The System Is Rigged: Qualified Immunity Is How the Police State Stays in Power

The System Is Rigged: Qualified Immunity Is How the Police State Stays in Power

“What’s been most striking to me is just how one-sided the rules are when Americans take on their own government…. It has been dismaying to learn the extent to which rules and laws shield the government from accountability for its abuses—or even lawbreaking…. It’s been a long and frightening lesson…. The rules seem rigged to protect government lawlessness, and the playing field is uneven. Too many processes favor the government. The deck is still stacked.” —  Journalist Sharyl Attkisson

The system is rigged.

The system is rigged, the government is corrupt, and “we the people” continue to waste our strength by fighting each other rather than standing against the tyrant in our midst.

Because the system is rigged, because the government is corrupt, and because “we the people” remain polarized and divided, the police state will keep winning and “we the people” will keep losing.

Because the system is rigged and the U.S. Supreme Court—the so-called “people’s court”—has exchanged its appointed role as a gatekeeper of justice for its new role as maintainer of the status quo, there will be little if no consequences for the cops who brutalize and no justice for the victims of police brutality.

Because the system is rigged, there will be no consequences for police who destroyed a private home by bombarding it with tear gas grenades during a SWAT team raid gone awry, or for the cop who mistakenly shot a 10-year-old boy after aiming for and missing the non-threatening family dog, or for the arresting officer who sicced a police dog on a suspect who had already surrendered.

This is how unarmed Americans keep dying at the hands of militarized police.

By refusing to accept any of the eight or so qualified immunity cases before it this term that strove to hold police accountable for official misconduct, the Supreme Court delivered a chilling reminder that in the American police state, ‘we the people’ are at the mercy of law enforcement officers who have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to ‘serve and protect.”

This is how qualified immunity keeps the police state in power.

Lawyers tend to offer a lot of complicated, convoluted explanations for the doctrine of qualified immunity, which was intended to insulate government officials from frivolous lawsuits, but the real purpose of qualified immunity is to rig the system, ensuring that abusive agents of the government almost always win and the victims of government abuse almost always lose.

How else do you explain a doctrine that requires victims of police violence to prove that their abusers knew their behavior was illegal because it had been deemed so in a nearly identical case at some prior time: it’s a setup for failure.

Do you know how many different ways a cop can kill, maim, torture and abuse someone without being held liable?

The cops know: in large part due to training classes that drill them on the art of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment, which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents.

This is how “we the people” keep losing.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Harlow v. Fitzgerald (1982) that suing government officials for monetary damages is “the only realistic avenue” of holding them accountable for abusing their offices and violating the Constitution, it has ostensibly given the police and other government agents a green light to shoot first and ask questions later, as well as to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

Whether it’s police officers breaking through people’s front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching motorists on the side of the road, these instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to virtually every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution.

Make no mistake about it: this is what constitutes “law and order” in the American police state.

These are the hallmarks of a police state: where police officers, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

Unfortunately, we’ve been traveling this dangerous road for a long time now.

A review of critical court rulings over the past several decades, including rulings affirming qualified immunity protections for government agents by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order, protecting the ruling class, and insulating government agents from charges of wrongdoing than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Indeed, as Reuters reports, qualified immunity “has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights.” Worse, as Reuters concluded, “the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police.”

The system is rigged.

Police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless searches. In Anderson v. Creighton, the Supreme Court ruled that FBI and state law enforcement agents were entitled to qualified immunity protections after they were sued for raiding a private home without a warrant and holding family members at gunpoint, all in a search for a suspected bank robber who was not in the house.

Police can claim qualified immunity for warrantless arrests based on mere suspicion. In Hunter v. Bryant, the Court ruled that police acted reasonably in arresting James Bryant without a warrant in order to protect the president. Bryant had allegedly written a letter that referenced a third-party plot to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, but police had no proof that he intended to harm Reagan beyond a mere suspicion. The charges against Bryant were eventually dropped.

Police can claim qualified immunity for using excessive force against protesters. In Saucier v. Katz, the Court ruled in favor of federal law enforcement agents who forcefully tackled a protester as he attempted to unfurl a banner at Vice President Gore’s political rally. The Court reasoned that the officers acted reasonably given the urgency of protecting the vice president.

Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a fleeing suspect in the back. In Brosseau v. Haugen, the Court dismissed a lawsuit against a police officer who shot Kenneth Haugen in the back as he entered his car in order to flee from police. The Court ruled that in light of existing case law, the cop’s conduct fell in the “hazy border between excessive and acceptable force” and so she did not violate clearly established law.

Police can claim qualified immunity for shooting a mentally impaired person. In City of San Francisco v. Sheehan, the Court ruled in favor of police who repeatedly shot Teresa Sheehan during the course of a mental health welfare check. The Court ruled that it was not unreasonable for police to pepper spray and shoot Sheehan multiple times after entering her room without a warrant and encountering her holding a knife.

Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits. In Plumhoff v. Rickard, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers who used deadly force to terminate a car chase were immune from a lawsuit. The officers were accused of needlessly resorting to deadly force by shooting multiple times at a man and his passenger in a stopped car, killing both individuals.

Police can stop, arrest and search citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. In a 5-3 ruling in Utah v. Strieff, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gave police the go-ahead to embark on a fishing expedition of one’s person and property, rendering Americans completely vulnerable to the whims of any cop on the beat.

Police officers can stop cars based on “anonymous” tips or for “suspicious” behavior such as having a reclined car seat or driving too carefully. In a 5-4 ruling in Navarette v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers, under the guise of “reasonable suspicion,” can stop cars and question drivers based solely on anonymous tips, no matter how dubious, and whether or not they themselves witnessed any troubling behavior. Then in State v. Howard, the Kansas Supreme Court declared that motorists who recline their car seats are guilty of suspicious behavior and can be subject to warrantless searches by police. That ruling, coupled with other court rulings upholding warrantless searches and seizures by police renders one’s car a Constitution-free zone.

Americans have no protection against mandatory breathalyzer tests at a police checkpoint, although mandatory blood draws violate the Fourth Amendment (Birchfield v. North Dakota). Police can also conduct sobriety and “information-seeking” checkpoints (Illinois v. Lidster and Mich. Dep't of State Police v. Sitz).

Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime. In Maryland v. King, a divided U.S. Supreme Court determined that a person arrested for a crime who is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty must submit to forcible extraction of their DNA. Once again the Court sided with the guardians of the police state over the defenders of individual liberty in determining that DNA samples may be extracted from people arrested for “serious” offenses. The end result of the ruling paves the way for a nationwide dragnet of suspects targeted via DNA sampling.

Police can use the “fear for my life” rationale as an excuse for shooting unarmed individuals. Upon arriving on the scene of a nighttime traffic accident, an Alabama police officer shot a driver exiting his car, mistakenly believing the wallet in his hand to be a gun. A report by the Justice Department found that half of the unarmed people shot by one police department over a seven-year span were “shot because the officer saw something (like a cellphone) or some action (like a person pulling at the waist of their pants) and misidentified it as a threat.”

Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes.” In Florida v. Harris, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court determined that police officers may use highly unreliable drug-sniffing dogs to conduct warrantless searches of cars during routine traffic stops. The ruling turns man’s best friend into an extension of the police state, provided the use of a K-9 unit takes place within a reasonable amount of time (Rodriguez v. United States).

Not only are police largely protected by qualified immunity, but police dogs are also off the hook for wrongdoing. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a police officer who allowed a police dog to maul a homeless man innocent of any wrongdoing.

Police can subject Americans to strip searches, no matter the “offense.” A divided U.S. Supreme Court actually prioritized making life easier for overworked jail officials over the basic right of Americans to be free from debasing strip searches. In its 5-4 ruling in Florence v. Burlington, the Court declared that any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials, which involves exposing the genitals and the buttocks. This “license to probe” is now being extended to roadside stops, as police officers throughout the country have begun performing roadside strip searches—some involving anal and vaginal probes—without any evidence of wrongdoing and without a warrant.

Police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home. In an 8-1 ruling in Kentucky v. King, the U.S. Supreme Court placed their trust in the discretion of police officers, rather than in the dictates of the Constitution, when they gave police greater leeway to break into homes or apartments without a warrant. Despite the fact that the police in question ended up pursuing the wrong suspect, invaded the wrong apartment and violated just about every tenet that stands between us and a police state, the Court sanctioned the warrantless raid, leaving Americans with little real protection in the face of all manner of abuses by police.

Police can use knock-and-talk tactics as a means of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment. Aggressive “knock and talk” practices have become thinly veiled, warrantless exercises by which citizens are coerced and intimidated into “talking” with heavily armed police who “knock” on their doors in the middle of the night. Andrew Scott didn’t even get a chance to say no to such a heavy-handed request before he was gunned down by police who pounded aggressively on the wrong door at 1:30 a.m., failed to identify themselves as police, and then repeatedly shot and killed the man when he answered the door while holding a gun in self-defense.

Police can carry out no-knock raids if they believe announcing themselves would be dangerous. Police can perform a “no-knock” raid as long as they have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence, under the particular circumstances, would be dangerous or futile or give occupants a chance to destroy evidence of a crime (Richards v. Wisconsin). Legal ownership of a firearm is also enough to justify a no-knock raid by police (Quinn v. Texas). For instance, a Texas man had his home subject to a no-knock, SWAT-team style forceful entry and raid based solely on the suspicion that there were legally-owned firearms in his household. The homeowner was actually shot by police through his closed bedroom door.

Police can recklessly open fire on anyone that might be “armed.” Philando Castile was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop allegedly over a broken tail light merely for telling police he had a conceal-and-carry permit. That’s all it took for police to shoot Castile four times in the presence of his girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter. A unanimous Supreme Court declared in County of Los Angeles vs. Mendez that police should not be held liable for recklessly firing 15 times into a shack where a homeless couple had been sleeping because the grabbed his BB gun in defense, fearing they were being attacked.

Police can destroy a home during a SWAT raid, even if the owner gives their consent to enter and search it. In West v. Winfield, the Supreme Court provided cover to police after they smashed the windows of Shaniz West’s home, punched holes in her walls and ceilings, and bombed the house with so much tear gas that it was uninhabitable for two months. All of this despite the fact that the suspect they were pursuing was not in the house and West, the homeowner, agreed to allow police to search the home to confirm that.

Police can suffocate someone, deliberately or inadvertently, in the process of subduing them. “I can’t breathe” has become a rallying cry following the deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd, both of whom died after being placed in a chokehold by police. Dozens more have died in similar circumstances at the hands of police who have faced little repercussions for these deaths.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are dealing with a nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out with impunity against individuals posing little or no real threat.

So what’s the answer to reforming a system that is clearly self-serving and corrupt?

Abolishing the police is not the answer: that will inevitably lead to outright anarchy, which will give the police state and those law-and-order zealots all the incentive it needs to declare martial law.

Looting and violence are not the answer: As Martin Luther King Jr. recognized, “A riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt.” Using the looting and riots as justification for supporting police brutality is also not the answer:  As King recognized, “It is not enough … to condemn riots… without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”

Police reform is necessary and unavoidable if we are to have any hope of living in an America in which freedom means something more than the right to stay alive, but how we reform the system is just as important as getting it done.

We don’t need to wait for nine members of a ruling aristocracy who primarily come from privileged backgrounds and who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo to fix what’s broken in America.

Nor do we need to wait for 535 highly paid politicians to do something about these injustices only when it suits their political ambitions

And we certainly don’t need to wait for a president with a taste for totalitarian tactics to throw a few crumbs our way.

This is as much a local problem as it is a national one.

Be fair. Be nonviolent. Be relentless in your pursuit of justice for all.

Let’s get it done.

Xer The People

Civil rights have come so far that women and religion both have to defend their right to exist

Xer The People

When peaceful protests injure hundreds and destroy entire neighborhoods, and the coronavirus infects protesters depending on the cause they’re protesting for, words don’t mean very much.

And reality itself is under siege in the minds of the men and women who run the country.

A Southern Democrat segregationist inserted “sex” into the Civil Rights Act as a poison pill.

What Gorsuch, Roberts and his leftist colleagues believe matters. Nothing else. Rights are as imaginary as gender and legislative history gets in the way of legislating from the bench

Rep. Howard Smith had introduced what eventually became Title VII, with a letter which asked, that since there were more women than men, “why the Creator would set up such an imbalance of spinsters, shutting off the ‘right’ of every female to have a husband of her own, is, of course, known only to nature… but I am sure you will agree that this is a grave injustice to womankind and something the Congress and President Johnson should take immediate steps to correct… especially in this election year.”

To add to the already hilarious joke, six Supreme Court justices just decided that what the Southern racist really meant by “sex” was gay and transgender because in Washington D.C. no joke is too funny that it can’t be taken seriously as a basis for judicial activism and lawsuits.

It’s still a joke, but we’re not allowed to laugh anymore.

“Few in 1964 would have expected Title VII to apply to discrimination against homosexual and transgender persons. But legislative history has no bearing here,” Gorsuch writes.

If the actual purpose and meaning of the law doesn’t matter, then what does?

What Gorsuch, Roberts and his leftist colleagues believe matters. Nothing else. Rights are as imaginary as gender and legislative history gets in the way of legislating from the bench.

The Gorsuch decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia finding that “sex” in Title VII covers any group having anything to do with sex in a trendy way has been described as “textual”. It’s only textual if you think the text of legislation should be read through a contemporary definition rather than the definition of the time. When President Taft’s wife was discussing their “gay season”, it didn’t mean gay any more than “sex” does. Except maybe according to Gorsuch.


There’s a new heresy in town and the social justice inquisition is always waiting
But words can mean anything and nobody cares about facts anyway.

Gerald Bostock, who is at the center of this Supreme Court precedent, claims that he was fired for being gay while Clayton County claimed that the child welfare services coordinator had spent money meant for Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) at Cowtippers and F.R.O.G.S.: a cantina in Atlanta. Cowtippers does not appear in Gorsuch’s decision though it seems more germane to the question than the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water, which does.

The Gorsuch judicial activist revision of Smith’s legislation is bad news for those organizations protected by that piece of paper known as the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

“Compelling a religious organization to employ individuals whose conduct flouts the tenets of the organization’s faith forces the group to communicate an objectionable message,” Justice Alito notes, paraphrasing these groups.

But these days there’s a new faith in town and people are being fired left and right for flouting it. If you run afoul of social justice mobs, your job will be gone because the company that employs you will blame you for “communicating an objectionable message”. Like the worth of all lives.

There’s a new heresy in town and the social justice inquisition is always waiting. The essential premise of that faith is that everyone must be made to kneel to it or lose their heads.

“These questions are going to create a tsunami of new litigation and create a huge amount of uncertainty going forward,” Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, cautioned.

“Can a Catholic school deny employment to a teacher whose sexual lifestyle blatantly flouts millennia of Catholic moral teaching? Can an Orthodox Jewish day school refuse to hire a male teacher who self-identifies as a woman, contravening traditional teaching rooted in Genesis?” Josh Hammer, Of Counsel at the First Liberty Institute, asked.


Our constitutional legacy, like our religious foundations, is based on the belief that words matter

The answer is obvious and the lawsuits are inevitable. And thus Smith’s old joke translates into the effective criminalization of traditional religious morality at the institutional level. That’s the problem with writing jokes into legislation, they end up packing a hell of a punchline.

The Gorsuch decision has put the Bible on the same level as the code of the Klu Klax Klan and that great legislator’s response to the First Amendment question is that it will be settled in future cases. There’s little doubt that it will, and on the terms of Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia.

Our constitutional legacy, like our religious foundations, is based on the belief that words matter. Judicial activism is based on the opposite belief that words can and do mean anything.

“Legislators actually won’t know what they are voting to pass—because words might change cultural meaning dramatically between the time of passage and some future court case,” Russell Moore, of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, warns.

When words mean nothing, rights mean nothing. Rights derive not from foundational documents grounded in eternal truths, but from social trends and the whims of political appointees.

Bill Clinton had famously debated the meaning of “is” and of sex. Gorsuch and his five accomplices claim that they’ve settled the question of “sex”. Now comes the battle over defining “religion” and the “free exercise” of it. Are teachers in religious schools exempted? What about bookkeepers? Civil rights has long since become a zero sum game with winners and losers.

The winners advance to the next stage of suing people and the losers retreat to defending them.

Religious organizations will be forced to defend the religious role of teachers. And, once that battle is lost, the religious role of rabbis and ministers. Then they’ll be told to ‘bake the cake’.

The larger question, the one that Gorsuch so casually loses sight of in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, is where do rights come from. The Declaration of Independence had a compelling answer to that question that enabled Americans to defy the will of a king.

Contemporary judicial activism has pitted religion against equality and we are less equal for it
“All men are created equal,” wrote a long-dead Virginian whose statues are being toppled, “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Equality was not in contradiction with religion, but derived from it. Our common origin as children of G-d made us equal. The whim of a court or any human ruler could not make or unmake our equality.

Contemporary judicial activism has pitted religion against equality and we are less equal for it.

Judicial activism began by taking away the equality of Natural Law and replacing it with the inequality of judicial whim which inevitably nullifies whatever good it sets out to create.

Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia reinvents the meaning of sex, based on the deeply serious work of a Dixiecrat trying to make a joke of the Civil Rights Act, while treating the First Amendment, that is the work of our Founding Fathers, as an awkward footnote. Title VII requires treating Rep. Howard Smith’s joke more seriously than the work of James Madison, and then dismissing Smith as irrelevant to the question of what sex was meant to mean.

What then is this whole thing based on beyond the prejudices of 6 contemporary justices?

As the crank said to William James, “it’s turtles all the way down.”

“Some of those who supported adding language to Title VII to ban sex discrimination may have hoped it would derail the entire Civil Rights Act. Yet, contrary to those intentions, the bill became law. Since then, Title VII’s effects have unfolded with far-reaching consequences, some likely beyond what many in Congress or elsewhere expected,” Gorsuch’s opinion concedes.

Take Title VII, which was blown up out of a segregationist’s joke into the ultimate expression of protecting women as a “sex” against discrimination, which now eliminates womanhood.


Smith’s joke continues to resound long after his death by not merely wiping out the Civil Rights Act, but the entire Bill of Rights
As Justice Alito notes, “The effect of the Court’s reasoning may be to force young women to compete against students who have a very significant biological advantage, including students who have the size and strength of a male.”

That’s far-reaching alright compared to Smith giggling about an entitlement to husbands. Some half a century later we live in a strange new world in which the dominant elite consensus is that women don’t exist except as a set of outfits, injectable hormones and a state of mind. The most popular children’s author in the world is under attack for asserting that women really do exist.

Our elites used to mock Galileo’s interrogators only to deny the existence of something far more real and obvious than the motions of planetary bodies. And the Supreme Court is on board.

Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia continues the process of ushering in a world in which rights are as fluid as the definitions of words and the shifting nature of ideas in a society going mad.

Smith’s joke continues to resound long after his death by not merely wiping out the Civil Rights Act, but the entire Bill of Rights. That old segregationist’s joke is now set to destroy, as Alito pointed out, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech and women’s rights.

The joke hath given. Now it taketh everything away.

Civil rights have come so far that women and religion both have to defend their right to exist

Dear Dad, You Were Right!

Donald Trump, victim of constant media abuse and criticism, could be our very last chance at some much-needed GRACE

Dear Dad, You Were Right!

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished by how much he’d learned in seven years.”—Mark Twain.


Away back in the year nineteen hundred and seventy, a bunch of us kids threw a rock concert in one of our city’s parks. We were raising money to help us beat the school board into allowing us boys to wear long hair in our high schools. My father, having seen the flyers around town, told me that I was absolutely not to attend the concert. And he told me that, in the event he discovered I had attended said concert, he would murder me. That being the case, you can certainly understand why I could not tell him that I had to attend—since I was one of the concert’s organizers. The day of the concert, a beautiful sunny Saturday, he and my mother drove into the park and up behind the big flatbed trailer we had rented for our bands’ sound stage. Our big generators could not be heard over the roar of the great rock music. My father left Mom sitting, got out of the car and strode determinedly toward my girlfriend and me. He politely asked me if he could have a word with me.

Dad was a prophet. At the time, I thought he was an idiotic relic

That Saturday, dozens of frisbees were flying at our tremendously successful gathering. There was a hint of marijuana smoke (still a BIG felony back then) mixed in with all the incense sticks smoldering amongst the thousands of attendees. Everybody must have donated at least a couple of bucks each because we wound up with about 10 grand in the kitty. We were elated. But, I was suddenly living what I then believed were probably my last moments of life on this earth. My dad and I walked over to one of the huge oak trees that sheltered that screaming semi trailer. And just short of yelling (in competing with the band playing) he narrowly looked at me and smiled and said, “You guys just don’t realize what sort of a horse you are dragging into our town.” Of course his allusion was to the Trojan Horse given by the Greeks to the Trojans—stuffed with fully armed Greek soldiers who would slip out of the horse that night and kill a bunch of drunken, sleepy Trojans. I looked at him and said (in my typically dizzying intellectual tone), “What exactly do you mean, Pop?” He said, “Everybody here has already forgotten why most of the guys my age went to Europe and fought Hitler. Trust me, by the time your grandchildren are old enough to start college, a lot of them will no longer have the sense to understand why we have locks on our doors.”

He was a prophet. At the time, I thought he was an idiotic relic. But he knew of what he spoke. And today we are living in the midst of a bunch of silver ponytails and idiots of all ages who don’t have the common sense to see that our actions these days have absolutely nothing to do with logic or even the most cursory knowledge of world history. As a society we are now entirely shaming the shed blood of our nation’s founders. And all the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way during the past nearly 300 years in ensuring our liberties—to them, we owe a bottomless apology. We have squandered the historically singular gift we are only inches away from completely losing. And the riots of looting pillagers we are watching every evening, before toddling off to our comfortable beds, have about as much to do with mourning the loss of a senselessly murdered American, as I, a six foot 10 inches tall stocky man, have in common with legendary gymnast Nadia Comăneci.

The events currently going down here in America are what the generations of our enemies—who don’t have a nodding acquaintance with the liberties we Americans daily take for granted—have been longing for since our inception. The silly myths and fairytales that have been pumped into our heads by a trillion warm televisions have successfully drowned out the reason big city’s downtown apartment dwellers have the array of deadbolts and chains on the cubicles they pay thousands of dollars rent for every month. Yes, it’s true that we can ride around in computer-driven taxis. We have sound systems that give our music a more accurate reproduction than when it was performed live. We have television monitors that deliver a clearer image than our retinas can differentiate from reality. We have boutique drugs that can lull us to sleep or seemingly give us enough momentary relief to justify living another day. But most of us all have lost sight of the FACT that mankind has never, in all its existence, been more blackhearted, filthy minded or cold-blooded than we are today. The devil, like a pool shark about to make his career shot, has at least all of America right in front of a corner pocket. And only a comparatively few can see that we are perfectly set up for a fall unprecedented in our wildest imaginings.


Politicians lend credence and give support to the ‘anarchists’

I never thought I would see the day when—after having watched several minutes of commonly available, precisely obvious video documentation of an elderly white-haired man feeling up all sorts of clearly uncomfortable little girls—that the very same man is now powerfully and respectfully proclaimed to be at least half our nation’s beloved favorite candidate for president. How in the world could such a thing happen? [I have explained that phenomenon in other stories which the reader should take the time to examine.] But if you had, just a few decades ago, told me in detail, about any number of the events now happening around us daily, I would have spit on the ground and sworn that you were out of your mind for making such insane predictions. Yet today my newspaper’s lead story photo shows a skinny reveler armed with his crowbar, standing on top of an abandoned police car with its windows smashed in and filthy words spray-painted on the doors and hood. And the horrid death of George Floyd is only a reason, but certainly not the excuse, for any of that. A colossally wicked human being (who happens to be white) dressed as a policeman - BECAUSE THE PEOPLE WHO GAVE HIM HIS UNIFORM WERE NOT PSYCHICS—killed a black man, and all of what’s left of our country is now effectively held hostage because most all of us have seemingly lost our ability to think rationally. But it gets worse …

Politicians lend credence and give support to the ‘anarchists’ (in this instance, rather like calling a rabid dog by a more respectful name) around our nation who are smiling as they ‘protest’ simply because they are bashing in store windows and ‘shopping’ without having to spend any money. And politicians, and movie stars, and all manner of contemporary ‘dignitaries’ are applauding these demons AND PROFITING BY IT mostly because the general public has gone mad and lost its ability to think rationally for more than an hour ahead. No, the bottom line—THE REAL TRUTH BEHIND THIS MESS—is that a very real devil saw his sweetest opportunity in a uniformed tyrant who never grew up, fatally bullying a gentle and sweet Christian man. And, just as satan thought he had won the day 2000 years ago when he crucified Jesus in a crowd of hypocritical priests, one of our Lord’s innocent, believing children was senselessly killed surrounded by a group of police who were equally as hypocritical as those devil-driven priests. And now much of America seems to be totally incensed because the people we trust to honestly report our news have further helped satan to use this evil tragedy to bring indictment on anything or anyone they want to paint with their lies and non sequitur sleight-of-hand.

Joe Biden will serve to do little more than grease the chute to total chaos and destruction
And, on top of all this, as I said in my last article, ‘has anyone yet given a proper answer to the coronavirus problem’? Jesus, in Luke chapter 21, Matthew 24 and elsewhere in Scripture talked about all the perplexing dilemmas preceding His second coming. Amongst His list of horrors, he mentions “PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE” as part of the problems accompanying the HARD-HEARTEDNESS of mankind, wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and floods in diverse places—open your own Bible and read all about what is happening around us right now. And how many of us Christians have been regularly going to God and crying out for His glory, help and gospel to rescue a lost and fumbling planet full of unbelievers?

When I think about the Lord quietly sitting on His throne and waiting—right prior to His finally losing His patience—I see a saddened and deeply thoughtful, TRUE GOD waiting for His creation to choose to come to their senses. And yet hardly anyone, not even many of His own blood-adopted children, are drawing near to Him seeking His will, comfort and omniscience in what clearly appears to be the beginning of this planet’s and people’s very last ‘time of trouble’.

It turns out that my father obviously never murdered me. But he was absolutely right in his predictions, given the limited material with which he had to work. His later born-again son took too long to catch up with his hard-earned wisdom. And I, very admittedly, eventually had to meet my Heavenly Father in order to achieve any ability to hopefully have made some sense in anything I have written above. Nevertheless, the fact remains that we are currently in way over our heads. The approaching, treacherous, final fork in the road of our existence is, I believe, directly ahead of us. And, judging by our performance to date (cutting to the chase), a Joe Biden will serve to do little more than grease the chute to total chaos and destruction. And Donald Trump, victim of constant media abuse and criticism, could be our very last chance at some much-needed GRACE. I pray that we don’t get what we deserve.

We're Not All In This Together

Each false cause is replaced by another big lie. If you can see past the lies, you’re not “Together” with the “We”. You’re one of the last Americans

We're Not All In This Together

“We’re All In This Together,” the sappy title of one of several bad songs, has become the Ministry of Information slogan of the pandemic. You hear it while shopping for groceries at the supermarket, see it on billboards that tell you to social distance your way off the street, and in every single ad on TV.

And then, after months of being locked indoors and that we were out to kill grandma if we left the house, the same media lauded massive numbers of rioters crowding together to curse the cops.

The political fiction of the pandemic died once its administrators found a shiny new fascist object.

Mayor Bill de Blasio went from threatening the Orthodox Jewish community for holding a funeral to appearing without a mask at an anti-police rally even as much of New York City is still shut down.

Social distancing doesn’t apply when you’re burning down cities, you can only get sick when you’re praying to G-d or burying your dead
“Mr. Mayor, are we in a pandemic or not? And do we have one set of rules for protesters and another for everyone else?” Hamodia, an Orthodox Jewish publication, asked De Blasio.

“When you see a nation… grappling with… 400 years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as… the devout religious person who wants to go back to services,” he snapped back.

Governor Murphy described anti-lockdown and anti-police protests as being in “different orbits”.

Just to be clear, we’re not all in this together. And we never were. Social distancing doesn’t apply when you’re burning down cities, you can only get sick when you’re praying to G-d or burying your dead.

The lockdowns existed at the pleasure of the politicians implementing them. And when the politicians found a lefty cause that they really liked, the rioters and looters were exempted from social distancing like kids told that they can leave algebra class early on Tuesday to go protest for the environment.

Lockdowns were always for little people. Not for celebrities, politicians or political radicals.

Martha Stewart is quarantining with her driver, housekeeper, and gardener. Lefty author Neil Gaiman decided that he needed to get away from his wife and flew from New Zealand to Scotland. David Geffen, the Hollywood billionaire tycoon who helped finance Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, tweeted, “Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus” from his $590 million yacht which boasts a staff of 55.

The riots just applied to the rioters and looters the same privilege that politicians had enjoyed.

Governor J.B. Pritzker’s wife and daughter enjoyed the lockdown far from Illinois on their equestrian estate near Palm Beach, and then headed to the 230-acre horse farm in Wisconsin that the Illinois boss had bought his wife as an anniversary present. After claiming that his family deserved privacy and was being endangered by reports of his hypocrisy, the billionaire contended that their travel was essential.

“We have a working farm. They’re there now. There are animals on that farm, that it’s an essential function to take care of animals at a farm, so that’s what they’re doing,” he argued.

He didn’t explain who was taking care of the horses once his wife and daughter went on to Wisconsin.

Then he banned a reporter who had first tweeted about it from his press conferences.

The same media which had howled in outrage when President Trump had dumped CNN and Playboy correspondents for egregious behavior, including assault, had nothing to say about a free press.

Not only was it essential for Pritzker’s family to vacation on one massive horse ranch and then another, but it was essential for Illinois workers to travel to Wisconsin to help build a huge home on the ranch. Local residents reported 20 to 30 trucks a day coming from Chicago to labor on this essential project.

Pritzker’s mansion and family vacations were essential. What was essential was who was in charge
“They’re operating an essential function. Construction is an essential function,” Pritzker whined.

Around the same time, Pritzker was using the slogan, “We’re all in this together” to promote his, “All in Illinois” initiative to tell everyone to stay home. “‘All in’ is our anthem and point of pride,” Pritzker had falsely claimed. “Illinoisans staying home for the good of each other and the good of our state.”

Unless it’s to work on the billionaire governor’s latest mansion. Or loot some Chicago pharmacies.

The difference between essential and non-essential was always a political fiction. The protesters who were told that their protest was non-essential were just protesting for the wrong cause. Going to church or synagogue, burying your dead, or protesting for your rights was non-essential in the same way that Pritzker’s mansion and family vacations were essential. What was essential was who was in charge.

We’re not all in this together. Ask New York Governor Cuomo’s brother Chris, who casually violated quarantine, and then starred in a fake news CNN video of leaving quarantine for his coronavirus infection. Ask Virginia’s Governor Northam who didn’t wear a mask to the beach before ordering everyone to wear masks. Ask Wisconsin’s Justice Rebecca Dallet who opposed the court decision ending the state lockdown, warning, “Wisconsinites will pay the price”, before allegedly going on a boat trip.

Ask New Mexico’s Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham who told non-essential businesses they had to shut down and then had a non-essential business open up so she could get some expensive jewelry.

Ask Professor Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College Model who was caught sneaking out for an affair or Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot who got a haircut after shutting down salons and barbershops. Or ask Dr. Richard (Rachel) Levine whose policies at the Pennsylvania Department of Health introduced coronavirus patients into nursing homes, but made sure to remove his mother from her nursing home.

When you hear another, “We’re All In This Together,” commercial, remember that it’s probably the brainchild of a Bernie Sanders supporter who found a second home in upstate New York or Vermont
Michigan’s Governor Whitmer had issued orders banning just about everything. And then a marina operator got a call from her husband about getting their boat in the water for Memorial Day.

“I am the husband to the governor; will this make a difference?” Whitmer’s husband asked.

Governor Whitmer claimed that her husband was joking and that he only traveled to a second home to rake leaves. That comes from the same tyrannical termagant whose bans had extended to yardwork.

We’re not all in this together. We never were.

The coronavirus touched Manhattan only lightly. That was partly because its residents could afford to get away.

When rentals were shut down, they bought houses elsewhere, sight unseen. About 5% of New Yorkers, over 400,000 people, left the city, abandoning trendy and wealthy neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The pandemic spread along their wake. Those who left included not only the elite, celebrities and billionaires, but the upscale wealthy liberals who keep the Democrats going nationwide.

The abandoned zip codes are also the ones that have been pouring money into left-wing politics.

When you hear another, “We’re All In This Together,” commercial, remember that it’s probably the brainchild of a Bernie Sanders supporter who found a second home in upstate New York or Vermont.

That includes the 10022 zip code, the top money source in the 2018 election cycle, where between 40% to 30% of the population vanished. A quarter of the population of 10075, the tenth biggest money zip code in the cycle, vanished. Ditto for the eleventh, twelfth and fifteenth top election cash zip codes.

“We’re All In This Together” manufactures mass consent
The New York City cash that fueled the 2018 Democrat wave was not together in this with us.

The posh parts of Manhattan are being looted because they were abandoned. All the rich toys being stolen by thugs are there because the elites who would normally be buying them are out of town.

Lockdown culture was an elite scam. The politicians, the technocrats, and the ad geniuses who imposed and sold lockdown culture to the country weren’t living it.

The pandemic and lockdowns did not hit us all equally. The division of society into essential and non-essential workers made certain of that by protecting some jobs while eliminating others. This plague year experiment in the New Deal 2.0 replaced any kind of togetherness with a political class system.

The administrators of that system, like Pritzker and Whitmer, were never living under it.

“We’re All In This Together,” does not offer unity or togetherness. It demands compliance from us for our assigned roles. Like 1984’s slogans, it means the opposite of what it actually says. Freedom was slavery, ignorance was knowledge, and being in it together meant that none of us had any say in it.

The lockdowns weren’t driven by science, but by ideology. That’s why the rioters crowding in D.C. and NYC are immune from the coronavirus while the spring breakers in Florida were going to kill everyone.

Underneath the sappy ad-speak was a Maoist Confucianism worthy of the Little Red Book in whose Communist system the coronavirus pandemic had originated. It has largely gone unnoticed that the coronavirus slogans we hear are minor variations of those deployed in China by the Communist Party.

“Better to wear a mask than a ventilator; better to stay at home than in an ICU”, “this year a house visit, next year a grave visit”, or “stay in and don’t wander around, you have AC, television and Wi-Fi as your friends” should sound familiar. It’s not just our electronics that are made in China. So is our propaganda.

And, just as in China, the lockdown is applied unequally by a tyrannical leftist political system.

Togetherness, in our pandemic propaganda, is defined as being isolated members of an unseen collective, reinforced by slogans like #AloneTogether or “Stay Apart, Stay Together”. It means complying with directives, informing on the disobedient, and listening to the experts without asking any questions.

“We’re All In This Together” manufactures mass consent. The “We”, “All”, and “Together” represent a conformist mass in whose ranks the individual is only valued for his or her willingness to obey.

All of it, as Mary McCarthy said of a Communist hack, “is a lie, including ‘And’ and ‘The.’”

When the collective was told to stop watching Netflix and start burning and looting, the “We” went out and did it, while the rest of us who are mere individuals looked on in horror and bewilderment.

No one in the collective can or will note the radical shift from mandatory isolation to mass riots. Collectives don’t recognize that their herd impulse has changed. Life for the brainwashed is unchanging. Once there was always isolation and now there are permanent protests. Tomorrow there will be something else. But that is not a concept that the “We” are capable of embracing as a collective.

“We’re All In This Together” is a state of mindless and unquestioning conformity. And it’s un-American.

Americans are not a Communist collective: we are a nation of individuals. Our togetherness doesn’t come from the illusion of functioning as an undifferentiated mass, but of pursuing our own individual strivings for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Collectivism is a lie that conceals the humbug wizards behind the curtains, and the oligarchies that make the decisions. It tells us to set aside our own interests and needs, to become part of Zamyatin’s “We”, to stop thinking and believe the lies.

The lies keep changing.

Yesterday we were huddling in our homes in our togetherhood of apartness. Now we’re supposed to be rioting together and calling for the abolition of the police. Each false cause is replaced by another big lie. If you can see past the lies, you’re not “Together” with the “We”. You’re one of the last Americans.

There are two kinds of people in this world - builders and destroyers. You know who you are.

There are two kinds of people in this world - builders and destroyers. You know who you are.

Our forefathers were builders who rejected monarchy in favor of limited government and the challenge of self-rule. Our forefathers understood the difference between servitude and citizenship. They chose freedom and built a more perfect union - a government of the people, by the people, for the people. The building of the United States of America was the most successful experiment in individual freedom and prosperity the world has ever known.

Our forefathers built America with a Constitution articulating its secular laws, and the Ten Commandments articulating its moral laws
Our forefathers built America with a Constitution articulating its secular laws, and the Ten Commandments articulating its moral laws. We are a Judeo-Christian country built on the Judeo-Christian foundation of the Ten Commandments. Let’s examine them.

Commandments 1-4 codify rules for membership in the group, they are the unifying principle of monotheism. Monotheism is at the heart of the Ten Commandments and its moral laws. Freedom and independence require self-respect, self-control, and respect for others. It is a delicate balance that requires maturity and the ability to agree to disagree.

Commandments 5-10 codify the ethos of individualism and respect for others: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The Constitution and the Commandments define the balance between self and society, and between the individual and the group. There is no disagreement about the need for mutuality or respect for the individual.

Collectivism is an affront to individualism, adult mutuality, and the morality of Judeo-Christian tradition. Collectivism, whether socialism, communism, Islamism, or globalism, destroys the value of the individual and insists the value of the group takes precedence. The problem, of course, is that even in collectivism the group is made up of individuals!

The humanitarian hoax of collectivism is the destruction of the individual. Socialism is the destructive democrat party platform being marketed as altruism. Radical blue state Democrat leaders are telling the citizens of their states that anarchy, looting, robbery, rape, murder, and mayhem perpetrated by destroyers will bring equality and social justice. It is a lie. Anarchy precedes tyranny.

We still have the choice between builders and destroyers in November. We can choose between ordered liberty or the Seattle CHAZ—Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone that has become the country’s first No-Go zone. The radical Democrat destroyers support anarchy and the defunding of police departments, but without law enforcement there is only anarchy. Ask yourselves, “Do you want to live in the anarchist country of CHAZ?”


CHAZ is the predicted escalation of radical Democrat sanctuary cities and sanctuary states that protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding citizens
CHAZ is the predicted escalation of radical Democrat sanctuary cities and sanctuary states that protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding citizens. In CHAZ the criminals have taken over the government. This is how violent revolutions begin. This is what the radical Democrat destroyers are offering you in November. Voter beware!

Law-abiding communities, black and white, are builders who want to live the American dream of freedom and equality rooted in American individualism articulated in the Constitution and the Ten Commandments. Law-abiding communities, black and white, reject the destroyers of the radical leftist Democrat party who foment racial divisiveness and religious divisiveness by embracing Antifa anarchists, Black Lives Matter supremacists, and Islamic sharia law supremacists who are all diametrically opposed to the Constitution and the Ten Commandments.

The Democrat hype of the coronavirus pandemic and their support of anarchist pandemonium are both tactical weapons in the radical leftist Democrat war of destruction against America and America-first President Donald J. Trump.

There are two kinds of people in this world - builders and destroyers. You know who you are.

The 2020 presidential election is a battle between builders and destroyers. The outcome will determine if the dreams of our forefathers for a more perfect union of citizenship and individualism prevail, or if the radical Democrat destroyers successfully surrender our country to collectivism and servitude.

Before you cast your vote in November, remember Communist China Premier Zhou Enlai’s dismissive comment, “One of the things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory.” The radical leftist Democrat destroyers are counting on you to forget the millions of people killed in the name of collectivism.

Remember that every group is made of individuals, this means if you choose radical Democrat collectivism you are choosing to destroy your self.

Remember that the ruling elite always take care of the ruling elite. The radical Democrat political party does not represent individualism and American interests. The radical Democrat party leaders are lobbyists for their globalist financiers who fully intend to bring socialism to America in preparation for the internationalized new world order of their globalist bosses.

There are two kinds of people in this world - builders and destroyers. Be a builder and reject the destroyers in November.

Liberty: "the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views; the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved."

Lockdowns, tracing, testing, vaccinating, and Liberty

These are the days.  These are the days when men and women accept draconian measures as if they were trifles.

The nation and the world come grinding to a halt, and it is just another “interruption.”

In 1776, there was a revolution against restraints from a foreign power.  Now there is bleating from domestic governors about lockdowns, tracing, testing, vaccinating, and the majority of the populace obeys these tyrants without question.  Even with loyalty.

“What harm could come from a government giving gifts?”

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)

Birthed after blood and sacrifice, national government in the United States was severely hamstrung, in order to prevent abuses of power.  But it has become the teat, the Giver and the Taker.  The wanton parent.

And now for decades, people have shrugged: “What harm could come from a government giving gifts?”

People say, “What harm could come from schools that don’t teach history?  We already have freedom.  Who cares how we got it?”

The exalted nature of Liberty has been disposed of in a sea of amnesia.

“Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.” (Lord Acton, 1877)

“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” (John Adams, 1772)

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”  (Samuel Adams, 1776)

“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”  (Edmund Burke, 1784)

Does none of this matter now?  Are pacification and passivity the cardinal virtues?  If so, I suggest a new Constitution, where we can enshrine these qualities with official language and be done with it.

We threw off the King of England so we could have YouTube and Facebook

BILL OF RIGHTS:

ONE: Shout “this is science!” when anyone threatens the power of government.

TWO: Censor dissent for the sake of public safety, according to guidelines laid down by government and corporations.  Disrupt the lives of dissenters.

THREE: Give up Liberty when the authorities demand it.

That is all.  Done.

We threw off the King of England so we could have YouTube and Facebook.

Exalted Liberty, tossed overboard into a sea of hypnotic assurance.

“Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such only because they judge it by its loud voice. If they knew its charms, the dignity that accompanies it, how much a free man feels like a king, the perpetual inner light that is produced by decorous self-awareness and realization, perhaps there would be no greater friends of freedom than those who are its worst enemies.”  (Jose Marti, 1893)

“What light is to the eyes, what love is to the heart, Liberty is to the soul of man. Without it, there come suffocation, degradation and death.” (Robert G Ingersoll, 1887)

If I had a child, I would home school him, and for a year we would do nothing but delve deeply into these and other remembrances of Liberty, re-establishing its exalted nature.  For those of you who do have children, that is what I suggest.

An education of mind, body, heart, and soul.

Where Liberty once was

Where Liberty once was.

That creature called socialism is, in effect, the transfer of any remaining Liberty to government, based on the fatuous hope that giving complete power to a tyrannical force will somehow reform that force and transform it into a messiah.  And this is the best formulation.  A more realistic appraisal would be: socialism is a notorious promoted enslavement, whereby elite men behind a curtain preach Centralized Authority as Kindness and Fairness, in order to raise an army of idealistic ravening wolves who will dispossess the people of everything they own.

Obviously, in order for this operation to succeed, the people must have forgotten that ANY quality of The Individual could occupy an exalted and eternal position—-a quality such as Liberty.

Once upon a time, defiant poetry about Liberty from oppression could move armies.  The stakes were as high as they have ever been.

From history.com:

”...General George Washington’s troops were encamped at McKonkey’s Ferry on the Delaware River opposite Trenton, New Jersey. In August, they had suffered humiliating defeats and lost New York City to British troops. Between September and December, 11,000 American volunteers gave up the fight and returned to their families. General Washington could foresee the destiny of a rebellion without an army if the rest of his men returned home when their service contracts expired on December 31. He knew that without an upswing in morale and a significant victory, the American Revolution would come to a swift and humiliating end.”

”...[Thomas Paine’s] Common Sense was the clarion call that began the revolution. As Washington’s troops retreated from New York through New Jersey, Paine again rose to the challenge of literary warfare. With another pamphlet] American Crisis, he delivered the words that would salvage the revolution.”

“Washington commanded that the freshly printed pamphlet be read aloud to his dispirited men; the rousing prose had its intended effect. Reciting Paine’s impassioned words, the beleaguered troops mustered their remaining hopes for victory and crossed the icy Delaware River to defeat hung-over Hessians on Christmas night and on January 2, the British army’s best general, Earl Cornwallis, at the Battle of Princeton. With victory in New Jersey, Washington won not only two battles, but also the love and thanks of man and woman.”

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls”

Paine’s famous words:

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

Paine wrote more:

”...I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent.”

“Neither have I so much of the infidel in me, as to suppose that He has relinquished the government of the world, and given us up to the care of devils…”

“...in the fourteenth century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc.”

“...Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.”

“...Say not that thousands [of soldiers] are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but ‘show your faith by your works,’ that God may bless you. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ’ Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death….”

The contest is not over.  It is never over.