The True Purpose of Gun Control Laws

 We have two articles to highlight today on the subject of the failed Minnesota gun ban. The first comes from Mike McDaniel at the American Thinker entitled Minnesota fails to ban (assault weapons (sic)). McDaniel points out that:

...Suffice it to say, no government that disarmed its people ever did so for altruistic and benevolent reasons. Just ask the Iranians or Cubans.

McDaniel starts off his post with:

There are several blue states that have extinguished themselves by going full Communist/Islamist. Never go full Communist/Islamist. The big three are California, Illinois and New York, but Minnesota, under soon to be ex-governor Tampon Tim Walz, is vying for the number one spot in that pantheon of lunatic anti-Americanism.

The Minnesota Senate is barely in the hands of Democrats while the House is evenly split, with the Speaker of the House a Republican largely due to Democrats getting caught cheating in the 2024 election. As with the big three and every other blue state, there are certain articles of faith. Arguably the most important among them is that Normal Americans—largely but not exclusively Republicans—must be disarmed, not only within their Communist/Islamist states, but everywhere. They understand that unless and until they can disarm Normal Americans, their utopian state, a tyranny of the majority, can never be realized.

That is what all the fuss is about. The so-called "Democrats" don't care about criminals with guns, or they wouldn't routinely let them out to rob and murder again. No, what they care about is YOU, the law-abiding gun owner. You scare them because they want, indeed they can almost taste it, complete power over you and how you live. It has been tried and failed before, most notably in the old Soviet Union. There the "citizens" were told where to work, where to live, what they could buy right down to what foods they could buy. Anyone who understands human nature knows this kind of control will fail.

A similar article, though more passionate, is After Failing to Pass a Radical Gun Control Bill, a Minnesota Democrat Responded With Violence at Townhall.com by Amy Curtis. Curtis points out that no matter how many gun control bills are already on the books, Democrats believe that one more will magically make us safer. But the fact that Democrat prosecutors and judges seem not to throw the book at felons in possession, even they don't believe it. This makes you wonder what these Democrats really want.

Democrats will never cease in their efforts to strip us of our Second Amendment rights. Any time there is a mass shooting, they trip over themselves to get in front of a microphone to demand more gun control laws. It doesn't matter that there are countless gun control laws on the books already — laws Democrats refuse to enforce — they insist more gun laws will magically make us 'safer.'

The reality is they won't. Last month, former Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax killed his estranged wife and himself in a murder-suicide. Fairfax was a proponent of gun control, including red flag laws that weren't followed as Fairfax's marriage fell apart and reports of increased drinking were apparently known. In Massachusetts, Judge Janet Sanders gave Boston career criminal Tyler Brown only five years after Brown — a man with a 20-year history of crimes, including firearms charges — tried to shoot two Boston police officers. Sanders admitted she was 'taking a risk' on Brown because law enforcement told her he was dangerous. Last week, Brown used a rifle to open fire on a Massachusetts road, critically wounding two commuters. And in Fairfax County, VA, Prosecutor Steve Descano released illegal alien Marvin Morales Ortez, dropping gun charges against him.

This reality doesn't matter to Democrats, because their goal is to take guns away not from criminals, but from law-abiding citizens. And when they don't get their way, they get nasty and violent, as Minnesota State Rep. Aisha Gomez did after a radical gun control bill failed to pass.

...snip...

Democrats accuse gun owners and Republicans of fomenting gun violence, but the reality is far different. At the drop of a hat, Democrats are willing to engage in violence when they do not get their way politically. Their accusations are really confessions, as Gomez once again demonstrated here. They know their Republican opponents are not violent; they wouldn't say such abhorrent things if we were.

Please go and read both articles. Understand that they could care less about the criminal element. The real target of these gun control laws is the law-abiding citizen.

Worshipping the Creation Instead of the Creator

 J.B. Shurk, over at the American Thinker yesterday had an article that gentled readers should read entitled Leftism: A Religious Cult for Psychopaths and Crazies. In it, Shurk describes the many ways the Left seeks to indoctrinate you, including finally murdering you if you still don't believe. In that, it is not unlike Islam, so it makes sense that the two "religions" have temporarily sought common cause against Christianity.

The efforts in Wales to indoctrinate toddlers to become little racists is despicable enough. But the proposal in Denmark to deny old folks in state run nursing homes meat should be thought of as genocide. The "crime" the elderly did? Why they destroyed the climate, of course. No wonder St. Greta Thunberg thinks the world will end in 12 years.

In its essence, leftist-globalism is a psychopathic religion. It cannot countenance argument or dissent. Everyone must be forced to believe in the exact same things. In Wales, leftist-globalists indoctrinate toddlers to fear “white supremacy” and to love Islam, “multiculturalism,” and “diversity.” In Denmark, leftist-globalists indoctrinate citizens to fear “climate change” and to hate older citizens for their “climate crimes.”

These are cult-like conditioning programs meant to trap human minds in a permanent state of suicidal self-delusion. Instead of “drinking the Kool-Aid,” toddlers are given daily diets of everything is racist! Instead of cutting out the hearts of human sacrifices to appease certain Aztec gods, today’s leftist-globalists sacrifice people over a certain age by denying them meat. It’s crazy, irrational dogma used to indoctrinate people from cradle to grave. Neither Jim Jones nor Aztec priests, however, are leading this lunacy. Instead, leftist-globalist governments are spreading this madness.

Now, the God of the Bible unlike Islam's god, or these crazy people's god, calls everyone to Him. But he leaves the choice to you. You can accept Him or reject Him. Those who actively reject the invitation, He lets them go their own way, now and in the afterlife. Hell, you see is not a prison designed to torture people. It is being as far from God as that person wants to be. The gates of heaven are always open, the gates of hell are locked from the inside.

Go read Shurk's article highlighted above and see if it makes sense to you as well.

Count Me Among Those Who are Fed Up

Mike McDaniel had a post yesterday at the American Thinker entitled When it comes to leftists and law-abiding gun owners, they really hate us. McDaniel starts out with a typical leftist approach:

After any notorious shooting, anti-liberty/gun cracktivists inevitably—after demanding: “what will it take before we do something about gun violence?”—call for a “national conversation about gun violence.” When Normal Americans reply, “OK, let’s talk,” they scream, “shut up, you racist, red neck, domestic terrorists!” Every. Single. Time.

I have encountered these "let's have a national conversation" types. My response, because I have around so long has been: "We have already had that conversation. You lost." They are not going to change my mind now, after all I have seen and heard, and I am certainly not going to change theirs. Second of all, as McDaniel points out, there is no such thing as "gun violence." Guns are tools, relatively simple inanimate objects. People are the once who commit violence, and that violence depends on whether they are assaulting innocent people, or they are defending themselves from such an assault. Guns may be used in both cases, but one of them is justified, the other is not.

It’s like Lucy pulling the football away from poor Charlie Brown. Normal, honest Americans are willing to talk with just about anybody about just about anything, even though they know there’s no such thing as “gun violence.” People commit violence, not inanimate objects. Guns are nothing more than tools that propel projectiles. They have no consciousness, no emotions, no malice. They are neither good nor evil, and they’re only one of many tools capable of being used by human beings to harm other human beings, tools like motor vehicles, which in the warped sense that guns are responsible for violence, are responsible for far more deaths and injuries than guns.

Normal Americans are the people who built, build, and maintain America. They’re not the people who are protesting law enforcement in particular and our representative, constitutional republic in general. Recognizing “our democracy” is a tyranny of the majority, they support the rule of law by voting and politely telling their representatives when they’re displeased.

Yes, I think our Constitutional, representative republic was inspired. But knowing that men are not angels I keep an eye on it. The right to keep and bear arms keeps the government from taking all of my other rights. I certainly believe that those who have rigged our elections need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And we need to go back to watermarked paper ballots and holding elections on one day. But I depend on the corrective power of the Constitutional representative republic to fix it.

True, many Normal Americans, knowing all that, are fed up. Many won’t bother to have a “conversation” that will produce little more than angry, spittle-slinging rage, obscenities and insults. Still, some will try in the hope that logic, reason, objective facts and the lessons of history might somehow prevail, that those foundations of western civilization might somehow reach those likely too far gone on the path to a communist utopia might pause, think and embrace sanity.

So sure, they’ll have that conversation, because they’re decent people and they’re willing to be pleasantly surprised. But they’re not willing to bargain away the Constitution or the rule of law to people who want them dead.

Count me among those who are fed up. I have had the conversation with many people, and at my age don't need to have another "angry, spittle-slinging" conversation filled with "rage, obscentities and insults." But if McDaniel is willing to put up with it, more power to him.

Beware Those Escaping from Socialist Hell Holes

 A reminder from David Codrea at Ammoland that Democrats Fleeing 'Socialism' Bringing Anti-gun Politics With Them. I had experience of this years ago when we first moved from Virginia to North Carolina. We had a house warming party and invited all the neighbors. One neighbor, who owned a working farm used a shot gun to kill a fox who was harassing his cattle. Note that the farm was more than 5 acres, and shot guns have limited range. One woman thought the police should stop him. I personally thought if the woman didn't like our neighbor shooting at foxes, she should have not moved there.

The same phenomenon happened when people started moving out along the route between Washington, DC and Dulles Airport. The airport was there first, by many years. Still, the newcomers demanded that the airport change its routes and times so they could sleep at night. It is the same thing that happens when enough Muslims come into an area. They demand the laws change to Sharia.

Codrea writes:

Who thinks an influx of hypocritical Democrats into these states, voters who don’t want to personally “pay their fair share” (their terminology, not mine) for the type of government they demand, will work out well for gun owners?

We’ve seen what happened in Colorado. We can see what’s happening all over the country in an analysis by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, which blindly opines:

“Texas, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee were the biggest net winners from interstate migration, while California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts were the biggest net losers.”

Codrea concludes with a passage from the Bible about the two sons of Isaac, Jacob and Esau:

It’s all reminiscent of the story of Esau, who traded his birthright for a mess of pottage. And what’s not being factored in by these migrating Democrats is when their new nests become as fouled as the ones they abandoned, there will be no safe haven to fly to.

If your only value is short-term financial gains, they may have a point. But long-term losses from increasingly strident collectivist demands – not just on incomes but on essential freedoms like the right of the people to keep and bear arms – are predictable.

I frankly do not know what is to be done about it. Living in NC, I have encountered New Yorkers who both are conservative and love guns, and those who are here to escape taxes, but want to impose those same taxes on us, and oh by the way, want to get rid of guns. Perhaps they should take classes on what it means to be a citizen before they can vote?

Bill Wilson and Ken Hackathorn Talk About the 9mm Luger

 Today I wanted to highlight a Youtube video on the Wilson Combat channel in which Bill Wilson and Ken Hackathorn discuss why they now shoot mostly 9mm instead of .45 Auto. You can find the video at .45 ACP vs 9mm - Gun Guys Ep. 08. Wilson is the founder and owner of Wilson Combat, a maker of high end M1911 style pistols. The Wilson CQB (for Close Quarters Battle) features in Kurt Schlicter's People's Republic series. Ken Hackathorn is known as "Mr. 45" in the gun community.

I have been following both men for many years as they competed in matches and especially as Wilson built his business. Both are getting up there in years. Both now mostly shoot M1911 style pistols in 9mm and the reasons are old age. Hackathorn in particular has arthritis in his hands and can take only so much abuse. Wilson doesn't have arthritis but likes the gentler recoil of the 9mm in a steel framed weapon. And, honestly, the higher round count of the 9mm, and the advent of hollow point bullets means there isn't a lot of difference between the two rounds most of the time. You would not feel under gunned with 9mm.

I too am getting old, and while I can still shoot a .45 Auto M1911 pistol, I now prefer the .38 Super Auto in an M1911 pistol. .38 Super loads a 9mm bullet into a somewhat larger casing but propels the bullet at similar velocity. When the .38 Super was developed, the 9mm Luger was a rather anemic round, so that at that time .38 Super was the most powerful handgun cartridge and remained so until the .357 Magnum came along. Also, the .38 Super is historically correct for the M1911 pistol, having been developed with that pistol in mind.

Gentle readers can rest their eyes, and listen as two old shooters talk about their now favorite round.

A sad story indeed

I may have mentioned that music is evidence for the existence of God. There is no evolutionary purpose behind music. It is simply for our pleasure and enjoyment. Does this prove that God created the universe and us? No, but it is an intriguing idea. Furthermore, if music is evidence of God the Creator, then it makes sense that Muslims would hate music. And sure enough... I have also stated that Muslims worship the Devil. So, it makes sense that they also try to destroy everything that God builds.

So, it is interesting that reports indicate that in Germany, music classes are being cancelled in schools, supposedly because for Muslim students it is forbidden. You can read about it at the American Thinker entitled Is the music finally over in Germany? by Eric Utter.

It is especially grievious to me because so many great great composers were German. I realize that the modern state of Germany is a recent invention, but the whole area from Prussia to Austria spoke a common language.

Germany produced far more than its share of great composers: Bach, Handel, Telemann, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Strauss, Wagner, and the list goes on. (Not to mention Engelbert Humperdinck or Nena!) To see its rapid cultural degradation and loss of identity is honestly heartbreaking, even from the perspective of a nation that twice defeated it in war.

Martin Luther was also German and a composer of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," a truly rousing hymn.

Sunday Reflections

 I graduated with a degree in civil engineering, and minors in mathematics and (believe it or not) English and American literature.  Note that having studied English and American literature does not make me a better writer. (sigh!)  In any case, philosophy was not on the menu, as courses in math and science, and how to apply them to a civil engineer's work took up all my time.  It is something I regretted until, talking with my pastor, who graduated from Yale with a philosophy degree.  He noted that philosophy was pretty much hogwash.  He didn't use that term but indicated that the study of philosophy was without value for God does not operate as man would expect, but out of His gracious love.

Now, in studying Marx's Communist Manifesto, I had to study a bit of Hegel.  His explanations of things did not particularly impress me, and he was...how do I put this...loquacious.  I had also read short passages from Nietzsche, but again I had to wonder what he was on about.  In other words, I no longer regret my lack of a philosophic background, for philosophy just puts others ideas into your head. The world would be a better place without a Neitzche or a Hegel.

Today, at the American Thinker Arthur Schaper has an article entitled Leaving Keirkegaard in which he points out that while many people read and were influensed by Keirkegaard's writings, the author discovered that the true light of the world is not philosophy, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Keirkegaard its seems is another philosophy the world could do without.

I am writing about the wily Dane, Soren Kierkegaard.

My senior year in high school, I came across his writings in the local library. His last name alone was hard to ignore. From there, I read his signature treatise on faith and the sacrificial account of Abraham and Isaac, Fear and Trembling. The poetic depth of his passages on the role of the poet and the beautiful courage of Father Abraham brought tears to my eyes. I admired The Knight of Faith, desiring to live a life filled with peace and purpose, in which everything has meaning and encounters nothing but wonder in an otherwise plain world.

Kierkegaard’s other work, The Sickness Unto Death, captivated me, as well. His first paragraph (“Man is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self? But what is the self? … “) made me laugh out loud. His cryptic syntax served as a necessary jab and tonic to the prolix Hegelian universalism swamping European colleges and discussion halls at the time. The titles of his books were quite gruesome, and his voluminous readings on the topics were profound in every sense. Kierkegaard intended for his writings to be difficult because he was engaging in parody but also stripping away the self-righteousness of a smug world determined to prove its own smarts.

Schaper writes that at the time he encountered Kirkegaard's writings, he too was taken in by the clever prose and the turns of phrase, the humor and the pathos. But eventually he discovered that:

The hardships we face cannot be overcome by philosophical texts. Who can overcome the sorrows and struggles of life with lots of thinking? There are bills to pay, people to see, challenges to deal with, hardships to overcome, and victories to enjoy. All of the abuses and traumas that I had suffered as a child could not be resolved by reading philosophy.

Furthermore, faith in falsehood cannot save, no matter how earnest the faith. Truth matters, and truth is not something that we come up with or is something merely grounded in our personal experience. In one of his most massive texts, The Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard writes: “Truth is subjectivity."

No, it isn’t. If you jump into a pool, thinking it’s ten feet deep but actually only three feet deep, you will crack your head on the concrete. If you are dying of thirst in the desert, and you spy an oasis, only to find more sand, you will die. Kierkegaard’s determination to turn inwardness into certainty is not only wrong but dangerous. He minimized biblical revelation in other ways. In The Book on Adler, Kierkegaard argued that God doesn’t speak anymore. Yet the New Testament is replete with accounts of the Holy Spirit directing man to do God’s will.

In my youth what philosopy I read often seemed obscure, and deliberately so. The writer wanted us to think he was smarter than the reader. My feelings here have only hardened. It was obscure because the author wanted to cover over the basic falsehoods in his thinking. Here is where Schaper turns to the Truth, which can only be found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ:

Kierkegaard’s miserly misunderstandings of Christianity ignored the fullness of the sacrifice that Christ Jesus accomplished on the Cross, and one can see the serious problems people will run into when they take someone like Kierkegaard seriously. If Nietzsche’s philosophy was consolation for those who were no good at living, then Kierkegaard’s philosophy is a comfort measure for Christians who don’t understand the Gospel.

Christian faith is not subjective. It’s not about our feelings, but it’s based on the accomplished fact and the eternal efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Where Kierkegaard talked about Jesus as an example, the Gospel proclaims Him as the Savior whom we receive. Only then do we follow him, only then do we learn to love others, and only because we learn that He first loved us.

As I matured, I found Kierkegaard unappealing and unrewarding. Kierkegaard believed in a law-centered, man-centered Christianity, one where man has to try harder in his own efforts, where there is never a sense of peace and rest. Very little time did he spend expounding on the wonders and grace of God, the Finished Work of Jesus Christ, and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.

There is nothing more to say

Gun Control Now Out In the Open

 At the American Thinker today, D. Parker has a post entitled Leftists move on from 'nobody's coming for your guns'. Like most of their anti-liberty agenda, the mask is coming off now, and the left feels certain it can steal its way to winning back the Senate and House in the midterms. They are so sure of it that they don't need to hide their true intentions. And their true intentions are to disarm normal Americans and cram their tyrannical program down our throats.

Leftists are no longer hiding their plans to take your guns if they ever gain power. That means it’s time to get activated in defending freedom.

The gun-grabber ghouls of the left have always played a little game incrementally demanding more control over a commonsense and constitutional civil right. Though they used to occasionally say the quiet part out loud, things have changed. They’ve never been as blatant about it as they are now.

In the past, the ghouls had the advantage that history had yet to be made in other Western countries, so they could brush off the very real accusations that they were ultimately out to confiscate guns. They could say we were being paranoid or toss off some variation of the infamous line that “no one is talking about taking your guns.”

But now guns have been confiscated around the world. Even worse, the facile promises of safety from these actions have failed to materialize. We now have the advantage of hindsight, to the point that the ghouls can no longer dismiss the gun confiscation accusation as “extreme.” We can now easily point to the U.K., Australia, and Canada, so they’ve changed their tactics.

I don't know if Parker goes back as far as I do in the gun debates. I can remember the great debate over "Saturday Night Specials." These were supposedly cheaply made revolvers that so called ghetto dwellers would use during their Saturday night escapades. The debate was terribly racist. Indiana Senator Birch Bayh (a Democrat of course) and others wanted to get rid of guns and so created the Gun Control Act of 1968. But of course, these measures are always a "good first step." The gun-ghouls will never be happy until we are disarmed and mere surfs in their machine.

Even as a teen I realized that the Second Amendment was not about hunting but defending the nation and for self-defense against tyrants. So-called "Saturday Night Specials" were not hunting weapons, so were derided for not having a "sporting purpose." Well, no they didn't. They were designed to be self-defense weapons when one was attacked. One of a legitimate government's jobs is protecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  But the state cannot be everywhere, so it becomes incumbent on the individual to protect himself. These things I realized even as a teen.

With that as background, I was happy to see the first state, Florida, to pass a shall-issue concealed carry law. That was in 1987. Since that time, most of the states have passed shall issue concealed carry, and many have passed so-called Constitutional carry, which doesn't require a permit. The Supreme Court has indicated that the Second Amendment is an individual right, not tied to being in a militia. But all that hard work over that last 50 years is in peril.

Even if you’re not a gun owner — or lost all your guns in an unfortunate boating accident — these stories should make it crystal-clear what is at stake in the upcoming electoral contests. Cruel leftists have already made noises about persecuting pro-freedom patriots, nuking the filibuster, making Puerto Rico and D.C. states, and packing the Supreme Court. And that’s what they will openly admit to at the moment. Who knows what else they have in mind?

If there is any constant in the universe, it’s that the collectivist left will lie, and lie often. It’s a hobby and a skill. It’s just like a spanner in the leftists’ political tool kit. It’s when they tell the truth that you really have to worry.

They Really Do Hate You

 J. B. Shurk today at the American Thinker asks the question Why Do Democrats Hate America? He eventually answers that question, and I will get to it shortly. But first Shurk cites a number of examples, some of which border on treason. And it isn't always just to "get Trump."

Earlier this week, Democrat Senator Chris Murphy highlighted a disputed news story claiming that a shadow fleet of several dozen Iranian vessels had successfully eluded the U.S. Navy’s blockade near the Strait of Hormuz. Above what appears to have been Iranian propaganda, Murphy wrote one word: “Awesome.” How much does a Democrat senator have to hate the country he putatively represents to root for a foreign enemy presently engaged in battle with the United States?

Murphy’s choice to side with Iran’s Islamic terrorists over American servicemembers should surprise no-one. As commenters quickly pointed out, the Democrat was caught meeting with members of an Iranian spy ring a few years back (most likely a crime under the plain statutory meaning of the Foreign Agents Registration Act for which Murphy was never prosecuted), and he actively lobbied the Biden administration to remove Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — the same group that slaughtered over 40,000 Iranian protesters a few months ago — from the list of U.S. sanctioned terrorist organizations...

...snip...

On Tuesday, Virginians narrowly passed a congressional redistricting amendment that will allow Democrats to replace their current 6-5 advantage in the House with a 10-1 drubbing that entirely ignores the state’s rather evenly split electorate. As of yet, Republican-led states have done nothing that so disenfranchises voters as what Democrats just did in Virginia.

Shurk continues on, citing the recent indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who actually paid what are extremely tiny and ineffective organizations to stir up racial strife where none exists. So, why do Democrats hate America?

The Democrat Party’s whole business model essentially runs on hate.

Gentle readers need to read the whole article. Then, imagine what it must be like to be a Democrat. One cannot sustain that kind of hatred of the people around you naturally. It takes a special kind of hatred to seek a job representing the people of your district and then using that postion to enrich yourself.

We are in the midst of a Color Revolution

 I have two today, both on the indictment of the SPLC.  But first I need to ask, if convicted, who goes to jail?  This business of indicting a organization seems...like cheap theatre.  But let's get into the articles, neither of which answer the question.

The first came yesterday evening in a post by Andrea Widburg at the American Thinker entitled Dems attack Hegseth to advance a coup against Trump. It is a fairly long post, containing lots of embedded X posts by DataRepublican, so get yourself a cup of coffee for this one.

The basic premise for this one is that the Democrats are attacking Pete Hegseth in order to split the military from Trump. It is standard in color revolutions to open a wedge between the military and police, and the current head of the administration for obvious reason. But the Democrats also go after the troops claiming that the administrations orders are not legal, and therefore if they don't want to be found guilty of war crimes, they should refuse them.

On April 15, thirteen radical House Democrats introduced six articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth, accusing him of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The charges are spurious, alleging that he violated the War Powers Act (which didn’t apply), that he committed war crimes because Iran claimed that girls were in a building on an IRGC base that the U.S. struck, and managing the military in ways they disliked.

Those articles may have been the acts of radicals, but the fact is that the Democrats have relentlessly sought to undermine Pete Hegseth at every turn. Some of it is purely policy-driven: They want mentally ill people in the military, low recruitment, a focus on social justice, not winning wars, and the triumph of overt enemies.

However, DataRepublican has a more shocking contention. She says the continued efforts to destroy Pete Hegseth are the prelude to an actual coup. I particularly noted this because Democrats are engaged in a stealth revolution against our Constitution and the Founders’ vision. DataRepublican, however, a more kinetic coup, which requires disposing of Hegseth.

Widburg includes a lot of posts from DataRepublican which should be read in full to decide whether she is right or not. I tend to believe she is correct; indeed, I have felt that the Deep State along with the media and the Democrat party are fomenting a color revolution to overthrow our Constitutional Republic for a long time. But it has gotten more obvious as we watch manufactured protests funded by leftists billionaires.  And the Left has undertaken that long march through the intuitions and now believes itself to be ready to spring the trap.

The second piece today is also at the American Thinker by D. Parker entitled Bombshell: SPLC accused of funding neo-Nazi and KKK groups to spark a color revolution.

The leftist NGO SPLC was acting very much like firefighter arsonists from real life and TV. Throwing gasoline on the coals of racism and then profiting from putting out the fire. Then, of course, there is the reality that the KKK was supported by the Democrat party, and our research has shown more than 50 common traits between them and the Brown Bolsheviks of the Third Reich.

One does have to wonder why the leftist 'law center' would be funding these groups, given all of the leftist falsehoods that they are supposedly on the 'right.'

But then again, anyone who researches past the lies should realize that it all makes sense. We'll set that aside for the moment, because these allegations raise even worse implications in that all of this was to stoke the fires of a color revolution.

Parker concludes with:

If the left wins, they have already started talking about packing the Supreme Court, locking people up, and taking other maneuvers to keep themselves in perpetual power, and that's now, while we're months away from the election. Think about what they would actually do if they were already in power and get activated.

The solution is to get out and vote. In such circumstances, your vote should be for the lesser of two evils, because in this fallen world there will always be evil. But if you want to pass on an America where the government protects our God given rights to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness, you must get out and vote. Oh, and buy guns and ammo, as Kurt Schichter advises.

Progressivism and Islam are not compatible with our republic

 I have felt for a long time that Clarence Thomas is a national treasure, and I hope he continues to be such for many years to come.  He recently gave a lecture at the University of Texas in which he made the case that Progressivism is incompatible with America's founding principles.  It is also incompatible with Islam.  The lecture can be found here, or you can also find it at the bottom of the article by Earick Ward entitled Clarence Thomas on the origins and dangers of progressivism.

Woodrow Wilson named the system "Progressivism," but it really should be called "regressivism." For Wilson was naming something that goes back into the very beginnings of civilization itself, "Tyranny." The Germans had long lived under various rulers, all of whom claimed a natural or divine right to rule over them. Bismark, whom Wilson admired and whose system of rule he wanted for America, was just the latest in a long, long line. Thomas says:

I would like to begin by addressing my first encounter with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. It is perhaps not what you would immediately think. The second paragraph of the Declaration proclaims; We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.

The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language defines self-evident as obviously true and requiring no proof, argument, or explanation.

I believe now, as I did then, that the Declaration of 1776 provides us with the principles to guide us as citizens of our republic. Even in this time of questioning and criticism of our Founding, we should not forget that the Declaration established the principles that produced, despite all of our imperfections, our miscues, and our tragic mistakes, it gave us the freest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation in the history of the world.’’

...snip

As we meet today, it is unclear whether these principles will endure. At the beginning of the 20th century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream. The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominent among them, the 28th president of our country, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism.

Since Wilson’s presidency, progressivism has made many inroads into our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever.

Progressivism was not native to America. Wilson and the progressives candidly admitted that they took it from Otto von Bismarck’s Germany, whose state-centric society they admired. Progressives like Wilson argued that America needed to leave behind the principles of the founding and catch up with the more advanced and sophisticated system of relatively unimpeded state power, nearly perfected.

Liberty no longer preceded the government as a gift from God, but was to be enjoyed at the grace of the government.

...snip...

It will, of course, not be easy. It never is. But if, like me, you need a greater source of strength than yourselves, you will need to rely on your faith to guide and to sustain you through it all.

Most of our Founders were Christian. As such they recognized that while the Kingdom of God was a kingdom after all, here in our fallen world, we could not entrust our government to kings and "divine" rulers. Christian theology has always maintained the concept of original sin.  We are not born good, but each of us is born in sin.  Our experience with George III showed us that we could not trust a king. After much thought, they came up with a republican form of government. But even though they thought this the best form, one can never discount the evil that men do. So, Thomas's closing remarks are very appropriate.

Please read the article, then listen to the lecture.

The Irony...

 The irony is thick in this story.  A gun grabber shoots and kills his wife then himself.

Today at Ammoland David Codrea has an article about the murder-suicide of Justin Fairfax and his wife. But Justin Fairfax was a former Lt. Governor of Virginia and a great proponent of red flag laws and gun control in general.

“Former Democratic Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax killed his wife and then himself in a shocking murder-suicide early Thursday morning, according to the Fairfax County Police Department,” Fox News reports. “Justin Fairfax shot and killed – shot several times – and killed his wife, ran to a different part of the home and then killed himself with the same firearm he just got unseen,’ said police chief Kevin Davis during a press conference on Thursday morning.”

While some may say it’s too soon, it can’t go without mentioning that Fairfax was a big proponent of citizen disarmament edicts, including those ostensibly purporting to be enacted to prevent domestic violence. The Fox News story itself notes, “He supported Virginia’s first red flag preventing individuals who show signs of being a threat to themselves or others from purchasing, possessing or transporting any kind of firearm.”

...snip...

It wasn’t “gun violence” that killed Fairfax and his wife, it was him. Since there are no reports at this writing that the gun he used was illegally owned, it’s fair to presume he went through a background check when he bought it. And he only needed a few rounds.

Time and again, it is shown that those who don’t trust us with guns and demand to control them really can’t trust and control themselves.

Why does it seem that these kinds of events always spring from those who would disarm you and me. Go read Codrea's article.

VA gun grab fight preparing to become nasty

 Virginia, a commonwealth that was fairly free on concealed carry and other firearms issues is facing suddenly becoming California.  According to the Firearms Policy Coalition, Virginia has about to heat up. A donation to the Virginia Citizens Defense League will be appreciated.

Stirring the Pot

 Shall we stir the pot a little?  You all have probably read most of the .45 Auto vs 9mm Parabellum articles, shouting matches and so forth. I have tried to stay out of these debates because I look at them as follows: each person must evaluate their own risks and then decide what to do about it.  My wife carries a .380 Auto, while my daughter carries a .32 Auto.  But I know that most don't carry anything at all. And most die of accident or disease or old age, not gunshot wounds.

So, it was interesting that the American Rifleman had a piece in it today by Bryce M. Towsley entitled The Infinite Argument: 9mm vs. .45 ACP. I recommend that gentle readers take the time to read it, because unlike a lot of the debate, this one is fairly sober.

If you watch TV shows, the good guys always place either one or two rounds such that they stop the bad guy from continuing his attack. But real life is far different. You want your attacker to bleed a little faster to stop his attack, and the .45 Auto has a proven track record of stopping an attack when paired with a M1911 style pistol. The reason the .45 pairs well with the m1911 is because the M1911 is a heavy steel pistol which absorbs much of the recoil.

The pistol and its cartridge resulted from a U.S. Army request for a new pistol:

This is a battle that has been fought before and probably will be again. For example, after the gruesome failures during the Moro Rebellion in the Philippines graphically illustrated the folly of using a smaller cartridge, the Army paid attention. That lead to the Thompson-LaGarde Tests, which proved what most of our salted Soldiers already knew: the Army made a mistake abandoning the .45 Colt in favor of the .38 Long Colt, a cartridge equivalent in power to the .380 ACP.

With that newfangled smokeless powder having been recently invented, ammunition makers were able to more or less duplicate the proven performance of the old .45 Colt in the newer, shorter .45 ACP. They put the cartridge in a semi-automatic handgun, the M1911, which went on to make its bones winning two world wars and in countless lesser conflicts. Yeah, I know. “OK, boomer.”

Well, yes, I am a "boomer, and an old fart one at that. And I shoot and carry an M1911 style pistol. Yes it's a relatively heavy pistol, but with a proper belt and holster it disappears under your cover garment. You see, physics has not changed, nor have bad guys changed. If someone pulls gun on you, it means he thinks whatever you have, that he wants, is more valuable than your life. Such people do not recognize you or anyone else as a fellow image of God. Now, I don't expect to have to use my handgun, most people do not. But it is like a fire extinguisher. You hope not to need it, but you wnat one if you do.

Woke Pope Becomes a Joke

 Yesterday at the American Thinker Monica Showalter had a post entitled Woke pope becomes a joke and gives Babylon Bee a field day. Now, as many of you know, I am a Lutheran because a number of passages in the Bible specifically deny a pope like figure. You can read these many denials in The Book of Concord to which all confessing Lutherans must confess.

You can read the Babylon Bee's many jabs at His Holiness absurdities and laugh along. I cannot make them funnier by quoting them here. But the last one is the funniest of all. Christ came into the world to defeat Satan once and for all. Therefore, Christ and Satan can never put aside their difference. St. Paul acknowledges this in Romans chapter 6 when he points out that we are now slaves of Christ and not slaves of the sinful flesh.

Showalter, by the way, is a member of the Roman Catholic church. We Lutherans (Martin Luther hiself would be appalled at calling his church "Lutheran.") think of our church as "Evangelical Catholic." That we derive all of our doctrine from the Bible, and add nothing to it, is one of the reasons Martin Luther was excommunicated. It was to maintain the power of the pope. However, we recognize that there are many faithful Catholics who will be saved.

Microstamping makes buying guns and ammo more expensive

 I was watching an old re-run of NCIS where Abby mentions that the murder weapon was a gun with microstamping. Case closed, right? Maybe on TV.  But as Mike McDaniel points out at the American Thinker in a post entitled Ammo serialization has nothing to do with solving crime, not so fast:

Microstamping is laser engraving a unique, identifying code on the tips of firing pins which will “stamp” that code—letters, numbers, etc—on the primers of fired cases. Some microstamping schemes also demand a second stamp elsewhere on a fired case.

One can imagine the many ways to get around microstamping. For instance, changing out the firing pin, filing of the microstamped code from the firing pin, not cleaning your gun, or stealing a gun from some innocent victim, or using a revolver. For that matter, merely policing your brass eliminates any signs of microstamping

But wouldn’t microstamping and serialization help catch criminals? No. In all my years in police work, I never solved a crime committed with a gun by finding and analyzing a fired case, nor was I aware of anyone who did. Virtually all such crimes are solved by old-fashioned police work consisting mostly of talking to people. The shining stainless steel and glass crime labs with holographic projectors and quantum computers of TV crime dramas don’t exist.

Microstamping has been enjoined by federal courts, not only because it’s unconstitutional and a blatantly obvious attempt to make guns and ammo too expensive, but because it doesn’t work. Serialization fails for the same reasons.

And here is the whole point. Microstamping, or indeed any serialization of ammo is not going to solve any crime. As McDaniel points out, you still have to place the criminal at the scene with the gun and prove he fired it. So, the only reason for such laws is to make guns and ammo more expensive for the average person to buy. Criminals will always evade the law. That is what makes them criminals. No, this is to make it harder and more expensive for you and me to buy guns thus making it easier to cram their totalitarianism down our throats.

The Image of God

Today, at the American Thinker in a post by Greg Maresca entitled The post-Roe landscape. I won't comment on most of the article. Gentle readers can read the grim statistics for themselves.

What I wish to comment on is another grim statistic, the lack of training in Christianity. Namely, that God created man in his own image. Every time an innocent human being is killed, another image of God is killed. While self-defense is allowed, mere mortals are not authorized to out and out murder our children. Indeed, God destroyed people who worshipped Molech, a "god" that demanded people throw their first born into the idol's fire in its belly.

He is Risen; He is Risen indeed

 He is Risen; He is Risen indeed!  Thus, Christians around the world greet each other on Easter.  Meanwhile, at the American Thinker J.B. Shurk points out that Leftism Fears Jesus Christ. You know it's true by the way the Left hates and resents us.  Why you would almost think the Devil inspired them.

On Easter, the holiest day of the year, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Savior, and Treasure. Just saying those words out loud — Lord…Savior…Treasure — it is easy to recognize why modern socialist governments find Christianity so threatening. For if He is the King of kings, then all of our would-be masters in this world are pale imposters. If He alone is the Way and the Truth and the Life, then the marble halls of Big Government are just false paths leading to false idols that promise false salvation. If He is the only Treasure, then all of the things that governments do to make us envious, resentful, and hateful toward one another are tricks and lies meant to blind us from the Truth.

A Canadian writer named Dimpee Brar wrote a beautiful and insightful essay on this subject last month. In that essay, Brar draws attention to the more than eighty churches that have been set on fire across her country. She deftly describes how government-sponsored lies instigated these attacks on Christian houses of worship and argues persuasively that Marxist-globalist governments view Christ, Christians, and Christianity as foremost enemies.

Shurk heavily quotes from Brar's essay, much of which is about Canada itself, though we here in the U.S. should be wary because the Democrats have threatened to bring on even worse to us if they win back power. And these threats are not empty. Every one should be taken seriously.

But, the fact is that Jesus can be found not in church buildings. These are built rather for our convenience. God is everywhere and Jesus promises to be present wherever two or three are gathered in His name. We may need to revert to the house churches, or as St. Paul did, rent out spaces in commercial buildings to hold services, and to distribute the Lord's Supper. We may have to go underground to keep our faith alive. So be it. Christ did not promise us prosperity and a care-free life.

Reflections on Good Friday

 Today is Good Friday, the anniversary of the day Christ died on the cross for us and our sins.  It is the most holy day of the year for us Christians, and it has nothing to do with bunnies and eggs.  It is a day when the paraments come off the alters in the Lutheran churches.  Our Lord has died a cruel and undeserved death and will not rise until the third day.  His disciples are huddled in the upper room, sure the authorities are coming for them next. 

Kevin McCollough, at Townhall.com has an article about an incident that occurred while Jesus was hanging on the cross between two thieves. The article is entitled A Thief's Impossible Hope. One thief, representing the world and its sinfulness mocks Jesus and says "If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross and save yourself and us." But McCollough spends his time discussing the other thief, the one who at the last, believed.

The pain is constant now—no waves, no relief, just a steady, crushing reality that presses in from every side. His body is failing. His breaths are shallow. The end is not coming—it’s here.

And yet—something inside him is awakening. Not physically. Spiritually.

Because after everything he’s seen… after everything he’s heard… after the clarity that has broken through his denial and exposed his guilt… something unthinkable begins to rise: Hope.

...snip...

What if this isn’t the end? What if the man next to him… is exactly who He claims to be? What if the kingdom He spoke about… is real? What if death… isn’t the final word?

Do you understand how radical that is in this moment? Because everything around him screams finality.

The nails say it. The blood says it. The crowd says it.

This is the end.

And yet, somehow, the thief is beginning to believe the opposite. Not because of what he feels. But because of what he’s seen.

...snip...

He’s seen a man suffer without hatred. He’s heard forgiveness spoken over executioners. He’s witnessed a kind of authority that doesn’t look like power—but is power. And now, standing at the edge of eternity, he makes a leap.

Not of logic. Of faith. “Jesus… remember me… when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus does not disappoint. Despite the gruesome torture he has been through, despite the unbearable pain, he grants this man's dying wish before he dies, just as he promises to save everyone who believes and is baptized.

When a man confronts his own sins, some that he may not know, it is enough to drive that man to his knees. But we are saved from hell by a loving God, whose grace is almost unbelievable. What love is this, that Christ was willing to die in this most horrible of ways, to save us from ourselves.

Update:  Please read also Where Evil Became Victory: Good Friday for a Suffering World, by Sarah Holliday.

Palm Sunday and the Start of Holy Week

 Today at Townhall.com Kevin McCollough has a post entitled The Madness of Palm Sunday in which he points out that Jesus knew, even provoked his own crucifixion, and yet he did in anyway. Not out of some form of madness, like the people who commit suicide by cop, but out of love.

Jesus rides into Jerusalem, not in secrecy, not under cover of darkness—but in full view of a swelling, electric crowd. They line the streets. They wave palm branches. They throw their cloaks on the ground. They shout, “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

They are celebrating Him like a king.

And they’re right to do so.

This wasn’t random. This wasn’t accidental. This wasn’t Jesus getting swept up in a moment. This was deliberate, calculated, prophetic fulfillment. Centuries earlier, the prophet Zechariah had written that Israel’s king would come riding on a donkey—gentle, humble, unmistakable. And here He was, doing exactly that.

Not on a war horse. Not with an army. But on a borrowed donkey.

Because He wasn’t coming to conquer Rome.

He was coming to conquer something far more permanent.

...snip...

Without the cross, there is no forgiveness.

Without His suffering, there is no healing.

Without His death, there is no life.

The madness of Palm Sunday is that the King is being celebrated by people who don’t understand the cost He’s about to pay for them.

Many people suffer, sometimes seeming unbearable pain. Jesus suffered all that. But his true suffering was the abandonment by the Father. Imagine if your father suddenly abandoned you, said "I don't know you" and turned his back to you. You would be hurt. Now imagine your father is the creator of the universe. This made His suffering so much worse. It makes our suffering seem like a pin prick.

We know how the story ends, and we are both sorrowful, and overjoyed. Please, This week, I urge you to consider this, and to pray on it.

How Should a Christian Vote

 I was reading the American Thinker today when I noticed a very interesting post by Kevin Finn entitled, I'm not a Democrat, I'm a Catholic. Well, first he means he's a Roman Catholic, for we Lutherans are "catholic" as well as other denominations that subscribe to the Apostles and Nicaean creeds. But the Roman church has the most well-developed ideas on how a Christian should vote of which I can think.

As a Catholic (and a sinner in need of redemption and God’s mercy), I can’t support the things that Democrats support. I think cutting off an unborn child’s arms and legs, crushing her skull, sucking out her brains, and then selling her organs for profit is evil. I think chemically sterilizing middle school kids and surgically mutilating their genitals sounds like a plan from the pits of Hell. I think it’s wicked to put graphic pornography in K–12 school classrooms in order to teach underage kids the finer points of rape and incest.

I think it was pure evil to open up the borders and allow millions of unvetted, unvaccinated people to enter. That crowd included uncounted numbers of MS-13; Tren de Aragua; and single, military-aged men from countries hostile to the U.S. I have nothing but revulsion and loathing for Joe Biden, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, Hussein Obama, and whoever else was running the country during the last “administration” to cavalierly disregard the 300,000 children who went missing during their tenure. Tom Homan has told us that many of those kids were sold into prostitution and slave labor, although he and his team have managed to rescue roughly half of them so far.

When you put it like that, and that is exactly how it is, a vote for a Democrat candidate is a vote for these evil things. You become, in lawyer talk, an accessory to a crime. You are therefore just as guilty as the one who committed the crime.

The author asked a friend and a Catholic how he justified his vote for Democrats. His friend's reply was "Trump's worse." But is he?

I know! Trump got Glen Simpson and Fusion GPS to fabricate a phony manuscript that falsely implicated Biden of inappropriate ties with Vladmir Putin. Then he fed that document to the media, and used the resulting news stories to justify lying to a federal judge to obtain permission to surveil Biden’s campaign headquarters. Then he used the “Two-Step” rule to expand that surveillance to many of Biden’s staffers. And then he fabricated other crimes and arrested many Biden associates and, with a complicit media establishment, subjected those associates to trials in Trump-friendly courtrooms.

Oops! Sorry! That wasn’t Trump, was it? No, that was Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, and their party.

You see, Donald Trump and a few conservative members of Congress and some Republican governors want to put an end to all of that. To a leftist, that makes Republicans worse than Democrats.

You can read what Catholic moral theology teaches about how to discern what candidate to vote for. Unfortunately, as Paul said, each of us has fallen short of the glory of God, and all men need God's grace. But the defiance of His law, not through human weakness, but to cynically get votes, says that Pelosi, Biden and others are following the Devil's path, and Christians should not vote for them or people like them.

Women Are Intended to Raise Children Under the Protection of Their Husbands

 I was intrigued by a post at the American Thinker today by Mike McDaniel entitled The Biden CIA didn't like motherhood. This after our church just celebrated another baptism, which I think might be our pastor's favorite duty. What's not to like about women who perform in the manner which God intended?

McDaniel has the story:

But why would the FBI, with tens, even hundreds, of thousands of Islamist terrorists and Chinese spies pouring over the border unvetted and unidentified waste time focusing on Catholics? Those traditional radicals appreciated the Latin Mass, which the DEI dimwits at multiple FBI field offices apparently saw as an imminent threat to America, or at least to the Biden’s Handlers’ Administration. Somehow, I doubt many, if any, FBI agents, spoke Latin.

Bizarrely, the FBI thought those Catholics were somehow aligned with White Supremacists. How they got that idea remains unexplained.

...snip...

The memo, titled “Women Advancing White Racially and Ethnically Motivated Extremist Radicalization and Recruitment,” tarnished females who hold traditional values.

“REMVE”?! Has any sapient being outside the CIA and Biden’s Handlers ever heard, or understood, that acronym? Does such an organization exist? Apparently, the CIA imagined it into existence.

...snip...

So. If you’re a white, traditional American mother who might be “RMVE-sympathetic," even though you’ve never heard that acronym and have no idea what it might mean, and you don’t advocate violence, as most traditional mothers don’t, you “amplify RMVE narratives regarding perceptions of racial and ethnic hierarchy, as well as perceived threats from those they see as advocating multiculturalism and globalization.”

What?!

I will end it there on McDaniel's "What1?."  I suspect that most girls want to get married, have and raise children. It is why God created us male and female. He could have created us male only, don't you know. But he saw fit to create us male and female with slightly different needs and desires. It is only when young women go off to college and are bombarded by the feminazis that they distain their primary calling.

The Greatest Threat To Our Nation Is Islam

 I have been having major health issues, so have not been able to comment on anything, let alone readd as much as I have in the past.  In any case, I have probably said everything that I needed to say.  But if I haven't please go read Eric Utter at the  American Thinker today entitled A Devolutionary War?

Muslims claim to love the LORD but then deny that He was indeed God in the flesh. They even deny that He died and was buried and rose on the third day. This is typical Muslim taqiyya. They lie to Christians. We should recognize that Muslims worship, whether they realize it or not, the Devil.

Utter writes:

The gravest danger to Western countries going forward is the rapid Islamization of their nations. No matter what Keir Starmer, Mark Carney, Catherine Connolly, or Zohran Mamdani say, this is inarguably the case.

Look at the countries from which Muslims come. Look at the U.K., Canada, Ireland, or New York City, three or four decades ago and compare that to what they look like today. Same for France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia, and others.

It is shocking. It is embarrassing. It is a continually unfolding invasion. It is leading to the rapid devolution of Western nations and the consequent degradation of quality of life, safety, and even character. It is a crime, one for which these nations’ leaders should be held accountable. These countries should look to the American Revolution for guidance on how to protect individual freedoms and counteract invasions and usurpations. So should many more Americans, for that matter.

As for the word "devonutionary" in the title of his article, when was the last time you heard of anything useful coming out of a Muslim nation. They claim algebra was developed by Muslims in the dark ages. Perhaps, but that is a long, long time ago. What Islam brings is death, destruction, and hatred of everything Christiandom has brought forth.

Yes, I think They Are Evil

 As if to answer the previous post, at the American Thinker Monica Showalter has a post entitled At Davos, the WEF now promotes less clothes-washing to save the planet. What is it with these rich freaks, that they want to impose misery on the rest of us?

What is it about the greenie jet-setters of the World Economic Forum flying in on a plume of carbon compounds, and their urge to make life just a little more solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short for the little guys they claim to know what's best for?

...snip...

It's all part of the leftist urge to make life as wretched as possible for the well-fed average joes of the West.

As I wrote here, they really like this stuff and they're on a tear:

What a sick world this is. Greens have unsuccessfully tried to sell us on all sorts of repulsive things to put into our bodies -- from various versions of soylent green, to "stewmaking" burials, to human compost burials, to recycling urine into drinking water to save the earth, to eating bugs. It's one disgusting thing after another, which these days even includes attempting to coax people into taking public transit. Not too long ago, a Utah official tried to encourage people to eat wild toads to save the environment. Utah teachers were also recently caught teaching CRT in schools behind the kids' parents' backs.

... and ...

It wasn't enough that the greenie left came for our light bulbs, our flush toilets, our guns, our plastic straws, our gas stoves, or our hamburgers.

Now they're coming for our coffee.

Another greenie favorite is going without air conditioning. The New York Times was promoting that last year. I wrote about it here.

Now they want crusty, dirty, smell-it-a-mile-away clothing, all made worse by the greenie practice of going without air conditioning.

To reinforce what I wrote in the last post, yes I think the WEF people are evil, and anyone who supports their insane ideas is supporting evil. Rather than trust in these guys, perhaps put our trust in God?

Are Democrat Voters Evil?

At Hot Air today, David Strom has an article that tells us It's Wrong to Assume Democratic Party Voters are Evil.

One of the frustrations all of us have is that Democratic voters are incurious about why we believe what we believe and why we vote as we do.

They come up with explanations that amount to: we are Naziwhitesupremacisthomophobiccolonialist genocidaires. They watch the pundits on TV, listen to people like President Biden, and read the editorials in Pravda and are convinced that we are on a hair trigger and will soon stalk the land with our scary AR-15s hunting down trans people, brown people, and eventually AWFLs.

The idea is of course absurd, but a lot of liberals have voted for politicians they, at some level, know are insanely liberals because they believe the alternative is a future they fear would be dystopian.

Now, reverse things for a moment. For decades, we understood that liberals see us as evil, and we saw liberals as stupid. But as their politicians have become more and more insane or even evil—what else can you call abortion until birth and sterilizing and mutilating children except demonic?—many of us have concluded that anybody who can be complicit in that evil must be evil themselves.

I see it in the comments. I understand it in my bones. When I hear a liberal talking about trans issues while ignoring the fact that boys are having their penises cut off and girls are having their breasts and wombs removed, it is enraging. Vague handwaving in the face of Mengele-like human experimentation isn't just baffling, but enraging.

So far, his experience is similar to mine. And frankly, I am not sure that ignorance is an excuse for continuing to vote for evil, particularly because so many have in essence closed their eyes, covered their ears, and yelled "nanny nanny boo boo" to avoid hearing the truth. They want to believe that man is basically good, but the truth is man, and everything in the world is fallen.

In the end, what liberals believe is that the world is perfectible with enough money and effort, and their politicians promise to perfect it. They actually believe that Gavin Newsom wants to solve homelessness, that Tim Walz wanted to feed children and provide daycare, and were shocked, SHOCKED, to discover that Biden's brain was pudding. They were told by their trusted elite that he was fit as a fiddle.

It must have been a mistake, because the alternative—a massive conspiracy to deceive the American public—would never be done by their trusted elite.

Your average liberal doesn't want communism or children sacrificed to the alphabet gods. They want peace and prosperity and a "kinder, gentler" world. They don't understand that human beings are fallen—most are post-Christian—and believe the myth that the world is perfectible.

Saint Paul notes that the Word of God has gone out to all creation. Therefore, closing your eyes, covering your ears and screaming so you won't hear it does not relieve you of the responsibility for evil. So, I will continue to think that while these people are not, in themselves, evil, they are still promoting it to the detriment of us all.

About Greenland

 Howard J. Warner has a post at the American Thinker entitled Greenland: How about this for a solution? that proposes a middle ground to America controlling Greenland. I agree with the President here that we need Greenland for security purposes. Looking at a typical Mercator map shows Greenland off to the side of Canada and much larger than it actually is. But if you look at a map looking down on the North Pole, the strategic importance of both Alaska and Greenland becomes obvious.

Now, the Arctic Ocean and Greenland are being actively contested by Russia, China, and of course the United States. Greenland has a population of only around 56k. Clearly it cannot defend itself. Either Russia or China could easily over run it. Denmark cannot defend it either. For that matter, can NATO? Don't make me laugh. As for which of these potential rulers would the residence rather live under. China? Really? Russia is not much better. The U.S. with its long history of freedom seems a much more benevolent. Now, I am the grandson of Danish immigrants, and I have been to Denmark. It's a beautiful country, to be sure, but I am sure glad that my ancestors immigrated here.

In an ideal world, the Greenlanders would be left alone to pursue their independent lives. But we don't live in an ideal world. The Greenlanders find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sorry.

A Democratic Republic Is the Worst System of Government...Except All The Others

Olivia Murray at the American Thinker today notes that As history has shown, communists always go for the churches first. Marx sneered that "religion is the opiate of the masses" meaning that the huddled poor comforted themselves that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. Marx was an atheist. And so are most of his followers.

Attacks against the Christian church and her people are nothing new. Christians in imperial Rome were fed to the lions and other wild beasts in the Colosseum, and they were burned alive on posts to light the streets—but what we saw in Minnesota was communism, through and through, as we’ve seen this same movie play out across time and place for more than a hundred years. Communists always go for the churches first.

In late 1917, the communist Bolsheviks overthrew imperial Russia, and just a few months later (January 23, 1918), Vladimir Lenin enacted the “Decree on the Separation of Church and State” (American leftists love that phrase still today), which was a systematic attack against the religious order of Tsarist Russia. That campaign promoted atheism as a core tenet of a new Bolshevik nation, and saw mass arrests, the confiscation of church property, and mass murders of religious teachers. (A few very interesting photos from the time can be found at this link, with one in particular looking eerily evocative of the smug mob that just barged into Cities Church in St. Paul, MN.) This war against the churches continued apace under Joseph Stalin, who, among other measures, ordered more mass killing against church leaders.

Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution waged a war on the “Four Olds” of traditional China, which included the destruction of Christian churches, and the prohibition of Christianity (a ban which effectively exists still today).

Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia during the 1970s intentionally decimated the Christian population. According to Persecution.org, Pol Pot “established a medieval regime of terror and restlessly hunted Christians.” The same site reveals that before the Khmer Rouge rose to power, there were around 170,000 Christians in Cambodia; in just a few years, that number dropped to a staggering low of only a couple thousand. Christians were “outsiders” accused of being too Western, so they had to go.

(I could go on with the anti-church policies of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, but I’m running out of room.)

Murray has noted every communist experiment with the exception of some of the smaller countries that have tried it. Then she asks a key question, one that gets to the heart of communism/socialism/progressivism/fabianism/fascism (the system has gone by many names, but they all come down to one reason.)

So why do communists hate the Christian church so much? It’s simple: Without an authority higher than man, they can be god. They want to be the moral arbiter, making moral claims on what’s right and wrong. So, the real moral arbiter (God), and anyone who believes in Him, is an obstacle to the communist and his political goals.

So, it is the original sin.  They want to dethrone God and sit in his place. They have listened to the Devil and are following his instruction and not God's. There is so much that is wrong with communism, I don't understand why people think it is better than our own system. Oh, I understand that ours isn't so great, but any other is worse, far worse.

Politics Is Dangerous to You and Everyone You Care About

 I don't write about Christopher Cantrill's pieces much, though they are thought provoking.  But today he made a point that needs to be amplified if we are to retain our sanity.  You can find his article at the American Thinker entitled Why Do the Virtue Signalers Hate Carl Schmitt? So, who, you are wondering is Carl Schmitt? I will admit that this individual is today just a little bit obscure. He was a Nazi jurist and sometime philosopher who made the point that politics requires an enemy. If there isn't an enemy, one has to be invented. Sometimes our overlords can't find a human enemy so they invent one like terrorism, poverty, or drugs. The whole point of politics is to acquire power so that you can punish your enemies and reward your friends.  Well, duh.  Obama made that point as well as noting that elections have consequences.

But there is another way to live. You can live by God's laws, doing good, loving God and loving your neighbor. This is how most of us, most of the time, live our lives. We are social creatures, for good and bad. Politics is a necessary evil. But Democrats see it very differently:

Notice how I am always writing about “our liberal friends” or “our Democratic friends.” There is a reason for that. I do not think that liberals are The Enemy. I believe that our liberal friends are fools and knaves that believe in politics as the solution to social problems -- and race problems and patriarchy problems and climate problems. Earth to liberals: politics makes most things worse.

I repeat: Doesn’t Yarvin’s maxim exactly explain the minds and the acts of our liberal friends, from intellectuals to politicians to activists? They are devoted to politics: therefore there must be an enemy.

Now, to me, Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt is important because he teaches me why politics is really dangerous to humans and other living things. I Have a Dream that one day our liberal friends will finally understand that politics is radioactive and that politics should be shut down like nuclear plants before we melt down all the way to China. My understanding of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt is that politics should be confined to dealing with the problem of real external enemies, and real internal thugs and criminals.

Schmitt explains why Communism has been such a disaster, why Nazism led the Germans into Hell, why the Iranian regime is blowing up the ancient land of Zarathustra until the rubble bounces. Using politics as a guide to running society at large is a disaster, because humans are social animals. Nearly all the time we interact with each other with the give and take of community and work and play and a shared moral framework. Politics is only useful in an emergency, as “in emergency, break glass.”

Yes, but whatabout morality, about good and evil? I direct your attention to our Democratic friends in Minnesota, and the apparent large-scale corruption featuring the Somali community. If you look at Minnesota politics through a Schmittian lens you see that, to Democratic politicians, it doesn’t matter that the Somalis have been ripping off all kinds of federal social programs. The Somalis help get the Somali vote out in elections and harvest the ballots to defeat the Republican Enemy. The Somalis are the Friends of the Democratic politicians in their fight against the Enemy, and in politics you reward your supporters and friends.

In other words, despite all the talk about morality and helpless victims, our Democratic friends just fight the enemy and gift the friends that help them get elected. Morality, good and evil, has nothing to do with the case. In politics the only rule is: just win, baby. Morality, good and evil, only applies outside of politics.

A note here about what it means to "love your neighbor," because too many confuse "loving" with "letting you neighbor get off scot free." It does not mean that at all. Suppose your neighbor defrauds another out of his life savings, and you discover it. If you do nothing, you may be showing one neighbor kindness, but you are further hurting the neighbor who was defrauded, not to mention that you are demoralizing yourself. Sometimes tough love is the only way to show love. This is why it is so important for the authorities to prosecute those who have lied, cheated, stolen elections, and engaged in lawfare. While we cannot achieve absolute justice in this fallen world, we must attempt to approximate it.

My main takeaway from Chantill's piece though is that while politics is necessary, it should not consume us. I have certainly allowed it at times to overtake my life, to my regret. Don't let it overtake yours.

When Both Men Are Armed, Persuasion Is the Only Way to Changes Men's Minds

 Allen J. Feifer reminds us that Whether in Iran, Minneapolis, or NYC, collectivists like gun-free zones at the American Thinker today. The Second Amendment to our Constitution is unique among the world's governments. But that is because of the unique circumstances of our founding. Having just fought a war for independence from what at the time was the finest army in the world, we determined to remain free and independent. The only way to do that was if everyone was armed and trained.

Just as people who want power manage to convince a subset of our people that socialism and communism isn't really so bad, so they constantly work to convince us to disarm ourselves. So far, it hasn't worked. There are too many reminders of things like the protests in Iran, or the massacre at Bondi Beach in Australia to remind us that perhaps we need more guns, more ammunition...just in case.

Have you been watching TV lately? If you have, you’ve seen an ever-spiraling series of events that threaten to overwhelm the most steadfast among us. You hear it everywhere: domestic and foreign events are as kinetic and dynamic as they’ve been since the end of WWII. From internal unrest to war in Europe and one of America’s major adversaries in open revolt against the Mullahs, what should we take away?

It turns out events in NYC, Minneapolis, and Iran have something in common—gun control:

Iran: Contrary to what many thought, the government still has cards to play. Its strength is that, while Iranians can own guns, they can do so only under very strict, state-controlled conditions, leading to few people actually owning a firearm and virtually no ordinary citizens.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who touts “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” opposes the Second Amendment, as do those in his government. They have warned that they have designs on citizens’ private property and wealth, and citizens have no Second Amendment bulwark against this.

In Minnesota, Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, showing incredible chutzpah, are simultaneously (allegedly) responsible for one of the largest frauds in American history, even as they scream loudly how caring they are for their “Neighbors,” which is code for illegal aliens whom Walz and Frey consider above the law. It’s not a coincidence that Minneapolis is an anti-gun city and Walz dreams of an anti-gun state.

Of course, there are other places like New York and Minneapolis right here in the United States. Virginia just elected a hard left governor, Abagail Spanberger, who took the oath of office on a Quran. Now, I know she is not a Muslim, and I suspect she is not a Christian either, but swearing on a Quran is making Lucifer the guarantor of your oath. What could go wrong?  But it is appropriate because the Democrat Commonwealth's General Assembly has sworn to bring gun-grabbing back to Virginia.

Which brings me to this point: that Virginia was a freedom loving state, and most of it still is. There are lots of guns in Virginia. One of the things one learns living in Virginia is that when both people are armed, the only way to change someone's mind is through persuasion. But collectivism depends on force.

Collectivist projects are always coercive because large-scale redistribution and centralized coordination conflict with private interests and individual autonomy. Sooner or later, the government must use force to implement and sustain collectivist policies.

While Tehran’s force is religious and military, New York City and Minneapolis use regulations, law enforcement, and judicial enforcement to exercise control over people. Most importantly, people’s ability to fight the government is limited by the government’s near monopoly on firearms ownership, which effectively empowers it and ultimately encourages it to violate our God-given and constitutional rights.

As long as we have the Second Amendment, and it is viewed as a first-class right, the same as the right our First Amendment rights, we are citizens. One we lose it, we become like serfs or slaves, mere subjects.

When the day comes that Americans can no longer resist their government and self-styled demi-gods like Mamdani, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and yes, people like Jacob Frey and Tim Walz, we will have lost our ability to protect ourselves. We will no longer be free men, but serfs in service to the collective.

What’s happening on Iran’s streets is a cautionary tale about tyrants disarming their people. Firearms ownership has long been understood as more than a matter of personal defense. It serves as a structural check on how far a government can intrude into its citizens' private lives.

Foreign Actors Finding Out

 J.R. Dunn claims in a post at the American Thinker that the Delta Force that arrested Maduro used a "sonic weapon". You can find Dunn's piece here.

Here’s a wild one: rumors asserting that Delta Force troops used a “sonic weapon” against Maduro’s bodyguard troops while picking him up last week have been confirmed by Karoline Leavitt.

While sonic weapons such as the LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) and sound cannons have been used for years against targets such as Somalian pirates (what a pleasure it is to write that) and rioters, this weapon appears to operate on an entirely new level of effectiveness. Eyewitness reports of the raid on Caracas describe troops falling to their knees with their noses and mouths spurting blood, a level of impact unheard of in previous such weapons. While the LRAD and sound cannons can cause disorientation and moderately severe pain, physical effects of this sort are new in this kind of weapon.

Early on, some wit coined the term FAFO. It describes a situation where someone who insists on doing bad things finds out what the word "consequences" means. Right now, some foreign actors are discovering the meaning of FAFO. Just as clearly, the Trump Doctrine is coming into focus, with a renewed emphasis on the Monroe Doctrine and an emphasis on American greatness.

Be Wise and Prudent

 Today, I want to highlight a piece from Ammoland by John Farnum entitled Gun Confiscation Promises, Criminal Release Policies, and the Myth of 'Random' Violence. Farnum makes the point that most violence isn't random at all in the strictest sense of the word. Violence happens because of things like gun restrictions and the so-called 'compassionate' release of violent criminals on our nations streets to commit more violence.

Violent, mentally-ill, drug-addicted vagrants (including many illegal immigrants), have been, by these same Democrats, dubiously re-christened “The Homeless,” and subsequently released (and perpetually re-released, despite multiple felony arrests) to ‘colonize’ our formerly beautiful public places, which used to be enjoyed by the rest of us, but are now filthy, crime-invested, disease-ridden open-sewers.

“Homeless” is a dishonest title, deliberately designed to make these dangerous outlaws appear “benign.”

...snip...

Like wolves that casually enter fenced-in pastures to kill sheep, VCAs and EDPs go into “nice areas” and murder citizens. Apex predators (human and animal) have scant regard for fences, nor for arbitrary political boundaries, nor for property lines, nor for other symbolic barriers.

In December of last year, a “transient man” entered a tanning salon in Loveland, CO, and precipitously attacked several people there with a claw hammer. Two of his victims were very seriously injured.

This “homeless man” was well-known to local police and had been arrested previously, multiple times. Local police and the media then assured us that this vicious attack was “random.”

“Random” is another less-than-honest term, frequently used by less-than-honest politicians, to convince the rest of us that we have nothing to worry about!

It is sad, but true, that ruthless, power-hungry people will alsways try to deny us our God given right to defend ourselves. We must be ever vigilant. Of course, your first line of defense is situational awareness, avoiding placing yourself in dangerous places if you can help it. But you should always be prepared to defend your life and lives of those around you. That is just the world we live in.

Be advised, the wise and prudent are never loved by the shallow, ignorant, and stupid.

“The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise, they will win and decent people will loose” ~ James Earl Jones.

The Term Marxist Billionaire an Oxymoron?

 What is it with these Marxist billionaires? Isn't that an oxymoron?  How does someone who actually believes the garbage Marx spewed accumulate $1,000,000,000? Shouldn't he have distributed it to the poor and the needy? Or given it to the government to distribute as it saw fit?

Now, except for Soros, I am not accusing any of them of gaining wealth by shady or illegal means. But if they came by it through capitalist means, why then use it destroy capitalism and the republic? Perhaps hoping to be eaten last? If so, a reading of history doesn't show that to be the case. In any event, I hope Rep. Luna grills him good, and the DOJ prosecutes him to the full extent of the law and makes an example of him. He is just as guilty as the protesters and leftist activists he funds.

Why We Have the Second Amendment

 Monica Showalter, at the American Thinker today points out that Venezuela's top thug unwittingly writes an NRA ad for the Second Amendment. I had not seen this, but it is both incredibly sad, and hilarious at the same time. I alternate between laughing to myself, and feeling deeply sorry for Venezuelans, who at one time had access to guns, though no Second Amendment. After a long campaign by the government, similar to the one waged by gun-grabbers here I might add, the government enacted gun control in 2012.

We will never know if Venezuela's citizens might have prevented a Communist take over or not, but we do know that the Communist dictators maintained power because they have a monopoly of force, as Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello points out:

BREAKING NEWS | Diosdado Cabello: "The country is calm because the monopoly on arms in Venezuela is held by the State". "Holding the position of arms has allowed us the control so that no group or anyone can claim acts of violence"

A monopoly of violence was NOT what the Founders wanted. They had just fought a war for independence from a tyranny that attempted a monopoly of violence.  Being Christian, they also knew that man is a fallen creature and inevitably can be tempted to tyranny. So, to avoid tyranny, and to avoid having a large professional army (which they couldn't afford in any case) they came up with the Second Amendment together with the militia. It is probably why our republic has lasted as long as it has.