Tag Archives: civilwar

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Daily Broadside | Israel Must Utterly Destroy the Life of Hamas

As we watch events unfolding in Israel, waiting for the ground offensive to begin, waiting on whether Hamas will release hostages in return for a ceasefire (nah), waiting to see if Iran will intervene or conduct a “preemptive strike,” waiting to see if two American aircraft carrier strike groups will deter Iran or Hezbollah in Lebanon, I’ve been mulling over where I stand on the issue.

Bottom line for me is this: Israel must totally and utterly annihilate Hamas. They have to go in and destroy the ability of Hamas to attack, regroup or reconstitute itself in any way, shape or form.

I can hear the cries of horror as readers react. “Sure, but what about all the innocent Palestinian women and children? What about the elderly Palestinians and those who don’t support Hamas? What about proportionality? How can you support such bloodshed?”

Here’s my position: Hamas chose this.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. Their attack on Israel wasn’t an act of “war,” it was an act of terrorism. They indiscriminately murdered men, women, children and the elderly in cold blood. And they didn’t just kill them; they tortured them and desecrated their bodies. The committed atrocities against their neighbors simply because their neighbors are Jews.

What they did was indefensible. I don’t care what excuses are made for their savage slaughter of innocent Israeli citizens. They may have grievances with Israel, but civilization is not required to tolerate their barbarism. Hamas has proven that it is incapable of moderating itself; it’s time to eliminate them.

As far as the women and children go — it is a terrible thing to kill the defenseless, even if they are members of the enemy. I do not advocate for the killing of civilians and if it can be avoided, it should be.

But Hamas does not show that level of concern for their own people. They deliberately position their weapons of war in civilian buildings and neighborhoods in order to create a moral dilemma for civilized nations when it comes to killing innocent: Wipe out the terrorists and take innocent lives with them, or allow the terrorists to survive in order to avoid civilian deaths?

In this case, I place that responsibility squarely on the terrorists. Hamas are the violent enforcers of a religious death cult, and the wives and children of Palestinians are indoctrinated to hate Jews. I don’t want to see impressionable children used as pawns or human shields, but I don’t want the terrorists to survive and launch more attacks.

It’s an imperfect metaphor, but I once discovered that paper wasps had built a nest under the eaves of my garage. There were three larvae in the nest and two adults caring for them. They aren’t a particularly aggressive insect, but will attack if they feel threatened. So I ventured out there with my wasp and hornet spray and gave them a maximum dose, killing both the adults and the larvae. Why the kids? Easy—nest building and attacking is in their nature, and I didn’t want them to grow up and be a threat to me or my family (or any other family). I wanted to completely annihilate them, and I did.

Not only so, but in this post by Rev. Donald Sensing, he argues that Israel is not only battling a physical army of psychopaths, they’re battling an ideology, which can survive physical defeat.

Having formed a “unity government” for the war, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has stated clearly that the permanent end of Hamas as the principal war aim. That this objective requires a land invasion of Gaza is also clear. But what can it take to destroy Hamas? Netanyahu has said that killing its terrorists fighters is a specific goal, but Hamas is not merely an organization. It is also an ideology. How does Israel end with not only the present Hamas organization destroyed, but also the ideology?

He goes on to write that both the American Civil War and World War II provide examples of how to achieve the end of Hamas. First, the Civil War:

After more than two years of indecisive, though bloody fighting, the Union’s strategy took a linchpin turn when Gen. U.S. Grant was appointed commander of the US Army and he unleashed Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman to invade the South. Sherman stated his goal very plainly.

“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”

“This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.”

Sherman’s tactics were ruthless, but they did do what he set out to do. His and Grant’s maneuvers and battlefield victories made it very plain not only to the Confederacy’s leadership (especially Gen. R.E. Lee) that they could not win the war, it was also crystal clear to ordinary men and women throughout the South, including those never actually touched by the fighting. Slavery was ended by the war and it is worth noting also that no state has attempted to secede since then. 

Then, the objective of the Allies in World War II:

One of the preludes to the massive landings on Normandy’s beaches to “enter the continent or Europe” in 1944 was sustained, large-scale aerial bombing of Germany by American and British aircraft. As the war went on and German (and Japanese) resistance failed to slacken, President Roosevelt decided that the German and Japanese peoples must realize after the war that not only had their armed forces been defeated: the entire nation, as a nation, had been beaten. He and Churchill were well aware that German militarism had survived World War I because its apologists had successfully propagated the myth that the Kaiser’s army had not really been defeated, it had been “stabbed in the back” by disloyal factions at home.

Hence, wrote Roosevelt in a letter to Secretary of War Henry Stimson,

It is of utmost importance that every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation. . . . The fact that they are a defeated nation, collectively and individually, must be so impressed upon them that they will hesitate to start any new war.

[…]

One notes that Japan and Germany have been well behaved since 1945. But we also have to note that massive, destructive bombing was alone not the reason. It was simply impossible for either country’s armed forces to claim that they had prevailed, or at least held their own, on the field of battle. German and Japanese orphans, widows and grieving parents were in almost every other household, and a lie that their armed forces had not really lost could not possibly have found legs to stand on.

Hamas and the civilians who support them (at least 90% of the population) must be made to see, to feel, to know that they are thoroughly and utterly defeated. They must be made to see that abhorrent tactics they displayed on October 7 will be answered with overwhelming force, and that such savagery will not be tolerated in this world. They must be made to experience “the hard hand of war” and their defeat “must be so impressed upon them” that they spend the next 20 years recovering from their experience.

I am with Israel and pray that God gives them the victory over their enemies.

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Daily Broadside | Trump To Be Arrested for Being Trump

I’ve written many times about my hate/love relationship with Donald J. Trump. I was not on the “Trump Train” during his first campaign for president. While amusing, I didn’t really like how he insulted his opponents by nicknaming them with all the gravitas of a first-grader. “Crooked Hillary,” “Low Energy Jeb,” and “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” seemed undignified for someone running for high office.

I also didn’t like how he seemed to speak off the cuff with rambling, unfocused, surface-level sounding responses during debates. Didn’t he prepare? Didn’t he have a plan? Why couldn’t he plainly tell us what it was?

And what was with his narcissistic personality? “I’m the only one who can fix our problems … build the wall … beat Hillary.” Really?

But then he got elected. And I saw how effective he was, how he put America first, and the necessity of “punching back twice as hard” as the Deep State emerged to challenge his presidency. Hands down, his most important accomplishment was not just seeing, but revealing the unelected bureaucracy hiding in the alphabet agencies.

I became a Trump fan during his first term because he reminded me of Lincoln’s words about U.S. Grant: “I can’t spare this man; he fights!” The ruling elite in Washington hated Trump and they launched a previously inconceivable and unprecedented series of sustained attacks on him, including the dirty “Russia” hoax developed by Hillary Clinton, the two sham impeachments, the misleading “expertise” of the men and women he trusted to lead us through the Chinese Lung Pox pandemic, with all of it culminating in a rigged election that installed the incompetent bumbling fool currently posing as Resident.

Trump has been out of office for more than two years, but that hasn’t satisfied the establishment. Merrick Garland’s DOJ conducted an unprecedented raid on Trump’s home over official government documents that Trump, as president, had the institutional and constitutional power to declassify. (At least, I think he did. Either way, you’ll notice that our mush-brain Resident hasn’t been treated the same even though many more documents have been discovered at many more places from when he was vice-president and did not enjoy the power of declassifying documents.)

And now, in the latest attempt to smear Trump to prevent his resurrection as president for a second term, comes news that he will be arrested this coming week on charges that he paid $130,000 to Stormy Daniels, a publicity-seeking prostitute, to buy her silence over their (alleged) liaison.

Trump on Saturday announced his impending arrest himself, writing in all caps on Truth Social:

OUR NATION IS NOW THIRD WORLD & DYING. THE AMERICAN DREAM IS DEAD! THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN [sic] OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND WITH IT, THE HEART OF OUR OUR COUNTRY. AMERICAN PATRIOTS ARE BEING ARRESTED & HELD IN CAPTIVITY LIKE ANIMALS, WHILE CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS ARE ALLOWED TO ROAM THE STREETS, KILLING & BURNING WITH NO RETRIBUTION. MILLIONS ARE FLOODING THROUGH OUR OPEN BOARDERS, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS. CRIME & INFLATION ARE DESTROYING OUR VERY WAY OF LIFE…

Page 2: NOW ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE, WHICH HAS ALLOWED NEW RECORDS TO BE SET IN VIOLENT CRIME & WHOSE LEADER IS FUNDED BY GEORGE SOROS, INDICATE THAT, WITH NO CRIME BEING ABLE TO BE PROVEN, & BASED ON AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE, THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!

My go-to “newspaper,” The Epoch Times, writes what is behind the charges.

Trump’s possible indictment stems from the alleged misclassifying of a $130,000 hush payment made to Daniels not to disclose an affair between the two, which Trump has denied. A grand jury was empaneled in the case and expectations have been building for an indictment.

Influential people like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and former GOP congressman and Truth Social head Devin Nunes have warned that if Trump is arrested, he’ll be re-elected in a landslide.

“As I’ve said for a very long time now, as the person who led the investigation into the Russia hoax, that we have slipped into a banana republic in this country where you have a two-tiered system of justice, where Democrats run scot-free, and then someone like President Trump, or other Republicans, are held to this ridiculous standard,” Nunes told the outlet.

Nunes, like Musk, believes that a Trump indictment would backfire.

“If they do move forward and indict, it’ll just make it even easier for President Trump to win election because people are going to see this for what it is,” Nunes said. “[It is] just a farce, and another attack on Trump at all costs to stop him from becoming president again.”

Maybe “it’ll just make it even easier for President Trump to win election.” If he’s publicly arrested, or booking photos are published, that might be enough to get people super angry over the double-standard standard now functionally in place across our country. But given the election “irregularities” of 2020 and 2022, do we really think the GOP will be allowed to put another president like Trump in office?

It’s clear to me that we are witnessing a slow build toward some kind of confrontation. We can’t go on like this. Either the cultural Marxists win, or true Americans win. One will be subjected to the other.

The Left’s reaction to Donald Trump’s political career has from the beginning been a classic case of a conviction in search of a crime. Charging their foes with bogus crimes is a venerable and tested Leftist tactic, going back to Stalin’s trials of his former Bolshevik comrades, whom he forced to confess to various fabricated charges of subversion in order to justify his executing them and consolidating his power as an unquestioned autocrat.

In the U.S., the Democrats enjoyed tremendous gains in both houses of Congress and won the presidency on the strength of Watergate, and they’ve never forgotten that lesson; in fact, tarring their opponents as criminals on bogus charges has become a cornerstone of their political strategy. And that is a prelude to treating them like actual criminals, complete with arrests, handcuffs, and perp walks. Whether or not it comes Tuesday, it’s coming.

Right now it’s looking to me like the American commies are in the driver’s seat. Trump calling for protests is intriguing, given the fallout of the J6 hearings that accused him of inciting the crowd to stage the “insurrection.” My question is, will the nation listen?

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Daily Broadside | Why Civil War Statues in the South Are Important

I had a thought prompted by an article in The American Spectator a couple of days ago. In it, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. observes about the American Civil War that,

… the monuments to only one side remain, and many of the ignoramuses who are tearing down monuments have their eyes too on Union leaders whose reputations they sully with the slander of racism. There was racism to be sure on both sides in times past, and there were other forms of intolerance: religious intolerance, ethnic intolerance, and intolerance of immigrants, for instance. Today, intolerance is still around, but it is being taught in the nation’s classrooms. There, intolerance is being taught under the guise of progressivism with perfumed words such as diversity, equity, and inclusion. Intolerance, apparently, you always have with you.

He’s referring, of course, to the grotesque specter of the wild, woke and irrational antifa and BLM fascists who rampaged across our nation a couple of years ago in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Shortly afterward I chronicled the number of statues and monuments that were torn down or defaced. Several of them were men from the Confederacy like Robert E. Lee or Jefferson Davis, but others were from the Union including Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.

After the initial spasms, several cities and counties permanently removed statues honoring heroes of South. According to a CNN article in 2022, “73 Confederate monuments were removed or renamed in 2021,” leaving 723 across the US.

Last year, a towering statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee was removed in Richmond, Virginia, and added to the growing list of Confederate symbols that had been taken down across the country. This week, Richmond began the process of removing the pedestals that once held the monuments to the Confederacy, which included Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Jefferson Davis and others, according to CNN affiliate WRIC.

Of course, the vandalism forced all of us to wrestle with a fair question: why do modern Americans tolerate monuments to men who were racists and who fought to keep the institution of slavery? Until then had it ever been seriously considered?

Here’s my thought: the answer is to be found in the final line of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address.

“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

After beating the Confederate army, Lincoln faced the task of healing a severely divided nation. He was extending an olive branch to the Confederate south, of which Lee would surrender his Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865.

Healing the country, rather than vengeance, directed Grant’s and the Lincoln administration’s actions. There would be no mass imprisonments or executions, no parading of defeated enemies through Northern streets. Lincoln’s priority—shared by Grant—was “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and unite the country together again as a functioning democracy under the Constitution; extended retribution against the former Confederates would only slow down the process.

For Lincoln there would be no gloating, no shaming, no exulting in the defeat of his countrymen. He would not take out his anger and frustration on his kinsmen; he would allow them the dignity and respect due a noble foe. It started with Ulysses S. Grant allowing General Lee and his men to return to their homes and letting the officers, cavalrymen, and artillerymen keep their swords and horses if the men agreed to lay down their arms and abide by federal law.

It was as if two brothers had gotten into a fist fight and one finally gave up. The victor, rather than relishing his victory, hated that the fight had to be had, and extended a hand to help his brother up. Putting his arm around him, they walked into the house and got cleaned up. After all, they were members of the same family and would have to go on living together.

That’s why we allowed the memorials to be built. It was part of an extended act of forgiveness and respect for the members of our family who had made a principled, but misguided and ultimately, futile stand.

Our modern fascists, however, are determined to do what Lincoln refused to do: take vengeance. They are punishing in absentia those whom Lincoln refused to punish. They have withdrawn the offer of a “just and lasting peace” and instead have taken out their anger on both sides of the issue that had been settled nearly 160 years ago.

The South’s decision to defend slavery was indefensible. But they were Americans, our countrymen. We took them to the woodshed, but tended their wounds after breaking them of their poor habit.

If only we could still see it that way.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | Fox-Tailed Witch Doctor Is a Key Democrat Witness on Abortion

Daily Verse | Isaiah 17:12
Oh, the raging of many nations—
    they rage like the raging sea!
Oh, the uproar of the peoples—
    they roar like the roaring of great waters!

Thursday’s Reading: Isaiah 21-23

Thursday and the so-called “Biden administration” is no longer a clown show but a freak show.

Democrats brought a woman who appears to be a member of a witch coven that engages in furry play as a key witness in a Dobbs hearing on Tuesday. The Oversight & Investigations subcommittee held a hearing on the impacts of the reversal of Roe v. Wade and “taking away the Constitutional right to an abortion.” The subcommittee heard testimony from various individuals on why abortion is “absolutely necessary.”

Democrats were allowed four witnesses and one of their totally sane choices was Paulina Guerrero.

When Paulina isn’t working as a National Program Manager at an abortion clinic, she spends her free time making YouTube videos conducting witch spells and engaging in furry play.

See for yourself.

Not only do they have this woman-child testifying about abortion, but Guerrero never said the word “woman” in her testimony. Instead, she used woke terms like “pregnant people.” Again, you can see for yourself in the video below (queued at 49:20).

I know you’re wondering what Ms. Guerrero is a “doctor” of, are you not?

In 2018 she graduated with a PhD in Folklore where she studied personal narrative, maritime communities, and gendered and racialized work traditions.

This is typical Democrat fare: devoid of substance but great optics. Like AOC pretending to be handcuffed when arrested for blocking traffic outside the SCOTUS. Here, it’s “Oooh! There’s a DOCTOR testifying before Congress. She must know what she’s talking about when she speaks out about abortion and how harmful it is to babies pregnant people who may or may not have a uterus!”

I don’t know about you, but this embarrasses me. The outside world must look at the United States and wonder, “What the hell has happened to you?”

Hey, I’m right there with them. We’ve descended into some kind of bizarre hell world where anything like “normal” is being run over by the fetishes of the Democrats and their progressive followers.

That may be why nearly one-third of voters believe they may have to take up arms against the United States government.

On July 24, the Hill reported the pollsters found that “twenty-eight percent of all voters, including 37 percent of gun owners, agreed ‘it may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government.’”

When responses were broken down by party affiliation, the poll showed 33 percent of Republican voters and 35 percent of Independent voters believe it may be necessary to take up arms.

One in every five Democrat voters believe they may have to take up arms as well.

I hate to say, “told you so,” but I’ve been warning about this happening for years and I know some of you still don’t believe me. It’s inevitable because pretty soon you run out of ways to restrict the government’s power and influence over the people.

Too many people still think this is just a cultural spasm we’re experiencing, and it will soon pass.

Like a kidney stone.

The poll shows that nearly half of American voters–49 percent–agree with the statement that they “more and more feel like a stranger in my own country.”

I am willing to bet that half includes both progressives and conservatives. I can tell you that both halves of the country look at the other half and think, “you’re screwing up my country!”

There’s no negotiating with the other half, either. Conservatives have given about all they can on social issues, and the agitation against them persists—even from their own “side,” as I wrote recently.

How we get back to something close to what used to be “normal,” I don’t know. It will likely involve a lot of conflict, unrest, pain, loss and, unfortunately, probably bloodshed.

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Daily Broadside | New Holiday’s Origins Are Rooted in the Bible

Daily Verse | Psalm 53:1
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”

Monday’s Reading: Psalms 55-59

Happy Monday. Apologies for the absence over the last few days — a collision of priorities meant I had to demote my blogging to concentrate on other matters.

If you are a dad, Happy (belated) Father’s Day. I enjoyed the day with all of my family — minus one who lives half a continent away. It’s nice to be formally appreciated once a year, and I’m grateful that it comes within the context of strong family relationships so that it’s not something done out of obligation but our of genuine love and respect.

We had an awesome pizza dinner and watched Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules.” If you haven’t seen it, I strongly encourage you to spend the $20. After watching it, you can’t say that the 2020 election wasn’t completely corrupted, if not outright stolen.

General Orders No. 3

Yesterday was also the second annual recognition of Juneteenth as a federal holiday. Uncle Joe signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law on June 17, 2021, and I have the day off today in honor of the holiday.

I didn’t understand until recently that Juneteenth is about commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans in the United States.

Juneteenth has been celebrated for more than 156 years, though its history is possibly lesser known than other American observances. Although the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed enslaved African Americans in Confederate states, went into effect in 1863, this document did not immediately end slavery. In fact, it took until June 19, 1865—more than two years later—to end the horrors of slavery in Texas. And slavery continued in pockets of some Union states until December 6, 1865, when the 13th Amendment was ratified and slavery was formally ended in America.

Part of the reason it took that long to reach Texas was that the Civil War was still being fought, yet the state experienced no large-scale fighting or significant presence of Union troops. Because of that, many southerners took their slaves and moved to Texas to keep them out of the war’s reach.

It took 2,000 federal troops two and a half years to arrive in Texas to take control of the state and to enforce emancipation. The man who led the troops and announced that 250,000 slaves in Texas were free was U.S. General Gordon Granger, who stood on the soil of Galveston Bay, Texas, on June 19, 1865, and read General Orders No. 3 (pictured above):

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863, freeing all slaves in the southern states, but it didn’t go into practical effect until the Union won the Civil War. You can’t enforce a law in a territory you don’t control.

It wasn’t until two months after Robert E. Lee surrendered in April, 1865, when the news got to Texas and the last enslaved African Americans were told about their freedom. And it was there, in Galveston, that the idea of Juneteenth took root.

While there was relief and joy in the immediacy of the proclamation, the former slaves started formally celebrating Juneteenth in Galveston the next year. Celebrations were initially held in churches, and “the original observances included prayer meetings and the singing of spirituals, and celebrants wore new clothes as a way of representing their newfound freedom.” They also included reading the Emancipation Proclamation.

The name, “Juneteenth” is a later designation. Throughout its history, the holiday has also been known as Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, Juneteenth National Independence Day, Black Independence Day, and Juneteenth Independence Day.

In the era following their liberation, however, African-Americans called their observance “Jubilee Day.” It refers to the biblical practice of every 50 years “when land was to be returned, debts forgiven, and enslaved people were to be set free. Announced by the loud blast of a ram’s horn, biblical scholars note, the Jubilee year was grounded in the idea of freedom, orchestrating an economic, cultural, and moral reordering of society.”

It’s based on Leviticus 25:8-55. Verse 10 reads,

Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.

One report explains,

At the time, Texas was the farthest state West and the last to hear of freedom more than two years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. As the news spread, the shock for some 250,000 enslaved Texans quickly turned to celebration. Juneteenth combines the words ‘June’ and ‘Nineteenth,’ but according to Tisby it was originally referred to as Jubilee Day – a biblical reference [to] the book of Leviticus, which tells the story of how the Israelites celebrated their freedom from slavery in Egypt. Faith formed the foundation of what would become America’s most recent federal holiday. 

Unfortunately, it seems as though Juneteenth has, at least in part, become detached from its roots and is now becoming a secular observance that isn’t satisfied with just remembering that the slaves had been freed after a long and bloody war that produced some 650,000 casualties. “The question becomes, what does it mean to celebrate that freedom gained, and what freedoms now are still being sought after?“

That’s an open question that includes discussions of reparations and accusations of systemic racism and tension between the races. Dr. Ben Carson, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under president Trump, encourages us to learn from the past and to appreciate the present.

“Juneteenth is so important because it actually efficiently recognizes the emancipation of the slaves, and slavery was a horrible thing, there’s no question about it. But I think we need to recognize that slavery has been a part of virtually every civilization since there has been written history,” Carson explained …

He continued, “We in America have actually done something that no one else really did. That is, we had so many people who are opposed to it that we fought a Civil War, a bloody Civil War, lost a large portion of our population to get rid of this evil. And that says something about this nation as a people. We’re not all the same. We have a lot of different opinions but overall tendency was to move toward freedom and justice for people” …

“It would be very nice if a lot of the people who are complaining today about the United States could go and live in some other parts of the world for a little while, and I think they would have a tremendous appreciation of freedom we have and why it is so vitally important for us to not only understand it but to protect it for those who are coming behind us and particularly for our young people,” Carson said.

For now, the longest-running African-American observance is Juneteenth, which originally celebrated the end of slavery in the U.S. The celebration included singing spiritual songs, prayer meetings, and likely thanksgiving to God for their newfound freedom. That posture would be worth restoring on the day which commemorates the emancipation of our black brothers and sisters of that era.

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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.