Yes, You are the “Baddies” (2)

Professor Russel Rickford of Cornell University spoke his true mind to a mob of bloodthirsty savages (i.e., Woke Progressive students at our most prestigious Universities) immediately after news of the Hamas massacre broke. Later, after having received criticism he retreated into the same old, dishonest non-apology apology statement. We must start believing what they say the first time and act accordingly if Western Civilization is to endure.

Commentary

For the past four years at least I have been using the word “wicked” to describe the ideas and behavior of the Progressive Left.  In fact, numerous post series have used the word “wicked” in their titles.  In July of 2020 I initiated a series titled “Something Wicked This Way Comes” with these words.

We should all know better by now than to ignore the more outlandish statements of the Progressive Left.  They have been so emboldened by their monopoly of our institutions that they no longer even pretend to hide their intentions.  Make no mistake, they are telling us what they intend to do should they by one means or another regain power.  So, stop pretending that these views into their wicked minds are unrepresentative of the Progressive Left’s true intentions.

In November of 2021 I upped the ante with a series of posts titled “Something Wicked is in Our Midst.”  I commented as follows in the first post of this series.

I’ve often wondered just what level of outrage it will take (if any) for the progressive Democrats (particularly those who claim to be Christians) to recoil in horror at the nature of their leader’s behavior.  We have an almost perfect test case here now that Mary Lemanski, who is listed as the social media director for the Democratic Party in DuPage County, Illinois has tweeted her vile heart out about the recent Waukesha Wisconsin tragedy.

In these and many other posts I have been making the case that what is going on in the Progressive Left is not simply error, but cold-blooded, premeditated wickedness.  Even though in every case I have provided explicit justification and associated references for these conclusions, I have worried that my readers may find such strong language to be off-putting.  After all, it’s disturbing to think that there are many people in power and even in our personal lives who harbor evil.  But, so concerned have I been about the nature of the Progressive Left that I felt there was no alternative but to speak plainly and forcibly.

Now, I must say that the response of the Woke Progressive Left to the October 7 Hamas butchery of Jews in Israel has removed all doubt about their inherent wickedness.  What we have all seen is the open, aggressive and proud support of Hamas’ butchery in our universities and cities that are utterly dominated by the Progressive Left.  In conjunction with that evil we have seen open, vicious antisemitism, including dehumanization, violent threats, physical assault and genocidal ideation in these same Woke Progressive Left dominated places.  

These vile displays didn’t even wait for the Israeli military response.  No, on October 7 and immediately after these wicked demonstrations were in full swing.  The core emotion was celebration that the “oppressed” Palestinians had been able to take “justified” revenge on their “oppressors” (by mass murder, rape, beheading, necrophilia, mutilation and burning of all the babies, children, men, women and elderly Jews they could find).  They also have kidnapped almost 250 women, men and children, using them as bargaining chips and almost certainly terribly abusing them.

This is what the Progressive Left in our universities and cities are not just supporting, but celebrating.  Make no mistake, these are places where anyone not on the Woke Progressive Left is virtually powerless.  Our universities have driven out all but the most careful hiders of non-Progressive thought.  Non-Progressive speakers are assaulted, shouted down and disinvited from our universities.  Our large city’s politicians and administrators are completely dominated by Progressives.  The populations of these cities continue to elect ever more radical Progressive Leftists to positions of power.

And yet, it is from these places of utter Woke Progressive Leftist dominance that the Hamas butchery celebration and vicious antisemitism has originated.  This is 21st century Nazism.  It is a continuation of the 20th century Nazi program to eradicate the Jews.  Hamas explicitly says so in its Charter and its leaders explicitly say so in their public comments.  

I am most certainly not accusing all on the Progressive Left of this wickedness.  Many of these people have good intentions and wish no harm to anyone.  What I am saying is that the activist core of the Progressive Left has revealed itself to be dominated by people who do harbor wicked ideas. This conclusion has been unmistakably exposed by their embrace of the Hamas butchery.  This activist core has deceived their supporters and many others by their aggressive claims to moral and intellectual superiority.  They have been exposed as liars and frauds.

I understand that it’s frightening to acknowledge the existence of such wickedness in the powerful and prestigious among us.  But unless we face up to this reality and do something substantial about it we place ourselves, our children, our family members and our fellow citizens at risk of experiencing violent, impoverishing civilizational collapse.  What will follow is most likely the totalitarian hell that fills the fever dreams of the Woke Progressive Left’s ideology-addled minds.

So, don’t look away.  Gaze upon the open, proud eruption os wickedness in our midst.  Then through speaking, legitimate action and voting do something about it.

 

The Ministry of Truth is Struggling!

It appears that even with the entire Federal Government bureaucracy, the Presidency, the Senate, the Corporate and Social Media, the Universities, the Public Schools and a massive cohort of ideologically lobotomized supporters (and an utterly pathetic Republican Party In opposition) the New Ministry of Truth is struggling to fool the American public.  Perhaps these totalitarians aren’t up to the task.  I’m sure there is a cadre of blood-thirsty monsters just itching to replace the current Progressives and get their chance at glory.  

Here are some receipts.

A majority of every group is concerned that “America is becoming a police state.” So, many people who are silent have this concern. Many more of us need to speak up loudly about the proto-Fascists that now dominate the Federal Government bureaucracy, the Presidency, the Senate, the Corporate and Social Media, the Universities, and the Public Schools, among other institutions.

A plurality of the general public (39%) has “none at all” trust in the Mass Media. An additional 29% have “not very much” trust. That’s 68% of the American population who have little to no trust in the Mass Media. We need to stop being cowed by the falsehood created by the Mass Media that we are in the small minority. Treat them with the contempt they richly deserve.

Mass Media support even among Democrats has cratered from over 70% to less than 60% in one year. More than 7 out of 10 Independents and almost 9 out of 10 Republicans don’t trust them.

And finally, what idea has the New Ministry of Truth tried to push harder than the 2020 election was the most honest ever? Well, in spite of that a plurality of All Americans (42%) think that it is Very Likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election. If we add the 19% who think it’s Somewhat Likely that’s 61% of the American public who have significant doubts. Note that only 50% of Democrats think that it’s Unlikely or Not at all Likely that the election was dishonest. Strong majorities of Republicans (80% Very/Somewhat) and Independents (64% Very/Somewhat) have significant doubts about the honesty of this election.

The Bottom Line:

While many Americans may still be intimidated into silence by the photo-Fascist Democrats in our midst, a strong majority is with us.  So go after these awful people with the confidence that you are not alone and that your courage will motivate others to speak up.

Totalitarians, Straight Up (3)

This from the woman who unleashed the “Russia Trump” fraud on the American people. There are millions of Progressive Woke cultists who still believe this hoax in spite of the Mueller Report and Durham Report both clearly stating that ‘Russian collusion’ was indeed a complete hoax. No one in the MAGA movement nor any conservative in a position of power or influence has suggested that “re-education” is needed for these people. It’s long past time for all American citizens of decency to recognize the totalitarian desires of our ruling class and stand in unity against this bloody minded wickedness.

Mainline Christianity and Progressive Politics (11)

Senator Kennedy has done the discomforting public service of reading aloud excerpts from the gay porn books that Progressive Democrats are insisting belong in school and public libraries (and available for children).

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The Progressive Christians who utterly dominate Mainline denominations rarely pass up the opportunity to signal their supposedly superior virtue (in this case a prayer published by The Presbyterian Outlook, PCUSA, excerpt, emphasis added).

Move in our hearts and open us to fresh expressions of your Spirit in our world today. Receive our anger at injustice and stir us to stand against those who stomp on our freedom.

Do not let our minds be overtaken by distorted views of history or by hateful rhetoric on race and gender. Embolden us to agitate for a free exchange of ideas and access to myriad points of view.

Awaken us to confront the hatred that motivates the unjust banning of books.

They attack those of us who dare to question the tsunami of gender propaganda that has engulfed our public schools and libraries.  We are said to be “book banners.”  Senator Mike Lee brilliantly explained this issue while exposing the true agenda of these child groomers at a Senate hearing on “book banning.”

Senator Lee: We’re going to play a video clip right now.  The video clip is from Deborah Caldwell-Stone.  She’s the legal counsel for the American Library Association.  Here’s what she has to say on some of these topics, these topics that deal not with book banning. No one here has banned any book.  You can still get these books anywhere you want them.  The question is not whether to ban them.  The question is whether they should be included in curriculum or in a school library.  A library or a school curriculum by definition will be finite, or a finite number of books that you can put in there.  The question is which books should be included and which should not.  Let’s hear what Ms. Deborah Caldwell-Stone has to say on this topic. 

Deborah Caldwell-Stone:  (Video) But ultimately we found that the thing that needs to happen most, and it needs to happen before these bills are introduced, is sustained messaging that reframes this issue, that that takes it away from the idea that these are inappropriate for minors or sexually inappropriate for minors and promote them as diverse materials and programming that are about inclusion fairness and protection of everybody’s right to see themselves and their families reflected in the books in the Public Library.

Senator Lee:  OK.  So I think what we saw here right now is someone saying the quiet part out loud, acknowledging what the goal is.  There is a goal here and the goal is to sexualize children, to provide minors with sexually explicit material and then hide this content from the parents.  Hide it by changing the messaging.  …  [They say]: This is not about sexually explicit content.  This is about equality, this is about justice, this is about what’s right and wrong, has nothing to do with sex.  

Well of course that’s what someone would do if they were grooming your child, if someone were trying to sexualize your child and make no mistake, that is what’s happening.

So, when a Mainline leader prays for “a free exchange of ideas and access to myriad points of view” and against the “unjust banning of books” they are using Ms. Cadwell-Stone’s strategy that “reframes this issue” from “sexually inappropriate for minors” to allowing “diverse materials and programming that are about inclusion fairness.”

Most of us, out of embarrassment over the content of these books, attempt to answer by stating their general nature.  But why should a third-party trust our general claims?  After all, we’re the ones being called fascists, meekly submitting to the apparently morally superior Progressive verbal abuse.

No, in spite of the discomfort, we have to give these onlookers the explicit, disturbing quotes from these books in order to justify our position.  Senator Kennedy (R) has decided to do just that, reading into the Senate Record specific pornographic passages from two books being defended as acceptable for school and public libraries by the Pritzker Administration (D, IL).  [NOTE: The linked video does not “bleep out” the pornographic words.  I did so out of respect for the sensibilities of my readers.  No such concern is shown by the Progressives who are pleased to deliver raw pornographic sewage to children.]

Let’s take two books that have been much discussed. The first one is called All Boys Aren’t Blue and I will quote from it.  

“I put some lube on and got him on his knees and I began to slide into him from behind.  I pulled out of him and kissed him while he mas*****ted.  He asked me to turn over while he slipped the condom on himself.  This was my a*s and I was struggling to imagine someone inside me.  He got on top and slowly inserted himself into me.  It was the worst pain I think I have ever felt in my life.  Eventually I felt a mix of pleasure with the pain.”

The second is a another much discussed book I’m sure you’re familiar with.  It’s called Gender Queer.  OK let me read an excerpt from that. 

“I got a new strap on harness today.  I can’t wait to put it on you.  It will fit my favorite di**o perfectly.  You’re going to look so hot; I can’t wait to have your c**k in my mouth.  I’m going to give you the best bl***ob of your life.  Then I want you inside of me.”

Now Mr. Secretary, what are you asking us to do?  Are you suggesting that only librarians should decide whether the two books that I just referenced should be available to kids?  Is that what you’re saying?

This is what our “moral betters” are defending.

This is what they want our children to be exposed.

I checked a couple of local Public Libraries to see if these books are available.

Both of these books are AVAILABLE from local Illinois Public Libraries.

These popular, influential books by conservative authors are BANNED (according to the “standards” of the Progressives) by these same libraries. So conservative economics and social science books are excluded but pornographic grooming books are available “loud and proud!”

I never thought the day would come when Canadians are showing far more guts in opposing the sexual grooming of our children than are citizens of the United States.

Totalitarians, Straight Up

The next time an ideologically lobotomized, New York Times reading snob blathers on and on about “saving our democracy,” laugh in their face and walk away.

Tyranny of the “Weak” (3)

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Commentary

How can we determine who are the powerful and who are the weak in a society?  In times past there was general agreement about this question.  But today we live in a bizarro world in which those who claim to be the “weak” (or claim to be advocates for the “weak”) actually wield enormous, virtually unchallenged power.  

Do you doubt this statement?  Well, we all know that the “weak” in our society are the various Progressive-designated minority groups.  At the very tip-top of this virtue pyramid are the transgender activists who are viewed as one component of the queer community.  This group has been designated to be the weakest of the oppressed weak.  But there are other minority communities who, though not as pathetically “weak” as the transgenders, yet still occupy positions of designated powerlessness.  Of course this includes the black community, and to a lesser degree Hispanics (ergo, the uniformly oppressed “black and brown bodies”).  Many other “communities” vie for the designated elite Progressive “weakness.”

In all these cases the “community” in question is conceived to consist of identical, interchangeable victims who have earned by their suffering ultimate moral and intellectual authority.  The idea that there are major individual differences in experience, temperament, gifts, wealth, education or any number of other differentiating characteristics is ignored.  

For example, in the fevered minds of our Progressive elites there are no transgender or gay people who are generally satisfied with their lives and just want to be left alone (or who don’t want to be used to enable wickedness, see “Gays Against Groomers”).  There is no cadre of educated and generally successful black and Hispanic people.  No, there is just an undifferentiated mass of faceless victims who justify the acquisition of ever more power by the Progressive elite to protect them from the “powerful” predators (primarily non-Progressive white heterosexual males, non-Progressive Christians or any other group who doesn’t joyfully embrace Woke ideology).

But, through the alchemy of Woke madness, it is the “weak” activists among us who are unassailably powerful.  How is it that the supposed “powerful” in our society find themselves to be utterly powerless?  If a person from the “powerful” criticizes gay people for strutting completely nude in public (and in front of children) they are shouted down as bigots.  How is it that the “powerful” are helpless to protect their children from exposure to gay pornography in their public schools and public libraries?  If a woman complains that a biological man who claims to “identify as a woman” invades their private spaces or their sports, they are viciously attacked.  I could go on, but my point is likely made.

The Woke Progressive Left has perfected the mind-trick by which specific “weak” groups are designated to be the ultimate holders of morality and then used as vehicles to obtain ever more political power.  They couldn’t care less about the individuals in these groups who want no part of the grift.  They couldn’t care less about the harm done to individual members of these groups as they are used and abused in service to their totalitarian goals.  And they couldn’t care less about the children, women or men who are destroyed by this wicked process.  The Woke Progressive Left will sacrifice any and all to their Baal of political power.  

These people are nothing other than civilization destroyers.  They have no ability to build anything of value.  They glory in the destruction of anyone and anything that stands in the way of their hellish desires.  

It’s time to stand up and call their bluff.  They don’t speak for the “weak.”  They don’t care about the “weak.”  No, they use the “weak” as a means to a wicked end.  And when the “weak” have served their purpose they discard them without the slightest trouble to their depraved consciences.

Our Corrupt Ruling Class (3)

It’s important because otherwise our massive ruling class of incompetent, ideologically lobotomized elite grifters might be exposed and held accountable for their failures.

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This is the house of cards built upon sand that the Woke Progressive Elite is determined to defend at any cost.

Excellence and success cannot be bought through giveaways and reality-denying decrees. We can eliminate failing grades, but we cannot eliminate failure. When our economies, our bodies, and our engines begin to sputter, our mounting bill will come due.

The invoice will bear the following description: rather than forcing individual and collective excellence to emerge as the natural outgrowths of a culture that incentivizes and exhorts us to overcome every species of adversity and rise to greatness, we tried to skip to the punchline. We hoped to use the blunt instrument of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion to engineer a racially proportionate outcome we did not earn and do not deserve. As a result, we got exactly what we did deserve — failure and incompetence at every level. 

We can either submit as cowards or rise up to overthrow this worthless cadre.

The West’s Psychotic Breakdown (3)

Wait a minute … I’ve been duped!

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Meditation

What in God’s good earth has changed to enable a mass psychosis breakdown in what is arguably a plurality of our population? I’ve been indirectly exploring the reasons through posts on postmodernism in general, and postmodern Christianity in particular. I’ve also addressed this issue through posts like “The Strange Persistence of Guilt” and post series concerning the nature of our rulers (deranged, wicked, clueless and vacuous).  As with all massive human movements the reasons are complex and diverse.  There’s no one”theory of everything” to diagnose nor a “silver bullet” to correct the situation.

But that’s no reason to stop pondering and developing theories.  One recent contribution to this deliberation was published by First Things in an article titled “Spiritual Death of the West” by Nathan Pinkoski.  The author there reconsiders the 1973 fictional novel The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail.  Mr. Raspail tells the (prophetic?) story of how a mass immigration event brought down European culture and governments.  As you can easily imagine this novel is hated and assaulted by our moronic intelligentsia.  But Mr. Pinkoski’s review and commentary on the novel’s ideas provide useful insight for those not ideologically lobotomized.  For example:

Yet The Camp of the Saints is not a disaster novel. The book’s significance does not hinge on whether Raspail was correct to predict mass immigration or describe it in catastrophic terms. Rather, the novel’s genius lies in the depiction of an apocalypse in the original sense of that term. Properly translated, apocalypse is rendered as revelation, disclosure, literally an “uncovering.” The Camp of the Saints unveils the perverse logic that pervades late Western civilization, and throws into sharp relief the nihilism of guilt whereby the West welcomes its own destruction.

Now that’s a bracing introduction!  What is the nature of this civilization destroying this “nihilism of guilt?”

It was not Raspail but Jean-Paul Sartre who first envisioned the Global South invading the Global North. In his 1961 preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, written as Charles de Gaulle was preparing to lower France’s flags in Algeria, Sartre argued that decolonization was not enough to settle the score. France and the French deserved punitive subjugation. “Our soil must be occupied by a formerly colonized people and we must starve of hunger,” he wrote.   …

Sartre may have desired reverse colonization, but he didn’t see it as a real possibility: “This won’t happen,” he complained. Raspail’s chief purpose, therefore, was not to predict an imminent future. He sought to take seriously the sentiments of self-loathing and the desire for reverse colonization that were gaining strength in Europe. The Camp of the Saints is best read as a long thought experiment, a fictional depiction of the civilizational consequences of this way of thinking.

This vague “nihilism of guilt” crystallized into a specific ideology that has conquered much of the West.

The West’s brand of moral universalism, Raspail’s novel suggests, causes its demise. Westerners have made a categorical imperative out of Mrs. Jellyby’s comically flawed ­humanitarianism—“do-gooderism” unto a distant other, while one’s own are neglected. In this moral climate, the piety required to love one’s community and the fortitude required to defend it become vices.

And, central to Raspail’s case is the treason of the Christian Church (sound familiar?).

In Raspail’s telling, Catholic Christianity has for some time been in thrall to humanitarian universalism. The novel satirizes a left-liberal Catholicism that disdains national and civilizational particularity and renders the faith indistinguishable from the moral universalism of non-believers. Under the banner of “charity, solidarity, and universal conscience,” progressive clerics abandon their neighbors for the sake of the stranger. They practice the religion of humanity, a Christian heresy.

The Europeans (and also we in the Unites States?), having lost our Christian faith and civilizational self-respect grasp at straws as we descend into the deep.

Again and again in the novel, cowardice and self-hatred are masked and moderated by the conviction that mass immigration into Europe and the deconstruction of European identity will somehow take away the sins of the West. But Raspail knows the truth: Third World immigrants do not have the power to deliver Europeans from their sense of worthlessness. Once one embraces the logic of civilizational repudiation, the endpoint is nihilism and cultural death. The Alpha is white guilt. The Omega is Francocide.

We can only pray that our merciful God will protect us from the consequences of our own moral and spiritual failures.

Contemporary excesses have their origins not in recent events, but in a much older and deeper spiritual sickness. Raspail’s poetic millenarianism illuminates what Badinter feared. Sometime during those seemingly good years after World War II—Les Trente Glorieuses, as the French call this period, which still prevailed when The Camp of the Saints was published—the West lost its soul. In a sense, the apocalypse has already happened. That’s why Westerners in Raspail’s novel lack the fortitude to defend their civilization and why so many find reverse colonization desirable. We live in a civilization that is already damned.

Regardless of if we are “already damned,” those of us who reject the “nihilism of guilt” through the forgiveness and new life through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, must speak up for His Gospel and the civilization nurtured under its influence.

What’s Next? (7)

All may not be lost. Awareness of the Woke Progressive Vanguard’s depravity is growing. Some national leaders are explicitly pushing back, with Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni at the forefront.

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Meditation (2)

Given the unbroken string of cultural victories described in the previous post it’s hart to be optimistic.  Clearly the Woke Vanguard holds we Commoners in such contempt that they like their chances of forcing our submission to normalized pedophilia.  The source of that contempt, as described in The American Mind, ensures that there will be no end to our degradation unless we put a stop to it ourselves.

The logic that drives each turn of our revolutionary spiral is Progressive Americans’ inherently insatiable desire to exercise their superiority over those they deem inferior. With Newtonian necessity, each such exercise causes a corresponding and opposite reaction. The logic’s force comes not from the substance of the Progressives’ demands. If that were the case, acquiescing to or compromising with them could cut it short. Rather, it comes from that which moves, changes, and multiplies their demands without end. That is the Progressives’ affirmation of superior worth, to be pursued by exercising dominance: superior identity affirmed via the inferior’s humiliation. It is an inherently endless pursuit.

The logic is rooted in disdain, but not so much of any of the supposed inferiors’ features or habits. If it were, the deplored could change their status by improving. But the Progressives deplore the “deplorables” not to improve them, but to feel good about themselves. Hating people for what they are and because it feels good to hate them, is hate in its unalloyed form.

If there is reason for hope it comes from the same place as does my pessimism, that being the Woke Vanguard has succeeded so fast on so many cultural degradations that they have prematurely reached normalized pedophilia.  We Commoners are no longer that perverbial “frog in the water,” being slowly boiled to death.  No, the heat has been turned up so quickly that most of us now realize the dire state in which we find ourselves.  That is, most of us understand at some level that the Woke Progressive Elite’s goal isn’t reform and progress, but rather civilizational destruction followed by tyranny.

There’s also the fact that parents have a visceral commitment to protecting their children.  We already see this in play as the pushback against child grooming and gender transitioning grows.  Numerous states have passed laws explicitly baring these practices by schools and hospitals.  It’s just possible that defeats in this domain will scare off the Woke Vanguard from eventually going all-in on normalized pedophilia.
We also have examples of explicit rejection of the entire “Gay Pride” agenda by national and religious leaders, as well as by Gays themselves.  The lead image of this post covers Italy’s Prime Minister explicitly substituting pride in the traditional family for “Gay Pride.”  The DC Enquirer has recently published an article about Princeton University professor Dr. Robert P. George’s attempt to recast June as a “Fidelity Month” (see Tweet to the left).  

Christian philosopher and Princeton University professor Dr. Robert P. George is pushing for the month to be recognized and celebrated as “Fidelity Month.”

Dr. George has launched an official website for the campaign as well as made numerous posts to his personal Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts. He is attempting to share the message as far and wide as possible to overwrite the LGBTQ-themed time.

The organization “Gays Against Groomers” is aggressively identifying, exposing and opposing the sexual assault on children. This recent Tweet (see to the right) is one of the most shocking. Once again, I’ve obscured the sexual aspects of this image with blue ovals.  If you want to see the full album cover image go here.

So, there is reason to hope that the Commoners (and even some decent Elites) will draw the line and effectively repulse the Woke Vanguard’s attempt to prey on our children.  In the better of worlds this repulsion will occur first for the transsexual grooming and transitioning of our children.  Additionally, this effort could be diverted if all the elites associated with Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophilia ring were exposed and duly punished. For if the Vanguard is successful there it’s hard to see how any line of defense for traditional morality can ever be held.

It’s long past time for we Commoners to stop averting our eyes from what’s happening to our culture.  Up to this point many have concluded that they have too much to loose should they become visible in opposition.  If that remains the case as the Woke Vanguard goes after our children then we do richly deserve all of the contempt that they have for us.

Memorial Day 2023

First and foremost, let us give thinks in thought, prayer and word to those Americans who have given their lives to protect the people of the United States and its Constitution. They all took this oath and sacrificed all to uphold it. This oath is to THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, not to an institution. Even those of us who have not officially taken this oath but who enjoy citizenship in the United States bear ultimate responsibility for our Republic’s direction. It’s time for all of us to take this oath with the seriousness it demands — to step up and defend our Constitutional Republic from all enemies, foreign and domestic.