions of its people. Wouldn't we call that an effective, albeit immoral, hybrid war strategy for taking down an enemy without ever having to fire a shot? Does that assessment change if the hybrid war is being fought, not against a foreign nation, but rather against the individual American states and their citizens?

Shurk cites three examples: a) Open borders, b) Election insecurity, and c) Destruction of the middle class. I would note too that while this has become more apparent under Biden and the Democrats, it is really a bipartisan issue. I would call it an issue between the elite...er...scavenger class and the citizen.  But go check out the whole article.

Biden Lies About the Second Amendment

 At the American Thinker Andrea Widburg has a post entitled Biden's heinous, dishonest speech attacking the Second Amendment.And Ms. Widburg is absolutely correct. Of course, she issues the unnecessary "I'm not if favor of armed rebellion" announcement because rather than show us why we are wrong (they can't) the gun grabbers yell "insurrectionist!" But after that, she points out just a few of Joe Biden's lies and misinformation. Of course, as a would be tyrant, Biden has always wanted to get rid of guns. But as Widburg points out:

Currently, the single most important thing separating America from most of the world’s other so-called free countries is our Second Amendment. Most countries pay lip service to the rights of free speech or free assembly; none acknowledge an inherent, Creator-given right to bear arms. Joe Biden would like us to be more like them. And as part of that effort, he appeared in New York on Thursday and gave something resembling a speech (he stumbled through words in a binder, interrupting his text with bizarre statements) that was a rare mixture of nonsense and lies about the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment is the single most important part of the Constitution because without it none of the other rights matter. As we’ve seen across the world, in country after country with a charter or constitution that ostensibly gives the citizens the right to bodily integrity, free speech, assembly, etc., those countries have no compunction about ignoring such rights. (I’m looking at you, Australia, Canada, Austria, Italy, etc., etc.) The governments know that their citizens have no recourse whatsoever. They are helpless.

Please understand that I am most emphatically not advocating an armed rebellion. What I am pointing out is that there is always in the back of our government’s collective mind the tiny frisson of fear that, with a lawfully armed populace, if the government goes too far, bad things might happen. It’s that fear that restrains the government from going too far.

Biden's lies are whoppers, to say the least. But they are also standard gun grabber fare. Go read the whole post, it's a duzzy. A man this ignorant should not be allowed anywhere near our laws.

Sabanes Oxley For Secretaries of State?

You may remember that Jay Valentine is the guy who exposed voter fraud using the same fraud detection methods he uses in business. At the article at the American Thinker entitled We Need A Sarbanes Oxley Law for Voter Rolls, he points out that the voter rolls in at least 30 states are filled with improbable voters. For example, he points out that in Alabama there are at least 9 voters over the age of 1,000. The oldest man recorded in the Bible was Methuselah who "only" lived to 969 years old. Shouldn't the Secretary of State of Alabama check out these 9 individuals? It is possible that they made a mistake filling out their registration form, but these 9 individuals are very low hanging fruit. But there is more:

In Alabama, there are over 3,300 voters on the rolls over the age of 100. The top 9 are over 1,000 years old.

Most Americans have never met someone over 112 years of age. Just go to Alabama: They have 482 of them on their current election roll.

2,500 or more Alabama voters share a phone number, some of whom started using that number in 1972.

There are even 18 active voters in one of their city jails.

Valentine goes on to share states as diverse as Georgia and Ohio. Whether red states, or blue, the voter rolls are filled with anomolies that open the door to cheating and the rigging of elections. What Valentine suggests is a Sarbanes Oxley law for Secretaries of State and Election officials. What Sarbanes Oxley does is require CEOs under criminal penalties, to certify that the data sent to investors is true and accurate.

America needs a Sarbanes-Oxley equivalent for voter rolls and any candidate for secretary of state must commit to the following:

All voter rolls will be made available without onerous fees. For you political types, that means no more than $100.

The secretary of state will cross-search the voter rolls monthly to identify phantom voters who live in hotels, UPS Boxes, cemeteries, and scores of other non-residential housing units. Then, remove them.

The secretary of state will apply a voter ID numbering sequence incrementing by 1 where any new voters come at the end of the sequence. That eliminates Wisconsin-style voter ID insertions.

90 days before early voting begins, and during early voting, the list of who voted will be made available via a URL so citizens can track who votes and how many times.

The secretary of state and election officials will sign off on the voter roll each year and, if there is fraud found in such a roll, those election executives are liable to criminal prosecution.

No, I wouldn't call Biden a traitor...

James Mullin has a post at the American Thinker today that is...well...interesting. The post, entitled I wouldn't exactly call Biden's oil and gas policies treason points to exactly that. As I have noted many times, when a series of abuses all point in the same direction, you can no longer claim that it is mere coincidence. Mullin points to an number of facts which any reasonable person can connect dots.

So that’s where we are: Even as the Totalitarians are on the move, Biden’s policies have made the West financially poorer, whereas those same Totalitarians have their income stream sharply reinvigorated.

I never advance for one second that the Biden family’s dealings with China, Ukraine, and Russia have anything to do with what is described here. Coincidences occur in life and do not equal causal connections. But as Sherlock Holmes once sagely said, when you eliminate all possibilities, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. And I find myself wondering more and more who were those citizens of ancient Troy who argued for bringing that wooden horse inside the city gates?

No, I wouldn't call Biden a traitor...

Election Integrity Is Moving Grindingly Slowly

According to the Gateway Pundit, testimony in Arizona revealed Democrats stole military ballots and replaced them with votes for Biden. Meanwhile, efforts to improve the integrity of our elections move grinding slowly.

Conservatives Are Silent On Canadian Truckers

Andrea Widburg at the American Thinker has noticed something that doesn't quite make sense about the Canadian trucker's protest. What Widburg has noticed is that so called conservative polititians have been silent.

For anyone who doesn’t watch the mainstream media, what’s happening in Canada has been one of the most exciting things in the two years since COVID left China and turned most of the world’s Western politicians into tyrants. Across Canada, outside of the despotic confines of Justin Trudeau’s brain and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, people are galvanized by the 45-mile-long truckers’ convoy that drove into Ottawa in pursuit of liberty. The Canadian opposition, however, although given a golden political opportunity, had nothing to say for a week, only stirring itself on Monday to a few weak pieties. Jordan Peterson gave them a solid scolding for their dismal performance.

Unsurprisingly, Sundance, at The Conservative Treehouse, noticed that Canada’s conservatives couldn’t bestir themselves to capitalize on the truckers’ inspiring stand. He grouped their passivity with the silence of conservative leadership in Australia, Canada, and the UK. I would add that we can say the same about most congressional “conservatives” in America.

Widburg posits that the reason for conservative silence is that the truckers are working class people, while the conservative polititians come from the same elite class as the Leftists. They go to the same schools, and essentially have the same point of view. When push comes to shove, they will side with the Left every time.

Personally, I think we should stop calling them the "elites." Most of these people are scavengers, stealing our wealth and income. They produce nothing, and deserve none our wealth.

Study Finds that Massachusetts Gun Control Legislation Has No Impact On Crime

 At Full Mag News Jack Shepard tells us that Massachusetts Gun Control Legislation Has No Impact on Crime. The study was done by American University, but it remains to be seen whether gun grabbers will pay attention to it. American University is hardly a bastion of right wing political thought. Time will tell.