Posts Tagged → civilization
Career politicians ended representative democracy
At its founding, America was envisioned as a representative government, a constitutional republic, where We, The People would vote for good citizens from amongst our ranks to represent our interests in government. Guy leaves his farm and plow behind to do his civic duty, returns back to the farm four or six years later. It is a good idea, because it does away with unfair feudalism and hierarchy, where only a few people at the top have power and everyone else is a powerless serf/slave/peon with no individual rights. The people making the laws are the same people who will be subject to the same laws. Everyone is treated fairly under the law.
And for a long time America worked pretty well on this model. Yes, there have been some political scandals along the way, and some power grabs that were turned back. Typically the American citizenry have been jealous of their rights and understandably suspicious of government in every way, and so they “throw the bums out” when the collective situation gets bad.
But somewhere in the past sixty years, maybe eighty years, America got deeply into political careerism. You know, where elected officials Mary Jane and Billy Bob were so respected and maybe even revered, either for their honorable traits or for their ability to deliver taxpayer funds to private beneficiaries, that the voters routinely, even habitually vote for them at every election. And so these people who kept getting elected in primaries and in general elections became career politicians. Either their entire career or most of it was spent working their way up a sort of “ladder” from local positions of authority to national positions of authority. And thus did people aim to have a career in politics, because of all sorts of reasons, some good, some bad, some corrupt, but there developed an entire culture within the two main political parties, Democrat and Republican, where party bosses would work with special interest groups to line up tame candidates who owed their political career not to We, The People, but to the party bosses and special interest groups.
And career politicians began to get really rich from their relatively low-paying public jobs. All the more reason to just stay in there and not do anything else with your life!
And so here we are, mid 2023, and career politicians in both political parties are willfully destroying America (e.g. faux “debt ceiling” wild spending spree that no one can ever pay for, Department of Defense can’t track expenditures below $100,000,000 and so our tax dollars are wasted and stolen from us, $83 billion worth of American military hardware is abandoned to our enemies in Afghanistan by Biden, neither party will hold Rep. Adam Schiff accountable for being a serial liar needlessly costing taxpayers $32 million etc).
Because career politicians are so personally invested in their political careers that if they deviate and try to do the right thing, then they stand a good chance of losing their elected office. And then doing the wrong thing becomes accepted and then promoted by the various established information outlets.
And so career politicians continue to make one bad decision after another, to hold onto their own personal power. To the point where even when Americans lose, when America loses, career politicians still win.
And so we reach the present financially and culturally unsustainable points that will inevitably result in America failing, and everyone losing their individual rights, and then some feudal overlords take over and use brute force like everyone else around the world lives under.
I know, I know, so many readers here laugh out loud when I write this stuff.
“America destroyed! Unsustainable! Ha ha ha that Josh guy sure is an idiot, because he obviously doesn’t know America is waaay waaay too big to fail!”
And so despite a long human history littered with wrecked human civilizations, the warnings from taxpaying worker bees like me go not just unheeded, but mocked and belittled by career political staffers and career politicians in both parties as they all continue to make financially and culturally unsustainable and reckless decisions for the collective rest of us. And at the end of their day, all the careerists see is money and power, and so anyone within their orbit can commit the most grievously corrupt behavior without being held accountable. As one of my mentors Frank used to say, the longer a career politician is in office, the tighter the horse blinders get, until they see nothing except what is right in front of them, which is money and power.
The rest of us? The We, The People worker bees? We see the corrupt rot all around us eating away at America. We see Rome beginning to burn, while the career politicians feast and live carefree lives devoid of discipline or honesty. This is not going to last, friends. If we all continue to re-elect career politicians, then our freedom-loving civilization is probably going to end within the lifetimes of the people reading these words, and everything we take for granted will be gone. All of it. It will all be History, as they say.
Is the Democrat Party just a big pedophilia group?
Serious question here: Why is the Democrat Party full of so many people who publicly want so badly to sexualize children? And why do grown adults truly want to sexualize children? It can’t possibly be legitimate, so what the hell is this about? Why are we even asking these questions in 2022, and what the hell happened to one of America’s great political parties that it has sunk this disgustingly low?
(Truth in advertising: I used to be a registered Democrat, and in the 1990s, when I no longer recognized the Democrat Party, I left it. This does not mean that I am committed to any other political party, at all.)
When we say “sexualize,” we mean introducing children, like tiny eeny weeny children, to human sexuality, which used to be a private matter reserved for parents at home. And not just human sexuality, like “the birds and the bees” reproduction basics, but all kinds of abnormal or minority/ “kinky” and even violent sexual practices, that are or should be strictly a private matter among consenting adults.
To be fair to these advocates of grooming children for pedophilia, I mean the “professional educators,” they say they are helping kids develop their sexual identity in a healthy way. So that young people can know their truest sexual self at the earliest possible age. These pedophiles, excuse me, educators, say that they are preventing children from becoming unhappy with themselves later in life. Inside every child is a bi-tri-homo-trans-sexual just screaming to claw itself out, they say.
And to all of that I say horeshit. It is absolute nonsense. Nowhere in the history of our species has so much emphasis been placed on sexual behavior as now, and for fifty or a hundred thousand years before all this grooming began, humans did just fine, but in order to make 1% of the population feel most comfortable with itself, we are supposed to sacrifice the other 99%.
The other humans who sacrificed their children were the pagans of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and these practices are horrific and should never be tolerated. But I don’t think the sacrifice part of this thing is where it is at.
Historically, the age of innocence was a sacrosanct time in a child’s life when “Big Person” ideas and issues were not allowed in, so that children could just be children. Certain ideas like sex, violence, lies, manipulation, and other adult flaws were not allowed to children, for good reason. For a long time, adults in Western Civilization shielded children so they could grow into themselves without being bombarded by adult issues and challenges that will already arrive soon enough. Kids could have imaginary friends, carry teddy bears, talk to themselves, have tea parties with mud pies, and have many years of safe space to just be a kid before the cold realities of life began to trickle in to their awareness.
Civilizations that allowed children to be sexually exploited by adults were always considered barbaric. And yet, somehow, a significant part of America’s voter base is now fully on board with what is obviously pedophilia, in the guise of “education.” What other purpose could this aggressive sexualization of children be for than adults to eventually have sex with those children? It is like open sexual grooming, preparing children to be the subjects of pedophilia, as a plank in a political party’s platform.
Recent examples include Disney’s push to have a more aggressive LBQTABCDEFG agenda forced on children who enter into Disney’s grasp in movie theaters and theme parks, despite recent news reports of quite a few Disney employees being arrested for child molestation. No shame at Disney, apparently, because their CEO just attacked Florida governor Ron DeSantis over an anti-child-sexual exploitation law, the much mis-named “don’t say gay” BS. The Florida law is aimed precisely at preventing pedophiles from grooming children to become sex objects and zero to do with anyone being gay.
Child sex molester monster Jeffery Epstein and his mostly Democrat Party elite child molesting friends had an entire island dedicated to this illegal and revolting practice.
Public school teachers pushing child sex exploitation across America are openly defying taxpaying parents, school boards, and school administrations who are telling them to stop (when the administrators tell them to stop; usually they tell the teachers to keep going). This is not the behavior of an educator; it is the behavior of sex-crazed pedophile maniacs. And the teachers unions are predictably supporting these errant teachers (they are not educators).
And finally, the Democrat Party’s centerpiece, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Jackson, whose long-term shocking leniency with convicted child sex predators can mean only one thing: She is personally quite OK with child molestation, child pornography, and the child predators who sexually exploit children.
Why aren’t rank and file registered Democrats speaking out about this problem? You know, something like a letter to the editor of East Succotash Newspaper: “Dear Editor, my name is John Doe, and I am a registered Democrat. While I do not support most conservative or Republican policies, I am concerned about the high level of support so many Democrat Party leaders and teachers unions have for sexualizing children. Sexualization of children is wrong, it is illegal in most civilized places, and something is wrong with a political party that makes this subject a focal point. I am unhappy about my Democrat Party going in this direction and I want it to stop.”
But guess what, you won’t see letters like this anywhere. I can’t tell if the registered Democrat Party voters are asleep at the wheel, or sheep-like lemmings that go wherever the party leaders wave them on, or do they actually agree with this crazy stuff?
If Democrats really want to challenge tiny children and get them to grow, eliminate their age of innocence, for the kids’ own interests, of course, then why not introduce them to economics and statistics at age five, so they can grow up into financially and fiscally literate and responsible adults?
If Democrats want to end the mis-use of firearms, and have safer schools, then why not have gun safety training in schools?
These are two legitimate policy subjects that could easily be incorporated into schools everywhere, and that would have tangible results right away. But nope, nothing doing. We just have teachers and school administrators obsessed with turning children into sex objects and props.
It is almost like the entire Democrat Party is just one big pedophilia and child pornography group, sad to say. Prove that this isn’t so. Anybody?
Anybody?
Anybody?
Right, I thought so, and I said so.
Update April 1, 2022: On afterthought, a political party or political movement that stands formally and officially for the killing of children after they are born, for the governmental crushing of individual liberty and dissent by coercively mandating unproven drug injections, for the government to steal children away from their families to be indoctrinated in government schools, for the allowance of pedophilia and child pornography, I could go on, but any political party or movement that stands for these things is really morally bankrupt. This is just pure evil. And for those of you who read this and roll your eyes, wake the hell up. This isn’t the Democrat Party of our youth or of JFK or of FDR. This is an authoritarian, anti-human, anti-freedom Democrat Party unworthy of having the word “democrat” in it. And if you are like me and you are revolted by this political party, you don’t have to join any other party. You can become an independent or a non-affiliated.
Did Justice Kavanaugh Just Torpedo America?
Probably a majority of Americans believe America is too big to fail, too financially successful, too militarily powerful, too much of an economic powerhouse. Our lives are just too comfortable and everything is just so orderly. How could it ever fail?!
Surely the last survivors of every failed civilization before us asked the same things, probably right before their lives and cities burned to the ground. Civilizational failure is systemic to humans. The question for America is not if we will fail, but when.
American citizens can prolong failure, perhaps indefinitely, by participating in their own governance and electing wise leaders who represent the USA’s founding principles. Because tyranny is only one generation away at any given moment, and America has had one and maybe two heavily propagandized generations, it sure looks like failure and tyranny are about to descend upon us momentarily.
The 2020 election is being stolen from the voters right in front of our faces. The evidence of vote fraud and unconstitutional laws and policies designed to enable fraud is overwhelming. And every taxpayer-funded public institution designed to protect the citizen taxpayer from injustice is now sitting on its hands, doing absolutely nothing to stop this theft and the tyranny that will follow. In particular, the FBI and DOJ staffs and leaders are actually looking the other way while mounds of new evidence are disclosed daily. These agencies have the legal purpose to intervene, but they do not act. This is because they are run by people whose political views no longer mirror the nation’s principles nor the citizenry’s interests.
Earlier this year commentator Mark Levin called this “the elites rebelling against the masses.” And how else could it be described? The masses voted overwhelmingly to send President Donald Trump back to the White House, and the entire federal government did everything it could to prevent that, or to allow vote fraud to succeed.
The US Supreme Court is America’s backstop, the last bulwark of democracy. Of all the government institutions designed to look out for and protect the individual rights of the citizenry, the US Supreme Court is and always has been the last line of defense. And yet it, too, is now staffed by people who do not share the vision or purpose of our founding documents, nor the interests of us, We, The People. At least half of the Supreme Court justices are Big Government liberals, whose answer for every public policy question is to say “We know better than you how to live your life, and so we are going to put the federal government in charge of your life.”
This has become glaringly evident as ObamaCare was deemed a tax, when it was legislatively not passed as a tax, and when over the past few years failing to intervene when lower courts aggressively ignored the high court’s Heller and MacDonald precedents in protecting individual Second Amendment rights, and recently when a narrow 5-4 majority ruled that California’s subjective and unscientific fatwa against church attendance violated We, The People’s First Amendment religious rights. And now yesterday, the US Supreme Court was unable to muster five justices to fix the most obviously faulty Pennsylvania election procedures and results.
Until yesterday afternoon, most political observers believed that Justice Alito had sufficient support from four other justices to back up his prior demand that Pennsylvania segregate the roughly 650,000 ballots counted AFTER Election Day. But late yesterday we learned that the Court had declined to change the faulty outcome, with no decision issued and no dissents. What this means is that the justices were deadlocked 4-4 and one hold-out justice refused to join either side.
Chief Justice John Roberts has increasingly sided with the Big Government leftists Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer, to the point where the Court now has a solid four-vote leftist bloc. That has become quite obvious.
On the other hand, the Court has two reliable originalists, Thomas and Alito, who have been or are reasonably expected to be backed by Gorsuch and Barrett. Justice Kavanaugh will probably join this group of four about 60-70% of the time, because Kavanaugh is not an originalist. Justice Kavanaugh is, more than anything, a Washington, DC, Beltway guy. When nominated, people were amazed that he was spending something like $80,000 annually on major league baseball tickets. He gave them away as gifts to “special people.” In other words, Kavanaugh is very much a DC elitist, and very much tied into the DC political web. His allegiance is to intellectual pyrotechnics and gymnastics, nuanced opinions written for law school students and professors to marvel at for generations to come. Unlike Scalia, Thomas or Alito, Kavanaugh is not a fighter. He is an effete functionary with a strong sense of duty to The DC Machine. He has no loyalty to the president who stood by him and who put him on the Court. Rather, Kavanaugh wants to ingratiate himself with DC elites and special people, at whatever cost.
So given yesterday’s deadlocked Court and the resulting rubber stamp given to PA’s fake election results, it is likely that Kavanaugh removed himself from the entire discussion. He punted. Like with his recent decision on the North Carolina voting law case, he probably erupted once again with intellectually flowery language designed to mask his unwillingness to commit to anything.
The end result of this is that every single similar or related case now brought to the Supreme Court is going to meet the same logjam. The American people will find no justice being served there. Which means the stolen 2020 election is likely going to be affirmed and Joe Biden sworn in as the next president.
Which means that America will overnight become a vassal to China. The long lawless Democrat Party will move swiftly to cement its power and control of all federal agencies, including law enforcement, and in short order dissent will be illegal, domestic political spying will be routine, the FBI will become the STASI, and America will never again have a fair or free election.
So, spineless Justice Kavanaugh just torpedoed America. The nation you grew up in, identified with, perhaps fought for, will be completely gone in another month’s time. It will resemble California shortly after.
What this all means for patriots is a big question. Will enough people be willing to use political violence to restore the Republic? Short of sufficient political violence to overturn this coup d’état against We, The People, America is officially a failed state, a tyranny, and God only knows who will fill the political power vacuum.
China?
My 2019 resolution: Not going pee with the ladies
Last night we were celebrating the incoming New Year with friends at a hotel in New York City. Lot of fun, beautiful time of year and place, great, friendly people and beloved old friends.
…and then I had to pee…
Discharging excess fluid is how a healthy mammal’s body works any day, and especially after copious intake. So, I feel the urge, stand up from the table, ask a friendly staff person about the location of the toilet, and receive clear directions. So far so good.
One of Western Civilization’s chief accomplishments is ubiquitous flush toilets. They even come with sinks and hand towels. They are generally clean, tidy, and hygienic, certainly compared to a hole in the floor like you will find the world over. This particular hotel is quite nice, and had all kinds of nice little “extras” about for guests, and it stood to reason that my bathroom experience would be top quality.
Nope.
This is in NYC, a major locus of PC crazy, and it turns out that simply going pee in the homeland of PC crazy results in a crazy pee experience.
I approached the bathroom door and noticed beautiful and often scantily clad women coming and going through that door. Then a well dressed young man entered. The see-through door is labeled “EVERY BODY.”
My inner dinosaur screamed “No f*ing way!” as my feet reflexively stumbled backwards. I may have suffered a brief infarct. Maybe a meteor hit Earth or my head at that moment, too. Reality wheeled around me, and I had an out-of-body feeling.
The kindly young bathroom concierge standing nearby smiled knowingly and said, “there’s a men’s room downstairs, here let me show you,” and he accompanied me downstairs to a glittering bathroom that said “MEN” on the opaque glass and brass door.
This was what I had hoped for: Urinals for guys to stand over, breath mints and mouth wash on the spotless counter, stalls with doors giving enough privacy for guys going #2 or even amorous couples to do their business without interference or observation. A typical nice Men’s room. Natural boundaries. Privacy for men, to be men.
After emptying my body’s excess water tank, I washed up, went back upstairs, and walked past the Chaos & Bizarro anti-civilization bathroom, shown in these photos. Young men and women were still entering and exiting simultaneously, and as a result I made my first and likely only 2019 New Year’s resolution: I will not use a Chaos & Bizarro dual-sex bathroom.
Nope.
I like my high civilization and I intend to keep it. One pee at a time.
Tidal wave vs. The People
When I was a kid at the New Jersey shore, I remember how some of us young boys would bob in the beach zone where the sandy bottom dropped off and the waves hit the hardest. If Jersey waves can hit hard…though they did to us kids.
We would square our shoulders and lean into the hardest waves, barely touching bottom, trying our best to withstand them.
It was a physical test and a test of willpower, kind of a test of our budding manhood. Man vs. Nature. Primal combat.
It was summer vacation, what can I say. We were kids and let our imaginations run. By today’s video games standard, it was quite wholesome and innocent.
Today I feel like we are all right back there facing down waves.
This time the waves are assaults on our society, civilization, by a media-political complex bent on crushing everything in its way. Especially the traditional people who represent or hold onto the old ways that built America and which are the foundation of Western Civilization.
A recent example of this was when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1994.
Clinton had a whole host of women accusers surrounding him. Accusations of rape, sexual assault, harassment, etc. And despite that, plus his shady business dealings, the media-political complex circled the wagons around Clinton and did everything possible to get him elected president.
In the course of that process, the media-political complex allowed Clinton to dodge, avoid, and lie about his actions, and get elected as a result. They attacked his accusers and protected him, because they shared his political views.
Another example of this was when Barack Hussein Obama was elected president in 2008. Obama had a whole host of questions surrounding him, including his shady business dealings and his overblown, shallow professional qualifications. As well as his citizenship qualification, which was raised first by his primary opponent Hillary Clinton, and recently resurrected by Obama’s own Kenyan brother, who last year was sending out a photo of Barack’s original Kenyan birth certificate.
In the course of that election process, the media-political complex allowed Obama to dodge, avoid, and lie about his actions, and to get elected as a result. The media-political complex circled the wagons around Obama and did everything possible to get him elected president, because he represented their values, their desire to “transform America.”
Today we are seeing this same old process unfold yet again, in the case of the US Senate election in Alabama.
There, a conservative anti-establishment candidate, judge Roy Moore, is facing an obviously contrived and coordinated attack by the media-political complex bent on crushing him and overturning the will of the people, the voters of Alabama.
That media-political complex is made up of BOTH political parties, as well as political and social elites.
Doubting that assertion? Consider that US Senate leader Mitch McConnell prefers a liberal Democrat over the independent minded Moore in that seat. McConnell can easily work with liberal senators. He knows how to horse trade with them. How to give in, roll over. He knows Moore will not roll over, and is not interested in the careerist perks McConnell can offer.
It may not be politically correct to be this honest, but the truth is, I do not believe the accusations against Moore. They are just way too conveniently timed, and are obviously led by GOP squishes like McConnell.
Where were these accusers decades ago? Suddenly now they’re available?!
And where was this same media scrutiny when rapist Bill Clinton was running amok and poised to become president? Where is that scrutiny now? Well, Bill Clinton is a hero to liberals. So he got the pass.
Where is the same media scrutiny for US senator Al Franken, whose damning photo shows him illegally groping a sleeping woman (who also accuses him of attacking her elsewhere)?
Where is the same media scrutiny for the dozens of Hollywood elite also accused of pedophilia, sexual assault, rape, and harassment?
Nearly crickets out there, folks, except in the unbelievable cases where the media-political complex is trying to protect Franken.
But Hell’s bells, you get an independent-minded guy like Moore, and the whole world is descending on him and demanding him to bow out of the race, with no proof other than these obviously well-timed political accusations.
So it is the Roy Moores of the world now, squaring their shoulders, standing in the surf where their feet barely touch the sandy bottom, and facing down the big tidal wave of contrived fake news designed to wipe them out of the only political process anywhere on Planet Earth designed to capture the will of The People.
Moore may not be a young kid, but it is the innocence of America that is at stake here.
Win, Moore, win.
Win for The People.
Western Civilization’s Superiority in One Image
The greater the variation in thinking, sound, taste, etc., the greater the range.
The greater the range of anything, the more refined it can become, and the more representative it is of sophistication.
The more refined something is, the more sophisticated it is, the better, more valuable it becomes to people, and when we are talking wild food and wildlife nutrition, the better it is for animals, too.
If there is one symbol of Western Civilization’s superiority above all other civilizations, it is the violin.
From a tiny violin a masterful player can emit the greatest range of sounds, which themselves can evoke a wide range of feelings and accompanying thoughts.
Stringed instruments are hard to make, hard to play well, and just as hard to keep tuned.
Stringed instruments require thoughtful, gentle and technically capable humans to create, play, and maintain them. A human culture capable of imagining, creating, playing, and maintaining a stringed instrument like the violin is at the height of human material, technical, and philosophical capabilities.
Not to disparage the cello, which in the hands of a master player can really surprise us, and not to question the viola…OK, what the heck is the viola, anyhow?
Yes, the piano is a stringed instrument. It is just a harp laid flat over a sound board, the harp strings struck by gentle little felt hammers of varying softness. No wonder the piano can be so emotionally evocative.
The violin is the most difficult to make and play of all stringed instruments. Not just because it is relatively small, but because it is both delicate and very strong. To make a good violin, that will be both a real performer and stand up to the hard use that wrings from it the wide ranging sounds that raise our hearts or cause us to cry, there must be a perfect alignment of the best natural and human-made materials with the best human capabilities.
This is art, the humanization of science. It is the highest form of human capability, and that perfected blend of form and function flows in all directions to encompass cars, firearms, clothing, music, buildings, food, etc.
That flow is what we call culture, and at the heart of my culture, my civilization, lies the violin.
Those fellow humans who join my country and my civilization are expected to join it, support it, appreciate it, advance it, not just benefit from it and give nothing back. Or worse, they cannot try to damage it, or change it. We call that treason, or war.
After all, this is my country. No one has a right to simply move wherever they want on Planet Earth, and demand that the natives there move over, make way, throw overboard their beliefs, their values, discard their noisy violins, so to speak.
Can an American Christian move to any Muslim country and build a church? No?
Can a Christian of any sort openly practice, safely, in any Muslim country? No!
Can a Jew even enter Saudi Arabia? Not without special permission from the Saudi government.
Western civilization’s simplest, sweetest violins are officially silenced across much of the planet. The violin is not their culture, that we accept.
But why must we accept that belief here, in our culture, their rejection of the violin?
American culture has always been successful and superior to all others because it made room for everyone to be themselves, and yet also be a loyal and patriotic American.
That understanding has ended among a great many Americans, old and new. Today, an American cannot be an openly practicing Christian without being ridiculed or accused of violating someone’s comforts, much less their rights. That someone might not even be an American citizen, legally not entitled to do much if anything, by law.
When a different, outside civilization can imagine, create, play, and maintain a top quality violin on its own, then I can make space for it here in my civilization. Until then, I value my little world with its many violins above all others. I do this, proudly, defiantly.
The Pope is Your Man
If you live in Europe, North America, or South America, you are greatly influenced by the Pope in Rome.
Whether you know it or not, the Pope is usually going to bat for you every day. You don’t have to be Jewish to like rye bread, and you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate and value the Pope, who fills a unique role for all humans.
While it is true that Roman Catholics have a special role for the Pope/Papacy in their theology, a role that non-Catholics find tough to accept, the fact is the Pope is the West’s leading voice on morality, charity, gentleness, kindness, and the other positive little acts that knit together our civilization. At his best he is a public advocate for all the important little things between people that are right and true, necessary for happiness on our planet. In that way, the Pope is your man.
Over the past 1,500 years popes have played varying roles in politics and the advancement of civilization as we have come to know and treasure it today. Some were better or worse than others. A few were truly bad, and quite a few were truly great leaders. The Church built much of Europe’s civilization (some of it built with money stolen through the Inquisition, the Church’s darkest time), and we all have gratitude for that stable society we now enjoy.
The pope we have today is pretty controversial, and I will admit I am not his biggest fan right now. Oh sure he says a lot of things that are important for all humans to hear, and I value that. But he also says things publicly and quietly does a lot within the Church that are contrary to how our civilization works.
Gentle critics ascribe this to his South American slum “liberation theology” and his Jesuit training. Harsh critics, including some of my most religiously observant Catholic friends, are much more blunt about their dis-satisfaction. I won’t repeat any of it here, but I will admit to missing very much the somewhat recently departed Pope John Paul, a really inspirational leader and powerful voice for goodness and right action across the planet.
Dear Pope, I hope you find your voice, because it is a voice for all of us. I am not Catholic, but I am a human who benefits from you when you are at your finest. Hurry up, please.
Good or bad, the cops have our backs
A society without a professional police force lacks the rule of law. No rule of law? No civilization.
Are there bad cops, violent cops, corrupt cops, abusive cops, escalating cops? Of course. I’ve seen it. Central Pennsylvania Attorney Devon Jacob has seen it, and he’s a former police officer who prosecutes police brutality. Even he says the bad cops are a minuscule fraction of the overall number.
Overall and overwhelmingly, the police across the nation are the best of the citizenry. They sacrifice their safety to bring a certainty to yours. Without police like American police, there’s no America. Not as we’ve come to know it.
That’s what gets me about the anti-police attitude so common now. What, you want anarchy?
Despite the fake and misplaced rage about criminals dying at the hands of the police they attacked, there is truth to the observation that police forces are too militarized. And too many police officers are quick to escalate situations to satiate an ego in need of control. These aren’t secrets and these are issues the left and the right agree on. It’s going to get resolved professionally through the political process.
The blips on the radar screen that get our attention most are momentary deviations from the standard behavior of nearly all police officers. The extremely high standard of care that the police in every community bring to all of us is second to none.
So, how any American identifies the police as the bad guys is beyond me. It’s a sign of deep cultural decay and failure. It’s time that stopped.
Josh’s Veteran’s Day presentation in Catawissa
Hello. My name is Josh First.
I am a political activist and small business owner from Harrisburg, and a dad and husband.
What an honor it is for me to stand with you today, recognizing our past and present military Veterans.
Thank you for your service!
Thank you to Jared Valeski and the other volunteers for all of your hard work on the field gun dedication, and for the invitation to be here with you today.
If you go to Ironmen Arms here in town, Jared and Tom might sell you a French army gun from World War One. It is in great shape, because it has never been fired and was only dropped once.
Hey, don’t forget the French army knife, either.
We all know what a Swiss Army knife looks like, right?
Lots and lots of tools in it, lots of uses.
You can fix your car with a Swiss Army Knife.
Well, maybe you’ve seen the French Army knife.
It has just two tools: A corkscrew, and a little white flag that flips up.
Hey, we can pick on the French a little bit, because American military veterans have been saving their behinds time after time, right?
Lots of ultimate sacrifice by our boys for the French, and for the other Europeans, to be free.
American military veterans are beacons of freedom and hope, each and every one of you, and the world knows it.
Who does the world call when freedom is on the line?
You. Each one of you.
We are going to talk about one of your fellow military veterans today, a young man named Herb McCarty, who defended the French from being turned into Germans back in World War One.
The question is: Will America be able to produce in the future more patriots like you, more heroes like McCarty?
A big thank you to Steve Campbell of the Catawissa Valley Historical Study Group.
Steve did the historical research on Herb McCarty, a real local American hero, and one of America’s best known combat veterans.
History is critical to civilization’s success, because without understanding history, we are doomed to repeat past mistakes.
Civilization only progresses if people learn from their successes and mistakes.
McCarty was a farm boy born here in Catawissa, in 1893, and like many Americans who loved liberty, he dutifully, almost happily went off to fight the Kaiser’s army in Europe in World War One, which threatened the cradle of Western civilization, that being France and western Europe.
During 1918, the end of World War One and also the year when most Americans fought and died then, McCarty covered a lot of territory over there, notably at the Argonne Forest front, where over 26,000 American patriots died for freedom in a matter of just days.
The Western Front there has been memorialized in many films, because the fighting was especially fierce, the weather was especially cold, the conditions were awful, and many wonderful young men did not come home to their families.
McCarty’s heroism there included leading men in an up-the-middle charge into entrenched German positions, after their captain fell, right into the teeth of thick furious fire, deadly combat, and
–carrying his wounded comrades off the field of battle while under intense fire, and
–being shot multiple times from a strafing German airplane, and
–then blown up by an artillery round, and
–then being merely wounded badly by another shell, and
–then he was left for dead on the zero-degree ground for 46 hours, before he was carried off.
All of this just three days before Germany surrendered and the armistice was signed.
But McCarty’s will to live was powerful, and while recuperating in Europe and during the following four years back home, he underwent just shy of fifty, yes fifty surgeries, 16 of which were done without any anesthesia at all, none, but involved young Herb simply lying there and screaming into a clenched wooden dowel while the surgeons sliced away at his wounds to heal his body for hours at a time.
In just one surgery, four bullets were removed from various parts of his body. Two bullets eventually became attached to his jugular vein with scar tissue, and McCarty took them to his grave.
Shrapnel was constantly being found throughout his body, and removed.
Some wounds just would not heal, and required frequent invasive attention, and that is what eventually killed him, four years after the war ended.
This is why McCarty is known as “America’s Most Wounded Veteran.”
92 years ago, at McCarty’s July 1st, 1922 funeral here in Catawissa, the Reverend Doctor Ulysses Myers said “This army never had a better or a braver man…We give thanks to God for him and feel that now he has been promoted.”
Reverend Lau said “For McCarty to live was God, country, and justice to all, and it was for this cause that he finally gave his life.”
McCarty’s incredible strength of will to survive, his powerful character, his grace and ability to bear such tremendous pain, are representative of Central Pennsylvania’s good people, long ago and still today.
And McCarty was motivated by much bigger ideas than just himself. He wanted everyone to be free.
I was thinking, if Catawissa meant “pure waters” in either Shawnee or Delaware Indian back in the early 1700s, then to its native boys in 1918, it must have meant “pure spirit,” because that is what McCarty represented to the world, pure American spirit.
For his many acts of heroism on the field of battle McCarty was awarded many medals, most notably the American Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, and the Croix d’Guerre (that’s the War Cross in English) by the French government.
You know, it’s amazing the French didn’t make McCarty their prime minister!
Take note that Columbia County also produced other World War One combat heroes, two of whom were also Distinguished Service Cross recipients: a young Mister Monahan, and Michael Chyko, who fought in McCarty’s unit and who was one of his pall bearers.
For those who may be wondering, the Distinguished Service Cross is the second highest military award that can be given to a member of the United States Army, for extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force.
Only the Medal of Honor outranks it.
You know, if the first European settlers of the Catawissa Valley were English Quakers, opposed to warfare, then I am here today, as a former Quaker myself, to say that in these modern times we still need the Private Herb McCarty’s.
We need them in our own generation.
We need to absorb McCarty’s strong character, his gallantry, his willingness to take the ultimate risk, and apply it here, at home. His quintessential American spirit.
Without that attitude, America fails.
There are some who claim the American spirit is bad, that we are a bad nation. They claim that we are too war-like.
Of course, they say nothing of the people who started wars with us in the first place, so you have to wonder whose side they are really on, and what they are doing here in America…
But we are gathered here today to honor long-dead heroes like Herb McCarty because they still inspire us so many years later, and we want them to inspire future generations, too.
As we are not presently at war abroad, we must ask, To what present purpose are we inspired by heroes like McCarty and their patriotic sacrifice?
More succinctly, what relevance do Herb McCarty’s actions from 1918 through 1922 have for our own actions today, 92 years later, or even as recently as this past Election Day?
We have been hovering about this question and it is time we took a shot at answering it.
Although there is certainly a serious conflict looming ahead of us between Islam and Western civilization, our biggest war right now is at home, here in America, not abroad, and we must recognize that we are fighting on our own home front.
This is a war not of bullets and bombs, but of ballots, hearts, and minds.
To that end, we must draw inspiration from Herb McCarty’s dedication to the American principles he passionately believed in, the American flag, our Constitution, and each of us must become a warrior-in-spirit for our nation on the home front, wielding a pen, a vote, not a sword….yet.
A majority of Americans and certainly most Veterans are awakening to the reality that our own federal government is presently at war with the very citizens who lend the central government its legitimacy.
Using federal agencies like the IRS, ICE, Homeland Security, NSA and others, our individual liberties, our free speech rights, our Second Amendment rights, our rights of assembly and petitioning our government, our privacy rights, our voting rights, our religious rights have all been “transformed” for the past six years in an unprecedented assault on the core of American democracy.
There is today in Washington a man who believes he is a “government of one,” a man who believes that Congress either rubber stamps his policies and his anti-America nominees, or it gets the hell out of his way so he can do whatever he wants.
There is a man in Washington whose tyrannical actions are greater in number, scope, and gravity than those in our Declaration of Independence’s list of grievances against King George in 1776.
No, his behavior is not democratic, and Yes, that man was soundly and absolutely repudiated by the American people last week at the voting booth.
That still feels pretty good, doesn’t it?
The citizens of our Constitutional Republic spoke out against his usurpation of power.
He has been repudiated in historic terms.
But the problem we face in recapturing the America of liberty, equality, and opportunity as it was founded, is that our votes only matter to those who believe in the American system.
We can vote, win at the ballot box, and go home feeling like we succeeded.
But we may still be defeated in the long run, if we forget to recapture our traditional culture and values, the qualities that made us Americans to begin with, the values that motivated Herb McCarty.
We risk becoming slaves to an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-doing central government.
And the problem with that is, The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.
In America, we are all about the citizen, not the government.
This is the real battle, the real war: To maintain our freedom at home, not on European battlefields.
This is a culture war, a contest either for an America as it was founded, or an America that looks like the old Soviet State, with no liberty, our Constitution rendered meaningless.
Like McCarty’s long battle to stay alive, this is not going to be settled with a single decisive battle.
Rather, it is a long-running war from which there is no retreat and no easy resolution.
It is not just about that one man in Washington.
It is about the anti-America movement that put him in Washington.
Our politically correct opponents’ tentacles have penetrated every fiber of our nation, every major institution, including churches, academia, charitable foundations, the Boy Scouts, the military, the media…you name it.
Sorry. Digression here, I just need to ask a simple question – with all due respect to the professional journalists with us today, may we ask if you are truly an objective, dispassionate arbiter of facts and accuracy, or are you an agenda-driven political activist hiding behind a false mask of fairness, like so many journalists appear to be?
Back to today. Today we face politically correct opponents not on an active combat battlefield like those on which Herb McCarty fought.
Rather, we are battling with ideas, information, and taxpayer-funded giveaways of great wealth.
Our opponents are not necessarily swayed by elections, nor dissuaded by individual electoral defeats.
They view these as merely temporary set-backs, individual lost battles while the bigger war continues behind the scenes, where McCarty’s strength of character and a sense of duty – YOUR strength of character and sense of duty — can be quietly erased from entire generations of Americans through control of groups like the Boy Scouts and educational institutions.
The very next day after an electoral defeat, our opponents return to the same battlefield with wing-nut activist Federal judges whose hatred for a Constitutional America is exceeded only by their pursuit of Socialism and big government micromanagement of We, the Peons.
They have Dumb and Dumber educational programs like Common Core.
Our opponents want to take America, the world’s most vibrant economy, and turn it into another French socialist democracy, at the least.
And that is why France has not fared so well in my presentation.
Because let’s be honest: France stinks. It is a mess in every way.
France hasn’t produced any Herb McCartys in a long time, and if America becomes like France, then we won’t produce many more quintessential American heroes, either.
The result of France’s socialism is that everyone with money and potential is fleeing the country.
Demographically, culturally, France will never be the same as it was 92 years ago.
But that’s where the politically correct Left wants to take us, despite history telling us that experiments in socialism and multiculturalism always fail.
And mind you, the France that Herb McCarty fought for had a military that invented Poudre B, or Powder B, the precursor to modern smokeless gunpowder used by all modern militaries.
That was a different France then.
But now, in France and their allies here in America, advocates of Big Government have spawned the rise of the entrenched, unelected, unaccountable, demanding Big Government bureaucrat.
The bureaucrat and his enormous pension have deeply eroded our individual freedoms.
The bureaucrat is a huge threat to liberty not anticipated by our otherwise brilliant Founding Fathers, who envisioned a limited government, not a big government.
But the bureaucrat outlives all elections. His ever-bigger government makes citizens ever smaller.
He is not balanced by the other branches of government.
We must elect politicians who are brave and strong enough to tackle this tough challenge.
So, if we are to follow in the footsteps of Herb McCarty, and if we are to translate his actions into actions today, and similarly serve our nation personally 92 years later, without necessarily fighting abroad or at home in a military combat unit, and if we are to be inspired to live for America the way Herb did, then here are four specific suggestions for winning the political fight for our traditional liberties and values here at home:
1) Be as politically active as possible. Go door-to-door, make phone calls, etc. for causes and candidates.
Support and work for good political candidates every year, in primaries and general elections.
America runs on political activity like a heart needs blood. Without you, the process is run by people who do not have your interests at heart.
2) Elect only those public servants who will voluntarily term-limit out, who do not seek a career in elected office, and who rely first and foremost on the Federal and State Constitutions for limited government.
Tell candidates that you will only vote for them if they pledge to voluntarily term-limit out.
And for state house and senate seats, elect people who will stick to the Pennsylvania Constitution and take only a salary and mileage as compensation.
That is what Article 2, Section 8 says is allowed, not the laundry list of taxpayer-funded benefits, like a pension, health care, car and per-diem costs.
Elected officials who term limit themselves are more able and willing to take risks and make sacrifices than those career politicians who will sell their soul just to stay in office.
Representative government, politics, should be about service, not self-enrichment.
And if there is a theme today, if Herb McCarty means anything today, it is about taking risks and making sacrifices in the service of our fellow citizens.
3) Bypass the political parties, and donate directly to political candidates and organizations like Gun Owners of America, Firearms Owners Against Crime, the NRA, and others.
Recognize that political parties are self-interested. Individual citizens do not interest them.
The political parties are full of bureaucrats and self-important functionaries who are modeled on government bureaucrats and functionaries.
Political parties were supposed to be vehicles for ideas, but nationally and especially in states like Pennsylvania, they are privately run business enterprises, whose goal is self-perpetuation.
They rarely serve the forgotten taxpayer, citizen, and voter. Rather, they simply re-divide the political spoils between each other every two to four years.
And do not fool yourself that “your” political party is better than the other.
I am a Republican because I am a conservative, traditional American, but believe me, the Republican Party establishment fights activists like me harder than they fight the Democrats.
Why? Because establishment Republicans know how to deal with the liberal Democrats: They each get a slice of the taxpayer pie; sometimes it’s less, sometimes it’s more, but they always get a slice.
Both parties agree on that, even though how big their slice of pie is may change year to year.
But good government activists can’t be bought, we stand on principle, and we want the taxpayers to eat their own pie, not politicians, and not the bureaucrats.
So we pose a greater threat to the bipartisan exploitation of government than if the parties merely temporarily lose to one another.
Our good government movement needs your support. Look for our candidates, like Scott Wagner in York County, who became a state senator on a write-in vote against his own party this year.
And finally, number 4) Reassemble the militias, out of love for our nation, Constitution, and our individual liberties, not out of hate for anyone.
Organized militias with muster rolls meet the “well regulated” clause in the Second Amendment of the Constitution.
Militias formed the basis of our nation, the basis of our military, and they are as American as apple pie, so long as they are focused on protecting communities and the Constitution.
And yes, that can include protecting American citizens from their own federal government, which is not some kooky idea from out of the blue, but in fact was a long discussion among our Founding Fathers and is the basis of the Second Amendment.
Even the French once knew the danger of big government, except they didn’t have the militia.
Instead, they used mobs and the guillotine.
Americans are just a wee bit more civilized than that, right?
It’s like Europe was the imperfect prototype, and America is the finely finished product.
It’s like Europe was the cradle of democracy, and America is the kid that got up out of the cradle and walked away, and grew up into an independent, strong young man.
That’s why young men like Herb McCarty have had to return several times to save the Europeans from themselves, and demonstrate each time how great we Americans are, at great cost.
Americans are exceptional, we have always been exceptional, not because we simply think we are better than everyone else.
It is because we humbly demonstrate our greatness time after time.
We get the toughest jobs done, because we are asked to.
High-falutin’ Europeans pretend they are exceptional by living hedonistic lifestyles and tossing their traditional values out the window.
Let’s not follow Europe’s lead, and let’s not allow young Herb McCarty and the many other vets buried here to have died in vain.
Let us learn from history, and let’s not make mistakes we know can end our civilization.
Last week’s election results were a small step in the right direction, and the real work is just beginning to re-create a traditional American culture.
Please be part of that movement.
In conclusion, thank you very much for having me here with you today, and…
Again, a big Thank You to our military Veterans here: Each and every one of you sacrificed and contributed toward my own personal liberties, like my ability to speak honestly with you here.
I would like to thank our audience for listening so patiently.
In Herb McCarty’s memory, I want to thank God the All-Mighty for having founded America on the Bible, the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, so that law, justice, fortitude, service, mercy, charity, liberty and love forever inspire and bind us together in American brotherhood.
Thank you!