Monthly Archives: October 2023

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Daily Broadside | “A Man Reaps What He Sows” Applies to Woke Ideology

The last couple of days my rants have probably sounded like a guy who is despondent and without hope. If I’m being honest, there’s some truth in that assessment — I am greatly discouraged over the condition of the United States, and I am losing hope that there’s a chance to pull us out of the nosedive we’re in.

However.

I’ve written before that, ultimately, my hope in this life is not in politics, a president, a change in culture, or even in the people who populate these United States. My hope is in God, who measures out justice and retribution as he sees fit.

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. —Acts 17:26

So while I’m not at all joyful and hopeful about the future of these United States, I do rest assured in the future because of the one who is sovereign over all.

Having said that, there are some interesting developments taking place in the last few weeks that ought to give us some hope that people are starting to wake up to the realities that are being forced on us by the ideological demagogues on the Left. Before I share those with you, however, I need to issue a LOUD DISCLAIMER SO THAT NO ONE MISSES IT: I DO NOT TAKE PLEASURE IN THE DEATH OF ANYONE.

Even God Himself takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (see Ezekiel 33:11).

I REPEAT: I DO NOT TAKE PLEASURE IN THE DEATH OF ANYONE.

I write that because I’m going to give you some examples of woke activists becoming victims of their own woke policies. And while I will be the first to shake my head with disbelief and say, “play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” in the end it’s a sad day when anyone loses their life for any reason, stupid or not.

Death is final. That life is over. It will never be repeated. It’s done. Extinguished. A terrible and sobering reality.

But sometimes people bring it on themselves; sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly.

EcoMap Technologies CEO Pava Marie LaPere, a self-described “anti-racist” and Black Lives Matter supporter who spoke out against the “criminalization of Black bodies,” was allegedly beaten to death in her own home in Baltimore on Monday by a black male who was released early from prison under the criminal justice reform policies she championed.

Video shows that the 26-year-old let her alleged assailant into the building because he pretended to be fumbling for his keys according to this report, which says,

So he was acting “as if he had forgotten his keys,” which convinced Johns Hopkins University graduate Pava LaPere to let the convicted sex offender — a fugitive suspect wanted on charges of rape, arson and attempted murder — into her building. Because it’s about a “building a deeply inclusive culture,” see? Virtue-signalling can get you killed.

So can naïveté, which plays into almost every one of these examples.

Over in Philadelphia, Josh Kruger was a freelance journalist and advocate for gay rights, homeless people, and drug abusers.

Kruger, 39, was killed Monday after police say someone entered his home just before 1:30 a.m. and shot him multiple times at the base of his stairs. The shooter fled, police said, and Kruger ran outside seeking help. Officers found him collapsed on the sidewalk on the 2300 block of Watkins Street, and rushed him to Penn Presbyterian Hospital, where he died a short time later.

According to this report, “Kruger had a long history of downplaying violent crime in the city, often openly mocking those who expressed concerns about homicides in Philadelphia.”

Hostile condescension may make a person deaf to reason.

Enough of Baltimore and Philadelphia. What’s happening in New York?

A stabbing took place early Monday morning in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, claiming the life of poet and far-left activist Ryan Carson. The 32-year-old was walking down the sidewalk with his girlfriend when he was attacked by a stranger.

As usual, Andy Ngo digs up the truth:

Here’s the kicker from Kevin Downey Jr.:

In a disturbing but not shocking move, Carson’s “loving” girlfriend, Claudia Morales, seen here wearing an Antifa “ACAB” shirt, (an anagram for “All Cops Are Bastards”) reportedly refused to give police a description of the man who killed her boyfriend. The revolution matters more.

That’s three people murdered in three different cities that have become dumpster fires because of the woke policies they supported.

In Minneapolis, Shivanthi Sathanandan survived a carjacking but is a victim of her own idiotic policies.

As Kevin Downey Jr. again writes:

Sathanandan is the leader of the Minnesota Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party and a big cheerleader for the “defund the police” crowd. Or she was until four lads with guns beat the potato salad out of her in her driveway as her two young kids screamed for help.

In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser also called for defunding the police and actually commissioned a street painting that read, “Black Lives Matter. Defund the Police.” Now she’s complaining that the city is 400 officers short and carjacking and other crime is on the rise.

Unfortunately for those involved, actions do have consequences, and Mayor Muriel Bowser is learning that the hard way. Amidst a growing crime wave, including a car-jacking epidemic that victimized a U.S. Congressional member on Monday evening, the mayor of the nation’s capital is complaining that she can’t fill the ranks of her police department. 

“We have policies” is a passive phrase that eliminates personal responsibility. Just how is it that you “have policies that make it difficult to recruit new officers”?

Over in Chicago, IL, Gov. JB (for “Jelly Belly”) Pritzker has all but accused the Biden adminstration of ruining his city.

“Unfortunately, the welcome and aid Illinois has been providing to these asylum seekers has not been matched with support by the federal government. Most critically, the federal government’s lack of intervention and coordination at the border has created an untenable situation for Illinois.”

Says Pritzker. Who also defiantly said this:

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York is similarly perturbed and said so.

The governor, up to her eyeballs in migrants, this week pointed the bony finger of blame at Biden administration border policies — and this was a very hopeful sign.

Could she be coming out of her coma?

Probably not.

For the governor then effectively endorsed the root cause of New York’s border-crosser crisis — Gotham’s completely insane, prohibitively expensive and totally unsustainable “right-to-shelter” policy.

You know, the one that says if you can make it to New York, you’ll have it made in New York — now and forever, no questions asked, until the tax base breaks.

To be sure, Hochul called out Washington’s abandonment of those states and localities shellacked by America’s shameful — and exceeding dangerous — border breakdown.

“This crisis originated with the federal government,” she quite correctly noted in an Albany speech Thursday, “and it must be resolved through the federal government.”

Of course she went right back into her coma when the blowback came.

The problem, she said, is the border itself: As in, “It’s too open right now.”

Which it obviously is. The consequences — societal, fiscal and cultural — also are obvious, and becoming more so.

But Hochul’s candor — aimed squarely at Washington, and at Joe Biden in particular — clearly has had consequences too.

On Monday, she was warbling a different — far more deferential — tune. To wit:

“With respect to what was said about the border, I have called for a more thoughtful, balanced national immigration — federal — immigration policy.”

Translation: “Oops, I sure stepped in it this time. Please don’t hurt me.”

And now, much too late—as in closing the barn door after the horse has bolted—Biden closes the barn door. Well, 20 miles of it, anyway. And he’s waiving 26 federal laws to do it.

“The Secretary of Homeland Security has determined, pursuant to law, that it is necessary to waive certain laws, regulations, and other legal requirements in order to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international land border in Starr County, Texas,” read the public notice produced by DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s office this week. The plan is to build at least 20 miles of new border barriers along the Rio Grande — an area Congress, in 2019, designated as a vital crossing point and appropriated $1.38 billion for the construction of a border wall to close.

The Biden White House is waiving no fewer than 26 federal laws — including the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, among others — to construct the additional miles of wall with all due alacrity. Given the administration’s sensitivity to criticism from its left flank, this is not an initiative this White House would pursue if it had a choice. Moreover, the administration’s decision opens it up to the charge of hypocrisy, given the president’s categorical denunciation of the very concept of a border wall.

“It’s imperative that we secure our borders, but ‘build the wall’ is a slogan divorced from reality,” Biden wrote in a 2019 op-ed condemning the Trump White House’s “racist” policies toward the “Latinx” population. Building the wall, he wrote, was a waste of time and money. It would not “stop asylum seekers fleeing” north, nor would it reduce the undocumented population, “most of whom overstay legal visas.”

Delicious. Biden and the Dems are building a wall that they called racist, xenophobic and ineffective. Logically, that makes them racist, xenophobic and poor stewards.

Nah. That makes them hypocrites.

Scripture says that “a man reaps what he sows” (Gal. 6:7).

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | If I Wanted to Live in a Foreign Country, I Would Have Moved To One

One of the things that I’ve said to myself and to people I trust is that I don’t recognize my country anymore. What I mean by that is not just the clear political shift to a socialist, Marxist, authoritarian ruling class, which is defintitely part of it, but also that I see it and experience it in my daily routines, like when I go to the store or to the post office or to the dentist or to a restaurant.

Or when I call number and am told in both English and Spanish which numbers to press.

I came across this article by Peter J. Sandys at American Thinker. A good part of what he wrote resonated so strongly with me that I wanted to share it with you to see what you think. Does it capture what you’re feeling?

For years, the same feeling has haunted the native populations of the Western world: a strange and pervasive sense of dispossession. Anyone walking down the streets of Western cities will not recognize them by their “modern atmosphere” or milieu. Anyone looking at the television screens or listening to the news will not appreciate the strange, politically correct, alien language. Glancing at billboards, watching TV series, soccer games, movies, plays, reading children’s school books, taking the subway, going to train stations and airports, waiting for a daughter or son after school, anyone feels like he or she is no longer in the country they used to know. Accompanying one’s mother to the hospital emergency room, standing in line at the post office or employment office, sitting at a police station or in a courtroom, anyone feels like they are no longer in the country they used to call “home.”

You remember the country you knew as a child, the one your parents and grandparents described. You remember the land you find in films or books, say, the United States, that is both casual and brilliant, literary and scientific, intelligent and original. You remember the land you are desperately looking for everywhere and compare every country to it without ever knowing—the country you hold dear—and that is about to disappear.

You have not moved but feel like you are no longer at home. You have not left your country, but it feels like your country has left you. You feel like a foreigner and outsider in your home—internally banished. For a long time, you believed you were the only one who sees, hears, thinks, and fears that way; you were afraid to say it and ashamed of your impressions and thoughts.

Yes! That’s exactly how I feel, with the exception of the last clause — I’m not at all ashamed of my impressions or thoughts, but I know they are not welcomed. If I said so, I’d immediately be judged as being racist or jingoistic or xenophobic or a white supremacist.

Yet, here I am, saying something.

For a long time, you did not dare to say what you saw, and most importantly, you did not dare to understand what you saw. And then you told your wife, husband, children, friends, colleagues, and neighbors, and then you realized that everyone shared your sense of dispossession. America was no longer America, and everyone had noticed; Britain was no longer Britain, and everybody had observed it. France was no more France, and all had recognized it; Germany was no more Germany, and people had realized it. Europe was no longer Europe, and everyone had seen it.

Of course, they despised you for noticing. The powerful, the establishment, the do-gooders, the journalists, the politicians, the academics, the sociologists, the elite universities, and the religious authorities told you that it was all a delusion, that it was all wrong, that you were all bad. But in time, you understood that they did the deluding; they got it all wrong and harmed you.

We’re not supposed to notice and we’re shamed with the lies above if we do.

I went to my local grocery store the other day and walked in with at least two other people who were speaking to one another in another language I didn’t recognize. I go to my local big box store and the majority of people I’m shopping with are not white. I drive down the streets in my local community and I now regularly see vehicles boasting a large Mexican flag covering the hood, driven by foreigners.

That’s a fact, not a judgement.

The open borders extremists have won. The anti-Americans have won. The globalists have won. The cultural Marxists have won.

The unique American culture that made America strong has all but disappeared. I grieve that.

And I’m angry that Democrats and their weak siblings, the Republicans, did it. Intentionally.

It goes all the way back to Ted Kennedy and the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. You know what he said when he was promoting its passage?

“The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants,” lead supporter Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy (D-Mass.) told the Senate during debate. “It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.”

Liar.

LIAR!

Just like the Left today, everything they said was a lie.

So, we reap the whirlwind set in motion by the Hart-Celler Act (so named after its two sponsors). Here’s what the act changed:

Quotas based on nation of origin were abolished. For the first time since the National Origins Quota system went into effect in 1921, national origin was no longer a barrier to immigration. “With the end of preferences for northern and western Europeans, immigrants were selected based on individual merit rather than race or national origin,” Chin says. “Accordingly, there were many more immigrants from Asia, Africa and other parts of the world which had traditionally been discriminated against.” The act also established new immigration policies that looked at reuniting families and giving priority to skilled laborers and professionals.

Hey, how’s that “individual merit” going with today’s 15,000 per day crossing the border?

It restricted immigration from Mexico and Central and South America. According to Chin, there were no numerical limitations on immigration until 1921, but Western Hemisphere immigration had been exempt. “Based on the Monroe Doctrine—and the desire for the free flow of labor, especially agricultural labor—there had been no cap under the National Origins Quota System,” he says. “The 1965 act established a cap on Western Hemisphere immigration for the first time. It also followed on the unwise elimination of the [guest worker] Bracero Program in 1964. These decisions disrupted traditional patterns of labor movement and agricultural production in the United States in ways we are still grappling with.”

LOL.

It changed immigration demographics and increased immigrant numbers. According to a report by the Pew Research Center, in 1965, 84 percent of the U.S. population consisted of non-Hispanic whites; in 2015, that number was 62 percent. “Without any post-1965 immigration, the nation’s racial and ethnic composition would be very different today: 75 percent white, 14 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic and less than 1 percent Asian,” the report finds.

As Kennedy said, “It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society.” Not even noticeable. Barely perceptible.

I’ve soured some on Ann Coulter, but she’s still one of the sharpest minds when it comes to “immigration.” From her book, ¡Adios, America!:

It was Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act that snuffed out the generous quotas for immigrants from the countries that had traditionally populated America—England, Ireland, and Germany—and added “family reunification” policies, allowing recent immigrants to bring in their relatives, and those relatives to being in their relatives, until entire Somali villages have relocated to Minneapolis and Muslim cab drivers are refusing to transport passengers with dogs or alcohol.

Kennedy knew what he was doing, and it was for nefarious purposes: to import Democrat voters. There’s really no other reason to do it.

Progressives destroyed what was the most productive, brilliant, benevolent country in the world. But the end hasn’t come, yet. They will preside over the third-world hellhole they created, and then they will be consumed by it.

If there’s any silver lining here, it’s that I’m unlikely to be around to see it when it happens. But I grieve for my children and for their children. They will never experience a homogenous culture.

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Daily Broadside | The House Tells McCarthy to Take a Hike

Matt Gaetz pulled it off.

Lawmakers have voted to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from his leadership role, the first time in the history of the House of Representatives that the chamber voted to boot a member from the top job. 

Eight Republicans voted with every present Democrat to vacate the speaker’s chair. The final vote was 216 to 210 in favor of McCarthy’s ouster.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., introduced a measure against McCarthy known as a motion to vacate on Monday night, accusing him of breaking promises he made to win the speaker’s gavel in January.

Is this a good thing? I don’t really know.

On the one hand, we really don’t need the distraction and the chaos.

On the other hand, I like that Gaetz and the other GOP reps who joined him were willing to deal some tough love to the speaker. They accused him of breaking promises he made in January to become speaker after four days and 15 rounds of voting.

The New York Post reports:

Eight Republicans — Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Matt Rosendale of Montana — banded together with a united Democrat conference to declare the office of speaker vacant by a vote of 216-210, removing McCarthy (R-Calif.) from power and thrusting the chamber into chaos as it faces a grinding process to pick his replacement.

The prospect of a revolt against McCarthy, 58, had been dangled for several months by Gaetz, his chief Republican antagonist.

Gaetz, 41, finally went ahead with the motion to vacate Monday night, after a weekend of stewing over the speaker’s decision to call up a stopgap spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown — and rely on Democratic votes to get the measure through.

What were the promises McCarthy made?

The New York Times:

Gone, too, was the promise Mr. McCarthy had made in January to allow lawmakers 72 hours to review any legislation before it came to a vote. Instead, members were given about an hour to read and vote on a 71-page bill they had never seen before. And it would be considered under special rules that required a two-thirds majority for passage, meaning that it could not be approved without substantial Democratic support.

Issues & Insights:

In the same fashion, Speaker McCarthy betrayed the conservative wing that allowed him to take power by depending on squish Republicans and a unanimous vote of his opposition to pass a 45-day clean continuing resolution keeping federal funding at its outrageously bloated fiscal 2023 levels.

Moreover, there is virtually no prospect of matters being different 40 days hence. As Freedom Caucus conservatives warned in signaling their opposition to yet another “CR,” the threat of a government shutdown will for the 27th year in a row put budget-cutters’ backs to the wall and raise, to the boiling point, pressures for another 12 months of unaccountable spending.

The author, Bob Maistros, goes on to write,

But just as important, reclaiming the power of the purse at any cost is vital to confronting straight-on the radical progressive and elitist cabal and avoiding the endless series of train wrecks toward which it has set America barreling. 

Again, not just debt and economic crash. But also nonexistent borders driving down wages, straining resources, and fomenting a fentanyl death spiral. Breakdown of civil and social order, from fractured families to fertility collapse to gender-bending to lawless streets and subways, even as the justice system at every level is weaponized against political opponents.

Permanent blackouts, along with energy poverty and confiscation of essentials from guns to gas stoves to gas-powered cars. Social scoring and cancellation. All ultimately leading to a virtual prison state eliminating not just freedom of conscience but also commerce, enterprise, wealth creation, mobility, housing, self-defense, intimacy, family formation and expression – in exchange for apportioned messes of pottage from the all-powerful Nanny State.

To advance this overthrow of democratic norms, the ruling cabal has blockaded every conceivable political, economic, social, cultural, and judicial avenue for reform. Including, yes, elections. After the certifiably unlawful tactics employed in the 2020 contest and the equally suspicious sputtering of the anticipated 2022 “Red Wave,” can anyone count on the 2024 vote to turn the tide?

Resistance must start someplace – and a good place to start is Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz’s maneuver to unceremoniously force McCarthy from power via a motion to vacate, rinsing and repeating if necessary until the desired effect is achieved.

Frankly, I like the pushback. Show a little life, a little bit of fight.

That’s what I think is good about this development. We need to have someone in the chair who will FIGHT the progressive regime, not go along with it.

Will it do any good? I’m not optimistic, but your guess is as good as mine.

We live in interesting times. Maybe Gaetz could be the next speaker.

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Daily Broadside | America is In a Death Spiral

I used to laugh at the idiocy of European countries allowing themselves to be overrun by foreigners. I’m not laughing anymore.

EAGLE PASS, Texas — Illegal migrants fist bumped and thanked Border Patrol agents for cutting through barbed wire that had been erected by Texas authorities to secure the border, the Daily Caller News Foundation observed Thursday in Eagle Pass, Texas.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently instructed Texas authorities to place more wire along the Rio Grande River to address the influx of illegal crossings. Border Patrol agents cut through the wire to take into custody a group of migrants that had crossed the Rio Grande and arrived at the U.S. side of the river.

The migrants who crossed illegally Thursday thanked Border Patrol and the U.S. after they were let in.

What is happening?

Our “Border Patrol agents” are acting as doormen doormats for foreigners who have no business being in our country. It’s lawlessness. It’s anarchy. It’s self-destructive.

And it all starts at the top with the Resident and his evil puppet masters.

Did you know that there isn’t any money for border protection in the hastily-passed CR that Kevin McCarthy “””negotiated””” with the Democrats? Now we know why: the border patrol is facilitating the invasion. They don’t need any money for protection because “””protection””” is not what they’re doing. They’re freaking fist-bumping illegals, then taking them “into custody,” which means these foreign invaders soon be on busses to sanctuary cities all over the country.

The Border Patrol, which is the armed law enforcement division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection within the Department of Homeland Security, is only following orders. But those orders come from Alejandro N. Mayorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security.

And Secretary Mayorkas has no interest in defending our borders, even though THAT’S THE JOB.

America is in a death spiral, and we won’t pull out of it until we clear out all the anti-American, Marxist globalists like Alejandro.

That is, if there’s time. I’m beginning to think we don’t have time.

Here’s another example:

One way liberals are working to keep Trump off the ballot is through “a legal barrage against Trump that so far includes a total of 91 felony counts, every one of them politically motivated.”

That barrage includes the civil “fraud” trial in New York that started today. As Tucker explained:

In some, Trump stands accused of inflating the value of collateral used to secure loans, loans that he has already paid back with interest. In other words, there is no injured party in this case. The biggest banks in the world assessed the risk, and they made a profit…not a single person was defrauded. For this non-crime Trump and his children are in the process of losing their homes and their businesses.

I’d encourage you to watch the whole thing, here:

As Tucker and VDH underscore, we’d better wake up to the fact that we are witnessing a revolution and be willing to fight for the survival of our country.

I’m reading “The Sumter Gambit” by Robert Spencer. His thesis is that the Left is trying in every way to provoke the Right into firing the first shots of a new civil war so that the government will have the pretext to impose martial law and crack down on anyone who doesn’t spout the official narrative.

Guess who that will be? MAGA, conservatives, and Christians.

As I’ve cautioned before (following Doug Wilson here and here), don’t take the bait.

But do keep your powder dry and your guns clean.

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Daily Broadside | All Chaos All the Time

I’m back!
I’m back in the saddle again.
I’m back!
I’m back in the saddle again.
— Aerosmith

Short post this morning.

My thanks to Bruce Gust for ably filling in for me over the last couple of weeks. Writing a daily blog takes effort and time, which are limited resources. When he contributes it means something else in his life has to be reprioritized.

I appreciate his focus on matters of faith and logically working through a worldview. I was particularly struck by this paragraph (in “The Real Contest”) that gets at the intersection of faith and politics:

The real contest today is not defined in the context of political parties. Rather, it’s a fight between a mindset that seeks to justify its morality by asking “Is it Constitutional?” as opposed to “Is it right?” It’s not whether or not you have the Constitutional right, it’s whether or not you are morally right in doing whatever it is that you’re attempting to justify.

Bruce is right that the deeper question is “Is it right?” when defining morality. As Os Guiness points out, the constitution gives us only “parchment barriers” against tyranny and other abuse of power. What’s really needed is an ethical society that doesn’t need anything stronger. Unfortunately, the (mostly Christian) virtues needed for a thriving constitutional republic are nearly extinct, or only exist in pockets throughout the country.

I also appreciated the dialogue in the comments this week. Thanks Kevin McGarry for speaking up and offering a contrary perspective.

I have to admit that being away from the news and social media for almost two weeks was refreshing. I opened a couple of news apps while I was away and quickly closed them after reading a few of the headlines. We are a nation out of control.

It’s always the same stuff. The latest on Trump. The latest on Biden. A fight over the stopgap funding bill between the Rs and the Ds. A fight among the GOP to expel either Matt Gaetz or Kevin McCarthy because of broken promises. Some stupid fire alarm stunt in DC. The latest on Swift and Kelce, Brady and Kardashian, the transgender craze, the ongoing invasion of foreigners and the national debt reaching $33 trillion.

It never stops.

It was a relief to ignore the the chaos.

But we can’t ignore it forever. What is happening will eventually touch every one of us. We need to stay informed and alert. We need to prepare for the worst because that’s what those in power are planning — the worst.

Stay tuned.