When I first started writing publicly about these times, I emphasized that times were coming when bumper sticker sloganeering and puerile virtue signaling were not going to cut it. One of the few good things that came out of the manufactured Covid crisis was that, when faced with the loss of their jobs, home, or freedom, people realized that boldly proclaiming their courage and conviction was not an actual strategy, however audaciously trumpeted. It was embarrassing if someone had done that and later folded (often with good reason). Made them seem more than a little like a blowhard. This was the first step in instilling prudence into the mix. You can’t be truly bold while being brash.
I am grateful that most of my regular readers have gotten that. Now you move to the next step. There is a militant morality, especially among many who pride themselves on their piety, that will countenance long-term atrocities in order not to approve of short-term ones that would end the atrocities altogether. Sometimes your choice is NOT the lady or the tiger, but the cobra or the tiger. What do you do when the choices are not between right and wrong, but between ugly and uglier?
What responsibility does a people have for the government they are subject to? Sometimes they have little control over it. Sometimes there are dire – and potentially deadly – consequences for trying to exert control over it. As for me, I believe everyone bears serious responsibility for the government over them. At times, that is a terrible and deadly cross to bear. And yet, when hostile countries aggressively target their neighbors constantly, must the neighbors just take it and not respond in a way that would stop the hostiles?
It is a brutally hard question. The reality is that a lot of hostile, captive regimes have not been broken until their people have suffered enough that the will to resist is broken. General Sherman’s March to the Sea did not end the Civil War, but it broke the Confederate’s will to resist, making surrender possible. The firebombing of Dresden did not end the war with Nazi Germany, but it ended even any pretense of popular support for the Reich, making surrender inevitable. Similarly, the atomic bomb broke the will of the Japanese to continue the fight. We can estimate the number of people killed in these engagements, but it is much harder to estimate the lives saved by finally and decisively ending the will or ability of belligerents to continue.
We are faced with a similar situation with the Arabic belligerents in Palestine. They started this latest war, as they have done persistently and consistently since the ‘60s. They elected Hamas, whose charter calls for the complete destruction of all Jews throughout the world. On several occasions, Palestinian leaders rejected a two-state solution because it required they end their genocidal aspirations to destroy all Jews. In 2005, a de facto Palestinian state was created anyway, when Israel evacuated Gaza and gave self-governance to Palestinians. Instead of building an economy and building upon the infrastructure that was already there, they used all funds to build tunnels and buy rockets and other weapons to kill Jews with. When attacked, they used their own non-combatant citizens and children as human shields. The reality is that a full 50 percent of Palestinian Civilians still support the brutal Oct. 7, 2023 attack on peaceful Jewish civilians. As of this writing, they still hold 56 hostages. And Hamas, itself, still holds a plurality of civilian support.
You know which country has even stricter border patrols against Palestine than Israel? And I mean much stricter…Egypt. Palestinians are the equivalent of the most violent, unrelenting street gang in the Middle East – and the other Arab countries do not want to let any of them in. It seems very clear to me that this is not going to end until the murderous will of the Palestinians is broken.
It is perfectly understandable why some Christians would not want to countenance doing anything seriously ugly when faced with this reality. Honestly, that is identical to the thinking that led the Catholic Church to fail to act until a third of Europe had been taken over by Islamic hordes determined to entirely exterminate Christianity before launching the Crusades. In such a situation, you may choose not to get your hands dirty, but do not deceive yourself that God will see you as having no accountability for the inevitable bloodshed that must follow such a decision. You have made a decision.
Because of my generally jovial good nature, people think I am nice. I generally am, but I am a much harder and more relentless man than most people fathom. I am perfectly glad to “coexist” (as the bumper sticker says) with people who live radically different than I do. That is so long as they are willing to coexist with me and mine. If that is not acceptable, I am – and will remain – an implacable foe.
I am not telling you what to do, though I am absolutely clear on where I stand. My position offers a way out: unconditional surrender and the forswearing of genocidal aspirations. Until that happens, work for the total annihilation of the Palestinian Arabs – offering succor to any children you can rescue. But know that if Israel does not wage total war until that happens, it is not suing for peace: it is pre-signing the death warrants of Israeli children that the Palestinians openly proclaim they will torture and kill.
You cannot evade moral responsibility for the choices you make. You might hide your eyes from the evil you enable, but God knows. Welcome to my world, where there are no easy answers and where you will be rewarded for every soul you gave effective witness to – and punished for every innocent soul you could have effectively defended but did not out of timidity or fear of getting your hands dirty. You will not be rewarded for condemning another three generations of Israelis to be tortured, raped, and murdered by calling it “peace.”
Our whole age has come to think morality comes down to refusing to respond savagely to people who will not stop their savagery until they are stopped. It is a big reason why our cities are dying, why we have not won a war in over 30 years, and why Western Civilization, itself, is on the bubble. It is why, for over 50 years, my take has been that you must do everything in your power to avoid war. If war still must come, then you must be all-in and only accept unconditional surrender. That is what will get the fewest people killed and establish the greatest stability in the world.
I have some people very close to me who disagree. I understand. But that is my position and I am content to stand before God with it. If there is no way to get to peace save through the destruction of some innocents, I am going to do everything in my power to see that the innocents on my side are not those who have to pay that price. I will take neither the cobra nor the tiger and I will do everything I can to annihilate whoever insists on that choice.
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It is the month of June. That is when the Supreme Court reaches the zenith of its busy year. In Donald Trump’s first term, he was hobbled by an attempted bureaucratic and administrative coup, with the gutter press cheering the coup on and blatantly lying on behalf of the coup plotters. This time, the attempted coup is being run by a judiciary seeking to take unto itself supreme authority that the Constitution denies it – and once again, the gutter press is cheering it on, pretending a supreme judiciary that does leftist bidding is the substance of “democracy.” Not content to be dishonest, they all choose to be stupid, too, while praying desperately that we are.
June will tell us whether the Supremes are going to continue to enable the ongoing attempted judicial coup and whether we will have to go through a genuine (rather than hyperbolic) Constitutional Crisis to determine whether we will survive as a free republic. It does not fill me with confidence that Chief Justice John Roberts is the key to choosing which path we will take. I think him the worst and weakest Chief Justice we have ever had, blundering from crisis to crisis in his pathetic efforts to make the courts the final arbiter of everything in American life. But whatever happens, patriotic Constitution-loving Americans will soldier on, determined to preserve the benefits of liberty and prosperity for their descendants.
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It annoys me to no end that Democrats in office and in the media have convinced so many conservatives that the “big, beautiful bill” is some kind of major spending increase. That conclusion is reached entirely by pretending that extending the existing Trump tax cuts is a major blow to spending. Sorry, not taking peoples’ money is NOT a spending increase, however much the CBO, Democrats and the media want it to be. The bill would be seen, even by these entities, as cutting spending if it just kept massive tax increases intact. Conservatives need to understand that, unless they really do want to see massive tax increases, they have been suckered by the media and the Dems.
The best short article, linking to hard data, that I have seen explaining how this bill is the beginning of fiscal restraint, was just published in PJ Media.
I have been deeply disappointed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep Thomas Massie (R-KY). Though disagreeing with them on things in the past, I have always given them credit for acting on principle. In this instance, if they honestly think it is fiscally sound to side with Democrats and the media, they are not near as smart as I gave them credit for. If they do know what they are doing and are just virtue-signalling, they are not near as honest as I gave them credit for. Either way, their stock has gone down dramatically with me.
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Less than a month and a half away from the National Conference in Atchison, Kansas. If you haven’t yet, please register for this fabulous celebration of “Courage Under Fire.”
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.
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