The Tragic Life of Senator Dianne Feinstein

 F. Riehl has what is probably the most balanced reaction to the recent death of Senator Dianne Feinstien entitled DEAD Senator Feinstein's Legacy: A Lifelong Quest to Destroy Your Second Amendment. While others have taken a certain delite in her death, the truth is that every death is a tragedy. Yet it is also true that she has spent the last 30 years attempting to take away the rights of law-abiding citizens.

The recent death of Senator Dianne Feinstein at the age of 90 has brought forth a wave of tributes and remembrances from the Left. While many laud her as a trailblazer and a champion for various causes, it’s essential to critically examine her legacy, particularly her relentless pursuit to destroy America’s Second Amendment rights.

Feinstein’s political career was undeniably shaped by the tragic assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978. This traumatic event, while deeply personal to her, became the foundation for her aggressive stance on gun control.

However, one must question whether personal trauma should be the driving force behind legislation that affects millions.

Her most notorious contribution, or to some, her most significant overreach, was the federal ban on military-style assault weapons from 1994 to 2004. While Feinstein and her supporters championed this as a necessary step to curb gun violence, it was a direct infringement on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.

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It’s worth noting that even after witnessing firsthand the horrors of gun violence, Feinstein herself once carried a gun for personal protection. Can you say “Only One”? This fact underscores a concerning double standard: advocating for restrictive gun laws while benefiting from the very rights she sought to curtail for others.

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Instead of addressing the root causes of gun violence, such as mental health and socio-economic factors, she seemed singularly focused on limiting Americans’ access to firearms.

I remember the death of both George Moscone and Harvey Milk, but I didn't know them personally, nor President of the Board of Supervisors Feinstein. After all, I was a young man of 26 at the time living in Ohio.  So, I can't say what effect the death had on her. No doubt it was traumatic. But it should have been clear that these deaths were committed not by a gun, but by a man.  Getting rid of guns would not have changed a thing.  Nonetheless, as Riehl points out, her personal experiences should not have resulted in the taking of the rights of millions of Americans.

The Real Target of All Gun Control Is the Law Abiding Citizen

In Government enforced helplessness: a cautionary tale, Milli Sands at the A,erican Thinker tells us what happens when government disarms its citizens and makes them dependent serfs. If you are not one of the "favored" groups, this may happen to you.

In late August 1929, the Arabs of Mandatory Palestine did what they did best: slaughter defenseless people — in this case, as in many, Jews.

The massacre took place on August 23–24, 1929, in Hebron, then part of British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. Arab mobs attacked Jewish residents of Hebron, killing nearly 70 Jews and wounding 60 others. Many homes and synagogues were ransacked and torched. The obligatory raping of women occurred. The attacks were carried out by Arab Palestinians against the long-established Jewish community in Hebron. The Jewish community had lived in Hebron for millennia, way before there was even a single Muslim on the planet.

She goes into some detail on the history of the British Palestinian Mandate and how the disarmament of the Jews came about. As always, prejudice against the Jews was at work in both the British government and the Muslims:

Inconsistent with these agreements was the creation from Mandatory Palestine, the "national home for the Jewish people," of Transjordan. The Jews got one eighth of the land, the Arabs seven eighths.

Despite this, the Arabs objected to the mere stump of land reserved for the Jews and increased tensions with the Jews of Palestine. This erupted in violence in Hebron in 1929. These tensions were incited more than most realize by the British government and its failure to follow the conditions and agreements under which it was given mandate over Palestine.

To assist and effect the Arab violence (mostly if not all from Muslims as they followed the directions of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the British-appointed grand mufti of Jerusalem), the British had disarmed Palestinian Jews weeks earlier as part of policies meant to appease the Arab population. This left the Jewish community vulnerable to attack.

The specific law used by the British to disarm the Jews was the Firearms Act of 1929, which required licenses for firearms and allowed confiscation of weapons by authorities. This disarmament was strongly protested by the Jewish community at the time.

...snip...

There had been some instances of violence between Jews and Arabs in Palestine by the late 1920s. The British aimed to prevent intercommunal violence by disarming both sides. However, in practice, the disarmament was enforced more thoroughly and punitively against Jews. Arabs managed to "hide" weapons, often provided by the Brits, from authorities.

British officials were also influenced by Arab leaders who warned of violence if Jewish immigration and arms were not restricted. This led to policies appeasing Arab demands.

There was antipathy and distrust towards Zionism among some British officials, which translated into selectivity in disarmament, resulting in selective slaughter.

And, quite interestingly, the British were concerned about rising Jewish immigration and nationalism in Palestine in the 1920s. Disarming Jews was seen as a way to limit the ability of Jewish militias to resist British rule.

Well, you say, here is but one example. Nothing like this will happen in the United States . We are not like those people. Except, of course, that we are those people. As Sands points out in the rest of her article, it has happened many times around the world, that whenever the government disarms its people, it soon abuses their trust. Whether it is Nazi Germany, the Ottoman Empire, the Hutu's in Rwanda, the lesson learned is always the same: you can not trust those who do not trust you with a gun. That goes for individual states.

States often posit gun control on the idea that it will control crime. But criminals do not, by definition, obey laws. A piece of paper with writing on it has meaning only insofar as the people who wrote it intend to keep it.  But criminals don't care about your paper.  As such, the laws will not impede them in the least. The real target of all gun control laws is law abiding citizens. Always.

Strengthening and Defending the Second Amendment

 Ranjit Singh at Bearing Arms has an interesting think piece on what can be done to strengthen the Second Amendment recognized rights of the people in gun friendly states. Singh recognizes that the anti-gunners are pretty much hardened into their positions. Guns, they think, cause people to kill other people. History will tell us a different story. People have been killing others since Cain killed Able with a rock. No gun needed. People have since been killed with fists, feet, clubs, knives, swords, spears, garrots, ropes, and on and on. Anything can be used as a weapon, even a plastic bag. The thing tying all these weapons together is the nature of man. The problem is not the guns, but the people. But anti-gunners don't want to recognize that fact, because it calls into question the whole of their philosophy.

You can find Singh's article at Five simple policy suggestions for lawmakers in Second Amendment friendly states:

At Bearing Arms, we have covered the post-Bruen tantrums in detail. The backlash is real and in states like New York, gun owners are worse off now than they were before Bruen. The goal of these tantrum laws is not to reduce crime or violence but to impede lawful gun ownership. What else explains imposing burdensome fees and training requirements, mandatory registration, licensing, etc., none of which criminals will ever obey, and then barring lawful permit holders from carrying almost everywhere by creating a massive list of “sensitive places”?

He goes on to list his five proposals, which include things like:

- Repealing all carry permit fees, 

- Integrating the issuance of carry permits within the DMV,

- Repealing all gun, ammunition and accessory sales taxes,

- Subsidize and promote gun training in K-12 schools, and

- Pass firearms industry liability protection and anti-discrimination laws.

Of course, he just outlines the scope of these policies. I can tell that subsidizing and promoting gun training in K-12 public schools would be met with vocal objections, even if the curriculum was age appropriate, and parents would have to sign off on having their children taught gun safety at school. But all of these, and more are worth considering.

One very interesting policy prescriptions I think is:

2) Integrate carry permit applications and issuance at the DMV

(Full disclosure: I am repeating an idea I heard from Attorney Mark Smith at the Four Boxes Diner YouTube channel.) Local DMV offices are well-positioned to process carry permit applications. They have cameras, computers, desks, paper forms, pens, etc., and employees who know how to process driver’s license applications. Processing carry permit applications is well within DMV employees’ abilities. States with pro-Second Amendment majorities should add carry permit applications to the portfolio of services offered by their DMV offices, and advertise the new service loudly and proudly.

Much as I detest the DMV, and hate going down there on the few occasions I must, I find it even more onerous to go down to the sheriff's office every fine years to renew my carry permit. I think this is a great idea. After all, the Left has claimed that voting is a sacred right and that all people should be registered. Therefore why not register them at the DMV, The same arguments apply even more to a right called out in the Constitution.

I urge gentle readers to read all of Singh's article, and spread these ideas wherever you can. The right to keep and bear arms is not about hunting or sporting purposes. Those are just training for the real purpose, which is defense of self, of loved ones under one's care, of home and state. We are really supposed to be warriors as well as workers in the field. Oddly enough, the spirit of workers who are also warriors is embodied in the Navy's Sea Bees. The Sea Bee units consist of the various construction trades needed to build facilities wherever the Navy needs them in the world. But they also are capable of fighting to defend their positions. They build and they fight. Understanding what the Second Amendment is and does, we must strengthen and defend it as well.

The Climate Hoaxers Want to Take Your Steak

 While the gun debate continues, and the country slides ever deeper into totalitarianism, let's change the topic, shall we?  Forgive me, but this is a topic near and dear to me: the average American diet, which consists of about 75% grains in various forms from breakfast cereal, to bread, to crunchy snacks, cakes, and pies, plus other carbs such as potatoes and potato products.

While I am no mere skeleton with skin, I have lost a great deal of weight on a high fat, moderate protein diet with close to zero carbohydrates.  More importantly, my blood work improved greatly, and I have been off blood pressure meds for two years now.  Call it the Banting diet, the Atkins diet, the Protein Power diet, or as it has lately been called, the Carnivore diet. All of these diets, and there are others out there that fall into this group, have in common that each is a ketogenic diet. That is, they put you into the fat burning mode. Interestingly, eating fat doesn't make you fat, in fact it is just the opposite.  Interestingly also, that ketogenic mode burns fat off the body, but leaves muscles intact.  And it is good for the brain as well.

In any case, there are two interesting reports today that touch on this topic.  The first, by Tristan Justice at The Federalist is titled Ozempic Is A Permanent Treatment To A Preventable Problem That Already Has A Cure. As the map embedded in the article shows, Americans are exceedingly fat, morbidly obese in fact. No matter how hard they try to obey the government's recommendation to cut fats and eat a low fat, high carb diet, they keep getting fatter. They are understandably desperate.

What Americans don't realize is that they have been lied to by the medical institutions, by the media and government for decades. As Nina Teicholz details in her book Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong In A Healthy Diet, we have all been lied to in an effort to boost profits for Big Food, Big Pharma, and boost power for Big Government.

America is losing the fight against obesity. In desperation, Americans are getting hooked on a new kind of 21st century diet pill engineered to capitalize on the crisis.

The latest health craze to sweep the nation features new injections for a preventable condition that already has a cure. Semaglitude, a popular type 2 diabetes medication, is being prescribed off-label to patients eager to lose weight.

The pharmaceutical solution being sold as a “miracle” cure to runaway obesity has become such a blockbuster success that the weight-loss drugs are “reshaping Denmark’s economy.” Denmark is home to the manufacturers of two name-brand obesity medicines, Ozempic and Wegovy.

(As an aside, doctors were punished, losing their rights to practice at certain hospitals and sometimes their licenses to practice at all for prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine off label, but not Ozempic. Funny how when profits are to be made, the rules change?)

The CDC estimates 6 in 10 Americans already have at least one chronic illness. Four in 10 have two or more. People who are obese can expect to pay double in health care costs over their lifetime. Those costs triple and quadruple as weight gain accelerates.

Put simply, there is far more money to be made on a population chronically obese than one at an otherwise healthy weight. Ozempic, meanwhile, is a medication that can exploit the desire for weight loss without solving the crisis. A spring report from The Wall Street Journal noted patients who quit taking Ozempic often see their weight go back up.

“Patient testimonies have focused not only on the dramatic effect on their waistlines, but also on how quickly many seem to pack the pounds back on if they stop taking the injections,” the report read. “That may not be ideal for patients, but for Wall Street it is a feature rather than a bug.”

On the other hand, remaining on Ozempic brings consequences of its own. A study from 2020 that examined patients who took once-weekly injections over a 52-week period found that while users of Semaglitude lost 7.4 pounds of fat, they also lost 5 pounds of muscle. It’s hard to describe a weight loss drug where 40 percent of the weight lost is muscle as some kind of “miracle” elixir.

Reading between the lines, one can see why the Wuhan Flu was such a perfect pandemic. For Big Pharma, it represented billions of dollars in profits, profits they don't want to let go of. For Big Government, it offered the perfect time to try out their most authoritarian schemes to see which ones worked the best. Many Americans failed the test, by the way. Of course, it offered the media the excuse to scare the public yet more. A lot of people got off work yet still got paid. No wonder they are ramping it up again. Oh, and let's not forget China, that got to test out a bioweapon without bringing down full scale war on itself. Win-Win-Win for those who want to control you and me.

Here's the truth, though it is easy to miss it among the thousands of weight loss diets and exercise plans. We evolved into the humans we are eating a diet largely consisting of hunting and eating animals. We preferred the fattest cuts of meat and organ meat, as these provided the most nutrition and energy. Our ancient ancestors were in constant ketosis, which allowed them to go for days between meals living off the literal fat of the land.

The American obesity epidemic has remained an ongoing battle for decades. Hampered by bad science leading Americans to obsess over calories and pursue low-fat, high carb diets, obesity exploded from just 13 percent of U.S. adults in 1962 to more than 1 in 3 today.

Fat storage, however, is determined by complex interactions between hormones and enzymes and dictated by the quality of our diet. Contrary to federal nutrition guidelines affected by the food industry, optimal metabolic health achieved with a minimally processed high-fat, low carb diet complete with an exercise regimen is one long-lasting antidote to obesity.

The second report that is of interest today is by Pete Colan at the American Thinker entitled There's something fishy about eating bugs. The notion that we should eat bugs is that somehow insects do not burp or fart, thus do not create greenhouse gases. There is so much wrong with this idea, however, that we need to unpack it piece by piece.

The first part of this theory is that greenhouse gases are warming the planet and that we will all burn up in 12 years. This is simply not true, but let us give the devil his due, and assume it is true. The next part of this theory is that cows, sheep, goats and other ruminant animals burp and fart carbon dioxide and to a smaller amount methane into the atmosphere. Thus, if none of these animals are around to do so, less global warming! We will be allowed to live for an extra three months. Hurray!

But wait...if ruminant animals are eating grass, and grass is taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in the first place, the cows don't really add any greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. They just recycle the carbon dioxide that is already there.

But hold on, there's more as it turns out. Using the natural instincts of ruminants to herd together tightly, one can cause them to build up the soil by storing carbon in the soil, thus they actually reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide load. You can read about it in a book by Nicholette Hahm Niman entitled Defending Beef: The Ecological and Nutritional Case for Meat.

Like any wide-reaching initiative the Left pushes, the long-term effects are never really thought out, which would also make them lousy chess players, but I digress. Examples of initiatives (like bug-eating) that have and will fail not only because the premise behind them is fundamentally flawed but because they lack sufficient critical thinking, planning and testing:

- Eliminate fossil fuels and go to electric vehicles by 2035. By now we all know how ridiculous the notion is to push EV’s so fast with their unproven reliability and range, lack of any plan for a supportive infrastructure, dependence on foreign nations for raw materials, etc. But the Left’s commitment to this folly us unwavering.

- Eliminate coal and natural gas power plant and build solar and wind energy production. Not only is this notion woefully unreliable and wasteful, but did anyone bother to do the math on this? I did, and based on the average efficiency of solar panels, the U.S. would have to sacrifice three entire average-size states to have enough solar panels to satisfy our current power needs, and that’s without any form of energy storage.

- mRNA vaccines are “safe and effective.” Well, now we know they were more harmful to healthy young people than the virus itself , while truly safe and effective mitigation protocols like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were outlawed.

Are we therefore ready to jump on the cricket train and accept that eating bugs instead of steak and spare ribs are the best long-term solution to human survival? Do we simply accept the premise that bugs don’t create so-called “greenhouse gases”? Well, they do. “Insects, like people, require oxygen to live and produce carbon dioxide as a waste product.” Oh, and insects also fart, emitting methane (termites), nitrous oxide (ants) and a whole host of “climate-change” poisons.

Frankly, before I dip into a termite nest for sustenance, I'll hunt down one of the King's deer. I am pretty sure that nobody in the Davos crowd is really concerned about the climate, nor believes the propaganda that St. Greta of Thunburg puts out. What they do believe is that the population needs to be reduced because their vaunted "technology" will eliminate too many jobs. They think we won't know what to do with ourselves, and will bring pitch forks to bear against them. In other words, Klaus Schwab and company are luddites. These are people who can't imagine that we will find better ways to use our time when freed from the tasks we are doing now. But man has proven that in fact he does adapt. Schwab envisions that he must figure out what to do for all of us. But it isn't up to him. It is rather up to each of us.

Perhaps California Needs to Rethink Their Crime Strategy

 As John Lott points out in an article at The Federalist, by proposing an amendment to the United States Constitution, that they know they do not have the votes to pass, that would ban gun ownership, California Democrats Admit It's Unconstitutional To Ban Gun Ownership. I do not know if they understand that is what they are doing. Living in an information bubble makes them vulnerable to believing that everyone thinks like they do. But a ban on guns is like attempting to put the toothpaste back in the tube. You will just create a big mess.

What is it about progressives (read communists, fascists, Democrats and the bleeding heart useful idiots) that they can not see that guns do not of their own accord commit crimes. Rather, it is people, and not the ones who buy guns for lawful means, but those who use stolen guns to commit crimes. After all, most criminals can not by law posses guns anyway. Such people represent only 7% of the population, such that there will always be enough guns for them. After all, if criminals can smuggle drugs into the country, why not guns as well? It is this blind spot that puzzles me.

But perhaps they do not know about these statistics:

Gun control groups claim California has the country’s strictest gun control laws, but it shouldn’t hold itself out as a model for the rest of the country to follow. California’s per capita rate of mass public shootings has consistently exceeded that of the rest of the country. The rate is much lower in Texas, but gun control groups give Texas an “F” grade.

Since 2010, California’s mass public shooting rate per capita has been 43 percent higher than Texas’ and 29 percent higher than the rest of the United States. From 2020 on, it has been even worse. California’s rate was 276 percent higher than Texas’ and 100 percent higher than the rest of the country.

Democrats’ primary argument for raising the gun ownership age is that 18, 19, and 20-year-olds commit firearm-related crimes at relatively high rates. That is true, but the issue is whether those who can legally buy guns commit crimes.

About 90 percent of murderers already have a violent criminal history and are banned from buying guns. Data show that young people who can pass background checks tend to be at least as law-abiding as older people. A ban only affects those who could otherwise pass a background check and legally buy a gun.

Gun control advocates say they push federal background checks on the private transfer of guns to stop mass public shootings, but those measures wouldn’t have stopped even one mass public shooting this century. They also claim they have stopped 4 million dangerous people from buying guns. But they should say that there were 4 million “initial denials.”

Gentle readers are encouraged to read Lott's article in full. Meanwhile, Judge Benetiz, of the San Diego Federal Court has struck down a California law that banned what are called "high capacity magazines."

A federal judge from California determined on Sept. 22 that the state's ban on gun magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez in San Diego said the state's "sweeping ban" of the detachable magazines—sometimes referred to as high-capacity magazines—violates the Second Amendment rights of firearms owners because it bars people from using such magazines for lawful reasons, including self-defense.

“This case is about a California state law that makes it a crime to keep and bear common firearm magazines typically possessed for lawful purposes,” Judge Benitez, a nominee of President George W. Bush, wrote in a 71-page decision filed on Sept. 22 (pdf). “Based on the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment, this law is clearly unconstitutional.”

Perhaps California should rethink their strategy on crime. It doesn't make sense to make law abiding Americans criminals.

People arguing for bans of guns are arguing for older forms of weapons

 A story out of South Africa points to the value of armed militia in stopping crimes. Olivia Murray has the story at the American Thinker today entitled Armed citizens restore the rule of law in South Africa after an armed robbery and murder. In general, a "militia" is any group of armed citizens under the control of officers selected by them, that act in coordination to achieve a mission. A posse could be a militia, in this case under the direction of a sheriff.

According to a local source, the police responded, but fled the scene when they came under fire, at which point a “community crime watch group” known as Hoedspruit Farmwatch stepped in, setting up makeshift barricades with boulders. The armed robbers then shot at the farmers, who returned fire in a clash that lasted around 20 minutes. After all was said and done, the members of HF were unhurt, while four of the gang members were dead and another three were injured...

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Few things bring me as much joy as when I read stories in which harsh justice rains down on those who hurt the innocent, so this was certainly a “feel-good” story for someone like myself, but it’s also a good reminder of what the “militia” is, and why our very lives depend on its sustenance. These armed farmers, private citizens with personal weapons, are the militia, despite all the screaming and shouting to the contrary—the militia is neither the National Guard, nor is it a state police force, nor any other government corps.

George Mason, an anti-Federalist, purportedly said, “I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

Gentle readers should read the entire post and realize that we cannot delegate our responsibility to defend our lives onto others, either the police or the National Guard. We are our own first responders, that is the painful truth since man first walked the planet. When people call for bans on guns, or gun confiscation, what they are really arguing for is older forms of weapons such as knives, swords, spears, or bows and arrows. Of these, only the arrow is a standoff weapon, like the gun, capable of leaving its user unharmed. Still, it takes a lot of skill and strength to use it effectively and it is quite a bit of stuff to carry around. I like archery as a sport but would hate to depend on it in case of an armed attack.

No wonder they crave power

 Have we heard enough of Michelle Lujan Grisham and her totalitarian edict banning the carrying of guns from Bernalillo County and Albuquerque?  I don't think so.  For one thing, the lawsuits filed against her misuse of her office cost a great deal of money, money you and I contribute to organizations such as Gun Owners of America, the Citizen's Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and state level organizations such as Grass Roots North Carolina. Name me another "right" we have that requires one to constantly sue people to be able to exercise it? Oh, that's right, more and more people are having to sue to exercise their First Amendment rights, but that is because the Second is under so much attack.

Thus it seemed prudent to highlight D. Parker's article at the American Thinker today entitled There's no way gun confiscation can work. At least there is no way it can work as advertised, to prevent crime. But that is not the intent, is it? The Second Amendment has been called by St. George Tucker in his Blackstone's Commentaries the true palladium of liberty. In other words, it protects all the other rights in the Bill of Rights. At the time of the founding, this was radical stuff!

There was a key moment in the pushing of the Overton window in the "temporary" New Mexico gun ban, where the governor and would-be tyrant stated that she doesn't expect criminals to follow the order. In the sane world of 10–20 years ago, that would have been the top story everywhere and the critical point where her political career ended.

Because if the efforts of the fascist far left and the ghouls of the gun-grabbing lobby aren't directed at the actions of criminals, then you have the right to ask: what is the point of their constant obsession with controlling and eliminating our commonsense civil rights?

We know why they don't care about criminals and just focus on disarming the innocent. They will lie on occasion, saying they have concerns about criminals stealing guns from citizens, as justification for their obsession with gun confiscation. That makes about as much sense as banning cars to stop drunk driving. But we do know they have a soft spot for the lawbreaker set, as proven by policies on cash bail.

...snip...

It's a hallmark of every leftist authoritarian down through history, from Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, and Maduro to Obama (Biden), to confiscate guns from his political enemies before annihilating them.

Always remember the sequence: registration, confiscation, annihilation.

You should also take notice that in all those studies by the "leading experts" comparing President Trump to Hitler, these "experts" strangely seem to always leave out this major difference. Doesn't this disprove their expertise?

So, we know one thing they see as a benefit to gun confiscation is to reduce the average Joe to serf status. The Democrats don't really like democracy, and would sooner be in power permanently. Rigging elections is such a waste of time and money, donncha know? But there are other benefits as well, which Parker goes on to explore.

But it gets worse than that — much worse. Anti-liberty leftists always love to play a little game where they characterize legislation under consideration as the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Remember the accolades for the BSCA Bipartisan Safer Communities Act when it was passed?) The bill under consideration will always be the solution to all of our problems just before it's passed, and then suddenly it'll be relegated to being "just a first step" right after. The next measure that comes up will be given the same treatment. Lather, rinse, repeat until our individual liberties are no more.

In the current example, if this is allowed to stand, the gun-grabbing ghouls will then demand formalizing the lists illegally created by the ATF (Rule of Law? what Rule of Law?) and put in place a gun registration system based on a couple of flimsy excuses.

They've also inverted the presumption of innocence. The new presumption under this rule is that if you happen to fall under the vague "guidance" of who is a "dealer," you could be charged as a felon if you do not possess a Federal Firearms License. This isn't the only recent case where this inversion has taken place, and it won't be the last.

The new rule will also impact gun shows in that persons who rent tables will be presumed to be gun dealers. The far left hates gun shows because they're a gathering point for its political opposition. If leftists can reduce or eliminate gun shows, it will boost their fortunes as a result.

But even worse than this, if they can control private property by eliminating private sales, they can exploit that precedent to control other products they deem verboten — gas stoves, air conditioners, whatever. All of this is from one little change in an ATF rule. This is why the ghouls of the gun-grabber lobby obsess over these things. They crave power, and they will take it any way they can.

Gentle readers can read the rest of Parker's article. When you think about it, what Grisham has attempted is breathtaking in its destruction of the rughts of American citizens. For without rights, rights given to us by God, or Creator, and which no one has a right to take away, we are reduced to serfs, little more than property of the state. If we are mere property of the state, the state can do with us as our would be rulers please. No wonder they crave power.

A Note To Gen Z From An Old Fart

 Ranjit Singh tells those students asking for more gun control Dear Gen Z: Get armed, get trained, start carrying, because you are your own first responders. I get it, you are students, and you haven't been given much in the way of history, or civics. You have been protected by...what? You don't know but you ascribe it to "society." You have bought the Koolaid that the police and fire departments are the "first responders." So, Singh is throwing ice cold water on all that and on you.

Well, wake up! Nobody is coming to save you. It is not that the police and don't want to save you, but that they really can't. It is not their jobs.  They are the ones who draw the chalk outlines and investigate the crime after the fact.  They are not your bodyguards, and frankly you don't want them to be.

Here is the truth: if a criminal wants a gun to commit a crime, he will get one. It doesn't matter if guns are not allowed in your "safe zones."  It doesn't matter if guns are banned entirely. The cartels smuggle fentanyl and other drugs into the country, and they can smuggle a few guns too, even full auto assault rifles.  So there will always be guns. Besides, zip guns (I won't show you, but you can look it up on the internet) can easily be fashioned from things you buy at the hardware store. Cartridges can easily be manufactured as well.

When it comes to guns, there is a generational gap as expected. In the wake of the murder of a UNC professor that resulted in a lockdown, there were the usual demands for gun control and even some theatrics from UNC students, especially the editors of the UNC student newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel. A couple of weeks later, there was an unrelated brandishing incident on campus involving a housekeeper that resulted in another lockdown. There were even more histrionic demands for gun control after that.

Some of that is understandable, but what doesn’t compute is the demand for gun control that has repeatedly proven to be ineffective. Gen Z should look at the recent past and see the numerous failures, from Orlando in which the assailant had been interviewed three times by the FBI, the Charleston massacre in which the FBI dropped the ball on the attacker’s background check, Sutherland Springs in which the US Air Force failed to submit a disqualifying domestic violence record to NICS, the Parkland attacker who could have been stopped on several occasions, the Buffalo white supremacist, or the countless incidents of criminals, likely including the UNC murderer, acquiring guns illegally through theft, straw purchases, or other circumvention or willful violation of the law.

When — not if — a criminal or a maniac acquires a gun and proceeds to commit a crime, what would you like to do? Be a sitting duck, locked down in a room with your classmates like fish in a barrel, hoping that the attacker doesn’t breach the door before the police find him? Or would you like to have a chance to fight back, whatever the odds of your success maybe?

So, I am just an old man, and of course, you've got it all figured out. But take it from someone who is old enough to remember, and before I become old enough to forget, carrying a gun gives you options in those extreme cases. Your kitchen has a fire extingusher, right? You have insurance for your car, your health, your home or apartment, right? Carrying a gun is the same thing. You should also carry a knife and a flashlight. Because you never know, and you want to have options. Besides, carrying a gun is a civic duty, like voting.  You will want it someday, believe me.  Now I'll shut up.

The Next Front in the War on Guns

 Andrea Widburg has a post up today at the American Thinker entitled The White House is creating an office to curb gun violence. I urge gentle readers to read the entire article, from which I will quote shortly.

I want to make a few points first. One is that "gun violence" should not be seen as any different from just plain "violence." Whether a criminal beats someone to death, runs them over with a car, stabs them, or hits them with a rock, dead is dead. While guns make killing more efficient, the emphasis should be on not doing so by any means, a point Widburg also makes. The other point, which no one has so far pointed out, is that Biden's creation of a White House office is to get around the Dickey Amendment, which keeps the CDC out of doing anti-gun research. Violence is not a public health problem and treating it as such will not solve it.

So, Mr. Smarty Pants, if applying public health solutions to the problem won't solve it, what will? Glad you asked:

So, if this new White House office to reduce gun violence would like my suggestions, here goes:

- Stop having a revolving-door justice system that sees criminals instantly back on the streets.

- Enforce existing gun laws against actual criminals.

- Encourage fatherhood, which significantly decreases crime.

- Discourage abortion, especially in inner-city communities, because abortion tells young people that life has no value. If a mother doesn’t care about a baby’s life, why should anyone else care about the value of life?

- Encourage the Judeo-Christian faith, not as run through leftism, but as built around the anti-murder values of the Noahide laws and the Ten Commandments.

- Close the border through which violent criminals, especially cartels, are coming.

- Teach gun safety in schools and give children responsible outlets for handling guns. This was also common in America when gun crime was much less.

Dave Workman has more on this at Ammoland in a post entitled Biden to Launch Federal Office for "Gun Violence Prevention."

The Hill reports that the new White House office will have the formal name “Office of Gun Violence Prevention.” We have yet to see whether it actually prevents so-called “gun violence” or merely pushes more restrictive gun control schemes.

Gentle readers are encouraged to get ready for the next push in the war on guns.

What Ever You Call It, It Means Rule By The Elites

 At work the other day, we had a brief discussion about the idea of taxation without representation.  My co-worker insisted that I had representation, and therefore it was right to tax me.  I on the other hand, claimed that I do not have representation. Why?  Because my representative is from a different party than I am, and has different ideas about...well...everything.

Now, I don't know Mr. Wiley Nickel, lately the Congressional representative of the 13th Congressional District of North Carolina, personally.  But I suspect if we met for coffee, we would agree on little.  Mr. Nickel is there because the Democrats, in collusion with the Democrat State Supreme Court and the Democrat Attorney General sued and sued until the Republican Legislature was forced to redraw district maps to make the 13th District a Democrat seat.

Now, Mr. Nickel might be the nicest person in the world.  But being a Democrat, he votes for the Democrat Party line pretty much every time.  And why wouldn't he?  After all, if he goes against the party, they are likely to pull any choice assignments and take away any influence he might have.  Would that Republicans had similar iron party discipline.  But that wouldn't solve the problem.  Not really.

The problem with democracy and with our form of representative democracy is that agree or disagree, the individual is at the mercy of the majority, at least in theory.  But in practice, unless one is one of the "ruling elite," one is at the mercy of the rulers, no matter the system of government.

J. B. Shurk brings all this into sharp focus in an article at the American Thinker today entitled Communism, Fascism, Globalism...What's the Difference? In fact, as Shurk points out, the difference is without distinction. They rule, you obey. Got it?

Monarchy, communism, fascism, globalism — what's the difference? At the end of the day, we are talking about a system of government in which centralized power belongs to a small group of elites who use their control over economic, military, and intelligence-collecting institutions to rule over everyone else. Whether it is a government run by Mussolini, a king, the self-described "proletariat," or an international cabal of central banks and corporations — it is a dictatorship all the same.

Let's not pretend that raw "democracy" is significantly different. As early-twentieth-century sociologist Robert Michels laid out in his treatise, "Political Parties," an "iron law of oligarchy" guarantees that a small group of elites eventually rise to "rule over" any form of democratic organization. Representative democracy, Michels argued, is a "facade" that legitimizes the continuing "rule" of some elite class.

Of course, our Founders saw fit to include in the design of our republic certain rights that are supposed to sacred, and not up for debate or a vote. I fact, they called these first 10 Amendments the "Bill of Rights."  And the courts, appointed for life, are supposed to uphold these rights. Alas, the courts have been very poor at their job. Thus, we have the government saying that freedom is slavery, that free speech requires censorship, boys can become girls, and other such asininity. It is as if they are using George Orwell's novel 1984 as a how-to manual. In short, the system is rigged so that the rich and powerful become richer and more powerful, while the rest of us toil to make them rich and powerful.

The other thing our Founders designed into the system was limits to what the government could do. As long as the government stayed within the limits provided for its scope, it didn't impact the average citizen too much, and that was a good thing. But over the last 120 years or so, the government has blown past all limits on itself. to where it has become a leviathon, and we were persuaded to let it do so.

This whole globalist march toward a New World Order is taking us to a place where Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, George Soros, their clones, a few royal families, a few multinational investment firms, a handful of central bank pirates, and a small club of international politicians can sit around a circular table adorned with a map of the world under their oppressive control. Even then, with the whole world belonging to a few dozen people (sprinkled with a politically correct ratio of races, ethnicities, and made-up genders, of course), the ruling dictators will haughtily chortle, "This is what democracy looks like."

They would be right. In practice, "democracy" looks a lot like a small cabal of ruling elites forcing everyone else to obey their commands. Whenever sane people reach the mistaken conclusion that they are actually in charge of their own government, they are quickly reminded that all dissent must be met with political persecution, lawless surveillance, unjust arrest, and censored speech — you know, the standard J6 treatment.

Mass protests against vote fraud and in support of free and fair elections are arguably the essence of real democracy — unless "democracy" really just means rule by the Clintons, Bushes, Obamas, McConnells, Pelosis, the Federal Reserve, the Intelligence Community, and the wealthiest, woke-iest ESG-DIE-supporting elites. In that case, real democracy must be punished as insurrectionist treason. The people must be made to believe that they are governing themselves but can never be allowed to actually do so.

The "ruling class" will spy on, harass, intimidate, imprison, and torture the whole American population, by golly, if doing so will allow it to preserve the illusion of a stable "democracy." Any American who opposes being Abu Ghraib–ed on U.S. soil, after all, is only pushing some dangerous form of "populism" that should be ignored. Much as an abuser justifies physical harm for the victim's "own good," the federal government has decided that the surefire way to save "democracy" is to beat the American people into submission. Only when the people have been coerced into a state of compliance will they be given back their "privileges." When the "ruling class" says that MAGA is a threat to "democracy," what it means is that any political movement operating outside of its control is a threat to the continued dictatorship of the Deep State.

Shurk believes that the way out of this mess is to return to the notion if individual liberty, of limited government. I am not so sure. The Left has been putting the take over of the world, and of course the United States for decades. Such a single minded purpose and design is a conspiracy that can only be called demonic. It will take the power of God and Jesus Christ to overcome. We must do what we can, but we must also trust in Him and pray.

Tradition is Self-defense. The Novel Idea Is Gun-control

Many thanks to the The Armed Lutheran for bringing this to my attention. It seems that the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), a traditionally conservative church body, is trying to go woke. I suspect that if it does, it will eventually mean the end of the LCMS.  It has published a rewrite of the Large Catechism, (which didn't need to be rewritten. But I digress.)

The Large Catechism is for the teaching of the faith to students usually 12-13 years old.  This teaching usually lasts 2 years, at the end of which students are confirmed and take their first Communion.  Communion is the center of our worship services, so it is important that students understand what it means to be a faithful Christian. 

Included in the Large Catechism is a discussion on the meaning of all the 10 Commandments.  But the discussion on the 5th Commandment that is truly egregious. Unfortunately, the LCMS got someone to write that section who doesn't believe in the right to self-defense.  But T. R. Halvorson has an excellent rebuttal to the article that is well worth reading:

What – the right of self-defense did not arise without the exercise of reason? It did not exist before the Enlightenment? That is historically inaccurate and jurisprudentially incompetent.

When I read that, I recalled off the top of my head what we were taught in my law school by Dean Robert Sullivan in his two, four-semester hour “Introduction to Law I & II” courses. The right of self-defense historically and jurisprudentially has existed, insofar as written history shows, in nearly every time, place, culture, and society. Today, self-defense is a recognized tenet of international law, which of course is not dependent solely on the European Enlightenment.

Halvorson then goes on to cite examples of laws both ancient and relatively modern, and in various cultures that include a right to self-defense. These include the ancient Hebrews. Indeed, Exodus 22:2 states:

If the thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall beno guilt for his bloodshed.

Note that if a thief attacks at night, the householder has no way of determining if the bad guy is armed, or if he seeks to take his life. In the day, one can make such assessments which is why there is a difference. But clearly, self-defense is admitted. This is but one example, but it shows that the Lord does not condone pacifism. Halvorson cites others from ancient Greece, ancient Rome, Islamic law and Canon law. The idea of self-defense is as old as written law, and probably older.

Self-defense is not new. What is "new" and novel is the notion that we should depend on the police to defend us. But of course, the job of the police has never been to act as bodyguards. The police are paid to provide over all law enforcement for the community. But everyone who has ever speeded in traffic must be aware that the police do not ticket every speeder every time. What the police do is to investigate the homicide and attempt to catch the killer. I would also point out that rarely do criminals commit a crime right in front of a police officer. So, despite the advertisement that the police and fire men are first responders, the actual first responder is the one being assaulted. Shouldn't he or she have the tools necessary to defend himself or herself effectively?

Then, there is the moral objection to the idea of the police being your bodyguard. You are asking someone to potentially take a bullet for you for a modest sum of money, like say $50,000. Is your life infinitely precious, but his is only worth $50 grand? No, that is not right. Every life is infinitely precious. Therefore, it becomes incumbent on each and every one of us, indeed it is a civic and religious duty, to defend ourselves and those in our care. Don't even animals use whatever means at their disposal to defend themselves? How much more should we?

The article by T. R. Halvorson is about the error involved in teaching young skulls full of mush that to defend themselves and to carry weapons to do so is somehow wrong.  We have seen though that God himself expects us to do so.  To do otherwise is to spit on His great gift of life.

But what about laws, also very modern, that make entire areas of cities so called "gun free zones."  We see university students held hostage to monsters that snub the "gun free zone" laws and attempt to commit mass murder there.  We see it in malls, airports, churches, movie theaters, indeed anywhere that people are prevented by law from carrying a gun.  Recently, although New Mexico has permits for people to carry concealed, the governor tried to declare an entire county a gun free zone.  But the governor when questioned admitted that criminals would continue to carry.  With that admission by the governor herself, one has to ask if the people who make and enforce such laws do not have blood on their hands?

Just asking...

One Catholic Diocese Upholds Christian Principles

Andrea Widburg has a post reporting that at least one Catholic bishop is not intimindated by the Left and is asserting Christian prinicples. You can find the post at the American Thinker entitled A Catholic Diocese throws down the guantlet on all things LGBTQ+.

Two of the worst Supreme Court opinions are Obergefell, finding an imaginary constitutional right to gay marriage, and Bostock, reading transgenderism into Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, the Diocese of Cleveland, by announcing that it is abandoning all LGBTQ+ ideology and practices, may give rise to a Supreme Court case that wipes out those legal abominations.

...snip...

Kennedy’s writing was slop, but it was slop that set up a very disturbing constitutional crisis: namely, the moment when a same-sex couple sues a conservative religious institution for refusing to marry it. When I mentioned this problem to a leftist lawyer, he scoffed. Much as the Catholic church opposed abortion, he pointed out, that had never caused a constitutional crisis. I responded that the Catholic church didn’t perform abortions.

...snip...

But the Diocese of Cleveland just did something that is great on its face, and that may finally force the Supreme Court to revisit these constitutionally corrupt decisions: It said that its Christian values must control when it comes to the question of human sex and sexuality. According to the Diocese, there are only two sexes, and heterosexuality is the only appropriate relationship.

The Bishop’s new “Parish & School Policy on Issues of Sexuality and Gender Identity” is remarkably clear. Its opening paragraph establishes that the rules it states are grounded in divine revelation. It acknowledges that people suffer from gender dysphoria or confusion and expresses sympathy for their sufferings but says that their belief “is contrary to the divinely revealed reality of our true, God-given human nature.” Compassion is called for but not more.

It is good to see that Bishop Edward Malesic has some spine. So often we see Catholic prelates who bend the knee to the Left rather than to Christ, who he should bow down to. Note that the policy calls for "compassion" for the gender confused. Compassion means sympathy and concern for the afflcted. It does not mean that we are supposed to enable the delusion or to pretend that it is reality. Those of us bound to reality must recognize that in reality, sex is binary.

It’s amazing that it took this long for a religious institution to stand up for religious principles. I hope the Diocese is braced for the inevitable lawsuits from activist employees or parents—and when those lawsuits come, I hope the Diocese has the resolve to take them to the Supreme Court if need be. Maybe, then, the Supreme Court will reverse the constitutional monstrosities that are Obergefell and Bostock.

Indeed.

Guns are a salvation to the innocent and a hinderence to the criminal

Over at Bearing Arms today, Cam Edwards has an interesting analysis of the recent infringement of the Second Amendment by the NM governor Michelle Lujan Grisham. His take is that the gun-grabbers are losing. But rather than rethink their positions, they are doubling down. You can read the article at Michelle Lujan Grisham Tries To Revive Democrats' "Massive Resistance" to Civil Rights. To set the table, Edwards recalls the Democrats resistance to Brown v. Board of Education in Farmville, Virginia in 1954:

Just off the main drag in Farmville, Virginia there’s an unassuming brick building next to a brightly painted tarpaper structure. The unobtrusive sign out front identifies the building at the Robert Russa Moton Museum; a largely unknown place that was the site of one of the most significant events in the civil rights movement. The museum was once R.R. Moton High School, the black public high school in Prince Edward County. In 1951, then 15-year-old Barbara Johns led her fellow students on a walkout in protest of the deplorable conditions of the building and the education they received.

...snip...

While Brown v. Board of Education was decided in 1954, public schools weren’t integrated in Prince Edward County for another decade. The school system dragged out any attempt to abide by the decision for years, and when that became untenable the county decided to shut down the public schools entirely rather than integrate. The “Massive Resistance” movement eventually resulted in several communities shuttering their schools, though none for as long as Prince Edward County. It took another Supreme Court decision in 1964 to re-open the schools, this time to both black and white students.

When I first moved to the Farmville area a decade ago I met a man who’d spent several years being taught in a church basement and in the living rooms of family and friends by parents and other adults who refused to let kids go unschooled. In fact, he was the one who told me about this shameful history in the first place.

Both Farmville and the nation at large have come a long way since 1951. Sadly, Massive Resistance to a Supreme Court decision is making a comeback among Democrats, and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham seems intent on becoming the standard bearer for the movement.

Edwards then draws a comparison between the Democrats of the 1950s and 1960s, who believed, incorrectly, in segregation of the two races to the Democrats of today who believe, again incorrectly, that gun control is crime control. This despite all the evidence to the contrary. The citizen that obtains a permit to carry concealed is not the one shooting up the neighborhood and killing innocent bystanders.  He is not the one doing drive by shootings or committing mass murder, much as the new media salivates for it to be true.  Further, the criminals, as Grisham admits, will not be dissuaded by any edict she might make. But, like Democrats before, she is doubling down.

Like her fellow civil rights suppressors in the 1950s and 60s, Grisham is ultimately lashing out because she’s losing. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and there’s a portion of the gun control movement that believes it’s time to start lobbing Hail Marys through executive orders and tossing verbal hand grenades at the Supreme Court over Bruen, while the more institutional wing seems intent on taking a more traditional incrementalist approach. If Grisham thought she was acting in a position of strength in proclaiming a constitutional right suspended because of a self-proclaimed public health emergency (at a time when homicides are actually trending down in Albuquerque, by the way), the backlash from many of her fellow Democrats and the refusal to enforce her order by local and state officials should have disabused her of her delusions. I think she was well aware of the weakness of her position before she made her announcement. She just decided if she was going to “do something”, she might as well do something big.

Grisham has backed down slightly from her original order, a decision I suspect that is almost entirely based on the unwillingness of police and prosecutors to go along. Massive Resistance implies mass, after all, and in Grisham’s case she (so far, anyway) hasn’t had the institutional backing she needs to pull off her unconstitutional scheme. That may have even factored into her decision to revise her original order instead of bringing lawmakers back to Santa Fe for a special session to address this “emergency”; she knows that she doesn’t have the political capital at the moment to control the outcome and ensure that her desired gun control bills get passed.

Let us hope that Edwards is correct, and that we are in the last stages of gun bigotry. Guns are inanimate tools, nothing more. Properly used, they are a hiderance to the two legged predetor and a salvation to the innocent.

Time to go to Church

I loved this post by Michael Devon at the American Thinker today entitled Some truths for conservatives to remember as things fall apart. First he diverts people who think of themselves as 'progressive" to a website on making salad. (sarcasm alert) This is very important so as not to cause progressives heads to explode (sarcasm off). Then he goes on to list just a few of the things that have and are happening:

The 2020 election was stolen.

Climate hysteria is an absolute hoax.

Deep State actors never get indicted, much less convicted.

America no longer has a southern border with Mexico.

...snip...

The MSM are nothing but a propaganda arm of our Marxist-Leninist Lizard Overlords.

The M-LLOs are planning to re-run the COVID playbook this fall, except they will change the excuse to climate hysteria.

With just this short list, anyone would be overwhelmed. After all, can you control any of the things coming at you? And the description of our Marxist-Leninist Overlords is so perfect. However, in truth we know that these are actually demon posessed people carrying out a Satanist agenda:

The M-LLOs' ultimate goal is to swiftly reduce the global population from eight billion to five hundred million souls. That's a 93.75% reduction of souls.

What to do? He advises prayer. Pray for our nation, our leaders, your and my neighbors. Pray and repent. As in ancient Ninevah, God may yet change his mind.

Keep your power dry

At Ammoland yesterday, Roger Katz had an in-depth piece on New Mexico governor Grisham unconstitutional order suspending the carrying of firearms in Bernalillo County and Albuquerque. The article can be found at Is Ne Mexico Governor Grisham Deliberately Inciting Open Rebellion? One thing Katz teases out is that indeed Grisham's campaign for governor was partially backed by George Soros money, and she is probably responding to a Soros initiative. By making the basis of her suspension a "public health emergency" she sought to set precedent. It it had succeeded, the "public health emergency" excuse could be used to suspend all our rights.

Soros-backed high-ranking State, County, and Municipal officials do not initiate unconscionable, unconstitutional actions out of the blue. And that is no less true of New Mexico’s present Governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham.

This pretentious, sanctimonious political leader of New Mexico is a Soros-backed toady.

As the New York Post reported on September 9, 2023,

“New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, whose campaign was backed by left-wing billionaire George Soros, riled up conservatives and gun owners after she issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public in Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least 30 days.”

...snip...

Governor Michelle Grisham in New Mexico, along with Governors Kathy Hochul in New York & Gavin Newsome in California, & several other Governors across the landscape of America, are “moles.” They are waiting to spring into action when called upon by their secretive “Case Officers,” aka Contributors, to do so, and with the U.S. Supreme Court rulings, they have begun to spring into action—some earlier, some later.

But they are all intent on assuaging the concerns of their Marxist benefactors and fully adhering to the Marxist agenda.

Governors invoke different strategies, as required, given the nuances of each State, but all are directed to the same outcome: destruction of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

I encourage gentle readers to read all of Katz's article. The entire Bill of Rights is under attack. The Department of (in)Justice has attacked various parts of it with the January 6th protestors already imprisoned. For many, who only trespassed that day, can their "trials" be called anything but kangaroo show trails? But the Marxists understand that they can just go so far as long as the Second Amendment stands. They desperately want to get rid of or nullify the Second Amendment so they can ram the rest of their Satanic agenda down our throats.

As always, keep your powder dry.  It is coming to a state near you.

We Are Made For God

At The Federalist yesterday, Casey Chalk had a article that attracted my attention entitled A Church Without God Is Dead On Arrival. The article itself was sparked by a Washinton Post article by Perry Bacon, Jr. Reading the Bacon article, I couldn't help but think that what he is looking for used to ccome from peoples' participation in service clubs like the Lions Clubs or the Rotary Clubs. It used to be that anyone who could afford these organizations was a member. They did good works, but they were not churches. Churches have a different function.

People get confused and don't realize that the Church has one real purpose-that of worship. What does worship consist of? Confession of sins and absolution thereof, prayer to God, giving praise to and honor of God, preaching of the Gospel, the good news of God's grace, love, and forgiveness, and the Eucharist or Communion. Yes, the church does other things such as prayers for the sick and shut-ins, counseling members, sometimes disciplining wayward members all within the Biblical principles laid down thousands of years ago.

People sometimes get balled up in controversies that really aren't, or needn't be. Bacon is concerned that his former "church" wouldn't allow a gay man to be a leader. Does God hate gays? No. But God commands against sexual sins such as beastiality, homosexuality, fornication. One may be gay, but out of love and respect for God, not practice gay behavior. It is the practicing of homosexual behaviors that is the sin.  One who practices homosexuality can not be a church leader.

Abortion is another thing God is against. He created each and every one of us in His image. We are gifts from Him, each and every one of us. To kill the unborn is to throw that great gift away like it is trash. Would you be angry of someone threw away a precious gift you had given him right in front of you? That is how God feels.  We must of course have compassion for people who abort their children, but we mustn't condone it.

While churches have historically provided other services to society such as schools and hospitals, and certainly being a regular member of a congregation provides a sense of community, the main function of a church is to facilitate the worship of our God. God is the center of our worship and as Casey Chalk notes, without God, the "church" is dead on arrival.  Such a gathering of people is not worthy to be called a Church.  The Church is built on one foundation, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

A church without God, prayer, or the Bible; a church for fellowship not faith, service not sacraments: that’s supposedly what lonely Americans need. Yet can such a civically focused ecclesial institution, or set of institutions, replace our increasingly empty (or repurposed) churches? In fact, they already exist, and have proved just as incapable of replacing the role vacated by that “old time religion.”

...snip...

And it’s not as if the nones are champing at the bit to join secular civic organizations that, denuded of any deity, prayer, or Scripture, still offer camaraderie and community service. Between 2019 and 2021, formal volunteer participation in America fell 7 percent — the largest drop that the U.S. Census survey recorded since it began tracking it in 2002. Covid didn’t help any, but this is not a new trend: Volunteerism has been declining for decades.

No, Americans are not just abandoning God, but each other, escaping into their smartphones and streaming entertainment. “Americans spend an average of 13 hours and 11 minutes a day using digital media,” Forbes reported earlier this year. It’s not only unbelief with whom churches must compete, but Apple, Amazon, and Netflix. Loving your neighbor or the Lord your God doesn’t offer the same dopamine rush as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, I’m sorry to say.

This is why a church for the nones is dead on arrival. The nones don’t want it, as even Bacon must admit. “But I’ve not followed through on any of these options,” he writes of trying to find a new “ecclesial” home. “With all my reservations, I don’t really want to join an existing church. And I don’t think I am going to have much luck getting my fellow nones to join something I start. My sense is that … those who aren’t at church are fine spending their Sunday mornings eating brunch, doing yoga or watching Netflix.” Americans are too disenchanted with an “intolerant” and “illogical” religion and too addicted to its chemical proxies to think an areligious alternative will satisfy the longings in their soul. Choosing church for its social utility, liberal pundit E.J. Dionne acknowledges in a recent WaPo column, is not a particularly strong draw.

So, in the end, it is really a failure of faith. Bacon doesn't believe. He, and other "nones" are looking for something in all the wrong places. If he starts with first believing, they praying, then admitting that he has done wrong, as we all have, can he then refind his faith. Perhaps it would help if Mr. Bacon would read the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the Epistles by Paul the Apostle:

Only when Americans relearn that we are, above all else, made for God, will our personal health improve and our communities once more move with brilliant energy and excitement, unanticipated byproducts of passionately orienting our hearts and minds to the transcendent and its transformative demands. Until then, expect little from ham-handed attempts to fashion church (and spirituality) to our personal preferences and peccadilloes. As a young Augustine himself learned, all that resides in such vain efforts is vapid self-worship.

A Bad Idea Returns

 On Monday, I wrote about the depopulating of the earth that the WEF and others are planning.  Of course, it is to save the planet.  Some want to reduce the population from 9 billion today to 500 million world wide.  Gentle readers will see in this a disguised version of eugenics.  Eugenics, a discredited theory, was originally cast as a way to improve the human species through control of who got to reproduce, and who did not.  Naturally, certain prejudices came into play.  In America, blacks were often the cited as being "undesirable."  In Germany, Gypsies and Jews were slaughtered in the name of "improving" the race.  I can't speak to Germans, but here in America, Margaret Sanger's group, Planned Parenthood, still holds to the old prejudice.

Today, at the American Thinker, Andrea Widburg's post entitled Climate Eugenics describes how the old, discredited theory of eugenics is hiding in plain sight as "climate change." Instead of saving the human race, now you are saving the planet. But just as no matter whether the climate is warming or is cooling, the solution is getting rid of fossil fuels, for eugenisist, the only solution is killing. And getting rid of fossil fuels will kill a great number of us, because so called "renewables" will not be able to supply even current levels of electricity.

Suppose the world was in the grip of an Armageddon-type crisis with the finest scientific minds from around the world working at a feverish pitch in an international collaborative effort to find a solution. So much so that medical and scientific journals were dedicated to keeping pace with the latest developments. No, I’m not talking about climate change. I’m talking about eugenics, the early 20th-century belief that there were too many of the wrong people in the world. One hundred years on, though, eugenics has fused with climate change for the perfect anti-human storm.

The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, a progressive, was one of the most strident supporters of this new theory. Financial support poured in from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman fortune. (These funds all still support progressive causes.) In 1916, Sanger established the first “birth control” clinic.

Back in that era, it was commonly believed that “the best” human beings (white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants) were not having as many children as “inferior ones,” such the immigrants from Eastern Europe and Asia, blacks, degenerates, etc. Sanger spoke of the burden of carrying the “dead weight of human waste.” President Theodore Roosevelt, the first progressive presidential candidate, declared that “Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.”

...snip...

Eugenics was a terrible ideology and one that should never be forgotten, but the world’s “elite” loved it...

In other words, the theory that man can "improve" man as a species, despite being debunked, continues to find fertile ground in the pseudo-sophisticated minds of pretend intellectuals. These self anointed elites do not believe in God.  They believe they are in fact gods.  But a belief and trust in God would perhaps have led to better ideas on how to improve society, while recognizing that man is a fallen creature.

Today we are in the throes of another false theory, i.e. climate change and all of its ugly ramifications. In fact, the parallels between climate change and eugenics are downright ominous. The first to person to recognize these ominous parallels and candidly discuss them was the late Dr. Michael Crichton in his 2004 book State of Fear. (At the time, Crichton genuinely feared publishing State of Fear, worrying that the book’s theme, which challenged climate change dogma, could get him killed.

Despite climate change theories being debunked as fast as they are propounded, the true believers make sure they won’t go away. They hide behind the word “unprecedented.” Everything that’s happened before on planet Earth—heat waves, drought, rain, wildfires, storms—is unprecedented, making it beyond challenge and justifying draconian, anti-human policies.

Gentle readers are encouraged to read the whole post.

Democrats Won't Like the New Rules When Republicans Come to Power

Kurt Schlichter, over at Townhall.com takes the issue of the recent banning of the Second Amendment in Bernalillo County (Albuquerque) to highlight the "new rules" and just how Democrats won't like them when used against them.

The title of Schlichter's essay today is The Tool Who Governs New Mexico Has Handed Patriots a Potent New Tool. Faithful readers will recognize this as a favorite hobby horse of Mr. Schlichter, though it is fun to think about. With rare exceptions, Republicans never turn the tables on the far-left fascist Democrats, claiming we are "better than that." But in a world where the only thing stopping such shenanigans is the thought of what might happen if they were used against the other side, turning the tables seems the only reasonable reaction. With that in mind, let's hear what Schlichter thinks might be good uses of the "new rules."

I want to thank the versatile governor of New Mexico, whose name I don’t care about, for being a communist and a fascist all at once. Now that may seem strange, coming from somebody who actually believes in freedom and actually defended it for 27 years, but I want you to hear me out. She may be an aspiring dictator and a mid-wit Karen brimming over with Xanax wishes and Chardonnay dreams, but she’s providing us with a valuable opportunity that we should take full advantage of. She has decreed that the constitutional right to keep and bear arms must yield to what she unilaterally decided is a “public health emergency.” Cool. Now, I’ve got some decrees of our own.

I’ve long said that there are three ways things can go. Option One is a free society where there are norms and rules that we all abide by and our Constitutional rights are protected and everybody has a right to participate in their own governance. This is my favorite option. It’s the one that I grew up in back when America was a free country and not a pronoun-fixated banana republic. Option Two is an authoritarian dictatorship where guys like me are in charge. Not my first choice, but I can live with it. Finally, Option Three is a communist dictatorship, and then it’s basically break out the rifles, boys. I was never good at kneeling, and at my age, my knees just won’t tolerate it any better than my attitude will.

Well, Governor Paula Pot has made it clear that Option One is now off the table, so I guess we have to go with Option Two – ironically, during the week of the 50th anniversary of Augusto Pinochet overthrowing the communist dictator of Chile. Now, I think it’s a bad idea and I’m still pushing for Option One, but it’s pretty clear that freedom no longer an option. So Option Two it is.

...snip...

The first thing red states need to decree is a ban on the teaching, advocacy, or practice of socialism in any of its putrid forms. Those who care nothing about the children will immediately pipe up about the alleged right to speak freely, but they refuse to acknowledge the harm this poisonous ideology does. Harm trumps rights, as colleges and the regime media have taught us. And boy, is socialism harmful. It’s violence – literally. Marxism is responsible for over 100 million deaths in the last century. That’s more deaths than net neutrality, Republican Medicare cuts, and dead-naming combined!

I like it! However, I can see problems with just banning Marxism, socialism, Communism fascism and so on. The first is they will just rename themselves and keep right on. They have always done this. Remember when Communist became a dirty word, they were "Progressives?" Right now they are out there, loud and proud, in some cases literally. If they are banned, they will simply go underground, but keep the same beliefs. Maybe an outright ban is not such a great idea. What else does he have?

The next public health decree? No trans insanity! We’ve got a public health crisis where children are being mutilated with chemicals and scalpels to conform their God-given bodies to the delusions of their Chardonnay-sodden Munchhausen mommies. This must stop. I know it’s weird that I have to say it, but castrating a boy so he can more effectively pretend to be a girl causes harm. And it is unsafe. And therefore it should be subject to being banned by a decree issued by a caring chief executive. And if you disagree, you clearly don’t care about the children – wait, that’s actually not sarcasm.

But why stop at kids? The decree should include outlawing mutilation as a treatment for mental illness in adults as well. I know that there are some well-meaning libertarianish folks out there who buy the idea that after age 18, we as a society have no interest in what you do to yourself. Well, we don’t let people walk into a hospital and say “Chop off my arm” because they feel like it, and what’s good for the arm is good for the penis.

If you want to cut up your body because you think you’re the other gender, you have a mental problem and not a physical one that can be cured by some quack surgeon slicing you into pieces. Some people will say this isn’t tolerant, and that’s fine with me. We tried tolerance, and we ended up with men dressed like Charo twerking their be-thonged butts in the faces of our kindergartners.

The next decree should address a massive public health crisis among children, because it’s always about the children, who are failing to learn and be educated in unionized schools. That’s public healthish, right? Clearly, teachers unions must be outlawed, and those running them prosecuted and punished for the lasting harm they have inflicted on a generation of kids. Now, some might argue that this is the kind of policy that should go through the normal legislative process, but I beg to differ. It’s a public health emergency when children are failing to learn to read and write because I said so, and if you disagree that’s violence, and if you oppose this common sense measure, you clearly hate the children. There’s blood on your hands. You should be deplatformed. You’re also racist and probably a transphobe or something.

Well, I like these suggestions too! With a stroke of a pen, we can get rid of queer weirdos and green haired teachers! Boy oh boy. But hold on. Now that I think about it, this doesn't really solve the problem, any more than Grisham's edict banning the carrying of firearms solves the underlying problem. So, what will?

All kidding aside now, the first problem is that we have turned away from God. Without God, we have no moral compass. Morality now comes down to doing what feels good at the moment. It may feel good to sell drugs because that seems an easy way to make a lot of money. But of course, you can hardly appeal to the police for protection of either your product or your life. So, you carry a firearm, whether legal or not, and you shoot first because the other drug dealers would do the same to you. Of course, going to the range and learning to shoot responsibly is too much trouble.  And then the Biblical admonition comes into play: if you live by the sword, you will surely die by the sword. It happens to too many drug dealers, but hey, they were warned. Whether Grisham likes it or not, having the police come down hard on criminals is the only way to contain criminal behavior. But she has decided to restrict the law-abiding people in preference to restricting the criminal class.

In the same way, solving the problem of teachers teaching subversive stuff is to better control who teaches our kids. Once again, the problem is that teachers that do not have a God focus have no moral compass. Teacher shortages or not, the best way to a) attract good teachers and b) to ensure our kids get a proper education is to better screen teachers for their knowledge and character. That includes getting rid of "education departments" and requiring teachers to have an actual degree in something real like history, or English, or mathematics, physics, chemistry or biology. Anyone with a "studies" degree need not apply. Teachers used to have actual degrees in real subjects, not the amorphous "education degrees." Going down a local street, there are a number of cross streets with the names of famous poets: Browning (Robert), Anderson (Hans Christian) and others. The point is that I ran into someone who claimed to be a teacher of English who did not recognize any of the names. What is she teaching, one wonders?

Schlichter is at pains to remind readers that he doesn't like the "new rules" and doesn't think the Dems will like them either when they are out of power. But the only way to teach them not to keep changing the rules is to apply them to fascist far-left good and hard. Democrats think they will be in power forever. I am sorry to disabuse them of the notion, but eventually the other side may be in power, and the new rules you are trying out won't feel so good when used against you.

Again, I don’t like any of this, but you know what I like even less? Taking this crap without hitting back. Leftist jerks, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I told you so.

We need an exorcism

Andrea Widburg is a senior editor at the American Thinker, who points today to two writers she admires at Two astute conservative commentators show how far we have deviated from normal in America. Of course, I encourage gentle readers to read Widburg's piece, as she is always an astute commentator as well. Naturally, I read both articles to which Mrs. Widburg hyperlinked, for to fail to do so would be blogging malpractice, no?

Styne's article is typically witty and acerbic, and as always, well worth reading. It points out that nothing about the current situation is "normal." I will just quote the end:

How about none of the above? Maybe half the country - or, to be more precise, forty-six per cent of registered voters - thinks the real problem is that the system no longer provides for any meaningful course correction. You can vote for an end to open borders, but you won't get it. You can vote to bring home the jobs that got shipped to China, but China owns all the politicians, all the "big guys" with the "ten per cent". You can vote against two-decade wars that end with the world's hyperpower losing to goatherds with fertiliser, but back at the Pentagon they just take a twenty-minute tea-break, throw a dart in the map, and start it all up somewhere else.

The Trump presidency was undone by Joe Biden's signing pen about ten minutes after inauguration. But that wasn't enough for the Uniparty. Like Oliver Cromwell, he has to be dug up and beheaded, over and over and over, and all his allies too, from Giuliani to that Florida grandmother - until you guys get the message.

Why pretend that's "normal" and meekly fall in line and move on to Nikki Haley? Even if you're going to lose, you might as well take a stand with Trump against the "normalization" of a system determined to criminalize you.

You can't have "normal" politics in a country where one side gets endlessly indicted and the other never is (notwithstanding the latest fake-o headlines about the not-so-Special Counsel promising to throw the book at Hunter on gun charges). America is dying before your eyes. Why pretend that's normal?

Please read the Mark Steyn article. The reference to the Conrad Black trial is to show how the government seeks through underhanded means to intimidate coworkers and friends to turn on you, hoping to be eaten last. This same tactic is being done to Trump now. That is why his lawyers are being indicted for doing their jobs.

Everything Steyn says in his essay is true. And we should not take these things as 'normal.' But I cannot help but believe that there is something much deeper that is guiding this decent into depravity. More and more others see it too. I have been told by people as inestimable as Francis W. Porretto that I must appeal on grounds other than religious, but I am compelled to do otherwise. I am here today to say these things to you because Jesus Christ saved my life, and I must proclaim Him.

Widburg also hyperlinks to Don Surber, an author I had not been familiar with, but who seems to see the thing, the beast, beneath the surface, moving the pieces on the chess board, always 10 moves ahead of us mere mortals. He calls it Satanic. Yet, Christ fights for us. How can we lose?

Again, I will quote from the end of Surber's essay, but read the whole thing to understand how he arrives at his conclusions:,/p>

The Christians built this nation into the greatest land of all. It took them only 300 or so years. Along the way, they created a government that was meant to protect their rights. It has devolved into the biggest threat to America. We have met the domestic terrorists. They sit at desks in Washington.

The enemy from within used 9/11 to expand federal power and to launch wars. Once 9/11 served this purpose, it was discarded. Billionaire Mike Bloomberg supported building a Victory Mosque near Ground Zero. This year, Mayor Eric Adams has the Muslim Call to Prayer intoned throughout the city. Biden is spending 9/11 in Alaska, as far away from New York as possible and still be in the USA — and away from Maui and East Palestine, Ohio.

Satan has taken over just about every institution in the country that matters. Even churches now work for him, if unwittingly. We can call it communism or fascism but the only name that fits is Satanism.

How else do you describe a political movement based on pedophilia and the mutilation of children through hormone blockers and butchery on the surgeons table?

How else do you describe Red China turning our streets into opium dens with zombie fentanyl users?

How else do you describe a police state that arrests those who try to stop a crime while ignoring actual criminals?

The left gave up on the war on drugs but kept every one of those laws. They now use the laws against the opposition. It is everything Real Americans oppose. It is evil. It is Satanist.

We need an exorcism, folks.

I do not know if an exorcism can be performed on a whole country. But we can pray that God will soon bring this demonic infestation to and end, and turn all eyes back to Him, for in Him is our only hope.

WEF Builds The Tower of Babel

 The globalist kleptocrats, also known as the Davos crowd, haven't been too loud about it, but they have definitely been rubbing their hands at the idea of "depopulating" the earth.  When one is caught in rush hour traffic at the end of a hard day, it may be tempting to dream of fewer cars crowding the road, but let's be clear.  No person is God, and only He has the right to depopulate the earth. Our godless "elite" do not have that right.

J. B. Shurk has a compelling piece today at the American Thinker entitled Depopulation Fanatics Should Never Be Trusted With Government Power.

A message from Captain Obvious: political “elites” with depopulation agendas have no interest in saving lives. Instead, they pursue policies that either outright kill people or shorten their lives and discourage them from reproducing.

Sometimes members of the global ruling class whisper this uncomfortable truth out loud, as John Kerry did this summer when he euphemistically described the world’s population as “unsustainable.” Or as Prince Philip of the United Kingdom once admitted before his death: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation.” Most of the time, however, the self-anointed globacracy speaks in coded language — dog whistles, if you will — by advocating for policies that purportedly deal with some “woke” issue but whose end effect is to spread infertility and death.

Defending abortion up to the moment of a baby’s birth (and sometimes after) isn’t about women’s rights — it’s about reducing the number of babies. Rationing fuels necessary for heating homes and generating electricity isn’t about “saving the planet” — it’s about making it harder to survive on this planet. Forbidding the use of fertilizers that help farmers feed a hungry world isn’t about fighting “climate change” — it’s about inducing famine. Encouraging children to volunteer for castration isn’t about respecting their “authentic gender” — it’s about poisoning their family trees before those youngsters even reach puberty. Forcing people to take experimental “vaccines” with dangerous side effects isn’t about “saving lives” — it’s about reducing lifespans. These are the cold, hard facts. And once a person accepts them for what they are, a natural question arises: why should the people of planet Earth sit back and do nothing while their “leaders” quietly orchestrate their slaughter?

When all our fascist far-left government and kleptocratic globalist elite policies all point in one direction, and that to shorten our lives while preventing us from reproducing, they are making themselves perfectly clear. They seek to kill as many of us as possible. What do you call a mass indiscriminate killer? Certainly "genocide" isn't enough cover what they are doing.  Genocides are usually against a minority, such as the Jews, or the Albanian Christians.  But these people don't care, as long as they exterminate billions of us. Perhaps demonic will have to do, for only Satan could conceive of evil on such a grand scale.

These ideas are not new. They just have percolated in quiet corners of the environmental movement for decades, and for some, for centuries. People who think like this are known as Neo-Malthusians, after the orginator of this theory, Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). At heart, Malthusians are true luddites, not believing in man's ability to adapt to his environment, sometimes by changing the environment. But man, not having either sharp teeth or fearsome claws, has had to constantly adapt using his wits as a weapon in order to survive. So why are they so convinced he can not do it again?

Actually, I don't think the real pushers of the depopulation movement behind the scenes are true Malthusians. Rather, with what they think will be the result of technology, they are concerned that too many of us will have too much time on our hands to make trouble for the kleptocratic elites. Idle hands, doncha know. They are concerned there won't be enough "useful" work for us, and we will turn to mischief. The goal is to shrink us down, disarm us, immobilize us, surveil us, and keep us busy digging ditches with spoons. They think they can avoid the unpleasant end other tyrants have received throughout history.

Our entire situation is so absurd. The feudal lords are running around killing babies, castrating children, starving serfs, and depriving the peasants of electricity. A more rational generation would take one look around at these grim conditions and rightly conclude that the world’s reigning nobility must be overthrown posthaste. Through the witchcraft of propaganda and indoctrination, however, our feudal lords have convinced a depressingly large number of “useful idiots” that their campaign of child mutilation, societal mayhem, and senseless murder is somehow “virtuous.” How do you commit genocide without anyone calling you a monster? You simply teach the victims that their murders are “politically correct,” and after a generation or two, the most malleable among us will be volunteering to help massacre themselves!

This is a dangerous game. The only way a minuscule number of ruling families can dominate the planet is if the global population continues to believe that all these destructive policies are actually their idea. As soon as that spell is broken and people wake up from their self-imposed slavery, then a season of pitchforks and pyres will end ruling class power forever. It is absolutely imperative that the masses keep chanting about “climate change” and “transgenderism,” lest they break free from their chains and rid the world of their Machiavellian masters.

There’s a reason the Marxist globalists had been, until recently, slow-walking the peasants toward their new-world-order cages: they knew a great awakening among the populace would mean lights out for them. Better to keep the people in the dark while they dig their own graves than to admit the “Great Reset” is real and start digging their own.

Gentle readers can read the rest of Shurk's article. I would like to take off on a tangent here and perhaps offer some hope that all will be well. In the Bible, in the Book of Genesis is the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1-9). In that story, God noticed that mankind was building a tower tower to reach the heavens. But how about if we let Moses tell the tale:

11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward,[a] they found a plain in Shinar[b] and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel[c]—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Note two things. The first is that the Lord refers to Himself as "us." We can derive from one of the first references to the Trinity. Second, and more importantly, the people in the story were once again attempting to take the place of God. This was the original sin, that of hubris and pride so breathtaking as to believe that they were God. But as the Lord said to Job in Job 38: 1-4:

4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

Tell me, if you understand.

5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it?

6 On what were its footings set,

or who laid its cornerstone—

7 while the morning stars sang together

and all the angels[a] shouted for joy?

What I am getting at here is that the WEF and its acolytes are attempting, once again, to set themselves in God's place. He will only let this go on just so long. I hear and read that much of the Leftist agenda is crumbling around them. But I know too that they will do whatever it takes to save it. As a result, we are not out of the woods yet, and there may be some rough going ahead. I hope you will all pray.