Pride Cometh...

Pride comes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall. - Prov. 16:18 (CSB)

 

 

The cracks are already starting to show, and we haven't even made it to inauguration day.

 

After the brilliant execution of their presidential campaign's master strategy - that of successfully keeping Biden, the elder, safely away from public scrutiny through the summer and fall months - Biden's handlers found it increasingly difficult to continue their plan, post-election.  Sequestering the old Biden away in his basement, safe from the reach of COVID and the occasional inquisitive journalist, was simply no longer feasible.  Since the election, his protection-squad of staffers came up with a new technique:  that of utilizing the most supportive hand-picked cheerleaders-slash-journalists to read pre-approved questions simple enough to be comprehended by even the most age-addled mind.(1)

But in anticipation that they cannot suppress every journalist, every time, their backup plan was to provide him with canned answers to damning questions. Such is what we have seen several times now when he was asked about the criminal investigations currently underway targeting his son Hunter and implicating Biden himself.(2)

 

Like all naughty children, hucksters, empty suit politicians, and other charlatans, when facing a question the response to which might put him in a poor light, there is always a dodge.  In this case, it is much safer for the elderly Biden to answer a question he wasn't asked, than to answer the question people actually want an answer to.

At least twice in the past few weeks, in response to specific questions about the family's financial improprieties, the presumptive president-elect replied with the strangely detached answer that:  "I'm proud of my son."(3)  An answer that naturally leads one to wonder exactly what the elder Biden feels he needs to hide from the public with this non-sequitur, and begs the question of exactly which of his son Hunter's actual or alleged improprieties are the source of such intense pride.

 

Might it be those lucrative Ukrainian and Chinese business deals (with 10% set aside "for the big guy"), or the alleged federal tax evasion, perhaps it was his being so quickly drummed out of the military, maybe the repeated alcohol and drug abuse, or his refusal to pay child support for his out-of-wedlock progeny?  Then again, based on the widely circulated photos from his abandoned laptop, it's probably his prowess in wielding a crack pipe.  I mean, what father wouldn't be proud of that?

All this does lead one to ponder why most Americans are only now, at such a late stage, hearing about the nefarious activities of the Biden family crime syndicate. Post-election polls revealed that 17% of Biden voters would not have voted for him had they known about the multiple Biden family controversies - controversies largely suppressed or covered up by the unholy alliance of the DNC-controlled establishment media, big tech tyrants, and deep staters embedded in the Justice Department.(4)

 

That was the plan all along, of course.

 

With only a few exceptions, the entities that comprise what was once known as the mainstream media - and now primarily function as the propaganda arm of the Democratic National Committee - fully intended to keep the truth from voters in order to insure the anointing of their apparently successful, albeit failing, candidate. But despite the complicity of an establishment media, which staked the last and tattered remains of the garments of their credibility on Trump's defeat, I'm not confident their suppression strategy will forever hold off the occasional 'baying hound' journalist hiding among the ranks of media lapdogs.

 

Until that time, however, we may have to sit waiting patiently for the necessary critical examination of the extent to which our national security is threatened by the foreign influence-peddling, tax-dodging, child-support payment skipping, drug-using, alcohol-abusing, crackpipe sucking son of our soon-to-be-inaugurated leader.  And if the 2020 Senate and 2022 House elections go as expected, we may get Senate committee hearings, special counsels, and perhaps even several years of phony impeachment proceedings designed to reinvigorate the fading memory of our Octogenarian-in-Chief and his family members regarding their barely arms-length business deals with the Chinese Communist party, wives of Russian bureaucrats, and Ukrainian energy companies.

If or when that happens, we may get just a brief glimpse of the secretive world surrounding the Biden Crime Family's dealings with a myriad of unsavory foreign actors, at least until the unholy trinity of big tech crony capitalists, Marxo-Orwellian academic elite, and Democrat sock-puppet media propagandists either shut it down again or distract us by fomenting more BLM and Antifa riots in our streets. Despite the triumvirate's best efforts to downplay the scandals associated with their preferred candidate, this is clearly not over... so stand by.

But then, who am I to say... quite literally. I'm sure by penning this blog I've already triggered the notice of FB and Google's speech-smothering and deplatforming algorithms - the same algorithms they developed and used so successfully at the behest of the Chinese government as part of the price of doing business in a Communist country.

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(1) https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-team-disables-chat-on-virtual-press-conferences-after-reporters-ask-tough-questions

(2) https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/09/federal-prosecutor-investigating-hunter-biden-for-potential-tax-crimes/

(3) Dodging the question, "I'm proud of my son."  https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4929905/president-elect-biden-im-proud-son   Biden is "deeply proud of" his son - https://apnews.com/article/45e0fe89ff7302a2a14afdba2d91b531

(4) “One of every six Biden voters we surveyed (17%) said they would have abandoned the Democratic candidate had they known the facts about one or more of these news stories.”  https://cnsnews.com/article/national/alexander-watson/poll-shows-media-censorship-cheated-voters-vital-info-robbed?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cns&utm_campaign=n-poll-censorship

Supreme Vindication

The importance of the 2020 election cannot be understood apart from an understanding of the dueling visions for the role of the Supreme Court.  Visions that pit the preservation of our liberty against the erosion of freedom and an insidious and ever-growing tyranny.

In that context, it can hardly be overstated how huge the swearing in of Amy Coney Barrett last week was. Absolutely huge. Absolutely, incredibly huge.

Associate Justice Barrett was the third Supreme Court justice appointed by President Trump and confirmed by the Republican Senate in the past four years. As part of an historic remaking of the Federal judiciary, the president has also appointed more than 200 Federal judges - most of whom are Constitutional originalists. As we have seen time and time again, there are never any guarantees about how a judge will rule once seated. Chief Justice Roberts is but the most recent and disappointing example of that. But if our justices don't at least begin from a place of deep respect for the text of the Constitution - and equally important - understand their own role in protecting it, our country's existence would be all but doomed.

 

And we were very close.

Back in 2016, many of us were unsure about exactly what kind of a president Donald Trump Jr. might be. Was he a man of his word - did he mean what he said about draining the swamp and building border walls and getting us out of endless middle eastern wars - or was he just another huckster politician? Could a braggadocios, pugnacious, and sometimes crude New Yorker be trusted to govern with what sounded a lot like mid-western values? Did he truly have a change of heart on the issue of abortion and would it affect his public policy? And above all, would he really keep his eyes on the prize by keeping his promise to appoint only Originalist, Textualist, Constitutionalist judges?

We all had to seriously ask ourselves one very fundamental question: Did the character flaws on public display and being widely and gleefully exaggerated in the predominant news media disqualify Donald Trump from receiving our support? And truly, both candidates were morally flawed. But conservatives and Evangelicals had been burned many times before when going to the dance with Republican candidates.

Many Evangelicals, Catholics, and other people of faith made the prayerful decision to take the chance, trust their gut, and go with the candidate who was right on the issues. Thankfully, many of us - whether joyfully or while holding our noses - cast our vote for Trump and trusted that God would ultimately use him to accomplish His purposes in the same way He has used and still uses flawed individuals today.

Many of us believed back in 2016 - and most still maintain - that the most important issue was Judicial appointments. (Imagine if Merrick Garland had been confirmed in the waning days of the Obama administration to replace Antonin Scalia. And then a President Hillary Clinton had appointed two radical justicial activists to the court.) While we know that court appointees sometimes stray from sound judicial philosophy and we will at times be disappointed in their rulings, still, President Trump's many originalist judicial appointments have gone a long ways toward the restoration of the Constitution as our guiding document, while largely vindicating the value voters' support for the President.

What was it about the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett - this mild-mannered, devout Christian and mother of 7 children, that scares the Democrat party?  Why does a soft-spoken and respectful legal genius, a careful law professor and jurist so rile Senate Democrats?  What is it about the confirmation vote on this thoughtful jurist who promised to faithfully interpret the Constitution sent Chuck Schumer into an apoplectic rage?

I can tell you that it is not because they think she isn't up to the task - she is smarter than any of them and twice as smart as some of them. It is not because she doesn't respect the Constitution - she knows it better and holds it in higher regard than they do or ever did. And it is definitely not that they are politically rudderless partisans - while they may be quintessential partisans, they are anything but directionless.

No, the problem truly isn't that they are without direction, instead it's that their direction is hard left. The Democrat political tantrum we've witnessed over the past four years has shown us how little the average citizen actually has in common with the political party of AOC, Sol Alinsky, Jim Crow, and Karl Marx. They have discovered, to their dismay, that their leftist agenda is too unacceptably radical for the American people and impossible to enact legislatively within the present rules.

For them the court has become far more than just the third of three coequal branches of government - it has become the last chance to enact their unpopular platform. They want to place judicial activists on the court in an attempt to turn it into an unaccountable, un-elected, uber-legislature. Justices such as Barrett, who respect the text of the Constitution, who honor the original intent, and who believe it means what it says are a threat to their radical agenda. That is why Chuck Schumer said of the confirmation of Justice Barrett: 

"It will go down as one of the darkest days in the 231-year history of the United States Senate." (1)

It also explains why he didn't bother, in his mad quest for power, to veil his threats about breaking or changing all the rules the next time he gets control of the Senate.  They threatened to abolish the filibuster, add D.C. and Puerto Rico to the union to inflate their numbers in the Senate, and promised a Supreme Court packing power grab.  Adding insult to injury, they want to disenfranchise the entire midsouth, midwest, and most of the western states by eliminating the Electoral College.  Essentially, there is no rule they will not break, lie they will not tell, or depth to which they will not sink to keep from losing their grip on power.

They would have us, as someone wise has said, abandon the Constitution that has served us so well for over two centuries, and enter into, what Constitutional scholar Mark Levin calls a tyrannical "Post-Constitutional America."

Of course, in their wisdom, the founders provided a Constitutional remedy to their concerns.  Simply enact laws which pass Constitutional muster - or - cultivate the necessary support to amend the Constitution.  Of course those things are hard to do, especially when your platform is neither popular nor tenable.

There is another remedy - a much easier one - and one much preferred for those of us who cherish our liberty and freedom, who value the maintenance of our God-given rights, who want to continue to live in a country ruled by laws and not by men, and who want to continue to live in a Republic not subject to the tyranny of the majority.  That twofold remedy is simple:  It involves NOT rewarding the party that gave us a four year political temper tantrum while at the same time voting for President Donald Trump.

 

Return the Trump-Pence ticket to the White House for 4 more years and keep America great.

 

-- footnotes ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1 - Axios - Monday, October 26, 2020 - Dualing views:  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday "will go down as one of the darkest days" in Senate history, moments before the chamber voted 52-48 to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

 

"...the next time the American people give Democrats a majority in this chamber, you will have forfeited the right to tell us how to run that majority. You may win this vote, but in the process, you will speed the precipitous decline of faith in our institution, our politics, the Senate and the Supreme Court."

"My colleagues may regret this for a lot longer than they think. Here at this late hour, at the end of this sordid chapter in the history of the Senate, the history of the Supreme Court, my deepest and greatest sadness is for the American people," Schumer said. 

"It will go down as one of the darkest days in the 231-year history of the United States Senate."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Democrats oppose the nomination because "they don't like the outcome."

"What this administration and this Republican Senate has done is exercise the power that was given to us by the American people in a manner that is entirely within the rules of the Senate and the Constitution of the United States," McConnell said.

"Elections come and go. Political power is never permanent, but the consequences could be cataclysmic if our colleagues across the aisle let partisan passions boil over and scorch the ground rules of our government." 

Which Lives Matter?

I've been asking myself, lately, "Why are we arguing over bumper stickers?"  Given the chaos we live in today, is there really nothing else to direct our energy toward?  And why does the argument irk me so?

So yes, I deliberately waited several weeks before posting this observation, because emotions were so raw, many friends of mine were seemingly stirring this pot, and I wanted to be sure I was attuned to the Holy Spirit on the matter.

We hear one person say, "Black lives matter."  Another answers, "All lives matter!"  One group shouts, "Black lives matter!"  Another demands, "All lives matter!"

But is it really an either/or?  Why can't both be true?

The Bible speaks to this issue and settled the matter 2000 years ago.  In the 3rd chapter of John, verse 16, it is written:

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Our lives, regardless of race or ethnicity, are so valuable, that Christ gave His own life so that we might have salvation, if one but asks Him and accepts the free gift He offers us.  That said, in light of the infinite value that God Himself places on all persons, does it not follow that both statements are equally true?  Perhaps Christians need to redirect the conversation.  To what end do we waste any time arguing and cajoling others about who's got the better bumper sticker slogan?

I do wish that were the end of it.  But unfortunately, there is a caveat.

In the politically-charged times we live in, it is difficult - if not impossible - to separate the phrase "Black lives matter" from the political organization that goes by the same name.  Many of the political goals of the organization's founders and its statement of beliefs are antithetical to the Christian worldview to which I espouse.  That in itself is a topic for another day, but I urge you to do your own homework.

The use of this phrase has been transformed into a radical political purity test in many corners - a bridge too far for me.  But, despite the fact that I avoid using the phrase or acronym (BLM), I do recognize that the Scriptures have clearly spoken on the value of each individual life.

So which lives do matter?  In closing I quote the earliest song I have remembrance learning as a toddler, "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.  Jesus loves the little children of the world."