Charlie Kirk, RIP

By now, I suspect all of you gentle readers are aware of the fact that Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA has been assassinated.  I say "assassinated" because his murder was quite political.  So far, we still do not know who perpetrated this horrible crime.  I have my suspicions but will withhold discussion of them until more is known.

I did not know Kirk personally.  Therefore, I will defer to others who did know him.  First up is Kurt Schlichter, at Townhall.com in They Murdered Charlie Kirk and They Must Pay. Schlichter tells us that lashing out is not the answer. What we need to do is cultivate a cold fury, and bring the perpetrators to justice legally. We don't need to make stuff up either, since murder is already against the law.

We will be tempted to hit back to hurt people who’ve hurt us. That’s not the way. As much as we want to take out our anger on the left, as much as we want to strike out and lash out, that’s not what our Constitution demands. That’s not what Charlie Kirk would want. We’re not terrorists and we’re not murderers. We’ve got the Constitution. Our Constitution addresses how to deal with this situation. We have laws, and we control the federal law enforcement apparatus. We will turn its full weight against not only the perpetrators of this crime, but the people behind the web of subversion from the left. Think of a J6 prosecution-level effort, except it will not be an attempt to frame people by contorting the law and perverting the justice system.

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Individually, what do we do? Well, we don’t shut up. We don’t submit. We don’t cower in silence because we’re afraid some freak will try to hurt us if we dare stand up and speak out like citizens. That’s where being armed comes in. It’s not about being macho. It’s about being free, free from intimidation, free from threats, free from domination by the same bastards who are on BlueSky chuckling over the murder of Charlie Kirk.

As Americans, we will rally and move forward to protect our country. But, at the same time, there’s a family out there that’s devastated. Charlie had a beautiful wife and two lovely little kids. Those lovely little kids are never going to see their daddy again because somebody shot him to death for daring to speak words that offended the killer. Those kids are going to spend the rest of their lives without a father. But, at least, they can know that their father was no coward. He went, unarmed and unarmored, in front of a couple of thousand people who hated him. He undoubtedly had death threats. He knew what the left is capable of because he talked about it. And yet he walked out there and did his duty as an American, to speak freely about what he believed. The man was a hero, and we can only hope that that knowledge will give his orphaned children some iota of solace.

This is a gut punch. This is real. It’s not social media imagery. It’s not a meme. It’s a bullet, striking bone, spurting blood, and killing a precious human being. We are not only justified in being angry; we are also obligated to be angry. But we must be righteously angry. I want retribution, but righteous retribution. We’re not going to frame anybody. We’re not going to trash our Constitution. We’re not going to besmirch what Charlie Kirk stood for, even as we try to validate it.

As the subhead of my blog has spoken since I started writing it, "The truth has no agenda" Yes, I stole that from Glenn Beck, but it is nonetheless true. We all must proclaim the truth loudly, whenever and wherever a lie is spoken. Not in anger, or by calling the other person names, but politely. Just as Charlie Kirk did. That is how best to remember him.

Next up is Laura Hollis, again at Townhall.com. Her piece is Why Is America So Polarized? I Can Tell You.

I'm sickened by this. Charlie was just 31 years old. A devout Christian. A husband and father of two little children. We had mutual friends. A founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie made a name for himself traveling to college campuses, engaging with young people, debunking falsehoods and presenting evidence for the positions he took, challenging his audience to think.

And for that, he was murdered. Killed in cold blood at an event where the shooter knew there would be phones and videos, so Charlie's family, friends, loved ones, colleagues and followers could watch him die not just once but over and over and over again.

All because Charlie had the courage to tell the truth.

Did you catch that? Because he told the truth. Are you sensing a theme here? And why is America so polarized? Because our institutions have lied to us, to our faces, knowing that they are telling lies, knowing that we know they are telling lies, yet expecting us to accept these lies even though we know they are lies. I no longer watch the news expecting to be told the truth or even a vague simulacrum of it. Indeed, the only reason I watch it now is for the weather forecast. Even that is clouded by the climate change alarmism narrative.

America is polarized because Americans have been betrayed and manipulated and exploited and lied to by the most important cultural institutions we have -- government, the medical profession, the justice system, the educational system, the media, the entertainment industry.

I could write a book with examples, but here are just a few:

We were lied to about the origins of COVID-19. We were lied to about our government's role in funding the gain-of-function research that made a virus like COVID-19 possible. We were lied to about the safety of the mRNA shots, which were never vaccines. We were lied to about who was at greatest risk from contracting COVID-19. We were lied to about the actual immunity that came with contracting the virus versus taking shot after shot after shot.

We were manipulated and forced by the government, employers and educational institutions into taking those injections, shutting down our businesses, closing our schools and masking our children. We were lied to about the real dangers that the mRNA shots posed to young people and pregnant women. We are still trying to discover the health risks of those shots and to calculate the economic and educational losses caused by those decisions.

In fact, it now appears that we've not been told the truth about the safety of the childhood vaccines generally -- at least with the current scheduled amount of them.

During the 2016 presidential election, our government was actively using social media corporations to censor us, and only Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter (now X) exposed that vile conspiracy.

We were lied to about Joe Biden's mental capacity and actual engagement not only while he was running for reelection in 2024 but throughout his entire term as president of the United States.

We continue to be told by medical professionals, school administrators, teachers and others that men can become women, and vice versa, by force of will. We are told that toddlers can change their "gender" and that biological males have no physical advantage over females in sports. Families with children suffering with mental or emotional illness are manipulated and exploited, told that their children will commit suicide if not allowed to "transition," assisted by drugs that will destroy their future fertility, prevent adult sexual maturity and possibly exacerbate mental illness, and with surgeries that will mutilate or remove otherwise healthy body parts.

We have been told that retail theft on a widespread scale is "reparations," that rioting and burning are "mostly peaceful protests," that keeping criminals incarcerated is "racist," that allowing the homeless, the mentally ill and those with addictions to live out their horrors on public streets is "compassionate," and that opposing illegal immigration is selfish and xenophobic.

We have watched as the death of a drug addict is celebrated with thousands of news articles, elaborate funerals, a gold casket and weeping politicians, but an innocent young Ukrainian woman stabbed to death by a repeat felon on public transit doesn't even warrant a single story. (And when she does get news coverage, her death is downplayed by the legacy media as just clickbait for conservatives.)

America is polarized because the people and institutions we should be able to trust lie to us as a matter of course for their own benefit, and because anyone who tries to get to the truth and bring it to the attention of the public -- in fact, anyone with an opinion that runs counter to that of the elites is this country -- is denounced as a conspiracy theorist, a kook, a threat to "our democracy," to "public health" and to some people's very existence.

Please go read both articles and pray for Charlie Kirk's family and friends as they grieve. All death is tragic. But a murder is especially so.

Our Government Is Conducting a PsyOp...And We Are the Targets

 This is a particularly long one, so get a cup of coffee and have some time without any distractions.  You've been warned.

At Hot Air David Strom has an article entitled Is It Accurate To Say PsyOp? Naturally, Strom then goes on to prove by a preponderance of evidence all pointing in that direction, that indeed we have been lied to, gas lighted, frightened, indeed scared and sometimes terrified by design. So yes, PsyOp is an accurate description.

The fact is that governments both here and, in the UK, used official means and people whose job is to flood the zone with misinformation to lie to us about subjects such as COVID and climate change to get us to comply with policies that were not in our best interest. He also writes about the use of fear to stampede us into behavior that we would not normally have chosen.

Being an elderly individual, I have heard other people speak of being terrified about COVID.  "People are dying."  I have heard young people absolutely sure the world would end in 12 years.  The fact that they have been predicting the world would end in 12 years for the last 30 years made no difference.  Clearly people being this terrified are not thinking rationally.

It is not conspiracy theorizing to call it a PsyOp, because it is a PsyOp. They are even deploying psychological warfare officers in many cases, when they can justify it as they did during COVID.

There is a playbook. They employ that playbook. And you are the target. We can argue about whether they are doing it to benefit themselves or in a misguided attempt to help everybody, but there is no question that they are doing it.

Please, when you have the time, read the article by Strom and realize that fear is definitely NOT the best response. Instead, look to the people who benefit from scaring you, and respond by denying them the response they are nudging you toward.

The Province of Man and the Judgement of God

I listen to the Glenn Beck Show whenever I can, which is not a lot lately. But when I have heard him, he lately expressing doom for humanity because of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Others too have expressed alarm, including Elon Musk. Such people are far smarter than I am, so I take their warnings seriously.

And yet, I am not afraid of AI. Why? Because I have been granted something that others have not yet grasped, and which I will explain in a moment. Yesterday, at the American Thinker Robert Arvay had an interesting article explaining Why computers can never become conscious. I will let Arvay speak for himself here, because I am just a dumb old engineer, and metaphysics is not my specialty.

Consciousness is the only known phenomenon in the universe that observes itself.

It does so from within itself.

This fact is the one that the experts cannot explain in physical terms, and will never do so, because consciousness cannot be merely physical. It requires something more, something that no computer can ever have.

It is important to recognize that, whereas the outward form of consciousness can be measured by medical science, the inward experience of consciousness cannot.

Indeed, there is no completely satisfactory definition of inward consciousness.

As is consciousness itself, all definitions of consciousness are recursive. They use various synonyms of consciousness to define it. It is the property of being aware of one's own awareness. It is useless to define a word by using the word itself.

You see the problem, don't you? All attempts to define being consciousness defy our ability to define it. We know it when we see it or rather feel it.

Attempting to find consciousness in the brain is like trying to find music in a violin. Music requires a composer to write it, a musician to play it, and a listener to appreciate it.

The brain is the instrument of thought, not its source. Damaging the brain can damage consciousness, just like damaging the violin can decrease its usefulness as a musical instrument, but the violin is not the music itself.

Physical science is a wonderful tool for understanding the physical world, but the adage is apt: When one’s only tool is a hammer, every problem is seen as a nail. Physical science is not the problem, physicalism is. Scientists sometimes are. Physicalism involves the circular reasoning which says that everything in physics can be explained by physics.

The fact of consciousness breaks that circular trap. While physicalists might say that consciousness is an illusion, they cannot define what it is that is having that illusion. Can an illusion have an illusion?

Here Arvay introduces another term, physicalism, where one already exists, materialism. Science is the process by which we observe, hypothesize, and measure the physical universe. In other words, science is a process not a static thing. Engineers use the discoveries of science to manufacture things useful to mankind. Today this engineering is called technology, but from the first invention, perhaps it was a spear thrower, engineering and technology have been the same. Science can only measure the material world, but as noted, consciousness is an experience. How do you objectively measure an experience?

Consciousness requires us, unlike the rest of the animal world, to evaluate our behavior, our emotions, and to understand that there is good in the world, and there is bad, even evil. Our dogs have the ability to sense smells to which the human nose is completely insensitive. Yet dogs do not distinguish between good smells and bad ones. They are all alike to them signals to various behaviors that again are all alike, neither good nor bad.

In the same way, we have music, though there is no evolutionary reason to make music. We can distinguish between "good" music and "bad" music both on technical grounds and by the messages the lyrics carry. You may not have thought of it, so universal is our ability to make and appreciate music. Indeed, music is like another language we all know to one degree or another. Dennis Prager has said that music is evidence of our creator and I have to agree. And it is here then that I give my reason for hope: man is greater than the things made by man, just as God is greater than his creation.

Man has always had a certain tendency to idolatry, to chasing after the next shiny thing. But our Creator, God, is greater and more powerful than anything on this earth. To worship, on the one hand, or to fear the things that man has made is idolotry. Computers are tools, nothing more. Yes, they may do things that humans do such as make art, but it is human directed and strictly derivative. They can write music, but as with art, strictly derivative. They can even play music perfectly with perfect timing, which no human has ever done, but it is not their own.

Please read Arvay's article and realize that AI is just another tool. It portends great things for society and great evil as well. But it doesn't know either one. That is the province of man and the judgement of God.

Update:  Here is another take on AI from Arthur Schaper at the American Thinker entitled AI Gloom Is Still Unfounded.

The Arrogance of Bill Gates

At Townhall.com today, Alan Joseph Bauer has an article, which title has a double meaning: Gates of Hell.

Jesus, the only one who has been there and thus would know, tells us that Hell is like a lake of fire. It seems that the Most Holy God sends bad people there. That is the Sunday School version. Actually, each of us decides, by our behavior in this life, whether we want to be close to God or not. Those who do obey his commands. For those who do not, God in his mercy, sends them farther away from him. The gates of hell have been described as being locked from the inside. The inhabitants could get out any time they wanted, but they don't want to get out.

Bauer, however, is writing not about the afterlife, but the here and now. He is writing about the hell on earth Bill Gates, through is foundation, wants to bring to people in this life. Bauer doesn't have anything against Gates for his money, nor for how he earned it. Rather, it is how Gates is using his vast wealth to force onto people things they did not, and in many cases would not ask for. Unlike his Microsoft products, he couldn't get people to buy into much of what he wants to force on us. But it is for our own good, you see. We, like little children, just don't know what is good for us.

There are certain individuals in our generation who wish to remake the world order built up over 80 years since World War II.

I attended Harvard a decade after Bill Gates studied there and then left to set up Microsoft. One advantage of religion is that a religious person generally sees himself as small and imperfect, with an omnipotent God over him and running the world. Such a view is completely independent of how smart and/or accomplished the person may be. There are those who are not religious but who believe that they display such brains and insights that they should be the ones running the show. Bill Gates is one such person.

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Bill Gates has assumed that his brains and wealth allow him to change the world in which we live. He invested heavily via his foundation in healthcare—vaccines—where he described his returns as 20:1 ($10 billion to $200 billion). He funds the WHO and his foundation funded “Event 201” which simulated a Covid pandemic—in October of 2019, around the time of virus release in China. He is the largest owner of farmland in the U.S. and it is not to grow cattle. He wishes to get rid of cows on the flimsy claim that their flatulence and burping are a direct threat to the future well-being of mankind. He wishes to replace beef-based proteins with cricket-based alternatives. He is associated with plans for cloud engineering to reduce solar impact on Earth.

Did you ask for any of this? Neither did I. Bauer brings up George Soros as another who thinks that because he is wealthy, no matter how he got it, he should therefore be able to rule the rest of us. But ultimately, there is only One who has the "right" to rule anybody. He has that right because He created us.  That one is the Most High God. All others have only such right as we, after prayerful consideration, give them. Moreover, it is not an unlimited right but only includes such powers as we give them for such terms as we say. This is why I say that our Constitutional limited government was inspired by God.

In Romans chapter 13, St. Paul tells us to obey authorities because they are appointed by God. St. Paul doesn't say so, but I think he is talking about those authorities who perform their duties within the bounds of God's commands. Why? Because when the kings of Israel and Judah go off the rails, God becomes so upset with them that he sends Assyria and Babylon to destroy them. Meanwhile, Gates and Soros have not been appointed by God or anyone else. They have just only appointed themselves. How arrogant.

Nationwide Constitutional Carry?

 By sending the National Guard troops into Washington D.C, Trump has already proven that the high crime rates of Democrat cities is a choice made by Democrats.  It doesn't have to be that way.  At the American Thinker today, Mike McDaniel discusses the idea of nationwide concealed carry reciprocity, which would greatly help in lowering the crime rate in various blue cities. His article can be found at Concealed carry reciprocity: a conscious choice?

Concealed carry reciprocity (CCR) is a simple concept. Anyone with a concealed carry permit issued by any American state can carry concealed in every state, subject to the specific laws of each state. It’s rather like a driver’s license with one major difference: the right to keep and bear arms—the Second Amendment—is an express, unalienable, natural right. The Second Amendment doesn’t invent or grant it. It merely recognizes it. That right existed long before America and the Constitution existed and will exist as long as human beings exist. Government cannot legitimately take it away or infringe on it.

I know, I know. There are infringements on the Second Amendment. They don’t invalidate our God-given right but do somewhat restrict it, though arguably less now than even eight months ago. I don’t argue the point, but I have only about 800 words with which to work and must keep my theme narrowly focused.

CCR ought to be a universal no-brainer, but it’s not. At the moment, because there is no constitutional, national standard, individual states must write compacts with other states to establish limited CCR. The majority of states do; others—mostly blue--refuse. The District of Columbia does its worst to keep honest residents from so much as owning guns. It’s certainly not going to go for CCR, and I doubt anyone is certain exactly how that process under home rule would differ from state-to-state CCR.

If driver’s licenses are universally honored and so are marriage licenses, as are a great many other licenses and legal documents, why shouldn’t a document upholding an express, unalienable, constitutional right be so honored? To normal, sane Americans it’s a rhetorical question; the answer is obvious. To Democrats, the answer is also obvious, though opposite that of the sane. It’s also usually expressed in spittle-slinging screams and obscenities.

Apparently, Trump has ordered that the processing of concealed carry permits should be faster. Indeed, he has ordered that they should only take 5 days! That exceeds North Carolina's and Virginia's times which are 90 days. Still, I can't see why, in this day and age with computerized crime records, that it should take 90 days to confirm if a person has a criminal record. Indeed, if the National Instance Criminal Background System (NICS) can spit out a request within minutes, why does it take so long for states to issue a permit? And if a person clears this hurdle, the state should issue him a licence on the spot.

McDaniel gets a bit ahead of himself speculating on permit less carry, or Constitutional carry. The idea is that if one can otherwise possess a weapon, in other words if one is not prohibited from owning or possessing a weapon, one can carry it with some exceptions pretty much anywhere. He points out that North Carolina is poised to become the 30th state to "allow" permit less carry. I say "allow" because everyone knows that criminals already carry without a permit. They are seldom prosecuted for it. Still, I am not holding my breath, as our "Republican" legislators have failed us many times before. They could have passed it with a veto proof majority last year but failed to do so. I am not convinced this time it is not to sucker gun owners again, sort of like Lucy pulling the football just as Charly Brown is set to connect.

While I would like to see nationwide concealed carry reciprocity, there are problems with it. It is not the be all and end all. The problem, of course, is that the government would have a record of every concealed permit holder in every state. Could that be used as a form of registration? You bet it could. But it is a good first step on the way back to nationwide Constitutional carry.

Hands Off Our Dogs

Today, at Townhall.com Guy Benson has an article entitled Stay the Hell Away From Our Dogs, Radical Environmentalists. It seems that dogs eat meat (clutching pearls and heading to fainting couch.) Radical environmentalists believe, contrary to science, that the production of animals for meat creates greenhouse gas. What the environmentalists apparently don't know is that rather than creating new carbon dioxide, ruminant animals like cows and sheep are merely recycling existing CO2. In fact, ruminant animals actually protect and improve the land if managed correctly.

Meanwhile dogs are indeed man's best friend. I have three of them.

Film critic Sonny Bunch observed years ago that radical environmentalists make excellent movie villains. They are fanatically ideological, they prize notions of green "justice" over the wellbeing, comfort, happiness, and even lives of human beings. And they are gallingly and insufferably self-righteous in their extremism. What's not to loathe? Beyond the fictions of the silver screen, it really does seem as though this category of real world ghouls and grinches go out of their way to alienate normal people as aggressively and obnoxiously as possible. Think about their pointless and performative "protests" that hurl food products at priceless pieces of art, or interrupt theater performances, or block traffic. The latter tactic is particularly grating and dangerous because it can keep people away from their jobs, their children, and even from needed medical attention. But the true-life villains don't care. They have tunnel vision, and they cannot be budged. They actively undermine their own cause in the process, but they also don't seem to care about that. It's a nihilistic movement, much like the "pro-Palestine" cause (there is, of course, large overlap within that dirtbag coalition).

Of all the off-putting stunts they pull, and lectures they deliver, I'm not sure any could match the self-destructiveness of telling human beings that they shouldn't have dogs as pets -- "for the planet," of course. I cannot imagine a faster way to get a wider array of people to extend double middle fingers than to come after Man's Best Friend, but that's what they're doing. Never change, enviros. You're doing great, sweeties. Also, stay the hell away from our dogs, you monsters:

"It turns out many Americans aren't great at identifying which personal decisions contribute most to climate change. A study recently published by the National Academy of Sciences found that when asked to rank actions, such as swapping a car that uses gasoline for an electric one, carpooling or reducing food waste, participants weren’t very accurate when assessing how much those actions contributed to climate change, which is caused mostly by the release of greenhouse gases that happen when fuels like gasoline, oil and coal are burned. The top three individual actions that help the climate, including avoiding plane flights, choosing not to get a dog and using renewable electricity, were also the three that participants underestimated the most. Meanwhile, the lowest-impact actions were changing to more efficient appliances and swapping out light bulbs, recycling, and using less energy on washing clothes.

Like Benson, I will not be complying with this nonsense. Probably, at least half of gentle readers have dogs, and know what I am saying here. Dogs are excellent companions.  When you come home, the dogs are already at the door, glad to greet you.  They, unlike your best friend, love you unconditionally.  They are around you and guard you when you are sleeping.  Of course, they alert you to the approach of strangers, which is very valuable out here in the country.  As Benson says at the conclusion, "keep your grubby, ideological hands of our dogs."

Choose Wisely

At the American Thinker Mike McDaniel reminisces about his career teaching English to high school and college students. He points to the obvious, that man can not prevent God from entering anyplace He likes, including schools in God has never left American schools. He calls out an aphorism that is both funny and true: "so long as there is algebra, there will always be prayer in schools."  His point though, and it is a good one, is that understanding religion is a part of a complete education.  You don't have to push any belief on students to give them such an understanding, but it is important to at least acknowledge the impact it has had on their lives.

Conservatives often complain that God has been removed from schools and demand He be reinstalled. Amusing that anyone might imagine the Almighty must allow leftists to do anything or that He can’t defend Himself. God is omnipresent; He’s everywhere always.

It is amusing. But as people, often caught up in the events of the day, it may seem that God has abandoned us. God, after all, doesn't need man, but man needs God. Don't believe me? Look to the Old Testament, particularly the books of 1 & 2 Samuel, the books of 1 & 2 Kings, and 1 & 2 Chronicles. For that matter, how many times did God get the Israelites out of scrapes in Exodus?

But McDaniel is correct that many school districts take these things too far, believing they will somehow avoid lawsuits by parents and crazy atheists.  For more on that, read below.  They can't, so stop trying and just obey the law.  McDaniel gives us a brief on just what can be taught in public schools and what cannot:

There’s no doubt most American educators tend to the left. Even some that don’t aren’t fully aware of the law and the Constitution, and out of an overabundance of caution are sometimes overly restrictive of student’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. Here’s what is lawfully proscribed in schools:

*Teachers can’t proselytize. They can’t advocate for religion or try to convert their students.

*Students can’t worship in disruptive ways. They can’t roll out their prayer rugs and begin to pray in math class, nor can they jump up in the middle of a class to call down the wrath of God on their evil English teacher.

*Teachers cannot mandate prayer or lead students in prayer. If they think that’s their job, they’re in the wrong profession.

Students can do pretty much everything else. They can certainly read the Bible or any other religious book as long as they’re not doing that instead of classwork. I maintained a small library in my classroom, which included at least four different versions of the Bible and multiple books on theology.

Schools can teach the Bible as literature, even history, but not as the one, true way. My Texas high school English Department offered an elective on the literature of the Bible. It never lacked for kids. In the mythology classes I taught, comparative theology was always a part. Teaching literature in general and American literature in particular, it’s essential to speak of the role of Christianity in the founding of Western Civilization and America. How can one understand the people of the past without knowing the beliefs that shaped them—and us? That’s true of any competent English or World History class, and it’s entirely lawful and appropriate, again so long as teachers don’t take the opportunity of a captive student audience to proselytize.

The Bible tells a story and you should understand that story in order to understand our founding. You don't have to believe it, though. The Koran also tells a story, and it is a different story than the Bible tells.  You don't have to believe that story either, but it explains events in our history.  I would point out as well that the God of the Bible, and the "god" of the Koran are two very different persons. Like voting, there is no middle ground. To choose not to decide is to decide. Everyone must choose. Choose wisely.