I visited a most hallowed ground this morning. It was a sobering experience to say the least. The dedication plaque says 6000 Southern soldiers, and being a GOD fearing Christian I could feel their presence.
I am humbled in a way that the presence of the dead has never had on me before.
Maria Henrietta Pinckney (1782-1836) of South Carolina was the daughter
of General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, an officer in the Continental
Army and a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Maria lost
her mother at an early age and was educated at home by her famous
grandmother, Eliza Lucas Pinckney. In 1830, during the nullification
controversy, Miss Pinckney published a widely circulated pamphlet
entitled The Quintessence of Long Speeches, Arranged as a Political Catechism.
In it she defended state rights and nullification, and argued against
the views of Daniel Webster (1782-1852), a nationalistic Whig leader who
contended that the Constitution was created by “the whole people”
rather than the citizens of the sovereign states. Thomas DiLorenzo
described Webster’s view of the creation of the U.S. Constitution as
“pure fabrication, invented out of thin air,” and noted that it was
“repeated by Lincoln decades later to rationalize waging war on the
South and the destruction of the federal system of government created by
the founders.” The following are excerpts from Miss Pinckney’s Catechism.
Question—What do we understand by the Federal Union?
Lies of Omission
was supposed to do more than preserve the voices and perspectives of
Mike Vanderboegh, David Codrea, Matt Bracken, Kit Perez, Claire Wolfe
and Gun Owners of America's Larry Pratt. It was supposed to fuel an
engine (12 Round Productions)
to counter the collectivist agenda. It was supposed to extend out into
the community highlighting other efforts and organizations. We had some
good follow-up films we wanted to do, primarily The Vanderboegh Tapes,
which was to be a two-disc set of the full interview with Mike
Vanderboegh, which would be a financial loser, but a cultural boon. We
had hoped to be able to absorb those costs through the profits from Lies of Omission.
The
police officer seen in a viral video arresting a nurse in Salt Lake
City is now under criminal investigation, according to The Salt Lake
Tribune.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill ordered a criminal investigation Friday into the actions of Detective Jeff Payne who aggressively arrested nurse Alex Wubbels on July 26 for refusing to draw blood from a severely injured patient.
Payne has been placed on administrative leave, The Associated Press reported. The
Salt Lake City Police Department also said Friday that two of its
employees have been placed on administrative leave while the
investigation is underway. It is unclear if Payne is one of the
employees mentioned in the agency’s statement.
Roy Lunn, one of the engineers behind a number of popular cars,
passed away at the age of 92 on
August 5 after suffering a massive
stroke. Lunn is survived by his wife Jeanie, two daughters and two
granddaughters as well as a great-grandson. Lunn’s career in automotive
engineering spanned several decades and two continents.
On August 26, Sen. John McCain
(R-Ariz.) once again grabbed an opportunity to criticize many of my
Arizona constituents and our nation's leader, President Trump. McCain is
angry that Trump, just like President Obama before him, exercised his
constitutional power in granting executive clemency to former Maricopa
County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Arizona's senior senator appears to have forgotten Obama's record-breaking 1,927 acts of clemency.
He also seems to have ignored the fact that Arpaio was convicted for
merely following state and federal laws when he turned illegal
immigrants over to federal officials.
The 85-year-old Arpaio was
not convicted of breaking narcotics laws, financial fraud laws or of
revealing our nation's secrets, all of which were crimes included in
Obama's numerous pardons. Arpaio was convicted of a simple misdemeanor
in what many believe was a politically motivated show-trial in the Obama
era.
Mr. Trump's two most trusted employees serving in perhaps the most critical positions in the Executive Branch intentionally reject any connection between Islamic doctrine and the conduct of Muslim terrorists. It is no wonder, then, that Mr. Trump's lengthy speech outlining his current Afghanistan war policy contained the word "terrorism" but no mention of Islam.
Since the global jihad thrust itself into our national consciousness on September 11, 2001, America's arbiters of political correctness have over and again rejected every honest inquiry into Islam. This willful refusal to explore the ideological roots of those who routinely claim allegiance to Muhammad's religion while engaging in terrorism has led our nation to choose costly and inconclusive responses to such violence. With the "lone wolf" phenomenon, having sprung up on our shores over the past decade, one wonders whether our nation is any safer today from Islamic terrorism than during our pre-9/11 salad days. More @ American Thinker
Chuck Schumer is in a spirited mood. "This is going to be one of the
biggest fights of the next three, four months," the Senate minority
leader said recently of the coming debate over tax cuts. "And Democrats
are ready for it."
No doubt they are. But the relevant question is: Does their readiness
even matter? Last month Mitch McConnell said he planned to bring taxes
to the Senate floor under the budget reconciliation procedure. That
would bypass the filibuster. The bill could pass by majority vote. No
Democrats required.
And Republicans are unlikely to experience the defections over taxes
that doomed them on health care. The health bill was a mess, a product
of Republican confusion and infighting. There is no such uncertainty
toward cutting taxes.
This is not to say that a cut is a done deal. Congressional
Republicans may find a way to screw up. Fumbling the ball at the
one-yard line is a specialty of theirs. But the prospect that GOP
incompetence may rob the Trump administration of another legislative
victory only underscores the fundamental point: Chuck Schumer's big
words to the contrary notwithstanding, the Democrats are irrelevant to
the power equation in Donald Trump's Washington.
That equation consists of five variables. None is called (D).
This is the gravestone of my
great-great-great grandfather, Benjamin Parks Middleton, located in the
Bethel Baptist Church cemetery between the towns of Hazelhurst and
Georgetown in Copiah County, Mississippi. He was a farmer from that area
and, to my knowledge, was not a slave-owner.
Benjamin served as a private in the 6th Mississippi infantry unit of
the Confederate States Army during the War Between the States. Eighty or
so years earlier, his grandfather, Holland Middleton, served as a
captain from Richmond County, Georgia in the Continental Army during the
Revolutionary War. At the time of Benjamin’s death in 1891, he could
not have known that his two-year-old grandson, Troy, would log more days
in combat than any general officer in the United States Army fighting
real, flesh-and-blood Nazis (not the modern Hitler fanboy variety)
during World War Two. Hundreds of thousands – nay, millions – of
Americans alive today can trace similar lineages and share similar
stories.
I cannot say for certain, but my guess is that none of these men
shared the Current Year’s enlightened views on race relations in our
Vibrant, Diverse, Multicultural Society. Does that make them History’s
Greatest Monsters whose sacrifices and accomplishments are not worth
publicly remembering? For the crime of failure to conform to modern
sensibilities, must we disavow our ancestors, the men who built America?
Sadly, among a small but increasingly vocal and violent segment of
America, the answer to these questions is a resounding “yes.” What began
as a call to remove from the public square monuments to the service and
sacrifice of those who – rightly or wrongly – reasonably believed they
were following in their grandfathers’ footsteps in fighting the Second
War for American Independence now has mushroomed, predictably, into a
call for removal, by any means necessary, of public monuments to anyone
so thoughtless as to be caught Wrongthinking While Dead.
This exceedingly myopic view of history and human nature will, if
left unchecked, leave a trail of destruction in its wake before
eventually burning itself out on its own incoherence and hatred. Before
that time comes, however, we who disagree must resist by all peaceable
means available. We who wish to live in an honest America, a truthful
America, a warts-and-all America – an America open to real diversity of
thought – must resist these totalitarian efforts to shoehorn American
history into a political ideology.
If you think so, say so. Pay no mind to the names
you will be called, for they are mere words designed to shame you into
silence, but which have no meaning.
In the end, the cultural Marxists running amok in America during the
Current Year will be defeated in their efforts to retcon American
history, if for no other reason than that their worldview betrays a
fundamental misunderstanding of human nature. Humans seek to honor their
ancestors, not cast them aside as so much garbage. Humans seek truth
and understanding, not political claptrap masquerading as history.
Humans seek the real diversity of thought, not the fake Diversity of
totalitarians.
