Taking Our Country Back

Years ago, I remember a commenter who was responding to an anti-gunner who had made a statement that, and I paraphrase here, those who wanted to own guns should move to a country where it was legal.  It was an outrageously ignorant statement and I remember that the commenter responded "Well, when I was born, it was legal to own guns here.  I didn't change, the country changed around me."  I can't help but feel that sentiment is true about almost every detail of life.  The United States I was born into is no longer where I live, though I have not moved.

And we may be heading for a showdown.

Robert Arvay again has a post at the American Thinker entitled Is the USA Headed For a Violent Revolt in 2020? in which he makes the case that the two sides are so divided and so distrustful of the other that either way the vote comes out, the other will cry foul. His analysis seems to me to be spot on. Arvay goes back to basic principles, and notes that the two sides, designated "right" and "left" have fundamental philosophies that can not be reconciled by a compromise. One side inevitably loses in any compromise. There are no win-win compromises available that will satisfy.

In 2019, we have for many years been witnessing the growing divide between two opposing political philosophies, loosely termed "right" and "left" or conservative and liberal, but the names do not capture the real cores of the two sides. Essentially, the right believes in individuality, the Left in collectivism.

Read the entire post. Be prepared. I suspect things will get worse before they get better, if they ever do get better.

Sumatra Maitra, over at The Federalist explains why we need to disengage from the Middle East, and our small wars in Whocaresistan, and bring our troops home to secure our border. His latest piece is entitled The Nations In America's Backyard Are Falling Apart While U. S. Remains Stuck In The Middle East. Again go and read Maitra's thoughtful piece.

Read it? Good.

Now, here is why I have I believe these two pieces belong together.  The Left is proceeding apace to take over this country by any means necessary. They are using the Courts as a way to rewrite the laws as they see fit. They are using their supremacy in the education bureaucracy to indoctrinate your children, and they are doing a very good job of turning out incredibly ignorant people who will vote for them. And they are replacing traditional Americans with horders of Third
Worlders who have no respect for, or understanding of, our system of government.  Now, lest someone accuse me of being a xenophobe, let me state that I am all for legal immigration, but strictly against illegal immigration.  A proper reform of our immigration laws would recognize that those coming into our country must have something of value to add to our already accomplished population.

Please remember that our system grew up organically from very ancient roots in the Viking tribes that established the English world. Remember that England was a land over run by first the Celts, then the Anles, Saxons, and Jutes (from Denmark and Northern Germany) and then the Norman invasion. But the Normans were actually the Vikings who invaded France a generation before. Our unique form of government grew out of these cultural roots. One can not simply "give" another an understanding of and appreciation for our unique system. It is complex, and requires much from the governed. As we are learning, even people long accustomed to it do not always appreciate it.

If we can cut off the Left's supply of new voters, and put Trump in for another 4 years, to change the judiciary sufficiently, we might just stand a chance.  Our next task is to retake the educational system.  The purpose of a liberal education is to teach a child how to think, not what to think.  We need more institutes of higher learning like Hillsdale College.

Indeed, if we do not take back our country today, we may not be able to take it back tomorrow.

There Ought To Be a Law...

I have commented in the past that the justice system often perversely delivers injustice to Americans.  There are literally too many laws, and often enough a new law just makes an older crime illegaller than it already was.  Such redundancy serves to make the law confusing to the people trying to obey it.  I remember teaching a session on compliance with asbestos laws to Navy compliance officers.  One of the things I stressed was that every base was different, in that there were Federal, State, and often local laws, that had to be simultaneously satisfied.  Redundancy of the laws on asbestos meant that in some cases, the laws may work to cross purposes, which would leave the hapless compliance officer with a conundrum.

In the years since, the justice system has only become more degraded.  The abundance of laws has made the normal American a potential criminal at every stage.  As an example, there are already laws on the books making it illegal to drive distracted.  It doesn't matter what distracts a driver, whether it is tuning the radio, answering a cell phone, eating a McDonald's biscuit, or putting on makeup.  So, making it illegal specifically to text while driving is just making that one thing even more illegaller.  It is already illegal if it distracts.

As adults, we should be able to make a determination that we should not answer the phone if we are in heavy traffic, or we need our full attention on the road and our driving.  Making laws like these simply infantalizes the population.  It sends the message that without Big Brother, we couldn't possibly make a decision in our own best interests.

Today at the American Thinker, Robert Arvay has a post entitled How America's Justice System Is Beginning To Crumble. Of course, our justice system is crumbling because in many cases, high ranking individuals, particularly Democrats, seem to get away with things for which lesser personages are put in prison for long terms. But Arvay is not talking about these sorts of injustices. Instead, he is writing about every day criminal justice practices that need serious reform. Things like plea bargaining, for example, or the fact that prosecutors often have seemingly unlimited budgets versus defendants that are often bankrupted defending themselves.

Arvay doesn't offer any solutions in this post.  But I can think of some.  If, after spending the time, and the expense of bringing in expert witnesses, other than the police, and the prosecution still can not secure a conviction, the state should have to pay the defendants costs of defend himself.  There are other things that may make the justice system more fair.

To use the bridge analogy, once a bridge has become visibly and seriously corroded, the need for repair does not require an expert to call attention to it. In the case of the justice system, most of us can recognize its glaring problems and can offer useful suggestions for remedy. The danger signs are obvious and ominous. In many cases, the remedy is suggested merely by identifying the problem and admitting that it is a serious defect in the system. This is the age of "see something, say something," and more of us need to get involved.

At one time we took pride in the fact that our system was designed such that we were more likely to let a guilty man go free rather than put an innocent man in jail. Today, more and more, that doesn't seem the case.

Too often the innocent are encouraged to plead guilty to a lesser crime rather than risk being prosecuted for a more serious one and going to prison for a long term. Then there are prosecutors who seemingly make their reputation by getting convictions, either by hook or by crook. In the 2006 Duke Lacrosse case, prosecutor Mike Nifong attempted to railroad the accused Duke team in an attempt I am sure of getting noticed for a higher office. Fortunately for these young men, their parents had plenty of money and eventually they prevailed.  In this instance, eventually the AG Cooper intervened to declare that the Duke players were innocent and Nifong was disbarred.  But this doesn't happen nearly enough.  Indeed, it was the first time in North Carolina history.

Prosecutors need to again see their part in the justice system as achieving true justice, which means arriving as close as possible to the truth.  The legal profession needs to hold prosecutors to a higher standard of conduct in providing exculpatory information that comes into their possession, and severely censor them when they don't.  Finally, the state should have to pay the cost of defense when someone who has been prosecuted has been found innocent.  Such would make the prosecutors less eager to pursue marginal cases. 

Oh, and the next time someone says "There ought to be a law",,, 

What the Left Really Wants

Apparently I must again address what is real versus what is the Left's magical thinking.  Just as a Rutgers University professor of "gender studies" claimed that the cause of fat black women was due to racism.  Of course, it is no such thing.  Instead, as I posted, fat black women, like fat white women and fat Latin women, and indeed, fat people everywhere, are fat becuase of their diets.

Today, I noted that the Seattle School District has determined, against all evidence to the contrary, that mathematics is a tool of oppression of minorities according to a post at The American Thinker by Eric Utter. This claim indicates a profound misunderstanding of just what mathematics is. As an engineer, in acquiring my major, I necessarily acquired a minor in mathematics because of the amount of math necessary to perform as an engineer. Math is entirely neutral in terms of politics, in terms of race, national origin, sexual orientation, or any other way of dividing us that the Left may invent. The concept of "Western mathematics" is also utterly and profoundly wrongheaded.

I will not quote the article, as I usually do.  Gentle readers can read the article for themselves.  Instead, I want to point out that progressives who espouse these trash theories are doing a huge disservice to those for whom they claim to be working.  Mathematics is the means by which we can understand how the physical phenomena that make up our lives actually work.

Think about the many electronic devices you use daily.  The components that make up the circuits in your smart phone, your computer, your television or radio are all defined by mathematics.  Where are you reading this article?  If it is inside, look up and note that the roof was designed by an engineer using mathematics and science.  Indeed, the definition of an engineer is one who applies science to solve practical problems.  When you got up this morning, one of the first things you did no doubt was to open the water tap to pour yourself some water.  The entire chain of pipes, valves, pumps, and storage tanks are defined by mathematics and the science of hydraulics.

I can also tellyou that mathematics is universal, being the same at every point in the universe.  2 + 2 always equals 4, no matter where you are.  Historians of mathematics will know that the Europeans learned algebra from the Arabs, who had developed it as a way to further their mercantile efforts.  As the saying goes, unless you know your numbers, you don't know your business.  Europeans, however were more interested in finding ways to discover how God's creation worked, believing in the Christian idea of a rational God.  Slowly, they discovered more and deeper mathematics as they discovered more and more of the inner workings of God's creation.  Issac Newton is credited with discovering the calculus as a way to describe his laws of motion and gravity.

Light travels at a speed of approximately 186,000 miles every second.  Compared to light, we are essentially standing still.  Even traveling at the sound barrier as some jet airplanes can do, we are still essentially standing still.  Newton's laws it turns out are not themselves universal.  Einstein updated Newton by making it more general to include things that travel at or close to the speed of light.  This discovery has unlocked the world of subatomic particles, and shown us yet more, and more amazing parts of God's great and amazing creation.

The Left constantly claims that they are on the side of science, but how can a person rightly be "on the side of" something of which he has no understanding.  It is also true that the Left has a well deserved antipathy to the Christian and Jewish religion.  Perhaps this attack on mathematics is a reflection of the fact that the Left has always wanted to make the world as it thinks it should be rather than as it is. The Left has always promised a Utopia, a heaven on Earth.  The Bible tells us though, that Utopia can't exist, that such a thing is impossible until Christ comes again, which explains the Left's antipathy.

Just as the Left promotes the notion that one can change one's gender by declaring it to be so, just as the claim that abortion is not murder, or that the fact of climate change is due to  a gas that makes up a mere 4 parts per million parts, or 0.0004% of the atmosphere.  Seem silly?  If they understood mathematics and science, it wouldn't pass the smell test of most of our citizens.  But maybe that is what the Left actually wants.

Racism Has Nothing To Do With Being Fat

So, a black professor of gender studies at Rutgers University has claimed, according to Fox News, that black women are disproportionately fat because of racism.

Wait...What?

Now, I'm a sixty something white male who has had to battle the bulge all my life, and I can tell this professor of "gender studies" which isn't actually a thing, that the reason she and a disproportionate number of others of all races are fat is because of what they stuff in their mouths.  The "epidemic" of obesity that is plaguing the United States has everything to do with the diet most of us eat, and nothing to do with racism.

For many years I was on the Atkins diet and its variations such as the Protein Power diet. There's also the paleo diet. What these diets have in common is that they are supposedly "ketogenic." Ketones are the results of the breakdown of fats into smaller units that your body can use for energy. Your brain especially likes to use ketones above all other sources of energy. These diets work in theory, up to a point.  But they usually stop working before you get down to your goal weight.  Why this happens is the "rest of the story" below.

The problem with these so called ketogenic diets is that they all share the fear of fats with which we have all been indoctrinated.  The Protein Power diet should have been called the "Eat Fat and Lose" diet.  That's the first thing.  But not all fats are good for you.  Vegetable oils sch as corn oil and peanut oil are a no no.  On the other hand, you should eat plenty of olive oil, coconut oil, medium chain triglycerides (MCT) oil and ghee.  In fact, Dr. Steven Gundry (see below) says that the main purpose of eating anything is to get as much olive oil in your mouth as you can.

Your body can either run on glucose, or it can run on fats.  Your body can store about 24 hours worth of glucose, at which time if it doesn't get more food, it must switch over to burning fats.  The fats that it burns, of course are stored on your body, and you have easily a weeks worth or more.  Indeed, eating quality fats is key to getting into ketosis and staying there.  But once in ketosis, your hunger subsides, and you find you don't need as much food as you thought you did. 

The other thing is that you can, and should eat a lot of vegetables and even some carbohydrates.  The plants you should be eating include a variety of vegetables such as lettuce, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, as well as more esoteric vegetables such as fennel.  On the other hand, you shouldn't eat grain and grain products such as bread, corn bread, cereals, including oatmeal.  Nor should you eat fruits except in season, and then only in very limited amounts.  Oh, and none of the nightshade family, which includes regular potatoes, and tomatoes.

The breakthrough for me came when I read a book by Dr.Steven Gundry entitled The Plant Paradox. Gundry claims to have found the answers. I suspect he has found maybe 90% of the answer to obesity. But that 90% means after all these years, I have lost 62 pounds and counting. More important, I have especially lost fat in the intestinal area.

The secret that Gundry discovered was the effect of lectins.  Lectins are the plant kingdoms form of chemical warfare.  Lectins are the way plants protect themselves and more especially their seeds from being eaten.  Lectins cause havoc in the human gut, causing "leaky gut," and limiting absorption of nutrients.  Taken with eating grains, which have a high lectin load of their own, and the meats we typically eat being fed grains as well, it's no wonder we are all getting fatter and fatter.  Then there is the fact that insulin has the function of storing fat when the cells in your body when the cells in the body are already full of glucose.

So, there you have it.  Eat more quality fats, eat more of the types of vegetables that contain less lectins, eat less meats, and get rid of processed foods.  Racism has nothing to do with it.

It Is Looking Like Civil War in Mexico

Today, at The Federalist John Daniel Davidson has an article entitled A Drug Cartel Just Defeated The Mexican Military In Battle. You may have heard about this on the news. In the city of Culiacan, the capitol of Sinaloa Province, the Mexican military and the cartel had a major battle, in which the cartel defeated the military. Now this is in a country where, according to law, nobody is supposed to have guns. There is one gun store in the entire country, located in Mexico City. Civilians can not own a gun which fires any round that has been adopted by a police agency or a military anywhere in the world, which pretty much means they are confined to .22 Long Rifle, and .38 Super Auto. So much for the public safety claims of the gun grabbers.

Armed with military-grade weapons and driving custom-built armored vehicles, cartel henchmen targeted security forces throughout Culiacan, launching more than one dozen separate attacks on Mexican security forces. They captured and held hostage eight soldiers, then kidnapped their families. Amid the fighting, an unknown number of inmates escaped from a nearby prison. At least eight people were killed and more than a dozen were injured.

The eight-hour battle ended when government forces, outgunned and surrounded, without reinforcements or a way to retreat, received an order directly from Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to release their prisoner and surrender. Lopez Obrador later defended this decision, insisting that his security strategy is working and saying, “Many people were at risk and it was decided to protect people’s lives. I agreed with that, because we don’t do massacres, that’s over.”

Now, while the Democrats and the squishy Republicans are decrying President Trump's decision to pull out of yet another endless war in Syria, where our national interests are at best fuzzy, here we have a collapsing state right on our Southern border, and if past is prologue, the current civil war in Mexico is likely to spill over and affect Americans.  Ranchers living along the Texas border might need those AR-15s.

I am sure that Trump is not among the gentle readers of this blog, but if I were in his position, I would ask the the Acting SecDef review plans for defending the Southern border and begin implementing movement of supplies and other logistics to the nearest bases along that border, with building up of men (and women, of course) as we can see more clearly the likely outcome.  As for where to obtain the men, why the Middle East looks like a good place.

Meanwhile, for those who are gentle readers, as always, you are your own first responders. Keep your powder dry.

Christians Need To Speak Up, Or Lose the Right To Speak

I didn't watch the Democrat Presidential debates, but I did hear the advertisement put on by the Freedom From Religion Foundation that ran during the debate.  I heard it on the radio the next day and I was appalled.  There is no Constitutional right to not hear or see anything related to God or religion. Indeed, the Constitution, rightly understood, allows each of us to practice his or her religion as his or her consceince may require. That may mean those who do not want to participate may hear prayers being said. They don't have to participate.

Interestingly, Tom Trinko today at the  American Thinker in an article entitled Atheists Call For Establishing Atheism As The National Religion makes the point that atheism itself is a religion. He makes a case for the notion that atheists live by faith just as much as those who believe in the God of Creation, but with less evidence or reason.

The FFRF works hard to impose its faith-based beliefs on America by using dishonest judges to exclude people of faith from the public square. They're constantly suing to end voluntary prayer in public settings. They apparently believe that the 3% of Americans who are atheist have the right to never hear anything religious, and the 84-plus percent of Americans who are religious have to shut up and sit down as a result.

The reality is that atheism is based on pure blind faith and hence is a faith-based belief system just like every other religion.

Atheism is a faith-based belief system because while atheists lack a belief in God, their position depends on them believing a number of other things that they can't prove to be true, including:

- God is unlikely — they use that to reject all evidence for God, saying it's not good enough. We don't have free will — Professor Hawking has shown that if there is no God, then we can't have free will, but we know that we do have free will.

- Everything in the universe can be explained by purely physical causes — science is a process, and it says nothing about what it will or won't explain, so this is a purely blind, faith-based claim. But if there is anything in the universe that isn't based on purely physical things there must be a god of some sort.

- The Bible is wrong — atheists can't prove that the accounts by men who died under torture rather than deny that they saw Jesus rise from the dead is wrong; they can only have blind faith that it is wrong.

- All of the miracles in the past 2,000 years are fake — given that atheist scientists and doctors have declared that multiple miracles are inexplicable, this atheist belief is based on faith, not facts.

While Trinko is concerned about our Constitutional rights, which it is true are based on the fact that they are inalienable, given to use by our Creator. They can not be taken from us by any man, or government. Indeed, when a government attempts to deny these rights, that government becomes illegitimate, and subject to being overthrown by the people.

The idea that men, not God, are the source of our rights can lead to unimaginable horror. Both slavery and the Holocaust were the results of the government defining certain human beings to not be persons and hence to not have rights. So long as we believe that our rights are from God, then we know that government can't revoke them.

But if the FFRF and the Democrats win and all our rights are suddenly not inalienable, we will be headed down a very dangerous path, with the freedom of groups of Americans existing only so long as the political party in power supports those rights.

However, my concern is of course my rights, but more important is my need to follow what I believe to be the Biblical form of Christianity. The Democrats have said that if a church does not go along with the LGBTQxyz agenda, or abortion, or indeed any of the left's ever changing agenda, there will be consequences.  No doubt those consequences will become more severe as they discover that the tax codes will not scare us sufficiently.

But noting that the final books of the Bible were written within 60 years of the Crucifixion, it can not be changed.  Oh, surely some people try to "reinterpret" the Biblical truth just as some judges try to "reinterpret" the Constitution.  But neither can be held to be legitimate.  The Bible can not be changed, and the Constitution can only be changed by the methods written into that document.

Please go read the whole article.  It is well worth your time.

Changing courses slightly, Tim Wildmon has an article article at  Townhall.com entitled Five Truths Most Americans Are Afraid to Say. These truths include that God matters, that Absolute Truth matters, that Strong Marriages and Families matter, that the Bible matters, and that the Church matters.

These things do indeed matter. If more of the people believe these things, the culture survives. If they cease to believe that these Truths matter, God is quite willing to let the culture go its own way. There is always, of course, a remnant who cling to the Bible and their churches. But God wants a relationship with His people, and if someone doesn't want a relationship, God will not force it. He will find someone else.

In the Old Testament, when a country falls, it's fall is attributed to God.  God withdraws his support for those nations who do not seek God's will.  But God is also merciful, and as the Prophet Jonah found out, if a country repents, God spares that country.

We Christians need to speak up, or we may lose the right to speak up. 

Red Flag Laws are Dangerous and Unconstitutional

Yesterday, at the American Thinker Daniel John Sobieski convincingly explained that Beto Would Risk Another Waco. But before gettin ino that, he provided a bit of background of which you should be aware.

 For example, the Democrats specifically excluded gangbangers from their proposed red flag laws. Why? The police certainly have more on gangbangers than on random law abiding citizens. Yet the Democrats don't want to take away gang members weapons. They want to take away law abiding citizens's guns.  Again, why, if the goal is to get guns out of the hands of dangerous killers?

Then there is the dangerous possibility at any time that an innocent citizen will be killed during a police raid to carry out a court order to confiscate a citizen's guns.  This has already happened when police knocked on Gary Willis's door at 5:17 am.  Willis answered the door with a gun, as who wouldn't?  One isn't usually awakened at 5:17 am by a knock on one's door.  And while police no doubt announced themselves, we have all heard of bad guys claiming to be police to gain entry.  In the ensuing confusion - remember that Willis had no knowledge that he had been "red flagged" by a relative - police killed Willis.  Democrats evidently view his death as a feature, not a bug.

So, of course readers will be aware of Beto's outspoken desire to confiscate not only semiautomatic rifles like the AR-15, but really all firearms.  Presumably, looking to England, eventually he would also want to ban knives.  But what is he going to do about fists, feet, and rocks?  Ban those too?  Here is Beto in an interview with Joe Scarborough as reported at Townhall.com

Presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke said "there have to be consequences" for gun owners who do not surrender their AR-15s, which would include police going to their homes and confiscating them.

The former Democratic Texas congressman was pressed by "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough on Wednesday after the fourth Democratic presidential debate.

"OK, but let’s just assume there’s a rancher in Texas that doesn’t, that says, 'I’m not going to do this because this is an unjust law and it’s unconstitutional.' What’s the next step? I think that’s what we need to concede because there will be people that don’t turn the guns back in. What’s the next step for the federal government there?" Scarborough asked.

"Yeah, I think just as in any law that is not followed or flagrantly abused, there have to be consequences or else there is no respect for the law," O'Rourke replied. "So you know, in that case I think there would be a visit by law enforcement to recover that firearm and to make sure that it is purchased, bought back so that it cannot be potentially used against somebody else."

Putting it all together, it is clear that the Democrats are not the least bit concerned about the one or tow people with guns killing others, but with the 80 million innocent gun owners who didn't kill anyone. Why is that? Not being a Democrat, I can only speculate, but I suspect from reading the tea leaves on other things they are pushing, that they realize they can not achieve them while gun owners have a potential veto. But, you say, what does any of this have to do with Waco? Allow me to quote again:

Beto’s response to Scarborough is frightening on multiple levels and harkens the mind back to the day when a group of bitter clingers assembled in Waco, Texas. They were perceived to be a threat, and the guns they possessed were said to be illegally and/or dangerous. In what may be called an early application of a red flag confiscation order, government agents laid siege to their compound followed by an assault that resulted in the deaths of 76 men, women and children on April 19, 1993.

The Republicans are often described as the Stupid Party. The Democrats, on the other hand, have become the party of evil. They have embraced celebrating abortion, the killing of innocent children for the convenience of the mother. They have embraced a religion of earth worship, and have claimed that if we don't do something about climate change now, we will go extinct in 12 years. They have convinced an entire generation of children of this ridiculous idea. That is child abuse. While I am inclined to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, until these people repent, I can not vote for them, and I hope gentle readers will also not vote for them.