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One thing Rush Limbaugh got right

Radio host Rush Limbaugh died a year ago, and people who enjoyed his show or his books are remembering him today. I am remembering him for two reasons. First, for his zig-zag career path and conventional/unconventional life path. Second, for a single political prediction he made in 2019 that was labeled “outrageous” and “dangerous” by his opponents, and which even raised a lot of eyebrows amid his supporters, but which has proven to be spookily prescient and 100% accurate.

First with number one.

Rush Limbaugh’s successful life path and career path are things worth studying, because so many Americans have been corralled into falsely believing your career must be, should be a straight and linear path forward. Even though that is just not correct, and in many cases it’s not healthy.

You know, graduate from high school, then go to college and spend an inordinate amount of money to be indoctrinated in nonsense and useless hokum, with the hope of getting a college diploma that “proves” you are smart and capable of making decisions. I don’t know if this linear career path idea is a natural result of the old guild mentality, where a son or daughter would apprentice in a particular guild (plumber, wood worker, watch maker, gun maker, horse carriage maker etc.), and then either take over his or her father’s work shop, or go start their own work shop/ atelier in some distant locale doing the same work. In truth, this guild and apprencticeship process offers a lot of value, not just three hundred years ago, but even today. It assures that young people go into work they enjoy, and that they are well trained when they are released unto the world as a certified expert. It also gives people a good income in what had been a feudal world of poor serfs and ultra-wealthy aristocrats.

But this guild approach to career saw its last vestiges swept away with the end of high school Shop Class and Vo-Tech programs that actually taught Americans how to do needed things of value.

And so Rush Limbaugh followed his own path in the radio world, and ended up being the most successful and well-known radio personality in radio history. His success did not happen in a linear way, but quite the opposite. He had to find his way. His stories about his first few jobs in radio, and about being fired by different types of radio managers for different kinds of real or imaginary infractions, and moving across the country several times to take radio jobs, are useful examples to those just now entering the work force or who are stultifying in old jobs.

Only after failing, or growing as it might be euphemistically called, did Limbaugh eventually get to sit behind the Golden EIB Microphone. It was his initial failures and zig-zags that eventually created his character and inner strength, his skills and abilities.

Lessons that Limbaugh learned were be yourself, be honest and forthright, work hard, take risks, make some sacrifices, and if you end up doing what you enjoy the most, then you will often be rewarded with material success and deep personal happiness. And as we well know, contentment is its own form of wealth (and as some of us know, there are a lot of very wealthy people who are also desperately unhappy and often cruelly, even destructively negative, to those around them), so becoming a high school shop teacher earning forty five thousand dollars a year may make you deeply content with your life, but your life partner is going to have to work, too.

But there is no such a thing as high school shop class these days….one should wonder Why…that is a separate issue.

Similarly, his personal life resulted in a strong and committed marriage to a woman, Kathryn, only after the two of them had been friends for many years. How rewarding it is to be married to both your lover and your best friend. That is the pinnacle of relationships, and Limbaugh’s marriage should serve as a useful template for others contemplating marriage themselves. Find a friend, and marry them.

Now about that crazy prediction Limbaugh made in 2019, the one thing he got right that at first sounded so outlandish and impossible…I remember shaking my head when he said that “the Democrat Party will seek a way to eliminate elections so that they can become the dominant and sole political force in America.”

“I don’t know how they are going to do it, but they are working on it,” Limbaugh said. “Oh, they will allow the trappings of elections, but they won’t be meaningful or fair.”

And I was not alone in my skepticism at such a huge claim. Many observers and listeners to Limbaugh’s radio program openly said that he was just being bombastic for the sake of poking his political opponents. No one in American politics could ever want to eliminate elections, the bedrock foundation of our constitutional republic, right?, we naively thought.

And yet Limbaugh stuck to this public claim several times more, and in the end he was proven correct with the stolen 2020 election, and the Democrat Party’s all-out hyperdrive to convert that theft into absolute iron control of Americans by any means necessary, including the federalization of elections and permanence of vote fraud activity.

It turned out that Limbaugh really did understand the Democrat Party and the American Left better than anyone else outside of those two movements. What is amazing is that the subject of his analysis, the Democrat Party, now makes no effort to hide its totalitarian ambitions. Everywhere American citizens have demanded audits of the voting machines or the ballots cast in the fraudulent 2020 election, they have been met with deviousness, rude defiance, threats, blocking lawsuits, and outright ballot-shredding skulduggery by the Democrat Party and its Republican Party enablers.

This is not the behavior of people committed to open and accountable elections, but rather the actions of the desperate and dangerous thief trying to keep his theft from becoming widespread knowledge.

America as a continuing constitutional republic is in huge trouble. Most of our institutions are overthrown and taken over by leftist activists, who then bend those cultural and political institutions against the American constitution and the rule of law. Rush Limbaugh was so deep into the political fray that like a champion prize fighter, he saw where his opponent’s next punch sequence was going to come from.

What is amazing is that the Republican Party still, even now, behaves like an amazed ringside commentator asking incredulously at the end of the fight how the champion prize fighter ever saw the attack coming and not only beat it back, but managed to land his own blows in order to win the fight. This just goes to show just how outside the political fray the Republican Party is; the GOP is barely an observer much less an actual participant in American politics.

We need Rush Limbaugh’s insights more than ever now, but he is somewhere else, and so the only bit of related wisdom or insight I can scrape up at this point is to say We must all be Rush Limbaughs, and each of us fearlessly stay in the fight for freedom and liberty.

And trust our gut instincts about our political opponents. Even if it seems like crazy talk to say that the Democrat Party or its Canadian political ally, Justin Trudeau, are hell bent on becoming absolutist totalitarian overlords. We must fight fight fight, or we lose everything.

Rush Limbaugh behind his EIB Golden Microphone, fighting for freedom and liberty. He knew politics better than most people and loved a constitutional America more than most

Limbaugh’s right-hand man, James Golden aka “Bo Snerdley” continues Limbaugh’s fight for liberty today

Twenty-five years of sitting by the warm fire

Our family burns a lot of firewood every cold season. Usually beginning in late October and going through February, sometimes into March, we burn split oak 24 hours a day.

Nothing heats up a room better and takes the chill out of the air than a fire in a modern wood or coal stove, and nothing provides a better centralized gathering place for people to read, doze, study, or talk than a fire place or stove. It is a real comfort, and if we think about it, humans sitting by a comforting fire goes back what, 100,000 years? Or six thousand? Either way, a long time.

We are back at it once again today, tending a fire, having now endured Winter’s recent biting return without a fire the past week or so.  Something about this late season chill just works its way into the bones. Maybe we kind of let down our guard, anticipating Spring, eager to shed the heavy coats and boots, and enjoy the warm air and freedom to lounge outside once again. Whatever  the reason, the harsh cold issues a strong call for the fire today, and so we lit one. We will run it constantly until we are fully out of Winter’s grip, and enjoying the comfort of the warm sunlight.

There is another sort of fire, however, and this one will never die out.

It is the fire of human passion, and love, and friendship.

It is that kind of fire which two people share after twenty five years of happy marriage together.

Sure, there are some tough times along that twenty-five years, some hard words, some bruised feelings in that period. Birthing and then raising three kids in that time means some disagreement and frustration are inevitable. But these things are part and parcel of living a committed life. And in a way, resolving the disputes makes the fire hotter, Polonius’ hoops of steel stronger. There is no walking out or walking away, quitting when the going gets tough. There is only commitment, fire. Ebbing, flowing, sometimes blazing hot, sometimes a bed of coals, but always a lit fire.

As a much missed now-deceased life advisor used to say to me, two married people are like two knives, constantly rubbing against one another, sharpening one another’s blade. The knives are working tools, cutting through life, getting work done, and by working together side by side, they also continually sharpen each other’s blades, their cutting edges, the working parts. Once in a while they nick one another. That is just the nature of the tool, the nature of married life. The little nick goes with the territory of work.

It is a good analogy, good enough for me. Because when I look back on twenty-five years of good marriage, as marked today, I feel like we are both still sharp, the Princess of Patience still looks sharp, and our cutting edges are holding up strong.

Said  the other way, I have been sitting by a particular fire now for twenty-five years. Once in a while, while tending it, it has singed me, or given me a minor blister, reminding me of its inherent powerful force. Given that I am klutzy, it is logical that I earned those little burns.

But usually this fire is my friend, my best friend, in fact. I am looking forward to another twenty-five years of her warmth and comfort.

 

Is it time for civil disobedience and ignoring kook judicial holdings?

Civil disobedience, non-resistance obstructionism, and peaceful protests against clearly unfair laws and violent government agents is time-honored in America.

Civil disobedience works because it appeals to the higher mind, it appeals to the best, highest conscience in Western Civilization.  You have to have an open mind to have civil disobedience work on your political views so that you vote for change from the status quo.

It won’t work in a Muslim country, where civil disobedience will just get you locked up and tortured, or summarily killed.

It did work for Ghandi in India because the 1940s British empire valued democracy and voting rights, and the public cry at home over images of British soldiers shooting peaceful protestors in Delhi’s public streets threatened to up-end political control at home.

Americans have successfully employed civil disobedience since the 1920s: Segregation laws, no voting rights for women, a lack of equal rights or opportunity across so many sectors of society… the causes were real and political changes were needed for America to live up to its promise.

And ain’t America an amazing place that it is designed to change and heal old wounds, to become a better place?

Because the original use of civil disobedience was so righteous, because so many of the laws being protested in the 1920s through the 1960s were so outrageously unjust, the behavior eventually took on a connotation of being above the law and always justified.  In fact, over time even violence became justified in the name of Marxist versions of “justice,” and pro-violence slogans like “No Justice, No Peace” evolved.

Today, violent, fake civil disobedience has been employed by the “Occupy Wall Street” thugs, and by the violent criminals in Ferguson, Missouri.  These events always start off as a routine, rote, formula civil disobedience act, and then they quickly devolve into destruction, arson, violence, beatings, attacks on bystanders….all in the name of some Marxist version of “justice.”

Inevitably, politically allied elected officials have begun to implement their jobs in a similar fashion.  No matter what the law says, they ignore it, and make a big public deal about subverting the law.  As if they are justified.  They actually take pride in failing to implement the law as they are supposed to.

Examples of elected officials ignoring and subverting the law are a county clerk of courts issuing same-sex marriage licenses, despite Pennsylvania law saying it is illegal.  Or Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane refusing to defend state laws, because she personally disagrees with them.  Or California banning state judges from belonging to the Boy Scouts.  Or the Obama administration willfully failing to implement immigration law.  Or Harrisburg City mayor Eric Papenfuse refusing to rescind city ordinances that are plainly illegal under state preemption law, because Papenfuse holds certain personal views about guns.

This lawlessness by the very people entrusted with safeguarding and implementing the law is dangerous.  These wayward officials stand on quicksand, because the basis of our republican form of democracy is the rule of law – equal application of the law, irrespective of what one personally believes.

If government officials begin ignoring laws they disagree with, and implementing law that was not voted into being by the consent of the voters, then the rule of law is over, it has ended.  The glue that holds America together is corroded, and the whole edifice can come down.

But let’s ask why only one side of the political debate does this.  We know they get away with this because the mainstream media protects them, but the MSM veil has been pierced by the Internet, so the flow of information is no longer completely bottled up by fellow travelers.

Put another way, why don’t other people, say people like American traditionalists, “conservatives,” engage in the same behavior?

Here is an example of what could be done: Last week a federal judge ruled that Arizona must issue drivers licenses to illegal immigrants.  Never mind that these people are in America ILLEGALLY, the claims they make for their applications could be and often are fraudulent, and the cost of these services is unfairly covered by taxpayers.

Why don’t the good officials of Arizona simply ignore that judge’s insane ruling?  That judge has no ability to actually make Arizona issue drivers licenses, and if I worked in Arizona government, or if I still worked in federal government and had something to do with allowing illegal immigrants in, I would simply ignore that judge’s crazy ruling, or the illegal commands of the occupant of the White House.

There, folks, how do you like the taste of that medicine now?

Think of the many kook, nakedly political judicial decisions that are handed down, contrary to law and policy.  Why reward these dictatorial jurists by following their dictates? Why not simply ignore them?  God knows, they are earning it.

Civil disobedience and official lawlessness is a game that everyone can play, and at some point the people who have been acting like adults will recognize they only stand to lose by following the rule of law while their opponents exploit their fidelity, and only by fighting fire with fire will they make it clear that everyone must follow and implement the law, no matter what their personal views are, or everyone loses.

Or, people can do it the old fashioned way, and work to get the law changed one vote at a time.

We interrupt this marriage to bring you hunting season…

Thank you to my wonderful wife, the Princess of Patience, for letting me hunt so much.

Knowing how many other “hunting widows” there are, I am confident I speak as one with many other appreciative husbands.

Division this close means widening social fractures

By Josh First

Legislating from the bench, a liberal majority on the US Supreme Court once again discards jurisprudence and picks up the hammer and saw of simple policy making.

Beginning their opinion with a personal attack on religious Americans and other traditionalists who thought that thousands of years of human history didn’t need to be tossed out a window, at least not by five people wearing ominous black robes, the Court said nothing about law or the basis of law in America. In fact, the majority opinion refers almost not at all to the Defense of Marriage Act which it overturned.

These are the same four or five Americans who do not believe that the Second Amendment to the Constitution means what it plainly says and always meant in practice among citizens since the nation’s founding. They are wildly out of touch with the law they are supposed to be upholding and protecting.

America is badly served by this sort of law-making. Why have a US Congress and an Executive branch if five unelected people can make something up themselves? And a lot of Americans aren’t impressed enough to start following this sort of top-down, Smarties-Know-Better-Than-You governance. Courts are supposed to be reluctant to toss out entire laws, because it demonstrates that the people, the citizenry, were just plain wrong. But in a Republic like America, government, and justices, operate only at the will of the governed.

That government that governs the least maintains the most credibility and fealty. Sweeping government decisions like today’s judicial legislation deeply alienate citizens from the government they believe is supposed to represent them. Remanding DOMA back to the states would have made the most sense, because marriage is a state issue.

But then again, Americans are locked in what is becoming a quiet civil war about what America is and how it is supposed to be, and the Court is becoming a friction point. These views are incompatible. One side wants adherence to the Constitution and founding principles easily obtained from the founding documents, while the other wants power through massive, intrusive, spying, monitoring, crushing, incarcerating, penalizing government. Apparently, some modern ideas are so good that they must be made mandatory…in other words, resistance to them is punishable, despite real, legitimate disagreement.

The biggest concern I have is how the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty is going to square up with this radical holding. Religious liberty is the hallmark of American freedoms. But can a Mormon minister be breaking some law if he declines to marry a same-sex couple? If it’s yes, and he is punished, will some states fight back by jailing the same-sex couples who wed out-of-state, but who then become incarcerated in states that criminalize same-sex marriage?

All it takes is for one governor to state that he will disregard this holding for the whole thing to boomerang back on the Court. American democracy requires little screwdrivers, but the alleged Great Brains on the Court have just used a sledgehammer. The shockwaves have only begun.

20 years of the best

Viv and I recently celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary.
Twenty years of the best kind of relationship possible. I get everything, and she works like a slave and gives everything.
Anyone who knows Viv knows she is a powerhouse. An accomplished attorney, a loving and doting mother, a cheerful wife, an incredible volunteer on many boards and charities…really, she deserves a Purple Heart or some other military medal for being married to me for so long, let alone the amazing work she does for communities and individuals.
Thank you, honey, for being with me and my better half.
I am looking forward to another sixty years together…
Josh