Democracy Is Two Wolves and a Lamb Deciding What's For Dinner

It used to be that Virginia was a Red State.  North of the border in Maryland and New England was occupied America, but in Virginia we were still free.  Now, Virginia, despite Youngkin's still being governor is a decidedly Blue State.  And to show its blueness, they are doing their very best to pass a ban on scary looking rifles that everybody owns and uses.

Today, North Carolina is a Purple State.  But due to the desire by the politicians, who offer sweetheart deals Big Tech and the EV industry to come here, we are being invaded by leftists from all over the country.  And of course, a number of people from New York have come here looking for lower taxes and a better quality of life.  Taken all together, it is fine for people to come here, but why do they have to bring their politics with them?

Today at the American Thinker Stephan Helgesen has a post entitle Red state dilemma: stand up to incoming progressive residence or flee? that sums up what we are facing. He specifically cites Colorado as an example, but the problem is everywhere throughout the Red states. Progressives are moving to these Red states from the Blue, and then voting in the very laws and policies that befouled their own nests back home.

No one can dispute how politically different Red states are from Blue states in our super-polarized country. When a large group of ideologically motivated people (usually leftists) move into a state, county, or neighborhood, things invariably change. The question for conservatives, who are usually the ones whose nice communities are changed for the worse, is whether they should flee or fight.

The once-conservative People’s Republic of Colorado perfectly proves how an influx of leftists changes an area. Most recently, Colorado decided to remove Donald Trump from the ballot.

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Staying with Colorado for a moment, the voters in two principal zip codes decide life for everyone else in the state: Denver, with 198,928 registered Democrats, 45,493 Republicans, and 191,316 unaffiliated (but leaning Democrat) voters, and Boulder, with 93,721 Democrats, 26,789 Republicans, and 97,014 unaffiliated (but leaning Democrat) voters. It’s no wonder that city councils and county governments can and are dictating what is or isn’t acceptable behavior at the ballot boxes and in the courts.

These big city zealots have consistently forced business owners to subordinate their religious beliefs if they are to stay in business. Home-grown Coloradans like cake-makers and website designers were persecuted by Colorado’s courts for daring to defend their beliefs and for standing up to the new wave of Progressives who now represent that state’s political majority.

As the recent effort to remove Trump from the Colorado ballot shows, though, this tyranny of the majority doesn’t stop with persecuting Colorado’s own citizens. Had they been successful, they would have erased any possibility that disaffected Democrats and independents might turn away from Biden and, instead, joined with conservatives to cast their vote for Trump.

Colorado is emblematic of the new Left’s strategy to win nationally by winning locally, by any means possible. The state is also working hard to change the culture by remaking it as a Leftist utopia (some would say dystopia) where only one opinion is acceptable. It is on a crusade to create a uni-culture based on wokeness and political correctness, and woe betide anyone who gets in the way of that crusade.

I vaguely remember a project a number of years ago by libertarians to have a bunch of them move to New Hampshire to change the state to be more libertarian. Being libertarians, that never worked. But the Leftists seemed to have picked it up and are infiltrating conservative states. There is currently no way to stop them.  The Constitution allows people to travel freely and to settle where they wish.  But it does place a real dilemma on the shoulders of conservatives.

Buying A First Gun for Self-Defense?

 Mike McDaniel has A basic, brief, semiautomatic pistol primer. Like McDaniel, I learned to shoot revolvers in the 1900s. Back then, semiautomatics were just a bit unreliable. If you had to use one in self defense, one wanted it to go bang, no questions.  We called semiautomatics "jamamatics." Frankly, I still love the Smith and Wesson Model 19 for its accuracy. As they say in Star Wars, an elegant weapon for a different age.

McDaniel likes weapons manufactured by Glock. It is a fine, and reliable handgun, and the manual of arms is simple, which is important when the doggy do do hits the oscillating air mover. I personally find the ergonomics of Gaston Glock's firearms to be off putting. Instead, I prefer 1911 style firearms. 1911s were somewhat unreliable in the old days, but manufacturing technology has greatly improved.

You’ve noticed tens of thousands of terrorists and members of the Chinese Army are skipping across the border. The Mummified Meat Puppet Administration (MMPA) is delighted, and doing everything it can to keep them coming. Texans have known this forever, but you’ve decided it’s time to exercise your natural, unalienable right to self-defense. But what kind of handgun to buy? Perhaps a semiautomatic?

I learned to shoot with revolvers. Back in the 1400s, there were few semiauto choices, and reliability was an issue. Making just about any semiauto reliable required a trip to the gunsmith who would fix all the issues manufacturers just didn’t address. Circa 2024, manufacturers do address those issues, and semiautos tend to be reliable out of the box, though they are somewhat more ammunition sensitive than revolvers—Some guns simply function better with some makes and bullet weights than others.

If you are thinking of buying a gun for self-defense gentle readers might start with McDaniel's article. I would add that you should try a number of different guns to find out which ones you shoot the best.  But which ones you shoot best is only one consideration.  You will also need a good holster, a sturdy gun belt, and a strategy for keeping your concealed carry ...well...concealed. You also will need some training and practice, practice, practice. You want to practice your draw until you can do it in your sleep. Finally, you will need to acquire some cleaning and maintenance supplies. Even a Glock needs to be cleaned every now and again.

We Do Not Have A Democracy, Either Direct or Representative

After Thursdays post, I hate to be a Debbie Downer, but there are things of which gentle readers need to be made aware. I have harped on this before, but this is the first time I have seen another writer bring this up.  Molly Slag, at the American Thinker has a piece today entitled Do We Have A Democracy? the main point of which is that, when most of the "laws" are made, enforced by, and adjudicated by, unelected bureaucrats, no, we don't.

 It is wrong, it is unconstitutional, but you can see why Congress would like to put the burden on to unelected bureaucrats. After all, is anyone of our 535 members of Congress and the Senate really excited about PM10 or PM2.5? Can anyone but a Squad member seriously propose to spend 10s of millions dollars per person to make the country safer for the very vulnerable? And if so, why are there so many still needing oxygen units to live?

The weight of the many regulations that affect literally every aspect of our lives can be measured in dollars which one estimate puts at $1.9 trillion. Now the Office of Management and Budget claims that the "benefits" far outweigh the costs. But do they, or is this just more government gas-lighting? These regulations are usually a one size fits all sort of thing. For instance, if you need a new water closet, it will be a low flow water closet. ALL new water closets are low flow. Now, low flow may make sense in California where water is scarce. Here in North Carolina, we usually have so much water it literally flows off the land and into the rivers and streams to exit in the ocean. But when you must defecate, you also must flush at least twice, sometimes three times to get all the particles down the drain. One wonders how much water is saved?

The US Constitution provides in Article 1 Section 1:

"All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives."

This says in very plain words that all of the federal government’s legislative powers are vested in Congress. That means no person or institution has any power to make a federal law except Congress. Hence, no one can enact federal law except the people’s elected representatives. That is the constitutional guarantee of the representative form of democracy in the federal legislative branch.

In particular, the bureaucracy has no power to make laws. That is, no federal agency can write laws. But of course, today, they all do! Federal administrative regulations have the force of laws, and their total mass and effect are far greater than congressionally-created laws.

This points us to two recent cases challenging the Chevron Deference doctrine, which gives deference to federal agencies in cases challenging their rulings. If the Supreme Court overturns Chevron it will start to unravel the tangled web of federal regulation. But it will only be a first step in a long process of unwinding the deep state.

A Bit of Hope

  Nothing seems inspiring me today.  Mostly the news is talk of this or that candidate's chances in that race and what it may mean for the future.  But I have long ago figured out that the only polls that matter are the polls on election day...or election season as it now plays out.  As noted in Ecclesiastes, Vanity of vanities.  All is vanity.  It is depressing.  But then, someone points out that we must continue because the war is not lost, man is not doomed, there is salvation in Christ our Savior, if we believe.  Such a one today is J. B. Shurk at the American Thinker in an essay entitled A Moment in History Pregnant With Purpose.

Shurk starts by pointing out that the situation today reminds us of the Revolutionary War period. Looking back on it today, it may seem inevitable. But it was far from certain. He notes that the founding generation took nearly 50 years to bring about our Constitutional Republic, the longest lasting republic in history. I would point out too that many people sacrificed their fortunes and lives to bequeath this Republic to us. And it is a republic, not a democracy. So when you hear someone talking about "our democracy," they are spewing lies.

But then Shurk gets down to what it is that gives us the strength, the courage, and the faith to keep going, even to be happy warriors in the face of all the evil in the world.

Still, even during the chaos of the late eighteenth century, people got married, had families, formed communities, and persevered through trials and tribulations that most of us have never endured. The “American Experiment” might have been the finest jewel of the Enlightenment, but to have read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense in the local tavern, to have endured British occupation in Boston, or to have been on the receiving end of the first volleys at Lexington and Concord would have felt like the beginnings of a long journey with just as many tortuous uncertainties as inspired truths. If America’s success story was foreordained, it is because America’s Founders steadfastly believed in God’s gift of freedom.

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Do you believe in God? If so, then do not allow yourself to be mesmerized by despair. If the Devil showed up at your doorstep with a billion-demon army and demanded that you join, would you acquiesce to your conscription? Or, having been forced to confront the existence of Evil face to face, would you dust off the full armor of God and pray for strength, guidance, and grace? Often, it is when we are tested most harshly that we find courage that we never knew we had. Do you think that’s because God prefers ninth-inning comebacks, or perhaps because God knows that to get the best from each one of us, He must challenge the very fiber of our souls?

Do you question that God’s hand is sculpting the challenges we face today? If so, it is never too late to “awaken” to God’s truth and, through His truth, to find implacable strength. As one of the most popular Christian hymns ever written ebulliently declares: “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound / That saved a wretch like me! / I once was lost, but now am found; / Was blind, but now I see.” John Newton, an English slave-trader turned evangelical cleric and abolitionist, wrote that stanza, coincidentally enough, around the same time that Americans were declaring their independence from Great Britain. Throughout history, spiritual awakenings have consistently provided the timely foundations for every great struggle for human liberty. Ours is not at all different.

Enlightenments are messy. Social and political revolutions are fraught with unpleasant moments. Every quest for human emancipation is filled with heartaches, setbacks, and miseries. Yet it is what we do with the obstacles before us that changes the course of history. We are not expected to pick up the weight of history, heave it over our shoulders, and carry it to the place it belongs. We are nudgers. We push and pull at the current and help shape its path. You feel that impulse in your soul, don’t you? That’s because God is nudging each one of us, too.

Gentle readers should read the entire piece. We all need to be reminded from time to time that we have a purpose in God's plan. It may, in the scheme of things, be a small purpose, but it is important nonetheless. Also remember that God demands loyalty and trust. No hedging your bets by appealing to other gods. The Universalist philosophy is false. So, buck up, don't lose hope, but remember that it is not the various candidates, who come and go, the God of Abraham, of Issac, and Jacob with whom we should be concerned.

Leftists Only Know How to Tear Down

 Vince Conyer at the American Thinker today noted that Leftists Disconnected From How Things Work Are Destroying Everything. It is true that a lot, maybe even a majority of these Leftist bastards are people who produce nothing. I don't mean that they produce nothing, but rather nothing of any practical use.  The world would not notice if they stopped.  But if they succeed in turning us back to a pre-industrial society, these are the very people who would not survive because they have no skills. Life was, as Thomas Hobbs noted, nasty, brutish and short.

Conyer takes us on a brief history of innovation and invention, what we would call today call "technology" that revolutionized the way we live. In the process, we rose from living an average of 30 years, to 47 years at the turn of the 20th century, to today at close to 80 years.  It is a remarkable feat.

I’ve always been a fan of the prosperity created by Western civilization in general and the United States in particular. Indeed, I even created a website called Gratitude for America, where I write about American entrepreneurs who invented things like barbed wire and standardized shipping containers. But maybe there’s a downside to this prosperity because we’ve created a class of people (especially in government) completely disconnected from how the world actually works.

Cyrus McCormick, who invented the mechanical reaper, is the most important entrepreneur in human history. He basically untethered mankind from farming, one of the most dangerous occupations on earth. In 1831, when he invented the mechanical reaper, approximately 80% of the American population was involved in agriculture, and, in most places in the world, it was higher—in some cases, 95%.

Back then, farming’s efficiency hadn’t changed much since the time of the pyramids. A man, using a scythe, could harvest approximately one acre of grain a day. Fifty years later, McCormick guaranteed that, by using his machine, a farmer could harvest 15 acres a day. With today’s machines, a farmer can harvest up to 100 acres in a day. Small wonder that only 3% of the US population today farms.

The reason McCormick is so important is not because of farming, per se, but because he freed up most of the population to go out and do other, less dangerous things. With that shift, work-life expectancies began to skyrocket in the latter half of the 19th century. In 1800, the average life expectancy was approximately 30 years, with Europe averaging 33 and the US close behind. By 1900, the world average had increased to 32, but in Europe it had jumped to 43 and in the US to 47.

...snip...

In the 20th century, things really took off. Today, a quarter of the way through the 21st century, world life expectancy is 72 years, while in the US, it’s 78, and in Western Europe, it’s above 80.

Not only are we living longer, but we’re also prosperous beyond anything in human history. Our food is more varied, dependable, and plentiful than ever. We have transportation, hospitalization, housing, employment, clothing, education, sanitation, entertainment, and leisure opportunities exponentially beyond anything in all of human history.

It is important to know how recent all this is. My father and grandfather together lived through the transition from horse and mule power to today's mechanization. To illustrate, WWI, my grandfather's war, was fought with horse cavalry. By WWII the fighting was with armored cavalry. All of this mechanization freed the majority of people to do something other than daily slave to find food and water. Enough used that freedom wisely to improve life for everyone else. But some used it poorly and tried to tear down what they could not build.

The average Westerner’s life is far superior to any experienced by 99.999% of the people who ever lived, but, somehow, everyone today is a victim—and we know that everyone is a victim because the elites tell us so. Through schools, media, and government, we’re told that Western culture is racist, sexist, fascist, or somehow otherwise oppressive. Basically, the better things get, the worse they get.

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The reason those elites, the ones who seek to manipulate the public, get away with it is because a significant portion of the population believes them. And they believe them because of the division of labor-driven prosperity that McCormick unleashed.

Virtually the entire left in this country has zero connection with anything having to do with creating anything, growing anything, building anything, or risking anything. They spend their days pushing paper in offices or selling cappuccinos, if they work at all. Not only are few of them farmers, but few are truckers, lumberjacks, steel workers, plumbers, electricians, or entrepreneurs. Few have ever had to balance paying a credit card bill versus making payroll. Few ever risked their money and invested sweat equity to start a business.

There was a program on the Discovery Channel several years ago called Dirty Jobs, hosted by Mike Rowe. Each week Rowe would take us to somewhere a person was doing a dirty and dangerous, but necessary job. These jobs were necessary to keep America running. The WEFers should have watched that show to see how many unnoticed things are necessary to keep a high tech society running. You can't do this with robots. It takes men with tools, skills and guts to perform these jobs. They are the salt of the earth. Leftist scum are just...well...scum.

The FBI Violating Americans' Fourth Amendment Rights

 Mike McDaniel at the American Thinker today has a post exposing us to the malfeasance of the FBI in their effort to go after Private Vaults in Los Angeles county. McDaniel starts out with this:

Most Americans don’t know how much police officers rely on the Constitution, and particularly the Bill of Rights, in their daily work. This is particularly true of the Fourth Amendment, which regulates search and seizure:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

There are necessary exceptions to the warrant requirement. Without them our police couldn’t function. However, probable cause (PC) matters. Simply put, it is facts or evidence that would cause a reasonable police officer to believe a crime had been committed, and a specific person committed it. That’s largely what keeps “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” politicized fishing expeditions from happening.

Apparently, the FBI doesn't care about anybody's Constitutional rights. So, while going after Private Vaults, they decided to open clients' vaults and "forfeit" their private property and keep it. They managed to steal $86 million in jewels, cash, gold and silver and other valuable property. This is outrageous, illegal, a violation of rights under color of law. To make it worse, it was planned and by design.

It’s a classic case. In order to open any safe-deposit box and seize its contents, the FBI would need to have PC regarding each and every box they opened. They didn’t. Not even close.

"That the FBI had the chutzpah to ignore the judge’s warrant, which explicitly “d[id] not authorize a criminal search or seizure of box contents,” did not sit well with the court."

The FBI along with the Department of (in)Justice, the AFT and other agencies have become the thug arm of the Democrat party. As McDaniel points out the likelihood of anyone being held accountable is next to zero. But it is true that the FBI has legitimate duties, and those duties should keep them busy enough. Perhaps defunding these agencies would be appropriate?

The United States Is Being Torn Apart

 Today, at the American Thinker J.B. Shurk has an excellent article entitled Hell Must Be Empty. As you read the article, you will soon find out why. Spoiler alert, it is because all the devils and demons seem to be tormenting us.

In New York City, the bad guys have long understood an unwritten rule: you don’t hit a cop. In the past, doing so put you at the top of the NYPD’s to-do list and ensured that you would not be free on the streets for long. When 30,000 officers are tasked with securing a metropolis of nine million residents, the impenetrability of the “thin blue line” is a matter of life and death. When video emerged of a group of illegal aliens wrestling two cops to the ground near Times Square and beating them with fists and feet, that thin blue line got thinner. When news broke that the offenders were released without bail and that a left-wing “charity” had likely given them a free ride to California, the blue line all but disappeared.

By looking the other way as criminal invaders attack the people charged with protecting the city, NYC mayor Eric Adams and district attorney Alvin Bragg not only betray their duties to those who risk their lives every day for others’ safety, but also prove their complicity with those who wage war against citizens of the United States. Before he disappeared without a care in the world, one of the foreign nationals apprehended for the attack left Manhattan Criminal Court with two middle fingers extended into the air and a broad smile across his face. It was an “F you” to all Americans from a man who should never have been allowed to illegally enter the United States in the first place. At the same time, it sure felt as if Adams, Bragg, Biden, Mayorkas, and all the other open-borders advocates and politicians were really the ones flipping off desperate American citizens whose decades-long pleas for secure borders have been entirely ignored.

Gentle readers can read the rest of Shurk's article, which lists a long train of abuses. I don't want to rehash these, as most reader will recognize them if you have been paying attention over these years. I want to get to the end of the article, from which the title comes

Forget “two-tiered justice.” This is just plain old evil disguised as politics. Only in a nation under attack from demonic forces would J6 political hostages be imprisoned for exercising their First Amendment rights at the U.S. Capitol when a congressional staffer can make gay porn videos in a Senate hearing room without any risk of ever being charged for a crime. Only in a nation suffering from the widespread proliferation of evil would the Department of (in)Justice seek decades-long prison sentences for peacefully protesting Americans who dare to speak out against abortion, while federal agents routinely look the other way as “unknown assailants” vandalize and firebomb the buildings of Christian churches, pro-life organizations, and politically conservative groups. Only in a nation whose government chooses to embrace evil and reject godliness could a Christian veteran be charged for the “hate crime” of destroying a demonic shrine celebrating Satan. When adherence to moral conscience is criminalized and the protection of flagrant sin becomes government’s chief concern, there can be no doubt that evil has risen from the shadows and seized control of the State. When Christians are punished for their convictions and Satan has more friends in political office, it is clear that America’s institutions are rotting from the inside.

Once that decay begins, it is difficult to save the host without first severing the cancer from the body. It is why government-engineered injustices now occur with almost daily regularity. Consider a few of the startling news stories of just the last few weeks. A group of international scientists is calling for a global moratorium on COVID “vaccines” because a peer-reviewed study concludes, “For every life saved, there were nearly 14 times more deaths caused by the modified mRNA injections.” Meanwhile, there is now documentary evidence that the CDC intentionally covered up risks from the experimental, yet largely mandated, treatments — particularly the risk of myocarditis. Switching to the growing evidence of 2020 election fraud, unearthed documents confirm that the FBI and Michigan authorities were notified of “alarming” witness accounts attesting to “ballot fraud in Detroit.” How was that situation resolved? The FBI buried its head in the sand, and Michigan’s Attorney General Dana Nessel charged sixteen Republican alternate electors with felony fraud crimes. Not wanting Michigan’s rampant election-rigging and political persecution to get all the glory, PBS (the Marxist news organization that Americans are forced to support with taxes) confirmed that Congress’s partisan January 6 Committee was never anything more than shameless political theater meant to tilt the 2022 midterms toward the Democrat party. Finally, in international news, even though the Biden administration has been forced to temper its support for a U.N. agency implicated in the October 7 attack on Israel, nobody is surprised that the U.N.’s terrorists have still been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

The language Shurk uses is the language Christians use to describe these things: Evil. Moreover, that Evil has a face, which is given many names: Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub and so on. By whatever name you call him, he exists just as surely as The Most High God exists.

Now, in his time on earth, Jesus cast out many demons. My mother told me that these were just people with epilepsy or whatever. But if you believe, as I do, that Jesus was the divine Son of God, he would have been even more able to determine whether someone had a mere physical ailment (many of which he healed) or had a demon possessing him. Even now, exorcists of the Church take great care in deciding if someone is truly possessed or is suffering from some psychological problem. But the demons knew Jesus, and he knew them.  Interestingly, the fact that so many of us are baptized and sealed with the cross is probably why so few suffer from demonic possession today. For baptism is not merely the act of passing through water, but a form of protection from the demons.  And demonic possession exists.

Whether our president is possessed, or merely controlled by others who are, I don't know. We pray for him at Sunday services. But the vast effort to defeat the United States and Israel is a generation-to-generation plan, executed over at least 140 years, maybe longer. Such a plan, where so many participants could not expect to succeed, but still marched on implies a malevolent intelligence behind the scenes orchestrating the strategy and tactics used.

There is some good news for people currently working for the dark side. Our God is merciful. You may lose His protection by rejecting Him and His saving grace. But if anyone repents, he can regain that salvation. I am here to tell you that is true. An even more powerful example of someone who repented is the story of Bella Dodd, who worked for the Communists before repenting and becoming a Christian who exposed the Communist infiltration into the schools and churches.

Hell is not empty, I am sure, because so many do not want to be close to God.  Nevertheless, it is true that the United States is being torn apart.