A Cultural Civil War

 

John Davidson writes in his article, We’re In A Cultural Civil War. It’s Time For Conservatives To Fight Back, “If you think what’s happening in America right now is crazy, you’re not alone. It’s true that something’s changed, that we’re in the middle of a crisis, that a cultural civil war is underway and escalating.

But it’s not true that this is a majoritarian movement. It’s not true that America fundamentally changed overnight. The hordes of protesters, impressive as them seem, don’t represent the country at large.”

Leftists infiltrated many of our American universities decades ago, systematically indoctrinating our culture with deadly ideologies:

(1) The jettison of absolute truth

(2) The “don’t offend anyone” narrative

(3) The “every idea is equally valid” falsity.

(4) The “America is fundamentally flawed” rhetoric.

Lawyer and talk show host Dennis Prager calls our modern battle America’s Second Civil War. He writes that in the Second Civil war, “one side has been doing nearly all the fighting. That is how it has been able to take over schools — from elementary schools, to high schools, to universities — and indoctrinate America’s young people; how it has taken over nearly all the news media; and how it has taken over entertainment media.

The conservative side has lost on every one of these fronts because it has rarely fought back with anything near the ferocity with which the left fights.”

Taking Right Ground

Lawyer turned evangelist Charles Finney wrote in the 1800’s, “The Church must take right ground in regards to politics . . . The time has come for Christians to vote for honest men, and take consistent ground in politics or the Lord will curse them . . . .

God cannot sustain this free and blessed country, which we love and pray for, unless the Church will take right ground. Politics are a part of a religion in such a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to their country as a part of their duty to God . . .

God will bless or curse this nation according to the course Christians take in politics.”

Respect for law and order, for policemen, for the Constitution, for God, for the Bible, for people of different races, for the sanctity of human life, and for the people of America is constantly challenged.

Davidson writes, “It’s long past time to fight back. That won’t be easy, in part because the radicals are largely in control of messaging. They have the sympathies—if not the outright allegiance—of the mainstream media, big tech, and corporate America. They also more or less control the Democratic Party and much of the petty bureaucracy, including public schools.”

The Redemption of Culture

Twenty-five years ago, many churches across the nation embraced Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Church concepts, promoting that there are five purposes to the church: worship, discipleship, fellowship, ministry, and missions. Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship and The Colson Center for Christian Worldview said at the time he always wanted to tell pastors to add another biblical purpose: the redemption of culture.

Colson wrote in his excellent book, How Now Shall We Live?, “The only task of the church, many fundamentalists and evangelicals have believed, is to save as many lost souls as possible from a world literally going to hell. But this implicit denial of a Christian worldview is unbiblical and is the reason we have lost so much of our influence in the world. Salvation does not consist simply of freedom from sin; salvation also means being restored to the task we were given in the beginning – the job of creating culture.”

The Lord’s Great Commission is linked with His cultural commission!

Colson goes on, “The same command is still binding on us today. Though the fall introduced sin and evil into human history, it did not erase the cultural mandate. . . .  When we are redeemed, we are restored to our original purpose, empowered to do what we were created to do: build societies and create culture – and in doing so, to restore the created order.”

It's past time for people with a biblical worldview of reality to engage the public square and make our voices heard.

Believers must not be silent.  We must speak.

Pray. Love your neighbor. Speak Up. Speak Out.

Pictures courtesy of Pexels and Pixabay

 

An Intellectually-Robust Theology of God and Government

 

Interpreting and Applying Romans 13

Many Protestants through the years, including the Protestant Reformers, America’s earliest Pilgrims and the founders of the American Revolution had an intellectually-robust theology, based on the entire Bible and not subject to proof-texting, that understands liberty, government, and our response to government as flowing from God and to God. It was their theology in part that led them to resist England and Europe, resist tyrannical leaders and governments, and some to fight a war.

America’s Founders, fueled by a decade of consistent preaching from New England pulpits that liberty came from God and not government, made one of their rallying cries, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” Benjamin Franklin wanted that inscription to be on the official seal of the United States with a picture of Moses at the Red Sea Crossing.

Such thought is grossly lacking in the American church today. Instead, we often hear Christians saying to not get involved in political discussions for fear of hurting our gospel witness. And Romans 13 is sometimes cited as a prooftext for that line of thought.

As Kay Arthur taught for years, context rules in Bible study, interpretation, and application.

Paul wrote Romans somewhere between A.D. 56-58:

·       A.D. 56 or 57 (Larry Richards’ Bible Reader’s Companion)

·       A.D. 57. (Tony Evans Bible Commentary)

·       the spring of A.D. 58 (MacArthur NT Commentary)

Nero reigned as Emperor from A.D. 54 to A.D. 68. The first five years of his reign, he was heavily influenced by his mother, Agrippina, and his tutor, Seneca. During those years he was relatively stable and exhibited the most rational behavior of his reign. His early administration ruled to great acclaim. A generation later those years were seen in retrospect as an exemplar of good and moderate government and described as Quinquennium Neronis by Trajan, meaning the first five years of his reign. One author writes, “The first five years (quinquennium) of Nero’s reign were characterized by good government at home and in the provinces and by the emperor’s popularity with the senate and people.”

These first five years were A.D. 54 to A.D. 59. Paul wrote the book of Romans squarely in the middle of the Quinquennium Neronis. These were the years of relative peace, when Nero governed at his best, and when the Christians experienced relative peace under Rome. These were not the crazy, hostile years that were to come in the 60s.

One author explains,

There was some political unrest in Rome in the late 50s, which made the Christians wonder about what their relationship to the State should be - whether as people who are newly “in Christ” and confessing him as Lord (not Caesar) should pay taxes and honour their city governmental authorities. There is a widespread understanding among the Early Church Fathers who said that there were Christian congregations in Rome who were “overly enthusiastic” about their new life in Christ and the new age inaugurated by Christ that they required rejection of everything to do with “this age” including human government and taxes. Leon Morris notes that “it is conjectured that some of them may have had ideas akin to those of the Palestinian Zealots who recognized no king but God and would pay taxes to no one but God.” (Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans (PNTC), p. 458.)

An earlier edict by Emperor Claudius in 49 AD had prohibited Jews (and Christians) from holding meetings, and there was lingering resentment against the government. It is also significant to note that in 58AD, the Roman historian - Tacitus (see Annals, 13:50-51) - reports that there was a great outcry by the people in Rome against the city’s taxation system. So, Paul responds by offering a corrective here to these sentiments and his argument in chapter 13 continues without any break from the previous.

In A.D. 59, Nero had his mother killed and from then on began a tyrannical and reign, marked by much suspicion of others. For example, in A.D. 62 he called for the first “treason trial,” had several of his rivals assassinated, and was a turning point in his relationship with the Senate, wanting to rule as a dictator instead. The craziness and lunacy of Nero began showing in these years, after A.D. 59.

The Great Fire of Rome occurred in A.D. 64,[i] which Nero blamed on the Christians. He stirred a great political fervor against them, convincing the public that the Roman gods were punishing the land because of the Christian sect, and thus began the widespread persecution of the Christians. Many Christians were arrested and brutally executed by "being thrown to the beasts, crucified, and being burned alive" (Champlain, Nero). [ii]

Historians call this the “Neronian Persecutions” and date this time as starting about A.D. 65. – seven to nine years after Paul wrote Romans. Doug Wilson writes, “Nero was the first Roman emperor to persecute the saints, and he did so from November 64 to June 68 . . . forty-two months.”[iii]

The website Theotivity explains . . .

Some wrongly argue that because Paul wrote Romans 13 to Christians living under an evil civil government that brutally persecuted and even executed Christians, Christians should always submit in everything, even unjust edicts and laws, to the government since he commanded such submission to Rome’s tyranny. However, this argument is anachronistic. Contextually, Paul writes Romans around 58AD - before the Neronian Persecutions broke out in around 65 AD. In fact, Paul writes Romans

“during the first half of Nero’s fifteen-year reign (54–68) as Roman emperor. For it was during those early years of his reign that Nero was honored by the people of Rome for his clemency and justice—largely because he had restored “the rule of law” in the Roman Senate, had corrected many abuses and inequities among the people, and had provided a time of peace for most of the provinces within the Roman Empire.” (Richard N. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary on the Greek Text, p. 964)

I encourage the reader to read Theotivity’s entire article on the subject, which explains in detail that “Paul’s purpose here is not to present a fully developed Christian theology of government. Thus, we should not miss his overall tone and thrust to be in subjection (as previously defined) - Christians are not anarchists. Yet equally, we must therefore not treat this passage as if it is the only word God has given us regarding our relationship to earthly governments.”[iv]

Check out the podcast, What Many Christians Get Wrong About Romans 13:1-7: The Christian’s Relationship to Civil Government, or read the article, God and Government, Exegetical Considerations of Romans 13:1-7.

It is incorrect, as many do, to assume that Paul was writing his instructions in Romans 13:1-7 during the crazy years of Nero when Christian persecution was rampant. He was not writing to a group enduring insane persecution (as would happen after A.D. 65). Paul was not saying, “I know the Romans are killing your friends and family members, lighting them up at his parties. But God has put Nero in power and you need to submit to Him.”

To say that would be like telling a woman who was being physically abused by her husband that Paul wrote Ephesians 5:22 (submit to your husbands as to the Lord NLT) to tell abused wives they should suck it up and and keep living in abuse.

Or to tell someone who is struggling with pornography or stealing that they should literally gouge out their eye or literally cut off their hand, because “that’s what the Bible says” (if your hand . . . causes you to sin, cut if off and throw it away Matthew 5:30 NLT).

Or to quote Hebrews 13:17 or 1 Chronicles 16:22 to someone in a church under a narcissistic, abusive, unhealthy pastor and tell them that God expects them to blindly submit. Those two verses are often used to support toxic church systems.

Such teaching comes from a very weak hermeneutic that becomes simplistic. One of the great problems with that, as with all 3 of the above illustrations, is that it leads well-meaning hearers into bondage and legalism.

As John Piper says, “Citizens to governments, children to parents, wives to husbands, church members to elders, all of these are called to have an appropriate submissive spirit and to follow leadership. None of these is considered to be absolute. All of them have the lordship of Jesus riding over the lordship of the superior and, thus, defining the limits of the lordship of the superior.”

Bible teachers are wise to know the difference between simple and simplistic. We need to do the heavy-lifting of study and prayer, wading through the complexities and applications, so that we can take very complicated matters and, as much as possible, explain them to our people in as simple a manner as possible. Taking the meat and giving it to them where they can eat it – without dumbing it down. And doing it in such a way that is clear. (The old saying says, “If there’s a fog in the pulpit, there will be a mist in the pew!) However, we cannot be simplistic, which means “treating complex issues and problems as if they were much simpler than they really are.”

In the illustration of government, it is the very line of thinking that will lead nations into tyranny and in subjection to tyrannical rulers. Many Protestants through the years, including America’s earliest Pilgrims and the founders of the American Revolution had an intellectually-robust theology, based on the entire Bible and not subject to proof-texting, that understands liberty, government, and our response to government as flowing from God and to God. It was their theology in part that led them to resist England and Europe, resist tyrannical leaders and governments, and fight a war.[v]

As Joel McDurmon writes in the foreward of Alice Baldwin’s book/doctoral dissertation,

We have a terrible problem in our land today. The problem is that our pulpits have abandoned the fullness of what Christ commanded: to disciple nations. That Great Commission includes the call, which our forefathers ably demonstrated, to speak truth to the public realm: to call our rulers, governments, laws, abuse, and to demand liberty and justice. In all our preaching today about iniquity and sin, we neglect to address inequity and tyranny.

And worse: should one dare to mention that broader social and political scope of the Great Commission today they are likely to be harangued not only by humanists and leftists, but by the vast majority of Christians and clergy. The response will be almost in perfect chorus: “Christians should not preach politics! We should preach the ‘Gospel’ only!”

Baldwin’s book explains the critical role the New England pulpits played in theologically and practically preparing the colonists to defend their liberty and resist tyranny in the decade leading up to the American Revolution: the preachers “had been working constantly in teaching and training their flocks, and the broader public, in the biblical message of freedom and political liberty. It was through steady and purposeful labor over time that their influence pervaded the populace and laid the foundations for resilience in the midst of crisis.”[vi]

As our nation moves closer to tyranny and the abuse of power, how pastors and Bible teachers present Bible passages like Romans 13:1-7 to our flocks will set the course for how the church responds to governmental tyranny. Will we willingly submit, like most of the German church did to the Nazi regime? Or will we take a different course, as did our American forefathers and people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

The first course takes a very simplistic, elementary approach, in part grounded in fear and compliance, to applying the Bible to such social, moral, and spiritual challenges. The second comes from a long line of deep, intellectual thought. And through church history, many early Protestants were thoroughly biblically literate, steeped in the Scriptures, which led them to embrace resistance theories in opposition to tyrannical governments.

As our nation goes down this path, Romans 13 will be a passage the church must know, interpret, and apply correctly. It will be used by many as a means to try and control the church and move her into submission.

The same Bible that contains Romans 13:5 also affirms David for not submitting to the law when he was an outlaw, the Jewish midwives resisting Pharaoh’s direct order by sparing the Hebrew babies, Daniel from disobeying Babylonian law, the early apostles refusing to obey the magistrates who ordered them to stop speaking about Jesus, and others.

We can, like many of our Protestant and American forefathers, embrace an intellectually-robust theology, based on the entire Bible and not subject to proof-texting, that understands liberty, government, and our response to government as flowing from God and to God.

 

See the following resources:

https://www.christkirk.com/sermon/resistance-revolution-reformation-romans/

https://www.standingforfreedom.com/2020/05/submit-or-defy-the-romans-13-debate/

https://www.wilsonrhett.com/2022/10/weighing-obedience-and-resistance-what.html

https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/does-romans-13-prohibit-all-civil-disobedience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT-e8J4WSA0

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[i] (Historian Tacitus describes Nero extensively torturing and executing Christians after the fire of 64 AD.)

 

[ii] Persecution of Christians. Since such public calamities were generally attributed to the wrath of the gods, everything was done to appease the offended deity. Tacitus recounted Nero’s scheme to avert suspicion from himself. “He put forward as guilty [subdidit reos], and afflicted with the most exquisite punishments, those who were hated for their abominations [flagitia] and called ‘Christians’ by the populace. Christus, from whom the name was derived, was punished by the procurator Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. The noxious form of religion [exitiabilis superstitio], checked for a time, broke out again not only in Judea its original home, but also throughout the city [Rome], where all the abominations meet and find devotees. Therefore first of all those who confessed [i.e., to being Christians] were arrested, and then as a result of their information a large number were implicated [reading coniuncti, not convicti], not so much on the charge of incendiarism as for hatred of the human race. They died by methods of mockery; some were covered with the skins of wild beasts and then torn by dogs, some were crucified, some were burned as torches to light at night … . Whence [after scenes of extreme cruelty] commiseration was stirred for them, although guilty of deserving the worse penalties, for men felt that their destruction was not on account of the public welfare but to gratify the cruelty of one [Nero]” (Ann. xv. 44).

Such is the earliest account of the first gentile persecution (as well as the first gentile record of the crucifixion of Jesus). Tacitus clearly implied that the Christians were innocent (subdidit reos) and that Nero used them simply as scapegoats. Some regard the conclusion of the paragraph as a contradiction of this — “though guilty and deserving the severest punishment” (adversus sontes et novissima exempla meritos). But Tacitus meant by sontes that the Christians were “guilty” from the point of view of the populace and that from his own standpoint, too, they merited extreme punishment, but not for arson. Fatebantur does not mean that they confessed to incendiarism, but to being Christians; qui fatebantur means that some boldly confessed, but others tried to conceal or perhaps even denied their faith.  https://www2.gracenotes.info/topics/nero.html 

 

[iii] https://dougwils.com/the-church/s8-expository/666.html 

[iv] https://www.theotivity.com/post/god-government-romans13

[v] See The New England Pulpit and the American Revolution: When American Pastors Preached Politics, Resisted Tyranny, and Founded a Nation on the Bible by Alice Baldwin.

[vi] Ibid, xvii

 

Something We’ve Never Seen Before

 

As I write this, the news is abuzz with the FBI raid of President Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago.

Several people have speculated that the Deep State has now officially crossed the Rubicon – passing the point of no return with irreversible consequences. Julius Caesar did so in A.D. 49, declaring war on the state and beginning a civil war.

Buck Sexton commented, “It almost feels like a preemptive coup… this is meant to prevent Donald Trump from being able to run again… This is the Rubicon being crossed. This is something we’ve never seen before. This is something that is outrageous. And the usage of the FBI in this way is really the nail in the coffin for so many Americans as to whether you can trust the FBI or trust the DOJ. Clearly not on political matters.”

Many Americans have suspected the FBI of widespread corruption for several years in various scenes of political theater like the January 6^th events, targeting political opponents, spying on Trump, and the crookedness swirling around Hillary Clinton’s server, The Clinton Foundation, and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Multiple FBI whistleblowers, including those in senior positions, are raising the alarm about the level of deep corruption. Senator Chuck Grassley is hearing from many people who have come forward with testimony about such deception, spanning multiple election cycles and infecting investigative activity. You can contact his office at (202) 224-3744 or wb_reports@judiciary-rep.senate.gov if you have something to report, and they promise to protect your identity.

Laurens County’s own Congressman Jeff Duncan shared, “The FBI just raided a former President’s home — but failed to ever go to Hillary’s home for the private server, get Hunter’s laptop, or investigate the Clinton Foundation. . . .We have a two-tiered justice system in this country: one for the liberal elites and one for everyone else.

The weaponization and politicization of federal agencies is egregious and scary. These are Gestapo-like tactics. If the FBI can do this to President Trump, what do you think 87,000 new IRS agents will do to the American people? If this happens, the IRS would employ more than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol COMBINED. Americans are in a recession, and Democrats want to weaponize the IRS.”

It's impossible for me to not assume the Biden administration, which is Obama 2.0, would intentionally use a gargantuan IRS to bully, intimidate, and investigate political adversaries. That is the bigger issue at hand.

Franklin Graham shared recently, “This is a step in weaponizing the IRS to act against people, organizations, and businesses who have a voice of dissent against government agendas.”

We are living through days of massive corruption in what has become known as the Deep State. And that is why they must stop Trump, because he is standing in their way.

Roger Simon writes, “Call it The Big Panic. Call it something more insidious—the instigation of one-party rule. The Democrats, the Deep State, the Justice Department, the FBI, and all the intelligence agencies, globalists, propagandists of mainstream media, and all adherents of that one-party rule and enemies of republican government, will do anything—anything—to stop Trump from winning the 2024 election.”

I’ve often wondered the past couple of years how long it took the good people in Germany to realize the rumors they kept hearing about atrocities being done in the 1930s were not conspiracy theories. When they finally woke up, the political machine of Hitler’s party had so weaponized the government that good people were silenced into submission.

Margot Cleveland shares, “Against this two-pronged approach to justice, Americans need not lean conservative or support Trump to spot the scandal. And Americans need not care about politics to oppose the politicization of the Justice Department and FBI: They just need to care about the future of the country—one that cannot survive long if such corruption and cronyism continues.”

Dismally but accurately, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich writes, “The six-year period of corrupt deep state dishonesty by the FBI, many of the intelligence agencies, the Democrats in Congress, and the fake news media have brought us to the brink of a constitutional crisis. . . .

I think we are wavering between restoring the rule of law and the Constitution and decaying into a third world banana republic system of greed, dishonesty, political power, and law breaking on a grand scale. . . . We are watching the corruption spread through the system like a malevolent cancer eating the structure and fabric of our freedoms.”

May God have mercy on us. And may Gideons and Deborahs arise.

 

 

 

The Real Story of January 6 | Documentary

 

“The Real Story of January 6,” a documentary by The Epoch Times, reveals the truth that has been hidden from the American people. While a narrative has been set that what took place that day was an insurrection, key events and witnesses have been ignored, until now. The documentary takes an unvarnished look at police use of force and the deaths that resulted in some measure from it. The film asks tough questions about who was responsible for the chaos that day. With compelling interviews and exclusive video footage, the documentary tells the real story of January 6.

What Really Happened on January 6?

While the dust from Jan. 6, 2021, has long cleared, it has been replaced by a smoke screen. A carefully crafted narrative has been set that claims the events of that day amounted to a “violent insurrection.” This claim, however, does not match the facts. “The Real Story of January 6” takes an objective look at what happened through the eyes of those who were there. The Epoch Times provides the first comprehensive look into what really happened that day. The Truth can’t be hidden.

​
We are Being Censored, Help Spread This Documentary

While this documentary is groundbreaking in providing a complete overview of what happened on January 6, The Epoch Times has been censored and suppressed by Big Tech. In order to spread the documentary, The Epoch Times relies on its own Epoch TV as well as other non-cancelable platforms to spread the truth. Stand up for free speech and oppose censorship by sharing the documentary with as many people as you can.

View the documentary here.

See also Ashli Babbitt Was ‘Murdered’ Under Color of Authority on Jan. 6: Use-of-Force Expert.

 

Political Theater: The January 6 Committee

 

The totalitarian pattern of the January 6 Committee is the biggest show trial I’ve seen in my fifty years in America. It’s a narrative piece for the next Presidential election.

The similarities to the staged show trials of Vladimir Lenin’s Soviet dictatorship are eerie and troubling, which were called “political theater intended for the instruction of the masses” (Engelstein in “Russia in Flames”). Newt Gingrich writes, “The parallels between the use of language by the woke Big Government Socialists and the propaganda techniques of the Leninist-Stalinist revolution are real and frightening. . . . They treat us as though we’re too stupid to see through a rigged game, a stacked deck, and a fraud of carefully selected and edited propaganda.”

The Committee sessions are carefully designed by a TV professional.

An incredible amount of selective editing of both video and papers were deceptively used.

The Committee kept the vast majority of the 1000 interviews and 25,000 documents hidden and in secret.

They are in no way bipartisan. Pelosi forebade Republican nominees to serve on the Committee – unless they had voted to impeach Trump. No speaker has ever before rejected the minority party’s nominees.

The clown show allows no dissenting views.

Victor Davis Hanson writes, “Its slick Hollywood-produced optics demonstrate that the committee has no interest in inconvenient facts. Why did a Capitol officer lethally shoot a petite unarmed woman entering a Capitol window? Why did the committee not investigate whether large numbers of FBI agents and informants were among the crowd? After all, progressive New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg who was there on Jan. 6 claimed, ‘There were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capitol.’ . .  . A real committee would investigate why there were lots of warnings that a large crowd would assemble, but apparently little government follow-up to ensure security. A real committee would learn why the government and media insisted that officer Brian Sicknick was killed by Trump supporters – even when it was known he died of natural causes.”

Nick Searcy and Chris Burgard recently released a documentary called “Capitol Punishment” that reveals items the kangaroo trial doesn’t want us to know. Interviewing many Americans who were there on January 6, it reveals their experience was vastly different than what the media claimed.

Searcy shares, “It was just a day of orchestrated events that anybody that knew what they were looking for saw. I mean, we saw people changing from Antifa black-block into MAGA clothes. These same people were trying to get us to attack the Capitol Police.”

They interview Aaron Babbitt, the husband of the former navy officer Ashli Babbit - shot by Capitol Police. New footage shows her telling people to stop breaking the doors – stop trying to break in - just prior to her death. The fourteen-year military veteran and law enforcement specialist was acting as a law enforcement professional, telling the less-experienced cops to get backup now.

Other footage shows Capitol Police in different areas calmly removing barriers, opening doors, and ushering people into the building. Don’t look for it on YouTube. Any mention of election fraud is banned from their propaganda.

On January 6, 2021, I simultaneously watched two screens. One showed the final moments of the Trump rally; the other, showed US Capitol livestream footage, moving between the Congressional election debate and other areas of the building. As President Trump started dismissing the crowd, a guard inside the Capitol yelled something like, “They’re coming in.” I braced myself, waiting for the type of rioters and looters that destroyed businesses, statues, and cities in the 2020 riots. Instead, I watched people resembling smalltown Americans calmly walking in a single-file line.

A rotten trail leads to Nancy Pelosi’s office revealing 50% of the Capitol Police not working that day, intelligence information never disseminated to them, and Trump’s request for 10,000 additional National Guard troops flatly denied.

Where was the trial for the 2020 four months of rioting, arson, and stealing? Over 35 people died with 1500 injured police officers, about 14,000 arrests, and between $1-2 billion in damage to property.

Most of those arrested for violence at “iconic government buildings, from courthouses to police precincts" (Hanson) were simply released. Many of those arrested from January 6 are denied a speedy trial, shamed, and assumed guilty with dishonest framing.

Searcy explains, “This is like a terror tactic. They’re trying to instill fear in the citizenry, that if you stand up to the government and say, ‘I believe the election was stolen and shouldn’t have been certified,’ you’re committing some vile act. They’re trying to send a message to everybody: ‘Do not ever resist us again or this is what will happen to you.’”

Hanson goes on to warn, “None of the questions will be answered because none will be asked because the committee’s role is not inquiry but confirmation of a useful narrative.”

The Committee doesn’t want facts, because truth doesn’t conform to their political narrative.

One obvious rhetorical question is, “Would the committee even exist if Trump were not considering running for President a third time?”

In summary, Gingrich aptly warns, “Clearly, the left understands it can’t tell the American people the truth. It must hide the facts and present only the falsehoods. This is why the Jan. 6 Committee has been so manipulative and consistently secretive and dishonest.”

See the best articles I've read recently on the January 6 show trial.

Pictures used courtesy of Pixabay

Best Articles I've Seen on the January 6 Show Trial

 

Lenin’s Show Trials and the Jan. 6 Committee by Newt Gingrich

Trust the American People, Not the Jan. 6 Committee by Newt Gingrich

What the Jan. 6 Committee Might Have Been by Victor Davis Hanson

Democrats’ Jan. 6 Fiasco Is Just Another Example of Conservatives Being Treated as Second-Class Citizens by Gabe Kaminsky

What If? Questions a Bipartisan Probe of Jan. 6 Might Have Answered by Fred Lucas

Movie ‘Capitol Punishment’ Tells Stories You Won’t Hear From Jan. 6 Committee by Rob Bluey

Congress Ignores Pressing National Business While It Obsesses on Jan. 6 by Star Parker

The Trump-Haters Are Now Desperate by Conrad Black

Picture used from Pexels

The Political Theater of the January 6 "Hearings"

 

"The Jan. 6 show trial features no dissenting views. Its subtext was right out of Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria’s credo: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”

If Trump was not considering a third run for the presidency, would the committee even have existed?

Its slick Hollywood-produced optics demonstrate that the committee has no interest in inconvenient facts. Why did a Capitol officer lethally shoot a petite unarmed woman entering a Capitol window? And why was the officer’s identity and, indeed, all information about his record withheld from the public?

Why did the committee not investigate whether large numbers of FBI agents and informants were ubiquitous among the crowd? After all, progressive New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg who was there on Jan. 6 claimed, 'There were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capitol.' ”

Read the entire article here at The Daily Signal by Victor Davis Hansen.

Image courtesy of Pexels.

 

The Biden Disaster

 

“There are so many things going wrong – and so many radically bad decisions being made – it would be useless to focus on just one issue for this column. Before we can solve anything, we need to go item-by-item to understand the insanity, incompetence, and destructiveness which historians will someday write defined the ‘Biden Disaster.’

. . . Inflation is out of control and about to get worse. The Biden administration’s spending policies are driving inflationary pressure as the Federal Reserve plans to expand an already bloated money supply to accommodate the left’s insatiable need for more cash. The stubborn policy against American oil and gas is guaranteeing pain at the pump and sending heating oil and fertilizer prices soaring. The loss of Ukraine and much of Russia as sources of food and fertilizer will guarantee higher food prices – which will cause more pain than gasoline prices. . . .

Biden’s shallow dishonesty is further exposed by American reliance on Russia to get to a deal with Iran. The theocratic dictatorship will not deal directly with America, so our negotiations are handled through the Russian ambassador. Furthermore, the Russians are demanding we lift all sanctions on their business with Iran as a price for helping Biden get to a really bad deal with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.”

Read the entire article here by Newt Gingrich.

Image used by permission from Pexels.

Judeo-Christian values vs. Marxism

US Senator Marsha Blackburn said that this isn’t just a culture war—it’s a war between Judeo-Christian values and Marxism, which the Democratic party is pushing. She is absolutely right. I applaud her for calling it what it is and for working to preserve, as she put it, “our American values of faith, family, freedom.” May God bless her! It is so important that we pray for our leaders.  - Rev. Franklin Graham

The country is experiencing a "rising radical left influencing various American institutions from entertainment to sports, corporations to media and on to government," says Matthew Boyle in his article, Marsha Blackburn in Long-form Video Interview Urges Republicans to ‘Fightthe Culture War.’

Read the entire article here - and watch the interview.

Picture available from Wikimedia.

Two-Thirds of Voters Want Congress to Investigate 2020 Riots

 

Now that House Democrats have created a committee to investigate the January 6 Capitol riot, most voters believe Congress should also investigate the Black Lives Matter protests that sparked violence in major cities last year.

A new national telephone and online survey by the National Police Association and Rasmussen Reports finds that 66% of Likely U.S. Voters think Congress should investigate last year’s violent protests, in which more than 2,000 police officers suffered injuries in the line of duty. Twenty-one percent (21%) don’t think Congress should investigate last year’s protests, and 13% were not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The survey found strong voter support for law enforcement on issues ranging from display of the “Thin Blue Line” flag to prosecution of so-called “quality of life” crimes.

Read the entire article at Rasmussen Reports.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Pelosi: On the Riot Side of History

 

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council knock it out of the park again in his commentary from Friday, July 23, entitled, Pelosi: On the Riot Side of History . .
.

"When House Democrats started clamoring for their own January 6 commission, it was never about the facts. But the last person anyone expected to admit that is Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). But this week, the California leader showed her cards when she booted two of the five Republicans off the roster because she was terrified they'd ask some hard questions. And hard questions, we all know, is not what this probe is about. Political theater is.

When House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) submitted his five names for the supposedly bipartisan investigation, Pelosi knew that Reps. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wouldn't let her party get away with the pack of lies they've been trying to sell about that day for seven months -- namely that Republicans and their supporters were responsible for the tragedy at the Capitol. So, she made up some lame excuse that Democrats needed to protect the 'integrity of the investigation' and rejected the two conservatives. Seething, McCarthy fired back that if that's the way Pelosi wants to play it, then she can go ahead with their 'bipartisan' committee without them. 'Unless Speaker Pelosi reverses course and seats all five Republican nominees, Republicans will not be party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts.'

'[She] just proved what we said all along,' Banks said on "Washington Watch." 'We said at the beginning that this was a political sham, a stunt by the Democrats to distract from everything going on in the country today. Democrats don't want to talk about rising crime waves around the country, inflation rampant and growing. They don't want to talk about the border crisis. They don't want to talk about the anti-Americanism and critical race theory that's being taught in our institutions [and] in our schools... They want to talk about Donald Trump. They want to talk about January 6. They want to drag Republicans through the mud and they want to drag 75 million people in America who voted for Donald Trump through the mud. That's what they want to focus on. They don't want to focus on anything else.'

Read the entire article by Perkins here.

Picture used by permission from Pexels.

Megyn Kelly: Media Misrepresented Jan. 6, Made To Look ‘Much Worse Than It Actually Was’

 

"SPOT ON," commented Matt Walsh about the following article:

Journalist and commentator Megyn Kelly said the media misrepresented the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol to attack supporters of former President Donald Trump.

Kelly accused the media of malpractice during Monday’s episode of her podcast, “The Megyn Kelly Show,” while interviewing comedian Chrissie Mayr. Mayr attended the rally then President Trump held before the riot, and she was near the Capitol as it stormed.

As the host and comedian began discussing January 6, Mayr said that the rally she witnessed was nothing like what was portrayed by the media. Describing her experience of the Trump rally beforehand, Mayr said: “It was, like, mostly the most chill thing ever. It was like people had blankets and picnics and families and costumes.”

Read the entire article by Tim Pearce here at  The Daily Wire.

Why Biden’s Blaming Trump for Border Crisis Has Zero Credibility

 "After just one month, Customs and Border Protection encounters ballooned to more than 100,000, the number of unaccompanied children has risen to 16,500 and continues to climb.

Three convention centers are opening to house those children because the Department of Health and Human Services cannot find enough sponsors for them. The secretary of homeland security has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist at the border and activated his own agency’s Volunteer Force to go to the border.

In perhaps the most desperate sign of the crisis, the Border Patrol in Texas is no longer issuing court dates to illegal aliens because it takes too long to complete the paperwork, and it simply needs to process individuals quicker. That’s a truly astonishing development.

This week, the president appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to oversee this crisis. Her appointment and the attempt to blame former President Donald Trump are tacit admissions that they have a crisis on their hands, but Americans know the blame lies squarely at Biden’s feet."

Read the entire article by Chad Wolf here at The Daily Signal.

Picture used by permission from Pixabay.

America on Life Support?

The following is my column in The Clinton Chronicle for Wednesday, January 20, 2021.

America, as the land of the free, may be on life support.

The propaganda is incredulous. The maneuvering better than any legal-thriller novel. The deception rampant.

Some Patriots exist, those who love America, understanding her historical greatness and the principles which work for liberty. One of those is Congressman Jeff Duncan. Several years ago, my family and I stood with Jeff on the Speaker’s Balcony at the Capitol Building, enjoying the city’s sites. We prayed with him in the George Washington prayer room. This past week, I’ve been exceptionally proud of his presence in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Before the breaching of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, which was a disgrace to our country – and wreaks of a planned set-up, Jeff was defending our Constitutional rights around 1:20pm: “Illegal ballots should not be counted and, therefore, the resulting electoral votes should be considered invalid. And what bothers me - is that so many of you are ok with that - that so many Americans, because ‘their person’ won, are ok with the manner in which that victory was gained!”

Later that day and the next, he, like every Republican Congressperson, unequivocally condemned the day’s violence: “[D]estructive protests that disrespect law enforcement are never the answer – that’s not how we should express ourselves.”

The events surrounding that week played out like a few chapters of a George Orwell novel. Through a series of lies, the Left immediately began spinning the narrative, like blaming the President and his rally for the very few people who invaded the Capitol Building (compared to the several hundred thousand of peaceful, happy protestors – some from Laurens County).

The next day, more than one video surfaced of Capitol policemen calmly removing barriers, opening doors, and welcoming these “rioters” in – many who walked through in a single file line. Like most acts of  violence, though, a few wackos in the crowd paint a bad picture of everyone. Even Democratic Congressman James Clyborn of South Carolina’s 6^th district indicated people on the inside of the Capitol were complicit in getting them inside.

Then, the Left unleashed a tsunami of censorship through politicians and their comrades – the Big Tech 5 companies. Dennis Prager writes, “Like the Nazi regime after the Reichstag fire, the left immediately moved to further curtail civil liberties, specifically conservatives’ ability to promote their ideas. Twitter and Amazon made it impossible for the alternative to Twitter, Parler, to exist, all in the name of preventing another right-wing ‘insurrection.’ ”

Cal Thomas commented, “In another display of the double standard, the two social media giants still allow the Iranian leadership and people associated with the Chinese Communist Party to maintain their accounts.”

Again, Duncan said, “It’s clear what’s happening. This isn’t about violence, incitement, ‘fact-checking,’ or the big tech employees who define those terms and the degrees of those terms. It is about complete and utter control. It’s about stifling free speech and canceling conservatives. It’s about shutting people up like President Trump and others that disagree with the radical left-wing ideology and its dangers to our Republic.”

Then, Democratic Congressmen foolishly began discussing ousting any Republican who questioned the election’s integrity. Again, Duncan said, “A loud minority have called me seditious and a traitor to my country. They have suggested that I and some of my colleagues should be expelled from Congress for signing two amicus briefs in support of election integrity and for voting to object to electors. These accusations are revolting, politically motivated, and frankly, don’t even make sense. I am following a constitutionally prescribed process as a Member of the House of Representatives that Democrats have utilized the last three times a Republican president has been elected (2000, 2004, 2016).”

A large portion of this country believes the 2020 Presidential Election was a masterfully-organized criminal coup. A recent poll even said 30% of Democrats believe the election included fraud. To stifle the ability of conservatives to speak their mind on the matters will only make matters worse. When someone gags you, it only makes you want to kick and fight.

When I was a boy, a common phrase in American life was, “I may not agree with  you at all, but I will fight for your right to say what you believe.” That idea is a bedrock of American liberty, and it is seldom heard today. Without it, we will go down the road of Marxism and Communism, which leads to death.

The current Democratic-elite leadership may be the most dangerous group to acquire power in recent American history. Joe Biden is already calling for unity. However, unity requires an essential component: truth.