Monthly Archives: January 2022

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Daily Broadside | Remembering a Man of Principle in a Time of Racial Division

Daily Verse | Genesis 41:41
So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt.”

Monday’s Reading: Genesis 41-44

It’s Monday and the annual day on which we recognize the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King was a Baptist minister and social activist who is remembered for his leading role in the American civil rights movement. An advocate of organized non-violent resistance based on the approach of Mahatma Gandhi, King led peaceful marches and boycotts to draw attention to the segregation of blacks across America.

An ardent student of the teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dr. King was much impressed with the Mahatma’s befriending of his adversaries, most of whom professed profound admiration for Gandhi’s courage and intellect. Dr. King believed that the age-old tradition of hating one’s opponents was not only immoral, but bad strategy which perpetuated the cycle of revenge and retaliation. Only nonviolence, he believed, had the power to break the cycle of retributive violence and create lasting peace through reconciliation.

In a 1957 speech, Birth of A New Nation, Dr. King said, “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness.” 

Due in no small part to King’s leadership, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.

Martin Luther King Jr Accomplishments Featured

The irony, of course, is that more than a half-century later, the progressive Left, Black Lives Matter, Inc., Antifa activists and the flying monkeys in the mainstream media have abandoned King’s approach and are using violence and shame to accomplish their mission of destroying “white” culture, rather than be “included” in it.

They’ve also set back race relations to the 100 years of Jim Crow laws, i.e., enforced or legalized racial segregation. You know, “separate but equal.” We now have separate commencements, housing and activities for Blacks on school campuses.

“The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness,” indeed.

In essence, the radicals have gone to great lengths to undo all that King accomplished and that we commemorate on this day. I wouldn’t be surprised if his monument in Washington, D.C., is destroyed someday by the self-righteous judges of woke for King’s attempts to integrate black society with “white supremacists.”

In the meantime, I encourage you to appreciate who King was and how he led the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s. One way you can do that is to read his Letter from Birmingham Jail, in which he wrote one of his famous axioms: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He explains in this letter his approach to non-violent direct-action demonstrations and he justified to his critics why he was in Birmingham and why he accepted being in jail.

He was a principled man of action—with emphasis on “principled”—something sorely lacking in today’s leaders.

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Daily Broadside | I Hate Abraham Lincoln or Something

Daily Verse | Genesis 31:24
Then God came to Laban … and said to him, “Be careful not to say anything to Jacob, either good or bad.”

Friday’s Reading: Genesis 32-36
Saturday’s Reading: Genesis 37-40

Friday and the end of the week. Anybody know if we’ve flattened the curve yet?

In preparation for this morning’s post, I came across a pithy sentence that sums up our current system of government rather succinctly (author apparently known but remains anonymous):

“The problem is not that the system has become corrupt, but that corruption has become the system.”

That’s it. That. is. it.

The reason we see so much corruption “in the system” is that the system has been displaced by a corrupt counterfeit so that it no longer functions like it was meant to. It’s not a system with some corruption in it; it’s corruption with some vestige of the original structure still holding it together. It’s like a Crusader’s sword that fell into the sea, only to be found 900 years later encrusted in minerals, shells and marine organisms. You can see the sword’s shape but that’s about the only resemblance it has to its original design. It’s been fully corrupted.

There are dozens and dozens of examples of corruption to choose from, but let’s look at one of the most recent.

Biden’s Education Secretary Miguel Cardona requested the infamous letter from the National School Boards Association comparing protesting parents to domestic terrorists, emails published Tuesday revealed, demonstrating even further the Biden administration’s entrenched efforts to smear its political opponents as threats to national security.

Wut? A senior official solicited a fake dossier letter to gin up opposition to their political enemies?

That letter, which smeared concerned parents who showed up at school board meetings as domestic terrorists and urged the Department of Justice to use terrorism laws against them, was cited by Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland as the reason he directed the FBI and state attorneys to take action against “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.” The NSBA later apologized for the letter, but that wasn’t enough to keep dozens of state school board associations from distancing themselves from the national organization over the debacle.

The idea that a member of the president’s cabinet secretly planted a political message in an outside organization, then acted on the request with the force of law under a pretense of neutrality, is scandalous.

Scandalous? Sure. But why act surprised? This is what our “system” produces and has produced for many years now. Decades, even. But we couldn’t see it as plainly as we do now. Trump blew all the circuitry running through the swamp and exposed it for all to see.

But the Democrats and Leftists and media monkeys don’t even care if we see it. All that matters to them is holding onto power long enough to retool the “system” to keep them in power. If that means tearing down the Senate filibuster like a statue of Robert E. Lee, then let’s do it. If that means labeling parents “domestic terrorists” for opposing the Democrat’s agenda, by all means, let’s do it.

And, if it means Brandon smearing half of all Americans as racists by offering a bizarre choice between racists and anti-racists all the way back to the mid-1800s, let’s do it.

Every official in America, [Resident] Biden said Tuesday, has a choice: “Do you want to be on the side of Dr. [Martin Luther] King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” Seriously, he said that grandiloquent nonsense.

Mr. Biden’s speech in Georgia was a call to bulldoze the Senate’s filibuster to pass a rebranded version of H.R.1, a bill that would impose a federal election code on all 50 states, including forcing them to count late mail ballots that lack postmarks. If you happen to think that’s a bad idea, or that it’s unconstitutional, or that nuking the filibuster would hurt the Senate, well, then apparently you’re against Abraham Lincoln.

Not to make too fine a point of it, Brandon, but Bull Connor, George Wallace and (most likely, from the correspondence we have) Robert E. Lee were all Democrats. Lewis was a Democrat and King supposedly had Republican sympathies, but his party affiliation remains unknown.

Only Lincoln was a Republican—and you claim his mantle for your Marxist administration that engages in lawfare against innocent citizens?

The whole edifice is rotten. It needs to be torn down and the earth where it stood needs to be salted.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | It’s Not Liberty if You Fear Your Rulers

Daily Verse | Genesis 29:18
Jacob was in love with Rachel and said, “I’ll work for you seven years in return for your younger daughter Rachel.”

Thursday’s Reading: Genesis 30-31

Happy Thursday, Broadsiders. Thanks for sharing your time with me.

There’s something very wrong with our government. As I wrote yesterday, the conflict we’re seeing in our country is ultimately between those who support the Judeo-Christian values upon which our government was founded (whether or not they are truly Christ followers) and those who deny God and want to supplant him with themselves as ruler. It’s the age-old dilemma of Man v. God and I can tell you right now that, in that engagement, it will not end well for man.

That’s at the core of the dilemma we face, but when I say something’s wrong with our government, I mean that it’s been inverted. Our Constitution starts with the words, “We the People” for a very good reason: we determined to govern ourselves. It was we, the people, who set up our system of government by writing and ratifying a law—the U.S. Constitution—to which all other governance in the U.S. must submit. It is the highest law of the land.

The people passed that law establishing a stronger central government over these United States. It’s the only law passed by we the people. Because it was written by us, that means that, technically and legally, all other forms of governance and governors under that Constitution are subject to our oversight. We did not pass that law to establish such government and then say to it, “Feel free to do what you want, we’re your subjects.”

But that’s not how it feels in today’s society, does it? Do you get the sense that the federal government is concerned at all about whether they’re following the will of the people as expressed in the Constitution? Do you get the sense that all of our state legislatures and governors are following the will of the people as expressed in the Constitution? Do you think that the judicial system we established has carefully ensured that they have faithfully applied the Constitution to their decisions free from their political biases?

If we’re honest, we have to admit that in today’s United States the inverse is true: we the people have become subject to the political agendas of those elected to high office. Our “representatives” aren’t concerned about whether they’re governance is Constitutional. One only has to look at all the federal “alphabet” agencies and the rules and regulations they create to know that Congress outsourced the legislative responsibilities the Constitution gave only to them.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. — Article I, Section I: Congress

Congresscritter A: Hey, I’ve got an idea! What if we make a law that gives someone else the job of making laws?

Congresscritter B: Wait, why would you do that if the Constitution only gives us that role?

Congresscritter A: If we delegate our law-making role to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats then the people can’t blame us for bad laws. If they can’t blame us for bad laws, we get re-elected!

Congresscritter B: Oh, I see. Then we can sit on committees to “oversee” the bureaucrats and call them in to testify when things go wrong and pretend that we’re representing the people! What a country!

No, to the extent that they are concerned at all about the Constitution, it’s about being elected “by the people” then taking that as a vote of confidence to shove their political agenda through the system and finding ways to either evade the Constitution or weaponize it—such as twice impeaching a president to tarnish his standing and legacy.

The government that we the people authorized to “insure domestic tranquility” has intentionally dissolved our southern border and allowed hundreds of thousands of foreigners to flood our nation unchecked, essentially becoming wards of the state because they’re dependent on government handouts funded by the money they take from us.

The government that we the people formed is now calling parents “domestic terrorists” for objecting to the sexual perversion and Marxist indoctrination being foisted upon their children by government-run (public) schools.

The government that we the people created serially undermined, hampered, harassed and lied about an elected president’s relationship with Russia and spent millions of our hard-earned dollars “investigating” what they knew was a bogus case—and those responsible have not been punished according to law.

The government that we the people established to “promote the general welfare” has instead taken to promoting the welfare of only certain groups identified by the color of their skin, their sexual preferences, their political bias and any other category by which they can divide us.

The government that we the people oversee now passes trillion-dollar “budgets” that are thousands of pages long without giving legislators time to read and understand what is in them, robbing us of our wealth in the present and our children in the future to pay for it all.

You get the idea.

I’m not saying that there aren’t, can’t or won’t be differences of opinion or that our leaders can achieve complete neutrality or that they will get every decision right. But it’s clear that the government we forged has become an elitist cabal of grifters detached from the law they are supposed to preserve, protect and defend, who have in mind only their own interests—money, power, notoriety—or those of “special interest groups,” which means they are more concerned with pleasing their base than the whole of we the people.

Often misattributed to Thomas Jefferson, it was John Basil Barnhill who said, “Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.”

What is very wrong with our government is that it does not respect or fear the people, who are its rightful masters.

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Daily Broadside | Only One Vision for America Can Ultimately Prevail

Daily Verse | Genesis 26:24
“I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.”

Wednesday’s Reading: Genesis 27-29

It’s Wednesday and I can’t help but feel that we’re headed toward a showdown between the forces of freedom and the forces of tyranny, which in full flower is the evil of communism. In yesterday’s post I mentioned that there have been several articles by lefty publications fretting about a new “civil war.” They’re late to the table, though, as I, myself, have been warning for years (recent samples here, here, here and here) about the trajectory we’re on as a country, concluding that the natural (though not inevitable) end of the arc was a violent clash between Left and Right.

Today I would modify my statement to say that the clash is between those who are alarmed over the restrictions being placed on their natural rights and freedoms, and those who want to consolidate power and lord it over the citizenry. At its core, it’s a clash of visions over what America will be: will it collapse in on itself and go the way of European multi-cultured socialism, or renew its strength as the sole bastion of personal freedom and opportunity never before seen in the history of the world?

Into the debate about whether or not we’re on the cusp of another civil war drops this article by William Sullivan, titled, “What Issue Was Really at the Heart of the Civil War, and is it Relevant Today?” After tracing the causes of the war way back to 1828, Sullivan explains, “The federal government issued new tariffs which were, by design, both harmful to the South and beneficial to Northern producers. A tariff of nearly 49-percent was issued on nearly all imported goods.” In response, South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union, but war was averted with “the 1833 passage of both the Force Bill and the Compromise Tariff, which gave the federal government the right to militarily enforce tariffs and lowered the tariff rates, respectively.”

However, that raised the question that remained unanswered right up until South Carolina actually seceded from the Union in 1861:

If the people of a state surmise that the federal government is pursuing a policy that compromises the liberty and prosperity of its citizens, does that state have to conform to what is perceived by the people of the state as an unconstitutional abuse of power, or, more bluntly, intolerable tyranny?

Sullivan goes on to quote Clifford Dowdey, who “offers a fairly good summation” of what led the country to civil war:

[The North and South] had diverged into patterns of life which became increasingly antithetical; antagonisms and rivalries grew in intensity. The industrial North did wish to buy cheap and sell dear at the expense of the South, while Northern money power needed the South in a colonial status for exploitation.  Slavery did exist in the South, and there was a high moral tone in the issue of freedom, held by a small minority. Extremists on both sides did inflame passions. There was, as an amalgam of all this, the nationalistic sweep of the new industrial middle-class society represented by the North, in alliance with the expanding, democratic West, and against these the South stood as an anachronistic, arrogant feudal culture in the path of manifest destiny. All of this defines the elements of duality within the corporate body of the nation; yet, put them all together, with equal emphases or any single emphasis, and the element of explosion is missing.

Sullivan then draws the parallels with our own age:

Red and blue states have, in fact, diverged into patterns of life that have become increasingly antithetical in recent years, and antagonisms and rivalries are growing in intensity. Blue states did fleece the taxpayers of red states last year by demanding a federal bailout for their decision to keep their states irrationally closed during the pandemic and in order to keep their broken, and internally unsustainable, entitlement programs afloat. There is a high moral tone being expressed on abortion in red states, an institution that disregards the right to life among the unborn just as the institution of slavery disregarded the right to liberty among slaves. Extremists on both sides are inflaming passions. Effete coastal liberals and elitists in the media and academia view middle-class, red-state denizens as anachronistic God-worshippers who prioritize their families and communities before the needs of the national collective, and are thereby impediments on that Hegelian path of history toward their inevitable vision of “progress.”

Red and blue states do, in many ways, seem like separate parts locked in a struggle that must be resolved if we are to function as a nation. Will this warring duality be resolved, or will we explode when, for example, the federal government decides to mandate vaccination IDs be issued by all of the states, and several states refuse?

Nobody would deny that we’re deeply divided in our country today. But what is the core cause of this divergence that we’re experiencing between red and blue states or, more candidly, between progressive activists and conservative citizens? What started the divergence in the first place?

Sullivan hints at it when he writes of “red-state denizens as anachronistic God-worshippers.” Remember that a key feature of cultural Marxism and its ultimate state, communism, is the superiority of Man and the rejection of God in any form. In his book, Witness, written 70 years ago, Whittaker Chambers explained that the trial of Alger Hiss, “was a trial of ‘the two irreconcilable faiths of our time — Communism and Freedom.’ And that struggle, that trial, he wrote, ‘can end only in the destruction of one or both of the contending forces.'”

Communism, he wrote, is

man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil: “Ye shall be as gods.” It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.

It is the vision of man’s mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man’s liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man’s destiny and reorganizing man’s life and the world. It is the vision of man, once more the central figure of the Creation, not because God made man in His image, but because man’s mind makes him the most intelligent of the animals …. Communism restores man to his sovereignty by the simple method of denying God.

That is the root cause of the division we are experiencing in our nation today—the denial of God in favor of the supremacy of Man. As John Adams wrote,

“Because we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and Religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.“

If we are no longer a “moral and religious people” who acknowledge the sovereignty of God and our Constitution wasn’t written with such people in mind, then we find ourselves adrift with no governing structure fit for us. Our system of government depended on self-restraint, or self-governance, which came from a belief in a sovereign God.

The core of our conflict is a clash between those who believe in God’s Providence and those who would assume for themselves the ruler’s throne. We can’t go on this way indefinitely. One or the other of the competing visions for our life together will be destroyed, but which—freedom under God or communism under Man?

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Daily Broadside | The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself. Right?

Daily Verse | Genesis 22:12
“Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Tuesday’s Reading: Genesis 24-16

Happy Tuesday, my friends. One of the things that I wrote last week resurfaced again this week and I want to reinforce the point with you because we live in a moment when we need to keep our wits about us.

We’re looking at some seriously troubling developments in our culture and politics, and we’re hearing some very troubling words spoken by our “leaders.” We’re hearing them say that J6 was an insurrection; that the unvaccinated will suffer a winter of “severe illness and death;” that the nation is headed for civil war; that you’re racist if you’re white, and on and on.

Troubling is the word I used but what I’m really after is the word “fear.” The developments we see and experience in our country right now are liable to provoke fear. Fear that the fascists will win, fear that we’ll lose our position, fear that we’ll be persecuted, fear that America is over.

Others have noticed the fear factor.

Witness the fearfulness engulfing Americans:

– Fear of the virus.
– Fear of being called a racist.
– Fear of being canceled.
– Fear of the other.
– Fear of defending beliefs.
– Fear of our history.
– Fear of not being woke.
– Fear even of saying the truth.

Fear works.  The face of America has taken on a pallor. Before the specter of 2021 descended, we were proud to identify as “The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”

Now, after a year of cautious, quiet desperation precipitated by a shower of those fears, we have become “The Silence of the Lambs.”

We’ve all felt some of this, even if it isn’t particularly alarming us right now.

Then there’s this: Democrats are trying to scare America over a civil war they’re trying to start

On Friday, John asked why liberal and progressive American news outlets and politicians are suddenly talking about an impending civil war. He linked to a couple of reliably lefty publications that have recently raised the prospect in scary terms, and it’s certainly true. I’ve seen quite a few similar articles myself.

Some of those articles are here and here and here.

In the aftermath of January 6, the FBI rounded up hundreds of citizens who were in the vicinity of the Capitol that day, even if they weren’t in the building.

The FBI’s nationwide manhunt to round up January 6 protesters was a show of force usually reserved for the country’s most dangerous criminals. Agents were let loose to capture hundreds of Capitol protesters in their own homes or their place of work. Families were awakened at dawn by armed officers screaming commands, children were terrified, neighbors were horrified. The over-the-top displays were intended to inflict maximum fear and humiliation. The stories were something straight out of a totalitarian nightmare.

I bring you back to part of the quote I included in the prior post linked above.

The process is the punishment. The cruelty is the point. The message to Americans is clear: You no longer live in a nation with anything remotely resembling equal, impartial justice. Enemies of the regime will be brought to heel; woke social justice warriors will get off scot-free. This is meant to both instill terror in and demoralize dissenters.

It also serves as a prior restraint on dissent because Americans know that every critical response the Ruling Class’ actions provoke will provide yet another pretext to turn the screws tighter in order to “save democracy.”

But fear is debilitating, “a prior restraint on dissent,” and we must not allow it to subdue us.

Fear can play no part for the citizenry of a free United States, but fear would be key to the control function of any replacement overseers. We must, or the least afraid among us must, end the fear by showing courage and thereby spreading courage further. We must let there be no doubt about our resolve to continue a free way of life in America by speaking with resolve with friends to bolster them, and to opposing views to challenge their motives in the land of the free. We need leaders stepping up.

To that end, our senators and representatives who themselves fear losing an election by potentially being shunned by a discordant and strident group need to instead, show some spine. Rise to save our nation. Break from the Fear Party. Let us hear you as our voice in expressing what it means to be an American.

I actually think that last paragraph is not just for senators and representatives. Those words are for us, the concerned citizenry. It is us who need to show some spine. It is us who need to rise to save our nation. It is us who must express what it means to be an American with unapologetic strength.

Don’t be afraid.

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Daily Broadside | The Only Way to Break Free From the Madness of Crowds is to Get Facts-inated

Daily Verse | Genesis 19:26
But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

Monday’s Reading: Genesis 21-23

Happy Monday and welcome to the next week in the ongoing saga of America Under Siege. Before Sunday service this morning I was talking with a friend about the hysteria surrounding the Chinese Bat Flu and its variants and how ridiculous we’ve all been in “following” the government’s “guidance” on dealing with the “pandemic” after the first two weeks to “flatten the curve.”

I closed the conversation with, “we’re led by idiots” to which he replied, “Absolutely.”

That shared sentiment is only one of two major ones with respect to the Peking Lung Pox, which I alluded to above when I mentioned the hysteria so many in our country have over the virus. People are still panicking over Covid like it has the power of Godzilla attacking New York City, when it is in fact no worse (now) than the common cold.

We’re experiencing something like a national psychosis. And I’m not far off the mark according to Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the original mRNA vaccine patents and Medical Director of The Unity Project, a group of 300 organizations across the US standing against mandated COVID vaccines for children:

When you have a society that has become decoupled from each other, and has free-floating anxiety, and a sense that things don’t make sense, we can’t understand it, and then their attention gets focused by a leader or a series of events on one small point, just like hypnosis, they literally become hypnotized and can be led anywhere. And one of the aspects of that phenomena is that the people they identify as their leaders, the ones typically that come in and say, “You have this pain, and I can solve it for you, I and I alone, ok, can fix this problem for you.” OK, then they will follow that person through he(ll)—it doesn’t matter if they lied to them or whatever, the data are irrelevant. And, furthermore, anyone who questions that narrative is to be immediately attacked, they are the “other.” This is central to mass formation psychosis. And this is what has happened. We had all those conditions. If you remember back, before, 2019, everybody was complaining, “the world doesn’t make sense,” blah-blah-blah, and we’re all isolated from each other, we’re all on our little tools, we’re not connected socially anymore except through social media, and then this thing happened, and everybody focused on it. That is how mass formation psychosis happens and that is what’s happened here. (My transcription.)

In another article Malone provides other detail about mass formation psychosis:

What one observes with the mass hypnosis is that a large fraction of the population is completely unable to process new scientific data and facts demonstrating that they have been misled about the effectiveness and adverse impacts of mandatory mask use, lockdowns, and genetic vaccines that cause people’s bodies to make large amounts of biologically active coronavirus Spike protein.

These hypnotized by this process are unable to recognize the lies and misrepresentations they are being bombarded with on a daily basis, and actively attack anyone who has the temerity to share information with them which contradicts the propaganda that they have come to embrace. And for those whose families and social networks have been torn apart by this process, and who find that close relatives and friends have ghosted them because they question the officially endorsed “truth” and are actually following the scientific literature, this can be a source of deep anguish, sorrow and psychological pain.

[…]

As mass formation progresses, the group becomes increasingly bonded and connected. Their field of attention is narrowed and they become unable to consider alternative points of view. Leaders of the movement are revered, unable to do no wrong.

Left unabated, a society under the spell of mass formation will support a totalitarian governance structure capable of otherwise unthinkable atrocities in order to maintain compliance. A note: mass formation is different from group think. There are easy ways to fix group think by just bringing in dissenting voices and making sure you give them platforms. It isn’t so easy with mass formation. Even when the narrative falls apart, cracks in the strategy clearly aren’t solving the issue, the hypnotized crowd can’t break free of the narrative. This is what appears to be happening now with COVID-19. The solution for those in control of the narrative is to produce bigger and bigger lies to prop up the solution. Those being controlled by mass formation no longer are able to use reason to break free of the group narrative.

This all makes sense if you’re outside the C19 bubble. Nobody knew for sure how dangerous Covid-19 was when it was first identified, so we all agreed to isolate for two weeks to keep the spike in infections down so that hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the sick. But as we gained more knowledge about Covid, we found that those most at risk for the disease were older and had significant comorbidities, while younger people seemed to recover quickly and the very young were hardly affected at all. The overall chances of dying of Covid were infinitesimal, on the order of 0.5-1% with the risk of death substantially increasing in those aged 60 or older. We also learned that cloth or “surgical” masks were completely ineffective in stopping the transmission of the virus.

In other words, there was a lot of data suggesting we didn’t need to fear covid or take overly drastic measures except for the elderly, but the data and facts didn’t support the official narrative—and if you deviated from the narrative, you were shouted down or censored on social media. That continues today as Dr. Malone has been booted off of Twitter, notoriously known to silence those who contradict the official narrative.

What’s hard to get my head around is that this is all part of a plan. Not that I can’t believe those in charge wouldn’t attempt to do something like this, but that they’re actually smart enough to see the situation and take control of it in order to advance their agenda.

Here, in America.

Maybe we’re not led by idiots. Instead, they’re smartly following Rahm Emmanuel’s advice: “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

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Daily Broadside | Ring Found with Image of Good Shepherd from Third Century

Daily Verse | Genesis 14:13
One who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew.

Friday’s Reading: Genesis 15-17
Saturday’s Reading: Genesis 18-20

It’s Friday and the end of the first week of January 2022, the 93rd week and third year of “two weeks to flatten the curve.” It’s also the 50th week since the disaster known as Brandon was foisted on these United States. I think just as the Democrats commemorated the January 6 riots with melodramatic speeches, a performance by the cast of Hamilton and a candlelight vigil organized by an antifa-linked group, the Republicans should hold a memorial on January 20 to mourn the death of America as founded, reciting all the failures of the current administration and the malfeasance of the Democrat Party that is now a rabid anti-American Marxist cabal.

But enough of that. Let’s close out the week with a stunning discovery reported just before Christmas.

Israeli researchers on Wednesday displayed a Roman-era golden ring with an early Christian symbol for Jesus inscribed in its gemstone, found in a shipwreck off the ancient port of Caesarea.

The thick octagonal gold ring with its green gemstone bore the figure of the “Good Shepherd” in the form of a young shepherd boy in a tunic with a ram or sheep across his shoulders.

In the Facebook post linked from the image, the Israel Antiquities Authority writes:

This image, of the ‘Good Shepherd’, is known in ancient Christian art as a symbol of salvation; it is a parable of Jesus as the merciful shepherd of mankind, or as the one who has shown the protection of man or the testimony of his believers. The investigators are sobbing, who carried the ring, was one of the first Christians; the ring was revealed in the vicinity of Caesarea, which has great significance in the Christian tradition, as in Caesarea was one of the oldest centers of Christianity.

The shipwreck from which the ring was taken was dated to about 1,700 years ago.

Sokolov said that while the image exists in early Christian symbolism, representing Jesus as a caring shepherd, tending to his flock and guiding those in need, finding it on a ring was rare.

The presence of such a symbol on a ring probably owned by a Roman operating in or around Caesarea made sense, given the ethnically and religiously heterogenous nature of the port in the third century, when it was one of Christianity’s earliest centers.

I’ve written before about discoveries like this, which are always exciting because they independently fortify our faith in Christ. If you’re a believer, you understand what I mean. If you’re not, perhaps it appeals to your curiosity about the veracity of the Bible.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | The UniParty is Strong with Ted Cruz

Daily Verse | Genesis 11:4
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

Thursday’s Reading: Genesis 12-14

It’s Thursday, January 6 and the one-year anniversary of when the ruling class and their enforcers staged a Reichstag fire at the Capitol that netted them not only hundreds of men and women to harass, but also a foundation on which to build the lie that “white supremacist terrorism” is the most lethal threat we face in this country. They have continued to build on that theme and openly fret that the outgroup will overthrow the 2022 and 2024 elections and destroy our “democracy.”

For instance, here’s Chinese noodler Eric Swalwell taking it to the extremes:

“Democracy nearly died”?

Really?

You’re sure that’s not an exaggeration?

Swalwell is the last guy to be talking about the death of “democracy.” He sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and was literally in bed with a Chinese spy. Did Democracy “nearly die” while you were being intimate with Fang Fang, you compromised flak?

Why this guy still has a job is beyond me, but he’s a Democrat, you see, and the rules are different for members of The PartySM.

Besides, Swalwell is all about election integrity, doncha’ know.

“If we don’t get it right”? You mean rigging it again? To preserve your precious “democracy”?

I hate to break it to you, genius, but we’re not a “democracy.”

What’s amazing is that everything the Demokrats accuse the Republicans of doing is exactly what the Demokrats are actually doing. It’s a massive exercise in projection and gaslighting.

What really irks me though, is that Ted Cruz, a reliably conservative voice in the Senate, weighed in today with comments about J6 that, to me, sink any enthusiasm I might have had if he chooses to run for president in 2024. (I voted for him in 2016 as a write-in candidate before my thinking on Trump turned a corner.)

“We are approaching a solemn anniversary this week. And it is an anniversary of a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol, where we saw the men and women of law enforcement demonstrate incredible courage, incredible bravery, risk their lives for the Capitol,” Cruz said at a Senate Rules Committee oversight hearing Wednesday with Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger discussing Jan. 6 security failures.

For him to use that language—”a violent terrorist attack”—is to play right into the hands of our oppressors. JANUARY 6 WAS NOT A VIOLENT TERRORIST ATTACK. Nobody bombed Pearl Harbor and nobody turned airliners into missiles. Nobody blew up a cafeteria with a suicide vest, nobody ran down pedestrians walking along a sidewalk with a truck, and nobody lined up captives on a beach and beheaded them all.

To apply that language to a mass trespassing event is to trivialize 9/11 and oversell J6.

And as I wrote yesterday, the only people to die on January 6 were Trump supporters, all of whom encountered violence from the Capitol Hill Police. One was shot without warning at nearly point-blank range as she climbed through a broken window. Should she have been doing that? Absolutely not. Should she have been killed for it and should her killer get off scot-free? Absolutely not.

I’m not saying J6 was defensible. It wasn’t. I condemn vandalism and trespassing. But it wasn’t what the Left makes it out to be or, unfortunately, what the Right now makes it out to be.

No wonder the country is going to hell.

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Daily Broadside | Was it an Insurrection, Riot, or Protest Gone Wild?

Daily Verse | Genesis 8:21
“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.”

Wednesday’s Reading: Genesis 10-11

It’s Wednesday, January 5, 2022, the day before the first anniversary of the so-called “insurrection” that occurred at the U.S. Capitol as a few hundred citizens breached the building, then proceeded to either wander through it like tourists or, in some cases, committed contemptible acts like breaking windows and doors, invading the offices of members of Congress, stealing the House lectern, or showboating by standing on the Senate dais.

In no sense at all was any of that day’s activities an “insurrection.” Here’s how Mirriam-Webster defines it:

… and how the Cambridge Dictionary defines it:

Under U.S. Code 18, insurrection (or rebellion) is a crime punishable by a fine, jail time or both. Anyone found guilty of insurrection is ineligible to hold office in the United States.

The reason the events of January 6, 2020, weren’t an “insurrection” is because no one participating was armed (as would be expected if there was intent to overthrow the government), there was minimal violence on the part of the participants (mostly limited to breaking doors and windows), and the only people who died that day were four protestors, of whom two died of heart attacks, one (Ashli Babbitt) was gunned down without warning, and the other (Rosanne Boyland), was beaten by police (although conflicting reports suggest she died of a drug overdose). Five police officers who were on the scene that day also died but none of them died that day or from injuries sustained in the protest. One died of a stroke the following day and the other four were suicides.

By far the most compelling evidence that it wasn’t an insurrection is that none of the approximately 700 people arrested in connection with the Capitol riot have been charged with insurrection. If it was truly an insurrection, those who participated would be charged as such; but not one person has been so charged.

It wasn’t an insurrection.

It’s not an insurrection!

There is also plenty of suspicion that the FBI was involved in driving the events of the day.

To the casual reader, news that the nation’s top law enforcement agency prepared ahead of time to combat possible violence on January 6 is reassuring. But to anyone who has closely followed the hyperpartisan activity of the FBI over the past several years, the article reads more like a confession, confirming deep suspicions that the FBI played an instrumental role in prompting the events of that day rather than act as a legitimate police force helping to keep lawmakers and American citizens safe.

(Btw, if you’re not reading Julie Kelly at American Greatness, you should. She’s been investigating and writing about J6 since it happened.)

The point? When you hear the word “insurrection” or “armed insurrection” during the “memorials” tomorrow, know that you’re being gaslit and that these people are being made an example as a warning to the rest of us not to protest our government’s overreach.

But that moment is coming when we’ll have to decide.

Count on it.

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Daily Broadside | You Know Something Isn’t Right—And You’re Right

Daily Verse | Genesis 4:7
But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.

Tuesday’s Reading: Genesis 6-9

Tuesday and we’re still getting used to thinking “2022.” How many of you can immediately begin saying “2022” and using it on official documents and letters? It sometimes takes me a good two or three weeks to start referring to the current year accurately.

I’m reading a newer book by Gary L. Steward titled, “Justifying Revolution: The American Clergy’s Argument for Political Resistance, 1750-1776.” It’s published by Oxford University Press and sets you back $74 on Amazon, which is a lot for a thin academic volume of 221 pages—92 of which consist of endnotes, a bibliography and an index. However, I have a driving interest in understanding how the Christian church of the 18th century justified supporting the American Revolution.*

We here in the contemporary U.S. are troubled by the increasingly authoritarian actions we’re seeing from our ruling class. I’m talking here not just about the Peking Lung Pox lockdowns, but things like the January 6 Select Committee that seems to be operating with lawless malice; the conspiracy to “fortify” the 2020 election—”in which state authorities openly flouted election laws and in which all manner of irregularities ensued;” the lawlessness that we see taking place in cities run by far-left Democrats and Soros’-supported state attorneys; the deplatforming of national politicians (who all happen to be Republicans, never Democrats; or who are experts who defy the official narrative) from techopolies like Twitter and Facebook and YouTube; and the deliberate scare tactics of a “white supremacist” terrorist threat that is never explained but only warned about; and a “free press” that is fully compromised.

What I believe we’re watching is the progression of the slow coup put in motion by the Obama administration after Donald Trump won the 2016 election. What we are seeing is the consolidation of power, inch-by-inch, by the anti-American progressive Left.

We are experiencing from our rulers an indifference toward our guaranteed liberties and constitutional rights, similar to what the patriots in the 1700s experienced when the British Parliament under King George III imposed first the Sugar Tax in 1764 and then the Stamp Act in 1765. Our ruling elite are over-reaching and getting away with it because of the cancerous rot known as cultural Marxism that has infected all three branches of government, and business, education, the sciences, the military, the press, the church and more.

In his column on Monday, Ben Weingarten writes about the J6 “insurrection”:

Consider how disturbing the treatment of Capitol rioters has been, no matter how contemptible the actions of the worst actors among them. There are people with no prior criminal record who participated in the breach now rotting in a squalid D.C. prison for months on end in pretrial detention, allegedly facing assaults, stuck in solitary confinement for hours a day and made to plead before judges before whom they repent their political views in order to try and garner their release. The process is the punishment. The cruelty is the point. The message to Americans is clear: You no longer live in a nation with anything remotely resembling equal, impartial justice. Enemies of the regime will be brought to heel; woke social justice warriors will get off scot-free. This is meant to both instill terror in and demoralize dissenters.

It also serves as a prior restraint on dissent because Americans know that every critical response the Ruling Class’ actions provoke will provide yet another pretext to turn the screws tighter in order to “save democracy.” We see similar themes in the pursuit of the perfectly peaceful political foes of the regime—the dozens and dozens of them—subjected to the Soviet justice of the lawless and limitless January 6 Select Committee.

What astonishes me is that Republicans on the hill have not risen up in loud protest. Normal Americans have been abandoned by both sides of the aisle. It really will come down to citizens having to make a difficult choice between acquiescence and resistance.

What will you choose?

*As I make my way through the book, I’ll take notes and eventually share with you what I learn.