I wrote the following piece just a year ago – on December 14, 2020. It has held up pretty well. In this Advent Season, while many look with joyful hope to the anniversary of the birth of our Savior, there is also a profound sense of dread about what will happen when the calendar turns over to 2022. Small wonder, given the last three years. 2019 saw the beginning of the end for liberty in Hong Kong. 2020 was worse, as the unwarranted panic over a new virus saw the economies of much of the world tanking under unprecedented restrictions – and the basic liberty of the formerly free world brought into question. 2021 was much worse, as America suffered a sustained assault on fundamental liberty and Constitutional rule of law. We now have a real contingent of political prisoners in America – who are treated far worse than political prisoners in Tsarist Russia were. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and much of Western European governments have suddenly become full-blown fascist authoritarian states – and the left in the United States is pushing to become the same. In 2022 the extent of the medical disaster the Covid shots are will be almost fully revealed. Moreover, it will be a year of profound decision. Will free Americans submit and allow the country to be subsumed into fascist authoritarianism? Will they battle prudently to recover the liberty that has been wrested from them and stop the slide into dystopian chaos? We all know a great battle has been joined. St. Joan of Arc marched under the banner of Jesus and Mary – and France was saved after almost a century of deep oppression and great trial. Only when we realize that our battle is primarily spiritual and undergo a great religious revival will the tide turn in any significant way. We must march under the banner of Jesus, Mary and Joseph – the full Holy Family. If we march under any other, we will lose – and a great new dark age will settle over the world. Once again, damaged as she is, America is the great hope of the world. If we recover our faith, defend our liberty, recover the partnership of faith and reason, we may help the rest of the world do the same. But the first order of business is to turn anew to the Lord, knowing that the first enemy to be conquered is our own sinful nature and infidelity to Him who has so blessed us. The new year may be consumed by battle, but it is primarily a year of decision. Who will we serve, the Lord or Mammon? A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.

And now, for the piece from a year ago that foreshadowed the challenges we would face in the year just gone by.-CJ

By Charlie Johnston

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves…The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation…We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

Abraham Lincoln: Message to Congress, December 1, 1862

The Supreme Court’s rejection of the Texas (election) case last Friday leads me to conclude that Joe Biden is going to be installed as a completely fraudulent president. For the left, the occupation of America is accomplished. Oh, I know, I read all of the remaining legal theories about how we could still avoid this disaster. It now has the sound of the fans of a football team that is down three touchdowns at the game’s two-minute warning talking about how they could still pull it out. It is still possible, but unlikely.

The bedrock upon which a healthy, working society is built is not a solid Constitution, but the social compact. A congenial social compact makes it possible for a constitution, a foundation, to be laid. The social compact is never written, but is a tacit agreement among a community of people on what is just, what the good is, and what goals are desirable and which are destructive. This is why, after the Constitutional Convention, when Benjamin Franklin was asked what form of government the founders had devised, he replied, “A republic – if you can keep it.” John Adams later made the point more explicit when he told a section of the Massachusetts militia that, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The people are the bedrock, the Constitution the foundation, and the laws and statutes the visible structure. So long as the visible structure is in harmony with and guided by the limitations of the foundation, all is well, if occasionally contentious. Now, the bedrock we originally laid the foundation in has turned to sand.

Initially, the most important question to me was whether or not Donald Trump and his team would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that massive fraud had taken place. Within a week I was satisfied that his team was well on the way to proving it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Having done that, I knew – and wrote – that reversing the fraud would be entirely dependent on courageous legislatures and honest judges. I was doubtful about that. The Supreme Court ruled it would not hear the case because the states involved lacked standing. Wrong. States do not have a case before the Supreme Court if they simply want to impose something, including reform of corruption, on another state. They do have standing if a particular state or states’ actions have a fundamental impact on the whole nation. The enabling of massive fraud in some states in a national election for president is clearly a situation in which the whole nation is affected – and honest states have standing to dispute. The Supreme Court used legal-sounding phrases to deny that obvious fact. Again, I know that some conservative commentators have made the argument that allowing standing in this case would set a precedent that would allow leftist states to impose their will on conservative states in the future. Given the elastic nature the Commerce Clause has taken in the last century to justify any intervention leftists want, I do not dismiss this lightly. But on the choice of the national leader for all the people, if the honest states don’t have standing, then the original agreement between the states is already abrogated and the Constitution has no meaning. Plus, I am sick to death of “responsible” conservatives explaining to us why we must accept a fraudulent loss this time on behalf of some principle so that we can fight by the rules against dishonorable people who will no more abide by the honorable rules some mythical next time as they did this time.

Though the judiciary has done itself no honor since this began, we have more honorable legislators than I thought at the beginning of this mess (along with some horrifying disappointments. It seems compelling to me that the Governor and Secretary of State of Georgia are deeply compromised). It is not enough, however, and the fraud will almost certainly stand. I have always thought that comparisons to the fall of the Roman Empire were over-used in public discourse, while the more germane fall of the Roman Republic was not cited in comparison to our steady fall often enough. When Rome drifted into authoritarianism, it kept the forms of democracy while draining them of their substance. Eventually, the Emperor Caligula appointed his horse to be a senator. While we have not gotten that blatant yet, Mazie Hirono IS a senator, while AOC and Eric Swalwell ARE Congressmen.

There is an irony here. Twelve years ago Barack Obama seriously began his bid to “fundamentally transform” America, an effort that went into hyperdrive these last four years as the pagan left openly sought to destroy American Society and the Western Civilization from which it flowered. They have largely succeeded – and now are poised to take control of what is left. The irony is that, on the cusp of taking control of what they ruined, they have no effective nation to govern.

It seems to me that the Supreme Court obviously used legal language in a nakedly political decision where the case was strong and the standing obvious. They think if they give the mugger what he wants now he will leave them alone later. That is a profound victory of wishful thinking over experience, given the results of appeasement over the last century. Given this set of facts, I think it profoundly wishful thinking on our own part to believe some lesser case is going to find the Justices suddenly willing to find their backbone when they could not do it with a strong case.

It is puerile to argue what dishonorable people SHOULD do. Thieves should not rob, murderers should not murder, confidence men should not cheat people – yet if your only defense is to howl in outrage that this is not how it should be you leave yourself at the mercy of the dishonorable. They don’t even much care about your public protests – those serve to alert others that resistance is futile. Now we are faced with an opponent who believes, with Mao-Tse Tung, that power lies at the end of a gun. Our defense cannot be just waving a piece of paper they are openly contemptuous of and telling them how it ought to be.

On the other hand, some people are very enthusiastic about a potential military takeover. I am not – and I do not think that option is going to come into play. First, it cannot be done without making the military the lead institution in society. I am not aware of any place where, long-term, that worked out well and became a guarantee of liberty. Second, the process would embitter most in the middle who otherwise might support the cause of liberty. Third, while I am not squeamish about the use of force in defense of liberty, going to the option of military intervention reduces this to a raw contest of power on every side. That is not a formula for resurrecting a culture committed to faith, family and freedom.

I would rather go into the great trial before us with Donald Trump at the helm of the executive branch. That would give us a chance to secure liberty with the least potential of extended violence. I no longer believe that to be likely. Yet, in its own way, I am content with what is happening. I have continually said this is the hour of the hobbits, the time of the ordinary man. Too many have interpreted that to mean the ordinary man must work extra hard to empower some man on a white horse who is going to save us. With or without Trump, we must all act, under God, as the people to whom liberty has been entrusted. It is us, indeed, who will nobly save or meanly lose it. Despite the transient despair that has gripped so many, this set of facts underscores that our future, our liberty is in our own hands. If we choose any way to contest the occupation of America that does not put God first, even if we win we will ultimately lose what we now must fight for.

I don’t think the left meant to be so brazen and obvious about stealing the election. Their hand was forced because the manufactured polls they followed engendered a false sense of security in them. When Trump was leading by over half a million votes in the swing states, they HAD to stop the counting and then manufacture enough votes to overcome the unexpectedly large margin Trump was winning by. But if this stands (as I think it will), the open brazenness of this steal becomes a feature, not a flaw, for the pagan left. Getting away with such a brazen fraud sends a powerful message that normal people cannot withstand them. That is true if we continue to cite legal and Constitutional provisions to a cohort that has already shredded them. As Lincoln said, we must disenthrall ourselves of conventional thinking.

I formed CORAC almost six months ago with this eventuality in mind. Oh, I set it up so that it could morph into a support group for Christians who were under assault but did have an ally in the chief executive, but my intention was to gear it primarily for a means of full-on resistance should that become necessary. Most people are geared into static thinking – they see in terms of a snapshot where, if you change one thing, everything else remains the same. The reality is that the world is always dynamic, like an ever-changing kaleidoscope in which you must endeavor to see what is, but also what will be. The two biggest weaknesses the pagan left have is that they are constitutionally incapable of dynamic thinking and they to come to believe their own lies as matters of faith. These will loom large, going forward.

Let us first look at some of the likely consequences of this brazen fraud.

The first is economic – and the domestic consequences that follow from it. Trump has done a yeoman’s job of managing and massaging an already broken economy. The fundamentals were already in a state and on a trajectory of ultimate and sudden collapse. One thing that Trump did not do was address the massive, unsustainable debt –  perhaps because it had already grown too large to effectively deal with. The sad fact is that, for some time now, complete, sudden collapse has likely been our best option – all the pain at once for a massive reset. Biden and company will not manage or massage it. They are bound and determined to enact policies that will shatter it quickly. Over the course of my lifetime, I have met few Congressmen who have a solid grasp of economic fundamentals. Democrats, though, have no understanding of wealth. They think it is all a creation of government to distribute as it will. This is a formula for quick collapse. Think of it this way: a farmer grows corn and through the exchange made possible by currency, individuals can purchase corn to eat. When government takes over, it mandates how much corn each person is guaranteed each week, while vastly depressing or shutting down corn growers. The guarantee is meaningless when there is no corn to be had – which is why almost all communist states quickly become poverty-stricken hellholes.

I am not given to conspiracy theories BUT this Covid scare has me wondering. It is a normal virus that has some peculiar characteristics that make it deadly to a small segment of the population. We have utterly failed to protect that segment effectively while using the virus as the justification for shutting down much of America’s sturdy middle class (the corn growers). The shutdowns are peculiar in that they have minimal effect on gazillionaire industries while targeting relentlessly small businesses and Churches. I am not certain that some shadowy group is trying to destroy America’s middle class, but if it were, it could not do a more effective job of it. This, too, is short-sighted. Historically, people revolt when they perceive that they have little left to lose. By adopting some market characteristics, China gave its population enough of a stake that their tolerance for ruthless political oppression was increased, forestalling the inevitable revolution there by making sure its people had something left to lose. The Democrat plan seems to be to make the entire middle class dependent on government largesse, stripping it of the capacity to produce, believing that will make them submissive to their government and corporate overlords. Historically, that is not how it works. This is a petri dish for revolution.

I am already disciplining myself to have some sympathy for those on the left who will wail when their life savings evaporate overnight, even knowing that they voted for it and dragged the rest of us down. Given the amazing resiliency of the American economy, this could happen in January or go another full year before the chickens come home to roost. But it will come – and right soon.

Those tech and media giants who think they are masters of the universe have two huge surprises coming. First, they think they are the productive sector because of the value of what they produce. Again, basic economics. The production of complicated products and services is predicated on a healthy system of producing the basics – food and energy. If those basics are not easily available, the technical people can only produce worthless goods. These masters of the universe would do well to study the market crash of 1929. It was not the farmers and laborers who were immediately bankrupted and started committing suicide en masse; it was the then-masters of the universe. The authoritarian tech moguls of this century will go down in the same infamy as the robber barons of the last century – and their fall will be even quicker. Their second shock will come when their government allies turn ruthlessly on them. Whenever there is an authoritarian takeover, after it is completed, the first people to be purged in the aftermath of takeover are those allies who have the potential to become a competing source of influence and power.

Let us turn to foreign policy, which is about to undergo a HUGE dose of reality. Most western diplomats these last few generations (and further than that, to be entirely candid), base their thinking on who are good guys, who are bad guys and which can be manipulated to the diplomats’ will. This is ignorant foolishness – and easily gives way to preening vanity that values agreements over results. First, do not use personality to analyze foreign affairs. Find what a nation’s interest is and then you have a useful template for analysis. There are times when a national leader is so foolish and obsessive that he does not pursue what is in his own best interests. These have to be managed and contained, almost always by superior force – but even with these, your best chance for a breakthrough is to appeal to that leader’s interest, not his good nature. Trump calmed Kim Jong-Un down to a low boil by appealing to his national vanity.

Do not be so superficial as to apply static thinking to such matters. Second-rate minds think that it is a scandal that America helped pave the way for the creation of Jihadists with the Afghan War in the late 70’s and for the rise of China with the Nixon initiative. We did, but at the time Russia genuinely was the primary threat to world stability. Foreign affairs, too, are like an ever-changing kaleidoscope. Today’s ally is tomorrow’s enemy and vice versa. To fail to do what is needed to defang today’s threat is to risk not even being around to deal with tomorrow’s threat. The foolishness is to assume that today’s ally will forever be an ally. Work from national interests and you will have a sustainable framework that can adapt to ever-changing circumstances.

Thank God for the peace agreements in the Middle East Trump brokered in the last year of his first term. It may have opened the door to a framework that allows for genuine cooperative resistance to the hegemonic dreams of Iran and Jihadists. While it is likely that Biden will try to appease and empower Iran, Trump has left the basis for effective local resistance regardless of American efforts to empower the radicals. That does not mean Jihad is dead. It has a huge opening in western Europe which I expect it to move with dispatch to exploit. Western Europeans have lost the will to fight for their own interests – and most of their leaders think that empowering the enemy is sophisticated and noble. They don’t have the sense anymore to take their own side in a fight. Thank God for Eastern Europe, which will be a center of resistance and may be a firewall from the complete subjugation of Europe.

I have been warning of the supreme danger of Chinese ambitions for over three decades. China is determined to be the global hegemon. However evil the Chinese masters are, they are not stupid. They do understand that the effort to subjugate America from within will likely cause a massive backlash. For a time, even that serves their interests, for an America in existential chaos gives them room to maneuver into supremacy. In the early stages of a fraudulent Biden administration, they will take full advantage of an executive who is so fully co-opted by them that he could well be taken for a Chinese agent – just as the NBA, Disney and much of Hollywood have become. Expect to see China acting with more aggressive brazenness in the next year.

Don’t be surprised to see Russia sign new cooperative agreements with China – and don’t be fooled by it. The analysis of Russia in this country is completely feckless – and complicated by the left’s need for a foil against Trump. Vladimir Putin is not a friendly, fluffy bunny. Even so, his brutality and oppressiveness is far more tame than that of China’s Xi Jinping. Russia does not force abortion on its people or dissect the bodies of political enemies to sell their body parts for profit. Jinping has done both of those things on a large scale with no apologies. Putin is a hard, manipulative, oppressive man who is VERY shrewd. His whole history, though, shows a deep desire for Russian greatness. For China to become the world’s only superpower, it must only neuter America (which we have been doing to ourselves quite well). It must, however, overrun and conquer Russia, which occupies most of its northern border. The alternative to Putin’s leadership is not a friendly fellow who despises corruption, but another corruptocrat who does not share Putin’s love for Russia’s history and prestige.

Putin’s motives and actions are almost universally misinterpreted in America, sometimes through sheer fecklessness and sometimes through the ignorant malice of those who find Russia to be a convenient bogeyman for their domestic aims. Putin desperately wants a stable, strong America. Barring that, he has to do what he can to prevent China from devouring Russia soon, hoping all the while that America will recover from its madness at some point before direct conflict with the Chinese dragon is unavoidable.

Above all, we must quit applying normal analysis to a situation where the Constitution has already been tattered. When people say we will get them in 2022, I wonder what they are smoking. If the left gets away with a brazen steal of the presidency in plain sight, why would they worry about the strongly-worded protests we file when they casually steal everything in 2022? When the courts are twisting themselves in knots to justify rank anti-Constitutional edicts with legal sounding words, why would the pagan left ever worry about what a court says again? And now if a ruling comes down they don’t like, they will just ignore it – and maybe manufacture a criminal case against the offending judge.

There will be much more to come from me on the path forward. For now, we need to disenthrall ourselves and fully understand our circumstances. Do not think that because the authority of force poised to occupy America from within is entirely illegitimate that there is no authority. They have the authority of raw power. We must be deliberate, never shrieking in impotent and even counter-productive, rage, but acting where we can actually move the chains. Again, that will be the subject of much more conversation here going forward. Lincoln, in his “House Divided” speech, began by saying that, “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.” We have to adapt ourselves to the reality around us. I think the foremost reality is this: if the American Republic were described in an obituary it would say, “Born July 4, 1776; died December 11, 2020 following a lengthy illness.” Stark but true.

The old has already passed away. But the Lord hears the cry of the poor. Let us hereby resolve that we will turn to the Lord with our whole hearts and devote ourselves to forging a new Republic in His service, bringing those who have been wounded, whether by the opponent or by their own pagan superstitions, back to Him who can heal all wounds and even resurrect the dead. As my friend, Jim Graham, sometimes says, we have to “pray up, get up, and saddle up.” There lies the true last, best hope of the world.

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Find me on Gab at Charliej373 or at the CORAC group.