Category Archives: Daily Broadside

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Daily Broadside | Go Woke, Lose $4 BILLION in Value

By now you’ve heard all about Anheuser-Busch’s choice to pander to the sexual anarchist wing of the Democrat party by featuring a mentally ill man who appropriates women’s fashion, makeup and stereotyped mannerisms to pass himself off as female.

No one except the trans-extremists believes transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney is a woman, but Bud Light went all in on making this idiotic parody of a woman their new spokesman — and, yes, I mean spokesman. You will never get me to join your irrational lunacy that declares a man is a woman — and I’m not even a biologist. Don’t get me wrong; Dylan Mulvaney can pretend to be whatever he wants. Just don’t expect me to play along.

Bud Light obviously didn’t expect their current customer base to play along because it is clear they’re trying to develop a new customer base.

The brand’s new Vice President, Alissa Heinerscheid, discussed the decision to include Mr Mulvaney in the brand’s latest ad campaign, attacking the brand’s reputation and core-customer base for being “fratty” and allowing customers to drink while enjoying “out of touch humor.”

She told hosts of a podcast: “I had this super clear mandate… we need to evolve and elevate this iconic brand… [that] means inclusivity… it means shifting the tone, it’s having a campaign that’s truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter…”

Ironically — and hysterically! — what they seem to have done instead is get a standing ovation from the LGBTQ+ lobby and its allies while alienating everybody else.

Consumers nationwide revolted against the nation’s top-selling beer brand after it stepped “recklessly” into the culture wars last week with its new spokesperson, transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney, according to bar owners and beer-industry experts around the country.

“I think society flexes it muscles sometimes and reminds manufacturers that the consumer is still in charge,” Jeff Fitter, owner of Case & Bucks, a restaurant and sports bar in Barnhart, Missouri, told FOX Business.

“In Bud Light’s effort to be inclusive, they excluded almost everybody else, including their traditional audience.”

He cited sports fans, working people and women as loyal Bud Light consumers the brand suddenly excluded in its race to go woke. 

Well, that’s on brand for the woke crowd, who push tolerance, inclusion and diversity on everyone while excluding, say, evangelical Christians.

But her effort to be inclusive excluded the people who matter most — Bud Light drinkers, according to St. Louis-area operator John Rieker. 

“It’s kind of mind-boggling they stepped into this realm,” Rieker, who owns Harpo’s Bar and Grill in Chesterfield, Missouri, told FOX Business. 

“You’re marketing to an audience that represents a fraction of 1% of consumers while alienating the much larger base of your consumers.”

His customers, many of them loyal Bud Light drinkers, are baffled by the brand’s lack of inclusivity.

LOL. “Baffled by the brand’s lack of inclusivity.” The VERY THING Heinerscheid thought she was doing. Brilliant.

As funny as that is, the key point is “a fraction of 1% of consumers.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the only thing these woke corporations understand is the bottom line. It’s only and always about the money. The only way that businesses like Target or Gillette or Bed, Bath and Beyond will stay out of the culture wars is if they are punished financially.

If some business is going to cater to the woke crowd, I say, let them. Let them survive on that “fraction of 1% of consumers.” Speak with your checkbook or credit card. Keep it in your pocket or purse when considering your next purchase.

I know, I know. You fret about losing your favorite brands. But really — do you need Bud Light? Can you survive without Bud Light?

You can.

You don’t need, and can do without, all kinds of products. All you need is a little food, water, air and some shelter. Everything else is discretionary. Don’t fuel these woke corporations. Starve them of the funds that allow them to influence our culture for the worst.

It seems like Bud Light’s current consumer base has already started sending that message to Anheuser-Busch, whose market cap dropped by $4 billion in the wake of this marketing fiasco.

We won’t know if the self-inflicted damage is permanent for months, or even years, but the now-popular adage seems to be holding true: go woke, go broke.

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Daily Broadside | Are You Being Watched While You Worship?

Every day brings more evidence that we’re rapidly evolving into a police state as our historic norms and traditions disintegrate and lawlessness is flaunted by our domestic enemies on the Left, whether in politics, education, science, entertainment, religion, medicine or business. We can no longer assume that we live in freedom with the U.S. Constitution guarding our rights, because those in power no longer respect that historic document.

Take, for instance, our rights of religion, speech, assembly and, though not specifically listed, freedom of association. Every one of those rights was to be violated with the latest revelation that the FBI planned to cultivate informants within the Catholic church.

The chair of the House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray for all records relating to a leaked internal memo that proposed developing sources in traditionalist Catholic parishes to inform on potential “violent extremists” in such houses of worship.

In an April 10 letter (pdf) attached to the subpoena, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) noted that the committee’s investigation of that Jan. 23 memo, which has since been repudiated by the FBI, had revealed that it was produced by at least one undercover agent and that, despite leadership’s claims to the contrary, the bureau intended to act on the memo’s recommendations.

“Based on the limited information produced by the FBI to the Committee, we now know that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis, and that the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith,” Jordan wrote to Wray. “This shocking information reinforces our need for all responsive documents, and the Committee is issuing a subpoena to you to compel your full cooperation.”

“Shocking”? Really, Jim?

Is it really so shocking after all we have endured during and post-Trump? We’ve learned that the FBI helped fuel the Russia! Russia! Russia! hoax, likely took part in instigating the J6 “insurrection”, coordinated the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home with the White House, targeted concerned parents opposed to public (i.e. state-run) schools corrupting their kids with critical race theory and transgenderism, concocted a ludicrous entrapment scheme to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen “Wretched” Whitmer, and abused their authority to arrest a pro-life activist in front of his family as a warning to anyone else who might think they can protest abortions at the little extermination camps set up across our fair nation without reprisal.

So, “shocking”? No. Not shocked at all.

This is the kind of police state activity you might expect in communist or socialist countries ruled by dictators-for-life. The FBI is acting more like the East German Stasi or the Russian NKVD than it is the domestic investigative unit whose mission is “to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States.” (*spit*)

FBI Director Christopher Wray denied that the FBI condoned such activity, protesting that, “we do not and will not target people for religious beliefs, and we do not and will not monitor people’s religious practices.” Yet, Jordan found that, “The document itself shows that its contents, including its proposal to develop sources in Catholic churches, were reviewed and approved by two senior intelligence analysts and even the local Chief Division Counsel.”

Say, I wonder if the FBI is developing sources within Islamic mosques to monitor for “potential ‘violent extremists’”? Or nah?

It’s not like the FBI had identified a specific threat coming from a specific church. The plan was simply to develop inside sources among “clergy and church leadership” to report to the FBI what certain church members were up to.

Can you imagine the distrust and suspicion that would be sown among the body of believers, especially as people found out that parishioners were winding up in federal prisons? The effect would chill relationships and conversation. After all, who could you trust?

For now it seems like the threat has been averted. But the fact that it was even proposed tells us all we need to know about how the FBI sees religious conservatives.

Today the Catholics; tomorrow the Protestants. Now that the precedent has been set and the idea of surveilling churches is out there, don’t be surprised when parishioners begin to be arrested or simply disappear without a trace.

It shouldn’t be that shocking.

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Daily Broadside | Shooting Other People Seems To Be The Rage

I trust you had a wonderful Easter Sunday. I took the full day off, meaning that I didn’t have a post for yesterday. No worries, though. Evil takes no holiday.

Officials with the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department in Kentucky confirmed Monday that five people died following “reports of an active aggressor” near a bank.

Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel identified the shooter as Connor Sturgeon, who was one of the five deceased.

Louisville Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey told reporters that four died and eight were injured, including one officer, with various injuries. Officials later said that five people died.

“We believe this is a lone gunman involved in this that did have a connection to the bank. We’re trying to establish what that connection was to the business, but it appears he was a previous employee,” Humphrey said.

Nine people, including two police officers, were treated for injuries from the shooting, University of Louisville Hospital spokeswoman Heather Fountaine said in an email. One of the officers was in critical condition, she said. At least three patients had been discharged.

The killer live-streamed his rampage. It’s possible that what we have here is a former employee of the bank exacting vengeance for some perceived slight. The New York Post reports that:

Sturgeon worked as a summer intern for the bank for three consecutive years, eventually joining as a commercial development professional in 2021 and a full-time associate and portfolio banker last year, according to his LinkedIn account.

[…]

Sturgeon had been told he was going to be fired from the bank, according to CNN, who also reported he had left a note for his parents and a friend saying he was going to shoot up the bank.

I wouldn’t make too much of it at this point in the investigation, but several commentators have pointed out his apparent support of the Pronoun Extremists by listing his pronouns in his bio.

The shooter was also a star athlete in high school who sustained multiple concussions.

Sturgeon was an all-round athlete, playing basketball, football and running track at school, according to an old classmate.

The classmate, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Daily Beast Sturgeon wore a helmet while playing due to multiple concussions he suffered while playing football.

Of course, Resident Brandon aired his grievances after the shooting, blaming the killing on the gun rather than on an mentally-troubled young man.

“How many more Americans must die before Republicans in Congress will act to protect our communities?” he added. “It’s long past time that we require safe storage of firearms. Require background checks for all gun sales. Eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability. We can and must do these things now.”

Neither safe storage, background checks, or “gun manufacturer’s immunity from liability” would have stopped the shooter yesterday. The shooter gave no indication whatsoever that he was capable of, or even harbored thoughts of, mass murder. So the Left’s precious “red flag laws” wouldn’t have stopped him either.

This latest shooting comes on the heels of the killing of six people, including three children, at a Christian school in Tennessee two weeks ago, which seems to be in some sort of cover-up mode. The shooter in that case died, too.

Our country is devolving into chaos, the opposite of order. If you haven’t purchased a firearm yet, I really, seriously, not kiddingly implore you to buy one and learn how to shoot it before it’s too late. And if you haven’t bought ammo recently, there’s no time like the present to stock up.

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Daily Broadside | Jesus Didn’t Condemn You But Offered A Way Out

Today is Good Friday, the day we remember on which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was put to death on a cross to pay the penalty for sin on behalf of all mankind. For Christians this is a day for sober reflection on our personal contribution to the sin of the world and the great love that motivated God the Father to send his Son on a mission to rescue us from our natural state of condemnation.

16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 

—John 3:16-18

Many people have gotten the impression that Jesus came to send people to hell; that he stands above us pointing an angry finger that threatens us with condemnation if we do not “repent and believe.” The truth is very different. The Bible says that we already exist in a state of condemnation; it’s our natural state of being. To “stand condemned” means we have already been found guilty — guilty of sin against God.

It’s not like Jesus came into a world that existed in a neutral state, neither judged nor unjudged, and then handed out red cards (condemned) and white cards (not condemned) based on how we responded to him. The Bible says all of us were already holding red cards.

Jesus came, offering to give us white cards for our red cards. Note that we weren’t allowed to drop our red cards on the floor in order to take his white card. We had to give him our red card, which he keeps, in exchange for his white card. He took our condemnation on himself.

To use another metaphor, we’re born separated from God and doomed to die separated from God unless we grasp the life ring tossed to us as we tread water on the open sea. The life ring is Jesus, who tells us that if we believe in him, we are no longer doomed to destruction.

It’s a remarkable thing to contemplate on Good Friday: the sinless Son of God willingly abandoned the comforts of his position to become human for the express purpose of securing our freedom from the consequences of condemnation.

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

—Philippians 2:5-8

May Good Friday find you contemplating your rescue, and may you have a wonderful Easter as we celebrate Jesus’ victory over sin and death.

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Daily Broadside | There’s No Going Back Now, Only Going Forward

Now that we’ve gone full Stalinist (or Maoist; at this point, who’s to say which we resemble more?), we need to be thinking about the ramifications. This has been a long time in coming, developing quite slowly over the last 80 years, accelerating in the last 15, and now hitting full velocity.

Half our population, including the illegal foreigners who now live in the shadows, do not believe in the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, or in America’s greatness. That also includes the Democrats as a party, along with RINOs, NeverTrumpers, and UniParty members. It includes the majority of our institutions, including universities, media, law, politics, entertainment, medicine and, unfortunately, a significant number of churches.

America as founded is gone. The skeleton, the framework, is there. But it’s either demonized as hopelessly racist or colonialist, or thrown over the shoulder as an accessory to convey some kind of status that can neutralize any criticism.

I’ve resisted wanting to admit that this is no longer the country I grew up in. The ground has shifted beneath my feet and moved so far to the Left that I would now be labeled a “right-wing extremist.” I’m nothing of the sort, of course. I’m an evangelical conservative Christian who cherishes our God-given rights and believes in personal responsibility, a moral obligation toward others, earning what you have, and enjoying the fruits of your hard work.

Since we now live under a nascent police state regime that is trying to consolidate its power and has taken the extraordinary step of indicting, arresting and charging a former U.S. president — and DECLARED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE who, by all accounts, is the leading figure of the political opposition — with 34 felonies but with no crimes listed, you can bet that it won’t stop there. If they are brazen enough to do this with Donald J. Trump, what’s to stop them from doing the same to a sitting Senator or Congressman? What’s to stop them from going after high-profile opinion leaders? Or little guys like me?

Or you?

I’ll tell you what will stop them: nothing.

Note the pattern. They spied on Trump as he campaigned. They unmasked members of his team. They accused him of colluding with Russia while he was in office. They accused him of a quid pro quo phone call with his Ukrainian peer. The soulless speaker of the House ripped up his State of the Union speech on national TV. They impeached him, twice. They rioted. They threatened. And now they’ve finally, finally, figured out a way to twist some NDA payments into federal crimes and have arrested and charged the man.

They now have to try him, with his next appearance in court on DECEMBER 4 — eight months from now and just before 2024 primary elections. Think that’s coincidence? If they get a conviction (nothing is impossible in our new state of affairs) Trump becomes the first U.S. president to go to jail. If they don’t get a conviction, the next step in the continuum is … terrible to contemplate, but four past presidents have endured it.

Then they’ll come for you.

Here’s our choice as Robert Spencer sees it:

There has never before been a presidential candidate under indictment, and Democrats appear to be banking on the proposition that most Americans are still unaware that the old republic has passed away, and that the criminal might not be the one who is indicted, but the one doing the indicting. That would explain why Alvin Bragg appears to be cheerfully indifferent to the appearance of conducting a corrupt, politicized prosecution designed to take out the chief opponent of the ruling regime.

Trump himself has often said it: “They’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.” The legal persecution of Donald Trump is a prelude to what this authoritarian regime plans to unleash upon law-abiding Americans if they dare to dissent from its sinister agenda. The feds have already sent this message by sending a SWAT team to arrest a peaceful pro-life activist, Mark Houck. Trump is the big prize, but his arrest is intended primarily to send a new message to the American people: fall in line, or else. And so, for the sake of the flickering light of freedom here and around the world, we must not comply.

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A Personal Note
I write five days a week on personal time because it’s one way I can contribute to strengthening the resolve of Christians, conservatives and other like-minded compatriots in the face of unprecedented division in our country. I would like to eventually do more. If you like what you’re reading and think others would benefit from it, please consider regularly sharing and commenting on my posts. Also invite your friends to subscribe. They can do that right on the home page. Thanks for reading! — Dave

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Daily Broadside | Trump Indicted; Will Somebody Make it Stop?

Yesterday we crossed another Rubicon, this time one that can never be undone. For the first time in 247 years, a U.S. president has been arrested and charged with criminal wrongdoing. No, it wasn’t Joe Biden, who has lied about his financial arrangements involving Ukraine, Russia, China and his son Hunter; neither was it Barack Hussein Obama (currently serving his third term behind the scenes) who was involved in the plot to undermine president Donald J. Trump’s term.

No, the president charged with a crime was Donald J. Trump.

When I saw that photo, I had one of those nauseous “watershed moment” feelings in my gut. This has really happened. A George Soros-backed District Attorney campaigned on a promise to indict Trump, rummaged through the gutters looking for something, anything, that he could use, and landed on 34 felony charges of “falsifying business records related to alleged hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign.”

The indictment‘s charges just repeat the same charge for different checks the Trump Family Revocable Trust wrote to lawyer Michael Cohen from February 2017 to December 2017. They’re saying that the checks were written to Cohen for legal services but were “intended” for something else, i.e. paying off the prostitute.

The indictment will revolve around hush money payments paid at the end of the 2016 election cycle to adult entertainer and Trump fling Stormy Daniels and, possibly, a former Playboy Playmate, Karen McDougal. Bragg revived what was known inside the Manhattan District Attorney’s office as the “zombie investigation” into the hush money payments. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, declined to seek an indictment on this matter. 

The theory of the case goes as follows. Trump made the hush money payments through his fixer, Michael Cohen, and reported the expense as “legal fees.” In fact, Bragg will allege, these were in-kind donations from Trump to his own presidential campaign. This distinction is important because New York state law deems the falsification of business records to be a misdemeanor unless that falsification is meant to conceal another crime. In this case, the documented fraud was perpetrated to conceal a violation of campaign finance law. 

If this is, in fact, Bragg’s case against Trump, then it’s paper-thin. Many campaign finance law experts say it’s unclear whether hush money would be an in-kind contribution to a political campaign, since Trump himself has said he made the payments to spare his family from embarrassment—not to win the 2016 election. 

These trumped up charges are pure political persecution and election interference on the part of Bragg. He’s a tool of the Left.

We would shake our heads and scoff in disbelief when we’d hear about countries where members of the political opposition were arrested under false pretenses. “That would never happen here,” we’d say to ourselves.

With the arrest of Donald Trump, we’ve entered into a new era of country’s history. The kind of corruption we’ve long believed was limited to third-world countries has made it to the Land of the Free. Thanks to Alvin Bragg’s precedent, prosecutors are now emboldened to misuse their power to punish political rivals with fabricated charges. Worse yet, roughly half the country condones it because they care more about punishing Trump than the rule of law or blind justice.

This, even though the statute of limitations has run out; even though the feds knew there was no case to be made (and declined to try); even though it’s dubious that Bragg is authorized to enforce federal laws; even though this is obviously prosecutorial abuse of discretion.

It’s no use wondering how close we are to being a communist third world banana republic. We’re there.

I cite this in order to make this point: In my wildest dreams, I never imagined what I was studying would ever apply to the United States of America, the freest country in world history.

I assumed that communism was, for various reasons, something that happened elsewhere — most obviously, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia and North Korea.

What were those various reasons? One was the absence of freedom in the history of those countries. Another was that all those countries were, with the exception of Cuba, outside of Western civilization.

All these years later, I see that I was wrong. Communism — or if you will, left-wing fascism and totalitarianism — is coming to America and Canada, and (a bit more gradually) to Australia and New Zealand.

Incredibly — or maybe not so incredibly — more than two hundred years of unprecedented and unrivaled liberty and commitment to Judeo-Christian values and reason, and all the unparalleled achievements of Western civilization, have come to mean nothing to about half of the American people and to virtually every one of its major institutions.

Don’t take it from me.

“America is back, baby!” is a farce under Brandon. “America” as founded is dead and will probably never be back.

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Daily Broadside | The Best Solution is the One that Seems Impossible

One of the men I read pretty regularly is Doug Wilson who blogs at Blog & Mablog. He had a post late in March that I wanted to circle back to because he has a way incisively getting to the point about what is going on in our culture from a (Reformed) Christian point of view.

The post, titled That Acrid Taste of Damnation, looks at what is happening across the country and says that it’s no longer about politics, but about wickedness. Let me quote one full section for you, but I encourage you to go read the the whole thing.

America’s Inchoate and Disintegrating Soul

This is what damnation tastes like. It is not the full damnation itself, but rather just one drop from the bottle, applied to the tip of the tongue. That acrid taste seems like it could never go away, and yet there is a full bottle of it left. There will always be a full bottle left.

It tastes like spitting loss, biting regret, venomous hatred, curdled resentment, dishonest blame shifting, and devouring lust, and all of it curved back on itself. To use Augustine’s phrase—incurvatus in se—it is like a snake biting its tail. Actually, it is not like a snake biting its tail; it is a snake biting its tail.

Instead of the soul turned outward toward God, the twisted soul bends back in upon itself. The idea is to believe in oneself, to reach deep down within one’s own heart, and there to discover a treasury of infinite riches. So goes the lie. But what we have discovered instead is that we have become a vacuous people with hollow souls, empty minds, and grasping hands.

Thinking ourselves to be urbane sophisticates, cosmopolitan, savvy in the ways of the world, we have discovered instead that the human souls that we once had are coming apart in our hands. They are in tatters, and pieces are all over the floor. When we try to pick up one piece, we drop other pieces, and all of them continue to tear and come apart. Not only so, but just as we buy our jeans pre-ripped these days, so also we try to treat our souls the same way—we try to introduce the artificial destruction early on. Christian parents send their fresh little girls off to a government school so that some bureaucratic flunky can start grooming her into taking hormone blockers, and then cutting off her breasts.

If you are reading this, and you are one of those who has been surgically torn apart by such lies, and you are still miserable, that misery has to do with your relationship to the God you are still rejecting. Your misery has nothing to do with the fact that some people in the red states disapprove of what you have done. They cut off your breasts in San Francisco, and you are not spiritually empty because somebody in Tulsa disapproves. You feel spiritually empty because you are spiritually empty, and Oklahoma has little or nothing to do with it. Not only so, but the surgeon who did this awful thing to you is spiritually empty as well, and the medical profession certified him is as hollow as a jug. Looking to them for answers is like drinking from the dry and broken cisterns of ancient Israel, the ones that were dry in Jeremiah’s day.

“Thinking ourselves to be urbane sophisticates, cosmopolitan, savvy in the ways of the world, we have discovered instead that the human souls that we once had are coming apart in our hands.” I can summarize this whole sentence into one word when it comes to what I’ve been describing so often in my observations and critique of the powers-that-be: soulless.

As in callous, heartless, cold, calculating, and cruel.

Name me any politician on the Left these days, and I think “soulless.” There are some on the Right, too, but they’re a minority. Whichever side of the aisle they are on, they don’t care about fairness, lawfulness, truth or those they harm with their insane policies. They care only about themselves and their power.

No one is really “soulless.” We all have a soul. But our souls are sick and unresponsive to what is right and good. So what is the solution?

When you are mired in sin, as America currently is, there is no option other than repentance. That repentance does not extricate us from the bog we have created, but it is the one thing required of us by the only One who can extricate us. The twin summons of the gospel consists of these two imperatives—repent and believe.

When I’ve said that there is only one way back from the coming confrontation, I’m wrong. One is to strenuously object; the other is to repent and believe. Where I am sure to ruffle some feathers is when I say that perhaps it will take both repenting and believing, and strenuously objecting.

The best case scenario is that we and our countrymen (and those living here illegally) come to their senses and repent before it’s too late. We must pray that the Spirit of God does that work.

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Daily Broadside | My New Badge of Honor

When I clicked over to Twitter yesterday, I was greeted by a message that told me my account had been locked for “violating a Twitter Rule” or something to that effect. I don’t have the exact wording, but it was clear I couldn’t access my account. At first I thought I was looking at some kind of meme — I totally did not expect to be locked out of my account.

When I clicked past that grim notification, here’s what I saw:

It’s my post from this past Tuesday. When I post a Daily Broadside at daveolsson.com, my account automatically posts a notice on Facebook and on Twitter. For the last three years I’ve been posting almost five days a week and have never run afoul of the twitterati censors.

But now I have.

If you look at the post, which consists of a title, a normal person would ask themselves what the problem is. But we don’t live in normal times, so we have to guess what the problem is, because the morally superior twits at the Twitter Censorship Bureau don’t tell you exactly what “rule” you violated.

Having been notified that I violated the “Twitter Rules,” with nothing more to go on, it seemed like a good time to get acquainted with them.

If you want to see “the rules,” you can do so here. There are four sections: Safety, Privacy, Authenticity, and “Third-party advertising in video content.” While looking through them, I came across this gem under “Authenticity”:

When they say that you can’t share anything that might “manipulate or interfere in elections” or “suppress participation” what they really mean is anything that might harm getting Democrats elected, like a true story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. But stories like Trump being a RUSSIAN AGENT are perfectly fine.

How authentically hypocritical.

Back to my experience. From what I can tell I’m not violating any of the Privacy, Authenticity or Third-party advertising “rules,” which means I must have violated a “Safety” rule. Here they are:

If I eliminate the ones I obviously didn’t transgress, it must be I violated the rules concerning “Violent Speech,” “Abuse/Harassment” or “Hateful conduct.” I mean, I guess I could’ve violated the “Violent and Hateful Entities” rules since, perhaps, it could be construed that I “promoted” the activities of a violent and hateful woman. But I’m guessing that’s not what my ban is about.

No, I’m guessing that it has to do with “Hateful conduct” described as: “You may not attack other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease. Learn more.”

My post is about a self-identified transgender, so that fits, but is my title an “attack”? I suspect that that is how the Twittites see it. If I had to guess, the words “woman” and “gender confusion” are the triggers. The killer was a biological female and went by the name Audrey Hale and Aiden. So, I am guilty of calling her a woman and suggesting that it might be linked to gender confusion.

That, my friends, is considered “Hateful conduct.”

Of course, I’m appealing the ruling.

I don’t expect to be exonerated. It’s not a court of law where you can plead your case. If they refuse to reconsider, then I have a choice: stay locked out of my account, or bend the knee to the “safety” standards set at Elon Musk’s Twitter. (Apparently he still hasn’t gotten rid of the Leftist snowflakes who monitor content.) That would mean surrendering to the woke definitions of “violence” and essentially giving in to their view of the world.

On Monday I shared some of what Jeff Goldstein wrote on his substack. One paragraph is worth repeating:

I will not “respect your pronouns” or “celebrate” your “queerness.” I am hostile to your sexualizing of children. I reject your neologisms, your “triggers,” and your desire to control my speech. I know who and what you are: you are my presumptive master, or else the Useful Idiot who empowers him. But I will grant you and your ideology no power over me.

And then I wrote, “I will hold the line and I will refuse to surrender.” True.

It’s the same principle that was at work in the lives of the early church martyrs. According to the account of Polycarp’s martyrdom:

And there met him the sheriff Herod, and his father Nicetes, who removed him into their carriage, and tried to persuade him, sitting by his side and saying, ‘Now what harm is there in saying “Lord Caesar,” and in offering incense, and so on, and thus saving thyself?’ He at first made no reply, but since they persisted he said, ‘I do not intend to do what you advise.’
— Documents of the Christian Church, 2nd Edition, by Henry Bettenson, Oxford, 1963, p. 10.

Rather than compromise his beliefs, Polycarp went to the stake and burned to death.

My situation is not in the same category, but the principle is the same. If I’m denied my appeal I will refuse to bow to their demand. Screw their rules. I will not allow a twisted understanding of truth to be my master. I won’t bow to the censorship of free speech.

I will gladly wear my banishment as a badge of honor.

I’ll let you know how it works out.

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Daily Broadside | Some Kids Got Killed But the Real Story According to the Media is Trans ‘Hate’

We don’t know a lot more about Audrey Hale, the young mentally-ill woman who shot dead three 9-year-olds and three 60-year-olds at a Christian school yesterday. But we’re learning a lot more about the trans community and their allies, of which she was a part.

Our noble media (*spit*) are blaming Republicans and Christians for what happened and spinning the story to make “trans” people the victims or to make the story about guns.

Fox News had this:

Forget that Audrey slaughtered six innocent people, including the three children. Instead, lecture those you despise with “Hate has consequences.” What are you implying, Trans Resistance Network? Seems to me the only one with “hate” around here is Audrey Hale.

And maybe you.

“Many transgender people deal with anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide, and PTSD from the near-constant drum beat of anti-trans hate, lack of acceptance from family members and certain religious institutions, denial of our existence, and calls for de-transition and forced conversion,” TRN claimed.

“Anti-trans hate”? “Denial of … existence”? “Forced conversion”? You’d think the whole country was out hunting these people like fox hounds.

Matt Walsh addressed the shooting on his show yesterday.

Here’s a few paragraphs that I found helpful.

The transactivists are assured that, somehow, those who disagree with them are a threat to their very lives. Just by disagreeing. That those who do not affirm their self-identity are engaging in violence, simply by not affirming. That the refusal to affirm is essentially an act of murder, okay, because you’re murdering me by not affirming my self-identity, because my self-identity is the only identity that matters, and if you make me question my self-identity then you are basically killing me.

That’s the logic. And it is a logic that gives a green light to carry out atrocities. It is intended to do that. That is how it is intended. Let’s stop beating around the bush and pretending otherwise. This is what they want.

Every time someone, someone in the media, someone in D.C., anyone else, points at Christians, at conservatives, at any of us, and says, “They want genocide!” what they’re really saying is, “Deal with them! Shut them down! Silence them! Take them out!” That’s how the words are interpreted. How else could they be interpreted?! After all, if somebody was really carrying out a genocide, then violence would be the appropriate response.

Nobody I know wants to be targeted by transactivists for refusing to “affirm” a transsexual’s “identity.” But for most Christians, this poses a problem because it is clear that a person who is confused about whether they are a female or a male has some psychological issues. We don’t “affirm” someone who makes irrational claims. We get them help.

As believers, we also let them know that God loves them, right where they’re at, but we don’t let them stay in that confused state. We get them help. They need healing.

It’s a tough needle to thread.

This is the evil that we are up against. And evil is the point, here. Because, y’know, no matter who’s responsible for the latest burst of demonic evil, what lies at the root is the reality of human evil and a society that fosters this evil, and fertilizes it, to help it grow.

I think this is an important point. It’s not just that the people in charge are cultural Marxists; it’s not just that they celebrate the crazy over honoring historic and traditional norms; it’s that they encourage what is evil, what goes against “Nature and Nature’s God.” Our institutions, our politics, our universities, our entertainment, our mainstream heroes, are fostering evil.

We’ve become an evil empire. And why?

Whether it’s a trans person or anyone else carrying out the latest mass murder, the root is always a culture in a state of spiritual and moral decay. We’ve become a country filled with numb, detached, empty, desensitized people with no sense of underlying purpose.

Again, I’m brought back to John Adams’s statement because it so clearly underscores why things are off the rails in our country.

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams, Letter to the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798

While there are exceptions, especially in our churches (but not always), the institutions that drive culture are no longer populated by “a moral and religious People.” And, therefore, says Adams, the Constitution they created is “wholly inadequate” to govern us.

Guns aren’t the issue. We’ve had guns for hundreds of years but it’s only been recently that “guns” have become a problem — that comes in the wake of a society that has forsaken God and actively fosters evil.

And that evil will go after the only thing standing in it’s way: Christians.

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Daily Broadside | Woman Kills Six at Christian School; Link to Gender Confusion Suspected

Over the past few years I’ve written about specific attacks on people who are Christians because they are Christians — for examples, see here, here, here and here. My point is to be taking notes and pointing out that Christians are fair game in the culture war, and I expect it to get more overt.

None of the incidents I’ve chronicled have been violent, until yesterday, when a confused and spiritually ill young woman who pretended to be a man deliberately targeted a Christian school that she attended as a kid and shot to death three children and three adults.

Nashville Police announced on Monday they responded to a shooting at a private elementary school and preschool as officials confirmed three children and three adults died.

Officials identified the child victims as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, saying they are all aged 9.  The adult victims were identified Cynthia Peak, age 61;  Katherine Koonce, age 60; and Mike Hill, age 61; according to a post on Twitter.

Police Chief John Drake told reporters that the shooter was identified as Audrey Hale and that “she identified as transgender, yes,” when asked about whether she had. “At one point she was a student at that school,” he added hours after the shooting. “But unsure what year … but that’s what I’ve been told so far.”

Ms. Hale was confronted on the second floor of the school and shot dead by responding police. No motive has been determined yet, but investigators say they recovered a manifesto and other materials from her car. When asked if her “identity” may have been a motive, the Nashville police chief indicated that there was evidence to that effect. When asked if it was a targeted attack, the chief nodded and simply said, “It was.”

So we’ll have to wait and see what the motive was. My guess is that 28-year-old Audrey Hale blamed Christians for her misery and self-loathing.

The tone-deaf moron in the White House made a statement about the shooting, but not until he had made an ass of himself joking about ice cream and how he had a whole freezer of it upstairs.

President Biden was criticized Monday for his response to the Nashville school shooting after he joked that he only made a public appearance because he heard there would be ice cream before discussing the tragedy that claimed the lives of three adults and three children at an elementary school earlier in the day.

“My name is Joe Biden. I’m Dr. Jill Biden’s husband,” Biden said from the White House’s East Room in his first public appearance since a 28-year-old woman shot and killed three students and three teachers at a Christian private school in Nashville. “I eat Jeni’s ice cream — chocolate chip. I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream,” he continued. “By the way, I have a whole refrigerator full upstairs,” he added. “You think I’m kidding? I’m not,” Biden told the crowd.

I have it on the very best of authority that when the Resident was installed, “the adults were back in charge.” We can all see how that’s going as he yuks it up at a moment that calls for somber reflection. But that’s what passes for adulthood in this adminstration.

Brandon didn’t waste any time in turning the moment to his extreme contempt for the Second Amendment and exploiting the shooting to push for stricter gun control laws.

“We have to do more to stop gun violence. It’s ripping our communities apart, ripping the soul of this nation — ripping at the very soul of the nation. And we — we have to do more to protect our schools so they aren’t turned into prisons. You know, the shooter in this situation reportedly had two assault weapons and a pistol — two AK-47. So I call on Congress, again, to pass my assault weapons ban. It’s about time that we begin to make some more progress.” 

One thing I’m sure about is that we are no longer the “moral and religious People” that John Adams said were necessary under our constitutional government. Because we don’t control ourselves, the powers that be try to impose control through the law. But laws don’t change a heart — only Christ can do that.

As if on cue, here’s an advertisement floating around out there.

I would say that’s a call to violence. Do you suppose the DOJ and the FBI are all over it? I wonder if Ms. Hale was having her own “day of vengeance”?