Tag: love

As the Elite Push Harder for Total Compliance – Be Thankful and Stay the Course!

Thanksgiving 1621 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, 1863-1930, artist. Published by the Foundation Press, Inc., c1932. photomechanical print halftone, colour. Pilgrims and Natives gather to share meal. (Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World

What really ticks them off is when people stand their ground in their own principles of trust, hope, love and faith. The New Normal / Great Reset world envisioned by the unprincipled may well be the undoing that they themselves are driving.

Tom Luongo hits another one out of the park in a followup to his Thanksgiving post .. ‘Being Thankful is the Path to Victory over Davos’:

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. It is the one day where we celebrate putting aside our differences and doing the most basic thing humans can do together, share a meal.

It is also the one holiday that does nothing to aggrandize The State in all its rotten guises. For that alone it would be my personal favorite. Ultimately this is just a story about two very different people coming together to share the fruits of the harvest and the hunt to begin the long and difficult process of building trust.

Trust, by the way, is the basis for civilization itself. Without trust there is nothing, just The Hunger Games.

Doesn’t that just about sums it up for what has been taking place? The elites NEED us all to NEED them, to “manage” us. Without us needing them their insecurities get the best of them and they will manipulate things to get our attention back on them ..

History shows us that the masses are always in doubt of what they can do to make civilization / society work .. always needing a “safety net” … always want to be safe sheep ..

Tom also shares how the cartoon-ish view of history is not accurate, but it shows the desire of the masses for a nice myth to believe in.

It doesn’t matter whether the stories of the first Thanksgiving are true or not. Only those with an obsession with demystifying the world to salve their own inner emptiness care about such historical ‘truths.’

It is the story itself that has power, like all great stories.

It’s a story that is deeply embedded in the Myth of America as the great experiment in governance and rebellion against the colonial powers of Europe.

In the end, that Myth is just that, of course, a myth.

America’s history is much more nuanced and complex, darker and lighter than the foundations of that Myth care to admit. I’m not here to white, brown or even greenwash America’s history any more than an honest British, Italian, Russian, or Chinese person would do to their own.

I’m here to discuss why it is we should be thankful for even having a world where such Myths can even exist.

Of course history is messy. It’s violent and, at times, horrific. Yes, some people suck. Wars happened and will happen. Genocides committed and are yet to be committed.

This parallels Jesus’ own words .. that wars and rumors of wars is in our future .. and the poor, we will always have amongst us. It does sound like a downer, but there is an upside:

We live in a time where those in power show their bottomless disdain for humanity by only focusing on those bad parts of it. It’s now grown to even dissing this one American tradition that is one of the last honest lessons for a world spiraling out of control.

Because that is what Thanksgiving is all about. Taking a time out from the harsh reality of existence and being thankful for what you have, not envious of or wistful for what you don’t.

To listen to the race-baiting, soulless apparatchiks screeching about how we should turn Thanksgiving into yet another opportunity to distrust each other before eating a meal devoid of nutrition, i.e. the turkey, desperately imploring us to keep up barriers between family members over COVID is revealing more of their sickness than anyone else’s.

These are people without hope or faith in anything. They are fallen, power-hungry zombies consumed with self-importance painting on a face of empathy while extolling medical apartheid and scapegoating the unvaxxed to fuel their hatred.

These are humanity’s enemies, not a virus with a 0.1% mortality rate or those brave enough to face it without the help of Big Brother.

While they are enemies, one does NOT need to obsess on them. They would love to think that you have them on their mind 24/7.

There is a way to understand the reality of the situation and yet be prepared to live life in the midst of this present storm ..

And yet, we should even be thankful for them.

Because without them as a counter-example, we have no way to gauge our own behavior. We have no mirror to look into and see our own tendencies towards ugliness. Because without that ability to see first hand what it is we do not want to be, we become as lost in our own fugue of self-importance which justifies any amount of violence as they are.

I don’t hate the Joy Ann Reids and the Jenn Psakis of this world. I celebrate their depravity because without them there can be no opportunity to point out just how insane the world they advocate is.

So you see how easy that is? Their desperation is evident of the wrongness of their agenda and the rightness of our principles for ourselves, our families and our friends WITHOUT having to have a bad guy/group to hate. This LIFE is pretty refreshing isn’t it? What a time to be alive 🙂

And, again, I am thankful for this. Because this latest round of fear porn is the most obvious, the most over-the-top, the crudest attempt at psychological warfare Davos has engaged in yet.

That makes it easy to look at and laugh.

But this doesn’t matter to those in charge. If we laugh at them and their seriousness become even more incensed.

They could see their bonds slipping and people getting back to normal. They could see the same massive protests around the world outside their seats of power that I’ve seen and knew it was time to play their next, even more desperate card.

The only thing that I’m even remotely afraid of at this point are the people who still need to believe in all of this.

And yet, we should still be thankful for the confirmation of our knowing they have been lying to us about all of this the entire time.

This will be my last attempt to try to get through to the fearful again. Cases aren’t hospitalizations. And hospitalizations aren’t a death sentence. With the mountain of evidence out there that none of the numbers we’ve been given about COVID were ever accurate why do you think we should believe anything about NuVID?

Yes, laughter is the best Rx these days.

Find friends you can laugh with .. you will need them going forward!

Stay the course!

-SF1

Lost Opportunities: 1776, 1787 and 1861 led to 1865 and Beyond

The efforts toward freedom and liberty have been frustrated for centuries, and it was in the mid-late 1700s where such promise seemed at hand. The American colonies were left on auto-pilot until the British Empire was hoping for some ROI and decided to push for some taxes and control. Please note that human nature’s default is that those in power will push for control as well as compensation for their “management” of society towards orderly conduct.

It does seem to be that the people of this era were pretty well versed (no pun intended) in what they experienced and learned in nature as well as what wisdom could be found in the Bible. It was these kind of people (think Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine) that would help draft the Declaration of Independence.

There is a line in this document that does acknowledge ” the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” as well as “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” as well as “that all men are created equal”. That last quote never implies that we are to be made equal by man, but that God sees us each as equal, as in made on God’s image, uniquely.

So in God’s/Nature’s God eyes, we are all equal, BUT we are each unique and never equal while on this earth. We are born with different gifts and talents, with various thinking capacities as well as emotional and physical capacities. Men are not the same as women, but equal in God’s eyes.

The problem comes with the progressive always wants to play god and make plans to “make” everyone equal, to “make” the climate perfect and to second-guess God’s decision that we are either male or female. They think so highly of themselves that they feel they can improve on what God has created. I am guessing if they want to work on themselves, then I say let them. However, they are never content with that .. they want their ideas to be applied across society with force. This is where government enters.

The opposing force to these ideas used to be the church but it seems like there is so much in-fighting in those circles that there is little energy left to bring wisdom to the discussion. Another opposing force, or so I thought, were “conservatives”. Well, while we have heard for decades about the conservative (political) fight .. it is just smoke and mirrors because obviously there are zero principles involved.

The conservatives have not just recently let the people down in this regard, even in 1871 critical thinkers saw the GOP “conservatives” for what they are .. Robert Lewis Dabney here calls them out for what they were in his day:

“.. Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation..”

“.. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always—when about to enter a protest—very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance. The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip…” [source https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/equality-is-not-americas-founding-principle ]

In summary, it seems like the opportunity presented in 1776 birthed 13 free and independent colonies by 1783, but quickly was swallowed up by the political fears that led to 1787’s coup d’etat when the US Constitution was secretly birthed and ratified in the next two years. No longer was Nature’s God acknowledged until the Confederate Constitution was ratified in 1861.

The failure of the seven, eleven or thirteen states to secede peacefully from the United States of America would put an end of a reliance on “Almighty God” and His Word, the Bible, in trusting Him with our future as a people and as a country.

The future looks more and more like being first century Christians in the Roman Empire.  Always in the minority and always despised until they see the love we can share from our Almighty God and then things may turn around.

-SF1

Non-Conformity: We Are Individuals Made in God’s Image AND Family is the Rock for Individual Development

For far too long Christians have traded principles for safety. Even in the time of Israel’s ruling Judges as a theocracy, the masses clamored for a king. Trust in a God that “seems” distant when fickle people don’t get the life they had hoped for goes low and trust in monarchy, democracy and even totalitarianism goes high on the dreams these systems offer to the masses.

History shows vividly how all these earthly efforts fail, not only not panning out on the dreams of utopia, but in the end resulting in the murdering (outside of war) of 200M innocent citizens of some of these wicked totalitarian governments in the 20th century alone.

What follows is a rather long and hard to read clip from an article that announces the emerging new wave of grassroots Christianity that can impact this world in the months and years to come as it becomes obvious that governments are a cancer on the people dressed up to be their safety net.

Due to the new hostile sociopolitical realities, the third millennium is a time as well of new beginnings; it is a time of the clan and the small-faith community of families; and it a time when a new Christendom will be built (to the extent that it is built) solely on Christ an those clans and families. If any new Christian sociopolitical entities, even new countries, are to arise, they must arise anew and outside and beyond the demarcations of the past; outside and transcendent of the current sociopolitical powers-that-be; they must arise outside and in contradistinction to the world, the flesh, and the devil. This dawn of the third millennium requires the advent of a new Christian culture comprised of individual pastoral, that is grassroots, shoots that have made their way up among the ruins of an anti-Christic, dystopic world.

It is now, in this the third Christian age, that the lay faithful are called to grow up and out of the childhood of ages past. These faithful, these so-called “commoners” and “citizens,” are called to rise up fully mature, no longer holding onto props of the world, no longer dependent or subservient to powers and principalities, but only holding onto, dependent upon, and subservient to the Holy Cross. The third millennium is truly the age of the laity.  It is the age of the laity because it is the age of the family and the imago Dei individual (the image of God as free rational-volitional beings) that comprises that family.  And it is the age of the family and imago Dei individual because that family is being destroyed and the individual enslaved as never before; for in God’s economy “where sin abounds grace abounds more” (RM 5:20), the truth and good arising in direct contradiction to the prevalent falsehood and evil.

This is where the real value of Jesus-followers in the world demonstrate their value to those around them, by loving others selflessly but wisely. Wise as serpents, harmless as a dove. Being made in the image of God involves flipping tables in public places as well as protecting others from harm with swords bought with the proceeds of selling one’s cloak.

A new Christendom entails not the divine rights of elite kings and royal families, but rather the divine rights of the common man and the nuclear family. And these divine rights of the common lay faithful are absolute, for they derive from the faithful’s absolute right to do their duty to God, that is, their duty to abide by both natural and divine law, and indeed divine inspiration. But make no mistake, those that so abide by natural and divine law are outlaws to the Satanic State; a State that as such must be militantly engaged for “the whole salvation of the Church of Christ,” and most specifically and urgently for the salvation of the domestic church that is the family.

The toxicity of the anti-Christic third millennium requires that Christian piety and devotion no longer be squandered on a supposed but baseless duty to king, flag, or country. No longer should a romanticizing of a country’s past Christian heritage evoke allegiance to that country’s anti-Christic present. And no longer can a Christian justify a particular nationalism against a larger internationalism, for internationalism is but nationalism writ large. Rather, in the third-millennium, Christian piety, patriotism, loyalty, and devotion must be given to that which a person can truly know and so can truly love; and it is the Faith made tangible in the family, and the community of families, that one can truly know and love. It is neither countries, nor royal lineages, nor constitutions that God has immutably ordained, but rather it is the Holy Faith in grace and the sacrosanct family in both nature and grace that is God-ordained.

Christian’s must not give their hearts to a State. Again, they are called to be patriots only in so far as they are called to be pious. A Christian’s allegiance should be both familial and universal, not national and political. For familial allegiance is grass-rooted, as charity begins in the home; and universal allegiance justly transcends nations, as all men are created in God’s holy image (and indeed all men have families as well). But when a people’s allegiance is national and political the flower of their own nation’s familial foundation is inexorably conscripted and exterminated, while the families of opposing politics or nations are likewise afflicted.

Politics and nationalism are a scourge on society no matter how addicting the message is from these forces. In the end, it is never about the individual, it is about the collective.

Lastly, this is what a new disorganized, non-centered but grassroots effort to live life in and around the emerging police-military state that grows stronger by the day:

From home-grown produce, home-schooling, and cottage industries to Christian corporations, neighborhood militias, and patriarchal governing, the family and the extended community of families can in this technologically enhanced third millennium achieve a degree of self-sufficiency, independence, and perfection that was never before possible. But again, this will only be actualized if responsibility is assumed by fathers as the God-ordained leaders of natural and Christian society; it will only come to fruition if mothers are enthroned as the God-ordained center and heart of natural and Christian existence; and it will only thrive if individual Christians uncompromisingly exert their absolute right to dutifully heed their God-ordained conscience informed by natural and revealed truths.

People of character, given just in time courage directly from God, can and will give hope to those marginalized by the centralized and global evil forces that are in motion around this planet. God’s direct comms, His still small voice, will be heard by His children in these days.

Peace out

-SF1

American Revolutionary War: 3D Layers to Causes, Principles Used and Results

The advantage of taking on a portion of this ‘American Revolutionary War’ conflict, as I was able to do in reviewing John Oller’s book ‘Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Won the American Revolution‘, was that I could get my head around how South Carolina became ripe for revolution, how principled was the conflict and how South Carolina dealt with their freedom from empire.

The disadvantage is that nothing happens in a vacuum or in isolation, and so in reality one needs to back up to the macro (Thirteen Colony Federation view) and even to a global view to understand more holistically how all this came down. This last disadvantage I was able to partially overcome with the assistance of a book Captain1776, Malibu and myself first ran across at the Camden, SC RevWar historical site bookstore called ‘South Carolina and the American Revolution – A Battlefield History‘ by John W. Gordon.

This book helped me to understand the rather complex web of issues, real or imaginary, physical or psychological that helped evolve the love of family, love of community and even into a love of a colony/region towards violence-based actions that risked these very things (family, community and colony/region and even culture).

The writer is a former US Marine officer and professor at the Citadel in South Carolina who is now involved with national security affairs in Quantico, VA. What was refreshing in John W. Gordon’s approach was the eye towards tactics and strategies that either helped or detracted from the efforts of either the rebel-patriots-Whigs or the loyalists-Brit-Tories in the very real civil war that raged in South Carolina from approximately 1775 until 1783.

One aspect realized, was the early attempt on the part of the British to utilize the Cherokee and Creek to their advantage in the southern theater of this war the British brought to regain control of the colonies actually led to ‘blowback’, where unintended consequences would rule as a result of decisions made. This in conjunction with the assumption that Loyalists would rise to greatly assist the British efforts showed how much out of touch London, England was with the thoughts on the minds of those in the low country, midland and rolling hills leading up to the Blue Ridge felt in 1775, 1778 and 1780.

Another aspect that came to light when reading this book was the pivotal moment the French aligned with the colonies which caused this conflict to spread to English colonies around the globe as this became a very real world war that involved Spain and the Dutch as well as the French.

Primary to all of this was the effect this effort to extract the South Carolina people from British Empire control in how this region unified to a degree during the conflict, that pitted father against son and cousin against cousin. The effect was specifically where, during and and especially after the war, the upstate areas obtained more say in the government. The fact that civil government by the people themselves for three years in absence of the British royals, that was then forced into exile in North Carolina for a time after Cornwallis occupied Charlestown and much of the region and then back in late 1781 showed that South Carolinians could rule themselves!

Decades later, praise for this effort across micro-cultures inside this state would emerge from the pen of George Bancroft in 1857 in “History of the United States”:

Left mainly to her own resources, it was through the depths of wretchedness that her sons were to bring her back to her place in the republic ..  having suffered more, and dared more, and achieved more than the men of any other state.

This struggle matured a generation of men and women towards principles that will be again used eighty years later when another “empire” would be threatening South Carolina in coercive and violent ways once more.

Hats off to South Carolina’s Revolutionary War generation in their fight for their love of future generations and their way of life.

-SF1

NOTE: Future posts are forthcoming towards a more in-depth review of this new book, South Carolina and the American Revolution – A Battlefield History , in our library

08NOV1780: Tarleton Can’t Catch Francis Marion – Inadvertently Calls Him a Fox

When I last updated y’all on Marion’s activities in the fall of 1780, Cornwallis had “green lighted” Tarleton via his commander at Camden, George Turnball.

From Camden on November 1 Turnbull wrote to Tarleton at Winnsboro, imploring him to gather up his Legion to hunt down Marion. Tarleton rarely paid any compliments to his rebel adversaries, but he respected Marion, later writing that “Mr. Marion, by his zeal and abilities, shewed himself capable of the trust committed to his charge.” … He [Tarleton] welcomed the opportunity to pursue him, and Cornwallis approved the operation, telling Tarleton, “I … most sincerely hope you will get at Mr. Marion.”

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

The reason for the “green-light” to Cornwallis’ favorite field commander was the impact, both physical and psychological, that Francis Marion and his militia had in South Carolina and in the Southern Theatre of Operations of the Revolutionary War just since August 1780:

Cornwallis was desperate to end Marion’s dominance in the country between the Santee and Pee Dee Rivers. Nisbet Balfour, the commandant at Charleston, worried that unless further measures were taken, all communication between Charleston and Cornwallis’s army would be “at an end.” Marion was bleeding the British to death by a thousand cuts.

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

By now, Banistre Tarleton had the name “Bloody Ban” based on reports from how his men at the conclusion of their 150 mile / 54 hour pursuit of Col. Abraham Buford who was late to reinforce Charleston in May 1780 so Buford and his 350 Virginia Continentals were on the run toward North Carolina. This event was called “Buford’s Massacre” and set the stage for a reversal of alliances for the people of the colony of South Carolina over the coming months! The words “Tarleton’s quarter” (meaning take no prisoners) became legend and his character traits were woven into the person called “Colonel Tavington” in the movie ‘The Patriot'[2000].

Tarleton and his Green Dragoons along with a force of Tories called Harrison’s Rangers set out from Camden on 05NOV1780 moving south based on Intel they received that had Marion’s militian in the High Hills of the Santee. They did not find Marion there as he was but but thirty miles farther south near Nelson’s Ferry with two hundred men on the evening of 05NOV1780.

By 07NOV, Tarleton and his forces moved to the plantation of the recently widowed Dorothy Richardson, whose late husband, Brigadier General Richard Richardson, had been the victorious Whig commander in the Snow Campaign in 1775. This was no coincidence to camp right at a famous patriot’s home. Intel continued to play an important role as Tarleton learned that Marion was camped now just sixteen miles south. Marion too heard reports of Tarleton’s presence.

Marion and his men laid an ambush at Nelson’s Ferry and waited until night expecting Tarleton to cross there but was disappointed as Tarleton backtracked as though he himself sensed a trap. Marion then maneuvered to within three miles of Tarleton’s camp, intending to surprise him. Both of these leaders possessed a high level of intelligence in the ways of military strategy.

Tarleton was crafty as well: he spread the rumor that his main body had returned to Camden and sent out small patrols with instructions to show little signs of fear by leaving camps abruptly with food still cooking in order to draw Marion to attack. He lit bonfires at Richardson’s Plantation designed to give the impression that he was burning the home of a revered patriot family. In the meantime he wheeled out two small artillery pieces capable of a kind of firepower Marion’s men were not used to facing. Then, knowing Marion’s penchant for making surprise attacks at night, Tarleton hid in the woods with his force of four hundred and waited for Marion to come to him.

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

It is about to get real at this point. Knowing that the smoke from the fires would be good bait to draw Marion’s militia forces into this trap, all Tarleton had to do was wait.

At this critical point, the widow of Gen. Richard Richardson prompted her son, the 39 year old Richard Richardson Jr. to escape the plantation’s main home undetected and warn the militia of this trap. Major Richardson’s Intel was that  Tarleton had 100 cavalry and 300 dragoons plus two artillery pieces and that one of Marion’s men deserted to the British/Tory forces and was now Tarleton’s guide in the area.

In light of this brush with death for his men and himself, Marion decided to separate himself from this force by taking his men in the dark on a ride through the swamps toward safety near Jack’s Creek.

The next morning, Tarleton is surprised that the trap was not sprung. This “cat-n-mouse” game was getting real and getting intense!

… he [Tarleton] sent a few men to find out why. They brought back a prisoner who had managed to escape from Marion’s brigade during the previous night’s mad dash. He informed them that Marion would have attacked him had some “treacherous women” (the widow Richardson and others) not smuggled out an emissary to warn Marion of Tarleton’s actual number. Tarleton immediately ordered his men to their arms and mounts, but they soon discovered that Marion had already flown from his camp at Jack’s Creek in the direction of Kingstree.

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

This started a day of adventure for both of these forces as Tarleton moved his men 26 miles through swamps in seven hours while Marion’s men racked up 35 miles in staying out of range of their pursuers.

As Tarleton reported to Cornwallis, due to Marion’s head start and “the difficulties of the country,” he was unable to catch him. He abandoned the chase at Ox Swamp, outside of present-day Manning, which was wide, mucky, and without roads for passage. It was there Tarleton is said to have uttered the words that gave Marion his immortal nickname. “Come my boys! Let us go back, and we will soon find the Gamecock [Thomas Sumter]. But as for this damned old fox, the Devil himself could not catch him.”

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

Now you might think that Tarleton would just move on back toward Camden and try to capture militia leader Thomas Sumter, however, a man of Tarelton’s character would ensure that his frustration would be felt on the innocent people and homes along the path toward Camden:

Tarleton’s frustration was evident from his actions immediately afterward. As he told Cornwallis, he “laid… waste” to all the houses and plantations of the rebels around Richardson’s Plantation and Jack’s Creek. (As usual, Cornwallis turned a blind eye to such depredations.)

Tarleton paid a visit back to the widow Richardson’s home and, as Marion reported to Gates, “beat” her to “make her tell where I was.” Doing what he had earlier pretended to do in order to lure Marion to battle, Tarleton then burned Mrs. Richardson’s home and some of her cattle, destroyed all her corn, and left her without so much as a change of clothes.

From Nelson’s Ferry to Camden he destroyed the homes and grain of thirty plantation owners.

Worst of all, Marion reported, Tarleton had “behaved to the poor women he has distressed with great barbarity.… It is beyond measure distressing to see the women and children sitting in the open air round a fire without a blanket, or any clothing but what they had on, and women of family, and that had ample fortunes; for he spares neither Whig nor Tory.” *

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

So we see here that Tarleton had two points of weakness, pride and revenge. The trait of revenge, especially on innocent women and children would help turn the tide of the “civil war” inside South Carolina itself, drying up Tory sympathies, and for many generations instilling the thought that war taken to the civilian population itself was not only uncivilized, but also brought “blowback”.

The empire of today (United States) could learn well from this lesson of the past. That thought though will have to be captured in yet another future post. As we leave November 1780, we find the British’s top performing field commander frustrated by militia whose leader now has a new name. Although the name Swamp Fox will not emerge until decades after the conclusion of this war, there is something to be said for this moment in time when guerrilla fighting techniques would be the deciding factor as to why the American Revolution did not end in 1780.

As a result, are we thankful today on Thanksgiving Day 2018? I know I am. Thank you Francis Marion and your faithful men in your stand against the empire of your day. You have given the generations that follow hope in the love, liberty and life that your efforts inspired. Amen.

-SF1