It Is Time We Threw Some Sand In The Machine

Kurt Schlichter again has an excellent wake up call for fellow conservatives at Townhall.com entited Reject the Normalcy Bias.

One of the most powerful tactics in the left’s arsenal is leveraging the reluctance of conservatives to accept that the foundational reality of our society has changed. We are not a free country in the sense we were just a decade ago – hell, the Durham Report just showed our ruling caste collectively framing a president they disliked and we all know there will be zero consequences. But part of the reason is human nature. The left exploits our normalcy bias, the tendency to assume that things right now are the same as they have always been. Yet, this is not normal. This whole political/cultural morass that America has fallen into is the opposite of normal. And some of us just can’t handle the truth.

They will not accept that this is not the society we grew up in. Hell, it’s not even the society our kids grew up in. It is something wholly other, a society where the norms and rules and guidelines that we thought existed, and that had existed right up until the left took over all of the institutions, no longer exist at all. And the fact is that many conservatives refuse to acknowledge the obvious, because to acknowledge it will require them to take action – radical action, like what Ron DeSantis is doing in Florida to the howling horror of the commies.

Here Schlichter is trying to wake conservatives up. Note too, what DeSantis has done in Florida. Every move he makes these days tightens the underwear of the Left and they squeal. But it has to be done, whether it is ESG, of taking drag queens out of the schools and public libraries, of taking away Disney's privilege to self govern. DeSantis is starting to use the sovereignty of the states to protect his citizens. Other governors should take a page out of his book.

This normalcy bias, the assumption that things still work as they used to, is what allows the left to get away with its shenanigans. But nothing works like it used to. It is beyond reasonable argument that the left has infiltrated almost all of our major institutions. Like a virus infecting a healthy cell, leftism takes over our institutions and uses the institutions’ structure to manufacture even more leftism, and that spawn goes and infects more institutions. It has taken over Hollywood, the colleges, the big corporations, and much of the government. It’s got the military, the NFL and, of course, the regime media. The left has shamelessly politicized every single one of them. They now focus not just on their jobs, but on pumping out more leftism. Yet all these institutions still demand the respect that they had back when they were non-political and were dedicated to their actual purposes. The military was about fighting our enemies. The justice system was about prosecuting criminals. The NFL was about football. The beer companies were about providing refreshment to dudes who did not pretend to be chicks.

But none of that is true now. The purpose of every one of these political institutions is now to promote leftism and all its attendant social pathologies, yet they still demand the respect and deference and obedience that they were getting back when they were actually doing their jobs. It’s all a lie. It’s all a scam. These are not the institutions that were once, if not respected, at least tolerated. They are something completely different, but they exploit that habitual, residual respect and, unfortunately, far too many conservatives still give it to them by default.

We all need to screw up our courage and begin to resist. Throw a little sand in the machine whenever you can. Oh, and if you have any doubts at all, read your Bibles. You will find out what being on God's side in all this means. Finally:

That’s why you get people when you're on the right who see something like the hero Marine subduing the lunatic mutant on the subway, and they immediately assert that we should somehow wait until the justice system grinds the hero into dust before we actually take a stand for him. “What, are we just going to assume any blue state judicial process is unjust?” Yes! Because they are – from framing an ex-president to ridiculous civil suits to this self-defense abomination to the systematic refusal to persecute actual criminals, do you need any more evidence that the justice system in NYC is totally broken? So why the hell should we give it any deference? Get it through your heads. There is no justice system. The justice system is a joke. It’s a clown show. No, strike that – clown shows are funny. This is horrifying, the persecution of American citizens for exercising their God-given rights to dissent or to protect themselves and others. Wake the hell up and smell the stench of weed and Soros Marxism.

Those kids who were screaming at the platform for Daniel Penny to be arrested and charged were not normal people. These were paid agitators. The Left has a bunch of paid agitators to go out and commit whatever they want done. We on the other hand have to go out ourselves, at the cost of time off from work. First, we must not give in to them. Second, we must insist that they get actual consequences. Blocking traffic or in this case subway trains is not legitimate protest. You say that they have a right to protest? They have a right to seek redress of grievances. That means letter writing, going down and having a meeting with your representative. That does not mean taking street action.

Why Gun Control Falls On Deaf Ears

Nathaniel Blake, at The Federalist makes an important point about guns in his article How Democrats Are Shooting Themselves In The Foot On Gun Control. He makes the case that the Left is the aggressors in the culture war, and have sowed division, mistrust, and alienation. So it is no wonder that Americans have armed up. But of course Democrats while aggitating the population, demand that we get rid of our guns.

Except for those who are already ideologically committed to it, gun control is a high-trust proposal. People keep and bear arms to defend themselves, and so persuading citizens to limit or even give up their guns requires persuading them that they do not need them for protection. But voters do not view Democrats as prioritizing a country with low crime and high social trust. Rather, Democrats are seen as the soft-on-crime party, with a left flank that is committed to insane defund-the-police policies.

When Democratic prosecutors refuse to prosecute, when Democratic politicians enact revolving-door bail policies for violent criminals, when Democratic mouthpieces insist that violent and threatening lunatics on public transit should be accepted as a normal part of life, they are telling people they are on their own. And many Americans have gotten the message; the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots sold a lot of guns, many of them to new gun owners.

If Democrats want to convince Americans of the benefits of gun control, they should start by showing they are willing and able to control crime. But they often do not even bother to enforce existing gun laws against violent criminals. The more Democratic leaders and activists tolerate crime and disorder, the more they sabotage their demands for more gun control.

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It is not guns, but the left’s hostility toward traditional values and ways of life that is driving much of the alienation in our country. And while it is most destructive for those caught up in it (fatherless children being a leading example) it is also threatening for everyone else. Part of why it is so easy for many American gun owners to envision a tyrannical government that might need to be forcefully resisted is because they can see the cultural revolution the left is waging against them.

If Bouie and the rest want some more trust, hope, and solidarity, they could start by calling off the culture war, or at least admit to waging it — one of the more surreal aspects of our political discourse is watching leftists proclaim their intention to radically remake American culture with every tool at their disposal, which they press to even the pettiest of points, and then turn around and pretend they are not the culture war aggressors.

Personally, I won't be giving up my gun. Carrying a weapon and being prepared to use it is a civic duty. But it is also a necessary tool on those once in a lifetime occasions when one must draw it to protect one's life. Please go read Blake's article.

Western Culture is Christian Culture

Is the Pope Catholic? One has to wonder with statements like this:

Recently, while apologizing to "indigenous peoples" and denouncing Christians — without the all-important historical context — Pope Francis declared, "Never again can the Christian community allow itself to be infected by the idea that one culture is superior to others[.]"

This — claiming all cultures are equal — is a dangerous position, not least as it leads to relativism and the abnegation of Truth.

Thus Raymond Ibrahim began is article at the American Thinker today entitled Is Any One Culture Superior To Others? My personal opinion, and that of Ibrahim, is that the traditional Western Culture is indeed superior to all the others. I am not ashamed to say it. And yes, the West has done many terrible things, some of them in the name of Christ; men are fallen creatures after all. But Christ is the only Truth.

An atheist once said to me "Are you condemning me to Hell? Others say I am going to Hell." My reply was that whether or not he would be saved was way above my pay grade. Only Jesus can answer that question, but Jesus said "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." Either you believe Him or you don't.

Indeed, for some thinkers, such as essayist T.S. Elliot, "culture and religion" are inextricably linked and "different aspects of the same thing."

Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living. ... [N]o culture can appear or develop except in relation to a religion. ... We can see a religion as the whole way of life of a people, from birth to the grave, from morning to night and even in sleep, and that way of life is also its culture. [From Elliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, 1943, p.100-101, emphasis in original.]

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The fact is, all values traditionally prized by the modern West — religious freedom, tolerance, humanism, monogamy — did not develop in a vacuum, but rather are inextricably rooted to Christian principles that, over the course of some two thousand years, have had a profound influence on Western epistemology, society and of course culture.

While they are now taken for granted and seen as "universal," there's a reason why these values were born and nourished in Christian — not Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or Confucian — nations. Even if one were to accept the widely entrenched narrative that the "Enlightenment" is what led to Western progress, it is alone telling that this enlightenment developed in Christian — as opposed to any of the many non-Christian — nations.

All this is missed by those ignorant of the spiritual and intellectual roots of Western civilization — including, apparently, Pope Francis.

I was talking to a fellow, a nice enough man, at church one day, when he made the claim that all religions basically teach the same thing and the same set of morals. Hmmmm. That assertion seems pretty easy to falsify. Buddists belief that man is reincarnated a number of times until his soul reaches "enlightenment' at which time he becomes god. Christianity, building on Jews roots, teachs that there is an infinite gulf between man and God. We are born in sin, and are only saved by grace through belief in Jesus Christ. Indeed Jesus sacrifice on the cross harkens back to the Jewish custom of atonement by sacrificing a lamb.

What, then, of "multiculturalism" — this word that the West is supposed to celebrate and embrace wholeheartedly? Behind it is the idea that all cultures are equal, and none — certainly not Christian or Western culture — "is superior to others," to quote Francis. In reality, multiculturalism is another euphemistic way of undermining and replacing the truths of a religion and its culture with relativism.

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One anecdote well captures this "clash of cultures." After the British colonial powers banned sati — the Hindu practice of burning a widow alive on her husband's funeral pyre — Hindu priests complained to British governor Charles James Napier that sati was their custom and therefore their right. Napier replied:

Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.

Incidentally, being opposed to "multiculturalism" — that is to say, relativism — is in no way the same thing as being opposed to other races or ethnicities, but rather being opposed to disunity and chaos.

So, Western culture, indeed Western civilation, is Christian culture. Despite current infiltrators in our Church body seeking to destroy it, Christ's words are eternal, his Church is eternal, and I stand with Him. When evil communists shout that "Western Civilation must go" what they really mean is that Christianity must go. These people are on the wrong side. Pray for them.

The Culture War Is The Only Issue

Today at The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson has an article entitled The Culture War Isn't The Most Important Issue in 2024, It's The Only Issue. While our politicians try to avoid talking about cultural issues like the hens try to avoid the fox. But it has become obvious to all that the culture of these United States has become polluted with paganism. Glenn Beck once touted that we surround them. Unfortunately, the great majority of people in the country aren't really Christians. Therefore, in a culture war fought between God and the Devil, most people will effectively be non player characters. Without a base of Giglical principles, they will eventually speak the cultures lies.

The more obvious it becomes that our domestic political struggles are actually part of a much larger spiritual war over the fate of western civilization, that we are today engaged not so much in a political fight as a religious battle between good and evil, the stronger the urge seems to be among Republican politicians to deny this reality and take refuge in the comforting political narratives of the past.

A perfect case in point was a tweet last week from Kari Lake’s permanent campaign, which managed in one fell swoop to channel the deeply misguided political analysis of the entire neocon Washington establishment: “No one is saying not to fight the culture war. But it’s simply not the most critical issue heading into 2024.” “The GOP must show the country how it plans to turn the economy around & prevent World War 3,” she added. “We need to take this country back from @JoeBiden before we can take our culture back from his friends.”

Ah, yes. The comforting fiction that if we can just show voters how we plan to turn the economy around, surely then we’ll regain power, surely then we’ll have a mandate from the people — and then (and only then) we can “take our culture back.”

What our Republican politicians do not seem to understand, or else want to avoid, is that the culture war must be won before the economy can be put right, before the crime problem can be dealt with, before the immigration invasion can be turn around, indeed before the common good can be taken into account, we must settle the culture war.

Put simply, the big mistake in thinking the culture war isn’t the most critical issue heading into 2024 is that all of American politics is now one big culture war. The culture war is the only issue because the cultural war is everything now. When one side stakes its claim to political power on offering abortion up until birth and transgender operations for 8-year-olds, and holds out these policies as proof of its moral authority, we’re way past arguing over how to get the economy back on track. There’s no going back to that kind of politics.

Tucker Carlson hit on this at the end of his big speech at Heritage recently. He compared the values of the political left to the values of the Aztecs, who sacrificed children to their bloodthirsty gods — and he wasn’t wrong. Our politics, he argued, have shifted profoundly in a relatively short period of time. Instead of arguing over the best means to bring about an agreed-upon common good, we no longer agree about what the common good is. Forget about whether Republicans or Democrats are right about the ideal marginal tax rate. We can’t even agree on whether men and women exist as meaningful categories. And if we don’t get that question right, you can forget about economic prosperity, much less anything like a republic or a constitutional system of government.

...snip...

The culture war in America is not some luxury good that Republican politicians can sample now and then. It has consumed our politics by revealing deep, uncrossable chasms in our national life. So we now find ourselves in a different kind of struggle. Call it a culture war, a religious war, a battle between good and evil, or all of the above. It’s a war for survival between two competing and irreconcilable visions of what America should be.

Any politician on the right that doesn’t understand that, who thinks we just need to show voters our plan for getting the economy back on track, needs to step aside and make room for leaders who know what time it is, that the hour is late, the day now far spent, and the time for fighting has come. The culture war is now the big tent. Those who embrace it, who delve into the fray without apology, will be the next crop of leaders on both the right and the left.

I Urge You To Pray

Two articles today at the American Thinker point to much deeper issues in our country than merely the work of man, though man can be evil. The first article, by Trish Randall is We've Forgotten What A Woman Is -- And Isn't. She asserts, not without millions of years of wisdom behind such assertions, that men and women have different skill sets. These skills need to properly combined, not used as a wedge. Then there is Richard H. Chiero writing From the 'L' Word to Cultural Marxism. both articles point out that many of our problems were spurred on by Marxist invading our nation with the intention of taking it down. I have often pointed out that the United States, as founded, stood as a rebuke to Marxism. We were literally minding our own business; they were the aggressors. The Left is still the aggressors.  But what makes the Left so powerful?  A mere philosophy can not persuade so many people.

Marxism, and those who follow it are, on the surface, the cause of much of our problems. But underneath, there is a deeper cause, which Jonathon Cahn delves deeply into in his book, The Return of the Gods. Much that plagues modern America also plagued the ancient world. I remember reading about the ancient gods Ba'al, Ashteroth, and Molech. People made idols to these gods - really demons, and worhiped them. Because the Bible places so much emphasis on not worshipping idols, I believed that these were merely mythological phenomena. But Cahn has shown that the culural plague we are witnessing, including abortions, feminism, transgenderism, the LBGTIA+ pride parades, the drag queens, the hook up culture, not to mention rampant pedophilia and more are all things that the ancient "gods" brought to ancient cultures. When Christianity began to flourish, these demons were slowly driven out.

Like a bad penny, however, when we started to kick God our Creator out of our schools, out of our public life, the "gods" came back. First Ba'al, as people became obsessed with becoming rich. They worshipped celebrities and wanted to be like them.  They wanted the fame and fortune and persued that to the exclusion of God. Then Asteroth, otherwise know as Istar came back with a vengence, stirring up again the gay and lesbian movements.   Meanwhile, while we no longer throw children into the fires of Moleck's belly, now doctors tear the unborn limb from limb while ephemistically calling it a clumb of cells, as if it were a tumor. Jesus predicted what we are going through in Matthew 12:

“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. 44Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. 45Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.”

We will all have to pay for this, somehow. I urge you to begin praying, if you don't already.

Criminals Should Live In Fear, Not Citizens

Today, at Townhall.com Kurt Schlichter has a barn burner advising that We Must Defend Self Defense. As I have continuously reminded, when a potential conflict arises, you are your own first responders. Criminals tend to avoid committing crimes in front of police officers. Therefore you are unlikely to be saved from death or serious injury by a policeman. Instead, the police will likely draw outlines around your body, and search for the killer. You must be prepared to defend your life and the lives of your family and friends.  Schlichter writes:

There’s a war going on against our sacred right to self-defense, and we need to defend that right, ruthlessly and vigorously against the communists who want us living in fear. And they do want us living in fear – sheep are easier to shear than sheepdogs. If you look what happened in New York City, where some mutant bum decided to threaten a bunch of people on a subway car, and then some heroes subdued him, and then he vapor-locked, and then the usual cast of liars and race-pimps screeched, you can see what they are doing – not merely trying to disarm us but trying to make us fear to defend ourselves at all. They want you terrified and impotent in the face of their unofficial militia, the criminals. The right to keep and bear arms means nothing if you are going to get jammed up whenever you have to use hot lead to stop the latest trans shooter, or junkie with a knife, or carjacker, or schizo hobo, or whatever. Which is the idea.

So, it is the guys defending the citizens on the train who are being treated as criminals and the terminated criminal who is being treated as a hero. The message is clear – accept that you must accept abuse. Understand that this moral inversion is all a lie – the stiff was a scumbag who was a fugitive for attacking a 67-year-old woman; they just want to exploit his justified death. This is happening all over the country in the blue cities thanks to the Soros prosecutor conspiracy – and if you don’t like me criticizing Soros, shove it. Time to stop this madness, at least where we can at the moment. Time to clearly side with the normals over the criminals who the ruling caste is using as tyrannical catspaws.

Their wicked plan is perfectly obvious – to criminalize normal people and normalize criminals. Thieves, bums, losers, junkies, whores, and other trash – they are the heroes in this morally bankrupt morality play, and we normals are the villains. The first step to fighting back is to see the truth, and the truth is right there. You just have to be hard enough to accept it and to not allow them to leverage your empathy or compassion into tolerating having to be afraid as some sort of price you owe for the crime of not being a lowlife. They want us, quiet, complacent, and obedient. They want a society where we live in fear. Not them, though – this subway vermin did not invade the Met Gala last week. Hell, he would never get anywhere near the princes and princesses and princexxs strutting around in their zillion dollar gowns. Rubbing shoulders with social detritus is for you little people forced to ride public transportation – just wait until we ban your cars and trucks and you have no escape! The costs of the bourgeoisie's moral posturing is to be paid by you and me, and not by the preeners.

Schlichter is absolutely correct here. There is indeed a war on self defense. Lawyers (sorry Kurt) will make the argument that the penalty for, oh say, robbery or theft is not death. Therefore you should not use lethal force against a home invader. But here's the thing. By invading a home where the homeowner belongs, and the invader does not, the invader takes the risk of getting killed on himself. He was fully in control of his fate. He could have avoided being killed by not committing the crime-Q.E.D. In addition, the lawyers who say this assume, illogically, that the home owner can read minds. How does the homeowner know whether or not the invader means only to steal, and not to harm him? Clearly such lawuers are operating from a position of bad faith.

Schlichter then explains what changes red states must make to their laws to make self defense an acceptable response to the criminals currently rampaging through our cities. I will recommend to gentle readers that they study Schlicters ideas, and to the degree possible advance them to their legislatures. Here is his first recommendation:

First, we must reiterate in the law the guiding principle that self-defense is not merely tolerated but encouraged. We should clarify that self-defense can be used to protect people, pets, and property. And that the risk of unexpected or excessive harm is on the criminal, not the citizen. Certain situations should be presumed self-defense – like when a citizen is surrounded by a mob on foot or in a car. We need to stop acting as if you need an excuse for taking down a criminal. You shouldn’t be penalized or persecuted – you should be getting a medal.

The point here is that criminals should be the ones in fear, not normal citizens.

Brady Campaign Accidentally Makes Case For Guns in Private Hands

Today, at Bearing Arms Tom Knighton has a post entitled Brady tweet actually runs counter to their cause. The Brady "cause" is of course to ban guns. Oh, I realize they don't say that, but Josh Sugarmann let the cat out of the bag years ago. So what did the Brady Campiagn do? Using the Kent State riots as an example of state sanctioned gun violence, which they claim to abhor, they undercut their desire to leave the state with a monopoly on gun violence. For if state sanctioned gun violence is so bad, wouldn't you naturally want a counter balancing force to protect the citizen from state tyranny?

Now, understand that I’m not interested in talking about what happened at Kent State. I know the official story about it, but I’ve become so distrustful of official stories that I don’t actually care to recount something that may not be remotely true.

However, what is true is that Brady is talking about “state-sanctioned gun violence” while simultaneously doing everything they can to make it so the state is the only one with guns in the first place.

Let’s remember, for example, that they tend to push to include law enforcement exceptions to just about every gun control bill they support. State-sanctioned gun violence, as they call it, is so awful they want to make sure only the state can have certain guns deemed too dangerous for you or me.

We also should remember that Kent State wasn’t the police. It was the National Guard. That’s military. There’s absolutely no push by Brady to disarm or restrict the military from having certain weapons, now is there?

Yet if state-sanctioned homicide is a problem that we should be prepared to address, how in the hell are we to do that if ordinary citizens are disarmed?

Without an armed populace, Kent State would cease being a historical anomaly and become simply the first of numerous other atrocities.

I was still in high school that day. Graduation wouldn't be for another month. Kent was the next town over from Stow, where I lived. Our local Students for a Democratic Society representative was ecstatic over the fallout. They had provoked the state to violence by their own use of violence. They had set the ROTC building on fire, then prevented the fire department from putting out the fire by slashing their hoses with machetes. Of course, at the time, the student riots were seen as "mostly peaceful." And it truth, probably the majority of the mob were there to protest the war in Vietnam. But the "peaceful" mob was used by the communist infiltrators as cover to create chaos and violence. Remember that the National Guardsmen were about the same age, and no doubt felt threatened by the hostility mob.

The point of pointing that out is that the situation, as usual, is complex, yet the press presents a simple story of state bad, students, good. I think there was enough blame to go around, which is why I, like the author, don't believe anything I read without a lot of evidence. So, in such a situation, do you want the govermnent to be the only one with guns?  To want that is to be naive.  Remember that in any situation, you may be the first responder.  Do you really want to stand there with nothing in your hands?