Monday Maunderings

     Hmm, only eleven days since the previous “assorted” piece? Should I? Shouldn’t I? Aaahhh, why not?

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The Reportage Has Muted.

     The disorder, vandalism, and violence have not:

• BLM / AntiFa attack residential neighborhood
• Massive Looting in Chicago
• Shots Fired at Louis Vuitton Store
• AntiFa On The Rampage in Seattle
• BLM Assaults Officer in Milwaukee

     Perhaps the Democrats’ strategists have warned their media annex that publicizing the rioting is proving harmful to the Democrats’ electoral prospects this November. However, on-the-scene citizen journalists are still collecting the evidence. Don’t let it slip past you.

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Frontiers In Leftism.

     Book burnings are often associated with theocracies and “bluenosed” communities. Whatever the convictions of the book burners, their intention is plain: they want to prevent the books they condemn from being read. Burning them is merely the most dramatic way to attain that end.

     But others on the Left have other approaches:

     Today, the Washington Post’s Sunday “Outlook” section ran a piece in which Lawrence Downes, formerly of the New York Times editorial board, boasts about feeding books by Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, and other conservative authors to worms. Downes says he purchases these books on sale from his public library. He then takes them home for “quarantine.” In this way, he prevents people who might want to buy and read the books from doing so.

     For extra pleasure, Downes has taken to putting the books in a compost bin along with coffee grounds, potato and carrot peels, etc., and feeding the pages to worms. He seems to believe that doing so is different in nature from burning the books. He’s right. Taking into account the pleasure Downes gets and his desire to write about the experience, it’s sicker.

     This...person is emblematic of the Left in our era. They know they can’t win arguments against the Right, because all the evidence and reasoning supports the Right’s positions. Their hope to prevail, therefore, lies in preventing the Right from being heard by any means necessary, including violence.

     Yet they call us “fascists.” You could cut the irony with a knife.

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Insisting On The First Freedom.

     Governors in several states have attempted to ban or restrict religious gatherings, in flagrant contravention of the guarantees in the First Amendment. But some Christians aren’t sitting still for it:

• Here’s one group with the courage of its convictions.
• Here’s another, with an extra helping of cleverness.
• And here’s the reaction of a governor who dislikes being outsmarted.

     I could only wish New York’s Christian communities would display equal courage and resolve. But what will come of this in the long run? Will the governors who have illegally attempted to restrict religious worship be penalized for it? Will they suffer any kind of rebuff? We shall see.

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Buy Guns And Ammo...If You Can Find Any.

     This will already be old news to some, but its relevance grows as election day approaches:

     Democrats are prepared to burn the country to the ground rather than accept another loss to President Trump in November and are war-gaming doomsday scenarios in advance of the most important election in American history....

     Democrats are contemplating secession and potential civil war as they game out possible scenarios for a closely contested election, according to a report by Ben Smith in a New York Times column Sunday.

     Now, I happen to think an individual state has a perfect right to remove itself from the Union, should a sufficient percentage of its resident citizens concur. The Constitution formed the Union, and the Constitution is a contract among the states, as is made plain by Article VII:

     The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.

     There was no disagreement at the time of the Founding that should a state decline to ratify the Constitution, it would retain its independent sovereignty, unsubordinated to the newborn federal government. That a state which decides that the Constitutional contract has been violated would have a right to retract its ratification seems implicit. (Let’s leave the little matter of the Late Unpleasantness to another time, shall we? Anyway, that particular disagreement was settled by force, a poor standard for Constitutional interpretation.)

     So it’s at least conceivable that the legislatures of California, Oregon, and Washington would vote to secede. What then? Would the patriots in those states merely sit still? Would they relocate in a body? Or would they call for and receive federal intervention aimed, as during the Civil War, at reincorporating the breakaway states into the Union by force?

     It would be...interesting, to say the very least. But remember the old Chinese curse about “interesting times.”

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On The Educational Front.

     With the government-run schools in total chaos, the teachers’ unions refusing to return to the classroom in the fall (but demanding to be paid nonetheless), online schooling allowing parents to “see into the classroom,” and parents discovering alternatives in homeschooling and private-school “pods” at a record rate, “educators” and those who support their hegemony over young minds are in a tizzy. I’ve run across two sobering stories at the edges of this tempest:

• An “educator” is exposed as an indoctrinator.
• School district mandated dress codes for online schooling?

     Thomas Jefferson’s one deplorable departure from good sense was his advocacy of mandatory government-run schooling for all young Americans. I wonder what he’d think of the above tales.

     While this story isn’t specifically about education, it has substantial relevance to the Left’s agenda and how the government-run schools have been used to promote it:

     Sophie Lewis, a so-called feminist theorist who says she’s interested in “queer communism,” came right out and said it in an article published at openDemocracy: “In short, the pandemic is no time to forget about family abolition.” (Don’t bother clicking through to the article at that link. It’s a silly call for all of us to live in hippie communes.)

     Lewis goes on to quote fellow traveler Madeline Lane-McKinley, who tweeted in March: “Households are capitalism’s pressure cookers. This crisis will see a surge in housework – cleaning, cooking, caretaking, but also child abuse, molestation, intimate partner rape, psychological torture, and more.” (In communes there’s no housework or something.)

     Lewis’s thesis is basically that since we’ve been at home thanks to stay-at-home orders, it’s become crystal clear that the family needs to go.

     Sometimes, Gentle Reader, they really do come right out and say it.

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Against The Mask Madness.

     This piece warmed the cockles of my heart. Someone gave this market owner a hard time about not demanding that all her customers be masked. I can’t add anything to it that would enhance its impact. Please read it.

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The Left Doesn’t Want You To Arm Yourself.

     This story, which could have ended much less pleasantly, makes that clear. Once again, I can add nothing to it. Please read it, and consider starting a preparedness group in your neighborhood.

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What Has Become Of The U.S. Marine Corps?

     Time was, the saying ran that “there are no atheists in foxholes.” Today, apparently only atheists are permitted to give lectures to Marines:

     The USMC scheduled an annual training for military lawyers earlier this month, at which the Battle of Gettysburg would be discussed. The instructor for one portion of that training was supposed to be Jay Lorenzen, an Air Force veteran who taught for 10 years at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

     Lorenzen’s biography, provided to the military lawyers in advance of the training, included references to Christianity, including his affiliation with Campus Crusade For Christ, now known as Cru, and a couple of religious-themed courses he teaches in his spare time. Several of those lawyers complained to Mikey Weinstein, who heads up a secular, anti-Christian group called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, that Lorenzen was going to teach about religion.

     That allegation was false. It didn’t matter.

     Weinstein, himself an Air Force veteran, is adamantly opposed to any form of Christian expression within the military, and immediately contacted the USMC to voice his displeasure at Lorenzen’s scheduled appearance at the training, calling Lorenzen a “fundamentalist Christian extremist parachurch official.” Within 64 minutes, according to Weinstein, the USMC informed him that the event had been canceled. It was replaced with an instruction regarding systemic racism within the military.

     This is only the most recent story of its kind. The deliberate exclusion of openly Christian instructors and commanders from the military has been going on for some time. Apparently the anti-Christian activists are more influential than I was aware.

     Let’s leave aside for the moment that Lorenzen’s lecture was not to be about Christianity, but about the Battle of Gettysburg, an engagement of importance to military lawyers. The rise of anti-Christian activism within the military is more significant than many realize. Marines risk their lives in pursuit of our nation’s military objectives. The lawyers who sometimes must prosecute or defend them in the aftermath hold those lives in their hands. Yet they are being systematically shorn of support for the religion to which the great majority of them subscribe – the religion that underpins their ethical code and the legal code of this nation. How does this make any sense?

     Does the Marine Corps still have chaplains?

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     That’s all for today, I think. The workmen will shortly be upon us, and I must make several necessary preparations. Until tomorrow, be well.