The Warrior Code: Remembering Who We Are

 I have several related posts today to bring to gentle readers' attention.  The first is by Kurt Schlichter over at Townhall.com entitled Inoculate Yourself Against Manipulation.

There’s one vaccine you should want – it’s an injection of basedness that renders you immune to bogus heartstring-tugging designed to get you to agree first to the massacre of others, then of yourself. Take a full dose and get the booster – it’s not MRNA and not a Pfizer product. It promotes your intellectual immune systems by allowing you to understand your enemy as well as he/she/they/xir understands you.

These creatures, be they Palesimpians, bizarre perverts, race hustlers, or some other variety of commie bastard, understand that you are kind and nice and fair and that you live in a generally peaceful society and are therefore soft. They believe that you cannot conceive of evil because you are not evil, and to accept it requires that you confront it, and that would interfere with your life of Netflix viewing and Door Dash deliveries. They think you don’t want people to think that you are mean or harsh or any of the ridiculous epithets they toss around to silence the weak. Racist, sexist, Islamophobic, fatphobic.

This is how people with no power get power. They get you to hand it over to them.

Stop.

...snip...

Once you are inoculated with Vitamin Truth, you see that this stuff is all one and the same, all moral nonsense designed to by immoral people to leverage your morality for the benefit of their power and your serfdom.

Here’s a little diagnostic test – what command, edict, or order do these people ever issue that increases your wealth, safety, or freedom? None, ever. Every single thing they insist you are somehow required to do, say, or accept makes you poorer, weaker, and less free. But that’s no surprise. The whole purpose of this grotesque exercise in manipulation is to do that.

They want you disarmed, disenfranchised, and deceased. That’s the goal. And all you need to do to stop them is to stop giving them what they want. Gobble down a red pill and vaccinate yourself against the social pathology of woke Marxism.

As Schlichter is wont to tell us, he has experience with these people, and he is correct as far as he goes. We learn from reading the Psalms that our God hates evil. As loyal soldiers in His army, don't you think we should hate what God hates? That God both loves and hates the Devil is for an infinite and all powerful God. We are more limited, so we should hate him too. There, I've said what Schlichter could not, or would not say.

Along Schlichter's line of thinking however, is the notion that once we free ourselves to think clearly by abandoning any notion that Christianity means being nice or giving in to the madness, then we must begin to think like warriors. There is an old Roman maxim that If You Want Peace, Prepare For War. The surest way to not have to fight is to be prepared to fight.

That is the idea surrounding Tom Knighton's piece at Bearing Arms where he discusses the way that Jacob approaches what may lead to his family facing off againsts his brother Esau's family. That it didn't come to war, brother against brother, is not the point. By preparing for war, he prevented actually going to war. He has this to say about the armed life:

Look, I’d love to live in a world where there was absolutely zero chance I’d ever need my gun for anything but recreational shooting. We don’t live in that world, we live in this one.

As such, I can and should take all the steps one can think of to prevent myself from becoming a victim and, as a society, we should take all the steps we can to make it so crime disappears forever.

Those of us who are the praying sort should do that as well, pray that those who would become violent criminals and those who already have find another way forward with their lives.

But we shouldn’t rest exclusively on those.

We should want peace, but we should prepare for war. At least in a manner of speaking, anyway.

Violence can and will come for some of us. We can and should do everything we can to mitigate the risk of that, but some of us won’t be fortunate enough to escape that.

So, we should be prepared to meet that violence with the threat of force and a willingness to use violence in the defense of ourselves or others if need be.

I pray as I take up my gun that I will not be forced to use it, but that if I am forced, that my aim be true. Christ did not promise us a peaceful life. Indeed, he promised us just the opposite. Get used to it.

Next is Andrea Widburg, at the American Thinker where she has a post entitled Americais experiencing its own Babylonian Captivity. Unlike Schlichter and Knighton, Widburg is not explicitly a warrior, but warriors come in many shapes and sizes. Some are literal warriors, some are intellectual warriors. Widburg is the latter variety. We need both.  She notes:

Not long ago, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy posted a video of himself saying that “America is an idea.” That is a fatuous statement because America is, in fact, a country, not an idea. However, McCarthy was edging close to something important, which is that America, unlike all other countries, is built primarily around an idea or, actually, a collection of ideas. It’s those ideas that Marxists have been attacking with stellar success, and it’s why we are more wobbly even than other countries when pushing back.

My point has its genesis in Max I. Dimont’s marvelous and very readable Jews, God, and History. He argues that Jews have defied history by being the oldest continuously surviving coherent people in the world, who still hew to an identity and a belief system stretching back to the Bronze Age. No other people can make that claim. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work.

Dimont explains that Oswald Spengler, one of the great early 20th-century historians, argued that nations have a lifespan, just as people do:

In Spengler’s view, civilizations are foredoomed to death. Civilizations go through the spring of early origins, mature into the summer of their greatest physical achievement, grow into the autumn of great intellectual heights, decline into the winter of their civilization, and finally die.

The problem for Spengler was that the Jews refused to fit into his thesis. He responded by ignoring them.

What Spenglerites don’t understand is that Jewish nationhood revolved around ideas rather than geography or genetics. In the ancient animist world, when gods were tied to locations or objects, the Jews had an abstract, omnipresent God. That’s why, during the Babylonian captivity, they maintained their beliefs and the memory of an affiliated geographic location (“If I forget you, O Jerusalem…”) without the Temple itself.

The Jews eventually returned to Jerusalem, only to be ousted 500 years later with the Roman conquest. But again, they were held together by the Torah…an idea about God, morality, rules of conduct, and their portable identity as a distinct people. Not only were they Jews wherever they went, but they were also able to welcome into this portable nation any other people who chose to embrace the same ideas.

So, what do these three somewhat disparate pieces have in common, and what does it mean for us? The piece that they all have in common is that we have forgotten just who we are. In attempting not to offend the perpetually offended, we have allowed the scum of the earth to overwhelm us.  Widburg is correct that the thing that has held the Jews together through all these years and being dispersed to the nations was an idea of who they were, what their mission in life was and remains. They are the chosen people of God. But as Christians, we are adopted into the family and have similarly become His chosen, grafted into Israelite family. We are a people with certain morality, certain rules of conduct. We just have to shake off the nonsense and the madness and remember those things, remember who we are. We need to repent.

Is the Left running the COVID playbook?

 Andrea Widburg today at the American Thinker has a post questioning Is there really a new plague coming out of China, or is this a con job? Widburg is right to be skeptical after so many lies coming out of governments, the WHO, social media, and corporations.  Indeed, to her, this looks like a replay of the COVID playbook.

In December 2019, right before a presidential election that seemed certain to reelect a president who was trying to corral China, we started seeing videos from China showing people crowding emergency rooms and collapsing on streets. By the time COVID madness ended, it had almost upended the West, along with destroying Trump’s reelection and vastly increasing China’s reach. Now it’s December 2023, right before a presidential election that might reinstate a president who will again try to corral China, and we’re starting to see videos from China showing children crowding emergency rooms. Color me cynical, but I smell a rat.

Widburg has two theories, and admits that these are sheer speculation, wild ass guesses even. The first is that China is telling the truth. It is possible, I suppose. But I would be more likely to believe them if they were trying to sell us a bridge in Brooklyn. The second theory seems more likely to be accurate:

Theory No. 2: What we are seeing is the first act in a replay of the COVID epidemic. This time, however, because China knows that it won’t be able to stir up the same level of panic with a virus that hits the general population, the new narrative is that this is a virus that targets children.

...snip...

Yes, that’s completely hypothetical on my part but, as I said, I’m cynical. I feel strongly the old saying that goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” The feeling of déjà vu all over again that I’m currently experiencing simply doesn’t allow me to look upon this footage with anything but a jaundiced eye.

Frankly, I am a skeptic as well. Gentle readers can decide for themselves.

Ending the National Firearms Act (NFA)

At Ammoland yesterday, Dean Weingarten had a post following up his previous post on the "incrementalists vs. the "all or nothing" crowd on the Second Amendment. You can read that article here. I must confess that I have at different times been in both camps, believing in one, then the other. As I have gotten older, I have come down on the side of the "incrementalists." But as someone who grew up in a state where my rights under the Second Amendment were not recognized, taking a baby step at a time approach seemed much as Martin Luther King must have felt when he said a right delayed is a right denied. Weingarten post is entitled Incremental Strategy To Reform and Repeal the National Firearms Act. It is a masterpiece that I urge gentle readers to read in full.

As the title suggests, Weingarten lays out a three part strategy for dismantling the NFA. First needs to be education of both the gun culture and the general public. Taking this approach is necessary, and may well not fully happen in my lifetime. Remember that the "shall issue" concealed carry movement started in Florida in 1987, or 36 years ago. But that was based on a number of scholarly studies and efforts to show that the "may-issue," which function for the average person as a "won't issue" regime was historically and practically wrongheaded. Dismantling the NFA will require the same sort of effort.

The second stage of Weingarten's strategy is to overwhelm the NFA system with compliance. Taking a page out of the Cloward - Piven strategy of the Left, Weingarten shows that the original $200 tax on NFA firearms that was effectively a ban has become within reach of most Americans. As a result, the numbers have grown. We need to keep those numbers going up and up and up.

The second step, again, well underway, is to overwhelm the system with compliance. This sounds counter-intuitive, but it has a strong and corrosive effect on the NFA. One of the insidious components of the NFA was to create extreme, prohibitive taxes to make the NFA an effective ban instead of regulation. When the Act was passed, the $200 tax was equivalent to $3,700 today. It was 40 times the cost of a Maxim silencer. In 1938, the first federal minimum wage was set at 25 cents an hour. In 1938 it would take 800 hours of minimum wage labor to pay the insane $200 tax. Today the federal minimum wage is $7.25, with 30 states having significantly higher minimums. With the growth of the Federal government and the debasement of the U.S. dollar over 80 years, the tax has been reduced from 800 hours of minimum wage labor to less than 28 hours of minimum wage labor. In 1934, the tax took almost two months pay for the average income; today the tax is about one day’s pay for the average income.

For decades, there were very few people who could afford legal NFA items. Today, the vast majority of Americans can afford the $200 tax. This has led to enormous increases in the numbers of people who have legal NFA items.

Virtually everyone who has to go through the insane loops required to obtain an NFA item is disgusted with the sheer idiocy of the law. With knowledge comes support for repeal of the NFA, in part or in all.

-  In 1990, there were 399 form 1s (make your own NFA item) and 7,024 Form 4s (transfer/buy from someone else) processed.

-  In 2020, there were 40,790 form 1s and 246,600 Form 4s processed, an increase of 100x for form 1s and 35x for form 4s.

Every person who takes a legal silencer to the gun club, contributes to the demise of the NFA. Every hobbyist who makes a Short Barreled Rifle legally, contributes to the demise of the NFA. There are now over 2.6 million legal silencers in the United States. In 1990, there were about 30,000 (estimated). Overwhelming compliance leads to normalization and acceptance by the gun culture and eventually the general public. Acceptance leads to the dismantling of the National Firearms Act.

The third step is to begin taking apart the NFA piece by piece. There is already movement to remove silencers from the law. While hearing protection becomes more and more effective, there really is no reason to have silencers in the law in the first place. They don't make your gun silent, despite the movie depictions of silenced guns. They just reduce the noise coming out of the muzzle from ear splitting to a dull roar. Hollywood depictions of silencers on revolvers are totally ridiculous because the sound of the round going off comes not just out of the barrel but also out of the rear of the chamber through the slight gap there. If you have a silencer equipped pistol, I still recommend you still wear hearing protectors.

The final step should be the repeal of the NFA as antithetical to the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court is a follower, not a leader, in protecting the Bill of Rights. When activists and states make enough progress showing the insanity of the NFA, the courts will eventually follow. Unfortunately, that is reality as this correspondent sees it.

The actions are not necessarily sequential. Many can and should overlap and proceed concurrently.

The United States may be the only country with the equivalent of the Second Amendment. We should cherish it as we cherish our other enumerated rights. We certainly shouldn't let the devilcrat gun-grabbers whittle away our rights one salami slice at a time.

Concealed Carry Success

 There are a lot of people who are new to either shooting pistols, or new to concealed carry and self-defense.  The statistics shows that many folks are arming up as a reaction to crime including illegal immigration.  The lack of prosecuting crimes in many cities with "woke" Soros backed prosecutors has encouraged the goblins to take bolder actions.  But knowing that citizens may be armed helps to constrain these same goblins.  Therefore, it was with great interest that I noted a piece at Ammoland by Ben Findley entitled 12 Steps For Concealed Carry Success. These 12 steps are a good overview, but I would add a 13th step: Pray every day that you never have to use your gun to defend your life or the lives of others.

Gentle readers can read the 12 steps for themselves. I would highlight several though that may be of interest.

The first is that training with your gun is vital. But the saying that live fire should be done with expensive carry ammo because after all, how much is your life worth? is not a valid argument. We each have a budget, and there are many things that demand our time and money. They must be prioritized. Remember that a gun is a tool, and not a multipurpose tool at that. I recommend most of your training being dry fire, which can be done at home. Occasional trips to the range should be regularly scheduled, mostly using inexpensive training rounds. You should run a few magazines loaded with your carry ammo before you carry it, however. Also, every 4 to 6 months you should dispose of the ammo you have been carrying and replace it with fresh ammo. You can just shoot the old stuff out, and then reload the magazines with fresh carry ammo.

The advice to carry always comes with a risk that only you can determine for yourself depending on where you work, what type of work you do, and other things including your family situation. My advice is to carry as often as you can within the law.  Unless you carry pretty much all the time, you may not remember that you have it in an emergency, or on the other hand, you may reach for it and it won't be there.

If you regularly wear a suit, you are good to go. But few people do these days. Being retired, I generally go about with a pair of slacks and a tucked in tee-shirt and a somewhat oversized unbottoned shirt over that as a cover garment. If you are new, it takes some getting used to, but you will soon learn that most people are not focused on you. Most people will not even notice if you are there. Just go about your business as you normally would.

Situational awareness is your most important weapon in your arsenal.  The gun is just a tool. Don't, in other words, be like most people. Look around you and be aware of the movements of others. Parking lots are often places where the goblins can strike from hiding. Be aware of people sitting in cars. Don't be one of those staring at their phones. Keep your head on a swivel and your eyes processing the scene. Note clothing styles that seem out of place, for instance. Avoiding places and situations that seem fishy is the best way to avoid needing you gun

Proof Our "Representatives" Do Not Represent Us

 This is not a new story, but I thought it was worth reminding gentle readers just how our government treats our Constitution as toilet paper.  The story, out of Australia because our own press could not be bothered, is entitled Gun-running scandal exposes the truth about Obama's 'transparency'. The story, with the buried lede, is about Operation Fast and Furious, described in the U.S. as a failed scheme to track guns that are allowed to "walk" into Mexico throughout the drug cartels. As it turned out, the real purpose was to walk guns to Mexico to create a reason to crack down on guns.  They never meant to tract them at all.

THE deadly-but-forgotten government gun-running scandal known as “Fast and Furious” has been dormant for years, thanks to White House stonewalling, and media compliance. But newly uncovered e-mails have reopened the case, exposing the anatomy of a cover-up by an administration that promised to be the most transparent in history.

“At least 20 other deaths or violent crimes have been linked to Fast and Furious-trafficked guns.”

A federal judge has forced the release of more than 20,000 pages of emails and memos previously locked up under President Obama’s phony executive-privilege claim. A preliminary review shows top Obama officials deliberately obstructing congressional probes into the border gun-running operation.

Fast and Furious was a Justice Department program that allowed assault weapons — including .50-caliber rifles powerful enough to take down a helicopter — to be sold to Mexican drug cartels allegedly as a way to track them. But internal documents later revealed the real goal was to gin up a crisis requiring a crackdown on guns in America. Fast and Furious was merely a pretext for imposing stricter gun laws.

...snip...

The program came to light only after Terry’s 2010 death at the hands of Mexican bandits, who shot him in the back with government-issued semiautomatic weapons. Caught red-handed, “the most transparent administration in history” flat-out lied about the program to Congress, denying it ever even existed.

Then Team Obama conspired to derail investigations into who was responsible by first withholding documents under subpoena — for which Holder earned a contempt-of-Congress citation — and later claiming executive privilege to keep evidence sealed.

The Obama administration did everything it could to destroy the United States as founded. Even so, they couldn't quite finish the job. Then Trump came along and reversed some of Obama's destructive policies. Unfortunately, the Republican party was with the Democrats, and so did not wnat to get rid of Obamacare. And of course, the Obama DOJ wasn't going to prosecute the people who responsible for Fast and Furious. But it appears Trump's DOJ wasn't going there either.  The Biden administration is doing its best to finish what Obama started.

The fact is that the Obama administration couldn't care less whether their schemes were Constitutional or not, and it seems, Congress doesn't care either. They are going to pursue their agenda no matter what. It has been a characteristic of Democrats for sure, but Republicans have also pursued a Leftist agenda more subtly.  This is why we all need to stay vigilant.  Because our "representatives" often do not represent us.

Turns Out, Speaking To Your Unborn Baby Is Important

I have known that the unborn, or the preborn as you may, are not just a "clump of cells." From the moment of conception they are human beings. Left to go to term, they will inevitably be born as a baby, not a dog or a cat or any other creature. Now it seems that scientists have discovered even more evidence, as if there weren't enough, that the unborn child in the womb exibits human characteristics. For example, according to Andrea Widburg at the American Thinker It turns out that pre-birth 'clumps of cells' are already learning how to speak.

I’ve always known about the connection between a verbal mother and a child who learns to speak well and quickly. Indeed, Gerry Charlotte Phelps, one of my early blog friends and a fascinating woman, made that point vividly when she wrote about working with women in terrible urban slums. On her now-defunct website, she said that these women never talked to their children except to threaten them with punishment. In this, they starkly contrasted with middle- and upper-middle-class mommies who never stopped talking to their children. The chatty mommies do so because they know it’s good for their child’s intellectual development.

Of course, all of that occurs after the baby is born. But what about before it’s born? Well, experiments are showing that, even in the womb, babies are developing language skills:

If you're an expectant mother, chatting as much as possible could give your baby a headstart when it comes to learning to talk.

That's because new research has found your unborn son or daughter will start learning the language you speak before they're even born.

In experiments, researchers discovered heightened activity in the brains of newborns when they heard the language they were exposed to most often in utero.

The study didn't look at exactly when babies become receptive to spoken language while they are still in the womb, although it's well known that a foetus starts hearing sounds in the later stages of the second trimester and the start of the third.

Therefore, expectant mothers – and fathers too – should not be afraid to chat away, and even talk directly to their baby bump.

Gentle readers will want to read the whole article. At this time of year, as we have just celebrated Thanksgiving Day, the article gives us one more thing to be thankful for this year. As one commenter said, creating life is one of the great joys of life.

Bearing Arms Takes Down Salon

Tom Knighton over at Bearing Arms has a post today entitled Salon Says 'Guns Are Winning.' Why That's A Good Thing. Clearly an intriguing title that deserves a click and a quick read. That quick read threw me back to the 1960s and the Kennedy assassination. I was 11 years old then, but I remember it like it was yesterday. The radio reports of the shooting and subsequent rush to the hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead were broadcast to us through the loudspeaker system used for daily announcements.

I also remember that the need for gun control was ramping up before that event in 1963, with various politicians telling us that certain nefarious types carried around cheap pistols known as "Saturday Night Specials." They look an awful lot like the snub-nosed pistols police detectives carried. These "deadly" firearms were often said to be as dangerous to the user as the goblin he was targeting. Then as now, stoking fear was a major feature of the media.  Five years later, and after another Kennedy assassination, Congress passed the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA 68). By then I was 16 and had a sense of human nature that said this legislation would prove to be counter productive. I was right.

Maybe it’s just me, but if you’re going to look at total numbers since JFK’s assassination, particularly with regard to guns, then maybe we should look at trends from that time and not cherry pick things to look as scary as possible.

JFK was killed in 1963. The Gun Control Act followed five years later. Not an immediate reaction, to say the least, but looking at the provisions in that law makes it clear it was, in part, a response to the assassination.

Please go read Knighton's article. I am off to the range.

And what happened immediately after JFK was killed and continued after the GCA was passed? The homicide rate increased.

...see embedded image...

That’s from the New York Times. What it shows is an increase in the homicide rate that spiked up in the aftermath of the Gun Control Act and continued to be sky high until the early 1990s and didn’t really get down to the early 1960s homicide rate until around 2010 or so.

During that time, we didn’t see a whole lot of gun control being passed. The Brady Bill was passed in 1993 and we had the now-sunset Assault Weapon Ban in 1994, but violent crime was already starting its downward trend, nearly 30 years after JFK’s assassination.

If I, a snot nosed kid of 16 at the time could see where this was heading, surely the men who proposed and eventually voted for the law could see it as well. I won't say that ALL the people who supported this law did for cynical and disingenuous reasons, but certainly the men who proposed it did. GCA68 was never intended to control crime, and indeed it did not. It was, as always, a good first step to disarming us. Moreover, at the time, the NRA was on board with GCA 68, whether out of naivete` or the belief that their hunting and sporting arms would never be in the crosshairs.

Eventually, GCA 68 along with the original National Firearms Act (NFA) must go by the wayside as Unconstitutional acts of a too intrusive government. In the meantime:

As guns have become more popular and people are carrying them more often, the homicide rate has trended downward. Even the spike of 2020 was nothing compared to the murder rates of the 1970s and ’80s.

So, in a way, the premise is right, even if not for the reason the author wants us to think. The guns really are winning. They’re making us safer.

May God's Blessings Be Upon All of Us Today

 As I watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York, I was reading a piece by J. B. Shurk entitled God Bless America. Shurk reminds us, as we face the current culture war with the Left that we have faced much more difficult times in our past, times that as has been said before, "try men's souls." Contemplating what these heros did in our past, one wonders if I would have had that kind of courage. Yet, if they could do these things, we can too.

Don’t fear the interesting times. Decades after they have come and passed, our descendants will marvel at all that happens now. If Americans alive today succeed in preserving liberty for the future, those born tomorrow will be forgiven for failing to appreciate the cost. They might even celebrate what we achieve without knowing our personal agonies. That is how great things come to be — by equal measures grit, sweat, tears, blood, and determination. Only afterwards do those who benefit from those efforts mistake triumphs as foregone conclusions.

If nothing else, be thankful that you come from a place filled with heroes who have stared down empires, made the impossible look easy, and found the will to unite even after civil war. America is a special place because it is home to exceptional people.

One of those exceptional people was Irving Berlin, one of the greatest songwriters of all time. A Jewish immigrant from czarist Russia who reached Ellis Island when he was five, Berlin rose from poverty to stardom. In celebrating the end of WWI, he wrote a heartfelt tribute to the country that had given him everything. He prayed: “God bless America, land that I love / Stand beside her and guide her / Through the night with the light from above.”

May we always follow that light. Amen.

Thankyou, Mr. Shurk, for reminding us we can, indeed we will prevail. May God's blessings be upon all of us today.

If People Want To Hurt You, It Makes Sense To Have the Means To Defend Yourself

At Bearing Arms Tom Knighton tells us about Anti-Semitism and the Second Amendment. I have reported before that after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, and the unexpected support for the Arabs pretending to be "Palestinians," Jews have been showing up at gun stores to purchase firearms and get some training. Fortunately, here is the United States, we have the Second Amendment because minorities like the Jewish community are always at risk.

Since the moment Hamas rolled over the border of Gaza and began its attack on Israeli civilians, something bizarre has been going on. I get that a lot of people disagree with Israel on a number of points, but the outpouring of blatant antisemitism has been more than a little alarming.

While polling suggests there’s still support for Israel, a lot of people are very vocal about their desire to see the Jewish people there exterminated.

And at least some attacks have taken place against Jews and Jewish places and there isn’t even a hint that the antisemitism will slow down.

...snip...

To paraphrase my friend Yehuda Remer, Jews with ARs don’t get put in cattle cars.

The truth of the matter is that any group that feels they’re likely to be targeted owe it to themselves to exercise their Second Amendment rights. That’s especially true of a group like Jews; people who were the target of genocide and are still reviled by many throughout the world.

If people want to hurt you, it just makes sense to have the means to defend yourself.

Indeed.

The Truth of the Rigged Election Is Finally Reaching A Wider Audience

I have said for a long time to everyone I know that there is simply no way that Biden got 81 million votes.  No way.  Oh, I am sure that Dr. Jill likes him, maybe loves him too.  But that and $4.24 would get him a cup of coffee at Starbucks.  Biden was just not that popular, and neither was Kamala Harris.  The fact was that the Democrat party manufactured enough fraudulent votes to win over Donald Trump.  I am not saying that as someone who is a Trump fan; I am not.  Neither am I a "anyone but Trump" voter.  I still think Ted Cruz would have been better, but I held my nose and voted for Trump because he was the best candidate available. 

As the 2024 election draws nearer, the Clay and Buck show features endless analysis of the horse race. Other pundits publish various polls showing this or that candidate ahead in the race and speculating on what it means. I on the other hand have taken the position that it doesn't really matter. As the Kari Lake versus Katie Hobbs race for the Arizona governorship shows, the Dems will do whatever they need to win, and the courts will back them up. Republicans will never win a race again if the Left sees it as strategic to their goals.

So it was with great interest that I read Campaign Kabuki by Leann Horrocks at the American Thinker. Ms. Horrocks tells it as it is, and holds no punches as she speaks about pundits, TV commentators, various courts including the Supreme Court, and the politicians who know what is happening but have said very little and done even less.

Less than a year to go until the 2024 election and the pundits are out in force with their analysis. There are whiteboards, videos, polls, graphs, and lots of posturing.

All the normal ways of analyzing election outcomes are a complete waste of time unless the issue of fraud is addressed. The sad truth is, that in many parts of the country, the voters really have no choice.

Take the case of the current president. He didn't even have to show up in 2020. He was promised the win and he got it. The election was over before the voting began.

Then there's the case of Lake vs. Hobbs in Arizona. Subtleties of computer malware weren't even needed in Arizona when the strangely vague Katie Hobbs was declared the winner. Through the entire campaign season, she didn't bother campaigning, she refused to debate and was rarely seen. Her opponent counted on people showing up at the polls on election day -- so what could go wrong? The voting equipment was simply disabled in Republican-heavy precincts, resulting in long wait times, lost ballots, and ballots that were promised to be "counted later." Subsequent investigations have shown video of tampering with sealed machines -- mountains of evidence have shown the election was fraudulent.

Evidence of fraud was met with a big "so what." The Arizona election tampering was so heavy-handed, one can easily assume the cartels were involved. Cartels were not about to have Kari Lake become governor of Arizona, and military-industrial types were not about to have a change in the U.S. Senate representation either. Neither of these parties care what voters want or what they do.

I applaud the voters of Argentina for their victory in the recent Presidential election of Javier Milei, but don't expect Milei to win a second term, assuming he survives his first term. If the Left plays rough here, it is even rougher in Argentina. He and Trump have this in common, that Mr. Milei will be hounded by the liars that make up the Left side of the political spectrum.

I urge gentle readers to read the entire article. The first thing in solving a problem is to admit that we have one. Clearly we have a problem. Joe Biden and his Democrat buddies, along with craven RINOs in Congress are driving the country into the ground. Some people have proposed solutions, and I applaud those peoples efforts as well, but until there is a massive overhaul of the election system, the Dems will be able to manufacture as many votes as needed to win any election they want. Several things need to change:

1. Every state needs to dial back its mail in balloting to the absolute minimum. Abstenee ballots should be mailed to only those who request one, and the reasons for requesting them should be vary narrow. Of course, being deployed overseas by a branch of the military is one. I don't think that permanent residence in another country should entitle one to a ballot, however. Ballots should only be mailed to people who are already registered to vote.

2. Everyone should have to register to vote a certain amount of time before election day. If one can not be bothered to register to vote, can't we assume he is not that interested in exercising his franchise? And for that registration, he should have to show government issued identification. The claim is often asserted without proof that requiring identification somehow burdens the poor. But even the poor have to present ID to obtain other services such as healthcare. Again, it should be assumed that if they can not be bothered to obtain the required proof of identity, they are simply not interested.

3. Bring back "election day." The polls can be open until 9:00 pm if you like, but everyone votes on a single day, except the few people voting absentee, who must have their ballots in by election day. Heck, you could make it a state holiday if you like. Weeks or months of early voting means that some will have already cast their ballots when news like that of Hunter Biden's laptop from hell comes out. No one knows what difference that might have made, maybe none. But people should have had that information available before they voted.

There may be other things you may think of. We may (I say that with trepidation) MAY be able to get our Republican legislatures to enact some of these. If we can do so in red states, then we might, from the base of red states march back through the institutions that have been hijacked by the Left. That discussion is for another day.

Temperatures Have Been Warmer In The Past And We Are Still Here

At Wide Awake Media is a piece telling us that For Most of Human Civilisation Temperatures Have Been Warmer Than Today.

Gentle readers will want to watch the short video interview as well. I have consistently stated that there is no climate emergency and that remains true today. CO2 has been much higher than today, and life went on. Temperatures have been much higher than today, and the world didn't burn up. Indeed, why the Secretary General of the United Nations can talk about the world "boiling" with a straight face and retain any credibility is a mystery to me.

Which Came First? The Chicken or the Egg?

 It seems the media has no shortage of things with which to scare the public.  Some of them are real, of course, and some are imaginary, like "climate change."  One, which the "elites" and the media would very much like to see become real is the "Great Reset."  So, it warms the cockles of my heart to read that WEF 'Great Reset' forecast looks gloomy as 'demand for vegan plunges' by Olivia Murray at the American Thinker.

I couldn't help but laugh at the 'X' post Murray included in her article. The idea of lab grown meat is disgusting, and so unnecessary. It is a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.  No one knows for sure just when our ancient ancestors began eating meat, but it was no doubt during one of the interminable ice ages when getting enough greenery to eat was impossible. Think of the Inuit who still live in an unremitting ice age. What else do they have to eat? And they are healthy.

Oh, so more people would rather just eat real meat than lab-made synthetic horrors? How weird! This fake meat is sold as the “socially-conscious” and “humane” option—but, if you don’t know about the process, let me just tell you, it’s anything but socially-conscious or humane. It still requires cows, meaning the same facilities decried as “environmentally-harmful,” and it still requires slaughter… of both a pregnant cow and her calf in-utero. Talk about gross! After the fake meat industry has had “many years of strong growth” suddenly people are bucking the trend? Why is that?

Why, indeed? It is just my opinion, but I think...maybe "hope" is a better word...that people are waking up to the nonsense around them. They are being asked to believe and to say so many things that are simply not true. At some point, the cognitive dissonance becomes too much to bear.

God has already won

 I have two posts to highlight today, both posts at The Federalists and both posts on the recent firing of Bishop Strickland of Tyler Texas. So, why, you might ask, is a Lutheran concerned with the inside politics of the Catholic Church? The truth is that the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) is a small organization compared to the Roman Catholic Church. The LCMS claims approximately 2 million members. On the other hand the Roman Catholic Church has 1.3 billion members world wide. If the Catholic Church goes off the rails, the resulting crash affects not just Catholics, but everybody else who claims to be Christian.

The first post by August Meyrat informs us that The Bishop Strickland Saga Outs Pope Francis As A Catholic King Lear.

On the heels of the pointless Synod on Synodality and a confusing motu prio on theology, Pope Francis finally caught the world’s attention by removing Bishop Joseph Strickland from leading the Diocese of Tyler in East Texas. Francis offered no explanation for the move, so he has left everyone following the story to speculate on the reasons. As far as anyone knows, Strickland didn’t have any scandals, nor did he deviate from the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings. On the contrary, he is one of the loudest proponents of Catholic orthodoxy.

Strickland was a conservative who sympathized with traditionalist Catholics. He asked uncomfortable questions about the Catholic leadership deliberately ignoring sexual abuse. As Catholic writer Kevin Wells explains in a recent essay, five years ago Strickland openly questioned why nothing was done with then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a notorious sexual predator who preyed on incoming seminarians at his beach house.

Strickland has since developed a reputation for opposing Francis’ progressive agenda. This culminated in a number of criticisms of the latest synod. He expressed fears about massive changes to the church’s teachings. In all likelihood, Strickland’s complaints — and those of men like him — prevented these changes from occurring.

And there it is. He criticized the Pope, who apparently has a very thin skin.  Rather than valuing the friendly criticism of a loyal subordinate telling him he might want to rethink his actions, he instead fires him. But despite that Strickland tells faithful Catholics to remain faithful.  He remains loyal despite the changes the Pope is trying to introduce. But of course, one wants to know what drives the Pope in the direction he seems to be going:

But I believe his motivations are much simpler and much more profound. It’s not that he has some grand scheme to recreate the Roman Catholic Church in his image. Rather, Francis has become King Lear.

For those unfamiliar with William Shakespeare’s masterpiece, King Lear is about an old British king who decides to leave his kingdom to his two older daughters. Lear’s older daughters flatter him while he repudiates and disowns his youngest daughter because she tells him the truth. Sure enough, the older daughters quickly seize their inheritance and kick their father out, leaving him to wander the countryside with his court jester. As this happens, the daughter whom he rejected works to save him despite his former behavior.

Something similar is happening with Francis, an old and distinguished monarch who has surrounded himself with shameless yes-men. These advisers are inept ideologues with ample personal baggage. They have absolutely no clue how to address any of the challenges facing today’s Christians. Sadly, Francis evidently prefers the sweet nothings of his circle to the harsh truths of men like Strickland. His circle has kept him safely insulated from reality for years now. This fact was recently revealed in his bizarre rant on priests acting like dandies.

So, in this telling, Pope Francis isn't himself trying to destroy the Church. Instead, he has surrounded himself with despicable people who are whispering in his ear. Except the Pope should be someone whose prayer life, whose reading of the Bible, whose learning is such that he is being guided by the Holy Spirit constantly. Even more, he should be familiar with Matthew 16:13-20:

13When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” 14So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. 18And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not [g]prevail against it. 19And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth [h]will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20Then He commanded His disciples that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ.

I know many faithful Catholics who put the best interpretations on this Pope's actions and sayings. And it is comforting that the Church will stand despite the machinations of sinful men. Indeed, God routinely shows throughout the Bible that He can take the actions of evil men and uses them for good purposes. But one wonders how many will be led astray in the meantime.

The second post by Carina Benton reports that Pope Francis' Removal Of Conservative Texas Bishop Exposes More Cracks In The Vatican's New Agenda. Benton is even more clear on the nature of Strickland's criticism of Pope Francis' agenda:

A survey of the issues Bishop Strickland speaks out on should leave Catholics in no doubt as to how Rome regards this orthodox, humble, and courageous prelate, and the gentle influence he has among American Catholics. Strickland has labeled abortion and same-sex “marriage” policies as transhumanist ideas that are being advanced as part of a “godless agenda.” He has been a vocal critic of public officials who identify as Catholic yet reject Catholic teaching on the evil of abortion, and has advocated against receiving Holy Communion in a state of mortal sin.

On the eve of the Vatican’s supposedly Holy Spirit-guided, tautologically named Synod on Synodality, which every thinking Catholic and his dog understands is a backdoor route for ushering in major changes to the church, Strickland released a message calling on Catholics to hold fast to the truths of the faith. He urged wariness against “any attempt … to push for a faith that speaks of dialogue and brotherhood while attempting to remove the Fatherhood of God.”

With all the doom and gloom, interestingly enough Benton notes that there is hope for the future. As proof, she cites St. Athanasius who was persecuted by the forces at his time who promoted the heresy of Arianism. Eventually, Athanasius was proved correct. Strickland stands firm as well for the Gospel and against the current forces for LGHTQ ad nauseum and abortion. Strickland understands that this is nothing less that the ancient battle between God and the Devil. Here's a hint: God always wins.

Christianity is not about being 'nice'

It is early yet, but I felt this post, by Robert Arvay, at the American Thinker deserved to be highlighted. You can find it at Christianity is not a 'nice' religion. Indeed, I have just finished reading Matthew chapter 5 and 6, which are entirely the words of Jesus. That was our daily reading for today. You should check them out yourself in the King James version. Jesus was not a pacifists, and many things He preached are hard in practice. Jesus could be insulting as well, calling people hypocrits and vipers. I wonder what kind of 'X' posts he would make today?

I heard a disturbing statistic today. Roughly one third of Christian pastors — clergy of various faiths, I assume — have a Christian worldview. Even one half would be shockingly low.

Listening to the sermons of many pastors, one walks away with the sense that one has heard a generic lecture, one that could just as easily have been given by a secular speaker, on the importance of being a “good” person. Christians should of course be nice whenever possible, but Christianity is not about becoming a nice person. Definitely not. Many churchgoers disagree with that.

In a retirement village I frequented, there were retired Catholic priests and nuns. I overheard an elderly nun, conversing with a priest, and she was respectfully reading him the riot act. She told him, not in these exact words, I’ve known you a long time, and I’ve never heard you say anything about God, Jesus, or the Bible. Do you even believe in those things? To my mind, she was the real Christian.

Christianity is about the painful, tortuous, death on a cross and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of the Most High God. What that means is that He has opened up Heaven to us sinful mortals. But it requires us to believe and be baptized. Baptism puts Christ's seal on us. Being forgiven, you will naturally want to live as Christ has told us. But that requires reading the Old and New Testament to find out what He has said through Moses and the prophets.

Of course, in today's world Jesus would recognize the old tempter that is behind the efforts of Hamas to murder Israelis today and is behind the antisemitism being expressed today.  Jesus hated what his Father hated, and the Bible makes clear that God hates the devil.  Because God is merciful, he has placed the people who reject Him as far as they can be from the light that comes from His face.  The same lignt that warms those who love Him burns those that hate Him.  That is what hell is.

No, Christianity is not about being nice. Far from it.

Discovering the Palladium of Liberties From Another Source

Ranjit Singh has a different take on Second Amendment scholarship. What Singh has discovered is some German translations of the Bill of Rights that were made during the Founding era. I am assuming that these translations were made for German immigrants to the states. What is interesting is that these tranlations support the understanding of the Second Amendment as an idividual right of every citizen of the United States. You can find Singh's piece at Bearing Arms entitled A Well Outfitted Militia: German Translation of the Second Amendment Offers Insights.

The insights come from the words used in German for certain concepts. The German words indicate a common understanding at the time of an individual right, not a collective right.

I have learned over the years that the words used in other languages can carry meanings that are very important to one's understanding. For instance, one of the difficulties in reading the Bible is that different translations offer different wordings in English for the Hebrew and Greek texts that form the Old and New Testaments. These English translations can be either more or less true to the original meaning and also reflect to some degree the theology of the translator. As with the Second Amendment, it is important to get the wording right.  A paraphrase just won't do.

There’s a perennial debate in gun politics in the United States. The gun control side makes various specious arguments claiming that the Second Amendment protects muskets and not modern arms, that the right to keep and bear arms belongs to a select militia like the National Guard, not We the People, and that “well-regulated” authorizes the de facto destruction of our rights via regulation.

Those of us who have studied the copious scholarly research on the text and history of the Second Amendment know that those arguments are bunk. We know that the right to keep and bear arms is not dependent on militia service. We know that the right extends to modern arms, much like the First Amendment is applicable to modern forms of communication. We know that “well-regulated” means in proper working order, not choking off that right while pretending to nurture it.

To further support the originalist interpretation of the Second Amendment, there’s insight offered from an uncommon source: the re-translation into English of founding era documents originally translated into German. The following is the abstract from an academic paper published in the American Journal of Legal History:

A Well-Outfitted Militia: German–American Translations of the Second Amendment and Original Public Meaning

By Brandon Kinney

This article seeks to uncover the original public meaning of the Second Amendment by scrutinizing unusual and previously unexamined sources: German–American translations of the Bill of Rights during the Founding Era. Translations offer a unique perspective of political culture, because they served as thoughtful analysis and contextual commentary on the source text. Using six German–American translations in the Founding Era, this article argues that the public understanding of the Second Amendment during the Founding Era was one that recognized the individual right to own firearms for individual use unconnected to militia service as well as a constitutional endorsement of an armed population as the best bulwark to preserve the liberty of the national people. Though the exact text of the translations differ across publishers and states, they retain thematic and syntactic similarities that suggest a public consensus over the meaning of the text. The notion that the Second Amendment protects an individual right rather than a collective one is borne out by additional translations well into the mid-nineteenth century. Printers adjusted their translations of the amendment after the militia as a military institution had fallen into disuse but preserved or strengthened the clause protecting the individual right to arms rather than letting it ‘fall silent’.

Gentle readers will want to read the entire article as well as Mr. Bandon Kinney's article as well. They will discover in the work of Mr. Kinney the true meaning of the Bill of Rights. After all, we preserve the Second Amendment in order to preserve the other Amendments of the Bill of Rights.

The Rest of the Second Amendment

Mark Smith at Ammoland provides some useful information about Second Amendment jurisprudence that, as a non-lawyer you may not realize. The report is entitled 2nd Amendment Guarantees Rights to Acquired and Train With Guns, Not Just RKBA. Smith talks about a principle of Constitutional jurisprudence called "ancillary" rights that applies not just to the First Amendment but to all of them, including the Second.

With the U.S. District Court decision in Colorado finding that Americans have no constitutional right to acquire firearms, and a major oral argument in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit about the right to train with firearms, we are presented with a perfect opportunity to discuss an often-overlooked fact about the right to bear arms.

Specifically, the Second Amendment protects a host of rights beyond the rights to possess and carry firearms.

These additional rights are unequivocally implied by the Second Amendment’s language. Ancillary rights, as we call them in constitutional law, don’t often get the same level of attention as those rights explicitly spelled out in the Bill of Rights, but they are equally important—and equally protected. These ancillary or implied rights are necessary to the practice and exercise of the rights and liberties laid out in our Constitution.

Essentially, you can't exercise the right to keep and bear arms if you can't acquire a firearm, if you can't buy one or build one. You can't exercise the right if you can't buy ammunition, or if the government so burdens the purchase as to make effectively impossible to obtain. Thus ancillary rights are a necessary part of the enumerated rights

To illustrate, one of the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment’s text is the right of free speech. But that right also protects a host of other ancillary rights such as the right to paper and ink, the right to print and sell newspapers, and the right of access to the public square (or social media). Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court has found that the right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment implies the right to pay for a lawyer, or to have counsel appointed in serious cases for indigents.

Gentle readers should go read the whole article for a better understanding of just why the numerous restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms are mostly Unconstitutional. The principle of ancillary rights does not just affect the Second Amendment, but aftects all the enumerated rights.

Do The Voters Want Pandemonium?

 Kurt Schlichter at Townhall.com has an article today entitled Chaos Is A Choice, using as an example the recent cleanup of San Fransico. But, the cleanup was not done for the taxpayers in SF, nor the convenience of the businesses downtown. It was not done, in other words, for the normal people. No, it was done because a Commie dictator was flying in.

Well, California’s rulers finally decided to clean up the junkie-strewn and poop-positive streets of San Francisco. But, of course, they didn’t do that because foul boulevards and medieval subways are a problem for normal people. California’s rulers did it because China’s Winnie-the-Pooh-looking dictator Xi is coming to town. You would think that the people of San Francisco would be insulted, but they’re not. Maybe they are into the city’s weird S&M scene on the masochist side, since they keep electing the people who force them to dwell in squalor. With basically a wave of a wand, and a bunch of cops with some support, their leaders cleared out the street vermin infesting the City-by-the-Bay overnight. They would do that for some commie potentate, but not for the people of San Francisco.

Note that the homeless and the drug addicted who sleep on the streets, and defecate wherever they please do not vote. You would think that the people who pay taxes to have clean and safe streets, in other words the voters would have voted the ruling class garbage out with the bums. But they haven't. Which goes to show that the chaos is a choice, and that the voters apparently like it that way.

What this all goes to show is that this chaos is a choice. It doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to have mayors who make excuses for the social pathologies that ruin it for everybody else. You don’t have to tie the hands of the cops. You don’t have to have DAs who refuse to charge criminals with crimes, but who will charge citizens protecting other citizens from the criminals who should have been charged but weren’t. You can stand up and say, “No.” No to crime. No to trash. No to hobos. No, no, no.

But they don’t. And they won’t. They won’t because their own blue voters don’t matter to them. The weird thing is that the blue voters don’t seem to care. They keep reelecting the same people with the same failed policies over and over just because the candidates have a “D” after their names on the ballot. At some point, you have to assume that the voters are pretty happy with the chaos because they are choosing it. It’s kind of weird to allow yourself to be treated with such contempt by people who depend on you for a job. Why do they allow it? Is it to get a virtue signal tingle when they refuse to support putting the hammer down on people upon whom the hammer would come down in any civilized society?

As shown by the San Fran ruling elite, it really isn't that hard. The city already has a police department, a sanitation department, and if needed a fire department. Just spin those puppies up and set them to work. It can be done in a day. They proved it, but they just don't want to. So, the people suffer in the stink, or they move away to someplace where the government provides the services the taxpayer is paying for.

Go read Schlichter's article and if your own government decides to let a bunch of bums live on the streets of your community and dump sewage into your streets, threaten people going about their business and generally making themselves unwelcome, please point to San Fransico and tell them it can be cleaned up in a day. But if pandemonium is what they want, far be it from me to stand in their way.

A Muslim Comes In Out of the Heat

 John Daniel Davidson has a report at The Federalist that claims The Conversion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali To Christianity Is A Dire Warning To The West. I have many questions, left unanswered by Ali herself, but I welcome her conversion, as our Lord, Jesus Christ welcomes all who come to him. Praise be to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit who is the only one who can bring this about.

Over the weekend, Ayaan Hirsi Ali revealed in an essay at Unherd that she has become a Christian. For Christians, this is welcome and joyous news. But it’s also instructive. A former Muslim who very publicly rejected Islam and became an avowed atheist in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Ali has been speaking and writing in defense of Western civilization and liberal values for decades.

Now she has come to the conclusion that there is no way to maintain Western civilization and no way to preserve its liberal values apart from Christianity. Just as she came to discover the fundamentalist Islam of her youth was a dead end, she has also discovered the atheism she adopted in response to it is also a dead end.

Ali is correct that classical liberalism, the recognition of the natural rights of humanity because we are human, that even true science grew out of mens' faith in Jesus Christ. For if what Jesus taught, what we read in the Bible is true, then the Creator of the Universe is rational. If He is rational and knowable, then we can discover how things work through rational means. But Ali also missis something here:

She’s also right about that but wrong to think Christianity is primarily about countering those forces or preserving a particular civilizational or political project. As great as Western civilization is, it arose as a byproduct of the Christian faith, the sole object of which is communion with Almighty God by means of salvation through Jesus Christ. Things like freedom of speech, rule of law, and human rights are fruits of the Christian faith, but they are not what Christianity is about.

Ayann Hirsi Ali is clearly new to the faith. There are foundational beliefs that go along with our belief in Christ that explain much. For instance, we believe that man was created in the image of God; we are God's representatives on earth. So, while Muslims believe in the killing of infidels, Jews, even other Muslims if it will further the faith, we can only kill in self-defense. We believe in Truth and it is a sin to lie, while Muslims can lie, again to advance the faith.  Muslims must work hard to earn their heaven. But we believe that heaven is opened to all who believe and are baptized. The doors of heaven are always open, while the gates of hell are locked on the inside.

Of course, if one truly believes, one will want to show it. Certainly giving of your time and money helps to show it. Ali's coming out as a Christian is also showing it, especially for an ex-Muslim, who will be a target as an apostate. Christians have made many innovations that have bettered humanity, but remember that Christ has already done everything needed. He has already defeated the Devil and the death the origianal sin brought into the world. God does not need our sacrifices, for what does a being who created everything with a word need? What He wants is a contrite heart. And a contrite heart brings us to prayer and to communion with God. But Ali will learn all of this.

The heavenly hosts are no doubt singing "Hallelujahs" over another prodigal daughter who has found her way home.  At the same time, one has to notice the differences between Christianity and Islam.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob one the one hand, and Allah on the other, seem to be opposites.  We know who our God is.  So, the other guy must be the Father of lies. 

The Barbarians Among Us

 At Crisis Magazine Msgr. Richard C. Antall writes that We Live Among Barbarians. He is speaking here of the recent vote in Ohio to enshrine abortion on demand into its Constitution. He likens the abortion of the unborn to the ancient god Molock, to whom the ancient Canaanites sacrificed their first born children by tossing them alive into the fiery belly of the image of the demon. The methods may be different, but the murder of the children has the same effect.

The vote should be a revelation to us: we live among barbarians who do not care about human life in the womb. In the Bible, there was worship of the evil god Moloch, to whom the firstborn of the Canaanites was ritually sacrificed in fire. Modern-day worshippers of Moloch propose abortion as something compassionate, and they get sentimental about destroying human life in the womb, even if that life is viable or capable of living outside the mother.

There was an old Latin saying that ius est ars boni et aequi. That means “law is the art of the good and the just.” In the case of Issue One, that has been turned on its head. Law has become the instrument of evil and injustice. Mr. Bumble, in Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist, when confronted with a legal dictum contrary to common sense, said, “Then the law is an ass, an idiot.” What provokes laughter in Dickens cannot do so in our situation. A society that enacts an unjust law is unjust. God will punish us for that injustice. An old Spanish saying has it: Dios tarda pero no olvida. The meaning is God takes His time but does not forget.

Readers of this blog will know that I have long believed that abortion is murder. Some may remember that I have advocated for each child that was to be aborted to actually have a advocate at court to argue for the life of the child against the mother's desire to kill him, and force judges to sign a death warrant. So, to say that I was very disappointed with Ohio vote is an understatement. I still believe that the Supreme Court did the right thing in returning the decision about abortion to the states. The Federal government has no business sticking its nose into the issue. Nonetheless, I had hoped that the states would prove better stewards of their citizen's lives  I was apparently wrong.

But it may be just as well that so many people have shown themselves to be enemies of God. It is good to know your enemy. Similarly, the pro-Hamas protestors and antisemites have shown themselves to be enemies of the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. Now we know who the Satanists are among us. Good to know.

The Vegan Cabal Strikes Again

 Today at The Federalist Tristan Justice tells us that Scientists Want Meat Slapped With 'Cigarette Style' Warning Labels About Climate Change. Here's Why It's Completely Asinine. Of course, the first reason it is asinine is that manufactured meat made from plants will have a larger effect on emissions of CO2 and Methane than pasture raised meat. It will also have a detrimental effect on human health. But you need to read the entire article yourself and check out the embedded references as well. Unfortunately, it is a long article, so get a cup of coffee and sit back for a long read.

To say that the researchers who are pushing this silly idea are 'scientists' is somewhat of a misnomer. These 'scientists' have predetermined their conclusions, and their only question is which scary label is the most credible, thus will have the greatest effect on the public. I somehow don't see the scientific method being used here, do you?

A group of scientists is proposing government-mandated cigarette-style caution labels on meat packages that could read, “Warning: Eating meat contributes to climate change.” The anti-meat scientists, who falsely claim meat consumption is detrimental to health and the environment, began pushing for the labels after conducting a study at the UK’s Durham University.

The researchers took a group of 1,000 meat-eating adults and split them into four groups. Depending on what group a participant was in, they were shown photos of hot meals assigned climate, health, or pandemic warning labels or no warning label at all.

“All the labels deterred meat consumption, with 7-10 percent of the participants choosing a non-meat meal.” However, when participants were asked how anxiety-inducing and believable they found each of the labels, they reported the climate change warning as the most credible.

This prompted the scientists to advocate for government-mandated climate change warning labels on meat. “Reaching net zero is a priority for the nation and the planet,” said study author Jack Hughes. “As warning labels have already been shown to reduce smoking as well as drinking of sugary drinks and alcohol, using a warning label on meat-containing products could help us achieve this if introduced as national policy.”

Contrary to the bleating of vegans, it turns out meat is good for you, and stunningly enough, when properly raised, meat is good for the planet as well. Who'd a thunk it? The chronic diseases plaguing man, particularly Western man, are not the diseases of eating meat, but rather the diseases of eating a diet very high in processes carbohydrates and sugary foods and drinks. When one eats a meat-based diet composed of meats, eggs, and small amounts of dairy products such as cheese, one doesn't have to constantly munch on snacks. One or two small meals a day is enough. Not only does this way of eating free your time to do more meaningful tasks but frees your thoughts as well. You no longer have to be thinking of your next meal. Additionally, you become healthier. As Dr. Benjamin Bikman says:

“By every metric, every single animal protein is superior to every single plant protein,” Bikman said. “A person can eat a modest amount of animal protein and know that they are literally getting every single amino acid they could possibly need in a good ratio. If it’s plant protein, well, then you kind of have to guess, and you hope you’re getting it all.”

Plant proteins, Bikman added, “are enriched with things called ‘anti-nutrients,’” which are “molecules that will inhibit the intestines’ ability to digest the protein.”

“So that’s kind of adding insult to injury,” Bikman explained, “because when someone’s trying to get all their protein from plant proteins, not only are they getting an inferior source of amino acids and an inferior profile of amino acids, they’re not even digesting the amino acids in the proteins they think they’re getting.”

As far as ruminant animals (translation: cows) being good for the planet:

“Regenerative grass-fed meat can restore ecosystems, improving soils while sucking carbon from the atmosphere and increasing water storage in soils,” Hyman wrote, urging readers to “choose regeneratively raised animal products whenever possible.”

“They are better for you and better for the animals and help draw down carbon and reverse climate change,” Hyman added.

Despite the fear-mongering over global livestock emissions, a trio of Spanish researchers published a study in April finding emissions from wildlife comparable to domesticated animals raised in natural grazing systems. In other words, contrary to climate alarmists’ warnings that livestock capital will pollute the planet into an environmental apocalypse, the elimination of animal emissions requires the extinction of natural species.

In the end, the desire of governments to get their populations off of meat and onto the products of Big Food is nothing more than the already rich as hell billionaires trying to get richer still at the expense of you and me. That they are killing us is of little concern to these people. In fact, from the perspective of the WEF that may be a feature, not a bug. Instead, we need to support America's independent ranchers who supply us with grass raised meat for our tables.

Islam Is Not A Religion

Have you ever wondered what the Left has in common with Islam? The Left and Islam seem to be in lockstep in this country, and one wonders why? Of course, Islam hates the Left as infidels, and the Left would be the first ones beheaded by Islamic jihadis. Not only are the Left nonbelievers, but actual atheists. And of course, the Left returns the favor of hating Islam. Jihadis would be the first ones thrown against the wall and shot. What I think they have in common is hatred of the United States. Until they can destroy America, the enemy of their enemy is their friend.

Today at the American Thinker Sloan Oliver has an essay entitled Islam is Not a Religion. Rather, it is a authoritarian system disguised as a religion.

What is Islam? To answer that question, it’s more important to know what Islam isn’t. Islam is not a religion. It is an authoritarian, political ideology that forcibly imposes itself on all aspects of any society unfortunate enough to be under its yoke. Islam demands complete subjugation by its adherents. Under Islam, there is no democracy, there is no free speech, no freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no minority rights, and there’s no right to love whoever you desire. Islam allows no dissent. It is a complete and total way of life that glorifies oppression, slavery, and death. Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, cultural, and military components. The religious component is the veil that hides the dangers of its all-encompassing ideology.

...snip...

Modern day Islam is just as oppressive and dangerous as was 8th century Islam. That’s because culturally, Islam still enforces the same tenets they did 1,200 years ago. What are some of those tenets, practices, and ways of life? Islam enforces edicts against homosexuality to the point of executing homosexuals. As for women, of the ten worst countries for women’s rights, seven of them are Muslim. The Quran clearly states that women are subordinate to men, and men may beat their wives (Quran 4:34). With Islam, there’s a fine line between oppressing women and enslaving them. Islam practices female genital mutilation, a barbaric practice (look it up and be disgusted). Other realities for women in Islamic countries include: women must be escorted in public, largely because it’s too dangerous for them to walk alone (rape and assaults are common); women must cover their bodies from head to foot; and very few education opportunities which result in limited employment opportunities.

We know (or at least we should know) that Marxism, Communism, Fascism, or any of the other Leftist ideologies create ugly oppressive political systems. But Islam is equally ugly and oppressive. Just look at the way women are treated in Islamic countries. Look at the fact that slavery is still legal in Islamic countries. Islam is called the "religion of peace," but within Islam itself there has been constant conflict.

You might wonder what I have against Islam, but let me ask this question: Knowing the profoundly immoral nature of tyrants and authoritarian regimes, would you be alright if Nazism or communism ruled over two billion people on the planet? I’m guessing most people would say “NO” to both, because the evils of these ideologies have no place in a civilized society of unalienable rights. Well, the evils of Islam are just as bad—perhaps worse—as the evils of any totalitarian form of rule ever devised by man. Islam doesn’t want peace; it preaches struggle, constant struggle, because it is an ideology that uses religion.

Many people might disregard the dangers of Islam, as we do have Muslims here in America, and we don’t see things like Muslim men buying children, or public beatings by administrators of Sharia “justice.” But, Muslims are a small percentage of our population at this moment. Anywhere Islam is the majority, there is oppression, conflict, and struggle. Think of the wars and conflicts being fought on this planet; then, think of the countries that have large Muslim populations, and you’ll find those two maps overlay one another. From Nigeria in Africa, to Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan, and to the jungles of the Philippines, Islamic societies are engaged in armed conflicts to suppress and oppress those populations. And also don’t forget, a small number can be very dangerous: the 9/11 attack was carried out by only 19 Muslims.

In Islamic countries, conflicts, struggles, and oppression have been ongoing for centuries; no end in sight, and it’s important to remember that above all, Islam is an ideology as dangerous and evil as any ideology ever conceived, using religion as a scapegoat.

Like Marxism, Islam and its Sharia Law is antithetical to the Constitution and Christianity. Whether the Left wants to admit it or not, our laws are derived from Christianity, and Islam is by definition the enemy of Christ. why the Pope keeps playing footsie with the Muslims is anybody's guess. As for admitting Muslims to America, we should not admit any more. It is utter madness.  People like the squad should be voted out of office.

The Bill of Rights Is Done

 At the American Thinker Andrea Widburg has a post entitled Lawyers, guns and money (and speech): How Democrats steal our Constitutional rights.  She has embedded a Tucker Carlson interview on X with Douglas Mackey.  Mackey is probably someone you have never heard of, but he is a canary in the coal mine.  Just as Trump is being prosecuted on specious charges, anyone who opposes these people is at risk.  Please watch the interview before we go any further.

Have you watched it?  Good.  Mackey seems like a typical New Englander.  He is a man of few words, dry even.  Carlson asks open ended questions but gets short answers.  

One of the most basic legal premises is that the government cannot do indirectly that which it is barred from doing directly. However, in Washington, D.C., and across America, Democrats are using indirect means to destroy our constitutional rights.

If you’re reading this post, I’m betting that you’re aware of the Twitter files, which revealed that the Deep State was working closely with Big Tech to censor content about Russiagate, COVID, the vaccinations, and Biden family corruption. Therefore, I won’t rehash that. However, if you haven’t seen Tucker Carlson’s most recent interview, this one with Douglass Mackey, you don’t know that the administration is also using its police powers to silence political speech.

Douglass Mackey is the man who posted a joke on Twitter telling people to text their votes for Hillary. It was a joke identical to posts that Democrats were putting up regarding voting for Trump. However, unlike the Democrats, Mackey was hunted down. Seven days into the Biden administration, he was on the receiving end of an FBI raid and staring at 11 years in prison for election interference. The fact that there was no evidence that anyone, even a Democrat, was stupid enough to take his joke seriously was irrelevant...In Democrat-run America, political jokes will get you arrested. So, while the Democrats haven’t succeeded in amending the Constitution to remove the First Amendment, they have engaged in policies that effectively chill political speech. They have done directly that which they cannot do directly.

...snip...

In Democrat-run America, political jokes will get you arrested. So, while the Democrats haven’t succeeded in amending the Constitution to remove the First Amendment, they have engaged in policies that effectively chill political speech. They have done (in)directly that which they cannot do directly.

Democrats have effectively erased the First Amendment right to free speech for Mackey. They are trying to do the same with the Second Amendment by going after ammunition. After all, if they can make the ammunition illegal, the right to arms becomes null and void. Now, they are also nullifying the Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel.

To date, the Democrats haven’t amended the Constitution to remove that right, nor would they want to. It’s important for Democrats and their voting blocs to have attorneys. However, they desperately want to make it impossible for their political opponents to have attorneys, whether in civil or criminal matters.

Because they cannot do that directly, leftists do it indirectly by going after the attorneys who work for their political enemies, seeking either to disbar them (e.g., John Eastman) or criminally indict them (e.g., Jenna Ellis) for daring to advance arguments with which Democrats disagree. Disfavored individuals like Derek Chauvin also have an almost impossible time finding legal counsel.

Imagine having to defend yourself from made up charges with incompetent legal counsel. They might as well just put you in jail without a trial at all. This is, as Carlson notes, Soviet stuff. Someone like Mackey will not have the resources to appeal the conviction.

In posting his Douglass Mackey video, Tucker Carlson (or his team) wrote “The First Amendment is done.” Through the connivance of the Democrat party, the Deep State, and the Biden administration, the Second Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, and Article I are done, too. If we don’t push back hard in the next election, our wonderful, unique, and liberty-oriented Constitution will have been rendered meaningless.

Democrats Try To Go Around the Constitution On Bulk Ammo Sales

 Olivia Murray had a post yesterday at the American Thinker about a group of far-left fascists continuing the attack on guns in America. Having largely been stymied by the Supreme Court saying that the Constitution says what it means, they are trying other ideas.

One is the California Governor Newsom idea of actually amending the Constitution. I like that straight forward approach, but it is unlikely to yield the desired effect anytime soon. And fascist far-left people are not known for patience or following the law or rules.  They would rather try something that might yield results sooner, especially if they can regain a majority on the Court.

According to Murray, they have another line of attack on our Constitutionally protected rights. They are currently passing ammunition limiting legislation such as limiting the number of rounds a magazine (called "clips" by the ignorant) may hold. Such magazine limits are being tested with mixed results, but the fascist far-left can probably see the handwriting on the walls. Besides, one can carry multiple magazines and train to reload quickly, so limiting the size magazines has limited value.

Thus, Democrats attack from all sides and introduce legislation to come after "bulk' sales of ammo.

Just today I penned a blog on news out of Texas that a Trump-appointed federal judge had issued a nationwide stay on the ATF’s pistol brace ban—but the high was short-lived. Allow me to explain:

In a move that the Democrats and the bureaucratic left clearly would have anticipated, the judge in that case announced that “public safety concerns must be addressed in ways that are lawful.” Gee, what a concept, the federal government (at least somewhat and sometimes) being held to the supreme law of the land too?

So, the Democrats covered those bases too, and instead of trying to legislate through the unconstitutional bureaucracy, they’re going through the branch of government where lawmaking is supposed to take place; eight days ago Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and California’s Robert Garcia introduced a bill they named the Ammunition Modernization and Monitoring Oversight Act, abbreviated as the AMMO Act. As the press release posted to Garcia’s official website says, the federal law “would restrict bulk sales of ammunition, would require businesses who sell ammunition to obtain the same federal license as gun dealers, and would require businesses to conduct a background check on buyers.” So what classifies as a “bulk” sale? From the text of the bill itself, “more than 1,000 rounds” of almost all calibers in a 5-day time frame—the one exception is .50 BMG, which in that case, 100 rounds meets the “bulk” definition.

Now, once upon a time, Israel enacted ammunition restriction legislation too—but a little over a month ago on October 8th, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir made an emergency declaration to “allow as many citizens as possible to arm themselves.” The new process allowed for a required interview to be done over the phone instead of in-person, mandated that good-to-go gun license applicants receive their approval within a week, and… altered ammunition restriction rules, increasing the number of rounds allowed in a person’s possession from 50 to 100.

Yes, you read that right, I didn’t miss any zeros—no wonder it was such a slaughter. Even if an Israeli had a firearm in their home, what good is a few dozen rounds against an army with thousands of rounds? I heard of one report in which a man who fortunately had a firearm in his private residence (he was a member of the special police force), miraculously held off ten terrorists; but he was obviously the outlier, and as Andrea Widburg noted in an essay she wrote on the story, he and his family likely only survived because he probably hoarded a secret little stash of ammunition.

Murray makes a good point here, tying Israel's issue with the terrorists to our own possible issue. In fact, we are likely to see terrorists attacking Americans wherever they can kill a lot of us going about our lives at random times to scare as many of us as possible. That is what terrorism is really for, to get us to change our lives to suit them. If we can expect it, it pays to be ready. So, buying ammo in bulk is a legitimate exercise of the Second Amendment.

But there are other legitimate reasons to buy in bulk. For one, it saves money overall. If you know you will use it, it pays to buy in bulk. Then there are training exercises. If you have ever participated in an International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) event, these people use up rounds like they were going out of style. One evening's event chews up 100 rounds or more. Note that these are local training events for the real IDPA championship matches.  But you will go through even more practicing for an event. IDPA is very good training for real life situations. Other training, like close quarter training uses up more. Oh, and it pays to have a bunch of preloaded magazines so that you don't have to waste time at the range loading magazines.

Throughout history, the people in power, whether you called them kings, or chieftains, or emperors, or just tyrants, have always wanted the common man to be as dependent on government as possible. This is why they typically forbid arms, promising to defend the commoners. But of course they never kept that promise. Throughout history, the common man was always his own and his neighbor's first responder. This is just another attempt by our garbage elites to disarm us so they can take more power.

Staying Awake

At The Federalist is an article entitled What I Saw In Israel On Oct 7 Should Be A Wake-Up Call For All Americans Asleep At The Wheel. The author, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells of his or her trip to Israel and noticing several "red flags" that should have told him that the Arabs might be planning a terrorist attack. The whole article is interesting. I have never been to Israel, but have always wanted to go. He also notes the thougts and attitudes of the Iraeli guides showing him the sights. You should read the whole article, but the most important part of the essay is the lessons learned for Americans back home:

The bloody-minded murderers who so deviously infiltrated Israel to slaughter innocents (including infants) don’t need to come across our borders in paragliders. For years, they have just walked across it. The terrorists are here in the United States — even Biden’s Department of Homeland Security admits it. We do not kid ourselves that they hate America as much as they hate Israel. Within the next year or two, we expect numerous coordinated, repetitive terror attacks here at home. We pray to God we are proven wrong, but preparation is superior to hope.

We returned gratefully to our beloved country having learned many lessons which we realize apply not only to us but to all Americans.

Never be complacent about the deadly risk of terrorism. These people are here in our country now, invisible, planning. They mean us terrible harm and know how to deliver it.

Don’t think Biden’s open border is somebody else’s problem. It is ours, today, with dire consequences we must deal with for decades to come.

Don’t take comfort in or settle for a “tech” border wall. Cyberattacks do not penetrate or disable a 30-foot wall.

Never take for granted that today’s peaceful life will be tomorrow’s too. Don’t be caught like so many Israelis — defenseless, panicked, waiting for police or military who will not arrive to save you. Never assume that “somebody will protect us” from terror attacks. Be prepared to protect yourself.

While it is now too late to stop the internal terrorism risk here, we can try to reduce the damage from infiltration. Build the wall and do it now.

Above all, never give up your guns. It is your only means to defend yourself and your family. Never!

Basically, he is telling us to stay aleart, expect the unexpected, and whatever you do, don't give up your guns.