Posts Tagged → Liberal
A Tale of Two Men, Two Peoples
We have in the past couple weeks been able to observe the best and worst of human behavior in America. Since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the outpouring of grief and love on the one side, and the mockery, cruelty and evil on the other, has stratified Americans like few other events.
Even the George Floyd response (before the resulting burning, looting, and murdering riots) had some basis in widespread earnest initial belief that Floyd had been unfairly killed by a policeman, which crossed all political and ideological boundaries.
Not the Charlie Kirk assassination.
Starting the day of his assassination until just a few days ago, I have spent a good deal of time with mainstream liberal Americans at different events, and I can tell you there is no sensitivity there, that I can detect. No sorrow, and no open animosity, either. Indifference mostly, as far as I can tell. Unless we scratch the surface…
Last week, at a mostly liberal soiree in a special place, a nice looking older woman approached me and chatted with me. Her name tag said she was from New Jersey, so I made some humorous quip about the unfavorable Pennsylvania view of New Jersey’s polluted environment and its erratic drivers.
“Oh no, I live in the center of the state, near Princeton,” the nice lady replied. “Though I have to admit I also live near HIS golf course, if you know what I mean. The TRUMP golf course.”
Her eyebrows arched up and down with implied meaning. Apparently rotten-to-the-core Princeton is just fine, but a pretty golf course has all sorts of problems for her.
Said I, using one of my standard golf-related quips, “I do not play golf, I hunt. Because there is not a golf course anywhere on this planet with sufficient liability insurance to allow me to pick up a club. I am safer to be around with a shotgun chasing after geese in the water hazards than swinging at a ball.”
She smiled wanly, un-used to meeting anyone at a posh soiree who does not at least pretend to like golf. When our pregnant quiet moment was at its ripest, I followed up with “Besides, I am a huge Trump fan. And I don’t think we should all be shooting at each other over these differences, because we are all Americans and can work out our differences with our words.”
What she said surprised the hell out of me: “No, we shouldn’t.” And then she was gone, a scowl on her attractive visage. As if anyone on the Trump side of things has been shooting anyone, anywhere. Or maybe she meant that we shouldn’t be using our words…?
There are two different peoples here right now, inhabiting our country. Each one orbiting two different men, Christian activist Charlie Kirk, on the one hand, and once-humorist pagan Hollywooder Jimmy Kimmel, now fired and late of late night TV, on the other hand.
While some Americans oppose Charlie Kirk’s policy preferences on intellectual grounds, I guess, a lot of them also seem to be seething with hatred or animosity about him and anyone associated with him. This is strange to me, because Charlie Kirk never hurt anyone. He was a gentle person, civil, generous, a listener, he asked questions. He did politics the right way: He talked. What on earth about him would make people filled with hate?
Yes, he had some strong opinions based on his Biblical values, the same values that founded America. And….guess what? His political opponents also have strong views, based on God only knows what, because I do not know. Does having strong opinions simply make a person a bad person? If so, then the hate should flow both ways. But it does not.
It appears that the ever-angry, lying, mis-informing, wildly partisan Jimmy Kimmel is fully representative of the political Left and the Democrat Party partisans right now. When faced with consequences for his poor behavior (mocking the assassination of Kirk and lying about who did it), Kimmel is defiant and petulant. People losing their TV and radio shows in the cancel culture war was fine for Kimmel when they had different opinions than he. However, when the shoe is on his foot, and his words fail in the marketplace, suddenly he is aggrieved, and foot stomping, and like a spoiled child demanding demanding demanding.
Never mind that Kimmel was in essence telling leftists that they could murder their political opponents for disagreeing, and that TV personalities would cover for them. Kimmel was violating the basic conditions on which his employer, ABC, had been granted an FCC public broadcast license decades ago. We can debate whether the FCC should even exist, but it does right now, and if one has a broadcast license from the FCC right now, then one must meet its “public benefit” requirement, or let go of it. Kimmel’s lies placed his employer’s FCC license at risk, and so his employer cut him loose and with him the liability.
When we compare and contrast Kirk vs Kimmel, we see two totally opposite men, and totally opposite ways of conducting one’s self in public and in private. Charlie Kirk’s assassination has brought out a lot of good people, and also a lot of troubled people. We now have a tale of two different men, and the two very different peoples surrounding them.
I hope you, dear reader, choose the gentle one. America needs this, not the hate.
Tucker Carlson, dingbat mean girl
The past two years of Tucker Carlson’s life have been devoted to attacking Israel and everyone who supports it, as well as revisiting essential Adolf Hitler messaging, like “the Jews” control media, banking, government etc. One of the pro-Israel groups, AIPAC, is one of his special whipping boys. Tucker accuses AIPAC of forcing American politicians to “obey” and thus AIPAC “controls” American government. He says.
Tucker ignores the truly vast amounts of money spent lobbying and influencing American government and decision makers at all levels by China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and many others who are definitely not American allies. AIPAC’s pipsqueak budget doesn’t compare, but if you are looking for a scapegoat, nothing beats “the Jews.”
Another thing Tucker has repeatedly said is that Iran is not America’s enemy (even though it very much has been since 1979), Iran is only Israel’s enemy, and that any real war against Iran’s nuclear bomb program, by either Israel or America, will automatically result in WORLD WAR THREE.
In this way, Tucker became the chief Iran First advocate in America. Given his open, unhidden, unapologetic personal animosity towards Jews and Israel, Tucker probably supports a nuclear-armed Iran as some sort of counter-balance to Israel’s longterm survival, and thus the survival of the Jewish people, if not an outright threat with a high likelihood of succeeding in turning Israel into smoking rubble.
But the problem is, if you are Iran First, like Tucker is, then you are America Last, and yet Tucker claims to be a MAGA America First guy. He cannot have it both ways. Iran’s record of hostility towards its “Great Satan” America runs the gamut from holding 66 American hostages for 444 days, to multitudes of bombings that have killed Americans around the world, to holding weekly rallies declaring “Death to America” in Iran and in countries it has exercised control over, like Syria and Lebanon. Iranian leaders have said countless times that its nuclear bomb program is intended to destroy both Israel and America. Iran has openly bragged about having terrorist sleeper cells here in America.
And yet, Tucker has done all one person can to protect Iran from military intervention by its likely victims. He really is Iran First, and so it logically follows that Tucker is okay seeing American cities go up in mushroom clouds if he also gets to see Israel destroyed. And while Tucker harbored anti Jewish sentiments in the past (e.g. his initial FOX News report on Sam Bankman Fried’s felonious Ponzi scheme dripped with personal animosity towards Jews), it was given rocket fuel by huge payments from both Iranian businessman Omeed Malik and Qatar. Reportedly over ten million dollars.
Yes, the same Qatar that has been funding the destruction of American college education in the pursuit of destroying American culture and borders.
So, Tucker may have been a kind of mean girl in the past, but his dislike for Jews and Israel really took off after he left FOX News. Left to himself and his anti-Western, Islamo-supremacist financiers, Tucker’s anti-Jew stuff ballooned into an open movement, a greater-good willingness to sacrifice America on the old Adolf Hitler altar that also destroyed Germany.
To this neo-isolationist banner Tucker attracted a whole posse of fellow MAGA conservatives, like open Jew hater Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Jack Posobiec, Patrick Bet David, even Charlie Kirk, who I thought would have had the common sense and honest Christian charity to stay away, and a whole bunch more. Some of these people have embraced Jew hatred as a business, and honestly, they seem to be doing OK at it.
Led by Tucker Carlson, this posse of mean girls has subsequently greatly shaped the public debate, the internal MAGA debate, and President Donald Trump administration’s policies about Israel, Iran, and American foreign policy in general. To intervene or not, to get regime change or not, to support an underdog ally, or not.
My opinion is that Tucker’s posse of mean girls has elevated non-interventionism and neo-isolationism into a graven image, an idol to be worshiped at any cost. Really guys, no regime change in Iran now, when probably 80% of the Iranian people want it? When we can most easily achieve it? You have a solid argument for this? I don’t see it.
Imagine being so “pro freedom” that you violently argue for ninety million Iranians to remain under the jackboot of the evil Shia mullahs. Because regime change is supposedly always bad. Again, I don’t see the logic or sound reasoning of this argument by the posse of mean girls. The blood of this week’s Iranian victims, civilians right now being rounded up by IRGC soldiers, is on your hands.
For the record, I have been MAGA since 2015, when Citizen Trump descended the escalator to announce his candidacy. Max campaign donations (even still on a monthly basis), all of the MAGA/ Trump tee shirts, boxer shorts, socks, hats, signs, banners, memes, you name it, I paid top retail to show my support for the one person I believe can save America. This blog is a record of my absolute commitment to President Trump at every turn over the past ten years. His America First policies are everything I believe in.
And for the record, I was a huge Tucker Carlson devotee when he was at FOX News, because he asked all the right questions about the right things, policies, and people. His goal was freedom and his aim was true. Tucker’s unintentionally comedic WASPy hostility towards Jews at the end of his Sam Bankman Fried report was tolerable, because who the hell doesn’t dislike Leftist Jews? They are a pox on America, as are most Leftist Catholics, Leftist Protestants, Leftist Muslims, Quakers et al.
Yes, Leftist Jews should know better than anyone else about how evil Leftism is, because of all that the Jewish People have been through, especially at the hands of arch Leftists. But Tucker has made it openly clear, most recently in his interview with US Senator Cruz (where Tucker revealed that he is a deliberately fake Christian), that he maintains an animosity for all Jews, including the politically and culturally conservative ones who are devoted to America and Western Civilization. The same people a politically active conservative would normally share the political trenches with.
World War Three never happened after the apocalyptic genocidal death cult running Iran was brought to heel, and America and Israel successfully defended Western Civilization together without America losing one military person or citizen. And thus is Tucker revealed as a destructive dingbat, and not a serious thought leader about real policy issues.
Without Chanuka there is no Christmas
Decades ago in graduate school, I was friends with a lovely classmate named Christine. Christine was from Kenya, studying graduate economics at Vanderbilt, with the expectation of returning to her country and taking up an important post in the Kenyan government. Smart, beautiful, articulate, kindly, Christine was the embodiment of what the rest of the world would like Africa to become, and what its leaders had hoped it could be.
One thing about Christine that surprised me was that, as religious a Methodist as she was (yes, Africa has more true blue religious Methodists than America, where Mainline Protestantism has become a Socialist anti-Christianity movement), she knew nothing of the Old Testament AKA the Torah. Christine thought that Christianity simply appeared to the world, and had its own kind of virgin birth, if you will. No connection to anything else, no roots in any other religion, or place.
One can easily blame the simple minded missionaries who taught Christine’s grandparents a Christianity devoid of its own history. As for Christine, you don’t know what you don’t know, correct? However, everyone has a responsibility for their beliefs, and now in our modern Internet age, where all questions can be answered to some degree of accuracy within a few seconds, and to a much higher degree of surety within a couple minutes, every one of us simply has to maintain some level of curiosity about the world around us, to stay informed. We must stay informed.
Christine taught me something that bears telling again today: Christmas owes its existence to the Orthodox Jews who successfully fought and won a brutal civil war against the Leftwing Democrats of their day, 2300 years ago.
Known as “Apikorsim”, Hellenists, Hedonists, whatever, the in-essence Democrat Party socialist Jews of 2300 years ago tried to impose a Godless paganism on the religious (Orthodox) Jews of Israel/Judea.
And the Orthodox Jews fought back.
Their leaders were known as the Maccabees/ Hasmoneans, largely drawn from the Jewish priests, and they prevailed against a much larger, better organized, better armed force by utilizing guerilla warfare. The Maccabees slowly whittled down the liberal Jews and their Greek allies through hit-and-run tactics and merciless head-long frontal attacks by highly motivated, battle-hardened warriors.
And so, when the Orthodox Jews prevailed on the battlefield, recaptured Jerusalem, re-dedicated the Temple there, and restarted the holy service in the Temple, Torah Judaism was saved. And because Torah Judaism was saved, a certain religiously observant Jew named Yeshua was born about 250 years later. And because that Jew went on to become a religious ascetic (a Nazirite like Samson), he became an outspoken critic of the religious ways or failings of his fellow Jews, and the occupying Romans, as he saw them.
The rest is history, if you know anything about the Second Temple period of Judaism or the early years of Christianity.
Point being, because Orthodox Jews fought the Leftist Jews of their time, Christianity was eventually born and eventually Christmas was created (observed the 25th day of December, just as Chanuka is always the 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev on a lunar calendar, which means Kislev 25th always floats around relative to the Gregorian calendar we use in America and Europe).
Tonight marks the beginning of Chanuka and the end of Christmas Day. Without Chanuka, there would be no Christmas. It is important for everyone to remember history, and to know how we all got here to where we stand today. I wish that Christine would have known history, or had been educated to want to know history, because that sensitivity or intellectual curiosity would have saved her life…a story for another day.
Happy Chanuka, America and world.
Had my day in court
Literally had my day in court yesterday, in the Dauphin County courthouse in Downtown Harrisburg. After nearly ten years of taxpayer-funded expensive stonewalling and dodging and delaying, Harrisburg City’s expensive taxpayer-funded attorneys (Lavery) were forced to actually litigate.
Harrisburg City was forced to actually argue for and explain why it has maintained three patently illegal ordinances on the books for years. At issue are city ordinances that criminalize carrying guns in a public park, discharging a firearm within the city limits, and failing to report a lost or stolen gun.
Each of these ordinances is subject to state pre-emption, because Pennsylvania state law clearly prohibits any political subdivision, like Harrisburg City, from creating its own gun regulations. This is in order to avoid a crazy-quilt pattern of gun laws within a state, where just crossing from one municipality to another, one township to the township next door, with a firearm, could result in an unintentional felony and violent arrest and incarceration. No society can operate like that, whether it’s gun regulations, abortion regulations, car regulations etc.
So, somehow the elected officials of Harrisburg City believed they were above the law, and they passed these illegal city ordinances. A group I belong to FOAC-ILLEA and Firearms Owners Against Crime, filed suit against the city many years ago, to compel the city to remove these illegal ordinances. After all, what is the purpose of having illegal laws on the books? What is the purpose of having illegal laws on the books, and actually spending hundreds of thousands of Harrisburg taxpayer dollars fighting to keep said illegal laws in place?
I will tell you why these ordinances are on the books: Harrisburg City wants to have the threat of these ordinances to use against people the city doesn’t like. People with different political beliefs, maybe the wrong skin color, maybe the wrong religion, you name it, these illegal ordinances can and will be used by city leaders for purely political and punitive purposes.
Even if the city charges someone with these ordinances and eventually loses in court, the city will still have won. Because the criminal process is the punishment. Simply dragging someone through the expensive, scary legal process from being arrested and handcuffed, having their person and home ransacked by police, being jailed, having to get a lawyer, maybe losing your job, is pretty bad punishment. So even if the city eventually loses a criminal prosecution with any of these ordinances, they will have really hurt someone.
And that is the purpose of ALL liberals everywhere, to scare and control and punitively hurt and damage people who disagree with them. Especially gun owning individuals who represent an armed citizenry capable of pushing back against tyrannical government. Like all liberal-run Democrat Party bastions everywhere across America, Harrisburg City desires to control its citizens, not represent them.
And so yesterday we finally got to sit in Judge Andrew Dowling’s court room and have a real, genuine legal offense-defense. It was something out of a Hollywood movie, with real court room drama, an occasionally piqued or openly amused judge, a sharp litigator (Joshua Prince) and a defense attorney who – no lie, no embellishment here – actually bellowed “I am being bushwhacked! This is an ambush!” after the judge reminded him that he was the attorney who said let’s move this trial to this date today.
Being the plaintiff of record from Harrisburg City itself, I had my opportunity to testify from the witness stand. I was cross examined at length, sometimes with real humor, by the defense counsel. I really don’t believe myself to be a “lawbreaker” when I am defying a patently illegal law, and it was nice to see the attorney have to concede that. I also enjoyed recounting how, during the catastrophic flood of 2011, I walked up and down my block and adjoining blocks with a shotgun and a handgun, to deter looters. That raised eyebrows, and led to an interesting line of questioning from the defense counsel and thumbs-up from my fellow plaintiffs.
Other plaintiffs, Howard Bullock, who lives outside Harrisburg City but who works within it, and Jim Stoker, president of FOAC, also took the witness stand, and were also cross-examined. All three of us did well representing our case. And the bushwhacked lawyer who raised ridiculous objection after ridiculous objection, including once to his own statements (the judge kindly reminded him that he was now arguing against himself), was clearly deflated after Judge Dowling said he would issue a decision on this trial.
Nearly ten years of Harrisburg taxpayer gravy train defending the indefensible are about to end for Lavery Law! And for me, the rule of law is being established, our flag of freedom being firmly planted in a small county court room far from the public eye. Not one news reporter was present, not one City employee, nobody but us freedom fighters, the judge and his staff, and the hapless bushwhacked lawyer.
Once again the forgotten taxpayer is out of sight, out of mind, though a holding of any sort in this case will then raise questions about why Harrisburg City spends hundreds of thousands of rare taxpayer dollars so frivolously and carelessly.
It was a great day for the law and a great day to be in court forcing the law to be upheld by striking illegal laws from the books. Thanks to attorney Joshua Prince for representing the rule of law, and to Judge Dowling for running his court room fairly and often with real humor and sharp observations.

(L to R) Plaintiff Howard Bullock, attorney Joshua Prince, attorney Kevin Fenchak, attorney Dillon Harris, plaintiff Yours Truly Josh First, and plaintiff Jim Stoker of FOAC fame in the Dauphin County courthouse yesterday.
Racist fake “journalist” attacks Trump in broad daylight
President Trump stepped onto the stage of the National Association of Black Journalists (what if there were a National Association of White Journalists…? Are white journalists not allowed to join the same group as black journalists? Isn’t that exclusionary racism? This whole racial skin color division thing eludes me) the other day, and patiently rebuffed a blatantly racist attack by the openly hostile host, Rachel Scott of ABC “news“, whose unprofessional, disrespectful and confrontational attitude is why the establishment media has lost the American people.
So-called “journalist” Rachel Scott behaved so poorly from the get-go that she left no question in anyone’s mind if she is a politically partisan activist. She is. She is also a white-hating racist. She rapidfire threw lie- bomb after lie-bomb at Trump, and then harshly interrupted her guest whenever he tried to answer her.
To put Rachel Scott’s aggressive behavior in perspective, had the skin colors been reversed, she would have been immediately drummed out of whatever atoms remain of journalism as a recognizable profession. Her hostility was palpable, his disrespect was measurable, and there is no other way to ascribe this unprofessional conduct than sheer hatred. If it would be unacceptable for a white person to treat a black person as Rachel Scott did, then the reverse is also true.
Racism is bad, it is un-American, and it cannot be allowed in polite society. What an embarrassment this event was for the National Association of Black Journalists. Not a professional group, evidently.
For his part, President Trump was incredible. He patiently responded to his vicious antagonist, and quite personally addressed her points head-on. Speaking of skin color, one of the intriguing things that President Trump brought up is how Kamala Harris never identifed as “black” before. As Harris is descended from Asians, whites, and possibly American Indians, with maybe some black Africans in the distant past, and her one ancestor owned the most slaves on Jamaica out of every other slave holder in that island’s history, it surprised Trump to hear the political activist ABC fake news person Rachel Scott call Harris “black.”
And he said so.
Kudos to Trump for being forthright and honest. And he also spoke the truth about having been the best president for American blacks since President Lincoln. When Rachel Scott yet again interjected that it was Lyndon Johnson who signed the Voting Rights Act, Trump was too much of a gentleman to point out that President Lyndon Johnson was a notorious southern racist, and his policies were openly designed to keep American blacks enslaved on the Democrat Plantation for generations to come. Which they have. And it was the Republicans who voted then for civil rights and voting rights for American blacks, while the Democrats voted against them.
What interests me about President Trump’s appearance on enemy territory is how the vast majority of Americans do not give a fig about skin color. I myself have loved women with brown skin, black skin, red skin, white skin, and olive skin, and I have to say that all of my friends feel the way I do – skin color is the least useful indicator of anything important. And yet, racists like Rachel Scott keep trying to whip up racial animus between Americans, all of whom simply want to live in harmony with one another.
Similarly, other racist “journalists” (Democrat Party activists who work in the news business) have accused Trump’s VP nominee JD Vance of being a racist, despite his wife having brown skin and their kids looking quite brown.
It’s weird, to borrow a word from Kacklin’ Kamala, how liberals and Democrats are always racists at heart, and how they just cannot tell the truth.
Thank God America has Donald Trump to say the facts as they are!
Central PA candidates on the ballot
Because I am a “politico” actively involved in politics, friends, family, and strangers ask my opinion on candidates running for political office.
Here are the people I am voting for on next week’s Republican primary election ballot:
President: Donald J. Trump, of course. President Trump is all that stands between We, The People and chaos and the forced failure of America as the representative constitutional republic we have enjoyed since 1789.
Attorney General: Dave Sunday. He has a strong 2A background and is endorsed by Gun Owners of America, whereas his opponent has a very poor 2A record.
Congress: Scott Perry. Scott continues to reliably do what an elected official is supposed to do. He has gotten a lot quieter since the lawless Democrat Party thugs known as “FBI agents” stopped his car and stole his cell phone from him at gunpoint last year. Nonetheless, Scott continues to vote for We, The People, like voting against the FISA renewal. FISA has been used by the FBI to conduct lawless, warrantless domestic spying against everyday American citizens.
US Senator: Mickey Mouse. I literally wrote in Mickey Mouse because the GOPe endorsed and orchestrated puppet strings candidate whose name appears on the ballot spent time and money to knock off the ballot several other candidates who would have competed with him in this primary race. What a scumbag.
Auditor General: Tim DeFoor. Tim is a solid citizen and one of the very few now career politicians I can support. I have watched him work his way through the political process, and though he is not ideological, he comes to his traditional views honestly, from the way he grew up, which I can respect.
State Senator: Nick DiFrancesco. This is a newer version of the state senate district seat I ran for in 2012 and 2015, and I have a lot of familiarity with its voters. Nick is an all-around politico who has been a Dauphin County commissioner and has held other publicly visible positions of trust. Nick is presently Dauphin County treasurer, and I believe he represents the only chance normal taxpaying citizens in our region have to stop far-left radical Patty Kim from inheriting this seat in a heavily gerrymandered district made just for her. The other candidate is Ken Stambaugh, who I have had the pleasure of speaking with at length and staying in touch with. Heck of a nice man, good intentions, and not a political animal. My opinion is Ken would stand zero chance against Patty Kim. I yearn for the days when America would naturally and easily elect good people like Ken to office, but unfortunately spring 2024 is as far away from those old days as America can get. We need political warriors.
State Treasurer: Stacy Garrity. Wish we had a primary opponent just for voter choice.
Representative in General Assembly (State House 103rd district): Cindi Ward. Wish we had a primary opponent just for voter choice.
Representative in General Assembly (State House 100th district): Dave Nissley. Failed incumbent and career political hack Bryan Cutler has been a disaster for central Pennsylvania voters who care about good policy and clean politics. Cutler got into elected politics at a very young age, and he just learned bad habit after bad habit along the way. Dave Nissley is by far the better man and the better candidate, and he has been endorsed by Gun Owners of America.
Delegate to the Republican National Convention: Jeff Haste, Sue Helm, George Margetas, and Charlie Gerow. Both Jeff and Sue are well known central PA pro 2A advocates. George Margetas is a local attorney who like so many of us went along with the covid tyranny mask nonsense in 2020, but who then bucked it publicly afterwards when it was clearly evident that covid was about political control and not about public health. I like a strong man who stands up for freedom. Last but not least is well known local politico and lobbyist Charlie Gerow, who I have known for many years and who is one of the few lobbyists I actually like.
The other RNC candidates have either zero about them available online, which tells us they are hiding, fakes, RINOs, or Democrats, or they have something about being “a fiscal conservative,” which is always a red flag for social conservatives looking for strong candidates who will represent traditional values and meritocracy. So-called “fiscal conservatives” rarely are, and they are always social liberals. No thanks.
Hanukka’s message to Americans
While Christmas is the national holiday of America, Hanukka is the other big holiday happening now. Today is the last day, and it is worth taking note of the meaning this religious holiday can and should have for all freedom-loving Americans.
Let us reflect upon what the message of Hanukka is and should be for Americans, because God knows, we are all in need of inspiration right now. Especially as we daily recognize ever more just how rogue and turned against us citizens our own federal government has become.
Hanukka is the commemoration of an unbelievably heroic and unlikely war outcome 2,300 years ago by a band of ferociously patriotic religious Jews battling against one of the regional superpowers of their time. In short, when Alexander the Great died, his Greek empire was divided into large parts, each run by one of Alexander’s generals. Seleucus was one of those generals, and while his life was a whirlwind of cloak and dagger politics, leading massed battles, and shifting political alliances, he ended up founding one of the regional empires. The Seleucid Empire included all kinds of remote areas and sleepy places and small peoples that the Greeks did not really care about, including the nation of Judea and its natives, the Israelites/Judeans/ Jews.
But the powerful Greek Seleucids ended up caring very much about the relatively small and highly religious Judeans, because most of the Jews would only go so far in pledging their loyalty to the Greeks, due to religious differences. While in general the Greeks had a very broad and inclusive view of culture, what was then called the pan-Hellenic, and while the Jews could go along with a lot of cultural differences so long as their religion was not compromised, the Greeks did require a basic fealty to their most important values. And those polytheistic values strongly antagonized the Jews’ monotheism.
It must be said that the resulting civil war was as much between religious Jews and Hellenized Jews as it was between religious Jews and the Greeks. Essentially it was the Orthodox Jews vs. the assimilated and very liberal Jews and their protectors, the Greeks. This fact obviously has great implications for the tensions between religious Jews today and their more liberal and religiously distant brethren.
An armed showdown began when the Seleucids erected their own statues and began sacrificing pigs in the Jews’ Great Temple. You know, the same large hill whereupon another uninvited, rogue, imperialistic and colonizing symbol has been erected, namely the golden dome of the rock. And so a Jewish priest names Mattathias (essentially Matthew in today’s English, a name familiar to Christians) picked up a sword, killed some bad guys with some gutsy moves, and started a Jewish rebellion against an overwhelmingly superior military force.
The Greeks and their liberal Jewish allies responded with force, and the Orthodox Jews fled their homes in Jerusalem to the Judean Hills, where they eked out a meagre existence in caves and remote washes where the Greek patrols did not go. Using hit-and-run guerilla war tactics over several years, Mattathias and his sons’ troops eventually wore down the Greek resolve, to the point where headlong massed battles resulted in smaller forces of Jews utterly annihilating their opponents.
Following the final battle, when the Jewish “Maccabees” returned in force to Jerusalem, they found the Great Temple ransacked and wrecked. Despite a great desolation upon the land, as a result of this terrible civil war, the religious Jews were able to scrape together enough pure olive oil to re-light the gold Menorah in the Great Temple while they also pulled the religious service back together, too. That fact about the olive oil has become kind of a materialistic Christmasized silver and blue tinsel fairy tale about a miracle, and thus great emphasis has been placed on the “miracle of the oil.”
Truth is, this “miracle of the oil” is almost a Monty Python sketch of what really happened, because the true miracle of Hanukka was that the tiny force of true believer Orthodox Jews was able to defeat a much more powerful but spiritually flaccid enemy. Where have we seen this same kind of scenario play out elsewhere in history? Hmmm, my fellow Americans?
The message of Hanukka is that no dark, evil force can defeat goodness and righteousness. This is the true miracle of this holiday, that a small band of humans, led either by George Washington or Mattathias the Priest, can defeat hordes of knuckle dragging barbarians. This is a message of inspiration that all Americans need right now, because we are now facing a terrible plague of evil, moral rot, and sadistic cruelty emanating from the present interloper rulers of our nation’s capital. Many people predict America is heading for a civil war, or at least an armed contest between the central government of Washington, DC, and the rest of the country. Hopefully, our election system is not so corrupted that we can vote our way out of this mess.
Don’t worry, Americans, because if you call upon God and are willing to sacrifice and take risks, like the Orthodox Jewish Maccabees did 2,300 years ago, then you can, we can, miraculously re-take the America that is ours from those who have risen up to steal it and make us all subjects and slaves to their evil power.
My fellow Americans, take heart from the history of Hanukka that you, too, can be successful against what look like overwhelming odds.

The light of freedom shines bright, including in our hearts and our spirit to fight for what is right
















































