One Wonders What’s Left In The Biden Brain…

 MAY 26, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at PowerLine:

BIDEN SHOOTING BLANKS (AGAIN)

Yesterday at the White House executive-order signing ceremony commemorating the death of George Floyd, President Biden unleased a false bromide that he has often repeated (transcript here):

I spent my career, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee and as Vice President, working for commonsense gun reforms — as I said, as a senator and a Vice President.

While they clearly will not prevent every tragedy, we know certain ones will have significant impact and have no negative impact on the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment is not absolute. When it was passed, you couldn’t own a — you couldn’t own a cannon, you couldn’t own certain kinds of weapons. It’s just — there’s always been limitations.

Jonathan Turley notes several previous occasions on which Biden has shot off this falsehood “that many of us have corrected in the past,” as he did here last month on April 12. Today he reiterates his research:

Once again, there were no federal laws barring cannon ownership when the Second Amendment was enacted. Gun laws remained local matters and I do not know of any bans on cannons or other gun types until much later in our history. Early local laws did control concealed weapons, though concealed cannons were not part of those ordinances.

Indeed, the Constitution itself supports private cannon ownership in the case of privateers. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 allows Congress to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.” That allowed private parties to privateer on the high seas with . . . cannons.

Its almost funny. As Ed Driscoll put it at Instapundit on a previous Biden misfire this past February: “The gaslighting will continue until morale improves.”

The Disappearing Of AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL!

MAY 26, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at PowerLine:

BIDEN SHOOTING BLANKS (AGAIN)

Yesterday at the White House executive-order signing ceremony commemorating the death of George Floyd, President Biden unleased a false bromide that he has often repeated (transcript here):

I spent my career, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee and as Vice President, working for commonsense gun reforms — as I said, as a senator and a Vice President.

While they clearly will not prevent every tragedy, we know certain ones will have significant impact and have no negative impact on the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment is not absolute. When it was passed, you couldn’t own a — you couldn’t own a cannon, you couldn’t own certain kinds of weapons. It’s just — there’s always been limitations.

Jonathan Turley notes several previous occasions on which Biden has shot off this falsehood “that many of us have corrected in the past,” as he did here last month on April 12. Today he reiterates his research:

Once again, there were no federal laws barring cannon ownership when the Second Amendment was enacted. Gun laws remained local matters and I do not know of any bans on cannons or other gun types until much later in our history. Early local laws did control concealed weapons, though concealed cannons were not part of those ordinances.

Indeed, the Constitution itself supports private cannon ownership in the case of privateers. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 allows Congress to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal.” That allowed private parties to privateer on the high seas with . . . cannons.

Its almost funny. As Ed Driscoll put it at Instapundit on a previous Biden misfire this past February: “The gaslighting will continue until morale improves.”

AS OUR AMERICA BECOMES MORE FASCISTIC, GODLESS, POOR, AND EVIL!

Ted Cruz on reducing mass shootings: School buildings should have only one entrance

ALLAHPUNDIT May 26, 2022 at HotAir:

Some of his critics are mocking him for this, unfairly. “What if there’s a fire?” they say.

But you can have one point of entry to a building and multiple points of exit. Anyone who’s been to a multiplex movie theater has seen it with their own eyes. There’s only one way into the structure but each individual theater has its own fire exit that opens from the inside. When I was growing up, kids used to game that system by having one friend buy a ticket to get in and then open the fire exit for his friends, who’d be waiting outside.

Many schools already use that system, in fact. One front door, but many fire exits around the building.

Of course, if you listen carefully to Cruz here, he says, “Have one door into and out of the school.” Er … no, one door out of the school isn’t going to work. But maybe he was speaking inartfully off the cuff.

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Texas’s lieutenant governor made the same mistake. One entrance in: Makes sense. One entrance out: Huh?

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I don’t think Cruz or Patrick is claiming that limiting the number of entry points a school has is a cure-all to the problem of school shootings. It’s a “best practice,” something that might reduce the number of school shootings, not a solution. One of the many tragic footnotes to the Uvalde massacre, however, is that Robb Elementary already employed some “best practices” to secure its campus. It wasn’t enough.

The district said it had assigned a group of support counselors and threat assessment teams to each campus and that it used software known as Social Sentinel that monitored “all social media with a connection to Uvalde” to identify any possible threats. Robb Elementary was also one of a group of campuses that used perimeter fencing designed to limit access to the building, according to the school district.

The school district even had its own small police force and a policy that teachers should keep their classroom doors locked, just in case. (Officers responding to the shooting reportedly had so much trouble breaking down the locked door of the classroom where the shooter was barricaded that they needed a school official to come and unlock it.) A few years ago, per NBC, Robb Elementary received $69,000 from the state for hardening measures like “metal detectors, barriers, security systems and ‘campus-wide active shooter alarm systems.’”

So how was the shooter able to get in and start his rampage? Either he planned meticulously to attack Robb Elementary on a particular date or he simply lucked out by attacking on a day when the school’s defenses happened to be lowered:

The school was holding an awards ceremony Tuesday for students who were just a few days from finishing the school year, which may be one explanation for the open doors. Parents reportedly were coming and going from the school all day.

Leti Ruiz, who has a granddaughter who survived the attack, said the school’s doors, usually locked, were open on Tuesday. “I think that’s why probably the gates were open, because people were coming in and out — parents — for the awards,” Ruiz said.

A single point of entry would have forced him to confront a security officer in order to enter the building. Although, uh, he *did* end up confronting a security officer — and two cops — and none of the three managed to stop him somehow.

Still, having a single point of entry could only help. So why is Cruz getting grief today for proposing “door control”? I think it boils down to the way the clip above reveals his priorities. It’s not that there’s no merit to the idea of limiting entrances to a school. There is, as nearly all school administrators agree:

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Rather, it’s the sense one gets from Cruz and Patrick that they’re open to literally anything, up to and including turning America’s 130,000 schools into fortresses each with its own complement of Marines, so long as it lets them avoid crossing their base by considering even modest gun-control measures. How much would it cost to station armed officers at the entrance of every school in the country, bearing in mind that some campuses contain multiple buildings and therefore would need multiple officers?

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How much would it cost to retrofit schools to limit points of access? Should we also spend money to limit points of access at churches, nightclubs, and businesses, where mass shootings have also been known to occur? Should we install metal detectors at every entrance? A fiscal conservative like Cruz would normally blanch at laying out taxpayer bucks of this magnitude, but forced to choose between cutting a check and crossing gun-rights advocates by supporting red-flag laws, raising the age to purchase a gun, banning accessories that make mass shootings easier like high-capacity magazines, etc, his preference is clear.

He’s in a political jam in the sense that he knows he has to Do Something but his lifelong dream of becoming president won’t allow him to piss off Republican populists by condoning any gun restrictions. To paraphrase Meat Loaf, he would do anything to limit school shootings — but he won’t do that.

Many Republicans would, however. Although probably not many of the sort who vote in presidential primaries:

Those GOP numbers will almost certainly soften in the next few weeks. The only thing surer than support for gun control surging in the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting is that support fading as the news cycle moves on to other matters.

I’ll leave you with another interview Cruz did yesterday. Ken White is right that there’s nothing unfair about asking why America has so many more mass shootings than other countries do. The answer doesn’t have to be “more guns” — it’s surely more complicated than that — but the first step in solving a problem is at least identifying what’s causing it.

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“WE CAN NOT ALLOW THIS TO CONTINUE, OR WE HAVE NO COUNTRY; NOT A FREE ONE!”

from A. L. Luttrell

4 hours ago·arlinluttrell.wordpress.comUser Info

“A war that must be fought with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, and with all one’s mind – the very way we must love God!”

My comment has nothing to do with this article…… But wanted to mention I watched 2000 Mules yesterday. Dennis Prager was part of the roundtable discussion. In the beginning he was show me the proof (Prager would be a great Missourian, we’d love to have him in the Show Me State) but open minded. When presented with the FACTS and video and stats, especially from the True the Vote organization Mr. Prager got on board, all in. He like many was/is sickened about the voting fraud in this country, especially 2020. I reposted the movie on my blog in hopes others will watch it. They had over 4 million minutes of surveillance video of mules going to drop boxes (numerous times, all over, taking pics of the boxes to be paid. That is illegal. They picked up ballots (fraudulent ballots) from organizations, instructed to deposit in various drop boxes, and were paid. That is illegal. Oh and the 2000 Mules are only the ones they tracked, there were MANY more. The number of illegal ballots dropped is unbelievable. The count probably exceeds the number of registered voters. WE CAN NOT ALLOW THIS TO CONTINUE, OR WE HAVE NO COUNTRY, NOT A FREE ONE.

Do You Remember Communist China?

Sec. Blinken’s speech on shaping the “strategic environment” around China

JOHN SEXTON May 26, 2022 3:20 PM ET

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Speaking today at George Washington University, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned “the foundations of the international order are under serious and sustained challenge.” Blinken mentioned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the global response to it but said that his department would “remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge…posed by the People’s Republic of China.” He continued:

“China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it,” Mr. Blinken said in a speech laying out the administration’s strategy on China. “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.”…

“We can’t rely on Beijing to change its trajectory,” he said. “So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open and inclusive international system.”

“We are not looking for conflict or a new cold war,” Blinken said but he promised that America would defend the international laws and principles “that maintain peace and security.”

After praising the hard work of the Chinese people to lift their own economy, Blinken got to the heart of the matter. “Under President Xi, the ruling Chinese Communist Party has become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad,” he said. He then listed a string of issues to demonstrate this including mass surveillance, militarization of the South China Sea and support for Russia despite its invasion of Ukraine.

Blinken went on to frame the competition with China as one that was America’s to lose. In fields such as biotechnology, artificial intelligence and quantum computing Blinken suggested America needed to lead on those technologies to ensure they weren’t used against freedom in the world.

Blinken did discuss the One China policy and Taiwan which President Biden seemingly undermined earlier this week.

“Our approach has been consistent across decades and administrations,” the secretary of state said. “As the president has said, our policy has not changed. The United States remains committed to our One China policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three joint communiques, the six assurances. We oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side.”…

“We do not support Taiwan independence, and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means,” the secretary said.

As for working with Taiwan, Blinken said the U.S. “will continue to expand our cooperation with Taiwan on our many shared interests and values,” and “”deepen our economic ties consistent with our One China policy.”

There doesn’t appear to be an official response from China to this speech yet. This is probably a case where they want to take their time. Here’s the full speech.

BARACK OBAMA REMEMBERS GANGSTER THIEF GEORGE FLOYD?

MAY 26, 2022 BY SCOTT JOHNSON at PowerLine:

(RE)IMAGINE

Barack Obama remembers George Floyd on the second anniversary of his passing (tweet below). He doesn’t want to let our current focus on the Uvalde massacre distract us from attention to the anniversary and the shibboleth of “reimagining policing.”

Obama puts me in mind of John Lennon: “Reimagine there’s no police. It’s easy if you try.” If you visit Minneapolis, by the way, you won’t have to do much in the way of imagining no police. No police is more or less the situation.

President Biden held an executive-order signing ceremony yesterday in connection with the anniversary. Representatives of Floyd’s family and others were in attendance. The White House has posted the transcript of his (and Vice President Harris’s) remarks here. Biden struggled with the teleprompter and recalled great days of yore:

Two summers ago, in the middle of a pandemic, we saw protests across the nation the likes of which you hadn’t seen since the 1960s.

They unified people of every race and generation. Athletes and sports leagues boycotted and postponed games. Companies and workers proclaimed “Black Lives Matter.” Students staged solidarity walkouts.

Wasn’t it grand? He forgot the rioting, looting, and burning, but otherwise perfect.

Biden is following in Obama’s footsteps. As president, Obama plowed new ground in the disparagement of law enforcement and the promotion of bad causes. Obama is still working the Trayvon Martin beat. He is talking up Black Lives Matter and “police violence.” Click on the link he thoughtfully provides to find “Clinicians of color.”

If Obama has the fever, I think Heather Mac Donald has the cure. Let us lead off with Mac Donald’s Washington Free Beacon column “Obama’s Ferguson sell-out” (2016). See also:

• Mac Donald’s current City Journal essay “Using tragedy for racial purposes” (2022).

• Mac Donald’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in response to the Oversight Hearing on Policing Practices: “Repudiate the anti-police narrative” (2020).

• Mac Donald’s Imprimis essay “The dangers of the Black Lives Matter movement” (2016).

• Mac Donald’s City Journal essay “Is the criminal justice system racist?” (2008).

• I drew on MacDonald’s 2008 essay in my own critique of Michelle Alexander’s unjustly praised but highly influential book The New Jim Crow.

George Floyd’s killing stays with us to this day, to be sure, but not in the sense Obama means. Rather, it stays with us in the nonsense and consequences.

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Texas School Board Severs Ties With NSBA

Texas Association of School Boards severs ties with national association

by KAREN TOWNSEND May 25, 2022 at HotAir:

AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File

The fall-out from concerned parents being called domestic terrorists by a school board in Virginia continues. Membership in the National School Boards Association (NSBA) has dropped substantially. The Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) is the latest state group to sever its ties with the national association.

The TASB responded to the release of a private investigation into a letter sent by the National School Boards Association to the White House on Sept. 29. The NSBA contacted the White House asking for assistance from the Department of Justice to deal with angry parents attending school board meetings. Parents were showing up at school board meetings demanding answers on school closures during the pandemic, mask mandates, and progressive curriculum being taught in classrooms. School board members labeled parents as domestic terrorists after overheated exchanges during school board meetings. The letter sent on September 29 initially included a request for the National Guard to be deployed to some school district meetings. That language was later removed.

Let that sink in. The NSBA wanted to send in a military presence to intimidate parents into submission. The investigation findings brought about a decision by the TASB board of directors to leave the national organization on Monday.

“With this report now available, it’s clear that NSBA’s internal processes and controls do not meet the good governance practices that TASB expects and requires in a member organization,” TASB Executive Director Dan Troxell said in a statement.

He added that changes within the umbrella organization aren’t aggressive enough to ease the Texas chapter’s concerns. Several other states have made similar decisions in recent months.

“Our decision to end our membership in the NSBA will not impact TASB’s work to ensure Texas public education has a strong voice and presence in Washington, D.C.,” Troxell said.

The NSBA released a statement denying it asks for federal law enforcement at school board meetings.

“The sentiments shared in the letter do not represent the views or position of the NSBA,” the group’s executive director, John Heim, said in a statement after the investigation’s release. “The NSBA does not seek or advocate for federal law enforcement intervention at local school board meetings.”

Was it just a rogue member of who asked for help from the National Guard to control school board meetings? The language wasn’t in the final letter to the White House and DOJ but we know the NSBA was coordinating with the White House all along. Someone somewhere brought the idea up. The Biden administration had to be sued by states to release documents related to the letter. Whatever happened to the “most transparent administration ever” promise, Joe? Texas joined the lawsuit. The NSBA letter even called out Texas school board meetings. Specifically, Texas parents objected to critical race theory lessons being taught in their children’s classrooms.

The final letter to the White House was dated September 29 and, as I said, didn’t include the request for intervention by the National Guard. It did, however, ask the White House to investigate threats to school board members from parents as domestic terrorism. TASB voted to leave the national association because of its failure to abide by good governance practices. TASB Executive Director Dan Troxell said, “We have been intently waiting for the release of this independent investigation for nearly two months.”

More than a dozen Republican attorneys general sued the Biden administration in March to release correspondence with NSBA leaders related to the letter. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton joined in that group.

Texas is the latest organization to announce it is leaving the national group. The Washington Post reported last year that 22 other states have created a new group, called the Consortium of State School Boards Association.

A TASB spokesperson said the organization has no plans to join that group. Troxell declined an interview request through the spokesperson.

The pandemic forced parents into the role of school teacher for their children when teacher unions demanded schools close and remain closed for over a year. Some states like Texas and Florida didn’t abide by those demands, doing what was best for their states. Along the way, parents realized what all was being taught to their children and many objected to the materials being taught. School boards members were slow to react and often dismissive of the concerns of parents. Then they were shocked when parents pushed back.

Times are different post-pandemic. Parents are taking back control of school systems and demanding real education, particularly on the basics. All the social experiments being mixed into regular subjects has to stop. Rewriting history doesn’t serve students, either. Some states will have to go it on their own, apparently, in order to protect its children from unnecessary progressive propaganda.

Today’s American Cultural Disdain For Human Life!

Mark Waldeland <m.waldeland@comcast.net>

Wed 5/25/2022

Guns Aren’t Radically Deadlier Than They Were 50 Years Ago, But Our Sick Culture Is

Our culture has incubated a disdain for human life while preaching a gospel of indulging selfish urges, no matter how evil.

guns-arent-radically-deadlier-than-they-were-50-years-ago-but-our-sick-culture-is

[ . . .]

The firearms that civilians have access to today are not significantly deadlier than the ones that were manufactured for civilian use over half a century ago [see examples earlier in the article]. Furthermore, the number of Americans who possess a gun in their homes has overall been lower in the last 30 years than it was from the 1960s to the 1990s.

. . .But until the late 1980s, the concept of a mass shooter walking into a school and arbitrarily targeting people was incredibly rare, if not completely unheard of.

. . .So if the guns in Americans’ hands and homes haven’t radically changed in the last few years, what has? As The Federalist’s Mark Hemingway noted, we’ve seen “no big advances in firearm lethality compared to what citizens could own decades before we ever had regular mass shootings.”

While humanity has been fallen since Eden, the past 50 years have seen countless indicators of exponential cultural decline, not the least of which have been falling marriage rates and skyrocketing numbers of children who are denied the chance to live with both their mother and father. We’re also seeing a pandemic of mental illness, which the years of mental angst and isolation caused by Covid school closures will certainly only worsen.

Americans are losing interest in the purpose and community that faith and church offer, losing respect for the sanctity of human life, and losing sight of the notion that a higher moral good exists than immediate self-gratification. Instead, we live under a cultural ethic that idolizes the indulgence of selfish desires even up to the point of taking the life of another.

Meanwhile, our politicians and academics pit Americans against each other based on the color of their skin, while the media machine grants notoriety to cowardly killers whose names deserve to be forgotten. Add to that our social media-crazed culture’s obsession with a few seconds of fame at any expense, and it’s clear that the gun market isn’t what’s radically changed. We need to address the rot we’ve sown for our children to grow up in, and no amount of blaming firearms for our culture’s depravity is going to change that.

The Second Amendment MUST NOT BE REPEALED! Our Citizens MUST BE ALLOWED TO DEFEND THEMSELVES BETTER THAN MASS GOVERNMENT!

MAY 25, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at PowerLine:

WHAT TO DO ABOUT SCHOOL SHOOTINGS?

Salvador Ramos’s evil rampage in Uvalde, Texas has had the inevitable consequence: it was politicized within minutes by Democrats calling for more gun control. Michael Moore, at least, was honest. He said the Second Amendment should be repealed. That, one suspects, is what many Democrats want, but most aren’t bold enough to say it. Instead, they beat around the bush, like Joe Biden who blamed the Uvalde murders on the “gun lobby” and fumed: “When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?” What, exactly, is that, Joe? He didn’t say.

The fundamental point to be made about mass school shootings is that they are extraordinarily rare. If we use the FBI’s definition of a “mass shooting” incident, i.e., one where four or more people are killed, this is the pattern of mass school shootings in the 21st century:

2022: 1
2021: 1
2020: 0
2019: 0
2018: 2
2017: 1
2016: 0
2015: 1
2014: 1
2013: 1
2012: 2
2011: 0
2010: 0
2009: 0
2008: 1
2007: 1
2006: 1
2005: 1
2004: 0
2003: 0
2002: 0
2001: 0
2000: 0

So mass school shootings are rare, a total of 14 incidents in more than 22 years. In a nation of 320 million, many more people die from bee stings, lighting strikes, and so on; yet, for understandable reasons, school shootings command national attention. But their very rarity makes it hard to know what to do about them, especially since most school shooters expect to die, which makes them more or less impossible to deter. How do you prevent something that happens, in crude terms, once every 480 million man-years?

The “solutions” proposed by Democrats are laughable, obviously intended for political gain rather than practical benefit. Banning “assault rifles,” while likely unconstitutional, would do zero good. In close quarters, handguns are better than rifles, even short-barreled rifles like AR-15s. In the worst school shooting rampage so far, at Virginia Tech, the murderer used handguns. And when the ill-fated ban on “assault weapons” expired in 2004, the homicide rate went down, not up.

But there are things we can do. Would-be mass murderers may be crazy, but they aren’t stupid. They nearly always strike in gun-free zones, including schools, because they want to be sure they are the only one with a firearm. Gun-free zones are an idiotic concept and should be abolished. And if every public school in America fired a diversity consultant and hired an armed guard, they would be vastly safer. Who stands in the way of such practical reform? Mostly the teachers’ unions, which bitterly resist improvements in school security, thus selling out, as they consistently do, the interests of American children.

Beyond that, it would help greatly if our media would stop publicizing mass school shootings. Why do young men who are willing to die undertake to kill innocent school children? Because they are inconsequential and want to be famous. Our press invariably grants their wish with massive publicity. Worst of all is when the murderer pens a “manifesto” laying out his childish and incoherent political views. That, too, always gets infinitely more attention than it deserves and encourages future mass murderers.

Liberals are eager to violate the Second Amendment in the futile hope that it will somehow stop school shootings. But if we don’t care about the Constitution, a ban on reporting of school shootings would do vastly more good and would be no less unconstitutional.

Finally, let’s not have any more shutdowns. As I wrote here, the number of “active shooters” increased in 2020 after being flat for a number of years, and exploded in Joe Biden’s first year in office:

The only plausible explanation for this increase is that covid-related shutdowns of schools and businesses exacerbated mental health issues in vulnerable young people. There is a great deal of data confirming such an effect, and in the extreme case, shutdowns evidently have have led to a dramatic increase in “active shooters.” Let’s not make that foolish mistake again.

Those solutions aren’t perfect, but they are practical and would reduce the already microscopically-low incidence of mass school shootings.

“A war that must be fought with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, and with all one’s mind – the very way we must love God!”

May 25, 2022

Wars and Rumors of Wars

By Anthony J. DeBlasi at American Thinker:

Uncle Sam sent me to South Korea in 1953 during its war of survival against communist North Korea.

Rumbles of yet another war while I was there – that would in time explode into war in Vietnam – made some of my comrades believe that at rotation time, they would be headed to that next fight against communism instead of returning to the states. One of my schoolteachers wrote in 1953: “What do you do there besides freezing in the winter…I hope they send you home before things get started in Indo-China. It looks very much as if that is the next step. I pray that it is not…” Many who dodged the bullet in Korea did in fact end up fighting in that next confrontation with communism.

Does the fact that we fought communism well over half a century ago register in the minds of many of today’s young Americans who seem eager and ready to embrace the geopolitical scourge of communism that brought down major countries, including the once great civilization of China, turning it into the world’s greatest dictatorship?

Since my return to civilian life, I have witnessed a series of turbulent decades that have pushed America off its foundation. Then and now seem like antipodes between two different worlds, one declared “innocent” but easily proven saner, the other “sophisticated” yet – in spite of numerous advances in burgeoning fields – conspicuously deranged.

The contrast between the 1950s and the closing years of the last century vividly highlights a dissection in our country not seen since the Civil War, reflecting a chronically unresolved conflict between Americans who trust in God, as did the originators of this county, and those who trust in man, then and now. Leaders of the latter camp, partly or wholly ignorant of their own history, seem blind to the adverse consequences of their inadequate judgments, as they blindly steer an enfeebled nation into the hands of America’s global enemies, not one of whom has any regard for the sanctity of human life.

One would think that the lessons of such an unstable and explosive past century as my generation lived through would be applied intelligently toward the formation of a just, safe, and peaceful world by those entrusted to lead. Perhaps that is too big an assignment for mortals who take their cues and assignments from men who, despite their apparent intelligence, choose to ignore the nature of reality, preferring to commandeer it in god-like fashion.

But a regard for reality and principled, moral power are prerequisites to progress for people. Witness the condition of America today, perilously close to the bottom of the “slippery slope” warned against in America’s culture war.

My brother, who served in World War II, was justly bitter over the fact that half a million men of his generation and a great many fighters of subsequent generations went to their graves fighting for what? – today’s mindless, degrading, lascivious culture with its contempt for civility and time-honored principles of morality and virtue greater than any generation’s non-equivalent substitutes? – Time-tested wisdom that defines for every generation the difference between freedom and license, need and wish, love and lust, dependence on the Power that designed us and the power that wants to enslave us. And my generation of fighters wonders why the hell we are now fighting communism in our schools and on our streets instead of on foreign soil.

The power that designed us (for which it is deemed divine) calls for a humbling respect for the sacredness of life, for a place in every heart, in every soul, in every mind where arrogance and conquest are not welcome. Without this vital appreciation for the value of life, there is no appreciation for the bloodshed and sacrifices of two world wars, the Korean War, the war in Vietnam, and subsequent conflicts to secure the right of every American to live free of tyranny.

Is today’s unappreciative, amoral, immoral, principle-starved, baby-killing, Marxist warped segment of society what the staggering number of American fighters sacrificed and died for? Are today’s brave young fighters committing themselves to defending more of the same arrogant,  corrupted “democracy”?

Judging from their actions to date, I must wonder if our leaders haven’t gone stark out of their minds. How else to explain the last couple of years of tyranny against people and now a mindless plunge into a major confrontation with Russia? When did progress become a synonym for insanity?

A pause for breath is all that’s left to remind ourselves that fighting that is not directly linked to defending one’s homeland, family, and community is wanton disregard for innocent human life, which no responsible leader can justify. The fact is, a search for the moral authority for wanton war in today’s world is most likely to lead to money bags and to politicians who violate their oaths of office and set themselves above the laws of God.

The war left to fight in today’s broken world is still the war against tyranny, a war that must be fought with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, and with all one’s mind – the very way we must love God – in order that the blessings of freedom may endure for all generations.

To any who might be asking . . .  has it come to this? . . . this great-grandpa must ask, has it not?