Military Veterans and Patriots

Author: AuntiE

Destroy the ‘Public’ Education System

David Harsanyi for National Review

July 7, 2020 6:30 AM

It’s largely a left-wing propaganda machine that funds Democratic politicians and entrenches racial segregation.

‘Public” schools have been a catastrophe for the United States. This certainly isn’t an original assertion, but as we watch thousands of authoritarian brats tearing down the legacies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, it’s more apparent than ever.

State-run schools have undercut two fundamental conditions of a healthy tolerant society. First, they’ve created millions of civic illiterates who are disconnected from long-held communal values and national identity. Second, they’ve exacerbated the very inequalities that trigger the tearing apart of fissures.

If you’re interested in ferreting out “systemic racism,” go to a big-city public-school system. No institution has fought harder to preserve segregated communities than the average teachers’ union. And I don’t mean only in the schools.

Prosperous Americans already enjoy school choice — and not merely because they can afford private schools. Anyone who has ever tried to buy a suburban home in a major metro area can tell you how acutely school districts influence home prices. Many middle-class and working-class families are priced out of areas with good schools because of inflated home values and high property taxes. And families who might otherwise choose to live in more diverse areas are kept out because of failing schools.

This entire dynamic is driven by the antiquated notion that the best way to educate kids is to throw them into the nearest government building. It’s the teachers’ unions that safeguard these fiefdoms through racketeering schemes: First they funnel taxpayer dollars to the political campaigns of allies who, when elected, return the favor by protecting union monopolies and supporting higher taxes that fund unions and ultimately political campaigns. So goes the cycle, decade after decade, one failed student after the next.

Even in cities where limited choice exists, most poor parents, typically black or Hispanic, are compelled to send their kids to inferior schools, even if there are better-suited schools within walking distance. More than a decade ago, I sat in a Denver auditorium with a single Hispanic mom who was, quite literally, praying that her kid’s number would be picked in a charter-school lottery. The mother wept as her number was passed over, not because she was a partisan reactionary — she didn’t care about politics — but because she knew her son would now be forced to attend a subpar and unsafe high school rather than one specifically designed to help first-generation kids assimilate.

It was a heartbreaking scene. And it’s only gotten worse. Colorado has since become a blue state, and Democrats have killed or obstructed numerous school-choice initiatives once supported by moderates in their party. In Denver, schools systems have helped solidify segregated communities, and the achievement gap between white and minority students is one of the worst in the country.

Nevertheless, Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden says he’ll create not a child-oriented Department of Education but a “teacher-oriented Department of Education.” By teachers, Biden means unions. Teachers unions spent $30 million on federal elections alone in 2016 — virtually all of it on Democrats. It’s about more than the money they give, however. Unions organize, campaign, and march for liberal causes. As a Washington Post piece (“Teachers’ unions may not raise pay — but they do bolster the Democratic Party”) aptly put it not long ago:

But teachers’ unions do accomplish something politically notable: They are a vital part of liberal coalitions and the Democratic Party. Teachers’ union organization and mobilization, like that of other government workers’ unions, have long compensated for the declining membership in traditional organized labor. What’s more, they’ve advanced the causes of women’s and LGBTQ rights — rights that are important to many or most of their members. They’ve done that by delivering money, mobilization and organization to both the Democratic Party and to feminist groups.

It’s likely that left-wing ideologues run your school district. They decide what your children learn. They are the ones who decide that your kid can protest the Second Amendment of the Constitution, but never, not in a million years, march for any cause the Founders might have championed.

Anecdotally speaking, I can confirm that the teaching of American history in at least one D.C. suburb — perhaps a better way to put it would be the un-teaching of American history — is detestable. Most events are couched in relativism; or, worse, the textbooks accentuate every sin and downplay every accomplishment. It would be one thing if this kind of ideological shading were relegated to history class, but it has infected plenty of other things.

If you have no interest in funding campaigns for “women’s and LGBTQ rights” (euphemisms for pro-abortion and anti-religious-liberty causes), well, that’s too bad. If you can’t homeschool your kid or send her to a pricey private school, you lose.

The embedded left-wing nature of big school districts is so normalized that parents rarely say a word. Mom and Dad can buy virtually anything from anywhere in the world, but they can’t use their tax dollars to buy Timmy an education that aligns with their values.

It was one thing when these schools were producing mere Democrats, and it’s quite another now that they’re churning out hordes of chillingly ignorant voters.

A recent study found that 60 percent of Americans couldn’t pass a U.S. Citizenship Test. It comes as no surprise that those 65 or older scored the best, with 74 percent correctly answering at least six out of ten questions. Of those 45 and younger, only 19 percentpassed the exam — and the younger the test-takers, the less likely they were to pass. Sixty percent of those tested didn’t know which countries their grandparents fought during World War II. And only 24 percent knew why Americans colonists had fought the British.

Now, I’m under no illusion that higher education is the sole driver of common sense and patriotism — intellectuals are susceptible to some the dumbest ideas ever conceived–– but if state-run schools can’t even teach the Founding, how are we going to move forward as a nation?

Some pundits point out that elite private schools have even worse problems with progressivism than the average public schools. That’s probably true — and also largely irrelevant. But a voucher system creates opportunities for all kinds of students, not just wealthy ones. It stands to reason, when one considers virtually every other marketplace in existence, that competition in education would generate a diverse array of schools offering an array of teaching methods and cultures to meet the needs of consumers. It would also pressure traditional public schools to do a better job retaining students.

There is no panacea. School choice won’t instantaneously fix our problems. Yet without closing the gap in educational achievement, it seems unlikely we’re going to fix inequality. Without fixing the corrosion of civic education, it’s unlikely that American liberalism is going to survive. We can’t fix either problem without smashing “public education” as it exists. It might already be too late.

nationalreview.com: Destroy the Public Education System

AuntiE Says: My feelings on public education are well known. I consider it child abuse and endangerment to send a child to ‘public school’.

8 July 2020
Welcome to Wednesday Conversation

Hopefully our personal unicorn is not making these grievous errors.🤔😳😲

Speaking of our WhiteUnicorn, you all have an assignment from Thursday through Sunday. You must direct target accuracy karma toward New Jersey, where she will be killing clay. If she does not do well, each of you will be held accountable.

8 July 2020
You Know What’s The Ultimate ‘Place Of Privilege’?…

You Know What’s The Ultimate ‘Place Of Privilege’? Living In The USA

People who come to this country don’t throw around that ‘privilege’ word as if to highlight some victimhood. They know America is still the shining beacon of hope for all mankind.

By J. Motos Gordon For The Federalist

From the moment I first saw a helicopter land in the rice fields of my small town in the Philippines when I was a kid, I was captivated. I wanted to fly. I never thought I’d ever get to fly anything but the homemade kites we used to make out of cement bags and bamboo sticks.

Then I got an amazing, life-changing gift: opportunity.

America, the Land of Opportunity

When I was about 10 years old, my mom brought me to the United States. She had come to the U.S. many years before with only about $200 in her pocket when she stepped off the plane. She made a life for herself, and when she was finally able, she brought me. She eventually met my dad, and he later adopted me. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

My mom and dad are amazing people — caring, salt of the earth, hard-working people. Thrift shops and Goodwill stores were our malls when I was younger, and to this day I feel a sense of excitement when I enter one. My parents gardened in the backyard, spent their money frugally, and continued to save for part of that American Dream: their own house.

I hated when my mom forced me to do my English and math with chalk and a chalkboard in our small hallway. With that tough love, she would always say, “When your grandfather was a young man in the Philippines, he helped take care of a farm. Then one day, they took it away. And so, he told me, ‘Go to school. People can take away your clothes and your house and your farm, but they can’t take away your education.’”

Although I never did become a pilot, I did get to fly in some of those planes I dreamed of flying. As the saying goes, sometimes we create our own opportunities. And sometimes, some of us don’t work hard enough to make our dreams a reality, but that’s on me, not the system. Nothing, not opportunity nor education, is ever guaranteed without sacrifice or hard work.

My experience isn’t special. I’m just a kid from a rice-farming town. Given the same opportunity, any of my relatives in the Philippines right now would love to come here to pursue the American Dream, and I have no doubt they would achieve it — irrespective of their background, skin color, accent, or any other perceived racial or economic disadvantage. Some of them are pursuing it right now.

This is America, after all, with better opportunities and freedoms than the place they would leave behind. They are proud, smart, hard-working, and family-loving people. The only difference between them and all Americans is that we are here in the land of opportunity, a land where your success is directly proportional to your effort. A land where freedoms and liberties are enshrined on old parchment papers, and bled for by young men and women.

If You Don’t Want to Be Here, Leave

I can’t help but wonder why statues of the Founding Fathers are being toppled and why people are calling to defund police. I can’t help but wonder why the push for racial parity is being hijacked by some to a dangerous phase where the worth of one race is extolled above others to the point that saying “all lives matter” is now deemed racist.

To those who hate this country, look at all the people who want to come here and become U.S. citizens. This nation is imperfect, but it is still a great country — many would contend it’s the greatest. If America is not a good fit for anyone because it is so horrible, they can leave it and go to another country. No one is stopping them from renouncing their U.S. citizenship and making room for somebody who wants to be here.

If people choose to stay, however, to make America a better place together, let’s exercise “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” enumerated in the Constitution. Let us not put each other down with name-calling, not topple statues, not set fire to neighborhood businesses, not riot and throw frozen water bottles, not loot stores for electronics, and certainly not kill others.

Being an American Is a Privilege

I recently had a discussion with someone who was born in the United States. Our viewpoints differed, and he hinted it may have something to do with my privilege. Excuse me? Let me hint at something.

If you grew up with lights and electricity in your house instead of kerosene lamps and candles just so you could read at night or feel safe, you have privilege.

If you have indoor plumbing instead of having to go outside and hand-pump your water out of the ground, you have privilege.

If you can sit on a porcelain toilet instead of between two bamboo trunks to go to the bathroom, you have privilege.

If you have shoes under your feet instead of flip-flops cobbled together with safety pins because you can’t afford new ones, you have privilege.

If you have more than two or three outfits instead of using the same ones over and over because you can’t afford more, you have privilege.

If you can throw your clothes in a washing machine instead of having to go to the river to hand-wash them, you have privilege.

If you feel safe during storms instead of having to worry about whether your thatched roof will leak again or if the typhoon will sweep away your house and family, you have privilege.

If you can reach into your cupboard for your box of Uncle Ben’s instant rice instead of having to harvest the rice fields, lay out the rice onto the street to dry it under the sun, use the wind to separate the husks from the rice, bag it, and then store it in a warehouse and hope the rats don’t eat it, you have privilege.

If you have a car to get where you need to go instead of having to pack yourself like sardines into an old Jeep with questionable safety, you have privilege.

If you can microwave food or grab Pop Tarts from your kitchen instead of having to dig up potatoes in your yard or steal guava fruits from your neighbor, you have privilege.

If you had an Atari, Nintendo, or Xbox instead of having to carve your own toys from a tree branch or use a Campbell’s soup can to make your own toy car or scrounge for coconut husks around town just so you can play a game, you have privilege.

If you live under an economic system that allows you to work hard, persevere, and be creative to pull yourself out of poverty and rise into your own definition of success instead of toiling with the same amount of blood, sweat, and tears only to be limited by a government filled with corruption and nepotism, you have privilege.

If you live in country where fundamental human rights and liberties are protected by a Constitution with its ingenious system of checks and balances instead of a country where your rights depend on who is in power, you have privilege.

If you live in the United States of America instead of a Third World country, you have privilege.

Make America Better Together

The difference is that people who come to this country don’t throw around that “privilege” word as if to highlight some victimhood. They keep to themselves, work hard and smart, realize how special this country is, believe in the American Dream, and go after it. They’re just happy to be here.

This country has disparities that still need to be addressed, but they are complex, just as complex as the history behind it all. A real, meaningful solution will be equally complex.

We must work together, not by marginalizing or denigrating those with a different point of view. In putting down and belittling the voices of other people, we miss out on the opportunity to talk to one another — and we may very well inadvertently silence those who would have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us to effect change.

In the end, this is still our country. Despite all its imperfections, America is still the shining beacon of hope for all mankind. Just ask anyone who wants to come here.

We can make it better — not through name-calling, not through riots, not through violence, not through erasing history. But together.

thefederalist.com: You Know What’s The Ultimate ‘Place Of Privilege’? Living In The USA

AuntiE’s take:

Maybe we should encourage those so dissatisfied with our country to leave. We could replace them with people who value America, even with faults.

7 July 2020
Welcome to Tuesday Conversation

If the above is a repeat, my apologies. It just gives me a big grin.

7 July 2020
Charlie Daniels, country music legend, dead at 83

Daniels, who was a Country Music Hall of Famer, died at a hospital in Hermitage, Tennessee, after he suffered a stroke, doctors said.

He previously experienced a mild stroke in January 2010 then had a heart pacemaker implanted in 2013.

Daniels, a singer, guitarist and fiddler, continued to perform even with his health in decline in recent years.

With Post wires

https://pagesix.com/2020/07/06/country-music-legend-charlie-daniels-dead-at-83/

6 July 2020
Mob Rule Imperils Western Civilization…..

Mob Rule Imperils Western Civilization. Now’s the Time for Courage and Leadership.

By – Jarrett Stepmanfor The Daily Signal

The war on history has spread across our country and has even spilled over to other parts of the Western world.

Now, on a daily basis, we see scenes of lawless mobs attacking and tearing down statues, and defacing monuments of every type—often as authorities stand idly by.

But this violence has hardly been reserved just for statues.

After toppling a statue of an abolitionist who gave his life to the cause as a member of the Union Army, a mob in Madison, Wisconsin, mercilessly beat a Wisconsin Democrat state senator who supported the protests.

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on?

Mob rule is indeed coming to America. It must be stopped.

Authorities have numerous tools to stop the destruction if they would just show the willingness to use them. Failure to act will only encourage more acts of vandalism and destruction.

As I explained in my book, “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past,” the attacks on our shared history go beyond any individual or statue.

What’s in peril now is not just the reputation of Christopher Columbus, the merits of the Founding Fathers, or the legacy of the Civil War. It’s something much broader and deeper.

What’s being threatened is the long history of ideas and institutions created and developed in the West.

The United States, of course, has been the prime target of radicals, because—whether we chose this role or not—it is the pinnacle of Western prosperity and strength.

Unfortunately, we have reached a point—due to the radical transformation of our schools and the rise of the new Left—where our elite institutions are no longer willing or able to defend the very ideas and people that made possible their existence.

In fact, those institutions are leading the charge to bring about this cultural revolution.

Those who do stand up to the statue topplers and radicals—even those who could bebroadly defined as “liberal” or on the left—will be drowned out and castigated, will be accused of being racist, and purged by the inquisitors of social justice.

Just look at how the historians who stood up against the inaccurate, flawed, and ultimately destructive “1619 Project” developed by The New York Times have been treated.

The project’s creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, dismissed her critics as “old white males,” and called others “anti-black.”

The purge and erasure of history require dissent to be silenced. No one may question the narrative. No one may be allowed to freely pursue the truth.

That’s what the war on history is leading to. It’s a war on 1776.

The attacks on history have moved international as well. Statues of Winston Churchilland Abraham Lincoln have been vandalized and defaced by mobs in London.

It’s telling that those were among the primary symbols being targeted.

After all, Churchill and Lincoln in their own ways were leaders who unabashedly stood by the essence of what their countries were in a time of almost overwhelming crisis.

Instead of tearing down Lincoln and Churchill, we must now look to them for inspiration in an uncertain age.

In an address at Bristol University in 1938, the British prime minister-to-be warned that civilization itself was under attack, that it would be tested, and that it would survive only if free people drew on their strength and courage to defend it.

In words striking in the face of our challenges today, Churchill said: “Civilization will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe.”

Will we, like generations before us, answer the call to defend our way of life? Will it be the generation that grew up at the “end of history”—after the Nazi menace was crushed by the arsenal of democracy, the USSR’s evil empire collapsed, and free people stood triumphant—that will cast our hard-won victories aside in an effort to purge our imperfect past?

In an era of mob rule—where the very basis of American and Western civilization is being questioned and attacked from within, and when rising superpowers like communist China that stand in opposition to everything we represent are on the march—it is essential that free people resist the impulses leading to our self-immolation.

The hour is late, and our hot summer days are becoming dark.

Still, imagine what things were like for Lincoln sitting in the White House in 1861 as government of the people, by the people, and for the people appeared to be on the precipice of perishing from the earth.

Imagine how things must have looked for Churchill in the summer of 1940, when darkness was closing in on the last free country on the Continent, the British elite were eyeing capitulation to the Nazi juggernaut, and across the Atlantic the American behemoth was still sleeping.

The times were grim, but leadership and statesmanship in the face of nearly insurmountable challenges held civilization together, allowed free people to rally, gather their strength, and stem the tide of ruin, bringing forth what Churchill called the “bright sunlit uplands” in the era that followed.

Now we are again being called upon to mount a defense of our way of life. We have a great deal to lose and much at stake, because what’s at stake are not just statues and stone, but the freedom of millions alive today and the many more yet unborn.

Mob Rule Imperils Western Civilization. Now’s the Time for Courage and Leadership.

AuntiE’s take: For quite some time, I have been at a loss for the word to describe how this chaos is impacting our nation. Mr. Stepman provided it. Our nation is, indeed, “imperil”.

6 July 2020
What Four Letter Word…?

Now that I have your attention, time for a quiz. It is “What Four Letter Word Perfectly Describes You?”

6 July 2020
Welcome to Monday Conversation

6 July 2020
Welcome to Sunday Conversation

As it is Sunday, I thought It would be fun to start with “church” humor.

5 July 2020
Horowitz: We can no longer celebrate our independence. We must fight for it.
Horowitz:

We can no longer celebrate our independence.

We must fight for it again.

The Fourth of July

Daniel Horowitz

The day was July 4, 1826. As John Adams lay on his deathbed in the afternoon, he uttered his final words: “Thomas Jefferson survives.” While in the literal sense, Adams was mistaken because Jefferson had died several hours earlier, in one way he was correct. The work that Jefferson completed on that very day exactly 50 years before – the work Adams helped him craft before the two became archenemies and then friends again – survived another two hundred years. Until now.

July 4, 2020, will be an Independence Day celebration like never before. In fact, it won’t be a celebration at all, but merely a commemoration of what we have lost and hopefully a reminder of what we need to fight for all over again after 244 years. It will be marked not by the grand public displays of fireworks, for those are forbidden by restrictions upon the very liberties expressed in the Declaration of Independence, but rather by the sounds of fireworks being thrown by anarchists against police – anarchists who now dictate our way of life as we the people continue to be locked down.

It wasn’t just the statue of Thomas Jefferson that was ripped down in Portland, Oregon. It was the foundational governing document he helped draft – the guiding light of our republic until it died 244 years later – that has been torn to shreds.

Ronald Reagan observed on July 4, 1986, as he related the story of the reuniting of Jefferson and Adams in friendship, that “the things that unite us – America’s past of which we’re so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of the world and this much-loved country – these things far outweigh what little divides us.”

Well, indeed, 34 years later, we can now say with certainty that there are very few things that do not divide us, chief among them whether we are even proud of America’s past or whether we seek to uproot every last vestige of its memory.

In order to understand what we have lost and what we need to fight for again, let’s review the precious document that was signed on July 4, 1776. The product of five great men – Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson – in just the 201 words of its preamble, this founding charter of government established six inviolate principles of the morality of a just governing system – all of which have since been broken:
1. That individuals are born with natural rights that come from God, not from historical precedent, English Common Law, or the democratic whims of the majority in a given society. Those rights are beyond the reach of mob rule or a tyrannical political majority.
2. That chief among those natural rights given by God are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to earn a living and own property. Implicit in this is the natural right to self-defense. As Sam Adams, the Founding Father of the American Revolution, said, “Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.”
3. That individuals form a government as a social compact, not to infringe upon those rights but to protect those inalienable rights from threats in a way that could not be managed without a governing body.
4. That on issues not affecting inalienable rights, government may exercise other just powers, primarily for the safety and stability of the society, but only by the consent of the people as expressed through some legitimate form of republican representation (consent of the governed). Inherent in this principle is that no outside forces not controlled by the members of that society itself may determine the destiny of the society.
5. That all men were created equal in access to and defense of those inalienable rights, not societal outcomes, privileges, or other human pursuits, an ideal that runs to natural law. Also, implicit in the preamble is that all members of a given society are equal in the right to self-governance in their respective societies on their territories and that no ruling class or individual has the right to invasively govern over someone else’s life.
6. That when a long train of abuses and usurpations of the aforementioned principles continues without any other recourse, the people have the right, indeed a duty, to rebel against the existing system.
The first five principles have been abrogated beyond recognition, which leaves us struggling with how to apply the sixth.

Today, we are suffering from a perfect contortion of these self-evident truths – the worst mix of tyranny and anarchy and the most widespread violations of fundamental rights since our Founding. We have a government that undemocratically locks down our physical movement and right to earn a living based on distorted data and flat-earth “science,” while facilitating unequal treatment for favored classes to riot. They strip us of the right to self-defense, while freely empowering their protected people and movements to maim, loot, block free movement, and even kill.

Everything our governments should be doing, they ignore, and everything they are prohibited from doing based on natural law, they elevate to the highest order of governance.

Mobs are allowed to roam freely and dictate policies through fear and intimidation.

Desires of foreign nationals who are not signatories to the social compact founded in the Declaration are elevated above the rights of the citizens governed by the compact.

Government by the consent of the governed? Our government is allowing people across the border to come here to get treated for the virus, then using those hospitalizations as a pretext to place curfews and other restrictions on the liberty and property of Americans.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men …” They are now allowing roving mobs to restrict our movement and attack motorists. In the process, they are spreading the virus, which gives this same illegitimate government further excuse to blame we the people and lock us down. We can’t gather in small groups to work or socialize, while they can gather in the thousands to dismantle our republic. How is that for all men created equal?

As I laid out in my indictment of our illegitimate government, rather than a government built on promoting and protecting inalienable rights for all, we have a government that manufactures super-rights and privileges for some at the expense of foundational rights of the whole of the people. Liberty, according to our illegitimate politicians, now means the right to someone else’s property or a public benefit, instead of freedom from restraint by someone else or by government.

Thus, this is not about a few or or even many policy disagreements. It all stems from the government’s contortion of life, liberty, and property to mean the exact opposite of what our Founders knew them to be. There is no bridging the divide.

This government will not fix itself without deeper intervention and divine guidance. The Republican Party is part of the problem, not the solution. As we grope in the darkness and strategize and pray for a long-term or even short-term solution, we ourselves must never forget our liberty and property rights as well as the right to individual and jurisdictional sovereignty. We must never forget that these truths are still self-evident and that we are still willing to fight for them. We must never agree to this grotesque confluence of anarchy and tyranny as “the new normal.” And we must certainly never legitimize this illegitimate usurpation of our social contract.

They might have torn down Jefferson’s statue and perverted the government built on the contract he wrote, but we still have the actual contract. It belongs to us. And in that contract, Jefferson offered not only the moral imperative to break away from England but also the moral imperative to fight back against future government usurpations of that contract in the future. That contract is eternal, because it is built on natural law from God.

As Abraham Lincoln said following the Supreme Court’s dreadful Dred Scott decision in 1858:

The assertion that “all men are created equal” was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.

Those infallible rights we are endowed with are inherent and don’t come from government. They cannot be covered by a mask. They cannot be taken away.

So, where do we go from here? As we formulate a long-term solution to a problem that is much greater than any of us can deal with alone, we need to build an immediate movement and take steps. The first step is to rise up and fight back. Until now, only the mob’s voices have been heard, because there is nobody else on the playing field. Nobody is representing us. To that end, we need to think beyond just the electoral process and take back our government under the following short-term propositions:
- No American should be restricted by arbitrary coronavirus edicts so long as rioters are able to violate them while destroying public and private property.
- No American without a criminal record should be barred from carrying a gun to protect himself from the lawlessness of gun felons who are allowed to roam the streets.
- No American should be arrested for self-defense as the police stand back and allow rioters to attack them in cars and on their lawns. Patriotic sheriffs should start programs to deputize and train law-abiding owners to help keep the peace.
- No American should have to pay local taxes until that governing authority reclaims the streets and the highways from roving bands of anarchists.
- No federal tax funds should go to jurisdictions promoting lawless sanctuaries for the BLM mobs and criminal aliens. Patriots must demand that Trump veto any budget bill in September that does not defund anarchy.
Finally, it’s time we organize citizen defense groups the way our Founders envisioned. No, we are not going to attack and harm innocent people as the governing mob is doing, but we will reclaim our right to defend our lives and property. We all respect law enforcement, but local police departments can’t have it both ways. They can’t abdicate their duties and throw us to the wolves but then swoop in when we try to fill the vacuum for our own protection or punish us for not wearing diapers on our faces even outside.

Just like the Minutemen of the 1770s, we need to form at the local level citizen defense groups to defend life, liberty, and property. After all, what made this great document we commemorate this week more than musings on paper was the signers’ resolve to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” That pledge must be renewed at the local level in parts of the country where patriots are most common. Block by block, city by city, state by state, we must take our country back from the violent modern French revolutionaries and create another great American revolution that will make our Founders proud.

Eleven years after the signing of the Declaration, many of the same patriots assembled in the same hall in Philadelphia to codify the system of government based on the blueprint of this social compact. During the final day of triumph on September 17, 1787, Benjamin Franklin rose to speak. In his notes on the convention, James Madison captured his words as follows:

Whilst the last members were signing it [i.e., the Constitution] Doct FRANKLIN looking towards the Presidents Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.

Over two centuries later, we have come full-circle, just as the Earth rotates on its axis, and we no longer have a rising sun. We have a sun that has already set. But the good news is that through darkness comes light, and from storm clouds come the growth and sustenance of rain. The same God who birthed us with these inherent rights constantly accords us numerous opportunities in life to defend and renew those rights, just as yesterday’s sunset gives birth to a new sunrise. All we have to do is show up and fight for it.

It won’t be easy, but it wasn’t easy the first time around, when the patriots were in the minority and most were loyalists or indifferent. As John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, the day before he signed the great contract of American sentiment, “I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph.”

“The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” ~Proverbs 4:18

https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-we-can-no-longer-celebrate-our-independence-we-must-fight-for-it-again
4 July 2020