In Germany they are having a rising tide of violent and often deadly knife crime. So naturally the doctrinaire lefties who are in control are proposing serious “knife control” legislation. Who knew that when government denies murderous thugs access to guns, those murderous thugs will simply find other weapons to accomplish their murderous aims? You have to change the culture. You start by targeting the criminal and his murderous heart rather than avoiding your duty by targeting his weapon of choice.

Of course, here in America lefties are given to magical thinking. They tell us no illegal aliens vote in our elections because it is illegal (though with next to no enforcement mechanisms). Obviously we don’t have any murders, robberies, rapes or car thefts because those are illegal, too. I don’t decry the loss of common sense in America; I decry the parody – without a lick of sense – policy debates have become.

I can laugh at the nonsense German and American lefties come up with that only increase crime and violence. But I have decided that when some lefty midwit in Congress introduces tough, new “spork control laws,” it’s go time.

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 Last fall I was screaming my head off to national pro-life leaders. Some of them had re-imagined themselves as “strategists” and were doing nothing to counter the left’s toxic and false narrative about “abortion rights” until “the right moment.” At one point I angrily bellowed, “We’ve lost Kansas. We’ve lost Ohio – and gave no effective pushback. When will the ‘right’ moment be? When we have lost the whole country?”

There is no little confusion among many about the proper and effective relationship between activist groups and political leaders. Including many activist leaders. Activist groups are the equivalent of the infantry in any movement. They have the forward positions and must clear the ground to make decisive action possible. Abraham Lincoln knew that nothing could be done in this country without first amassing a critical level of public support. If activist groups do not take the lead in amassing that public support, there is little even their staunchest allies on the practical political side can accomplish. The political side is like the cavalry, which comes in and mops up to formalize what the infantry and artillery have opened up to be seized. If the infantry does not even bother to take the field – as it has not since the overturning of Roe, it has no business complaining that the cavalry has not followed it in to decisively seize the field.

For decades, the prime goal of national pro-life leaders was the overturning of Roe v Wade. They did a good job of taking the ground that this was an issue best left with the states. Acting as the cavalry, Donald Trump delivered for them – more decisively than any president of my lifetime. And now, after sitting on their hands for two years, allowing the pro-abortion advocates to seize the narrative, almost uncontested, that abortion is about women’s health, that there never are such things as late-term abortions, and that the smallest restriction is a “ban” on abortion, some national pro-life leaders have the raw nerve to complain that Trump didn’t do their job for them?! Trump has not failed them: they have failed Trump and the larger pro-life movement.

It is not that the left’s narrative could not have been contested. The type of heart-wrenching circumstances that leftists pretend all abortions are only constitute a tiny fraction of the actual total – less than two or three percent. Most abortions are purely elective. If late-term abortions never happen, why are there nearly 50 clinics nationwide that specialize in the procedure? If late-term abortions never happen, why do 17 states guarantee abortion until the moment of birth – and pro-abortion advocates adamantly oppose any efforts to change that? Minnesota allows abortionists to leave live-born babies who survived an abortion to die. It has happened nine times that we know of and can prove since Dem. Vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz has been that state’s governor. Why were national pro-life leaders not highlighting and emphasizing these things and more relentlessly? Do they not coordinate with each other anymore?

The pro-life movement does have some real, practical hurdles to overcome. First, they have largely operated as a national interest organization. It is much harder than it looks to retool into 50 effective statewide organizations with national leadership and support. They have to deal with a relentlessly hostile and largely ignorant national media. To get traction, their initiatives almost have to start with conservative media and be so compelling that the national media is forced to recognize them. But this is no more true now than it was when the national media was desperately trying to ignore the depravities of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell as a local story. There has to be a coordinated, unified approach on what the priorities are, lest it all be so much clutter making it that much easier for the national media to dismiss. There could have been a targeted emphasis on the substantial presence of late-term abortion clinics nationwide, the absolute refusal of the pro-abortion crowd to accept any restrictions on the procedure at any time – designed to show that the abortion movement is not primarily about women, but a business model that seeks to commodify the organs and body parts of infants and sell them for big profits.

I am absolutely pro-life and anti-abortion. It is, in fact, the primary reason for my political activism these last few decades. But I aim to win, not posture. I know that the bulk of America is NOT where I am at on the issue. So I get what I can. We have left a LOT on the table because of the fecklessness of national pro-life leaders. In referenda across the country, we have lost pro-life initiatives because young women thought we were in the business of banning abortion, altogether. Why did they think that? Because we did not effectively contest the flim-flammery of abortion advocates. Most of the country agrees with us on the restrictions we have sought: no late-term abortions, no commodification of fetal organs and limbs, parental consent in the case of minors, and other rational restrictions. But we didn’t make that case with any memorable, targeted effectiveness.  

Fortunately, the pro-life leader I am closest with (a dear friend, in fact) is David Daleiden. He is strategically brilliant, tactically sound and gifted, and always focused on what he can do to change the dynamic from the portion of the movement he occupies. In fact, over the last year he has focused on doing things to take the narrative back from the left, using the Congressional release of previously banned undercover videos to reveal the ghoulish cruelty at the heart of Planned Parenthood’s (PP) business model. We talk together constantly about how to get facts like this out and penetrate most of the establishment media’s effort to enforce a de facto ban even when there is no de jure ban on the truth of all this.

The pro-life movement has always struggled with a “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the purest of them all?” complex. Currently, as people who have done good work threaten to sit on their hands and help Kamala Harris win if Trump does not adopt their position in toto and do the work they should have been doing since the fall of Roe, they would send tens of thousands more babies to the abortuaries. Since Planned Parenthood has gotten heavily into the business of transgender ideology, they would contribute to the toxic gender confusion maiming our culture. Finally, not all in the conservative coalition rank pro-life as one of their top priorities. Making threats will not change them, but alienate them, making pro-life concerns less, rather than more, relevant and influential. All of this is because Trump said he would veto a bill banning all abortions if it came to his desk. Seriously?! At the stage we are at a bill granting all American sovereignty to China is more likely to hit his desk. He is obviously trolling Kamala Harris, once again doing the work national pro-life leaders refuse to do. They must be the infantry in the battle to make such a bill possible.

Fortunately, there are three things the pro-life movement could do before election that would help move the chains forward.

• Call for a ban on all federal money to abortion providers. We are in a financial crisis and such a ban would appeal to serious fiscal conservatives as well as pro-lifers. It would also loosen the incestuous ties between Democrats and PP, which gets federal money and then funnels it back to Democrats in the form of campaign contributions.
• Put a premium on publicly identifying late-term (third-trimester) abortion facilities to put the lie to PP’s narrative that it never happens. Hammer home that the reason this is so important to the abortion industry is because it is the heart of where they commodify fetal organ and limb-trafficking, perhaps the most profitable segment of the entire abortion industry. Highlight the genuine atrocities abortion workers commit in order to get viable organs and limbs to sell.
• Lobby for a ban on late-term abortion because it is an atrocity that brutally kills what almost everyone recognizes as a living baby. Do this in conjunction with item #2 on this list so that it is just plain common sense to everyone, not just pro-life activists.

These are doable, reachable goals, any one of which would help draw us closer to a society which understands the barbaric nature of abortion. Trump has demonstrated that when we clear the ground for him, he delivers for us. We can start clearing and get closer to a just society or we can have a snit and allow the pro-life movement to be politically marginalized. If we do the latter, more babies will be executed. I would not feel pure at all if I knew that my ham-handed strategy had helped bring about that result…and I do not think God will congratulate me for my purity when I stand before Him in judgment.

So pray up, git up, and saddle up. There are lives to be rescued and souls to be won.

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Townhall’s Kurt Schlichter just put up a bracing column on what the degradation of our military with woke initiatives truly means in an ever more chaotic world. I’m not going to comment on it right now, save to say I agree with it entirely and urge you to contemplate it seriously and deeply. There’s a lot of ruin in a nation. We have absorbed at least two generations of ruin in the last three and a half years. The world is going to look dramatically different a year from now than it does today. Your determination and fortitude will decide whether it will be better or worse.

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Acknowledge God.

Take the Next Right Step.

Be a Sign of Hope to Those Around You.

I wrote that 12 years ago, not as a slogan, but as an easily remembered rule for life – particularly in the midst of crisis.

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on Twitter at @JohnstonPilgrim

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